Tag Archives: single mom

happiness

Shortbread cookies

My great aunt had her birthday party today. Twice a year her family hosts big community/family parties and they have become important hubs that pull the family together. Life has changed, it has become busier and we don’t always take the time we should to spend with our loved ones. This gives us an opportunity to do just that and I’m very grateful for that.

We visited, we laughed, we ate (omg the shortbread cookies at that house are to die for), and I even got a winter hat out of it!

It was fantastic. We are so lucky we are part of this tribe. Happiness.

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happiness

Love can build a bridge

I had the most touching moment as I was sitting with my mom tonight. As I was sitting there thinking what an honour it is to be her daughter, to be there with her, I had that old Judd’s song play through my mind.

I’d gladly walk across the desert

With no shoes upon my feet

To share with you the last bite

Of bread i had to eat

I would swim out to save you

In your sea of broken dreams

When all your hopes are sinkin’

Let me show you what love means

Love can build a bridge

Between your heart and mine

Love can build a bridge

Don’t you think it’s time?

Don’t you think it’s time?

I would whisper love so loudly, every heart could understand

Love and only love can join the tribes of man not trials

I would give my heart’s desire so that you might see

The first step is to realize that it all begins with you and me.

Love can build a bridge

Between your heart and mine

Love can build a bridge

Don’t you think it’s time?

Don’t you think it’s time?

When we stand together, it’s our finest hour

We can do anything, anything

We’re believing in the power

Love can build a bridge

Between your heart and mine

Love can build a bridge

Don’t you think it’s time?

Don’t you think it’s time?

Love can build a bridge

Between your heart and mine

Love can build a bridge

Don’t you think it’s time?

Don’t you think it’s time?

Love will overcome everything. It is the most powerful force in our lives, it is stronger than fear or hate. We should all be building bridges of love. I find this brings me a lot of peace. Thank goodness for my tribe – we are all building that bridge together. That is happiness.

Don’t you think it’s time?

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happiness

Handbells

Tonight we went to my old elementary school and watched the Christmas concert put on by my cousin. I’ve been trying to get to this concert for a couple of years now so it was well overdue

What a great concert she put on. The kids were all so well behaved and their performances were amazing. The parents were swaying in their seats and waving proudly at their kids.

It was an honor to be there to watch it.

And at the end we got to help put away the handbells. Handbells was my favorite part of elementary school and it was really fun to give the bells a little ring as I stood in the gym where I stood 40 years ago ringing handbells.

Being grounded and rooted – that is happiness.

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Walk by faith

I keep asking God to shine light on the path I’m on so I can see where I’m going. I often forget that my walk is one of faith and that I need to rely on that and not on what I can see. I can’t see the big picture from where I’m at, but I have faith that He does – even if it doesn’t make sense and I get angry and yell a little bit.

I had an epiphany today as I was doing a tapping session. We were talking about being loved and being lovable and recalling times when we felt like we weren’t being loved or valued by someone in our lives who we felt should be loving us. Basically the lesson was that we are all worthy of love because we are lights of the Divine.

It got me thinking of the pain that comes with the rejection of love. I know I write a lot on here about the pain and suffering financially that my divorce has caused, I don’t talk as much about the pain and suffering on our hearts that this divorce has caused. I not only lost the person who was supposed to be my life partner, but my kids lost their dad. I mean, we all lost him years before I filed for divorce, but that’s what the divorce symbolizes on the deepest level. The result of being or feeling unloved. It hurt me that for years I was told I was unlovable and not worthy of love. It devastates me to see my children experience the same feeling. It hurts to be told you’re not worthy of love by someone you love.

And yet, sometimes that happens. Sometimes the fairy tale doesn’t happen. Sometimes the person who was supposed to love you is the person who hurts you the most. Even if it’s not complete destruction like in my case, we all hurt each other because we are human and we are flawed.

For years I was left feeling unlovable, unloved, unworthy – as were my kids. Financial struggles aside, this has been the hardest part of the family coming undone. And one of the most important things  has been us discovering, learning, training ourselves to believe, that we are worthy of love. All of us are. We are because it’s our birthright. We are all beloved children of God.

We are all worthy of love. Asrael asked me yesterday how deep does love go?

It must go to infinity (and beyond haha).

