There But for the Grace

There But for the Grace

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened sooner. Later.
Nearer. Farther.
It happened not to you.

You survived because you were the first.
You survived because you were the last.
Because you were alone. Because of people.
Because you turned left. Because you turned right.
Because rain fell. Because a shadow fell.
Because sunny weather prevailed.

Luckily there was a wood.
Luckily there were no trees.
Luckily there was a rail, a hook, a beam, a brake,
a frame, a bend, a millimeter, a second.
Luckily a straw was floating on the surface.

Thanks to, because, and yet, in spite of.
What would have happened had not a hand, a foot,
by a step, a hairsbreath
by sheer coincidence.

So, you’re here? Straight from a moment still ajar?
The net had one eyehole, and you got through it?
There’s no end to my wonder, my silence.
Listen
how fast your heart beats in me.

~by Wislawa Szymborska

I read this poem originally about seven months after 9-11. I rediscovered it again later in a book and found out that it was originally written about the Nazi occupation of Poland in WWII and the Holocaust. And I think that if I am still here despite the other things that befall my fellow man, there is a reason. God must have some things left for me to do. And if you are reading this, the same is true for you. Waste not a day.

Step Away from MY HUSBAND

One night this past summer, MY HUSBAND and I met my parents for dinner at a local restaurant. Afterwards, MY HUSBAND and I decided to walk over to the local B&N bookstore to do a little browsing. I was recovering from having a small bout of bronchitis and I had a recurring cough. MY HUSBAND was in the mood for some coffee so we wandered over to the Cafe section. Still feeling a little under the weather, I decided to sit in one of the comfy wingback chairs while he stood in line. I watched the people file in and out of the Cafe and when the crowd cleared, I had a clear view of MY HUSBAND standing in line. And MY HUSBAND is always a GREAT view from any angle (if I do say so myself).

As he stood there, I noticed the woman behind him (all capri-panted, high heeled, size C cup, long hair, mid-20 or 30 looks of her). I noticed her reaching for something in the beverage case directly to the right front of her which caused her to visibly bump into him with both of those C-cups and I saw him react slightly annoyed. (Yes, ANNOYED). I know that it is probably the common view that any man (married or otherwise) would not mind the brush of any size of female protrusions but my husband happens to mind. Being generous and apparently somewhat naive, I assumed this game of bumper cups to be an accident. So I gave her that freebie but not without a little bit of bronchial cough interruption which startled the whole line - just so they knew I was there.

And then, SHE DID IT AGAIN. But this time promptly placed both of her snackpacks directly on him - clearly not an accident. All I could think to myself was "HELLO! HOOCHIE MAMA ALERT!" I crossed that Cafe in one leap and was in line, purse-swinging, profusely coughing and all before you could say "snow capped mountains." I "accidently" grazed her with my Marshalls bag. MY HUSBAND and I decided to leave since neither of us was in the mood for bumper cups - as a participant or a spectator.You might think I over-reacted but seriously, even knee-deep in single gal land on nights when I was prettied up, heels, dress, NOT ONCE did I consider it necessary to attract "udder" attention. NOT ONCE. Hummph!

8 Random Facts

For those of you who haven't lost hope in my posting, this post is for you! My friend Laura thought she could get me back blogging if she tagged me. She's right. So here goes, if anyone is still reading...or holding out hope that I will blog another day.

The Rules:
1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules. (**if you a€™re a non-blogger, you can email them!)
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don'€™t forget to leave them a comment telling them they are tagged, and to read your blog.

8 Random Facts or Habits about me:

1. I can score at least 3 points and sometimes many more off my underhand volleyball serve. Everyone seems to take those kinds of serves for granted and they end up missing the ball multiple times.

2. I actually enjoy cleaning up after dinner parties. I love cooking for friends and I used to throw many dinner parties before I was married. After everyone left, I would let the candles continue to burn and put on a Norah Jones or Diana Krall CD and start washing the dishes and putting things away and thinking through the evening. It is a calming way for me to end an evening filled with food, friends and wine.

3. My dream job would include cooking, writing, and travel with MY HUSBAND.

4. I still have memorized the entire soundtrack to "Babes in Arms" due to the fact that it was the very first play I "acted" in during high school (over 20 years ago) and I was (of course) in the chorus.

5. I make my bed EVERY morning. I only started doing this 4 years ago but I find that having that one thing done - having that small bit of order in my days makes a HUGE difference. There is nothing like the peace of coming home to a made bed.

