Entry

Nancy,

Here is a video of the entry and a bunch of pictures.  Let me know if you need to see anything else!  And thanks for your help,

Cindy

 PS--remember, we are after LOTS of LIGHT!!

 

Here is the view from the front door.  

 

Here is looking up towards the current (dated) chandelier.

This is looking slightly to the left, then to the right,

 

And then towards the stairs.  Finally, the front door from the inside.

Curtain Options

Ok, here are the options so far.  If you click on the picture it should open it bigger for you.  I could also get something plain & white...

The bottom pic is of the shower curtain that we've had across the window thus far.  I really love the print & how it works in the room, but I've seen nothing remotely like it as I've looked for curtains, and I really (REALLY) don't have the wherewithal to find fabric and make something right now.  None of these are terribly expensive options, so I figure that I can have them for a while and then later when I have time and want to do something different, I can.  

I've taken the pics 2 ways so that you can see how it looks with the curtains "closed" and "opened."

Oh--pls ignore the boxes.  As soon as we get one box unpacked, we bring in another.  They've sadly become part of the landscape!  (But at least we're making progress!)

To Heaven and Back

It was a good example (retrospectively, of course) of how easily things come together when one is moving in the direction of God's will.  It has taken many years to truly learn that when everything seems difficult and feels as though you are swimming upstream, it is usually because you are not following the direction of God's will.  When you are doing God's will, everything seems to happen without much effort or many obstacles. 

The only scriptures she was able to focus on in the hospital:
First--"Rejoice always."  1 Thess 5:15
Later in the day--"Pray without ceasing."  1 Thess 5:17
Finally--"Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God's in Christ Jesus for you"  1 Thess 5:18

Even the most terrible circumstances and events can stimulate great change in individuals and/or societies.  Without observing cruelty, we would not be moved to compassion.  Without personal trials, we would not develop patience or faithfulness.  It is the recognition that our earthly concerns matter little when compared to life eternal that allows us to know joy in the midst of sorrow and worry.  Have you ever really changed or experienced personal growth during times of comfort or complacency?  The acceptance that change rarely comes without difficulty and challenge can truly free a person to "rejoice always."  It also allows us to live daily with a grateful heart and "give thanks in all circumstances."  No matter what the circumstances, we can be grateful that God fulfills His promises, that our faith is sufficient to sustain us, and that our eternal life is assured.

The stories of almost everyone who has spoken with me began with some sort of traumatic situation.  This is fairly predictable, and it is unfortunate that we rarely have such intense spiritual connections except under conditions of dire stress.  I believe that anyone can have the same connections and experiences that I have had, but I think we are too distracted by the world around us when we are under "normal" circumstances.  When we are in dire circumstances, these distractions quickly fall away and we are able to discern that which is most important: our relationship with God.

Ultimately they must not only find God, but must freely choose to accept God's love and direction.  God gave humans this ability to choose freely, which makes us ultimately responsible for our choices, our actions, and our lives.

     People ask why so many miracles occurred in ancient days but not in our present time.  I contend that there are just as many miracles occurring today, in the lives of ordinary people.  But I also assert that most of us don't look for miracles, don't recognize them for what they really are, and don't really believe them to be of divine origin even if their miraculous nature is noticed.
     My life's experiences would argue against the concepts of coincidence and luck  It would support the belief that there is only the guiding presence and plan of God, who uses His assortment of angels and messengers to lead us and communicate with us. 
     King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes that "people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end" and I would heartily agree.  We live our lives in forward motion, but only understand them when looking backward.  I would therefore challenge you to keep a six to twelve month journal of coincidence.  In that journal write down the details of every "coincidence" you experience.  In one column, write the details of each major event in your life...What are/were the circumstances surrounding your acceptance into college, meeting your significant other, finding your job, choosing where you live, and so on.  Note every time the arrangements easily fall into place.  Similarly, every time you struggle with a situation write down the eventual outcome.  Write down the "bad" things that happen to you or others and, in an adjacent column, list what happens as a direct or indirect result of these bad things.  I believe that when you look back through your journal at the end of your exercise, you will clearly see how many of people, events, decisions, and outcomes are interconnected.  I think you will see a pattern of linkage that cannot be attributed to statistical chance.  You will see evidence of God's work in your life, giving assurance that God has a plan for your life.  you will begin to recognize coincidental events for the miracles they really are, and you will know that God is with you even in times of sorrow, loneliness, or other misfortune. 

