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Wednesday, June 29, 2016

I HAVE NO SHAME




I don't have enough superlatives for Brene Brown.  Since she has dedicated her living to understanding many of the emotions that drive humans...including and especially shame-I will defer to her definition of Shame:
 "..... the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection. "

I've recently become aware that I have no shame.  I mean that in every way that you can mean it.  I am SHAME-LESS.  There is no shame on me.  The skeletons have made their way from the closets and are quite comfortable sipping tea on the front porch.

Shame has no partner in my world to make it seem more reputable.  I don't carry around my guilt with my shame.  Why do we say that?  It's as if putting the guilt in there will somehow make the shame  more palatable or easy to choke down?  

How do you feel about chocolate chip cookies dipped in soy sauce?  Disgusting right?

When I was pregnant with my second child, I could not imagine anything that could possibly surpass the delicious nirvana a chocolate chip cookie dipped in soy sauce would achieve.  I never actually ate it but I dreamed of it almost daily.  I felt that in spite of the pull of the salty sweetness, I would somehow regret taking that plunge.  Once I was divested of the sweet little parasite...I came back to my senses. I imagine my the taste of this delicacy is not dis-similar to how guilt mixed with shame would taste.



Shame is something that I was told early on was essential to being a 'good' human.  I grew up expecting to eat doses of shame with every meal-as if it is a multi-vitamin that would help me grow into something wholesome.   I've spent a long portion of my adult life gradually shedding this connection.  Some of my shame was easy to let go-the parts tied to being born a poor little cracker in rural North Carolina are now badges of honor.  The wounds I received from being abused as a child I managed to heal through loving my own children-as imperfectly and thoroughly as any mother is able.

Some of my shame was more insidious and chameleon-like.  It is harder to turn off the shame of imperfection when you believe somewhere in your core that you are supposed to achieve something close to it-in mothering, in sistering, in wife-ing, or just in employee-ing.  My value statement of myself was often defined in my ability to be of service.  And I'm not going to lie....that shizz was hard to let go.  

In the past year, I've been committed to eliminating the spider web tags that shame has managed to bury into my life-particularly in the ways where I tell myself that my shame is good or useful for me.  And just last week....I realized that I have kicked the habit.  I hadn't really thought about it in a while but...my spouse asked me if I had shame around an incident from a while ago.  I answered quickly and with complete openness....No.  Not any.  Not a wee little bitty bit.  

I don't really care who knows about any bit of my story, my heart, my head.  It's not necessarily anyone else's business but....I am an open book.  I may regret some choices that I made along the road of my life but...

I own them
I understand them
I am not burdened with anyone's expectations
I am worthy of love and compassion
without any relation or consideration of  those choices

And so are you.

My spouse had to think about that for a while because he literally set his vocation to be a shame-filled person.  He has been carrying and growing shame like a farmer tends crops-learning new techniques to get that shame bigger and bigger.  And...like anything you practice with intention, you become very successful at what you give energy and attention.  He's had a bumper crop year. 

So how does a farmer of shame react when you negate his life's work? It kind of boggled his mind I think to realize that in spite of everything, I am not ashamed.  How could that be?  We are supposed to be ashamed of  behavior that is 'bad'...ask anyone.  They will tell you.

The problem is...shame never helped anyone be something more than damaged.  Shame is poison that slowly, inevitably, eats away at our being.  Every time.  No exceptions.

We drink the liquor of shame and soon we're building our lives around it.  Before we know it, we're managing everything so that we can make sure that no one sees our shame and no one stirs it from the little shrine we made for it in our heart of hearts.  

 That's something to think about.  We hide shame to keep it safe.  Shame becomes precious to us.  We protect it from ourselves and hug it close.  We even create new labels and names for shame to make SURE that we don't actually address it.  
Healthy competition  
Constructive criticism  
Drive for our best possible selves
Success

We will label shame all kind of things so that we can believe we are in alignment with our religion, our role, our limits.  Did you know that we do this terrible thing? 

Well...that just doesn't work for me.

Let me ask you....Is a peacock ashamed because it doesn't look like a robin?  Does it moan about how it could only be a better peacock if it ate vegan or cut it's children's sandwiches into triangles?  
No the peacock does not.  
It just LIVES. 
 In glorious, audacious color.  
Exactly as God meant it to live.



I just don't have a single itty bitty bit of ME that I believe prohibits me from being completely worthy of LOVE.  


I am enough.
Exactly as I am right now.


Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Choices




Humans seem to have a particular fondness for trying to understand ourselves.  We love to display our choices, highlight our decision making skills and talk it over with a glass of wine with our best friend.  Whether it's fashion, friends, vacations spots, or careers-what we choose says something profound about us.  We are sure of it.  But how can we interpret or express the landscape of that deeper meaning?

