Tag Archives: sunrise

happiness

The whole night through 

Last night I was feeling exhausted and I went to bed early. In my perfect life I’m asleep by 9, although the last little while it’s been a bit later. Last night though I was sound asleep by 8:00. I woke up at 5:00am completely unsure as to whether it was morning or not. I couldn’t believe it when I checked my clock. I usually have difficulty sleeping through the night.

 I have a great bedtime routine learned through Ayurveda, but I find that pain usually wakes me up once or twice and makes me move around a bit. As I’ve been making changes, letting go of stress and things that no longer serve me, I’ve been relaxing more and that pain is lessening. 

I slept the whole night through. I felt amazing and that early happiness moment set me up for the rest of the day. I am never sure where this path I’m on is heading, but I’m sure enjoying walking along it. I feel like finally I’m attracting all the love and joy I have been seeking. 

God gave me a good morning high five in the form of this lovely sunrise. This was the view from my front door. 

  

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happiness

Tea and a birthday party

The day started off with a beautiful drive in the cold, bright morning air. I was glad I was inside my car. Somehow I thought it was about -5c but turns out it was more like -22c. That made it chilly, but oh so beautiful. There was something really peaceful about the time I spent on my morning errands.

The beauty of my morning drive.    
  
This afternoon we had one of those wonderful Christmas break moments where family stopped by for a visit. An aunt and uncle, and another uncle came by and we had tea and left over Christmas baking. Well, I passed on the baking (I may have overindulged already), but I sat and had a delightful cup of tea. I gave up caffeine about 4 years ago, and that has done wonders for my anxiety. But every once in a while I wistfully think of how delightful a nice cup of real tea would be.

Today I made a pot of Murchie’s 2000 blend and I just couldn’t resist, I love their tea. I drank my cup and it was so good! It made me feel happy right down to my toes. Even the caffeine didn’t seem to have much affect on me. Not that that means that I’m in a big rush to start drinking it again. I dedicated my life to pushing panic attacks to the side, and I’ve done a pretty good job of that. I’m in no rush to bring something in that could cause anxiety. But, that one cup was so good! A little happiness moment for myself.

We had a nice visit with the family. I often see my one uncle in the grocery store and we get a little chance to catch up, but to be able to sit down and really visit is an entirely different thing. It’s so nice to be here where there is family to visit with and share our time together.

Jenna and my niece have birthdays coming up very soon so we had our annual the girls are together birthday party and enjoyed a really nice family supper. Naturally followed by present opening and ice cream, because heck – it was a party. I feel so blessed that we can share in these family occasions and be relaxed about it. Usually this birthday celebration is accompanied by tears as we are packing suitcases and preparing to leave the next day. Not this year! I am so thankful that we are here and we don’t have to prepare to say goodbye to loved ones. It lightens the heart considerably.

The peaceful drive, the tea visits, and the girl birthday party. My happiness moments for the day.

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Halelujah, Mr. Bean

We decided today was the day to start church shopping. It’s only taken us 6 months to get to this point, but better late than never I suppose. There are many reasons why it took us so long (laziness, summer, not sure where to go, wanting to sleep in….) but the one reason that had truly held me back really came to light today in service. It was hard for me to be in the house of God and talking about heaven and not think about Dad being there. Which is fine (no it isn’t) except for the sudden outbursts of tears I am prone to, and I wasn’t really excited about bawling my eyes out in front of a bunch of strangers who could ask me what was wrong. Because having to explain all that is just difficult.

So, I did go to church with a little anxiety today. I’m already socially awkward and I really didn’t need anything extra to have to worry about. Not too far into the service the minister started talking about heaven and God being there and loving us,  and my eyes started leaking. I can’t help when it happens, and once those tears start rolling they don’t want to stop. Actually, sometimes I think I really need to stop some afternoon and just have a good cry. I think I would probably feel better after it.

Fortunately God took pity on me and decided to break things up a little bit as the next hymn was All Creatures Of Our God and King. Beautiful hymn, but all I could think of was Mr. Bean singing in church and I couldn’t stop smirking. I really hope no one was looking very closely at me as I’m sure they would think I was prone to violent mood swings.

It was exactly what I needed though. Mr. Bean is awesome. But, aside from the much needed humour he brought to me, I needed the reminder that we are all awkward and “uncool” and weird at times. I was all blury eyed not really able to read the hymn words, but like Mr. Bean as soon as the Halelujah’s came along I could sing them loudly and with meaning. Then back to blahhhh blaaaahhhh blahhhh.