6. I have a paper fetish - I could fill a whole room with stationary, cards, postcards, and still not have enough. I don't believe one can have too many cards or too much stationary. There is nothing more inviting to me than blank card or piece of stationary - the possibilities are endless!

7. I am a Marshall-holic. I LOVE MARSHALLS! I can always find something there because they have everything - baby gifts, shower gifts, gourmet food, luggage, purses , shoes (never my size, but I keep looking), it is the Disneyland of shopping!

8. My dream is to have a home in Paris or the South of France. I spent three weeks in France in 1998 and have been hooked ever since. On the first day, it felt like home.

I tag: Starshine, andTim, Heather, Dan, Laura, Rachel, Manda, and Chere. (Feel free to list your random things in the comments!)

Saving Grace

I have been struggling with motivation at work lately. Not because I am not motivated to do a good job or because I dislike my company but because I have become disheartened and discouraged. I finally understand the Dilbert cartoon. It's not that I didn't understand corporate America before but I didn't realize how quickly a company can turn into that environment. I have been with my company for almost fifteen years and seen it grow from two people and we have between 50 and 100 people now and I am finding that the growing is very difficult. I am finding out the differences between management and vision and that you need both of these in people to be successful.

People, especially in the engineering professional, don't enjoy managing because it inevitably has conflict. And it has conflict because it has people. My job involves working with a lot of people in managerial positions and as much as they enjoy technically managing projects, they don't enjoy managing people. And there is the rub...Projects require people unless you are a one-person outfit.

My approach has been to try to be as non-confrontational and speak in measured tones to help managers work with their people. Honestly this has not always been my approach but I have tried to act the way God would desire and exercise patience and try to understand things from others' perspective. And sometimes I see God working and sometimes I stand in His way. I think that lately I have been standing in His way and allowing my frustration to crowd out my ability to see the progress. What seems obvious today as I read a devotional is that I cannot give God a timeline. I cannot allow myself to get frustrated because after all my efforts I don't see change. The truth hit me today as I read the Book of Acts, Chapter 20, Verse 24:

"However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace."

God has not called me to turn engineers into managers. Or force people to be at work on time. Or train people to not do things at the last minute. Or teach an old visionary new tricks. He has called me to testify to the gospel of grace. He has called me to see PEOPLE - NOT plans, projects, budgets, organizational charts, agendas, customers, or contracts. These are things I am required to work with in the context of my job. However, in the context of my purpose is the ability to exhibit grace in spite of the circumstances. In that fundamental realization, I am safe at home back in the arms and protection of my Savior. And making requests to Him with gratefulness and letting Him guard my heart and mind (see Phillipians 4:6-8).

Amazing Grace - so simple and yet often forgotten but not forgotten today.

Santé

If You Never Did, You Should...

"If you never did you should. These things are fun. These things are good."
~ Theodore Seuss Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss)

I received an e-mail this morning from a close friend calling my attention to the fact that today is the birthday of the man known to us as Dr. Seuss. I think back about the big influence he had on my life growing up. I grew up as an only child and thus I had to find ways to amuse myself. Reading became a big part of my life and I can remember checking out book after book written by Dr. Seuss in grade school. The simplicity of his language communicated thoughts and ideas that resonate in me now.

"A person's a person no matter how small." - Horton Hears a Who

"I speak for the trees! Let them grow! Let them grow!" - The Lorax

"It's high time you were shown/That you really don't know all there is to be known." ~ On Beyond Zebra

"I know up on top you are seeing great sights, but down on the bottom we, too, should have rights!" ~ Yertle the Turtle

"You're in pretty good shape for the shape you are in." ~ You're Only Old Once

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. / You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. /And you will be the guy who'll decide where you'll go. /Oh the places you'll go. ~ OH, the Places You'll Go! (one of my all time favorites)

and other Seuss-isms that just ring true:

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities."

If you have never read a Dr. Seuss book, go directly to your nearest bookstore and pull one off the shelf and begin reading immediately. Because...."Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way."

Santé

A Valentine for ALL AGES

I dedicate today's post to MY HUSBAND. How good it feels to write that (every time!).

