Down That Street

"Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle." ~ Christian D. Larson

Read the story...

Clearly Clothes

"Leap and the net will appear." ~ Zen saying

A couple of months ago I wrote a post titled, As If. The post was about how my grandmother had always given me the advice to "act as if" something were already as it should be, even if in fact, it were not.

In other words, if I felt shy, then she would tell me, I needed to change my thought pattern about who I was and act as if I was the opposite of shy: confident! 

My grandmother reminded me that I didn't have to necessarily start by first believing that I was no longer shy, only that I needed to "act as if" I weren't. Eventually, she encouraged me, confidence would become my default thought pattern and my shyness would be gone forever. 

And she was right, at least 99% right - and the 1% being the rare times when I find myself really liking a guy and then my shyness tries to creep back in and make me run for the hills - 99% of the time I am self-assured, even if I am walking into a room full of strangers, and that's because after years of "acting as if" I am confident, now, I actually am quite confident.

So, it was shortly after that post that I was shopping in Target and I happened to pass by the baby section, specifically the baby clothes section. And as I was walking by I saw a cute baby girl's outfit with what looked like a really cheap sales price on it. I thought to myself, if I'm going to practice what I preach (or rather, what my grandmother preached!) then I should buy this baby girl's outfit to "act as if" something I want is already coming to me, because, after all, I told myself, you do plan on having a baby girl. I picked the cute little outfit off the rack and headed with the rest of the items in my cart to the check-out counter.

But just before I got to the check-out counter I thought more about the baby's clothes I had just placed in my cart, and reminded myself, but you plan on having a baby boy, too! I stopped moving my cart forward and did a u-turn back to the baby clothes section, specifically to the baby boy clothes and picked a similar outfit on sale for my little guy. I wanted him to know that I knew he was coming to me just as assuredly as I knew his sister was. I was going to plunk down "acting as if" dollars for both my little girl and my little boy.

However, when I was at the cashiers buying everything, the baby clothes rang up at more than twice the price I thought the tags had read! It had been a little bit easier for me to convince myself to buy the two baby outfits in my "act as if" moment because they were so inexpensive. Now, when I found out they were much more than I had thought, I felt a dilemma: one part of me was saying, you can't afford to spend money on these clothes because you're on a budget and they aren't necessary, the other part of me was saying, you can't afford not to spend money on these clothes if you expect the "Universe" to understand clearly that your intention is for your babies to come to you!

So, really even though it was a huge splurge to buy the baby clothes in the first place, in the end I splurged even more and paid the higher amount because at that point, at any point, I know "acting as if" is worth the price!

I went on, during two different occasions, to buy two more "act as if" items. First, while traveling during September with my mom, I just had to buy some adorable little girl's booties that I couldn't resist (even though once again the price told me I should!) because they seemed to be an exact replica of my own "booties." And second, when I was in New Zealand - in a little shop that only sold items made from New Zealanders - I came across a pair of  knitted baby booties that I felt I had to purchase in another "act as if" gesture because they seemed perfect for my baby boy.

I keep my babies' clothes items in a place that I see every day, so that I am reminded that they will be worn by my dreams manifest - my children. However, for some reason I hadn't thought, before now, that it might be something I should make a blog post about. But, upon further reflection, I thought telling (and showing!) of everything that I am doing to help make my dreams become my reality is exactly the point of Dreaming Miracles, and really, I can't believe I didn't share this "act as if" experience sooner.

Family History

"The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win." ~ Roger Bannister

Last week a guy I went to high school with messaged me on Facebook to say that he would be visiting his father (who he told me was 93!) where I live (and he grew up) and asked would I like to get together sometime during his stay? 

Now, this is a guy that I knew was in my high school class - because I went to a small high school! - but I can't say that I ever spoke a word to him during our four years of high school together. 

It wasn't that I was a snob - though I will readily admit he was a geek! - but probably due more to the fact that I was shy back then and didn't talk much to anybody outside my "circle." 

But, as you know if you've followed this blog, a couple of years ago I had my 30th high school reunion (remember I was the girl who wanted to gain an extra ten pounds before I went to it!) and at that reunion this guy, P., came to it, and during the later hours, when the number of class members gathering shrunk (read: lightweights!), the smaller group got to hang out and have more quality time together. And this guy, P., was one of the remaining few. 

