moments
A moment that invites you to feel as though someone has taken a box full of all you know and a box full of all that you do not want to admit and turned them over on to a table and said, "Make sense of this. Now."
A moment (or two) spent wondering what home really is and really means and why it sometimes feels like I am someone searching for home instead of seeing the home I already have.
A moment that feels as though someone holds up a mirror facing me and says, "Look. No. Really look."
A few moments I have experienced lately.
I have been a traveler walking through truth, wonderment, joy, and pain. I have been visiting the past while sitting in the present.
I have felt as though I am becoming a bit worn in a few places as if I am on a trip seeking the lessons of the wise skin horse.
And this is what it is…life. This is what real is. This is what I am to do. This is doing.
I hear the whispers of truth, "you are on your path."
But it has been a bit uncentering as this kind of traveling can be and I have felt a bit like I am up on the tightrope holding my own and someone suddenly turns off the lights in the big top. My only option? Breathe and be patient.
So that is what I have been attempting to do.
And, tonight, the lights were raised by a little music I hadn't listened to in years paired with the rhythm of moving the scissors at the cutting table.
As I sung along with Alabama and Randy Travis then George Strait and finally Ronnie Milsap, I realized that these men sing part of the soundtrack of my life. I was transported to the many trips I have made from Indiana to South Carolina and back. I found myself:
In the middle front seat of a white Bonneville singing "40 Hour Week" with my mother and cousins as we tried to find every letter of the alphabet in the signs along the Kentucky interstate.
Spotting the mountains of Tennessee and turning up "Smokey Mountain Rain" so my mother and I could sing along as my brother groaned and turned up his walkman in the backseat.
Driving alone to my grandparents' house for the first time as George Strait kept me company singing "The Fireman" and "I Cross My Heart."
Tonight, singing these songs and remembering the goodness in the past, I found my footing.
As I turned the music off and then the lights in the little room, I realized that I felt grounded in the joy and beauty of the little moments that make up this life…in the moments that make up my life.
I am blessed.
it is what it is
Reader Comments (15)
yes, we are blessed.
we get so totally lost when our boxes get overturned...just to visit these save places again...and to dance in the good memories...to treasure and nurture the not so good ones...to come to the end , of which we know is life...to feel blessed all over again! xx
This post moved me to tears...it is almost like you were expressing my same feelings and desires...Alabama,too, has a very special place in my heart. My sister Kelly Rae and I often listened to Alabama as we rode together in our fathers truck so many years ago. He has been gone for 25 years now, and I can still hear the music...still.
I will be 39 very soon. Most would call it "mid-life". Lately I have been somehow forced to truly take inventory of myself...to look into my mirror and really LOOK. My box has been overturned for quite sometime now, but I think I am finally making some sense of it all.
Thinking of my father's early death makes me realize how truly blessed I am to have these years that he didn't.
My home is in Alabama, no matter where I lay my head...
Thank you for your moving words.
and i am blessed
to come here
and read your words
and be reminded
to
be
and to
do
and to
share....
you have a gift with words.
it is amazing what you
do with them....
what you make me see
and feel...
missed you.
You have such a gift with words. I'm a new reader to your blog and am so glad to have discovered it. Your writing is beautiful.
me too...i am blessed by you, your words and the memories to bring to mind.
this really speaks to me on so many levels, its the small moments that make a life that define the world i am breathing in these days and i am grateful to have found peace within that ... thinking of you, much love, xo
What a lovely post, Liz.
Yes! Yes! Yes! I love all of these moments and have felt them each too, felt I was exactly who you describe -- someone searching for home instead of seeing the home she's already created. I love the box full of all you know and all you don't want to admit. I love the challenge to make sense of it. Now. I love your whispers of truth and your realizations about life. I love all that you have discovered in your return to, and creation of, home. Beautiful, dear friend. Just beautiful.
xoxo
Looking over your site, so beautiful.
I collect buttons, savor flowers, save quilts for the world, and antique fabrics, believe in listening (well, most of the time).
It is the best gift..!
We only have now, because it is all there is..amazing isn't it, how we add on to it, and subtract from it because we find a moment of time to be too long for our short attention spans?
All the problems seem to stem from that impatience.
Nice to meet you!
This was beautiful and so resonates, though, of course for different reasons. This path we walk can be so incredibly challenging at times, and it can seem truly insurmountable. But, at the end of the day, you are right...we are blessed. Thank you for sharing and thank you for the reminder. love.xoxo
It's a gift to have the wisdom to take the time to recall and savour those wonderful moments.
And it's a gift to have a blog like yours to remind us of the beauty of quiet, still moments.
Thank you.
So lovely...we are truly blessed.
This really got me thinking. Thank you x
"But it has been a bit uncentering as this kind of traveling can be and I have felt a bit like I am up on the tightrope holding my own and someone suddenly turns off the lights in the big top. My only option? Breathe and be patient."
Wise one.......these words hold me tight and give me love.
Sending love on the wind to you
what a beautiful post.
I don't think i can take my hands away from my eyes to look at the complete mess my two boxes made. I'm just not as ready as I want to be.