How Will You Measure Your Life?

For those of my classmates who inadvertently invested in lives of hollow unhappiness, I can't help but believe that their troubles stemmed from incorrectly allocating resources.  To a person, they were well-intended...intending to build a satisfying personal life alongside their professional life, making choices specifically to provide a better life for their family, they unwittingly overlook their spouse and children.  Investing time and energy in these relationships doesn't offer them that same immeiate sense of achievement that a fast track career does.  You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis it doesn't seem as if things are deteriorating.  Your spouse is still there when you get home every night...  In fact, you'll often see the same sobering pattern when looking at the personal lives of many ambitious people.  Though they may believe that their family is deeply important to them, they actually allocate fewer and fewer resources to the things they would say matter most...

It's rarely easy.  Even when you know what your true priorities are, you'll have to fight to uphold them in your own mind every day.  For example, like many of you, I suspect, I'm naturally drawn to interesting problems and challenges.  I can lose myself in one for hours...but I know that spending my time this way is not consistent with my priorities.  I've had to force myself to stay aligned with what matters most to me by setting hard stops, barriers, and boundaries in my life--such as leaving the office at six every day so that there is daylight time to play catch with my son..I have to be clear with myself that the long-term payoff of investing my resources in thie sphere of my life will be far more profound.

...there is no one-size-fits-all approach that anyone can offer you.  The hot water that softens a carrot will harden an egg.  As a parent, you will try many things with your child that simply won't work.  When this happens, it can be very easy to view it as a failure.  Don't.  If anything, it's the opposite... Instead, you have just learend what does not work.  You now know to try something else.

Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be amont the sources of the deepest joy in our lives.  They are worth fighting for.

The relationships you have with family and close friends are going to be the most important sources of happiness in your life.  but you have to be careful.  When it seems like everything at home is going well, you will be lulled into believing that you can put your investments in these relationships onto the back burner.  That would be an enormous mistake . By the time serious problems arise in those relationships, it often is too late to repair them.  This means, almost paradoxically, that the time when it is most important to invest in building strong families and close friendships is when it appears, at the surface, as if it's not necessary.

Each of us can point to one or two friendships we've unintentionally neglected when life got busy.  You might be hoping that the bonds of your friendship are strong enough to endure such neglect, but that's seldom the case.  Even the most committed friends will attempt to stay the course for only so long before they choose to invest their own time, energy, and friendship somewhere else.

I genuinely believe that relationships with family and close friends are one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.  It sounds simple, but like any important investment, these relationships need consistent attention and care.  But there are two forces that will be constantly working against this happening  First, you'll be routinely tempted to invest your resources elsewhere--in things that will provide you with a more immediate payoff.  And second, your family and friends rarely shout the loudest to demand your attention.  They love you and they want to support your [career] too.  That can add up to neglecting the people you care about most in the world.  If you don't nurture and develop those relationships, they won't be there to support you if you find yourself traversing some of the more challenging stretches of life, or as one of the most important sources of happiness in your life.

