Poetry can be inspiring, motivating, heart-wrenching, powerful, but it always inflicts emotion. It can pull at my heartstrings or just make me laugh. Writing poetry is a hobby for me and I have decided to keep a notebook in my backpack just for this purpose. While sitting at the car wash a couple of weeks ago (why does it take them so long?) I penned this one I call The Big Fat Fail.
Enjoy and let me know what emotions you feel when reading it by commenting below. Feel free to share your stories of taking your “sucking lemons” failing moments and how you turned them into “sweet lemonade”!
The Big Fat Fail
Fail forward, they say! And I can’t disagree,
but it’s hard to focus while nursing skinned knees.
Bumps, bruises, scrapes, the inevitable aches,
the road rash of crashing, but that’s what it takes.
To live is to fail, that’s the lesson I’ve learned,
through age and experience, or just getting burned.
20/20 vision for me has ALWAYS revealed,
every fail that I’ve suffered has earned me more steel.
Failure = Opportunity! To this I confess,
I love who I am now, having passed or “failed” each test.
Be sad in the moment, scream, cry or kick,
but look for the good, and lickety-split,
you’ll find your opportunity, practice! Give it a whirl!
The Big Fat Fail can turn (I promise) into your pearl.
Want to read more poetry?
Check out Mary Oliver’s biography here and buy one of her books, House of Light here.
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Rising From the Ashes with Renewed Hope
2013 FireOut of the Ashes We Can Find Hope
This story of hope begins in 2013, when our county experienced a terrible fire. We were evacuated from our homes on a moment’s notice. The picture you see below with billowing orange smoke bombs was taken from my friends camera as we stopped to look back, perhaps for the last time on our neighborhood. I remember calling my mom while sitting in the long line of cars trying to leave and telling her of the situation. She expressed concern and told me to stay safe, but when I sent her that picture, she freaked out! It’s a lesson learned on how pictures speak louder than words. My husband and I truly thought that our home would be gone and that we would be starting from scratch. At the time, it just didn’t matter. I had just driven out of there with flames on the side of the road consuming trees that were 100 feet tall. I was alive, he was alive, I had rescued our kitties and our daughter had been at school. All was well as far as I was concerned.
This particular fire burned hot and fast. It consumed everything in its path and in the end burned over 24,000 acres from a little valley, crossing the mountain range and ending at the ocean. Everything was black, sad and black. The smell of smoke and ash would be our constant companion for weeks. Words could not describe what we saw. We had people come drive out to see us and not truly get what had happened until they saw it for themselves. It is now just over two years as I write this and our beautiful mountains still carry the scars of this fire.
The firefighters were the true heroes of the day. They miraculously saved our entire housing community. They had used our hose as our house faces a hill that was burned. A tree was knocked down by a fire truck. Trees surrounding the outskirts of the neighborhood were singed and blackened from the fire, but every home was safe. How was that possible? I saw the fire as I left. I saw the crazy big flames and felt the heat so hot that I had to roll up my car windows to not feel like I was getting burned. I had zero hope.
(Our housing surrounded by blackened hills)As I look back, I’ve likened this very physical and temporal experience to a spiritual battle I had in my own life. So much is the same. The darkness was real and hope was not on my radar. Not so much as a little blip on the screen. When I read the saying that someone had “temporarily turned the light off at the end of the tunnel”, I could completely relate. (Stay with me now, because I found that silly little light-switch to turn on my own light!)Now, unlike the fire, I have no one to blame but myself. I made choices that brought me to that tunnel without a supposed light and had removed myself so far out there that my radar was actually damaged and couldn’t see that blip that turns out, was just hiding, not gone. Part of my lesson was realizing that I didn’t know how dark things had become. When you make wrong choices, consistently over a long period of time, they become your reality. My tunnel light had not been turned off, but there was so much smoke I had created that it just wasn’t visible to me anymore.My dark choices will not be the same as yours. We all have our own enemies to fight so I won’t bore you with the details of my battles, but I did win this particular war. The only way to win the war is to do exactly the opposite of what got you there to begin with. In my case, that meant not making decisions on my own. If I had tried to battle our physical fire around our homes I would have lost! I did not have the skills or expertise in that field. Everyone would have suffered the loss of their homes. The firefighters were the experts. I needed an expert in life. That meant turning to my spiritual power of prayer and getting on my knees and begging God to help me. He was my firefighter and I needed all of his expertise and knowledge of life to help me fight. All of my choices had brought me to that place…dark, lonely, afraid, sorely sad, and just plain miserable. Surely God could help me make better decisions than the ones I had been making.And indeed he did. It took some time, but I am grateful for my experiences I have had in my life. They have made me who I am today. Just like our mountains, I carry the scars from those days, but I believe, “A mended heart is stronger”. They remind me see that if I can make it…anyone can! I truly mean that with all my heart and soul. Ladies, if I can make it…so can you!Some people see the fires that burn hot and fast, while others experience a slow burn, but my goal in writing this blog today is to give you hope. Hope that you can become a magical electrician and wire your own switch for a light at the end of your tunnel. Hope that you see the sun and feel the warmth on your skin and in your soul. Hope that you find a flashlight along the way. Hope that your friend can loan you a flashlight until you can locate yours. Hope that out of your darkness and ashes, you rise like the fabled Phoenix to start again, renewed and strengthened for your journey ahead. Because once you are on that path, you need to loan your flashlight to others who can’t see their light and help them on their journey.Yours in Hope and Positivity…#makelemonade -
The Boring Bliss of Routine
Is your routine answer “Life is busy.”? It’s the unmistakably counted on answer when you ask someone the dreaded socially correct question now known as a greeting in our fair culture of “How are you?”. Is your response different? A “fine, how are you?” perhaps? I’m just as guilty as the next person and it has become habit to say either “fine, how are you?” or if I know them a bit better, “I’m busy”. And if I hesitate (usually trying to think of how I really am so I can answer honestly) the person asking the question immediately thinks that something must be wrong in my life and jumps to conclusions that who knows what that has formed in their minds from sour milk to my dog dying.
