Amazing Grace

3 funerals, one pending, yeah, life doesn't suck, death does. While I am all doom and gloom, I have to get this out. If illness, suffering and dying are all around us and it ISNT happening currently in our own lives or our immediate family members lives, than how can we in good conscious not treasure, enjoy, love each day that we wake up to?  Restless is a disease of the fortunate, thinking not enough or they have more than I do or when I get there is for the healthy of body, the ones who look out into the future with longing because they have the luxury of doing so.  What about wishing for one more day because this one might be the last?  Greedy self, occupied with more, how dare you steal from now and borrow from a future that might not exist?  I have is more honest, kinder, softer, than I want.  It is with gratitude that I thank God, for but for His amazing grace go I.

Heaven Wins Again

FAITH...forsaking all I trust Him.  2014 is only 52 days old and I have attended 3 funerals already. Today's was especially hard, because someone I love deeply is gone from this earth, God took back one of the really good ones.  When I think of him, I think of Gods love radiating from his face, his words a gentle balm of peace and trust in God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.  I knew the end was coming for my friend, it makes me grimace, seeing spirit moving in a body, them breathing life into their lungs and knowing at the same time that the death march has begun, and that it would eventually, soon even, be claiming another saint.  Death is a cruel thief, stealing away loved ones before I, before we, are done loving them.  Sickness is crueler yet, and so it is a welcome platitude to hear and say "he/she is in a better place". This does nothing for me, as my heart aches and yearns for one more hug, one more faith filled story, one more shared moment of soul brushing.  I will miss you Doug Dakin, I'm grateful and blessed for having known such a great man of God.  Heaven wins again. 

Dreaming

The lyrics to a Passenger song  called Things That Stop Your Dreaming grabbed me as they rang truth.  They go like this "if you can't get what you love, you learn to love the things you've got, if you can't be what you want, you learn to be the things you're not, if you can't get what you need, you learn to need the things that stop your dreamin, all the things that stop your dreamin".  This last line nearly broke my heart in the lonesomeness of the message, need whatever it is that will stop your dreaming...it's like clinging to a tooth pick to save you while you bob up and down in the middle of the ocean, trusting that somehow the tooth pick is enough, loving it and hoping it will save you. Coaching, lovely rich coaching asks what are your dreams?  Who are you?  Who do you want to be in relationship?  What are you here for, what is your life purpose?  Coaches know clients have dreams that have gone to sleep, desires they are afraid to speak for fear of them never coming true, hopes that have been dashed in the past, holding them pinned to helplessness.  The coach believes in the client. We are not dream weavers, coaches are the gentle wake up call from slumber to come alive to love, life, reaching for the big stuff of which dreams are made.  Do you see what I see...isn't it the truth that we can't see our own brilliance until we see it reflected in the eyes of an admirer?  Seeing less stops our dreaming.

Welcome to Communicable Diseases

Welcome to communicable diseases, spoken in deep, rich, vibrant DJ tones. 

This is the recorded greeting for the immunization health unit. This message cracked me up and I giggled and or full on laughed at the thought of it and my repeating it to others, throughout the day.  A communicable disease is clearly something to be avoided, being welcome to it was plain old ridiculously hilarious! 

When choosing who to speak to, a recorded request is made of the listener that goes something like this, If you have a fever or flu like symptoms, do not come to the clinic; this message delighted me as much as the first one! 

I am inclined to spin this into a super cool metaphor, I invite you to come with me. 

What if the communicable disease is dis, ease, agitation, anger, dis satisfaction, selfishness, bitterness, self pity, entitlement, envy, self indulgence, me first?  These are real health threats, corrosive and sometimes, contagious otherwise referred to as emotional contagions. 

• Why would you or I want to be exposed to these toxins?  
• What is the impact when we are?  

I for one feel sick after exposure, and like any illness, the symptoms take a while to dispel, lingering far longer than the actual exposure experience took in the first place.  

