My gym

Three days a week I have to report to gym to do my walking under supervision, but two days a week, I get to strap on my heart monitor and do it on my own. Today we hiked a trail in Swope Park (KCMO). I’m always amazed that these places exist right inside the city limits. It was a little difficult keeping my heart rate in the targeted range due to the steep inclines of this trail, but I much prefer this gym to the clinic’s treadmill!
It was a gorgeous day and the view was much better than the gym’s large screen TVs.

And although I was techincally doing this without the usual supervision, I still felt as though I was being watched…

Ozark Beauty

Troy and I had a lovely walk through the Dolomite glades in Ha Ha Tonka. I am falling in love with the Ozarks. There are so many different terrains that I feel as if I’m in a entirely different region with every new direction we decide to explore. I’m also entranced by the beauty of the wildflowers. I only had my phone for pictures. I’m posting the few I captured on June 7th.  I purchased a book to identify them after we returned home. There are some I’m not quite sure about since I only have the photos to reference but we will be going back soon and often and I hope to get a lot more photos in my collection

Sensitive Briar

Phlox?

Daisy Fleabane

Jacob’s Ladder

Missouri Coneflower

Missouri Coneflower on Dolomite Glade

Purple Astar – possibly?

Russula Mushroom – again possibly?

Spiderwort

Goodbyes…

Yesterday I was told that you had passed. After all these years of looking for you, I found you too late.
I  hope that you now know all the things I wanted to tell you but never got the chance. You literally changed my life without even knowing it.  After our last meeting, 23 years ago, I went home and cried. I sat in the basement and prayed for you. I was at a loss of how to minister to you and in my ignorance I cried out to God “What are you trying to teach Jeff through me?” over and over – then it happened, the shell that had been built around me cracked and I saw the light seep into my soul and heard the still quiet voice say “I am trying to teach you through Jeff.” That moment changed my life. It started me on a journey of relearning God.
I always thought that I would see you again, give you a giant hug and tell you how much my life changed because of you. I wanted to say I was sorry and I wanted it to be in person.  I hope that your life was full of love and that you were surrounded in peace as you passed on to the next one. I love you my friend and am a better person for knowing you.

Sadness lingers

I had trouble falling asleep last night, which is par for course lately. We spent the weekend at our friends lake house helping them get it ready for Spring. It was the first weekend I was away from the kids for a while and it was a welcome break. While we were gone, Ian took the girls to the zoo. He said Trinity was upset at the zoo and kept crying because she thought she saw Mommy. When I asked her later if she had fun at the zoo. She said “I saw mommy” I didn’t know how to respond, because she hadn’t. She hasn’t seen her mommy in weeks. It broke my heart.

Angry

For the third time in two years my granddaughter’s mother has decided that she doesn’t want to be a mom. My 21 year old son has moved back in with his daughter’s ages 2 and 6 months. As you can imagine, it a whole mess of emotions for everyone involved.

I’ve never known what to do with anger. I’m not good at it. I don’t like it. I was told by a therapist years ago that anger turned inwards becomes depression but I still have trouble expressing it. That being said I am so angry, so uncontrollably, incredibly angry at the circumstances that my grandchildren have been put into that I can barely breath.  I want to physically put a certain someones head through a wall and knock some sense into her incredibly selfish little pea brain! But that would benefit no one except me, so while pea brain is out partying with her friends, I am up at 3am worrying, praying, preparing to do whatever it takes to help these girls hold onto some sense of self esteem in the wake of their abandonment. I’m the one struggling to answer a two year old’s question “Where’s Mommy at?” for the hundredth time. Praying that our love can somehow help ease the pain of a child who’s mother is unable to attach. Knowing it’s not that easy.

I am angry at my son, who decided at 18 that he was in love with a girl he’d known a week. Loved her so much that when we refused to let her move in with us, he quit school, gave up his internship to Cerner, gave up his family and friends and moved into a seedy hotel.  Troy and I had spent years going to monthly IEP meetings, working hard to help him overcome his learning disabilities and diagnosis of ADD to ensure his success in life. 18 years of work down the drain.  And I am angry that while we are in “Crisis Mode” he is still making immature  selfish decisions that can adversely effect his daughters.

This anger is so painful and raw. I don’t know what to do with it. I’m fighting to hold it in but it leaks out through hot tears soaking into my pillow in the middle of the night. IT’S NOT FAIR! There I said it. Not fair to me, not fair to Troy and not fair to those precious little girls.

Random thought for the day

It’s easy for me to keep my childlike sense of wonder because it seems I am being reborn every few years…

I want to grow young with you

A poem I wrote for Troy…

I want to grow young with you.
Shed these aged shells that have hardened over the years
and feel the wetness of the morning grass on our naked skin.
I want to grow young with you.
Laughing from deep inside our bellies,
jumping from couch to couch to keep from falling into the molten pit of bubbling lava.
I want to grow young with you.
Hiding from the world in our tent made with sheets and kitchen chairs,
whispering secrets that only universe and us are meant to know.
I want to grow young with you.
Dipping our hands into shades of vibrant colors,
using our fingers to paint uninhibitedly in swirls and waves.
I want to dance and twirl on my tippy toes and look for rolly pollies under moss covered rocks.
I want to sleep under the stars  and be amazed at the universe but oblivious to the world.
I want to lose the knowledge of minutes, hours, years…
I want to grow young with you.

And another one. Early 2012

http://btgats.wordpress.com/

One I started earlier this year on a different site.

Ok, everyone caught up. I’ll try to keep them all in one place for a while.

Live Journal Blog 2005-2007

http://mrstvh.wordpress.com/

I always start blogging and then lose interest, only to lose my passwords and start all over. I’m not sure how to incorporate them all, so in an attempt to have everything in on place. Here is the link to my first blog, originally on Live Journal.

Beloved let us love one another…

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” Gandhi

I spent the majority of my life (13-30) deeply rooted in a fundamentalist evangelical christian church. As I have mentioned before, when I left that church it was a time for me to relearn God. Truthfully I was scared to death to question or explore other religions, because I had grown up with fear-based teachings. A vengeful God, who demanded unconditional, unquestioning, love and respect. Don’t dare question or you will end up in the fiery pits of hell. I loved him in a Stockholm Syndrome fashion. as a hostage loves the captor who gives and takes away life.

The journey I have taken could fill a book and I won’t delve into it in this post, but suffice to say I have relearned a God that is love. Pure, unfailing, unwavering love. I read the bible in a different light now. I no longer claim to know all the answers. But when I question, I don’t seek out pastors, or theologies – I go to the source, the spirit that is within me (within all of us) and ask for guidance

What spurred this post is the resent backlash, I’ve heard from conservative radio hosts that has made it’s way into the views of people that I know who claim to be Christians. I have actually heard these people condemn the relief efforts we are giving to Haiti. I know, my jaw is still on the ground. Is it politics? Prejudiced? Unfortunately in this day and age, I think the two go hand in hand.

It’s heartbreaking to me, because I am a believer and this type of behavior makes the beautiful truths that I try to live by polluted. We can no longer see God’s truths because of the Christians. Shouldn’t the Christian (Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, hell, just human) response be “I see a brother in need and I will reach out to him”? I know that for the majority of us this is the case. But this small minority has really disturbed me. As Martin Luther King Jr said “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Ok, thanks for letting me vent. I will end this blog with one final quote:

1st John 4:7&8
Dear friends, let us continually love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born from God and knows God. The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love