I ran into a coworker in the hall and we talked a bit about the origin of Valentines Day which remains shrouded in some degree of conjecture throughout history. I am partial to this legend:

• The Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, compiled about 1260 and one of the most-read books of the High Middle Ages, gives sufficient details of the saints and for each day of the liturgical year to inspire a homily on each occasion. The very brief vita of St Valentine has him refusing to deny Christ before the "Emperor Claudius"in the year 280. Before his head was cut off, this Valentine restored sight and hearing to the daughter of his jailer. Jacobus makes a play with the etymology of "Valentine", "as containing valour". It is probable that the various legends about St. Valentine were invented during the middle ages. Another account states: On the evening before Valentine was to be martyred for being a Christian, he passed a love note to his jailer's daughter that read, "From your Valentine." (extracted from Wikipedia)

This particular story really sparked something in me to consider Valentines' Day from a completely different point of view. When you consider one origin of the day to be a martyred saint, then "LOVE" has a whole different meaning. It is, of course, a wonderfully romantic thought that a saint's last words were a love note to a woman. But the GREAT LOVE has nothing to do with last words or a last note but his last act, which should not be overlooked. Step back and take a look at the entire picture: a man was martyred for his belief. His GREAT LOVE was His Savior. He died refusing to denounce the Greatest Love of all time - the love of a Lord whose sacrifice echoes throughout eternity and whose victory would bring him home. Humbled am I.

How great My Lord is that He died for me. That alone should overwhelm us to our knees. And yet, in my life, just to make sure I am listening, He gives me a wonderful man to share this life with and whose presence in my life not only reminds me of my Lord but draws me nearer to Him every day.

Making Love to Music

In January, I took MY HUSBAND to the symphony as his Christmas present. We had the great pleasure to see Yo-Yo Ma in concert. For those of you not into the classical scene. He is a world famous cellist. However, those words are such a paltry description of what we saw. We saw so much more than a performance, we saw a man deep in love with the music. His hands stroked life into notes written by composers long since passed. Men we read about in history books whose names we cannot even pronounce. In his hands, these aged compositions felt like breathable air, if you can breathe at all in their presence. MY HUSBAND commented when we left the concert hall, "Now I know what a virtuoso is." So true. He played from his heart, eyes closed the whole time, not so much as single page of music before him. He graced us with one encore, a crowd of thousands fell silent in one exhale as he raised his hand to the bow once more.

Few expriences in life engage every one of your senses. For the first time I can recall, I not only heard the music, I felt it, tasted it, smelled it. But that we could experience such a heightened sense of appreciation in the everyday, we might be that much closer to Heaven.

Losing Track of Time

MY HUSBAND and I didn't get a long honeymoon. He had started a new job just a month before the wedding and was not able to take too much time off. So we visited a lovely bed and breakfast (B&B) called the Coppersmith Inn in Galveston, Texas. I highly recommend it should you ever be in Galveston. We stayed in the country cottage and our hosts Karen and Pat had many stories to go along with their hospitality with a DELICIOUS breakfast every morning. Being our first B&B experience, we were instant converts.

Now it is the new year and MY HUSBAND tells me I need a break and he is right. This man is SO SMART! We have not had the opportunity to really take any time at all TO BE for an extended period of time. Weekends are nice and long weekends are nicer but to really relax, one needs enough time to lose track of time. That is when I KNOW I am relaxed. Twice in my life I have freed from the shackles of tracking time:

- Poolside at the Fiesta Americana hotel in Cozumel in 1997 with one of my closest friends, she and I were drinking pina coladas and listening to the roll of the waves just across the footbridge and time was a distant memory.

- On the beach in Marseilles in the summer of 1998 on a vacation with my best friend and her brother. I was sunning myself and decided to journal while we lay there basking in youthful immortality and I started to write down the date and realized that I had no idea what day or date it was.

I would say that it's about time I lose track of it again. So we are heading out in a couple of weeks for a few days to hit another B&B in driving distance. And I plan to take my watch off the minute we leave and not even put it on until we return home. Time spent without a watch is priceless; time spent living by a watch isn't really LIVING and often you lose more time than you gain.

~Santé

Good Bedside Manner

3:30 a.m.

Me: Honey, I think I might have the flu. The inside of my throat is really swollen.

MY HUSBAND: Do you want to take some ibuprofen?

Me: Yes, I'll go downstairs and get it.

MY HUSBAND: I'll get it, you might bump your throat on something.

For What He Didn't Do

For the first time in awhile, I decided to "veg" in front of the TV tonight. We don't have cable so the choices pretty much hinge on what I can get the rabbit ears to bring in. Tonight it was ABC. I grew up with TV, lots of it. So I know how all-consuming it can become. I have elected not to have cable and MY HUSBAND agrees with that. He didn't have cable before we married. Both us figure we should be able to amuse ourselves with the 5-8 channels that come in or find something else to do. Suffice to say, we have a HUGE movie collection.