So, at the reunion I probably had a short conversation with him - enough to know that, even though he was still a geek, he was a way more interesting one than thirty years before! And so he later "friended" me on Facebook and we became "acquaintances;" we ended up having some common interest and points of view, enough that we felt a comrade of sorts with one another. 

But he lives with his wife and two daughter's - probably a thirteen hour's drive away - and came to visit his father for the week, sans the family, thus the inquiry of my availability. 

Anyway, long story short, on Sunday night we did get together at a local pub for drinks, then dinner, and had a nice time. Like I said, I knew virtually nothing about him so it was easy to talk as I could ask him a lot of questions in which to gain more knowledge of him and his life experiences.

And it was after inquiring about his immediate family, the family he grew up in, that I found out he had four older sisters and an older brother, the closest in age to him being six years. And all of them, he said, had relocated to the state of his familial mother. I asked about each of them, as somebody might ask me of my six siblings, and he told me a quick bio of each. But it was the bio of one of his sisters that struck me as being very interesting, and one more answer to the bigger signs which I have been seeking. 

When he explained this sister's life he said that she had started out as a high school science teacher, then went into some medical tech speciality and another thing, and another thing, until finally she went to medical school and now - after what he called her 30-something years of schooling - she was a practicing M.D. He went on to say that she had married late in life (I didn't ask what that age was) and that she had ended up having, through IVF, triplets at age 49, that he said, gave her six kids in total (yes, all after she had married later in life!)! I asked were the triplets her own biological children? Yes, he said, and I didn't feel like I knew P. enough to pry more on the subject (though everything in me was screaming out, tell me everything you can about her!). 

So, I guess the moral of this blog post is that, once again I was minding my own business when, out of the blue, someone tells me another successful, happy story of an older woman getting married later in life AND getting pregnant with her own eggs - and this one just a year younger than me at age 49!!! 

I had earlier (to begin my New Year!) told God, thanks for all the signs you have been sending me, but I need something bigger, and I think with this story I got something a little bigger. Yes, she was still younger than me, but still close enough where I feel I can almost reach out and touch my dream of miracles...

2014

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." ~ Harold Whitman

Happy New Year!!!

Well, I have to say, my expectations for 2013 were really high and of they weren't met.

I definitely feel like my intuition failed me, but I'm only learning what having (and using!) my intuition is all about so I guess I should cut myself at least a small break on that. I do feel like sometimes my hopes' voice is louder than my inner-knowledges' voice and that can lead me astray. But I do want to continue to listen to what I think my inner-voice is telling me. I do want to try to keep working on my intuition - learning and practicing it - as if I were studying a foreign language - which, of course, to me it is.

I go into this new year, 2014, with the same hope and faith I have gone into each of the years I have been writing this blog. And actually, in a lot of ways, despite the passing of the years, I feel more hopeful and faith-filled than I ever have. I still have no idea how in the world any of what I dream of, what I desire, has any way of coming to fruition. If I was still thinking of it in human terms I would probably just lie in a darkened room curled up in a ball, but thankfully, more than I ever have in my life, I think of most everything in God's terms, and that is why my hope remains high, how my faith still fills me up and keeps me strong in my beliefs, because those terms, God's terms, are the terms upon which I can't even fathom how to fathom; those are the terms where any thing, every thing, is possible.

And I did start my 2014 with a really needed-to-hear story that the person telling the story had absolutely no idea I needed to hear! 

My niece was giving a New Year's Day brunch and I asked one of her mother's friend's (actually a family friend) what she did for her New Years Eve. And this friend said that she drove about an hour's drive away to meet a girl from her high school days. I asked which girl in her (and my sister's) class did she visit (though they were seniors when I was a freshman I knew almost all of their friends). She told me the girl's name and I had no idea who she was - which I thought was strange because we went to a small Catholic school and I thought I would surely know the girl. Anyway, our friend continued by giving me a quick synopsis of this girl's life saying, "She married later in life and had a baby at forty-five…" and then most everything else she said quickly about this girl went in one ear and out the other, because all I could focus on was, yay, another purely random story about someone finding love and having a biological child of their own so much later than the "norm."