My happiness moment was sitting in church with Jenna beside me, Dad in my heart, and Mr. Bean in my brain. We all need each other, no one can walk through this life alone.

Yesterday I wrote about how beautiful the sunsets are here, and how I prefer them over the sunrises. Well, this morning when I woke up I was treated to this view out my front door:


Just a simple reminder that both the beginning and the end of things are beautiful and important.

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A thanksgiving jar full of gratitude 

We are finishing off our thanksgiving weekend in a blissful turkey and pumpkin pie coma. 

I am so happy that our first thanksgiving back, Jennas first one in Alberta, and our first one without Dad was such a raging success. There are holes in my heart from the sorrow of losing Dad, but I also feel like my heart grew four times bigger with joy, love, and happiness because we are able to spend time with our loved ones. 

Tonight’s part deux thanksgiving supper was another throw back to old times and was held at my aunt and uncle’s place. The only difference being this time I was seated at the adults table (usually I snag a seat at the kids table. It’s where all the fun happens). It worked well until the usual political discussion got heated, and then a couple of us vacated the room to make tea. It took a long time to make that tea. 

We laughed, we shared, we were together. It’s been a long time since we have had our family to be together like this with. Not a rushed visit, but a simple drive over to visit. Something to be thankful for. 

The entire day was one of focused gratitude. I woke up to this: 

  
Just in case there is ever any question as to whether or not I have things to be grateful for, the Universe gifted me with this breathtaking view from my home. 

I spent the day with my tribe, loving the fact that my kids are becoming such a comfortable part of this wonderful extended family we have. 

I finished the day with the kids and I starting a new thanksgiving tradition. We decided a few days ago that it would be a good thing this year to write down at least one thing we are thankful for and put it in a jar. We will keep the jar and add to it every year. That way we will have a record as time goes by of all the things we have brought as gratitude to thanksgiving. It was time to bring some new life to thanksgiving and we believe this will be an excellent way to do that. 

It was a big happiness day today. A whole day of gratitude and happiness. I am blessed. Happy thanksgiving everyone. 

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Morning soul warmth. 

I need to add a happiness moment to my post from earlier today. 

As we were getting in the car to head to school this morning I looked east and saw this sight:

  
The sun rising over the hill while the cattle were grazing.  Every single second I count my blessings that not only are we home, but that we are home. Nestled right in the heart of our family, where our roots are planted, in the house where it all started, with views like this as a way to start the day. 

We are incredibly blessed and fortunate people. 

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The morning rush 

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify. Having been a fan of Thoreau for almost 30 years I have read those words over and over. Yet the actual concept of being  and living a more simple life is often one that I struggle with. 

I don’t want to be all high maintenance, yet I know I kind of am –  I like nice things. My body does not want to sleep on a wood palate, I like nice clothes and tasty food. I have purple streaks in my hair that take more time a month to get touched up than I care to admit. 

When we went to Waldon Pond a few years ago I had a better understanding of what Thoreau meant. Simplify was an easier concept when I stood in the beauty of that pond and saw what it was he looked at every day. And he didn’t live there in isolation either, he was constantly back in town visiting. Simplify and deprivation have very different meanings and I think I’d been confusing the two. 

Over the past few months the kids and I have learned how to simplify. We have gone from the big flashy house to the old in need of love house. We are now living in about a third the size of house, with a third the amount of stuff and on a much stricter budget. 

We have to be simpler. 

And here’s the interesting thing. We are all happier in the old in need of love house. I can see it in the kids’ smiles, in the way they run outside and yell at me to come see something that has caught their eye, as they’re running across the yard to play with cousins or to visit nana. A happiness that has come from simplifying our lives.  

I’m thinking that maybe simplifying does not mean giving up what I love and going without so much as it means figuring out what is really important and only keeping those things in my life. Getting rid of excess and clutter has lessened my anxiety and brought me back to balance and happiness. 

We turned onto the road today and I looked west. The moon was hovering so perfectly over the mountains we had to turn off into the neighbors’ driveway to look at it.   
Then as we went down into the valley, the sun was peering up from the other side. 

  And as we came out across the valley the moon showed itself to us one more time before we turned the corner and headed into a huge wall of fog coming up from the river. 

I said to the kids how lucky we were that what made us slow on our drive to town today was that we had to keep pulling off the road to admire the beauty of the morning. 

So many people started their day rushing and anxious and tired. We are so blessed that we started it in amazing nature of Creation. It blesses us, grounds us, nurtures us, and brings us incredible joy and happiness. My happiness moment today.  

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Opening the gates

One of my favourite childhood memories is of grabbing my horse and heading off through the fields for the day. It wasn’t until I started learning about meditation and the importance of connecting to Source (or God, or Nature) that I realized that this is what I was doing as a kid. Riding has always been a very spiritual activity for me and I have been blessed to have been able to ride for miles and miles in quiet freedom with the companionship of a beloved pony.

I haven’t come across a lot of really difficult gates in my adulthood – either they’ve made them easier to open or I’m not heading into difficult fields, I’m certainly not venturing as far on horseback as I used to. But, when I was a kid there were some incredibly difficult gates. I’m sure part of it was my age and size, but a larger part of it was those gates were made from insanely tight barbed wire – they were made to stay closed. Once in a while I’d be lucky enough to come across one that had a stick wrapped around the wire for extra pull – or I’d get really lucky and it would have that metal snap that went over the top. But, often I’d be stuck at some gate that was just barbed wire wrapped around a pole.

They were so hard to open. I’d stand there with my patient pony beside me pulling and struggling at the gate. Harder yet was when it would open and we would go through, because closing those tight gates was so much harder than opening them ever was.

For some reason it never occurred to me to just not go through the gates. I was busy exploring the ranch and if there were places I needed to go, then I needed to get to them.

Today when I was driving into town I saw a man come out from one of the fields where they are shooting a movie. He was standing at the gate trying in vain to close it. He didn’t have the technique down at all – the posts and wire were only half way up as he was trying to snap the gate closed – and I knew he was going to be there for a while. As I drove past he turned and looked at me with a face of frustration and impatience. I actually thought of stopping to help him, but there were a few other men standing around and I figured surely one of them would help him out. I was late for kid pickup, and things have changed just enough that I’m not comfortable stopping on back roads to help strangers the way I once was.

It made me think though, as I continued to drive to town, how much time I used to spend struggling with those gates. I would have been out all by myself, and have opened the gate so there was no option but to close it. I had been well-trained in the rule that if you come across a closed gate you alway, always, close it after you go through.

I am grateful for that part of me that felt like quitting was never an option. When I come into struggles in life now I think back to how I was as a child and I used to just keep moving ahead. Even if it seemed impossible, if I had a goal in mind I just kept working at it until I reached it. I think about it now as I’m on the quest to be the best me  which has involved stripping myself down and looking at the deepest and darkest parts of my soul. Walking away from that is also not an option. I can’t turn away from that anymore than I could have turned away and left one of those gates open. There’s certain tasks that need to be completed.

Sunrises seem to be my happiness scene these days. I started the day off looking at this:


The sun rising over the barn where I spent so many hours of my childhood. There are bits of all of my family’s souls in this building my grandfather built. It brings me constant happiness to be able to look out my kitchen window and see the barn. My happiness moment today was watching the barn be awoken by the sun this morning.

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Home with this cold… Passing time like sand through the hourglass…

Last Friday the kids kindly infected me with the brutal back to school cold that is making the circuit through town. I tried to get better over the weekend but instead got worse (and worse, and worse…)

I had appointments Monday and Tuesday I couldn’t do anything about, but  yesterday and today I was able to cancel all but the most critical things and spend some quality time on the couch feeling like crap and letting my body recover.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a quiet house to myself and not been busy doing the things that need to be done. I’ve discovered some interesting things in this time:

The Golden Girls talk about sex a lot. I don’t remember that from my youth, but it seems as though the entire show is about getting some.

Taking the vacuum to the window and sucking up the hundreds of flies that congregate there is very satisfying. I’ve developed a catch and release program only because I can’t figure out how to off them in the bag.

What was the plot of the movie Cake? I didn’t get it. I mean I mind of did, but I need the for dummies version to explain some things. I will watch any movie with Jennifer Aniston in it.

After 20 years I’ve started caring again (Lord help me) about the goings on in Salem. Kayla and Steve, Justin and Adrian, Jennifer, John and Marlena, Bo and Hope – they’re all back. Oh I love Kayla and Steve…. and maybe since Jack is dead – unless he comes back too- they’ll bring back Frankie for Jennifer  (I’m so ashamed).