Doctors and nurses are called to aid the ill; they have healing hearts and hands, and they expose themselves to real and deadly disease for the sake of others. Those that request their help for healing are given the gift of health aid~this said, they have a call to duty, to protect the general public from "communicating" illness, by refraining from exposing others when they are already very sick. 

Coaching is like this, the client can bring all their dis ease to the coaching relationship because they want to get better, move away from what makes them emotionally sad and sick, and toward what makes them healthy, whole, and feels like heart singing resonance. Clients learn to move away from emotional contagion and toward health filled loving relationship first with themselves, and then with others. 

I want to catch happiness, I want to infect others with joy, I want to be so contagious that everyone is bitten by the love bug!  Perhaps you have been bitten today, in a great and wonderful way? 

I sure hope so.

Love is a feeling AND an ability

I heard a great line in a movie "love is not a feeling, it is an ability". I mentioned this to my son and he said "love is a feeling AND an ability", clearly love can be and is both. There is a lot of self love I have been reading about~this shows up in social media, where people take brave steps in confidence and tell the world, and the world (or the persons social circle) responds with good for you and I knew you had it in you and you inspire me comments. I am inclined to get irritated with these public displays of proudness, they seem adolescent and needy to me, as though the grown man or woman did not receive praise in their formative years and now they can catch up, share and care and fawn over themselves and others.  I'm tracking right now in my memory to see if I am a suspect, if I am amongst the needy?  Guilty as charged, for who among us is not in need of love?  Which brings me to my point:  there is a time in each life where the feeling of love must be incoming, an outside in, a receiving in order to comprehend, to absorb, to feel and know that you and me, we are precious. Than, as I see it, know it, have experienced it, love becomes an ability, it moves away from my need to receive and toward the giving, the sending, the offering to another.  My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of The Lord...my Teacher loved me first so that I might love as He does.  If this is all I learn from this life, to love like Jesus, it will be gloriously good enough.

Love Dove at Dusk

It is 6:13 p.m, dusk. I went to get my mail and a morning/mourning dove flew toward me, landing on a lower branch of the tree at the end of my yard.  

A bird, in the middle of winter, at dusk, was a pleasant surprise. I said, Hello, as he sat and looked down on me. 

I am pretty sure I could see his exhale in tiny wisps as he breathed the cold air in, then out.  We stayed, me standing looking up, him balancing on a thin branch, looking down.  

I made the verbal observation that he had a small head and a big chest, and asked, Does that mean you have a big heart? Of course he did not answer, but it occurred to me that if humans had these body and head proportions, perhaps we would be a kinder, more gentle breed of being. 

We were silent for a while when I decided he definitely came for me, a morning love dove, in the evening. 

It's cold outside, and as an indoor dweller, I decided to thank him for his reminder of coming spring and cliche as it sounds, of love. As I walked toward my front door, I looked back, and he had turned toward me, watching me enter my house. 

Strange and wonderful. I half grin, grateful for my love dove at dusk.

Dead Phone

My iPhone unceremoniously died yesterday and while I know I must replace it for many reasons business related, there is a part of me that was happy to see the blank black screen, unresponsive to my button pushing and prodding. It crossed my mind that the phone can be compared to some clients I have worked with~no amount of prodding, encouragement or super amazing powerful questions lit them up~the battery appeared to be dead and unresponsive, and I was working too hard in trying to recharge them, defibrillate them back to life.  As coach, a cue that things are going sideways is the feeling that I'm working too hard.  This takes me in two directions:  am I working too hard because I have my own agenda for the client OR am I working too hard because they don't want to?  Change is painful and powerful, not to mention rather uncomfortable.  Highly motivated clients forge forward, acknowledge the pain and keep their eyes on the prize, taking sometimes baby steps, periodic huge leaps and bounds, to get there, wherever their there happens to be.  My phone sits quietly in its deep perhaps much needed sleep, and I grin knowing that it is not my first, nor my last client, I mean phone.