Enough

Life is weird. If I waited to write something brilliant and unique I would never write anything at all. Still, life is weird, as dumb and infantile as that sounds.

Just to be clear, I love God. I believe Jesus is the Son of God and is God in flesh. I believe in the Spirit who is like the wind and blows wherever it pleases. I also know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I don’t know much of anything. God is love and I’ve been learning to love my whole life. I’m getting better at it and I’m still learning.

I love my mom. My first memories of being cherished and loved are from being her daughter. How lucky am I?

I love Mike. He is the first person that showed me love beyond my understanding. For some reason he loved me no matter what. Ten years in we got to that dark place of no return. We got gut level honest and said no more pretending, no more lies. We somehow walked barefoot over the flaming hot coals and made it through. I wouldn’t have ever understood that kind of love without him. He started it. I followed.

I love my kids. Ever since I was a kid myself I dreamed of having children. I wanted boys. I am so eternally thankful I got to be mom to my three boys.

Dillon made me a mom. He was difficult. He made me face the truth of what I wanted in life. He is my first and made the dreams fade to reality. No sleep, frustration, irritation, annoyance, exhaustion, sheer joy, raw love, total vulnerability. Now I rely on him for so much more than he ever relied on me.

Keenan reminded me I was right. Kids are worth it. Joy is in watching an infant learn to focus on their hand for even one second. Love is messy and imperfect and amazing and bigger than anything else. Now I continue to learn from his wisdom and caring heart.

Tristan was the confirmation. Mike and I had been through the fire and chose each other. Tristan was our gift for becoming vulnerable and choosing to love each other no matter what. I finally cared more about enjoying each moment instead of making sure every speck was cleaned. I continue to learn from his creativity and open spirit.

I love my grandchildren. They are the fulfillment of a lifetime of love I have witnessed with my grandparents, parents and am still experiencing with Mike. And it’s true, being a grandparent is freaking amazing!

I love children. I love my students. Each is unique and special. I see the touch of God on each one of them. I just hope they see it someday too.

Life is weird. Love is weirder. I don’t know much, but I know love really does cover everything. It covers failure. It covers fear. It covers judgment. It covers hate. It covers sin and regret and guilt.

God is love and Love is enough.

And

The end of 2022 is hours away and I have been formulating this post in my head for over a week.

I’m beginning to live in the space of a word that I learned in kindergarten. It was one of the first words I knew how to read and spell, but it’s taken me my whole life to even begin to grasp its true power. For so many years I’ve lived with an either or thinking and but mentality. Years ago my therapist told me to use the word “but” sparingly because it negates whatever words that come before it. “I love you but… You did a great job but… Thank you for your kindness but…”. Why do we have such a desire for dualism? Black or white with no room for grey, right or wrong, good or bad, happy or sad, etc.? This kind of dualism leads to living in rigid scarcity instead of where I want to live…in open abundance!

This holiday season I am happy AND sad at the same time, grateful for my husband, kids, grandkids, friends, mom, and this present time of being a music teacher, an empty nester, a grandma, and a composer, AND I’m missing my dad, my mother in law, and the way things used to be.

My word for the new year is the simply spelled with complex meaning “and.”

I’m going to try to rid myself of buts and live in the complexity of ands.

I am a loving person and I sometimes let my fears rule me.

I am disciplined and spontaneous. I am creative and detailed,

I can be kind and I can be judgmental.

l am human and I am divine.

AND that is beautiful AND holy.

I think one of our biggest lessons to learn in this life is how to hold seemingly opposing feelings, views, thoughts, etc. and accept them all as truth.

Wholly holy truth. AND I will keep striving to live in the uncomfortable place of multiple feelings, thoughts and beliefs.

I follow Jesus’s teaching and I do not identify with a religious institution.

I love my family and I disagree with them on some issues.

I love God and I am learning I know very little about Them.

I am glad 2022 is almost over and I learned so much this year because of the sadness and pain it brought.

As I look forward to 2023, I know I will face new challenges and experience new joys. They go hand in hand.

Happy New Year AND

what is your word of focus for the coming year?