 For all of human history it seems, we've been trying to explain to each other and to ourselves why we are the way we are.  We try to communicate through many methods and with many different perspectives.  Sometimes it's easy to see someone else's perspective and interpret the landscape of their values by observing their choices.  Sometimes though, it can be pretty complicated and require us to walk through a maze of situations and experiences to gaze through someone else's perspective.

Here are a few suggestions I've been given by people to explain their motivations, tendencies, or built-in knee jerk reactions :
Family Birth Order
Gender 
Race
Religious tradition (or lack of)
Luck (or lack of)
 Astrological sign
Birth place/country of origin
President at time of birth
Genetics
Socio/economic status
Availability of parental support throughout childhood
Traumatic Events (or lack of)


I am no expert on any of this (or anything really).  Probably all of these things do shape us in ways that are mysterious to our conscious minds. Maybe we're just so complicated that we can't find just one language around this topic.  Or maybe we're just so simple that all the descriptions help us from staring the simple reason in the face.



So...forget all of us and trying to understand the road map for humanity.  It's probably impossible to understand anyone else.  I'm trying to focus on myself lately.  Do I really know why I do what I do?
Not really.

So I've been noodling on that.

I KNOW that there are times I am processing perceptions on a level that feels almost cellular. Sometimes my reactions to certain stimuli are so visceral, I don't even realize I am having a reaction.  Often my response feels so ingrained, so fundamental-that I don't even recognize that there was a choice in that moment to act/feel/believe something different.



Here are some areas where I don't actively 'choose' my response-times where I just autopilot along:
Holding the door for strangers
Saying Thank You
Oversaying I'm Sorry
Blessing everyone after they Sneeze
Catching the Ball as it's thrown at my head
Kissing the child who snuggles into me
Responding to an 'I love you' with an 'I love you too'

Most of those seem pretty innocuous in the grand scheme of things.  That's probably because I like to think of myself in a positive way.  Kind.  Loving.  Optimistic.  Generally....I think of myself as the protagonist of the story of my life. 

Not consciously you know...because that would be pretty self-centered and narcissistic-right?  

But there are other times where I make choices and don't even allow myself to see the choice.  
  • When I let my eyes skim over the eyes of that person who just passed me instead of making contact (because they are different than me). 
  • When I tell myself that the woman across the room is judging me (because I'm actually judging her)
  • When I correct someone else's perception about an event (because my perception is more right than their perception)
  • When I give advice about how someone else could 'fix' their problem (because I'm implying that I don't have that same problem or need to adjust it myself)
  • When I talk about being broken 'then' (as if I'm somehow resolved or different now)

What if everything about me is a choice?

What if I could change who I am-to the fundamental core of my being-by choosing differently?




Questions I'm pondering:

How can I recognize the choices that I'm making when I'm not even aware that I'm choosing?
What do I need to understand about my heart, my soul...my fear....in order to let the choice become conscious instead of innate and reactionary?
What story about myself am I holding onto in order to successfully avoid being different?

It feels a lot like walking through waist deep water to try and rethink every single action that I make.

 And then trying to understand how those actions relate to my underlying beliefs about that scenario. And then asking what I know about myself that I didn't know before.  
And then thinking about how I want to be in the future...who I want to grow into.

Are you tired just thinking about it?  I'm tired in actuality.

I'm hoping that just like any other exercise program, this will get easier as I make it part of my practice.  A few years ago, I started lifting very heavy weights as part of my exercise routine.  I got some advice from someone along the way....When you first start lifting heavy weights, you will think....I don't want to lift that heavy-that weight seems impossible.  The advice I got was don't talk yourself out of the weight before you ever try to lift it.  Even if you can only lift it once the first time...try.  You'd be surprised what you can lift when you get out of your own way.

And miraculously, when you lift the craziest weight that you could possibly lift just once....the next time you try and come back to that same weight, it will feel easy.

I'm lifting heavy in my practice so that when I go about my normal life...it feels easy eventually.





Wednesday, June 08, 2016

Service in Bloom

This post is really just a bunch of interim pictures while the gardens fill out.  I couldn't be more pleased with the results and can't wait to see how they continue to evolve over the summer.  The Welcome bed in front still looks mostly the same so no new pics of that one.

The Fiesta Garden

We've gotten two peppers out of this garden already and have cherry tomatoes on the move.  But the best part right now is the pop of color that greets you.

