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What Do I Miss?

I’m growing more comfortable with being a single parent. The RV we borrow for many of our adventures only has three seats and our boy-centric life is a lot of fun.

It’s allowed me to more patiently evaluate what I miss about having a partner. Not necessarily the things I miss about Mary, but the one-on-one exchanges with an intimate partner.

I’ve learned that physical closeness holds more meaning in my heart than I realized. Not for its own sake, but as an expression, exploration, and expansion of love and compassion. “Casual” isn’t in my vocabulary of physical intimacy. I still crave physical connection, but now know better the significance it holds for me.

More difficult is not having someone with whom to process the day’s happenings. Adventures and struggles with my sons, soccer wins and losses, or the podcasts I consumed while doing dishes and laundry, they’re all sitting inside me at the end of the day. I do have a couple very special friends I talk with on occasion. I find we can unwind problems that seem to solve themselves just through verbalizing them. I miss that dearly as a daily practice.

Writing has lightened my mental load, problems often find their own solutions and the process can be as bold and freeing as a good conversation. But it is not the same as going on a verbal expedition with someone you care about and who cares about you. That is special and, at least for me, necessary.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Absolute Beginner: The Yoga Is Working

I’ve been practicing yoga for a few weeks and my focus has remained on mechanics. Well, to be more accurate: I’m just trying to keep up with the class and not injure myself.

Today was different. Not in the struggle to keep up with new poses, but in my intention. I noticed that the attendance card box was labelled “M-Z”. The instructors have been very kind to me and up to this point had been pulling my card for me, I hadn’t paid attention to the box.

My late wife’s name was Mary Zerbey. There’s more in those initials than the reminder of our life together or her yoga mat under my arm.

She was Mary Fisher for almost 37 years, Mary Zerbey for less than 11. I have learned that the Mary I know is unique. She only exists in my mind and the people who knew her for all of her 47 years don’t have the same person in their minds. It’s a peculiar revelation of grief, of how we exist differently in individual minds. My love for her is mine alone, as is my love for anyone.

I got to my mat with an odd intention, to release the love I had attached to people in my life and to bring it back into myself. A totally new idea for me. Up to now I’ve been sharing as much love as I can stand while simultaneously seeking it internally. Specifically, I focused on a recent love that was no longer serving my independent, forward movement.

Class was thoroughly challenging and I had no space to consciously reflect on my intention.

We stretched out for shavasana, or corpse pose, to close our practice and images from my dreams appeared. I watched an ancient planet, the source of powerful dream stories since childhood, fall towards a new landscape I had been wandering for weeks, searching for meaning. The collision destroyed both worlds, killing millions on the old planet and shattering the barren wilderness under my feet.

I went to tears under the cool towel over my eyes.

The old quest to find love in the world is over. I’m ready to find it in myself.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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A Terrific Tuesday at Winterthur

These kids are locked onto learning about inertia.

For seven years I’ve been witnessing this level of engagement on hot summer days, no #SummerSlide in sight.

Terrific Tuesdays happen at Winterthur Estate throughout July and August. Our first visit in 2013 turned into a membership purchase and we try to make as many of these events each year as we are able.

Of course, the activities offer a great reason to discover the always changing and always beautiful gardens.

After five hours of hiking, playing, and learning, my sons had tired bodies and activated minds.

We’ll be back.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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The Beast

“You’re a beast back there.”

It’s the most frequent compliment I get from teammates and opponents. Soccer is where I’ve consistently acted out the integration of my shadow into my persona. It’s come from an overdeveloped sense of work ethic. When every striker seemed bigger, stronger, faster, more skilled, or better equipped, I figured that I could out work any one of them. Pushing myself to never give up on any play introduced me to the beast. Through the work I’ve gotten stronger, faster, and a bit more skillful. Game after game I found unlikely successes and built neural shortcuts to the beast.

It’s there at every kickoff now. It’s part of my game, part of me that is entirely under control in a seemingly wild way.

I have a lot more beasts to contend with, trickier and nastier monsters, but I know how to work and how to use them for my betterment.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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A Restorative Day

We had a rocky start to the day, not making it to Sunday service, but we all found what we needed throughout the rest of the day.

My sons played with neighborhood friends as I dove back into Lego sorting and listening to Dr. Jordan Peterson lectures on Jung and Freud.After practicing their lines for an upcoming play and having an on-the-fly lunch, they made a new friend as I battled through one of the toughest soccer matches of my summer. We rushed home to let me get cleaned up and pack snacks for our evening adventure.

The Members Only event at Longwood Gardens proved to be busier than expected, but we met with friends, snuck up front, and enjoyed tight bluegrass interpretations of 80s pop hits from Love Canon.

All of this came on the heels of a difficult few weeks, a funk that was running longer than I felt comfortable with. Action always seems to be the answer for us, the edge of the familiar and the unknown.

I look forward to better sleep tonight and a renewed confidence that I am capable of providing all that I am called to for my sons.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Meetings

C.S. Lewis wrote about being “met” by his late wife. Not in a ghostly way, but those serendipitous moments when answers appear that only could have come from her.

