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Dennis, I hope your son has a happy birthday. He's over a quarter of a century old! What type of work do you do in the middle of the night, while I'm asleep?
Thanks for the birthday wish! And, for reminding me that I will soon turn a HALF of a century old! In the middle of the night, while you sleep, I do chemistry work for an electroplating company. If you have any chrome plated plastic on your vehicle, there is a good chance it came from where I work at. In addition to chemistry, I try to make sure our manufactoring process is not doing harm to the environment. However, one of my more important jobs is making sure the three stray cats that hang out there are fed. And trying to sneak posts in on here from work when I can! So, you all sleep well, wherever you are, cause I'm up all night, and I got it ALL covered!
Morning ALL! Dennis, you are great, I hope you work with coworkers through the night, your humor is too good to be wasted on the cats!
Had a 24hr flu yesterday, feeling alive and great today. Am going to my first book club meeting (in my new area) this week, so I have to go get the book today ~ 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' by the author of 'The Kite Runner', which was a great book. I waited until today to buy it, bec I am afraid I'll forget it by the time the meeting rolled along, if I read it sooner...sorry Dennis, this symptom started after I turned 50! haha
Anyway, just checking in to affirm that it's great to hear peace and contentment on Robyn's thread ~ we're here if you need us girl!
I woke up this morning and it was still dark outside. I lay in my bed not knowing the time, not even caring about the time.
I layed there happy, content in my nice warm bed. I layed there in love with my life.
I was still there awake as the sun came up, and even for a while longer. Just thinking. Just being happy. I finally got up and came down the stairs. I walked down the old wooden stairs of Chimes and suddenly I knew there was only one thing I wanted to do.
I needed to accomplish this one thing. I needed to go to the track. Natures Superdome. If I did nothing else today, it would be just that.
Even the drive out there was different. Had nothing to do with the fact the vehicle was different, although that is a part of my new life, the old gone.
The trees, they were bare. The sky full of puffy white clouds, so many you could hardly see the blue background. My clothes different.
Before, I drove there everyday, sometimes twice a day. I would wear shorts and t shirt. I carried water. I walked. I did not walk to live, I lived to walk.
Today I drove there looking at the bare trees, where they were once so full of color, so full of life that I could not see through them.
I have on jeans and a tshirt with a sweat shirt jacket. I drove past the pond there at the park, and water was almost even with the ground.
I thought that was so strange, I drove on to my normal parking place, it was open. There was only one other car there, an older couple walking together.
Just as I have always done before, I locked my car up, and I turned on my MP3 player, put the buds in my ears.
As I stood there today, three doors down walked me along the track. The first curve took me to the all familiar golf course. But it wasn't the same. Before it was lush and green and full of life. The sand so different in color from the grass.
Today the grass was almost the same color as the sand. I walked along. I looked at the trees of this Natures Superdome. Bare as they can be. I could see through the woods. Before the trees were full of leaves, green. Today, just huge sticks protruding from the ground. I could see clearly what was before me.
Nothing hiding behind the trees, the honeysuckle. Nothing to impair my vision, or my senses. Before when I could smell the honeysuckle, I knew for there to be such a thing, life had to be sweet somewhere. It just wasn't sweet for me, at the time.
But now, the bareness shone through. I could see everything, there was nothing hiding anymore. Life was not hiding. My life was not hiding from me. It was present, it was clear.
I walked now down the straightaway of the track, from so much further back I could see the river.
The cold breeze off of it, blew my hair back and hit my face. I was free. Seeing things so clearly, as they truly are, nothing hindering my view.
The river. I had been enticed by the river this summer. Sometimes I wished that I could just jump in and flow where ever it may lead me. That would have been the easy way.
No. I had to take the right way. I had to work it all out on my own, and in my own time. Thats what I did.
I got many yards away from the trail leading down to the river and I picked up a jog, and then I began to run to the river. My arms up in the air, embracing it. Embracing life. Embracing my life. I slowed down to a walk as I got to the trail and began down. Leaves everywhere, sticks and rocks.
I walked carefully down the trail, music still playing three doors down.
I got down to the rivers edge. In the summer I used to look down at the river about 4 feet or so.
Today, it was almost along with where I stood. There were holes where the sand crabs had made there homes, and as the water washed up, the holes overflowed with it.