I think it's stories like that, that come at me when I'm least expecting them, that keep me just focused on still being "in the game." Granted this woman was much younger than me when she had her baby - five years younger! - but as long as nature is working with me - and I feel that it is doing the best it possibly can - I just stay focused on the positives and the possibilities and leave the other stuff to the non-dreamers of miraculous endings and beginnings!

Have a happy, joyous, and miraculous 2014!

Faith

"Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." ~ Jesus - Matthew 17:20

The other night I was talking with my eighteen year old niece, A., who's a freshman in college and visiting for the holidays. When we had our conversation she revealed to me something that she has probably tried to hide from nearly everybody in her life. 

She has an illogical fear, really to the point of panic, that at the times she can't get a hold of one of her family members - by phone call or text message - either her father, brother, or mom, but mostly her mom, then something must be terribly wrong with them. Until she hears back from them, and sometimes, for various reasons, it can be quite some time, she gets so wound up that she can't concentrate; she can't do anything but worry and fear the worst has happened to them. If it's at night she can't sleep; for hours her fears' possess her. It's almost to the point of obsessive compulsive behavior, except without the compulsions. 

I understand my nieces fears' and worries regarding wanting her family to be safe, for them to be there for her in the morning, for them always to be there for her. You see, when I was thirteen years old - now thirty-seven years ago - I was diagnosed with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and I did have both the obsessions and the compulsions - debilitatingly so! 

This was 1977, and at that time very little was known of OCD in general, and virtually nothing of it in children. I was seen by a Duke University-educated psychiatrist who, despite all of his best medical and psychiatric training, didn't know how best to even begin to help me; he had barely heard of the disorder. My father had to educate this "brilliant" child psychiatrist on this strange and peculiar illness. And I say that literally. 

My father, a dentist (although very much involved since the late '60's in the nutrition movement and by default, holistic medicine) had to literally take the psychiatrist and teach him about OCD, about the limited research, about the adult medical trials that were in their infancy, and about the one program in the country at that time that was beginning to find children with the disorder and start medical trials on them. My father did all of this research, gained all of the available knowledge, even though he had a full time job, a wife, and six other children fully in need of his time and attention. And like I said, there wasn't much in the way of knowledge of the illness in children. And of course this was all done before the internet, with its websites and emails, etc., so my father did it the old school way: contacts, phone calls, more contacts, more phone calls, libraries with their medical journals, and such.

I have often talked of my father as a creative, visionary-type person, one who had the ability to not only think outside the box, but to think beyond boxes at all. And to this day I admire his tenacity when it came to problem solving - when it came to a cause of any sort that he believed in. My father didn't know the meaning of, "no," if it had anything to do with something he desired, whether for himself or for those he loved, or even for the causes he believed in. 

But even with my father thoroughly made knowledgeable on a mental disorder that at the time was only just beginning to be understood and diagnosed, it wasn't, in the end, his medical understanding or help that cured me of that debilitating illness of which I struggled with all through my teen years and into my early twenties, it was, I think, the foundation that he and my mother gave me... in religion. 

It's funny because, in the end, I think it was religion that played into my severe OCD and yet it was also the thing that cured me of it!

For me - though I have no idea how it is with others' who have OCD - almost all of my Obsessive Compulsive behaviors were tied to something bad happening (the obsession), a car wreck that would kill, an incurable illness, death by some thing or another, and I HAD (the compulsion) to do something to protect them all, whomever I loved deeply, from the bad thing. If my mind told me I had to wash my hands fifty times in a certain way or my mom would be killed, well, I washed my hands fifty times. If my mind told me that if I didn't walk twenty-five times back and forth through a door threshold my father would die, I walked back and forth through it so my father would live. If it still didn't "feel" "right" I did it all over until it did. Those are only two small examples in a day's worth of living this kind of life, so when I use the word, debilitating, in regards to my mental illness it was that and more… it was exhausting. 