"Treat people as if they were what they outhg to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being."--Goethe

My Stroke of Insight--Jill Bolte Taylor

Via our left hemisphere language centers, our mind speaks to us constantly, a phenomenon I refer to as "brain chatter."  It is that voice reminding you to pick up bananas on your way home and that calculating intelligence that knows when you have to do your laundry.  There is vast individual variation in the speed at which our minds function.  For some, our dialogue of brain chatter runs so fast that we can barely keep up with what we are thinking.  Others of us think in language so slowly that it takes a long time for us to comprehend.  Still others of us have a problem retaining our focus and concentration long enough to act on our thoughts.  These variations in normal processing stem back to our brain cells and how each brain is intrinsically wired.
     One of the jobs of our left hemisphere language centers is to define our self by saying "I am."  Through the use of brain chatter, your brain repeats over and over again the details of your life so you can remember them.  It is the home of your ego center, which provides you with an internal awareness of what your name is, what your credentials are, and where you live.  Without these cells performing their job, you would forget who you are and lose track of your life and your identity.
     Along with thinking in language, our left hemisphere thinks in patterned responses to incoming stimulation.  It establishes neurological circuits that run relatively automatically to sensory information.  These circuits allow us to process large volumes of information without having to spend much time focusing on the individual bits of data.  From a neurological standpoint, every time a circuit of neurons is stimulated, it takes less external stimulation for that particular circuit to run.  As a result of this type of reverberating circuitry, our left hemisphere creates what I call "loops of thought patterns" that it uses to rapidly interpret large volumes of incoming stimulation with minimal attention and calculation.

     Because our left brain is filed with these ingrained programs of pattern recognition, it is superb at predicint what we will think, how we will act, or what we will feel in the future--based upon our past experience.  I, personally, love the color red and am inclined to collect a bunch of red things-- I drive a red car and wear red clothes.  I like red because there's a circuit in my brain that gets very excited and runs relatively automatically when anything red comes my way.  From a purely neurological perspective, I like red because the cells in my left brain tell me I like red.
     Among other things, our left hemisphere categorizes information into hierarchies including things that attract us (or likes) or repel us (our dislikes).  It places the judgment of good on those things we like and bad on those things we dislike.  Through the action of critical judgment and analysis, our left brain constantly compres us with everyone else.  It keeps us abreast of where we stand on a financial scale, academic scale, honesty scale, generosity-of-spirit scale, and every other scale you can imagine...

     When we evaluate the unique characteristics of the two cerebral hemispheres and how they process information differently, it seems obvious that they would manifest unique value systems that would consequently result in very different personalities.  Some of us have nurtured both of our characters and are really good at utilizing the skills and personalities of both sides of our brain, allowing them to support, influence, and temper one another as we live our lives.  Others of us, however, are quite unilateral in our thinking--either exhibiting extremely rigid thinking patterns that are analytically critical (extreme left brain), or we seldom connect to a common reality and spend most of our time "with our head in the clouds" (extreme right brain).  Creating a healthy balance between our two characters enables us the ability to remain cognitively flexible enough to welcome change (right hemisphers), and yet remain concrete enough to stay a path (left hemisphere).  Learning to value and utilize all of our cognitive gifts opens our lives up to the masterpiece of life we truly are.  Imagine the compassionate world we could create if we set our minds to it.
     Sadly, the expression of compassion is often a rarity in our society.  Many of us spend an inordinate amount of time and energy degrading, insulting, and criticizing ourselves (and others) for having made a "wrong" or "bad" decision.  When you berate yourself, have you ever questioned: who inside of you is doing the yelling, and at whom are you yelling?  Have you ever noticed how these negative internal thought patterns have the tendency to generate increased levels of inner hostility and/or raised levels of anxiety?  And to complicated matters even more, have you noticed how negative internal dialogue can negatively influence how you treat others and, thus, what you attract?
     As biological creatures, we are profoundly powerful people.  Because our neural networks are made up of neurons communicating with other neurons in circuits, their behavior becomes quite predictable.  The more conscious attention we pay to any particular circuit, or the more time we spend thinking specific thoughts, the more impetus those circuits or thought patterns have to run again with minimal external stimulation.
     In addition, our minds are highly sophisticated "seek and ye shall find" instruments.  We are designed to focus in on whatever we are looking for.  If I seek red in the world then I will find it everywhere.  Perhaps just a little in the beginnig, but the longer I stay focused on looking for red, then before you know it, I will see red everywhere.
     My two hemispheric personalities not only think about things differently, but they process emotions and carry my body in easily distinguishable ways...My right hemisphere is all about right here, right now.  It bounches around with unbridled enthusiasm and does not have a care in the world.  It smiles a lot and is extremely friendly.  In contrast, my left hemisphere is preoccupied with details and runs my life on a tight schedule.  It is my more serious side.  It clenches my jaw and makes decisions based upon what it learned in the past.  It defines boundaries and judges everything as right/wrong or good/bad.
     My right mind is all about the richness of this present moment.  It is filled with gratitude for my life and everyone and everything in it.  It is content, compassionate, nurturing, and eternally optimistic.  To my right mind character, there is no judgment of good/bad or right/wrong, so everything exists on a continuum of relativity.  It takes things as they are and acknowledges what is in the present.

