Shine

Nothing needs fixing;

everything desires A Celebration.

You were made to bend

so that you could discover

all of the many Miracles

at your feet.

You were made to stretch so that you could find

Your Own Beautiful Face of Heaven

just above

all that you think you must shoulder.

When I appeal to God

to speak to me,

I am feeling just as small

and alone

as you are.

But this is when,

for no good reason at all,

I begin to Shine.

Em Clarie 2007

Hmmmm.....

I guess the assumption might be that if one starts a blog then one must always have something to say.

Not so.

 For days I have been thinking I should post here but the truth is I couldn't think of anything to write about. Of course potential topics are endless yet I am still coming up empty. I read other blogs and admire them and all that they share and I think I am still trying to find my "style". Some people write very specific blogs on subjects like cooking or sewing or simply their children. I don't think I am a specific kind of girl. I would get so bored to continue to write on the same topic. Just not me. I like so many different things. I enjoy cooking a good meal, becoming immersed in a decorating project, reading, writing, taking pictures, going to estate sales, TRAVELING, going to the movies, learning new things, sitting by a campfire and just simply being with my friends and family. I use to dream about being one of those people who is just obsessed with one thing, like maybe horses. You know what I mean, those people who are all about one thing. In the case of horses it would be their entire life. They eat, breathe and sleep all things horse. Or maybe fishing (I live with that guy) or maybe gardening, that would be a good one. I am NOT that girl. My father once said that I have the adult version of ADD, maybe, but I just love so many different things and when I master something or it simply no longer holds interest for me I want to move on. Sometimes I feel a panic at the shortness of my human life when there is so much I want to see and do. This life is so amazing. I feel like a kid in a candy store.There is so much to choose from and so many experiences just waiting on us to show up and have them. So I think I am finally ready to set aside any fantasy I have about being one of those horse people and JUST BE ME.
What a concept.
How come it takes so long to just be who we are?

No excuses.

No apologies.

I hope my children don't have to wait as long as me to embrace the truth of who they are.

The picture above is one of my four cats.
 Do you think he ever thinks he should be anyone else? 

Seems so stupid in that context doesn't it?

I feel such responsibility with a blog, especially as you start to gain a following outside of your friends and family. A feeling of needing to say something really good, to hold your interest, to make sure you come visit here again and again. I think the best way to do this is not to worry about it. Remember the movie "Field of Dreams" with Kevin Costner? Build it and they will come? So I think my blog will start to be a bit more documentary style of what goes on in my daily life. When we adopted our daughter from China I had a blog where I just took pictures each day and then told about what we did and where we went. Sometimes it would lead to writing something very touching and inspirational and sometimes it was just we went here and we did this. I like that. I think that is the direction that I want to go in now. I have put pressure on myself to say something profound every time I come here to talk to you and quite frankly I think that will start to be annoying to both of us. Some of the most inspiring things come from the mundane details of our everyday life. The simple moments. The quiet pleasures. The spontaneous hug from your two year old, the homemade pizza cooked to perfection, the clean table with a fresh tablecloth and flower from your own garden. These are the moments that I savor. So let me tell you what I am going to do today. I am going to take a bath, then I am going to go pay my homeowners insurance, then I am going to one of my favorite little country markets in the town I use to live in as a little girl. After that I am going to clean my house and think about how I can start working a plan to become financially free so my husband and I can pursue our dreams. We have a four year plan but it is top secret right now. I will share when the time is right, but trust me that this blog is one of the first steps on the path. You will want to stay tuned. A grand adventure is in the works. But when the hour of blue comes this evening I will make some dinner for my four children (make that 5 when my oldest daughters best friend is with us) and my husband. I will most likely fall asleep with my book in my hand and my two year old curled up next to me. I will say thank you for another day to be alive and experience the gift of my own life.

xo

Kimberly 

Morning Walk

Isn't it amazing


what you see

when you take

the time to

really look?

I have been walking in the mornings with my sister-in-law. This is desperately needed for both my butt and my spirit. Today I decided to bring my camera and the mushrooms were what I decided to focus on. What was interesting to me is that once I picked the subject of mushrooms I saw them everywhere. They were there all along but until I decided to really see them I didn't even notice. I am always amazed at the life forms in the woods. All that goes on with no input from humans who try so hard to make things happen all the time.

And all the while the woods go on.

I go to the woods to let go. To remind myself that everything will be okay. I remember who I am when I am surrounded by such glory. My problems seem to shrink. I start to breathe deeper. Peace washes over me. I gain perspective and sometimes big insights.

And meanwhile the mushroom just does it's thing with no struggle whatsoever. It gladly lets me photograph it and marvel at it's beauty or it would kill me with a few bites.

Either way. The mushroom just IS.

I am pretty sure the mushrooms are secretly laughing at me right this very minute.