Vulnerability

I am a mentor to a student at my school. He has experienced a lot of tragedy and sadness in his short life and doesn’t smile a lot. I decided one of my greatest goals with him is to lighten his load, make him laugh, share some joy! We’ve started a gratitude list, shared pizza a few times, and played kick ball with a soccer pillow in my room. Today I knew he was feeling comfortable with me because he asked me to tie his shoe and when I began to do so he deliberately farted. I dramatically held my breath and acted like I was going to die and he laughed hard and long. I didn’t think much about it.

Until tonight.

I was driving home from dinner, having an emotional moment, speaking aloud to God.

“Why can’t we smell with our noses without collecting boogers? Why can’t we eat incredible foods without the nasty aftermath? Why can’t there be beauty without ugliness? Don’t You get tired of it all? Especially decaying and death…. Doesn’t it get OLD???”

I then said aloud “I guess death has its own beauty. Death is vulnerability.”

That hit my heart.

I saw it in my dad.

I saw it in my mother in law.

Their lives were lived with shields out and swords drawn, so vulnerability wasn’t easily seen until they were dying.

My mind immediately contrasted that with the way my sweet mama has lived her life, showing her heart, being vulnerable day by day as she lives. I thanked God for her and decided I needed Siri to write my thoughts down for a future blog post. I said very distinctly and articulately, “Death is vulnerability.”

Siri interpreted, “Gas is vulnerability.” At this point I just knew my dad was messing with me. I’d been talking to him earlier about how much I missed him and how much I’ve struggled. I’ve been hyper focused on trying to do what’s right and figuring out my entire life’s purpose.

(I also recently had a coyote sighting on a walk, and felt there was a spiritual meaning. Shortly after the encounter, I dreamed of coyotes, which I’ve since learned can mean I need to lighten up and shake things up a bit. Coyotes are tricksters and unpredictable.)

Maybe I don’t need to be so serious all of the time. Maybe I don’t need to constantly think of death and whether or not I’m fulfilling my life’s purpose. Maybe my student isn’t the only one that needs to lighten up.

Yes death is vulnerability.

But frankly so is gas.

My dictation: Death is vulnerability. Ha ha, ha ha, daddy you did that! Oh ha, ha ha ha ha ha oh, daddy, death is vulnerability, death death!

Siri’s interpretation(or King Jon’s): Gas is vulnerability. Ha ha ha ha ha you did that. Oh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, ha oh daddy yes is vulnerability. Yes Jasper!

Sanctuary

I’m on the back screened in porch of our Beaver Lake, Arkansas house listening to cicadas and frogs as the light fades.

Daddy built this house in 1986 when I was 18. While searching for property that year he drove and drove until he came to the end of a peninsula and decided it must be his land. Luckily he found a reputable builder this time and that’s why I’m here on the screened in porch in 2022 writing of my love for this place.

Life is such a mysterious grab bag. For reference, when I was a little girl I went to a special fair at church that had mystery grab bags. I remember being so excited to buy one for a dollar and place my nervous sweaty hand in the brown paper bag to discover it’s contents. Unfortunately it was a disappointing mix of trinket toys and candy. Is that all life has to offer?

I choose to live in the nervous excitement I had as an eight year old with the mystery grab bag. God is so much bigger than that…so I’m going to continue to hope in God’s greatness. I choose to believe I have limited understanding yet there is eternal hope and redemption for all.

Rejoice! Rejoice! God loves all! GOD LOVES ALL!

Thank you God for the cicadas, the lake, and the hummingbirds. You remind me all is sacred and all is beloved. Therefore all is eternal.❤️ Dad made this house as a sanctuary for all who visited. Just like Quasimodo yelled “Sanctuary!” for Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I am in a sanctuary of peace to reset my heart and mind on what is right and important. We all need such a sanctuary.

Reverend KK

My Gramps was a reverend. Rev. EE Kardatzke…Reverend K.

Today I got to be Reverend KK for a day.

I was the blessed officiant of my niece’s wedding and it was one of the most humbling and honoring moments of my life to date.

First of all, I would never have agreed to the task if I didn’t believe in the two individuals and their relationship.