Tonight though, I was in the mood to watch TV. And I stumbled across a show I had not seen before: "Men in Trees." It reminded me of "Northern Exposure" but instead of a male doctor, it revolves around a female author. It was interesting enough, the best lines were, as usual, recited at the end (reminescient of "Sex in the City" and no wonder because it has the same writers).

What struck me tonight though was a particular scene involving the main character (Marin) and the disappointment and heartbreak she experienced because her love interest (Jack) was torn between her and his former girlfriend (Lynn) who reappeared after leaving him months or years before. As I watched this, I could not help but reflect on how thankful I was that I never had to go through any of that with MY HUSBAND. Before we married and throughout our courtship not once did I wonder how he felt. I never had to worry about his confusion about us or other women or old flames. Yet one more thing that made me so sure I was going to marry this man.

When I met MY HUSBAND, I had gone through my fair share of riding my emotions, scrutinizing every word, trying to interpret a glance or a hug, wondering where I stood or if I was in standing at all. But with MY HUSBAND, none of that happened. As soon as the show ended, I got up and walked into our office where he was busily typing away on a journal and hugged him and kissed him and thanked him. I thank him everyday for a hundred little things that he does for me. Tonight I thanked him for what he didn't do:

• He didn't pursue me until he was sure of how he felt.
• He didn't speak in noncommittal words.
• He didn't run when I let my guard down.
• He didn't make promises he couldn't keep or excuses.
• He didn't bring unfinished emotions into our relationship.

And most of all, he didn't say "I love you" until he was sure that he could follow it up with "Will You Marry Me?"

~Santé

Ripe with Potential

I find it interesting how things seem to drop into our lives for no apparent reason. And if we are not very careful, we can often miss an opportunity because we assume we already know where it will lead.

I meet MY HUSBAND for lunch almost daily and he always walks me back to my car. This past Tuesday after he walked me back to my car and we kissed goodbye, I turned to open the door and on the ground was this lemon. At first glance it looked fake, so perfectly yellow and rounded. I almost got in my car without giving it a second thought. Almost.

Thankfully my curiosity got the better of me and I knelt down and picked it up and before I pulled it to my nose, I could already smell the sweet, fresh fragrance of potential. It was heavy in my hand, full of juicy possibilities. I called to MY HUSBAND who was walking away to show it to him. He held it and looked up into the trees, as did I. Surely this dropped from somewhere in the sky. Yet there was no lemon tree to be found.

Instead of tossing it away, I kept it. I started surfing online last night to find a good recipe that needs one lemon. I will keep you posted on what I decide to make. This lemon has become something of a symbol to me. A talisman for what may come. Sometimes, you don't have to go out on a limb to get a choice piece of fruit. Once in a while it just falls at your feet. And all you have to do is pick it up.

~Santé

Feeding Frenzy

A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles
in this manner:
Inside of me there are two dogs.
One of the dogs is mean and evil.
The other dog is good.
The mean dog fights the good dog all the time."
When asked which dog wins he reflected for a moment and replied,
"The one I feed the most." ~Unknown

This story pretty much sums up my struggle into the New Year. The problem has been that just because I turn the calendar another page, that doesn’t mean that my perspective shifts completely. I seem to be feeding the “impatient, why can’t people exercise common sense, how many times do I have to tell someone this, why are THEY in such a bad mood dog”; instead of feeding the “grateful to have a good job, wonderful HUSBAND, resources to follow my dreams, God is amazing dog”.

I realize that I have started the New Year with an emaciated spirit. I have spent so much time DOING in the last few wonderful whirlwind months of a new BLESSED marriage that somewhere along the way, I stopped feeding my soul, I stopped BEING. So instead of giving in to the world’s feeding frenzy, I resolve today not TO DO but TO BE:

• Be thankful for the life I have been given.
• Be aware of the struggles of others around me.
• Be alone with God.
• Be unafraid to be less than perfect.
• Be a boss who understands that there is more than one way to do things.
• Be more open to what others have to offer.
• Be an employee who equips my boss to succeed.
• Be less offended by the world and more compassionate toward it.
• Be a true friend who doesn’t consult her schedule in order to make time to listen.
• Be real – it’s not all about me.
• Be a grateful daughter and take time for my parents.
• Be a shelter for my husband, not a storm.
• Be all that God has given me the potential to be.

And then maybe…with a well-nourished soul, I can start to DO again.
~Santé*
*A shortened version of a French toast: A Votre Santé which translates “to your health.”