Love's Blush

The world blushes -

Not with embarrassment or shame,

But romantic glow.

Colors creep,

Flush warm,

Tiptoe inside human flesh,

Burn hot:

Divine love.

“The only One who can satisfy the human heart is the One who made it.”

–unknown

Bedrock Toolbox

My pink, girly-looking toolbox is great for keeping gizmo-gadgets in one place so I can find them when a picture falls off the wall, or a screaming grandkid locks himself in the bathroom and I need to pick that lock – and quickly.

But honestly, this cute, user-friendly-looking box is deficient. While it holds a couple of slim-nose pliers and several miniature eyeglass screwdrivers, it lacks big, influential tools able to tackle really mean jobs when something essential falls apart.  

That’s often the way it is with health, too.  We rely on superficial quick-fix tools without addressing what’s actually “broken” underneath.

In recent years, I’ve been outfitting a wellness toolbox with new power tools (by that I mean powerful tools): an anti-inflammatory diet, a mind-blowing collection of nutritional supplements, an exercise routine with various resistance bands and weights, and a schedule for regular walking. And I’ve realized vast improvements.

But new-and-improved tools showed up a few months ago when I wasn’t even searching for anything else (it always amazes me when this happens, as if God steps in and says “Here, THIS is for YOU”) - new products that support health at basic foundational levels, and thus every other part of me as well.  I’m in a better place as a result, even better than the good spot I’d already discovered doing all those other pro-active things.

For example, I sleep soundly most nights (no small thing when it used to take hours to fall asleep only to waken as if electrified at 3:00 a.m.), tolerate even unbearable annoyances (huge when you have chronic tinnitus that sounds like referee whistles going off inside your head 24/7), and navigate physical and emotional challenges (amazing when you can hold your own with energetic grandkids, and feel less jumpy inside when disappointment strikes).

It’s almost as if a switch has flipped inside, and my entire body is calmer and more capable.

Things like this don’t happen accidentally when you’re sixty-six years old.  Rather, it’s about these new tools: Plexus Worldwide products that oxygenate and detox cells and quell inflammation, balance blood sugar levels, and rebalance gut bacteria.

Pretty hefty tools, I’d say.  Like crowbars. And nail guns.

 Let me speak plainly, here. Plexus is becoming major for me.  As well as seeing results myself, I’ve been amazed by the testimonies of others who have found relief from their own plagues - brain fog, thyroid imbalances, eczema, chronic fatigue, anxiety, allergies, and so many assorted other ills.  This is because they are repairing underlying footings instead of just patching sunken roofs.

As a result, I’m encouraging my friends to reevaluate their own toolboxes filled with aspirin bottles and band-aids, and suggesting they get serious about supporting health at bedrock.  And I have to say…Plexus is a helpful tool for doing just that.

Oatmeal and Charity

Picture this.

I’m sitting at the computer, focused on making important email contacts (important means I’m choosing words carefully and crafting my messages rather than just blowing off casual conversation), when I realize my husband is standing behind me.  He is positioned slightly off to the left side, poised like a silent ship anchored in the night – only it isn’t night.  It is morning.

I turn.  We make eye contact.

“Yes?” I query.  He’s usually outspoken and starts talking well before we’re in close proximity, so I wonder what situation could call for such a timid approach.  He is offering me a $20 bill.

I think, OH NO…he is buying me off!  Occasionally this is a joke between us – he offers payment for some favor I would automatically do anyway.  I don’t want to be interrupted.  After all, I’m writing, which is important. I impatiently think, Oh brother, WHAT does he WANT?

“Would you…” he begins tentatively, with the raspy voice of an old man with a cold (which is what he is and what he has). 

“Yes?”

“Would you…make me…some…oatmeal?” 

His monetary offer is supposed to be funny, and I bark back with mock disdain:  “Are you too feeble to cook your own oatmeal?? Are you paying me to make your oatmeal? Are we talking super-simple here?”

But then I study his facial expression, which seems genuinely needy.  I remember, and soften. He doesn’t feel well; this cough has been hanging on far too long.  In the past month he drove me thousands of miles back-and-forth across the country to visit our newest grandbaby.  Now he’s asking me to make oatmeal, a five-minute job.  I can do that.

Suddenly I am out of the chair, hugging him, walking to the kitchen.  And I want to make oatmeal more than anything else in the world, which is so much better than a $20 bill.

Home

We’re back home from the Deep South, Back from cactus and clear skies…

…to the chilly Northland. Here brown leaves lie tucked in small spaces around a few remaining post-seasonal garden flowers, and a soft, cloudy cloak hangs over the lake.

I love the sense of rootedness, of being home – not just to our modest dwelling, but also to a place where I fit directly and deeply, close to the heart of an identity that has been forged over a lifetime.

Mercy Mirror

Concern is often our response to suffering’s blow.  “I feel so much compassion for the Syrian refugees,” we murmur, and we mean it.  Or, “I feel so badly for you” when confronted with a friend’s struggle, pain, or loss.

That’s very nice.  But something else may be more important than the feeling part, which is, after all, more about us than them.

I’m talking about about acting out compassion, freely offering our physical, emotional, and intuitive selves (and perhaps also our resources) without reservation. Co-experiencing.  Connecting.  Getting-under-the-skin-of-the-other-person.  Being vulnerable enough to voluntarily share their dark pit.  After all, only when we’re actually in that bleak place can we be genuinely helpful in supporting the overthrow of the drooling gremlins that have staked their claim there.

It seems more popular to espouse a compassionate ideology than to practice it these days. We often talk a good line, but less frequently live it. Real compassion, however, is active and powerful, an agent of change and renewal. 

I am grateful for a daughter who gets this.  Recently I was overwhelmed by a certain bogeyman (a bugaboo of advancing age, I suppose) that momentarily strangled my deep heart and soul - AND injected a mega dose of inadequacy.  And yet this adult child, who is half my age, stepped right smack dab into the moment to make a difference.  Compassion shone from her eyes.  She spoke it, delivered it through her hands that touched me gently, knowingly.

Someone else might have pooh-poohed the whole mess and suggested I “snap out of it” and stop making such a big deal out of such small stuff (which admittedly, in the big picture, it was). But she mercifully offered kindness, the antedote that helped break the spell much more effectively than logic. 

I soaked up her provision like a thirsty, wilted flower. And now, some days later, she continues to graciously support and uphold me as I walk away from my earlier discouragement with fresh perspective.  She has been an agent of healing, a human mirror of divine mercy. I am grateful.

* * *

“Ever let mercy outweigh all else in you. Let our compassion be a mirror where we may see in ourselves that likeness and that true image which belong to the Divine nature and Divine essence…”

— St. Isaac of Syria