Secondly I had to believe in myself.

When the idea was first mentioned, there were many who thought I couldn’t put my emotions away and keep the focus on the couple and their love…I did.

I talked about how difficult life is, and how hard relationships are. I included the audience as witnesses in the service, telling all that they have a responsibility to the couple to remind them of their vows and stand by them in times of need. I read 1 Corinthians 13 and made sure I got out of the picture as I pronounced the couple man and wife. The whole wedding took about 18 minutes and I felt great about it until it was over and a family member said, “Why didn’t you tell us to sit down? My back was killing me!”

😣I forgot to tell the congregation to sit. They stood through the entire 18 minute wedding and I was mortified.

Oh well.

Perfection is never an option. Especially with me. I can try so hard to cross my t’s and dot my i’s but invariably I forget something and perfection is lost.

I guess that’s the point of it all. Marriage is far from perfect. It’s two imperfect people dedicating their hearts to each other’s flawed selves, saying, “I see you as you are, and I say YES….I will love you and stand with you till the day I die.”

Marriage is a declaration of commitment to vulnerability and yes, imperfection. It is a messy, hands on work of art. Those who try to go about it in a sterile, cleansing way will completely miss the heart of it all.

Life. Is. Difficult.

Marriage. Is. Difficult.

Because it is made of two individuals who are broken in many ways they haven’t even recognized yet and won’t know until the person they love the most forgets their birthday, says they wrong thing, or disappoints them.

Brokenness hides until it can’t. Wounds become scars and don’t hurt until they are poked and shoved, and living life day to day with another means lots of bumping into the dark places of each other’s souls.

Perfection isn’t an option.

Maybe it’s a good idea to stand through a wedding with the bride and groom. After all, if you’re there as a witness, you are standing with them in spirit, saying you will uphold their relationship and remind them of their commitment to each other. If your legs and back get tired, so be it.

Life is tiring. Anything worth doing is difficult. Alexa and Jacob, I stand with you now and forever, and will strive to be a voice of love and reason as you navigate your new life together. Thanks for the privilege of today. ❤️

Big Shoes to Fill

A few days after daddy died my brother Scott, his wife, Cindy, and I went back to his room and picked up the rest of his things. His black leather loafers were still in the closet by his bed. Before his death, many times during my visits he would point to the closet and say “Are they in there? Come on, let’s go!“ I would open the closet and show him the shoes and tell him we didn’t need them just yet.

I don’t know how old the shoes are, but they look just like the ones he wore over twenty years ago when we hiked to the tea house at Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada. It would be fitting indeed if they were the very shoes he wore as he laughingly and fearlessly led us up the steep incline. Our oldest boys were five and seven and loved each minute of the exploration, only too ready to follow King Jon’s every step!

The day I brought his shoes home I put them on and felt the bigness of them. My feet slid around much like they did when I was a child. I felt the weight and size of them…big shoes to fill, too big for me, so I put them in my closet next to my own shoes. Day after day I felt the stinging loss of him when I would see the shoes that once marched up mountains collecting dust next to my Sperrys.

Our twenty-seven year old son, Keenan, had always been a kindred spirit to his Papa Jon. They loved to talk of wars and weapons, ancient civilizations and kings and generals. In the 4th grade Keenan wrote an essay about his hero, Papa Jon, describing all the things he admired about him.

Flash forward to this evening. We had family dinner and Keenan and his lovely partner Jen stayed a little later than the others. As we were talking I suddenly remembered the shoes. I asked Keenan if he thought they might fit and he said he’d like to try them on. I ran to the closet, dusted them off and he slipped them on like Cinderella’s glass slippers!

The joy I felt at that moment took me by surprise! I’d been ignoring how bothered I was that my dad’s shoes were empty, sitting in my closet. They was a constant reminder that he is gone and I can’t see him, hold his hand, kiss his forehead, or sing to him ever again in this lifetime. But now, they are filled with someone who loves adventure and life as much as King Jon did. Someone who called him Papa and cherished him, someone who King Jon was especially fond of.

My heart is full…and so are daddy’s shoes!