These kinds of moments bring me deep happiness because I can feel in my soul I’m one step closer to getting it. As a bonus happiness moment, we drove around and looked at Christmas lights while listening to Bob and Doug Mackenzie and laughing loudly. It was a great moment of joy and happiness. I love this time of the year.

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The highs and the lows

Today was a day filled with emotional highs and lows. It was exhausting – but it was a condensed example of how life really is – good and bad, happy and sad, safe and fearful.

I started the day by sending an email to Mr. X asking him if he would consider paying up front for the kids to see the dentist. I have a years worth of unpaid (by him) expenses and I was really hoping he’d step up and help out (he won’t). Then I was gifted a family love miracle by my tribe with an offer of help that will relieve us all of some stress burdens we’ve been carrying. Then I opened my mail and discovered we likely will have to take Mr. X back to court again to sort out the court order he’s refusing to follow. Then I took my computer in to get repaired and even though they warned me all my data was likely lost they recovered it all. Then I sat with my mom as she had a rather difficult evening.

Good and bad, highs and lows. This is life. This is why although often my happiness moments are about events, or my tribe, or my horse, or my home; happiness must come from within – or from God our Source of everything. I can’t depend on outside circumstances to make me happy because they’re in constant change. I need to keep seeking peace within, I need to improve my connection to the Divine, I need to trust in the power of love. That is where happiness stems from.

Please pray for my mom.

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I’ll be hope for Christmas

The message in today’s sermon was I’ll be hope for Christmas. The gist of it was that the be of the most important things we must do is have hope. This hope involves being able to have complete faith and trust in God.

There seems to be a lot of uncertainty in my life right now and this was a much needed message. And actually, within about 10 minutes of leaving church, I had a prayer answered. God stuff. I love it.

We need to keep hope.

Mom was able to come out again today for the afternoon. Having the family together in the kitchen – that was happiness from the core of my soul.

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Dueling Christmas carols

We started to put up Christmas in the house today. This was accompanied by Christmas carols played and sang loudly. My all time favourite is Mary’s Boy Child, and the boy’s is O Christmas Tree. So we each played ours at top volume and sang out hearts out.

I realized as I was putting up our advent calendar how many wonderful Christmas traditions we have. Most of our away years we came home for the holidays, so most of our traditions are rooted here at the ranch already. Tomorrow we will get our lights up, soon we will get our tree, Christmas music will play until Boxing Day.

I found a photo taken maybe 5 or 6 years ago – my kids are standing in front of our house here and they look like it’s their home. Except it would still be quite a few years before we returned home. None of us ever thought we would be living in this house we have come to love so dearly.

How funny is that. It’s like they were practicing for years to come. Home sweet home. This place has been a safe haven on our road to happiness.

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We are all just walking each other home

I’ve been feeling very disconnected lately. Disconnected from God, disconnected from my tribe, disconnected from myself. Knowing that is one thing, changing it is another. And really, since I’ve been kind of mad at God lately that’s where it all starts (and ends).

I sat today and had a conversation with God about how I was feeling like he’d abandoned me. I think we all feel like that sometimes. I said my peace and then got up to carry on with my day – which meant taking a shower.

As soon as I had a head full of shampoo the water pressure dropped and it was obvious I had only a few seconds until I had no water at all. I did my best to squeeze out the soap suds and was mostly successful by the time the water was completely gone.

Because we live in this crazy old house, nothing is simple. Our water comes from the well up the hill and provides for me, the barn, my cousin, and my mom. And it’s all been patched and repaired by generations of ranchers. So you really have to understand the system to make anything work. I have a very basic understanding of the system.

I called my cousin’s husband who ended up being out of town and he sent over my nephew to try and fix it. We went down the hill to the well and FaceTimed for assistance and figured out the problem (broken pipe). My nephew got one of the guys who works on the ranch and they went down and fixed it.

Then they came to our place to turn it on and there was an issue with the pump. It looked like we wouldn’t have water all night, but my cousin in law showed up this evening and magically solved the problem so we have water again. Hooray. Running water is a big deal.

As I was on the hill earlier today I realized how connected we really are, this tribe of mine. It helped me remember how important it is to belong to a group. How we all need each other to get through.

I had a really nice visit with my mom tonight, she was looking better than I’ve seen her in a while. There is a life long connection and one that will carry through the ages.

And so I work on repairing my connection to God. Because if we are all just walking each other home, he is home. And that is happiness.

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