Regular Life

It can be tempting for me to think that every post needs to be profoundly inspiring and that can keep me from coming here to talk to all of you. That is ridiculous. The goal of this from the start was to use this blog to share my life. Sometimes it is profound, but sometimes it is pretty darn regular. I would never want readers to think that my life is simply one inspiring moment after another becuase quite frankly...it's not. I would like to lose weight, I feel a little short on cash at the moment and my house is WAY too small. I have no closets and my house often looks like a laundromat. It is helpful at times to visit my new house and see that each person in this family will indeed have their own closet soon and there will be plenty of room for our expanding family. Somedays it makes me feel worse because it isn't done and I have to dig deep inside and find some more patience and some more faith and there are days where I don't know if I have either of those things left. On those days my husband would like to be living on another planet and I would like to go with him and leave myself behind, if that makes sense. I think the hardest thing about this process is constantly feeling like we have something to do. There is very little down time and when there is we both have a tendency to feel guilty. This is terrible because we really need to rejuvenate from time to time in order to accomplish all that we are trying to do. My husband has a tendency to live in the "I will be happy when...." place. I sometimes follow suit but I know this is so wrong. Happiness is available in every moment if I choose that for myself. This is my new realization and I commit to looking for and living in the happy right now. This moment. I have prolonged joy too long. What if this was my last day? That would suck. Seriously. How can I be happy each day? By deciding to be. That's how. So this is what I have decided, I am going to be a happiness junkie. A crusader for all that is good. Sometimes it can be a Venti Iced Chai from Starbucks, sometimes a good movie, sometimes a hug from my daughter, sometimes a note that somebody is reading this blog and they are getting something from it and sometimes I will even struggle to find the happy. But I will. I am going to make a list of all the things that bring a smile to my face, those things that make me settle into myself and remember to breathe and to laugh. I deserve this and so do you.
Let's start a happiness revolution.

And that leads me to the picture above. I LOVE this old sign. It used to hang in one of my favorite deli's. I was so sad the day I went to get my favorite sandwhich and the place was empty. I was not happy! But I was very happy about a year later when my husband and I drove past a garage sale and that pepsi sign was one of the items for sale. It practically screamed my name as we went whizzing by at 60 mph. My shrieks of joy freaked my husband out who probably thought he had just hit a small mammal. He turned around at my request and a short ten minutes later we had that sign in the back of my car (it is a little hard to drive with a metal sign over your head, but it CAN be done). Now it hangs in my dining room and makes me so happy. The fan in front of it makes me super happy too. I found this about a month ago at a garage sale. It was $7. They do not make fans like this anymore. It drowns out all sorts of annoying sounds and actually moves air around unlike the new versions. I love the color too. It makes me want to break out the old country music and put cocktail peanuts in a bowl and make a litte cocktail to go with them too. It makes me want to play cards and go camping. Yes, this one little fan in front of this sign makes me feel all of these things. Next time I can't find my happy you will find me in front of this fan with my hair blowing back staring at the pepsi sign and I might even have a cocktail in my hand. If you find me this way, please don't disturb me I am just trying to find my way back.

I will be just fine.

Here's to Happiness,

Kimberly

Thank you

We are going to my cousin's wedding this weekend and then on to visit my sister and her family. It will be a bittersweet day as my cousin's father, my Uncle Dick, passed away in February and he is missed more than words can say. So as his son gets married his spirit will be felt but his physical absence will be hard to bear. My Uncle was one of those people that everyone loved and he loved us right back. He had the gift of making everyone feel that they were his favorite when in fact he just loved us all so much. His cancer diagnosis was sudden and his death a short five months later. He encouraged us that it would all be okay even when I think he knew inside that it would not be. Many lessons have come about as a result of his death but the biggest one is examining in close detail how I want to spend my days. I realize now more than ever before that there will be an end to my life. It makes me think of this line from a Mary Oliver poem

"What will you do with your one wild and precious life?"

It is wild.

It is precious.

What will you do with it?

It won't last forever.

How we spend our days will be how we have spent our life. I see places where I could do better. I am working to improve these things so that when I say my final goodbye to this world I will be proud of the mark that I have made, the love that I have given and received, the memories that I have made and the lives that I have touched.

I would gladly trade these lessons to sit around one more campfire with my Uncle Dick.

How would we cherish something if we knew it was the last time?

How can we live being so present in each moment?

How can we take our problems in stride and focus more on the joy?

How do we pay the mortgage, feed the kids, walk the dogs and keep our marriage alive while we stay mindful of this wild and precious thing called our life?

I am working on the answers and the one thing I am certain of is that GRATITUDE is the main ingredient. It is so easy to say thankyou to the waitress or the bank teller but I am not talking about that. I am talking about appreciation. Living from a place of gratitude does change the way I look at my life. I learned awhile back to start saying thankyou to everything. Including the hard stuff. It reminds me that my life is exactly that....MY life and I would not want to trade my joys or my sorrows with anyone else. I try to make a mental list of what I am grateful for each day and I realized just now that I am so incredibly thankful to experience this grief.

