Alchemy?

What I am trying to believe about myself:

·         I am loveable.

·         I am worth the effort.

There are times when I absolutely hate the fact that I am a hopeless romantic; times when I wish I could simply eradicate this from my character. I imagine, with practice, I could. But there are other times when I love this about me.

Being a romantic means that I believe in the impossible; that I believe in miracles; that I believe the extraordinary can happen in real life even against the most seemingly impossible of odds. I enjoy thinking that, like my beloved Gatsby, I possess an “extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as [Carraway] have never found in any other person and which it is not likely [he] shall ever find again.”

I want to believe in Alchemy – in the notion that if and when we believe, God and the universe conspires to help us find the treasure we seek – that which we desire most in our hearts.

All things considered, God has blessed me with incredible riches.

Despite the fact that I am a child of divorce, I have an amazing mother. My mother always made me the primary focus of her life. There was never a day of my life when I wasn’t told I was loved or that she was proud of me. I never wanted for anything. I never knew what the ache of hunger felt like in my belly.

While my relationships might have been short-lived and unorthodox, at best, I have been blessed with two amazing daughters. Brown-eyed beauties who are so snuggly and loving – intelligent and funny – that I sometimes wonder what role I have played in how incredible they are.  Slowly, I am learning to give myself credit for the love and nurturing I offer them. The perfect parent I am not, nor would I pretend to be. But I love them unconditionally and without limits. This has to be worth something.

So I sit here and I feel selfish for wanting more. For feeling like there is something missing in my life; like life remains, in some way, incomplete. Yet no matter how diligently I try to ignore this void, to stuff it away, it is there.

I desperately desire to be loved. To feel loved. To be someone’s heart’s desire. To be longed for and sought after – the pearl of great price.

The Alchemist was truly a life changing book for me; however, sometimes I wonder if I can’t separate fact from fiction – reality from dreams. And yet when I read this book it seemed to affirm for me every ‘romantic’ notion I have clung to my entire life.

“In alchemy, it’s called the Soul of the World. When you want something with all your heart, that’s when you are closest to the Soul of the World. It’s always a positive force.”

Romantic love. Married love. Best friend love. Unconditional love. This is what I desire with all my heart; what I have desired for as long as I can remember. In my quest for this, I must say I feel more spiritually connected to God than I have felt in a long time. I think I have finally learned and understand what it means to surrender.

Obviously, I would not have my daughters without the choices I made in my life; but those were my choices. As insane as this might seem to some people, I am really trying to allow God to lead me in the choices I make. I desire a lasting love relationship. Not one that is going to fracture and fall apart when life enters stages of difficulty or throws in obstacles that must be hurtled.

In those times, I want someone who is going to hold my hand so that we can overcome these things together.

“When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person realize his dream.”

I so desperately want to believe that this is true, but my beacon of hope dims a bit every day. The green light at the end of the dock becomes more difficult to spot through the fog.  

Like everyone else, I imagine, I have watched endless news feeds of the recent tragedy –blood-drenched theater patrons seeking asylum in a dazed mass exodus. As I have watched the footage, and both read and watched the commentary, my mind has been churning with questions since the news first broke.

Boil it all down to the most basic of queries and we are all left with one immense ‘WHY?’

Why does a seemingly intelligent, by all accounts ‘normal’ young man with opportunities for a bright future ahead of him, purchase 6,000 rounds of ammunition and plot out a plan designed to injure and kill innocent strangers?

Crimes of passion, while no less heinous, are predicated on irrational, over-zealous human emotion – love and hate can drive the most balanced of people in behaviorally insane directions.

I am in no way offering a pass on these crimes, but I can, at the very least, wrap my head around the “why” and simultaneously offer a variety of solutions to the problem that doesn’t end in homicide.

Walking into a movie theater and shooting into a crowd of complete strangers – this I simply cannot fathom. Is it an act of insanity or is this the personification of genuine evil?

Sitting in the safety of my family room in Easley, hundreds of miles removed from Colorado, I have not personally experienced what these victims or families are having to endure; yet, I am able to translate what I am seeing on the television news into an earnest sympathy and compassion for the events that have unfolded.

I will never again be able to walk into a movie theater without a heightened awareness of my surroundings – my fight or flight instinct at the ready to protect my children. And it makes me sad that this thought is now part of my conscious awareness.

Living in Pickens County (as opposed to Miami) has lulled me into a false sense of security.  The fact of the matter is what happened in Aurora could have happened in Easley. Obviously we all hope nothing like this ever happens here, but no one can definitively guarantee that we are immune to an act of terrorism such as this.

Still, we can’t all live our lives fearing what might happen. As senseless and horrible as the Aurora massacre continues to be, in some way I think it is another reminder for all of us to live each day to the fullest – as if it is our last.

Obviously we have responsibilities that cannot be cast to chance, but we can be a little more mindful of what is truly important in our lives: our children, our spouses, our parents, our siblings. Maybe we can let go of past insults and injuries, replacing those with a hug and an “I love you.”

None of us knows what is going to happen from one minute to the next, and there are things in life for which we cannot plan; the actions of others over which we cannot assert control.

This is why I never let a day (or an hour – who am I kidding?) elapse without telling and showing the people in my life that I love and value them.

Life, as we know it, is fragile; it can be turned upside down and inside out in an instant, when we least suspect it to happen.

Congratulations!

Sometimes performing the simplest of calculations can make a person, well, me, feel really old. Doing the quick math, it would seem that I graduated from high school 18 years ago this month. Time flies when you’re having fun or getting older and raising children. Any way you slice it, time is certainly a gift I have come to value more and more over the last year.

