Tag: living

Double Vision

We’ve had the blessing of healthy children this year. Agents and publishers interested in multiple of my works. I’ve stepped away from my nonprofit and ministry work to homeschool our children. We’re reveling in the delight of longer snuggled mornings, less rigid schedules, and discovering how all elements of life and education are interwoven.

Autumn is kissing the Blue Ridge with a kaleidoscope of oranges, reds, yellows, and browns. We’re loving sweater weather, s’mores, spiced coffee, hot cocoa, cousin sleepovers, fire pits, and friends. Joys and highs and blessings untold.

This year has also come with death, five significant people in my life since May, spanning from aged to young. Two vernal loved ones are being treated for ugly heartrending diagnoses and another young-to-me is being tested for words I can’t make myself utter. Beyond my immediate circle of family and friends, there’s even more suffering, parents scream-praying for children to live, children reeling without parents. End of treatment. No more clinical trials. Hopelessness that prompts unthinkable actions. Familial, social, political, and spiritual unrest.

My anxiety resurfaced, forcing recognition in the form of physical symptoms, more medical tests, and eventually, treatment for the root cause. Grief, sorrows, and depths of despair.

Driving home from church the other night, I turned on my Rich Mullins playlist, hoping his folksy voice and thought-provoking lyrics would quicken my heart for things eternal. First to play was, “Here in America,” where Mullins describes God’s creativity in natural beauty around the world. Tucked in the chorus are the words, “there’s so much beauty around us for just two eyes to see, But everywhere I go I’m looking…”

That’s what I need, I thought, more eyes to see more beauty.

But if I had extra eyes to see more beauty, wouldn’t I also witness that much more suffering?

Living with our hearts and eyes wide open means truly seeing the beautiful and the ugly, indescribable joy and unimaginable sorrow.

I can’t carry it all, I cried. I never intended you to, I heard.

 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30 NASB.

I settle into the truth of these words and pray for grace to release my grasp on all I cannot hold. I wrestle with the paradox of being a believer in Absolute Truth who lives with questions. One who hopes against hope to avoid suffering, while knowing the presence and peace of God in the midst of it.

God uses the words of Ann Voskamp to remind me that “Those who long to see miracles, see everyday miracles everywhere.”

“Live like God is a genie in a bottle, and we become like angry drunks.

Live like God is king on a throne, and we become intoxicated with awe,” Voskamp writes.

Again, Rich Mullins sings prayers I cannot speak. “…hold me Jesus cause I’m shaking like a leaf. You have been King of my glory. Won’t You be my Prince of Peace.”

Whether beholding beauty I cannot describe or suffering I cannot utter, a warm blanket of Grace is there to envelop. Abiding Peace that IN all things, God never leaves, never forsakes, never abandons. And if my arms are raised, praising or questioning, my head bowed in reverence or sorrow, my body shaking in joy or rage, I’m held in His Everlasting Arms.

Be THOU my vision, oh Lord of my heart.

Vote My Poetry Submissions!

I need your help! I’m entering submissions into a poetry contest, and I’m wondering how to narrow these eleven choices to three. I’d LOVE your votes to see which three I should submit. Please let me know in the comments. Thanks!

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1: Cornucopia

Deep autumn air

Finagles through window seams

Invigorating my soul from sleep

Cradled by feather pillows

And fleece blankets

Loves sleep-dreaming around me

Rain forest coffee beans

Party in my thalamus

Crimson pomegranate seeds

Plink into the bowl

Dark wheat bread lies rustic in it’s basket

Tasting of sunshine, rain, and wind

Wood-stove’s heat warms toes and floors

Mocha dog, comforting, protecting nearby

Morning moves over the Blue Ridge

Breaking the quiet stillness of dawn

My day, only beginning

And just like that my cornucopia

Overflows

Bursts goodness

From the million little joys

That fill my life

 

2: Rescue

Flashing blue lights

Watery in my rear view mirror

Rain pounds relentlessly

Sirens scream past

I pause

I pray

For whoever is in need

For officers risking lives to respond

For emergency personnel

Who cannot unsee what lies ahead

For nurses and doctors

Who give all they can

Rain pounds relentlessly

Rivulets shroud my windshield

I pause

I pray

For all impacted

By those flashing lights

Watery in my rear view mirror

 