The tide came in as I stood there watching, looking... screaming in my mind that this is it. I am free. I am alive today. The water came up and touched my shoes, made the the bottom of my jeans wet.
I grabbed a stick and drew my name in the thick mud, almost like clay.
I have never done that before here. Never even thought of doing it. But today I did it. Before I suppose my mind was so occupied with everything else... it just never crossed me to do it.
The breeze blew over me, cold. It felt so good on my skin, in my hair. I took a picture of the water coming onto to the little bit of thick clay like shore.
This summer, I took the very same picture. The very same spot. Oh how very different the two pictures are. So different. Like night and day.
Just like my life between then and now.
Night and day.
I finally left the river to be on its own, and walked back up the steep trail. I walked through the grass and back onto the track.
I knew I only needed one time around, but I could have gone 8. It felt so good to be there in freedom. Total and complete freedom.
I knew I had to go today. I knew it. I had to feel the diffence in today and the summer. I knew it would be different, I did not realize how very different it would be.
Amazingly different. The summer brought beautiful colors and nature, but hid things from plain sight. The winter is bare, everything I could see. Nothing blocking my field. Nothing leading me to believe anything other than true reality, which is what I live now.
I felt like a bird, flying free around that track today. Free to go where I pleased, free to be alive. I was a free bird today, and from here on, I fly free.
As I walked to my car, Carrie Underwood was playing on the mp3, Jesus take the wheel.
Monumental.
Last edited by Pikantari; 01-27-2008 at 02:32 PM..
The words ringing so true to life, I listened as I neared my car, so unbelievable....
She was driving last Friday on her way to Cincinnati
On a snow white Christmas Eve
Going home to see her Mama and her Daddy with the baby in the backseat
Fifty miles to go and she was running low on faith and gasoline
It'd been a long hard year
She had a lot on her mind and she didn't pay attention
she was going way too fast
Before she knew it she was spinning on a thin black sheet of glass
She saw both their lives flash before her eyes
She didn't even have time to cry
She was so scared
She threw her hands up in the air
Jesus take the wheel
Take it from my hands
Cause I can't do this on my own
I'm letting go
So give me one more chance
To save me from this road I'm on
Jesus take the wheel
It was still getting colder when she made it to the shoulder
And the car came to a stop
She cried when she saw that baby in the backseat sleeping like a rock
And for the first time in a long time
She bowed her head to pray
She said I'm sorry for the way
I've been living my life
I know I've got to change
So from now on tonight
Jesus take the wheel
Take it from my hands
Cause I can't do this on my own
I'm letting go
So give me one more chance
To save me from this road I'm on
Jesus take the wheel
Oh I'm letting go
So give me one more chance
Save me from this road I'm on
From this road I'm on
Jesus take the wheel
Oh take it take it from me
Oh
Those words were me in May. Last May I held onto the wheel so tight for my life. For my marriage. I was not letting go. I knew I could make it ok. I just knew it.
I held on so tight in May, this can't be happening. But it was. Soon, in the same month, I started my walk. Now I walked before this... and I didn't realize I was on my walk, but I was.
One foot in front of the other I walked. Slowly I let go of the wheel. So slowly I let it go, letting Him grab ahold of it. Letting Him open the clouds and allow the sun to shine through and into my life.
I thought of this as the song played on. The song mentions giving her one more chance. I thought of myself, and this being my one more chance.
I wondered how many chances I had been given before, but had not taken them, or seen them to be had.
So, now, today, right now... my one more chance, and I am taking it and living it to the fullest.
I was allowed this chance for a reason. Part of that reason is to follow.
Shackles is on the way to the track of freedom. I have to pass right by it to get there. As I drove along the road I called my friend, my old next door neighbor.
Today I pay it forward.
She screamed in the phone crying, her words hardly audible. Can I come see you I ask her. No, I will be ok, I have to go to work.
"Get the hell out you SOB!"
I could hear what she was screaming about now. I said I am going to stop by, for if nothing but to give you a hug.
No Miss Robyn, don't come all the way out here, I'll be ok. No. I am right down the street at the stop light. I am hanging up now.
I turned into her drive, only a quick glance to my old life, at shackles.
I got out of my car and went to her carport, her husband slamming out the door, she in the house screaming.
A million steps forward, a million back.
A feeling of guilt overwhelmed me. I have come so far, and she has gone backward. So far back.