Like I said, at the time I was diagnosed with OCD in 1977 there was virtually little known of the illness in adults, and almost nothing at all in children. I just lived with it. And my family lived with me living with it because when you start walking back and forth through a door threshold time after time and your family is in the car ready to go somewhere, waiting on you, it becomes their problem, too. 

It was only when I came home after I had graduated from college, and a year spent in New York City, at age twenty-three, that enough drug trials had been done with OCD patients (my mother forbade my dad from putting me in the only children's drug trial going on in the country when I was fourteen because she didn't have a good "feeling" about the doctor in charge) that I tried drugs that were supposed to be helpful. But the only thing those drugs did was make me want to stay in bed, in a darkened room all day, and sleep. My parents wanted me to be helped, to be cured, but sleeping away my life was not what they had in mind. I went off the drugs. The sun shone brightly once again through the bedroom curtains I opened each morning, but my obsessions and compulsions remained completely a part of my daily living. 

Finally, when I was probably twenty-four - so I had been living with severe, debilitating OCD for eleven years - a day came, I can remember it as clearly now, twenty-six years on, as I did when it was happening. I was driving a brand new Chevrolet truck down the road, transferring it, for my brother-in-law, from one dealership to another, and per usual a thought came into my head that if I didn't do this particular thing my mom would die. Of course it made no logical sense to me. But regardless, if part of my mind knew if was an illogical thought, the part of my mind that had control over me would always say, "Do you want to take that chance? Do you want to take the chance that you if you don't do the the compulsion one of the people you love most in the world could be taken from you?" In eleven years I had always answered, "no" to that question. I had always "protected" the people I loved and cared for most. 

But on this day, when all of these thoughts about something bad happening to my mom, if I didn't do some illogical thing came into my head, another voice, a new and strong voice, interrupted my thinking. And that voice said to me, "You're a hypocrite!" That voice continued, "Do you want to be a hypocrite?" A hypocrite? How? I asked the voice. And yes, it was a conversation between me and, I guess, this other part of me that had not made itself known before. 

When I asked the voice how I was being a hypocrite, how was my mental illness - an illness that I felt I had no control over - tied in anyway to hypocrisy? The voice talked to me about faith; about God. 

This strong voice asked me that if I believed in God why was I trying to act like I was God? Because, as the voice reminded me, everything I did with my OCD, every obsessive and compulsive behavior made, was made without any thought given to faith. Why, the voice continued, if I said that I believed in God - and I did thoroughly believe in God - did I try to control everything in my environment to the point of irrational behavior, why did I not feel that God was in control? Why did I not let God be in control? 

It's hypocritical of you, L, the voice told me, to say that you believe in God, in His being your creator, and yet you do these obsessive compulsive behaviors all based on fear, and doubt and worry - all based on an overwhelming lack of faith... in God! 

You can't have it both ways, L, the voice said. You have to choose. You have to choose whether you believe that you control the world around you - and really, whether you want to continue to try to control the world around you - simply because you lack faith in the one person who you should know to put ALL your faith in.

So, choose, the voice prodded, do you want to live your life in lack and faithlessness or, do you believe, with the faith of mustard seed, that God is in control of you and all of the people you love and He will take care of you and He will take care of them. Give Him your worries, your doubts, your anxieties, your fears, and let Him take control… give Him, through faith, your life.

As I sat behind the wheel of that truck, driving down the road, feeling desperate to "protect" my mom from harm by listening to the obsessive thoughts in one part of my mind and wanting to do the compulsive behavior that would "save" her, I told God that I was tired. I told God that I was exhausted at trying to control my world, and the people closest to me, by having my OCD rule my every day existence. I told God, that yes, I did believe in Him. Yes, I did have the faith of a mustard seed to know that he would take care of me and those I loved. I told God, that no, I didn't want to be a hypocrite. I told God I wanted to to live my life in faith. 

And it was then that I asked God to take over. I told God that with complete faith in Him I would not do the obsessive compulsive thing that I had felt I needed to do to keep my mom "safe." I told Him that through faith I would allow Him to take care of her, that by faith I was giving up control, and in faith I would believe that all would be well. And for the first time in eleven years I stopped; I didn't let my obsession compel me to do some behavior, that thereto for, although irrational in theory, I was, incapable of believing was irrational in thought. But I let go anyway. Purely in faith… I let go. 