The contents of the big pot:

Dwarf sunflowers, Lantana, a coleus, a tomatillo and peppers:

A side long view as you come up the drive:

Jalepeno detail:


The White Garden


 Looking back down the drive-see how it kind of mimics the garden on the other side of the concrete divider?

White Gaura and gardenia with some little vinca annuals are mirrors of the Gardenia, Pink Gaura and cream colored Knock out roses on the other side:

Buddlei and Nicotiana withThyme, Shasta Daisies, Gaura, and Yarrow:

Iris, Lavender, Artemisia, Cosma, Penta:

 Looking back up the bed so you can get the dancing little bits of white floating along the bed:

And in the sunshine:

Lychnis, Sage, Iris, Chives, and dwarf Gardenia:

Hydrangea, variegated Thyme, lambsear and a little Scabiosa pulled from the Welcome Garden early on:
 Seriously....so pretty

Friday, June 03, 2016

Service in Bud

In the last post (Service), I rehashed how I got onto this landscape committee thing and also why. I recounted our sudden adoption of three gardens (instead of one) and stated assurances that there was a plan.  This post is about THE PLAN and also has some lovely shots of us laying in the gardens.  

THE PLAN
Most design projects for me start with a feeling or an idea that I hope resonates as you're in the area-whether it's in my home or in the great outdoors.  

Hold tight...this may be a little 'woo-woo' for you.  

You see....your surroundings speak to you.  What they are saying is often the result of the choices made for what fills that space.  There's a good reason that hospitals have calming colors.  Or that entrances to gyms often have tons of bright colors on the opposite sides of the color wheel.  We are spiritual beings and like it or not, our spirit is informed by what is around us.  The VIBE is a real thing.
The creative process is hard to describe to someone not in it with you.  I easily get lost inside my ideas.  Actually having to articulate what I am seeing in my head and heart can distill the vision more fully.  Here's a scribble for a different design project:

Enter my partner in crime who very patiently reminded me that for him to be an equal part of the team, I needed to slow down, draw it out for him, be specific. So here is what I saw as potential in my head as I was staring at those three gardens on that first day:
  • The Welcome Garden
    • Greets you when you come up the walk
    • Welcomes you around to the front entrance
    • Highlights important information (the path, the sign)
    • Generally gives you a feeling of optimism (this is THE HOUSE OF HOPE PEOPLE!)
  • The Fiesta Garden
    • Celebrates the unique nature of this body of our church family
    • Incorporates food for giving 
    • Energizes as you walk down the path (to the actual main entrance for staff)
    • Continues the feeling of optimism
  • The White Garden
    • Mimics the form of the garden next door
    • Feels light and ethereal
    • Calming and yet again....optimistic
    • Repeats some of the forms both beside and across the way-hot pink and purple ties into the other two gardens
    • Continues the use of edible plants within a space for both beauty and function

But what does that actually look like?  Turns out....I CAN actually draw it out.  Who knew?  I guess I did but I had forgotten in my growing up...I can draw.

So I worked hard at putting together sketches for possible plantings, showed them to my husband for opinion and sometimes went back to the drawing board. 

It turns out that my partner has very good instincts about what 'normal' (non-horticultural) people will find soothing and beautiful in a space.  His reactions to a specific plant or configuration are very strong and instinctive.  We trusted those instincts and combined them with my plant know-how.  We wrangled with each other (and learned a new way to communicate along the way) until we got to a place of mutual agreement.

Once we were agreed, we proceeded to get busy with the plan.  By spending an entire weekend in May enforcing outdoor work as a family.    What follows is an overview of the dig-in weekend.  It's mostly for my benefit so next year I can remember what we did.  It's also to prove to myself that just ONCE I can do a decent before, during, and after description.


The Welcome Garden




The Welcome Garden is still in progress.  For the summer months, we've put in a strip of annuals (in purple) to draw your eye to towards the door.  We moved around some of the plants for bigger impact-creating groups of  3 for similar plants and repeating plants further down the garden to draw the eye towards the door.

We moved several Stella D'oro daylilies out from the shade to frame the sign for the office and help give it weight.  And then...we kind of decided to leave it for a while. This garden is truly a hodgepodge. I cannot even begin to list all the plants that are in this area because every time I start to take an inventory, I realize there are 5 more peeping through the mulch.  Today a bright red Easter Lily bloomed.  It's like a grab bag garden.

We could have some big changes come fall or we may just tweak it again. We're kind of letting that one play out.  


Fiesta Garden


The general color palate for this garden is spicy.  Think reds, oranges, purple.  This bed is mostly intended to be a rotating annual bed that contains beautiful flowers as well as vegetables to donate to the local food pantry.