    One of the most prominent characteristics of our left brain is its ability to weave stories.  This story-teller portion of our left mind's language center is specifically designed to make sense of the world outside of us, based upon minimal amounts of information.  It functions by taking whatever details it has to work with, and then weaves them together in the form of a story.  Most impressively, our left brain is brilliant in its ability to make stuff up, and fill in the blanks when there are gaps in its factual data.  In addition, during its process of generating a story line, our left mind is quite the genius in its ability to manufacture alternative scenarios.  And if it's a  subject you really feel passionate about, either good or awful, it's particularly effective at hooking into those circuits of emotion and exhausting all the "what if" possibilities.
     As my left brain language centers recovered and became functional again, I spent a lot of time observing how my story-teller would draw conclusions based upon minimal information.  For the longest time I found the antics of my story-teller to be rather comical.  At least until I realized that my left mind full-heartedly expected the rest of my brain to believe the stories it was making up!  Throughout this resurrection of my left mind's character and skills, it has been extremely important that I retain the understanding that my left brain is doing the best job it can with the information it has to work with.  I need to remember, however, that there are enormous gaps between what I know and what I think I know.  I learned that I need to be very wary of my story-teller's potential for stirring up drama and trauma.
     In the same vein, as muy left brain enthusiastically manufactured stories that it promoted as teh truth, it had a tendency to be redundant--manifesting loops of thought patterns that reverberated through my mind, over and over again.  For many of us, those loops of thought run rampant and we find  ourselves habitually imagining devestating possibilities.  Unfortunately, as a society, we do not teach our children that they need to tend carefully the garden of their minds.  Without structure, censorship, or discipline, our thoughts run rampant on automatic.  Because we have not learned how to more carefully manage what goes on inside our brains, we remain vulnerable to not only what other people think about us, but also to advertising and /or political manipulation.

     During the process of recovery, I found that they portion of my character that was stubborn, arrogant, sarcastic, and/or jealous resided within the ego center of that wounded left brain.  This portion of my ego mind held the capacity for me to be a sore loser, hold a grudge, tell lies, and even seek revenge.  Reawakening those personality traits was very disturbing to the newly found innocence of my right mind.  With lots of effort, I have consciously chosen to recover my left mind's ego center without giveing renewed life to some of those old circuits.