When she was getting ready to marry him I had so wished she wouldn't. this was a choice she had made, thinking that if they were married, she may get her younger daughter back. She didn't.
My heart screamed out for her, cried for her. I held her in my arms as she sobbed uncontrollably. She just could not stop. I have been there. Not in her situation, but in a sense, a little.
I felt like I had to be strong for her, but for one tear which did escape.
I held her as tight as I could and rubbed her back, Kissed the side of her head.
We went and sat in the living room. I don't know what I am going to do, she says to me.
I have given my two months notice and it is coming up soon. I am supposed to go live at my sisters house, but now I can't.
There is more detail to that, that I will not go into here.
He has been nothing but no good.
I let her release her heart and soul to me. Her hurt and her pain... her turmoil.
As you all have let me do here, I sat there with her and let her do there.
I had not planned on this pitstop today, but after hearing her, there was no way I would not go there.
We sat there for about 2 hours, talking, letting her just say everything she had to say, just get it all out. Cry, scream, yell... talk.
Boy do I remeber the what am I going to do.
She said Miss Robyn, why did this have to happen like this.
I told her we can't go back, only forward in life. We cannot change what has happened in our past, just make it right for the present, so that our future would be protected.
She says I should have married this other one. We just can't go back.
She wants to get this marriage annulled, and she says she knows she will not get her younger daughter back.
She is going to start school soon, my friend, and right now she works two jobs, so that she may afford child support.
In all hopes that she has, she wants this man to be gone from her life, understanding that she will not have her little girl, but by the time she is done with school in 2 years, she is hopeful to have her feet on the ground, and to have made her life better.
She prays that her younger daughter will not have been so easily swayed as her older daughter has been.
She hopes that her daughter will still want to live with her in two years when she is thirteen, and can make that choice known before the courts.
She was taken from her last July, and she sees her on some weekends and on one weekday.
Her court dates keep being moved out. She has spent so much on attorney fees. Money she does not have.
All I could do was be there for her. I could not offer her a place, I could not offer her money. I could only offer up myself to her.
"Go" from Hansen just got done playing... thank you for the person who introduced that song to me.
Thats what I did.. GO, from my old life.
In all of you allowing my thread here, contributing, I think that we may help so many... continuously. I hope that rings true for everyone here, as you have all helped me, and for just one person reading to know there is a way....
Last edited by Pikantari; 01-27-2008 at 02:14 PM..
In my life, my whole life, not just this past year... music has been monumental.
I listen to the words, I sing the songs.
Always there is music. It can lift you up, it can help you see things when life is just not so clear for you.
Sometimes I listen to music, and they ring so true to my present, my right now, that I don't even hear the words.
It is like they live in my mind, in my heart, and I don't even have to hear them. I am in the song, my life identifying with the words.
Me there only hearing the music, the lyrics background.
A few minutes ago, Maroon 5 played.. She will be loved.
Now Carbon Leaf is playing.. well, now its over... Creed is on. The song is called Beautiful.
There is no music on my mp3 that I do not like. All songs here have some sort of meaning in my life. All songs put here this past summer.
With the huge changes that have taken place in my life, the swiftly everchanging life.. I suppose that I need to put some other songs on here, but these songs will never come off.
The songs of my past have led me to my present, which will walk me into my future.
All with their very own meaning.
Some, like Jesus Take the Wheel, I did not even see the meaning.
Maybe back then, I wished someone else could take the wheel of life for me. I was hellbent.
It was mine to do. Mine to take care of. I needed to turn it over, and finally I did. I knew I had, but listening today... it all came into perspective for me.
This is not the only song either. I have yet to take out the buds, and the songs play on.
Now Corine Bailey Rae. Put your records on.
Maybe sometimes we got it wrong but its alright....
The posting fool made a heck of a lot of sense today. SHe is also paying it forward, and for that she is going to 'reap what she is sowing' but that reaping will all be good as she has sown good seed.
I'm so very proud of you lady, you are blooming into a beautiful rose, deep hues of color that go deep inside the flower. Your beauty glows from the inside out, and people are drawn to you. You sway strong in the winds of change, becoming a beacon for those who will follow after you. You lead the way, silently teaching via your life journey, and do it with such grace and dignity. Robyn, one day you shall have many crowns for your faithfulness and giving.
blessings to you my friend..aiangel
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What type of work do you do in the middle of the night, while I'm asleep?
I felt like a bird.... freebird.