Joy to the World

As I grow older, my comprehension of God grows bigger. As a child I thought God was very human like…easy to anger, someone I needed to please by treading lightly and carefully following instructions.

It saddens me how many denominations and religions hold by this teaching. I have a 2nd grade student who isn’t allowed to sing Happy Birthday to any of our students because it’s a sin to celebrate people. How sad to be taught that God doesn’t celebrate children! God loves us and celebrates over us! The Great I Am delights in us and wants us to have joy! “The Lord your God is with you; the mighty One will save you. He will rejoice over you. You will rest in his love; he will sing and be joyful about you.””
‭‭Zephaniah‬ ‭3:17‬ ‭NCV‬‬

To live with such legalism feels like the chains that were wrapped around Jacob Marley’s ghost in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. We forge our own chains…God doesn’t. In fact, God breaks us free of such bondage when we accept the grace freely given. The key is acceptance. We have a choice to continue to follow a God in our image, one of judgment, rage, condemnation, legalism, and joylessness, or accept the love, grace, freedom, and joy the Great I Am offers us. A God so great my finite mind cannot comprehend, a Love so all encompassing I cannot fathom, a Grace so real it hurts…piercing my very heart and soul and flooding my eyes with tears.

Yes the older I get, the bigger God’s love, the greater God’s mercy, this is the Universal Christ, who was for a moment contained in the form of a vulnerable newborn baby, born to declare God’s great love for all the world.

“Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive Her king! Let every heart prepare Him room! And heaven and nature sing!”

Robust Fragility

It’s been a difficult couple of weeks for reasons I don’t want to go into, but I’ll just say I was feeling physically great until I suddenly wasn’t and it didn’t have anything to do with Covid.

I know this happens to us all, we may be going along merrily with our lives, feeling content and almost invincible when something happens to bring us back to reality.

I am mortal, and so are you. Life is fragile and so are our bodies. Yet we are also immortal and life can be incredibly resilient! It’s strange how we can hold seemingly opposing truths within our own being. For example, I’m sitting here beside my dad’s bed and he is such a dichotomy. His mind is feeble and he looks so frail yet he still has such a healthy heart. It’s strange how our physical bodies are like war machines, continuously fighting off germs and healing and regenerating, until eventually being overwhelmed with something. Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s almost ten years ago, lost his ability to walk six years ago, and has forgotten almost everything and everyone, yet his heart is strong and he has literally outlived friends and family members that were decades younger than him. I was feeling fantastic three weeks ago, healthier and thinner than I’ve been in 15 years with boundless energy, and then my body succumbed to a bacterial infection and I was flat on my back in bed. I’m so incredibly thankful for modern medicine! Without strong antibiotics I’m afraid this bug would’ve ended me.

We are at once robust and fragile, immortal and mortal, and in my mind I liken this contradiction to the description of joy. Several philosophers have proposed that true joy is only experienced with the deep understanding, acceptance, and internal coexistence of sorrow and happiness. Tears and even heavy sobbing come with joy, because the truly joyful one has known loss and great sorrow. Joy cannot be without sadness, for it is formed from it. They are intertwined and to deny the pain will be to dilute and even numb the joy.

Truth is almost always found in paradox, yet our minds still crave dualism. If I can say you’re wrong than I can feel right. If I deem myself healthy, I can point to you as unhealthy. Yet this either/or mentality drives us to hate and fear rather than to love and peace. Now more than ever we must discern between what is born of love and grace which is of the Spirit and what is born of hate and fear. Dualism is not the mind of Christ. This is why He spoke in parables, not meant to frustrate those of us who want an easy road map with instructions, but to encourage us to work out our faith, wrestle with it, question ourselves and our religions and our politics that are built on dualistic principles. The narrow path is a humble and often lonely one. It winds back and forth and in between the other wider paths with louder and more vocal travelers. It demands discernment and intuition, and above all else, humility. If we have to yell how right we are, who are we trying to convince, others or ourselves?

