Yeah!

I'm so glad everyone is posting!

I've been busy this month and have had the kids all month up until this weekend. I spent 3 days at Breitenbush Hot Springs a few weeks ago. I took a workshop called "Qi Dancing". It was a combination of Qi Gong and Ecstatic Dance. The first night when we were dancing I remembered when we were little and mom would turn on music in the house (I think in Concord), and we would just move and dance and I remembered how good it felt. It is that same kind of 'dance'....just free dancing.....movement as free expression. It was like being a kid again. I shared a cabin with 2 women from Washington. I just ate healthy food and rested and soaked. It filled me with new energy. Sometimes it gets tiring and I feel so sad that I can't be the kind of mom I want to be; at home full time and to have my kids with me all the time; where I didn't have to worry about earning a living. I want my focus to be where it was before, on being a mom and cooking and cleaning and nurturing, however, life has put me on a different path and I accept it as God's will and do the best I can with what this life has offered me. And there are gifts in this path as well. I have been truly blessed with great children and continued good health. I use to think life would be easier when the kids got older, but what I find is that those baby and toddler years were the BEST! Andrea........SOAK IN EVERY MOMENT OF THOSE KIDS IN YOUR FULL CARE! Being a mom to young adults is a lot more mental stress as you watch them make life choices that will effect their entire course, and to have them on the other side of the world and not be able to talk to them. They grow up so fast. There is no part of me that wants to have more babies, but I find recently that as I watch babies I feel a new excitement at sharing my life with grandbabies. My goal is that I can have a work schedule so that I can be available to spend time with them regularly, and not be too tired to do so. I want to have my house paid off in no more than 10 years.

Laura and I took a day last week and played hookie and went to Cannon Beach to enjoy the sunshine. It was PERFECT. I especially enjoyed that we didn't have a time frame and could wander through the galleries at leisure and share our discoveries with eachother. We went to the beach in the late afternoon and watched the sun set behind Haystack Rock. Nature continues to be such a good teacher for me. I noticed as the sun drops in the sky, right before it completely disappears, it seems to move many times faster than before. It brought up the feeling that I wanted it to slow down. It occurred to me that is what life is like in so many ways. Right at the end of certain phases, time seems to speed up so fast and leave us with this feeling that it's going too fast. I thought about how natural it is for us to experience daytime and nighttime. We don't fight the sunset, or curse it or panic that it will not rise again or ask God to let the sun stay in the sky....because we KNOW that it is not gone, just out of our sight and a time for rest and regeneration for us. It is God's perfect rythm and balance. And yet, when it comes to birth and death, we struggle with that rythm, and yet death is like the sunset, and right before we die I wondered, and imagined if it may be like that too.....like all of a sudden it's all going too fast. And whether it is us, or a loved one, do we rail against it, and ask God to not let it happen, and yet, it is the most natural part of life. And if we truly have faith in God, then we understand that even though we cannot see it, the timing is perfect, and that person is not gone, we just can't see them, and our relationship has entered the other side, or the darkness, but they live on still. But just as they have moved on, so will we, and we will see them again. Our work is within our own hearts and minds, to live within the time of grief and darkness in their absence and keep open to life and all the emotions that this grants us the opportunity to experience and to trust in God and seek out the messages and lessons this new phase has for us. I want to live each day so that at the sunset of my life I know I soaked in every moment so that I have no regrets. Ever since spending time on my quest this summer I have come away with a new ability to relax in the moment and play more readily. I can meandor and relax like no one's business and it doesn't cause me the stress it did in the past. I know (from my own experience) that enjoying the moments is what it's all about. I had an online class this morning, but no other commitments in stone today, so I did what sounded fun and went to Saturday Market by myself and that was new and good, because I could spend as much time as I wanted at each area. I have been wanting to get a Native American Flute for months now, and so I did that and got some ice cream. I stayed until I had seen it all and then came home and spent more time outside taking the dogs to the dog park. Amber and I love to do that. I think it's because watching the dogs run and play is so enlivening. They are truly in the moment and when they run it is pure freedom in motion, and I think I soak in the joy. I heard one man call it "Disneyland for Dogs". Then I came home and sat in the back in the swing and played the flute. The dogs even like the sound, although I need to work on my skill. Namaste..........Val