I’ve become more open to these meetings, but I call it listening and I’ve stopped worrying about whether it’s God, a heavenly Mary, the Mary that’s left in my mind, or a mix of all or none.

This week, with low spirit and weak energy, I let my children roam the neighborhood at greater intervals. There were some mothers with names remarkably close to “Mary” who showed radical hospitality to my sons. My first reaction, and a lingering one, was shame in not doing the job I was called to do. But I think that the boys have found little meetings on their own. And I believe I got some answers to my loneliness and fear of not being able to provide a rich life for my sons.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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The Self Destruct Button

The exponential growth of awareness of my own ignorance in relationship to my meager learning, that’s what I’m up against. Not in a broad manner, I’ve come to love this fact of learning, but in the personal realm.

I’ve been exposed to this idea that we’re each a node in a network of humans with an interconnectivity that has reach beyond what we can conceptualize. The Self doesn’t exist outside of this ever transitioning network. Even the Self seems to exist within it’s own network within our minds. Ego, Super Ego, and Id are a simplification of the uncountable concepts of Self that we absorb, create, and receive.

How much Will do I have? What’s in my control? What do I KNOW?

Scary and empowering knowledge, to be sure.

I’ve learned one thing about my Self that is, at least for the moment, definitively true. I know exactly how to self destruct. Through exploring powerlessness in Alcoholics Anonymous, counseling, prayer, and reading, I’ve found my power over alcohol. It’s a black magic, one that would be easier to deny and hide from. I didn’t want to admit that I had this power to destroy myself and drag down a whole network of humans with me. So many messages tell me to claim powerlessness, but that’s not how power works. It will manifest, whether through intention or in spite of inaction.

How do I employ black magic for good? I don’t know. Maybe by sharing this knowledge that the self destruct button within us need not be denied I can help someone else.

Take a look at your self destruct button. Get to know it and recognize the awful power that each of us possess.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Lego Sorting Zen and Tips: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

Look at all that little stuff!

Whenever I’m sorting I start out with what is visually most accessible. That just means I grab the largest, most plentiful pieces first.

That can leave an intimidating pile of tiny elements at the bottom of your sort bucket. The first thing I do is fill the bucket again with unsorted Lego and start over. If you do this a couple times, sorting the mass of littles at the bottom gets easier.

Then, when you’ve got a good pile of smaller pieces, you can use a similar technique to sort. For this assortment, I picked out “dots,” as we call them, or single-stud round plates. Depending on how you’ve decided to break them out, you can choose two colors and use both hands to pluck them from the pile. We haven’t yet broken out all the colors, so I use palettes like earth tones, translucent, reds, and other.

I hope this helps.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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A Marriage Complete

There is a criticism of marriage that essentially states that the only marriage deemed successful by our society is one that ends with the death of one or both partners. Longevity trumps health in our most valued relationships.

I have the questionable honor of having had a successful marriage.

Beyond having made it to the natural dissolution of our union, I believe that Mary and I achieved all we were meant to together on this Earth. We set out with few goals and accomplished all of them, and much more, in almost 11 years of marriage.

We wanted two children and to have a stay-at-home parent. That goal expanded into a home education lifestyle and a focus on family wellbeing that we had not imagined. It created a framework for us to survive and thrive through a difficult loss.

We had rules to keep decisions, disagreements, and conflicts between the two of us, to always turn to those rifts and work to heal them. Through those rules we built an indomitable team. We counted on each other’s checks to improve ourselves and our marriage. I hold this model close to my heart and apply the direct mastering of conflict as often as I am able.

There must be things left undone or unsaid, correct? A widow friend of mine commented that we seem drawn to those ideas that were sown but never harvested. Maybe our dreams weren’t grand enough, but I can’t think of a thing we wanted to do, yet did not “get around to.” A live recording of a Nine Inch Nails song came on yesterday and ambushed me with happy and sad tears. We saw them in a technologically and theatrically stunning show in Chicago. I thought about all the concerts, the theater, the modest traveling. I cannot think of any significant opportunity for ourselves as a couple or as a family that we passed on for another time. There was something in us that knew we only had so long together.

When we had no reason to believe it was our last few months together we got baptized as a family and shared special hikes and personal moments alone.

The end was the end. It was Mary’s story completed and the chapter of our marriage closed.

We had no aspirations beyond marriage. I’m still trying to find my purpose, my story.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Finding Order

This is my mess, my chaos. Well, it’s the mess and chaos immediately before me. We haven’t sorted our Lego collection since Mary passed and I’ve had the expedient habit of buying bricks when I didn’t know what else to do.

I’m going to spend some time every day getting this in order. My sons create amazing buildings, vehicles, cities, and, most importantly, stories when they can easily access the materials they need.

Also important is to bring order to our material life. I don’t regret focusing on our spiritual, emotional, and educational lives, but it’s difficult to focus on those things when there is physical chaos about.

Wish me luck.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason