January 2, 2014 · 7:34 am

End and Begin

Here it is again, the end of a year and the beginning of a new one. Last year I chose a word to live by rather than making a list of New Year’s resolutions which I may or may not have followed.  I came across ONEWORD THREE SIXTY FIVE and adopted the idea.

Last years Word of the Year was Surrender and here I’ve hit yet another learning curve in my older age of navigating being a writer, connecting with social media, and trying to stay current with developing computer skills. Surrender to the fact that I’ve much to learn, must ask for help, must yield to instruction, follow instructions, then retain all that information to repeat actions in the future.

In order to finish what I originally set out to do: write about my word for this year, I had to teach myself a new skill which was to find the title of a previous post and insert it correctly with a title and not a long list of… what is the computer word for a bunch of letters, symbols and ….ahh…yes ‘code’?  This was definitely a ‘learn as I go’ post.

I read Claire De Boer’s  article on her chosen word and I borrowed her plan to think, pray and toss around ideas for what my word would be…several options presented themselves until it became clear. It wasn’t until after I’d chosen my word, gone back and read Claire’s article again that I spotted my word right there in the middle of her writing. Thank you Claire. It was confirmation somehow that I was on the right path.

I am currently reading The Inheritance by John and Lyza Clarke who share several of their sailing excursions along with spiritual truths of travelers from the Old Testament. In one particular chapter John was telling about the time he and his son were on the boat together, stuck at dock waiting for some stormy weather of wind and rain to end so they could continue sailing.

John says, “Two things are especially important to remember on a sailboat voyage. One is you need a destination to head for and the second is you have to keep moving. If you stay in one place too long, its charm diminishes and restlessness sets in. A destination gives you a direction, a distance to cover, and a sense of accomplishment. When our children were young, we headed for Desolation Sound and back to Seattle on our summer vacations. They anticipate the special places along the way, like good old Sydney Spit, Hawkins Island, Bucaneer Bay, or Harmony Island, but we always hauled anchor and moved on to the next spot before they grew tired of each place’s uniqueness. By the end of the trip we looked forward to the routines of home and were ready to get off the boat. But then we repeated the same cycle the next year and the kids never tired of it as long as we kept moving.”

I was prompted to read that paragraph several times and then continued to read, “Life, too, needs a purpose or destination to keep progressing toward. We are meant to keep moving toward the inheritance through the lessons God has prepared, to a place where the intimate knowledge of God and a mature character are the goals.”  While John and his son were stuck waiting out the storm they explored the beaches and kept moving and as John says, “talking about life.”

It was during those repeated readings the word FORWARD came to settle upon me as the focus for upcoming year. FORWARD is significant for me because it clarifies how to set goals and ask myself if any particular thought, book, activity or habit will move me or not.

Over my life journey I’ve needed to look back a lot, to sort out where I came from, heal from wounds and discover who I was – a tendency though is to emotionally live back there if I’m not careful. To let go and look FORWARD is wise and good inner advice for me to follow. As I approach my 60th birthday – oh right, that happened in October…as my husband Ross approaches his 60th birthday in February and we anticipate our 35th wedding anniversary in March we’ve planned a fun holiday for ourselves.

A few ideas of putting my word into daily life plan means I can prioritize my writing activities and decide whether they are moving me in the direction I want or need.  I may even dig my paint brushes out of confinement and get creativity going again.

I can focus on the big dream I have of one day walking the Pacific Coast Trail which runs from the Canada/US border all the way to the Mexico border which I’ve loosely read about. In looking toward that walking trek I can make choices about how much I will walk this month, this week, this day. I can choose how I treat my feet, my health, my attitudes about fitness and how I will use my mind while out walking.

I enjoy my family and friends, the game of Pickleball, the recovery/discipleship ministry called Freedom Session and I anticipate what will come in this next year as I keep my word in front of me as a guide. I want to step in the direction of my destination as it unfolds before me.

Oh, and after several hours of experimenting with how to ‘simply’ insert a link from another website I accidentally did it right one time and after that…well, I managed, with help to do it again.   I am moving FORWARD.

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October 19, 2013 · 6:49 am

My Age is Showing

This week I tried to be brave. Actually I was brave. I said yes to myself and to the man who lives in the house with me, to learn more about my new phone and how to store my precious written words out there in cyberspace. It didn’t go well.

Take two almost 60 years old (a husband and wife) and put them in the same room, in the evening, after dinner – after each one has already had a long day of doing life, out there in people world and it doesn’t take too long to imagine what might happen.

This is what happened. (full story may appear here after I share it with my writers class next week)

After the step by step instructions of the computer got too bossy for me, I slowly slunk out of my nice comfy chair and ended up on the floor pleading with my man that, NO, I was not going to change my password because I loved my password. And how come I needed to do that anyway? I tell you, it wasn’t a fun rest of the evening. It is amazing how cool a room can become, even if the heat is turned up and the fireplace glowing with a cat sweetly curled up in front of it, ignoring us. Imagine that…

I’d take a picture and post it and do show and tell, but then I’d have to first get it into the computer, then shrink and fit it to size, then upload or download or insert or…well, it just isn’t happening today.

I have other more important details to concern myself with – one being the fact that a large number birthday is approaching. It’s odd how significant numbers become. When I turned 30 life was exciting, children were being born and none of the above consumed my evenings.

When I arrived to age 40 I tried to ignore it and kept on being a busy mom, with kids approaching the teen stage and days seemed to move faster than before.

When age 50 came I went into shock, then had a girl only party and got on with life. By the time I was 55 I accepted the fact that I was in my 50’s. Suddenly 5 more years have passed and I’m an empty-nester who is approaching the senior years. Really!

So, instead of the focus being on babies, toddlers, adolescents, teens, young adults, careers (mine, kids, husband) I’ve graduated to computers, instagrams, i phones, clouds and what seems like a zillion other terms that are now taking up space left by empty-nesting but not empty braining. Though I wonder…

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September 26, 2013 · 9:54 am

More Learning Curves

Oh my!  My brain is swimming in mush today.  I’ve been on a two day whirlwind tour with my 29 year old son Randall, whizzing through ‘this is how you do…’ on my new I phone 5c.   We’ve been linking to, or connecting/disconnecting or hooking up (correct terminology left me days ago) Facebook, Instagram, Itunes, my gmail email account and well… I simply can’t remember everything we’ve done.  So I write notes to myself, much to my son’s dismay.  I can imagine what he’s thinking….

However, true to my nature of not always grasping the simplest of details while learning the vast amount my menopausal brain can hold, I asked my husband this morning, (really I did this) “Do you think that when my phone actually rings, I pick it up and hold it to my ear and say hello, like a regular phone?”   Meanwhile I’m looking at my beautiful new, green, rectangular, super thin box with its lovely white case – covering almost all the pretty green I’d spent hours online looking at to decide what color I wanted.  I held up the phone looking for the speakers, wondering how I was supposed to hold my new treasure.  My dear husband, didn’t even bother to answer me while I stood there lost gazing at my ‘best deal ever’, according to my son.

So, all I had to do to get this amazing device was to cancel my other plan, (huh, how do you do that?) for which I got step by step son instructions, then choose my color, agree to a ‘share plan’ (a what?) with son and daughter in law – okay, I’m pretty sure those details will come later. Then I was to pay for the actual phone, gulp, accept the fact that the monthly plan is the best I’ll ever get even if it is $20 a month more than I’m currently paying for my smart phone.  I trust my son so I nod in agreement even though we did this all by repeated phone calls while said son was in the store ready to purchase waiting for me to make up my mind, then agree to set up a direct deposit from my bank account to son’s for my monthly usage part and he’ll take care of the rest….uhm – really?  I’ll get around to that banking thing soon, but not too soon.

On day one of the phone tutorial, sitting in a coffee shop, me, son, daughter in law and husband – you’d think we’d had a baby or something , and the first thing my son said, before handing me my phone was, “Okay Mom, one thing you have to know is this, you have to be very careful, you can’t drop it because it will shatter and…”   I laughed because it was so reminiscent of times way in the past when I’d be telling him something similar about his new toy, while all he wanted to do was hold it, touch it or get using it.  It was a quick hour of basic instruction and the two young-ens were off to dinner, while I very carefully held my new toy, terrified I was going to drop and wreck it especially because I’d overheard Randall say to Carly, “I don’t know about this, her other phone is pretty sturdy,” like I wasn’t even within hearing distance. I quietly agreed because my now apparently useless phone has been dropped on many occasions with no damage.

Overnight, from tutorial day one before day two arrived, I conned my husband to sit with me while we transferred some of my contact info from one phone to the new one because Randall originally said I couldn’t just import it all like other phones.  The husband and son got busy online and discovered that ‘there’s an app for that’ or a way to do it but by then I was halfway finished and envisioned double entries and that just wouldn’t do so I painstakingly one by one entered all my ‘peeps’. (borrowing from the younger generation – people)

Well, day two tutorial was a 3 hour coffee and lunch paid by me event.  What I loved the most, was the time spent gleaning from my son while smiling through comments like, and I loosely quote Randall, ” what old people don’t understand is this…, get rid of your home phone, everyone should be using gmail,” while clicking buttons, reprimanding me for touching the screen too hard, and showing me 10 different things at once, then taking the time to check his own phone that silently speaks to him and take care of his texts/calls and whatever else he was doing.