It means I loved someone so much and they loved me back.

Out of all the uncles in the world I got this one and he was extraordinary.

Do you want to know another thing on my list today?

YOU.

I have been receiving some personal notes along with the public comments that make me feel so encouraged to continue writing. This means so much to me. I love to write but what I really love is knowing that my words mean something to someone else.

So thank you for that.

In Gratitude,

Kimberly

Is a picture worth a thousand words?

There is a time for words and there is a time when there aren't enough words to describe what we are thinking or feeling. I have a friend on facebook who I went to school with but I have not seen her since 1987. We "friended" each other on facebook earlier this year. I was so happy to see her face and hear what she has been up to over the past two decades. Recently she posted a visual journey for her facebook friends that were strictly images of her over about a 25 year span. I was so moved by this. One of the first ones was a photo of her exactly as I remember her. It was maybe her 15th or 16th birthday and I said out loud "there she is". It brought a smile to my face and a flood of highschool memories. As I looked at each photo I could see the same girl I remembered in each and every one. Some where she looked like she was searching for something, some where she looked like she had found what she was looking for, some where she looked so wise and mature and some where she looked very childlike in her joy. But I could see the essence of who she is in each and every photo. I actually felt that I had learned a lot about where she has gone and who she has become in the years that have passed since I last talked with her. I found it very inspiring that I could feel so much by letting the images speak for themselves without any descriptions or words to get in the way.

Sometimes in our attempts to explain we lose the very thing we are really trying to say.

Sometimes the very best thing we can do is say nothing at all.

I thought it would be fun to just post the above images and not explain them away.

Enjoy!
Kimberly

Sedona Sedona Sedona

Sedona, Arizona

All I can do when I see this is breathe.

Deeply.

How can I describe the way I feel when I am in this beautiful place? I have lived in upstate New York most of my life and the majority of my traveling was up and down the East Coast. I had no idea this place even existed. One day I was visiting a friend who had recently traveled to Arizona and she was sharing her pictures with me (thanks Maralyn). I was taken in by one picture in particular of her standing by a cactus. I realized instantly that I had to see this place with my own two eyes. All of a sudden it seemed ridiculous to me that I had lived nearly 40 years and I had never met a cactus in person. Decision made. I was going to Arizona. I am happy to say that a short 6 weeks later I walked off a plane with my dear friend Sharlyn into the warm Phoenix air. Luggage, rental car, map, water and we were off. Our first destination? Sedona. We had no idea what we were about to see. It was a breathtaking drive from Phoenix to Sedona. A landscape I had never seen. I just kept thinking that I couldn't believe this had always been here and I was just seeing it for the first time. As we came around a bend in the road the red rocks of Sedona came into view. I am still baffled as to why they call them red rocks when they are clearly orange mountains. Either way, named or nameless, they were stunning. I felt tears spring to my eyes at the sight of this majestic "rock". This was Bell Rock to be specific. We were in awe and just kept saying "oh my God, oh my God, and......oh my God". We spent the next couple of days exploring Sedona and we were fortunate enough to return at the end of the trip (eight days and a few thousand miles later!) I have been able to physically return two times since that first visit but I have returned there in my mind nearly everyday. On these actual trips I started wondering things like where is the post office, library, school and of course health food store. I realized why I was wondering these things and for the first time in my life I could really picture living somewhere else. I have no idea what the future holds (Thank God) and we are about to move into our dream house and I have very strong roots in this place I call home. I am blessed with a lot of family close by and some amazing friends. I also happen to love this area minus the six months of winter that drags on and on and on taking my sanity with it. But wherever I live one thing is for sure.....Sedona has taken ahold of me and me of it. I think of returning there often and I consider it one of my "places".

Have you traveled much?

This is what I have found, there are lots of amazing places on this exquisite planet. I am impressed with most everything I see. Even though I can see the beauty of a place I don't always feel connected to it. I find myself saying things like "that was nice, but I don't need to go back."
Don't you find the same thing too?

Some places beckon us over and over again. There is some reason beyond our understanding that makes us feel home. I love when this happens and I have been blessed to be born in a place which feels this way to me. I hear this is not true for everyone. I am curious where your places are. So do me a favor if you will and send me a note on the comments page of your favorite

place(s). I will compile the list and share it with everyone in a future post so we can all add to our travel wish list. Consider making Sedona next on your list if you haven't seen it already. You don't want to pass this world without sitting on one of those rocks.

Trust me.

Happy Travels,

Kimberly

P.S. I almost forgot. We have written a book about our Arizona travels that will be available for purchase and download in the near future. I will keep you posted on the details.