Tag: Four30Challenge

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What I Need This Morning

I’m probably at my worst when plans are disrupted. It’s why I purposefully leave lots of time for everything I do and like to have a pocket full of backup options.

Today’s disruptions are complicated by my anxiety over what it means to be a single dad. I know I need an adult life that is separate from my sons, if only for the fact that it makes me a more complete model of self-care for them. More important is actually taking care of myself. Balancing that against being the sole caregiver of two amazing souls can bend me in half.

I’m letting go of the expectations I put on myself. Maybe the son who was in tears about missing his mom’s touch and had his first fearful episode of sleep walking doesn’t have to go to church today.

I’m replacing fear with love.

God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason

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Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me

David Bowie has been playing on life’s jukebox since the Labyrinth’s Fire Gang gave my eight-year-old self nightmares.

By high school I was hanging out with the drama kids, singing “Magic Dance.” I was also in Poetry Club writing my own versions of Nine Inch Nails’ songs, so when Bowie toured with NIN in ’95, I was there. “The Hearts Filthy Lesson,” had just hit MTV and it was intensely dark. I put on some sort of black t-shirt and made my way to a muddy hill in a Camden, NJ, amphitheater.

At 16, I had no appreciation for the moment or the performances. The hill had turned into a slip ‘n slide and I was goofing with the goths. Fortunately, I had my head in the right place for NIN and Bowie playing “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)” together. That, I will never forget (nor the dirt-covered goth girl who pinned me down for a kiss at the bottom of a wicked slide).

I went on to see him at the Roseland in NYC (a show just for BowieNet subscribers), Moby’s Area2 festival (there was a cosplay Jared, but still no Labyrinth tunes performed), and the Tower Theater in Philly (the closing lyric, “Ziggy played guitar…” still holds on to my auditory nerve center).

Bowie had virtually quit touring when I met Mary. We were at Lollapalooza in Chicago when The Raconteurs revived a lackluster set by playing “It Ain’t Easy.”

I was mostly hands-off when it came to wedding plans, but I had a couple requests. One, that her dress show off her “shoulders and boobs” (direct quote). Two, that “Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me” be our song.

—

“Oh, when you rock and roll with me

There’s no one else I’d rather be

Nobody here can do it for me

When you rock and roll with me

When you rock and roll, when you rock and roll with me

No one else I’d rather, I’d rather be

Nobody here can do it for me

I’m in tears, I’m in tears

When you rock and roll with me”

—

For a marriage that involved so few tears, yet lead to so many, this song has come to mean almost too much.

Today I reflect on “Nobody here can do it for me.” I’ve learned the truth that self-love is a connection with the internal divine. There is an infinite engine of Love. I call it God. You can glimpse it in others, feel the radiance of it, but direct access is found only inside one’s own soul. Only once you’ve done that can you really share in the warmth of another’s love.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Duality and Divinity

John 1:1-5 (ESV)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Reverend Karen Covey shared this verse during a casual service in a wooded park this morning. The sun was bright and unseasonably warm and we were invited to spend quiet time among the trees in thoughtful meditation.

I was drawn to the edge of the woods, to the uninterrupted sunlight pouring in from the east. Still amidst the trees, the shadows pointed me toward the sun.

We can’t find the light without orienting against the dark.

The power of creation is our divine gift. Our word is the expression of our divinity. There’s no choice in that. To speak or write is to create. We can use this power to build a world of love, truth, compassion, and understanding, or a world of lies, deceit, fear, and assumptions.

It’s not easy to speak the truth. It’s not comfortable. It feels so much easier to swallow the assumptions and go along to get along. But it can’t be sustained. That world of lies will fall apart around you, bringing down those you love, yet not enough to tell the truth.

What will you create with your word today?

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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The Best Christmas

Holidays are where I notice the biggest changes in our lives.

The house isn’t as colorful as it has been in the past and it isn’t filled with wonderful smells of food made with loving care.

But it is so peaceful. Christmas music plays while my boys quietly build their Lego sets and I lay back in bed, taking time for myself. They were excited for the most modest gifts. I feel like I know them better than ever, that our loss and struggles have brought us closer together.

All our fortunes bloom out of the unfortunate.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Embrace Your Freedom

In the weeks after Mary’s death I wrote about how music had lost its power over me.

I was living a robotic existence. It was too too risky to feel anything at all. I had intuitions about the importance of love, but I wasn’t ready to experience it.

The road trip we embarked on started with a weekend of music that would break me out of the armor I had built.

As Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band tore through “Lay Your Burden Down,” I had my son on my shoulders, my feet in the mud, and tears framing the smile on my face. Mary and I had danced in front of them on a special date weekend. All the emotions I hadn’t let myself feel poured forth. I let myself be free to feel.