3: The Scent of Grief

Liquid gold, drinking in the aroma of Gain laundry detergent, regular scent
Inhaling deeply the month of June, sterile hospitals, funeral homes, and her, still covered with the fluid of my womb

Whispers of family and friends on soft summer breezes, gathered fully together for the first time in years, to mourn our lost love
Eyes averted, conversation avoided, but inhabiting one space
Tears and laughter juxtaposed
Could it be? Heart healing in our greatest pain?
Cleansing communication, only love remains
Empty bassinet, unfinished nursery
Tears washing grief from our eyes
Hearts united in the sacred dance of grief and joy
Her scent now faded from her soft white blanket
But not from the laundry that hangs on the line

 

4: Veins

As I child, I noticed mom’s hands

Worn from labors of farming and gardening

I pushed in her blue veins

And laughed as they filled again

They looked so different than my smooth soft hands

Now that I am Mom

My hands too, are worn from labors

I hold my young daughter

She laughs as she manipulates my blue veins

 

5: Our “Dave Ramsey” Family

By Regina Cyzick Harlow

4/14/2018

Stuff and label envelopes

Assign specifically to spend

Our monthly budget on a plan

To pay debt snowball to the end

Tweak, adjust the budget app

Enter every dollar spent

We’re only halfway through the month

But now we know where money went

Beans and rice and rice and beans

No more going out to eat

Cooking skills put to the test

As lentils take the place of meat

Limit our vacation plans

Yes to less and no to more

Protect from impulse purchases

By taking lists to every store

Kids think “Uncle Dave’s” no fun

Until allowance pay-out day

When scheduled worked-for chores are done

And mommy is prepared to pay

Persist, endure, and persevere

With “gazelle intensity”

Will all be worth it in the end

When we are finally debt free!

 

6: Wind

By Regina Cyzick Harlow

3/1/2018

Caterwauling wind

Scrapes branches

Against my nerves

Rattling my soul

Leaving me in a constant state of angst

Unsettled, unnerved, gloomy

Perhaps a kite

Or harnessed power experiment

Might lift my spirit

But instead

I’m drinking coffee

And sulking

In my favorite yellow chair

About the wind

 

7: Stoic Hope

Regina Cyzick Harlow

2/27/2018

From Aunt Mary Beery’s funeral

Shovels scratch

Dirt onto the coffin

Filling the grave

Formed from dust

To dust returning

Mourners

Black hats

Black shawls

Sturdy shoes

Singing

Shoveling

Discretely wiping tears

Faint florals blend

With horses

Leather

Farm

And moth balls

Wafting on the breeze

Sunshine

Blue sky

Breathing deep

Crisp air

Inhaling the promise

Of Living Hope

 

8: Creation of the Violin

By Regina Cyzick Harlow

She longed for me, my mother did

To hold her baby flesh and blood

When I was born into this life

She fell ill and shortly died

I lived without her twenty years

I cried ten thousand bitter tears

But I went off to find my love

Guided by mother’s hand above

I came across a palace grand

A rich king with a daughter’s hand

Men had tried the world around

To win his daughter and his crown

I trembled low before His Honor

What must I do to court your daughter?

He cursed at me and bellowed loud

Threw me in the dungeon crude

Foolish boy, I thought aloud

For I am just a peasant’s child

What right have I to royalty

A beggar’s life is fit for me

Doom, despair, despondency

My self-fulfilling prophecy

Poverty is all I know

Crept it’s way into my soul

Light pierced through the dungeon black

A Fairy Queen, and from her back

She took a box and rod of wood

In my hands she placed the goods

I plucked some hairs from off her head

And strung them o’re the box and rod

I tucked the box beneath my chin

And touched the bow upon the string

As music filled the dungeon chamber

Fairy Queen was filled with laughter

Then as I slowed the bow and string

Tears became her offering

I felt a surge within my soul

Another language took control

Tears and laughter came and went

Evoked by my own instrument

Into the box and rod I poured

My lonely tears my childhood joys

My mother’s longing and her death

The odds of poverty and wealth

The chorus of ten thousand others

Joined the song across the ages

Haunting voices throughout history

From the future, still a mystery

Hope, despair, joy, and sorrow

Amalgamated and crescendoed

When at last I took a rest

I could hardly catch my breath

We had no words, the queen and I

No cheers to laugh no tears to cry

The song transcended any language

Gave voice to my deepest anguish

I sat once more before the king

Touched again the box and string

Moved by the magic of the music

King gave his daughter to this peasant

Happily, our ever after

Peasants, Royalty, together

Joined in song by box and string

Creation of the violin

 