 
Everyone's brain is different but let me share with you some of the simple things I have found to be true for mine.  It seems that the more aware I am about how I am influencing the energies around me, the more say I have in what comes my way.  To monitor how things are going in my life, I pay very close attention to how things are flowing, or not flowing in the world around me.  Depending on what I am attracting, I take responsibility for how things are going and consciously make adjustments along the way.  This does not mean that I am in complete control of how I choose to think and feel about those things.  Even negative events can be perceived as valuable life lessons, if I am willing to setp to the right and experience the situation with compassion.
     Now that my left mind's language centers and storyteller are back to functioning normally, I find my mind not only spins a wild tale but has a tendency to hook into negative patterns of thought.  I have found that the first step to getting out of these reverberating loops of negative thought or emotion is to recognize when I am hooked into these loops....Learning to listen to your brain from the position of a nonjudgmental witness may take some practice and patience, but once you master this awareness, you become free to step beyond the worrisome drama and trauma of your story-teller...
     When my brain runs loops that feel harshly judgmental, counter-productive, or out of control, I wait 90 seconds for the emotional/physiological response to dissipate and then I speak to my brain as though it is a group of children.  I say with sincerity, "I appreciate your ability to think thoughts and feel emotions, but I am really not interested in thinking these thoughts or feeling these emotions anymore.  Please stop bringing this stuff up."  Essentially, I am consciously asking my brain to stop hooking into specific thought patterns.
   I whole-heartedly believe that 99.999% of the cells in my brain and body want me to be happy, healthy, and successful.  A tiny portion of the story-teller, however, does not seem to be unconditionally attached to my joy, and is excellent at exploring thought patterns that have the potential to really derail my feeling of inner peace...These are the cells in our verbal mind that are totally resourceful in their ability to run our loops of doom and gloom.  These cells tap into our negative attributes of jealousy, fear, and rage....My cells get the message that I am serious about not hooking into those negative loops of thought, but only if I am persistent and determined enough to pay attention to what circuits are running in my brain...
     Recovering my left mind has meant that I have had to give voice to all of my cells again.  However, I have learned that in order to protect my overall mental health, it is necessary for me to tend the garden of my mind and keep these cells in check.  I have found that my story-teller simply needs a little disciplining directive from my conscious mind about what I want versus what I find unacceptable...I have found that just like little children, these cells may challenge the authority of my authentic voice and test my conviction.  Once asked to be silent, they tend to pause for a moment and then immediately reengage those forbidden loops.  If I am not persistent with my desire to think about other things, and consciously initiate new circuits of thought, then those uninvited loops can generate new strength and begin monopolizing my mind again.  To counter their activities, I keep a handy list of three things available for me to turn my consciousness toward when I am in a state of need:  1) I remember something I find fascinating that I would like to ponder more deeply, 2) I think about something that brings me terrific joy, or 3) I think about something I would like to do.  When I am desperate to change my mind, I use such tools.  I have also found that when I am lease expecting it--feeling either physically tired or emotionally vulnerable--those negative circuits have a tendency to raise their hurtful heads...If I want to retain my inner peace, I must be willing to consistently and persistently tend the garden of my mind moment by moment, and be willing to make the decision a thousand times a day. p 150-154

Our patterns of though are grounded in rich multidimensional circuitry that we can learn to scrutinize.  First, each though pattern has a subject--something that I am cognitively thinking about...Second, each thought pattern may or  may not be accompanied by an adjoining emotional circuit of which I am cognizant.  Finally, these specific circuits of thought and emotion may also be linked with some of my more complex physiological circuitry, which upon stimulation would result in predictable behavior.
     Finding the balance between observing our circuitry and engaging with our circuitry is essential for our healing.   Although I celebrate my brain's ability to experience all of my emotions, I am cautious about how long I remain hooked into running any particular loop.  The healthiest way I know how to move through an emotion effectively is to surrender completely to that emotion when its loop of physiology comes over me.  I simply resign to the loop and let it run it's course for 90 seconds.  Just like children, emotions heal when they are heard and validates.  Over time, the intensity and frequency of these circuits usually abate.  p155-156 [She has previously explained it takes less than 90 seconds for an emotional program to be triggered, surge through the body, and then be flushed out of our blood stream.  At this point the chemical component has dissipated from the blood and the automatic response is over.  If we remain angry at that point it's because we choose to let that circuit continue to run. p.147]

  This stroke of insight has given me the priceless gift of knowing that deep inner peace is just a thought/feeling away.  To experience peace does  not mean that your life is always blissful.  It means that you are capable of tapping into a blissful state of mind amidst the normal chaos of a hectic life....
     Based upon my experience with losing my left mind, I whole-heartedly believe that the feeling of deep inner peace is neurological circuitry located in our right brain . This circuitry is constantly running and is always available for us to hook into.  The feeling of peace is something that happens in the present moment.  It's not something that we bring with us from the past or project into the future.  Step one to experiencing inner peace is the willingness to be present in the right here, right now.  p. 159