The original planting list is down below the pretty pictures.  In many cases I don't know the actual variety.  That's b/c mainstream gardening centers don't always label them correctly and also because sometimes I get tired of trying to remember.  Old people problems.  You don't care....but I want to try and remember what I put into this sucker :




That big teepee looking thing above is for the cherry tomatoes to grow up.  That was totally the husband's jam.  Notice the pretty design he made using the rope in the background of the picture below?  Nice touch.

The big pot below is to balance the bed visually when you look at it.
Several of these plants were re-homed from other beds.  That lone snapdragon came from the White Garden.  The yellow day lilies and coreopsis came from the Welcome Garden.



Here is us laying it out before planting.  This garden was ready for planting so we just filled the pot with potting soil, put in the plants and fertilized.  The hardest part for something like this is trying to keep in mind the size of the more mature plant so that everything has enough room.  Many of these plants will double in size over the next month.  some of them will be giant by the end of the summer.



Summer Planting 2016
  • Purple Fountaingrass (Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum)
  • 'Miss Huff' Lantana (Lantana camara 'Miss Huff)
  • Dahlias (assorted)
  • Dwarf Yellow Sunflowers (Helianthus 'Teddy Bear')
  • Red Salvia (Salvia micophylla 'Hot Lips')
  • Celosia
  • Purple leaf sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas)
  • Purple leaf Canna lilies (Canna sp.)
  • Mexican Sunflower (Tithonia)
  • Tickseed (Coreopsis sp.) (transplanted from the front bed)
  • Stella D'oro Daylily (Hemerocallis Stella D'oro) (transplanted from the front bed)
  • Coleus
  • Several veggies pre-ordered from Wild Onion Farms:
  • 4 kinds of cherry tomatoes:
    • *Peacevine (70) Very heavy producer of red cherry tomatoes.  Peacevine earned its name from its high content of gamma amino butyric acid, an amino acid that acts as a calming body sedative.  Tastes awesome, too!
    • *Black Cherry (70) dusky purple cherry tomatoes, sweet rich flavor
    • *SunGold (65) Fruity sweet and tangy orange cherry tomatoes are like tomato candy.  Highly addictive!  The only hybrid tomato we grow, but their flavor has no match in the heirloom world.
    • *Pink Bumblebee (70) Sweet cherry tomatoes are dark pink, streaked with gold, yellow, and orange stripes.
  • Jalepeno peppers
  • Poblano peppers
  • Tomatillos


The White Garden

The majority of our physical labor this day revolved around the White Garden.  There was a forty foot strip of grass that needed to be removed. Removed the old fashioned way-with muscle and a flat head shovel.

We also had to clear out about half the irises that existed in the bed, remove several small trees and that bush you see me digging up below. We are done with the grass in this pic but still have to bring in top soil and then plant and then mulch.
 Notice the kiddo in the back- both kiddos helped weed, fertilize, mulch and haul. Sometimes.  They also fought with 'swords', hunted worms with the robins, sprayed each other with the hose, and crushed rocks and mulberries.
Sigh.  
Mama nirvana to go with dirt-digger nirvana.  
Double nirvana!

Here's the view from the front one the planting is in.  Many of these plants were in the Welcome Garden and we just moved them over.  Some of them already existed and we added a couple more to repeat down the bed.  And when we needed to add, we stuck to a color regime:  white will small accents of purple or hot pink.

Again-it can be a challenge to leave the space so the plants can fill out.  
Resisting the temptation to over plant is worth while.


Plant list:


*All of these came from the Welcome Bed.  And the Welcome Bed is still filled to overflowing with snippets of perennials that I just can't quite identify until they get a little bigger and/or bloom.  Seriously a grab bag.
**these are annuals that will need to be rotated seasonally.


Wednesday, June 01, 2016

Service

One of the best parts of my falling apart over the past year is that I fell back into connection with my GOD.  I finally committed to living out my life as closely as I can to a life of LOVE.  Which is pretty f*ing hard people.

Jesus was no light-weight trail blazer.  

Trying to follow in his path is incredibly humbling and breathtakingly BRUTIFUL.  Just when you think you're being open and loving and compassionate....boom!  There goes the judgement reflex that knocks you back on your bum.



Part of committing to this path was committing to join a group of brothers and sisters.  I had been attending church intermittently for a couple of years but hadn't really committed to it.  There were reasons I had walls between myself and God.  My fear and inability to look at my actual life was one of those reasons.  He never left me but I put HIM in a box to take out on special occasions.

And then last year happened.  

HE showed up in ways like HE always does.

I decided to listen.    
With my heart instead of my head.
With my soul instead of my ego.

So many people I respect have talked about how their challenge with Christianity is not with Jesus but with the imperfect way humans try to structure religion that I don't need to rehash that.  