Now that I’ve formed this little rant on the “how are you” question…I HAVE BEEN BUSY! Haha! I can honestly answer that my life has been busy. You have to understand that I am crazy OCD and an organizational freakazoid who has dialed in my “to-do list” and my “must-do” list so I’m practically scheduled out every day of the week. Throw in a trip to Oakland for a family affair, my women’s conference where I was in charge of the almost 50 women volunteers, a couple of relatives popping in to say hello for a few days, and a planned trip coming up for four days the end of this week, and I pretty much throw my perfectly laid out plan out the window. Well, not all of it…but it does get a bit more stressful and trying to shove 6 days of work into 3 days of available time.
BUSY VS ROUTINE
After some recuperating and catching up I realized that sometimes I consider my life boring. Not bad boring, but routine boring. The same old things week after week. The same chores, the same workouts, the same type of work. Wearing my retainers every night, praying, meditating, daily reading, meals…all of it! And then I remember my younger adult self. Scattered, not settled into a career or a happy marriage. When the dust settled on the last two weeks and as I look forward to this coming weekend trip, I realize that I LOVE the BORING BLISS OF MY ROUTINE.
I love that I’m the first one up every morning because my hubby and puppies are not morning beings. I love going downstairs and getting a glass of water first thing and putting away the dishes from the night before and laying out my breakfast utensils. I love saying my morning prayers, and doing my daily reading and journaling all before the rest of my household awakes. I absolutely LOVE everything about Lauri’s Lemonade Stand…from the podcast, to the blog, to Ms Penelope Pickwick (My Bookworm). I love the routine of cooking dinner or just going out if it’s been a long day and that I watch movies most weeknights with my hubby (If you haven’t seen the movie Embrace…or I Feel Pretty…I highly recommend them!).
In today’s blog I just want to publicly acknowledge the boring bliss of my routine. I absolutely love it. I love the busy moments and the quiet moments. I love the growth moments and the bliss moments that happen after the growth moments and I realize that I’ve learned something new. I love the boring bliss of my routine! The next time someone asks “how are you?” I will answer “Really Good, and you?” What will you say?
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Goal Posts 3 of 4 – Bite Size Chunks
Bite Size Chunks
Now that you’ve Dreamed Big and had some time to Reflect, it’s time to set your actual goals by breaking them down into Bite Size Chunks. This year I decided I wanted to make my goals more fun instead of stodgy. I changed my goal title from Lauri’s Goals to Lauri’s Promises. I changed the Relationships category to Family Focus, Physical to Physical Well-being and Playtime, Financial to Abundant Wealth Prowess, Education to Cultivating Enlightenment, Spiritual to Soul Solutions. I even added two new categories this year: Creativity and my favorite? Recess!
Not only am I adding in more fun this year, but I have two pages of promises and this might help you, too. One set is a Promises Summary where it states my goals. The second set (and this is where the bite-size chunks come in) breaks down those promises into actual action steps. How will I accomplish my goals?
Let me share one with you so you get the idea.
Under my Recess Category I have a goal for a Weekly Date with guess who? Me! One my first set of Promises where it is a summary, it simply says, Weekly Dates with Myself. On the second set I have it broken out to say that not only will I have a weekly date with myself, but I will alternate each week from an evening to a daytime date. I have ideas written of a few dates I’ve done in the past and enjoyed and some I think might be fun. Not all of my dates have been a hit, by the way. Some felt as a downright waste of my time by the end, but consistency keeps me moving forward in the right direction so that I keep taking time for myself. Last week I simply set a date to pull out all of my stamp collection, see how much they were worth right now and make a list of a couple of collections I’d like to complete and added it to my wishlist for friends and family for my birthday and Christmas (yes, I’m the OCD one when it comes to lists and preparation…I always have a wishlist going! You should to!)
Now is time for YOUR action step.
You’ve Dreamed Big, you’ve Reflected on past goals that have and haven’t worked for you and where you are now. You are ready to make your Promises, but more importantly, ready to break them down into Bite Size Chunks so that you can actually see yourself accomplishing your goals.
Next week? The last piece of the puzzle to help you accomplish your goals or promises – Accountability. I’ll tell you that I’ve never taken this step before until this year and what I’ve done to make it happen for me.
Please leave a comment below and share one of your promises for this year. I love hearing from you!