Letting go, having faith in God became my salvation. For every time an OCD thought came into my head - and I was bombarded with them throughout my days - I ignored it, and instead told God I had faith in Him. I had faith that He was in control of my life and that I knew that I could trust Him to take care of me and all those I deeply loved. 

For a long time it was a constant battle between feeling the obsessive thoughts and irrational compulsions that had ruled - and ruined - my life and allowing my faith to assert itself and take control. But my faith, in the end, was victorious. My faith triumphed. And even as I write the words, "victorious" and "triumphed" with the greatest of awe because it was all of that, I know too that it was so much more. "It" was a miracle. Because to this day, twenty-six years later, I took no medicine that cured my mental illness, no psychiatric treatment that helped me, I was free and clear of my OCD, from that day onward, purely by the grace of God. 

And I have written of all of this regarding my mental illness - my OCD - because when I was talking to my niece, about her incapacitating fears and anxieties, I told her that lesson that somehow, and I can only call it a miracle, was given to me: either you believe in God and you have faith in Him and allow Him to be at the center of your life and in control, or you don't. Faith, I told her, sets you free.

I even explained, in some part to her, that while on this Dreaming Miracles journey just about everyday my mind tries to let fear, doubt, worry and anxiety in. I think to myself, how are my dreams going to come true? I'm fifty years old. I live in a small town where meeting a single, cute, well-adjusted guy is like bobbing for apples in a barrel full of oranges, how is "it," all of "it," going to happen? And then I just have to remind myself that kind of thinking is human thinking and God doesn't think like humans think. Thank God, God thinks like God!!!

And if I have even the faith of a mustard seed, which I told my niece I believe I did, anything is possible with God. All I have to do is let go, know, in faith, that He is in control and let Him work it all out. Know that even as I write these words, He's doing exactly that… working it all out! 

Often, when I have these thoughts of doubt or fear - of the enormity of my dreams! - enter my thinking, I just picture what I might call, magic dust, swirling and sparkling around me, as if, even though it may seem as if nothing is happening to make my dreams come true, EVERYTHING is happening, all around me, at all times, miraculously making sure that they do!

I live in Faith...

Living in the Past

"The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love." ~ Pearl Bailey

I did something I never thought I would do. Almost twelve years went by and I never did. So, why, I wondered, did I do it now?

I called, G.G., the guy who had been my greatest love; the guy that broke my heart. In my post called, Love, I wrote, "The moment I got my apology I knew that I would never talk to G.G. again in my life - not because I would harbor anger, but because that was just the way it was going to be." Well, I guess never is a long time, or in this case, nearly twelve years.

I think, in the end, he got "involved" in the New Zealand "fate line" which I talked of in a previous post. And just until I wrote that last sentence I didn't see my getting back in touch with G.G. as part of something that happened only because of that one fateful event that caused me to travel to the other side of the world in the first place, but now I do see clearly that it was one of that journey's many and varied results.

Because this is how it happened: G.G. lives in Hawaii and I knew I would be stopping there on my way to New Zealand, visiting my brother for several days, and then stopping for a long layover on my way back from NZ to my home. I got the thought in my head that I would call G.G.'s parents' for his phone number - I had long since lost track of any way of knowing how to contact him - tell them that I was in Hawaii and that I wanted to get in touch with him.

But my time was short in Hawaii and I lost my "real" phone in a taxi cab (I know I lost it in the cab because I got a text from my sister saying to call the cabdriver because he had my phone!) and just ran out of time to actually get it back. So it wasn't until I was waiting for my flight to Auckland in Honolulu airport that I thought it was probably the right time on the mainland to call G.G.'s parents, and I did. I used my iPod Touch which I had turned into an iPhone (yeah, you can do that!) and rung them up.

His mother answered and right after I introduced myself as being an old friend of his and that I was visiting Hawaii and thought I would get in touch with him, she was like, aren't you the girl that called from ______ about ten or so years ago? Wow, I thought, either I'm super memorable or she has a good memory… and I went with the latter of the two thoughts. She gave me his phone number and had a few choice comments to say about him and all I could do was commiserate with her because, well, I knew him!