This reminds me now how I discovered an amazing feature on my phone.  After the tutorial, at home where I was safe from thieves who may be lurking about ready to remove me from my phone (so says a personal warning) and carefully placed in my chair where if I dropped the phone it would land on soft padding, I had a question, of course – just one of a hundred but I’m trying to ask one at a time.  I sent off a text message asking what the picture meant at the bottom of my screen – it looks like a vertical peanut in wine glass.  I got up the courage to touch it to see what would happen.  This happened.  A wavy line appeared across the screen, my husband took ‘my’ phone out of ‘my’ hands and talked to the phone.  Then magically words typed across the screen and I got all excited so I took ‘my’ phone out of his hands and did the whole process myself and then sent another text message to Randall telling to him NM, I got it.  (for the uniformed, as I was until this week – NM is never mind)

I’ve just decided this is part one of Iphone C talk….part two will come another day.  I must get back to my play time.  Oh yes, perhaps by then I will know how to take a photo, get it into my laptop or connect to my blogs.  Oh my!

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September 9, 2013 · 7:24 pm

Gold and God – A Winning Match

In exhaustion and exhilaration I climbed in bed for a good night’s sleep.

Earlier in the day I and my female partner had participated in the women’s doubles in the game of Pickleball at the BC Senior Summer Games in Kamloops, BC.  http://www.2013kamloopsbcseniorsgames.org/

This is the first year of going to a rating system of 2.75, 3. 3.25, 3.5, 3.75, 4 and 4.5 and in our category of 3.25 we were in a mix of 4 teams and played each team twice.  We ended up in a 3 way tie with 4 wins and 2 losses each.  It came down to points for and against and we were able to squeak out a Gold medal with 7 points separating Gold, Silver and Bronze.   We were proud of our win.

Laying in bed in my tiny motel room, with my husband snoring beside me, he was nearly drowned out by the fridge whose motor kicked in randomly which sounded like a car motor revving.  On and off, on and off the fridge roared and I eventually put a pillow over my head to assist my ear plugs to do their job of silencing my space so I could sleep.

With the fridge on and off is how I slept, on and off, reliving my day, and to quote my partners description of a restless sleep, “pickling all night.”  I could see myself make great shots, watch balls drop at my feet, sometimes unable, or at other times not even trying to hit it, taking huge sweeps to slam the ball over and across the net – yet miss it completely.  I was feeling the emotions of winning a game and losing a game and my adrenaline simply kept me going in sleep cycles throughout the night until I became fully awake at 5am and began to write.

It reminds of the night my son was born.  There was a 4 hour burst of energy, intensity, focus and full attention to the task at hand of birthing.  Shortly after midnight my prize was born and I was high on adrenaline for the remainder of the night reliving each moment, snippets of conversation and the thrill of knowing I had participated in doing something wonderful – in this case giving birth though I had the assistance of my husband, nursing staff and months of preparation.

My Pickleball games also came with help, lessons, 3 years of learning the game,  months of practice, teamed up with my partner as we chatted about our areas of strengths and areas we needed to work on and asking for tips from others along the way.

My musings of the night took me further as I reflected about my journey through marriage.  Ongoing training, staying focused and to press on toward the goal, to reach my reward reminds me of  the scripture reference from THE MESSAGE in Philippians 3:12-14, “I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made.  But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me.  Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward – to Jesus.  I’m off and running and I’m not turning back.”

I remembered saying to myself through my various games, “okay, stay focused, watch the ball, and keep your eye on the ball” then feel my body take a readying position to receive whatever came my way.  I was trained to this point, at my level and I was giving it my best shot, literally.

This is a revelation of what Paul (THE MESSAGE) teaches about life, in my spiritual pursuit of living life according to Gods word and his purposes whether it be in play, work or marriage.  To be filled with zeal, train for it, find my strengths, be aware of pitfalls, weaknesses, work on improving and stay focused on the path to my reward, communicate and actively work as a team member with my partner – pick up the slack for each other, yet at the same time, strive for my individual best.

My Pickleball partner and I are well matched each bringing our particular strength to the game and spots where we may have to help each other out of a tough spot, encouraging and strategizing – consoling – spurring one another on.

So like birthing.  So like marriage.  So like the game of life.

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