All That is Bitter & Sweet-- Ashley Judd

He [Archbishop Desmond Tutu] talked about spiritual maturation and how sometimes during our growth we have dry periods, or rather spells that feel dry, because we have moved beyond the need for that blissful flood of grace that encouraged and informed us at the beginning of our journey.  I instantly apprehended what he was telling me--I had always been so grateful for th egrace I could summon and feel growing in my heart when I meditated.  But now I saw that those instruments had served to confine and reassure my thoughts until I was mature enough for something more subtle--when I could sit in a rice tent and feel what it was like, and not flee its reality by asking God to blow me away with some on-the-spot transcendence.


Codependency....describes an array of behaviors and choices that are formed as strategies to survived ysfunctional family systems and are a direct result of trauma and abuse.  The first cases were identified among spouses and family members of substance abusers who had become enmeshed with the addicts they were caring for and were driving themselves crazy trying to control the addicts behavior--make them change, clean up, whatever.  The definition has expanded to include anyone who tries to control the behavior of others (or themselves) as a coping mechanism to medicate loneliness, that hole in the soul left behind in the aftermath of abuse--which does not have to be radical, dramatic, big-time abuse.  Codependence can be a hard concept to grasp because it's so broad, so looking at its core symptoms is useful.  According to...a nurse and recovering codependent who has written extensively on the subject, codependents have difficulty
1.  experiencing appropriate levels of self-esteem
2.  setting functional boundaries
3.  owning and expressing their own reality
4.  taking care of their adult needs and wants
5.  experiencing their reality moderately

      We tried to process together every night as a way to release the emotions that surfaced during our time in the field.  It is immportant to name our feelings, out them, and release them before they have a chance to become toxic to our bodies and our souls.  So many aid workser (and others in helping professions, such as nurses) anesthetize themselves at the end of the day with alcohol, cigarettes, food, or even drugs to numb the effects of what they've witnessed.  To often, gifted, compassionate people burn out.  Seane and I encouraged the humanitarian and aid staff to join us to talk honestly about what we had been seeing and feeling, even if those thoughts were not exactly politically correct...We would listen without judgment in a room filled with candles and friends.  We considered how we could overcome the anger, revulsion, guilt, and fear that we weren't doing enough and carry on with greater love.
      Our staff members were so used to stuffing down their emotions that this process was alien, even frightening to some of them...For myself, I have made it mandatory.  Feelings are not facts, and in order to endure in this work, not burn out or give up or just stay home on the farm, I need to express my feelings, even the crazy ones.  I need the support of others as I do so, to know I am not alone in my internal struggles.  And I certainly need spiritual tools to go the distance and stay present in the work, when it is so tempting and easy to become hopeless, apathetic, cynical...

A few things of which to be conscious during an upcoming trip to Africa, a return to the Congo:
-Expectations are premeditated resentments.
-Live life on life's terms.  Be a woman among women, one among many.
-Do the next, good, right, honest thing.  Keep it simple.  I am responsible for the stitch, not the whole pattern.  Turn the outcome over to God.
-Ask for help.  Write [a letter.]  Pray.  Cry.  Get on the yoga mat.  Journal.  read the 104th psalm...

    My prayer was answered, and I remembered that God lives in the space between people, in relationships, is acted out through our interdependence.  God had always been with me.
     I remember what I believe: God is love, and when I love, God is with me; and, in order to love, I have to have someone to love.  And that someone, well, maybe that someone is you...

A Vision of Light (Alisyn's 14th century book)

I could not help but answer, "Still, is it not better to love and risk sorrow than to freeze at the heart?"
"Not when sorrow is certain, that I think," he answered.

"The longer you live, the more you'll discover how necessity forces hard choices on us all.  It seems to me that goodness doesn not consist of remaining untouched, but of acting honorably under difficult circumstances..."