I casually asked whether he had married or had children and she said, "We have no idea! He tells us he didn't get married, but we're really not sure." Mind you this is a guy who last saw his parents fifteen years ago! Anyway, after talking with her for a few minutes I realized that I really didn't have enough time to actually call him and decided that if I felt like it on my return I might try.

Well, I did have a really long layover on my return from New Zealand in Honolulu. It was Thanksgiving Day but it wasn't until I missed the first opportunity of flying out (I was on a standby pass) that evening and had another hour-and-a-half before my next chance at getting on the flight out of Honolulu, that I remembered my thought of calling G.G. I told myself, well, you're still in Hawaii so you can tell him that you were calling because you were in the islands (not making it clear that I wasn't going to be there but for an hour more!) and I had thought of him and decided to call. And that's what I did. I nervously dialed his number, not sure what to expect. His voice mail came on and I left a very simple message and gave him my phone number. Then I went to my gate and got on that next flight out of Honolulu.

When I got back to my home I was so tired I slept for 22 straight hours. And when I checked my "phone" after I had slept so long, I saw that somewhere in that time a call had come in from G.G.'s number. He had called me back! Yeah, I was surprised he had called me back because he's the kind of guy that would let "sleeping dogs lie." He didn't leave a message, but that he called was the message!

I didn't call back right away. I was too tired to want to talk, but then the next day I saw that I had missed another call from him by mere minutes so I picked up my phone and called him right back. And when I heard his voice answer it was surreal; I know this guy, I thought, but I don't know anything about who he has been the past twelve years: who is this guy?

But we talked and though at times it had a bit of awkwardness about it, it wasn't awkward at all when he said that he really missed me and I told him I had really missed him, too! I always knew he loved me as much as he could love anyone in the world, despite the fact that he couldn't give me all of his love, and he pretty much blankly stated that fact… he said to me, "You know I've always loved you."

However, his mom had warned me that he had had problems with alcohol, she didn't say he was an alcoholic,  just that he had, at least to her knowledge of past events, had a problem with it. And I could tell that he had been drinking when I called him back. I did ask if he were married, or if he ever had been. He said, "No." I asked if he had any children and to this he said, "Yes." There seemed to be a daughter, but he was vague on everything about her, finally just saying, "Why don't you call Stephanie and ask her." So the "feeling" I got from that part of our exchange is that he had not known he had a child, that he was thrown a curveball when it was revealed to him much later, and that he didn't seem to be allowed to participate in her life.

Since that first call he has called me a few different times, sometimes early into my morning, though only late in his night, because of the time difference between us, but also during his day. I think he is the same, and the same is not really a good thing to be after twelve years have past. 

He's the guy with all the potential, and that's what it remains - potential. But I'm very familiar with that person because I have been that person. Hell, I am that person now. But, psychologically, I am much different than who I was when last in his life, psychologically I have grown by leaps and bounds. And it's the psychological part of him that is no different than it was before… at least that's how it feels to me now. I think we will keep in touch and the more I get the chance to talk to him the more I'll be able to evaluate how he has - if he has - grown.

Why should I care if G.G. has grown or not? If his feelings about me are just as they were? Complete love without being in love. Really, I don't know… I do things because I follow the intuition inside my head… often I don't know why I should, but I think the answer is about helping me learn. Sometimes it feels as if my intuition - that voice inside my head - is just testing me to see if I do "hear" it and if I will follow it. And when I do follow it, it's like getting a passing grade which encourages me to keep following - that somehow, in the end, it - my intuition - will lead me exactly where I need to go.

Life is as much a mystery to me as any other person, but I do try to "figure" it out as best I can… sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, and sometimes I just draw even, but it's that excited anticipation of wondering what's behind "door number three" that keeps me ever seeking...

Miracle of Life

"It's a mystery. It's magic. It's Divinity! ~ Yale mathematician, Alex Tsiaras

I love this TED talk by Alexander Tsiaras… who through science - of all fields - really allows your eyes to be open to the "God Factor" that truly allows for what we call, the miracle of life...