9: First Day of School

Barefoot o’re the dusty pathway

Through the pasture, was the rule

Skipped the girl with brunette pigtails

As she hurried off to school

Ah, the summer filled with daydreams

Hailed her with its final call

Breezes yielded July’s sweetness

To ripened hints of early fall

Deep inhale, she sniffed the pencils

As the sharpener ground the wood

Buried nose into her textbooks

Smelling knowledge to be learned

Classroom chatter all around her

Catching up on summer fun

Couldn’t rival her excitement

Of a new school year begun

Bother math, it still confounds her

Language arts, she wanted more

Reading, writing, singing, playing

Timeless knowledge didn’t bore

Oh those sacred childhood memories

Held forever in her heart

Well from deep within her being

As her own, their school now start

 

10: The Days Are Swiftly Marching

Mid youthful scenes of summer’s play

I often whiled the days away

By dreaming of the years to come

Of husband, family, hearth, and home

Sunrise to sunset took sweet time

As childhood years rolled gently by

But now I’m living in those years

And oft’ I’ve wept life’s bitter tears

For young and old who’ve gone to rest

Longing once more their brow to kiss

I wonder where the years have gone

The days are swiftly marching on

Day in day out the cycle goes

The winter’s snow, the summer’s rose

I long to capture every breath

Each kiss, each tear, each soft caress

Life is fleeting with each sigh

The days are swiftly marching by

 

11: Rambling Thoughts

1/22/2017

Gray January day

Our nation celebrates

Our nation weeps

The divide is palpable

Fear pulses

Anger boils

Victory cheers, expectant

What will happen?

What will be?

 

Homeless are still homeless

Children’s blank faces

Wonder what is a CPS worker

And where they are going

Hunger roars

Lonely sit silent

People pass by, coming and going

What will happen?

What will be?

 

Big houses, busy families

Working parent’s too engrossed

To notice their daughter

Lured into the night

Sold for entertainment

Their son, retreating into depression

Their marriage, crumbling

What will happen?

What will be?

 

Problems, we have so many

We fold our hands and acquiesce

Too big for me

Some march in protest

What difference does it make?

We toss coins at million dollar problems

Our small adds up

What will happen?

What will be?

 

Gaze deeply into the faces

Of our circle of influence

One need helps moving

Another, a job

A widow weeps

Parents mourn their child

One celebrates new birth

What will happen?

What will be?

 

Send that “thinking of you”

Allow someone to go in front of you

Look beyond the surface

Listen to stories

Tell yours

Build relationships

What will happen?

What will be?

A revolution?

We will see…

 

 

 

Update

Dear Readers,

It’s been too long, so long that the WordPress app offloaded from my phone. I’ve missed you! I’m on chapter six of writing my book, I ran a half marathon, and family and work life have continued briskly since you’ve last heard from me.

I’ll be back soon though, I need to hear from you all, my blogging and reader friends, to connect again. Anyone headed to upcoming writer’s conferences? I’m planning to go to one in Hampton Roads in September. If you’re there, I’d love to connect!

In the meantime, here’s a guest post I wrote when asked to share about grief and loss for a pastor’s forum. While the article is geared toward pastors, it speaks to anyone wondering how to support someone in grief.

If you’re on social media, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook by searching Sadie Rose Foundation. Check out the wedding gown to burial gown project we have happening over there.

Please comment and tell me what you’ve been up to! Link your blogs so I can go catch up!

See you back here soon.

My favorite chair with my faithful writing and study companion.

We’re enjoying Spring in our area!