Music touches me even deeper now. Everything does. Freedom means being able to explore further, especially within.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Don’t Overdo

We don’t have a tree up, I haven’t acquired stocking stuffers, and I’m not sure where the stockings are.

These were all on my mind as I pulled this card from don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements deck.

Now I’m thinking of Halloween. Mary was Tippi Hedren from Hitchcock’s The Birds one year before we met. She took bloody pecks out of a stylish blazer, wired birds around her, and had more birds torturing her hair. It was brilliant.

We overdid it all. Costumes, hikes, meals, decorations…we never sat for more than an evening by the fire. Even that would be rife with problem solving and planning.I don’t know if that’s what left her depleted and unable to fight off the infection, or whether she knew in her soul that her time would not be long. Both could be true.

I’m finding my pace. I’m learning how to rest.

I’m going to do my nest today.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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A Night Out at the Bar

Alcoholism.

I’ve written very little about it since questioning whether I was an alcoholic almost a year ago.

I stopped drinking on Halloween night, 2018. It was two months before I felt my mind begin to clear. I was entering a romanic relationship with a woman who had a history with addict partners. With her help I stared down two decades of unhealthy patterns and concluded that I had a serious problem. In truth, maintaining the relationship was a significant motivation in my quest to make myself better. That and being a better father to my sons drove me towards therapy and weekly (at minimum) AA meetings. It was all helpful. It was all necessary for me to spend serious time exploring my past and working through my guilt and shame. Why would I quit drinking for this woman and my sons, yet I hadn’t for my wife and those same sons?

I was missing a key element to my healing and it wasn’t until the romance was ended beyond my wishes that I discovered that key. Suddenly single again, I set to meditating and reading more. I picked up Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. It spoke immediately to the hole inside me. I was lacking in a love for myself that was crippling my desire for self improvement. I took on the daily affirmations and listened with care to my self-critical voices. I found inside myself an ability to heal. I didn’t need the therapy sessions or AA meetings anymore, I needed to spend that time expressing love and care for myself. I found an internal drive to push away the things that did not nourish me. Identifying as an “alcoholic” was no longer appropriate. I had broken the patterns and swam in the darkness that had lead me to self medicate. I loved myself too much to do more harm to my mind, body, and soul with alcohol.

I went out last night and danced among the drinkers. There were friends there, but I was primarily there on my own. A lot of it was uncomfortable. I still feel like widowhood is a contagion, that people are too vulnerable to come near that pain. It’s often easier to be around strangers. The music was good and I fell into the bliss of moving to it. It didn’t matter who I was, or wasn’t, dancing with, I was experiencing the moment just for myself.

Not drinking turned out to be the easy part.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Still Present

Mary visited me again.

This inspirational card has floated around our lives for more than a decade. I don’t know where Mary found it and I never paid much attention to it on our dresser or her nightstand.

Having no clear connection to our life together, I was tempted to toss it in my efforts to make room in our lives. Physical health and wellbeing has been paramount in our family transformation and I didn’t think I needed a reminder. I checked myself on how easily bad habits form and old patterns return and placed the card between our kitchen and dining room.

A day or so earlier, I was at Lanikai Wellness Studio for a yoga class and purchased a deck of cards based on don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements. I have a long to-read list and thought this would be a good way to bring Ruiz’s wisdom into my life. I also hoped they would provide material for a new blog series.

I sat down this morning to flip through the cards for the first time. This same card was of the first ten I read. We didn’t own the book. We never discussed Ruiz. I didn’t discover him until after Mary passed and there’s no indication of his name or the book title on the cards.

This is my first real holiday season alone. A friend buoyed me through my first Christmas as a widower, but that friendship has been lost. As much as I trust where I am and the good things that are to come, the loneliness is weighing on me.

This week I came home from a brutal two hours of soccer. I was hammered in goal and on the field, nothing seemed to work in the back-to-back games. I was wiped out emotionally and physically. I was useless to my sons as they warmed up leftovers and served themselves dinner. I wondered what I was doing wrong, how I got to this place.

I had a dream that night that Mary had been in the stands watching our boys and watching me play. I ran over to the edge of the field to ask for help with something small. It startled me and I woke angry. I envisioned the stands again and I took her away. It wasn’t like a dream. I can see the empty spot at the end of the metal bench now. I could have told her how much I loved her, how blessed I am to have had her, how important she was and is to me, or I could have just smiled and enjoyed a moment seeing her again. But I erased her. I was angry at myself for a foolish fantasy.

So she’s back this morning telling me to take care of my body. She always protected soccer for me. She would come home from a long day of work, start making dinner, and send me out the door, no matter if the boys were being disagreeable or impatient, or if coats were still on the floor from our afternoon adventures. She was always there later to hear about my frustrations and successes on the field. I can hear her drowsy, mumbled, “I’m listening,” as she fought off sleep after a late game. She was listening, she was always present. She was so good at being present that she still manages it from time to time.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason