Tag Archives: tribe

happiness

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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Coco

My girl and I had a mother/daughter date night tonight and went and saw the movie Coco. It was fun and I really enjoyed some time with her.

Happiness comes from within, but I also find great joy and comfort in my tribe.

Please keep my mom in your thoughts and prayers. She’s one tough lady and her courage never ceases to amaze me, but we could all use some healing prayers.

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Compassionate healer

We have the best family doctor, we found her by chance and she’s not close to where we live, but I am so grateful she’s our doctor. She knows us all so well and is so caring and compassionate every time we go to see her. It makes us feel safe, cared for, and listened to.

The girl had to go see our doctor today and as usual it was such a positive experience. She expressed some teenage concerns and the doctor listened, not just listened but heard and was fully present in the moment. She made my girl feel important, cared for, and loved. That is a real gift. It’s happiness.

A bonus happiness moment is that we were feeling well enough today we could finally go visit mom again. It’s been a week since I got this cold/flu thing going on and I wasn’t able to go in and see her. Talk about an amazing lady with so much courage and strength.

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Today they curled

Today we went to small town Alberta and the kids participated in a very Canadian activity – they went curling. Somehow I have never curled before, but it sure looked like they were all having a lot of fun. Turns out this is an unexpected bonus of the kids joining 4H is they get to do cool things like this.

It was good to get out and laugh and have a little bit of fun. Happiness.

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Happiness blogs

I started this blog almost 3 years ago on my 44th birthday. I was still in the beginning stages of working my way out of my dark night of the soul years (sometimes I feel like I’m still at the beginning, but I’m not). I began with the idea that I would do 44 days of happiness – my goal was that every day I would have to find something that made me happy and I would write about it. Sometimes those happiness moments were really hard to find at the beginning, I think I wrote a lot about Henry the Heron who I used to see every morning on my walk. I remember many times the day being over and me realizing I still hadn’t had a moment of happiness and making sure I did something right away so I could say I had done one thing that had brought me some joy.

I think now about how small and unhappy my life was then. I mean really, in the last 3 years my entire life has imploded, gone sideways, blown up, and been shaken like I live inside a snowglobe and still I have found moments of happiness every day. Thank God I trained myself to look for them or I would have been having a right pity party.

My life now still is pretty uncertain, full of bumps, and honestly I have no idea what I’m doing – but it’s so much happier. We are home, we are safe, we are free. Those are big words. It has helped me incredibly to have a check in every day and find something to be grateful for, something that made me happy, to express gratitude.

This morning I found an email from feedspot.com saying they had chosen my blog as one of their top 75 happiness blogs – I am number 64. Look it up here

Seriously how cool is that?

I even got a little award to put on my blog – that was a smile filled moment of happiness.

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Give a hug

Today as I was driving into the parkade at the hospital I witnessed a remarkable moment of tenderness. A couple about my age was walking outside when the woman stopped and started crying. The man with her pulled her in and gave her a huge hug and held her while she sobbed. It was a very powerful moment to witness. She was obviously so hurt and he just stepped in and held her and held space for her while she let it out.

I had a meeting after that with a woman who was brought on the wings of love into our life and who will be able to provide a lot of help for my mom (and for all of the rest of us too). When we were done talking she stood up and turned to me and said stand up, you look like you need a hug. I’m going to give you a hug.  And little miss “dont-touch-me” stood up and let this woman hug some of my hurt out too.

Hugs are powerful, little acts of kindness can make all the difference in someone’s day. Do them. We all need to do them. They are happiness gifts.

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