Last Saturday, I had the privilege of attending Easley High’s graduation ceremony. I know for many it was bitter sweet – 2012 is the last class that can claim roaming the hall of the historic buildings for their entire high school career. Change. This is the one constant in life on which we can always depend. Without change, there is no growth. No evolution. Difficult as it can be at times, change can be an incredibly positive experience.

While I offer these words of wisdom to all of those seniors in Pickens County – recent graduates who will be heading off in a new direction – I would like to note that I am very proud of my ‘adopted’ daughter, Kaiteland. I have had the honor of being her second mom and watching her grow into an amazing young woman these last few years. She graduated among the Easley High class on Saturday, and I beamed with pride as they called her name and I got to watch her walk across the stage.

In the almost two decades it has been since I graduated from high school, I think the most important lesson I have learned is that we truly never stop learning. There are so many things we learn from books and from our teachers, but there is an equal education we receive living life, making mistakes and tackling new challenges. If I were giving a commencement speech, I would urge everyone to be receptive to each and every opportunity life offers you to learn more about yourself and the world around you.

The acquisition of knowledge is a process that really has no end but one must be open to embracing the experiences that will allow us to learn and grow.

My other piece of advice would be not to wish your life away by constantly focusing on what tomorrow might bring. Don’t get me wrong – I certainly believe in thinking ahead and planning for the future, but not at the expense of ignoring the present moments with which we are gifted.

Tomorrow is never a guarantee.

When I was in high school, I couldn’t wait to be in college. When I was in college, I couldn’t wait to go to graduate school. Looking back, I wish I had taken the time to thoroughly enjoy each and every course I took, to more completely cherish the friendships I had and the lack of true adult responsibility. You will have plenty of real-world, grown-up responsibilities in the form of jobs and bills soon enough.

Find your passion and what you love to do with your time. I have degrees in English and Counseling because I love people and I love language, literature and writing. Maybe it was unwise to choose a career path that would not afford me the opportunity to measure my success by how much money I earned in each paycheck. However, every job I have ever had – be it teaching, counseling or writing, has made me happy.

I have measured my successes by the fact that I enjoy going to work and that what I do makes a difference in the lives of others in some form or fashion.

The last piece of advice I have to offer is from Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford commencement speech. Having not heeded this advice in my younger years, these words have had a profound impact on my life over this last year.

“Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know [what you love] when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

Congratulations to the 2012 graduates of Pickens County and a very warm ‘shout out’ to my dear Kaiteland. I am so very proud of you. You are an amazing young woman with so much heart and oodles of talent. It is entirely my honor to be your second mommy. Listen to what is deep inside you – to what stirs your soul – and follow your heart knowing that there are so many people who believe in you, support you and love you more than words could ever say. Congratulations!

Lacking Foundation

I imagine most people are fairly conventional when it comes to relationships.
Two people meet and begin dating. They take ample time to get to know one another, to develop trust, emotional intimacy, strong communication processes. Maybe they also develop a physical intimacy built, again, on trust and communication. They share their individual needs and wants and begin to dream of a future together making those hopes and desires a reality.

At some point, they decide they want to get married, so they get engaged. The engagement process is typically proportional in time measurement to the months and (or) years leading up to the engagement. The couple gets married and settles into life together. Maybe they start a family. They evolve as a unit built on a foundation of unconditional love and acceptance. Mutual respect and appreciation.

I’m certain it will come as no surprise to my regular readers that I see love from a slightly unorthodox perspective, which is to say that the romantic in me believes in love at first sight and soul mates. The notion that God, in all of his infinite wisdom, has divinely created perfect matches that he unites when the timing is correct.

Recently I reread my copy of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist (an AMAZING book if you’ve never read it). In hindsight, I believe that I was drawn to the novel at the perfect time last year. My Mom had recently been diagnosed with Breast Cancer, and my world felt like it was crumbling around me. Looking back, it was also around this time that my marriage was slowly unraveling, stitch by stitch.

The book offered me a renewed spiritual peace from which I was able to cope with the massive changes taking place in my life at that time. It made me feel grounded and it gave me hope for the future.

As I read back through it, the following passage caught my attention: “At that moment, it seemed to him that time stood still, and the Soul of the World surged within him …. he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke – the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes met, as had theirs here at the well. She smiled, and that was certainly an omen – the omen he had been awaiting, without even knowing he was, for all his life.”

“It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. Because when you know that language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning.”

I find myself exploring this possibility because – without even being consciously aware of it – I have ascribed to this philosophy my entire life. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that everything – good or bad – just or unjust – happens for a reason.
Everything we experience in our lives – the challenges, the triumphs, the failures, the setbacks, the joy and sorrow, pain and heartache – all of these things mould and shape us into the people we are supposed to be. Following the Biblical analogy where God is the potter and we are the clay – being ever shaped into the most perfect form of ourselves at the exact moment in our lives when it is imperative. There was a time when I thought my hopelessly romantic nature was silly. Childish. My perspective, however, has shifted. I believe in the divinity of soul mates because I believe that God’s love is limitless.

The biggest problem in my marriages has been that I have lacked God as a foundation. Ever the control freak, I wanted to be in charge of every detail rather than giving it up to God and allowing Him to take the reins. I lacked faith, instead allowing myself to be consumed by fear and uncertainty.

I am saying good-bye to fear as the guiding force in my life, and replacing it with Faith, Hope and the knowledge that, with God, nothing is impossible.