 I realized part of my inability to commit to a faith was fear of the faithful.

So...I did that.  
I decided to FEAR NOT.  
I committed to being Christian...a follower of Jesus.  
In my heart first.  
Then OUTLOUD in front of lots of people.  
Then in my heart again.  
And again.  

The place where I practice gathering with two or more is Apex United Methodist Church.  I understand now better than ever before that all things will change so I can't say that I'll live out my days in this church.  I don't think of myself as a Methodist.  I think of myself as HIS.  I'll go where that takes me.  

Anywho.  We live in the NOW people.  And in the NOW, ApexUMC is my home, my school, my family.  I crave my time there and have worked to try and find the best possible way for me to serve within that community.  It's been a journey. 

Our church motto is '.  Welcome All. Serve All. Love All'.  Could you love that more?  I can't.

ApexUMC offers a rich array of ways to connect, learn, and serve across four very distinct church families that worship in connected, but distinct ways.   It was overwhelming at first to figure out where I fit....with help and love, my family is figuring it out.  This church is so big that there are many many ways to serve and support each other. 

There are the usual ways-Sunday school teaching, ushering, musical participation, prayer groups.  

There are also new ways for this new, modern day Christian.  

There are actual classes that feel like going to school again where you study the historical significance of the Bible to help us NOW understand us THEN.  How we've changed and will continue to change.  

There are committees for everything from knitting prayer shawls to meditation.  
There are yoga classes and men's groups who meet at the pub.  

We are a group committed to showing up-in as many ways as we can imagine.   We are for each other and for works larger than each other.    

I have found ways to serve that fill me up and ways to serve that empty me out on the floor.  I have come to understand that in this place, it's ok to admit that I don't want to serve in that way.  In this place...we have to find the ways that are meant for us.  My husband and I are on this journery together and so we try to serve together.  We have ushered, taken classes and taught our youngest's Sunday School class.  

 Confession time:  Teaching Sunday school is not my preferred method of service.  

Not that I don't love the Sunday school kids-on the contrary-I LOVE them all SO MUCH it literally makes my eyeballs hurt.  I spend an hour with them, focusing on them, answering really IMPORTANT questions, showing up in their lives (and usually telling my own child that yes, you are special too but not just right this minute because right now I am not Mom).    

Then I go home and spend the rest of the day with bees buzzing in my brain while I try to let them go and find my center.  Not quite fulfilling in the ways that my soul needs.  I am told I am good at it but.....I am not called to do it.  Maybe one day but definitely not in the NOW.

Recently, my husband suggested that we answer a call in the church bulletin for gardening help.  

My husband who previously viewed all things plant related as my domain.  
Never for him to enter unless expressly bidden and then only to start power tools.  

It is one of the best gifts he's ever given me...opening that door on something for us to do together that was not in his comfort zone.  

I am impressed at the courage it took for him to offer his time and energy to do something that he knows little about.  
I am grateful for his graciousness in initiating the conversation.  
Oh, and also...in his help at doing manual labor.  

You see....I kind of forgot in all this mess that at my heart of hearts....I just want to grow flowers and vegetables.  More than really any other medium of  creativity...gardening has always been my love language.



We met the head of the committee on a rainy morning.  We walked around and looked at what was going on.  In the space a few short minutes we left the proud sponsors of.....3 gardens.  

Yes...3.  

Trust me.  It makes sense in context (this is also what I said to the husband who manfully bore with me).  All 3 gardens are adjacent around one of the buildings of our church and on first sight...I just had that feeling I get sometimes.  This will be easy.  I know how to make this work.  I know just how we could really make all 3 something extra special.

We spent a solid weekend revamping them from this to something else. Here's the view of the building from google maps.  We have responsibility for the curvy bed in front and both beds lining the drive.  This building houses offices for our Fiesta Christiana congregation and is called 'The House of Hope' by people who've attended our church for a while.  

I didn't even realize this building was part of our church facilities before working on this committee.  


The front bed above in the curve was just a mishmash of everything.  I don't have a good before picture because it was kind of hard to focus.  Lots of material just arranged in a way that I couldn't understand.  No worries...we can shape that up.

This is what I call the Fiesta Garden before.  There was literally nothing there.  Nothing.  And we had full reign to do whatever we wanted.  This is dirt-digger nirvana.

This is what I call the White Garden before.  Kind of weedy and actually not much of a garden.  This bed runs along the driveway directly across from the empty space above:  Across a concrete wall, several other ladies had landscaped a nice perennial border as their service.  Easy peasy to figure out what to do with this space.


Next post will be some excavation pictures.  Stay tuned.