While I can usually beat the kids – or hold my own- playing connect 4 on my phone, when I play the computer at any level besides easy it beats me pretty consistently.

The cats lie around and sleep a lot but the poor dog is bored and wants me to walk her.

Mostly I’m just grateful that I’ve had these days to recover and start to get healthy again.

My happiness moment today was as I was getting ready to get the kids up. The sun was waking up as well and when I looked out the east window I saw this:


Life is good, there is so much beauty in the world feeding my soul. That makes for happiness.

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Sunflowers and rainbows 

Starting the morning off the right way sets me up for the entire day. We had some bumps in the road this morning – couch surfing is difficult and even more so is getting used once again to the early morning *go* routine of school. I was running about in the kitchen at Mom’s while Jacob was getting ready to run back to our place to grab something he forgot when Mom came over and grabbed Jacob. They took off and after a few minutes he came running back telling me that Jenna and I needed to drop everything and run over there.

So, even though we were late, we did. On my way over my cousin texted me telling me to look outside. I read her text as I looked west and saw the most glorious rainbow doing a complete arc over the mountains.

From where I was standing, the rainbow ended directly into Mom’s sunflowers which somehow managed to survive the snow and the cold we have had the past few days.

God’s glory. Sunflowers reminding me of Dad.

An amazing happiness moment. We live in a beautiful place and I feel so blessed that I am able to breathe this in and let it flow through my soul. 

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Tears from heaven 

I’m finding as I move further into my understanding of who I am (with the help of my Ayurvedic studies, my meditation, my yoga, my increasingly closer relationship with The Source) that I am loving my sacred quiet morning times more and more. They are what gets me on my path for the day ahead and the more relaxed and at peace I can be when I start off, the better my entire day is.

This is how we started the morning on our terrace at the Tamaya Resort, so quiet and peaceful and warm. 

After helping Mom get ready for her course I headed back out along my Sunflower Path to clear my head and stretch my legs. As I began walking I was impressed with how quiet my head was. I was congratulating myself on how unstressed and uncluttered I was as I strolled along. Of course, no sooner did those thoughts come than my emotions were all like oh yeah? You think you’re all zen? Here, let me show you what’s really going on inside. And suddenly I was filled with rage.

By the time I realized how completely angry I was, I was at the halfway mark which looks out over the river towards the mountains and towards one of Dad’s sunflowers. So, I stood there and mind raged at the Dad-sunflower. 

Now, it was cloudy when I left for my walk, but I’d been out for about a half hour and although it was a bit chillier than I had thought, it was just overcast.

As I reached the peak of my mind-yelling at sunflower-Dad I started crying. Thank goodness I’m getting more comfortable with this whole bawling my eyes out in public thing (it helped that the path was quiet and I had this space to myself) because my eyes really let ‘er rip with those wet tears.

I was standing there bawling with a huge rock on my chest and a big lump in my throat as my mind-yelling turned into deep sorrow and I realized I was more really sad than really angry. At this exact moment it started to rain. Tears from heaven.  I stood there crying in the rain for a few minutes just allowing all the emotion to flow out of me and into the rain, into the river, and towards sunflower-Dad.

Then I was done and so was the rain. I felt the weight leave my heart and clear my throat. As these grief and sorrow feelings flowed away, the rain stopped. I waved to sunflower-Dad and walked back to the path to finish my walk. The second half of my walk was lined with the rest of the sunflowers and I had the strong feeling it was Dad reminding me that I wasn’t alone.

When I came back to the room I turned on the TV to listen to while I organized things. The channel was on The Doctors and they had some guy on talking with Vicki from RHOBH. She lost her mother a few months ago and she was getting messages from her through this medium. Then he went on say that so often people who have passed on are trying to contact us, but that we have to remain aware of the signs.

I smiled and thought how much I appreciated that Dad made his signs pretty easy for me to see. But, he loved us like that – he would try and make it as easy as possible for us.

I turned off the TV, rolled out my yoga mat and spent some time in quiet body stretching reflection.

My happiness moment: my tears joining with Dad’s tears from heaven. Because happiness isn’t always rolling on the floor belly laughing. Sometimes it comes from a deeper place in the soul.

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