I don’t really know much of anything, and the older I grow the less I am sure of, but I can say I’m certain of the paradox of truth. There are nuances and different shades of color and they help us see definition in our world. I’m thankful we don’t live in only black and white, and I embrace my robust fragility, as it continues to teach me of balance and mindfulness.

Of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come

Another year passes

The Lines on my face increase

With the time

My parents are as old as my grandparents were when I had my first child. I know our time is short.

But my heart cries eternal!

Give me more than temporal! It didn’t last long enough. But then good times are never long enough.

The busy exhausting yet invigorating years are over and I feel a little like a lead actor backstage after a fun and well attended play, wishing we were still on stage in the middle of the excitement but everyone has gone home and I’m alone in the dark remembering how special it was. Why did it have to be so short? I cry “Encore encore!” to an empty theater.

It’s human nature to feel the emptiness and scarcity instead of focusing on the privilege, the gratitude of having had so much love, so much joy, and the recognition of current abundance of both in my new role as Grandma KK. This time too will pass swiftly and be no more.

May we live fully in this present moment with appreciation and thankfulness for all life is, past, present, and future, and bow our heads in reverence to the sacred all around us.

God was there, God is here, and God is always. God has intentionally put eternity in our hearts as a promise. We are not abandoned or forgotten.

The Christ has come, and is here, and forevermore shall be.

Oh come let us adore Him.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”Ecclesiastes 3:11

The Sweetness of God

When I was in HS I was a huge fan of Days of Our Lives and I adored a super couple, Steve “Patch” Johnson and Kayla Brady. Every time Steve called Kayla “sweetness” my heart melted. It’s such an intimate name…indicating the delectable flavor of something that turns bread into cake, crackers into cookies, and lime juice into margaritas…with tequila of course!😜

The sweetness of God is the reason I’m still a believer. Just when I’ve rationalized God out of my life and begun to grieve over the crisis of my faith, God’s intimate sweetness comes in the form of an phone call, a special memory, a dreamed of job offer, a card of encouragement, a random song or line in a book that hits my heart with purpose and special meaning…some confirmation that God is involved and with me on my life’s journey…this is the sweetness of God. Little reminders (that some call god-incidences) invigorate my faith and keep me searching for truth, dedicated to love and hope and joy in spite of the darkness all around. Forgive me if I’ve shared this before, but I’m reminded of Puddleglum’s speech in CS Lewis’s The Silver Chair,

Puddleglum : Suppose… suppose we have only dreamed and made up these things like sun, sky, stars, and moon, and Aslan himself. In that case, it seems to me that the made-up things are a good deal better than the real ones. And if this black pits of a kingdom is the best you can make, then it’s a poor world. And we four can make a dream world to lick your real one hollow.

Green Lady : How dare you threaten me!

Puddleglum : As for me, I shall live like a Narnian even if there isn’t any Narnia. So thank you very much for supper. We’re going to leave your court at once and make our way across your great darkness to search for our land above!

When Puddleglum was lost in the caves of earth with the green witch, he remembered enough of where he was from to know what was presented as real before him was nothing but a counterfeit version of the truth. Ah this sounds familiar doesn’t it? This world with all of its governments, glitter, power, and gold distracts us from the longing in our hearts for home. Those special transcendental notes and nudges try to gently guide us back to where we belong….yearning for home.

I recently received an email from a long lost treasured friend who somehow has been reading my blog! I’m so tech illiterate I didn’t realize it was searchable…I had one of my sons help me make the account and have just been writing because I’ve always wanted to and realized I’m already in the autumn of my life without ever penning anything! The knowledge that even one person, especially someone I have known and respected, has been impacted by anything I have written is both humbling and honoring. Thank you to each person who reads any one of my musings. Not coming from a professional angle to writing, I almost see this blog as my diary of thoughts, and it’s very easy to forget anyone might be reading it. I have consistently prayed that God would use my blog to speak to any person who “has ears to listen.”

To have heard from a special friend from the past was another sacred moment, the sweetness of God. Know in your hearts my friends, you are remembered and loved by many who have crossed paths with you, and you are remembered and loved by God. Be looking for the eternal in the everyday and may you be blessed with your own intimate sweetness of God this week.