Writing Mama

5:30 am

Releasing words

On blank page

Husband stirs, coughs,

Releases his own gas

Into the atmosphere

Cats scratch hungrily at the door

Dogs want scratched too, by me

Baby calls for mama

Another needs covers

The third isn’t sure

He can go back to sleep

Just like that my quiet space,

My blank page

Is gobbled up

By the humans and animals I love

The words stay stuck

Inside my head

For one more day

Our “Dave Ramsey” Family

Our family began the year by taking “Financial Peace University” classes offered by our church. Financial Peace University is a course developed by financial expert Dave Ramsey, teaching people to get out of debt and build wealth using a practical budget system and debt snowball. (Definitely check it out!) It was the beginning of a much-needed, eye-opening, life-changing, journey for us.

However, less than two months after the last class, I found myself in a chain store making an entirely unnecessary impulse purchase that included this book.

The purchase also included an art-prompting sketch book for our son and a poetry journal for our daughter. I am admittedly a sucker for books and writing tools and our 9-year-old son has started drawing impressive comics and our 6-year-old daughter is writing powerful poetry.

That, along with my own need to write, and April being poetry month, it took two seconds to justify spending money not included in our April budget.

Perhaps the purchase will be redeemed, because as I balanced our monthly expenses this morning and determined to end this month with an “every dollar” budget, I used my impulse-buy book to reaffirm our family’s mission, poetry style.

Those who listen to Dave’s podcasts, read his books, or have taken the course will recognize his phrases and lingo in the poem. Thanks, Dave Ramsey. We’re one more family on track to change our family tree. Can’t wait for the day we do our own “debt free scream!”

Our “Dave Ramsey” Family

By Regina Cyzick Harlow

4/14/2018

Stuff and label envelopes

Assign specifically to spend

Our monthly budget on a plan

To pay debt snowball to the end

Tweak, adjust the budget app

Enter every dollar spent

We’re only halfway through the month

But now we know where money went

Beans and rice and rice and beans

No more going out to eat

Cooking skills put to the test

As lentils take the place of meat

Limit our vacation plans

Yes to less and no to more

Protect from impulse purchases

By taking lists to every store

Kids think “Uncle Dave’s” no fun

Until allowance pay-out day

When scheduled worked-for chores are done

And mommy is prepared to pay

Persist, endure, and persevere

With “gazelle intensity”

Will all be worth it in the end

When we are finally debt free!

Dog Therapy

These two make my world a much happier place. I need happy right now and thought maybe you could use some too.

Yo. That’s good stuff!

What? You’re taking pictures of this?!

Sheesh Mom, stop embarrassing me with all the photos.

Would y’all stop the shenanigans? I’m trying to sleep over here!

Oh shucks! Now she’s taking my picture too!

Hrrrumph….

Poetry, Family, Creation Care

A few weeks before Christmas, I took Our 9 and 6 year-old on a walk through the basement of our house. The goal was to find ten items that I would eventually write a poem about. We play the “describing game” all the time where one person defines something without naming it, and everyone else guesses. This time, we described without defining and took it to a whole new level of fun for us!

Here’s the list of items we found: Globe, Horseshoe, Maracas, Christmas lights, Toys, Nativity, Clock, Presents, Coat, Glasses. I had no agenda for what the poem might become. The end result as words flowed from me, was a poem about Creation Care.

I snapped those pictures from some of my favorite places with my phone. I love the way God uses Creation to speak to me.

Treasure

By Regina Cyzick Harlow

Sphere rumbles, rhythmic

Marchers, move toward eternal

Tired, worn out, used up sphere

Capitulating to misuse and consumerism

Wilds waning

Countryside yawning

Cities bursting

Beneath the pounding beat

Blind marchers march

Caught in the flow

Ever consuming

Ever using

Impetuous, heedless, injudicious

The stage set

A junction, once in periphery, becomes clearer

Marchers arrive at the hour of decision

Hope, born into their world

Salvation, Eternal Gift

Birthed from darkness

Offering joy

Pointing beyond time

Gate of Perfection

Marchers, every tongue and tribe and nation

Gathered in orbs of jasper, ruby, emerald,

Emanating from the One True Light

Basking in the warmth of One True Love

Sight returns

Vision restored

A New Heaven and a New Earth

Finally the Marchers treasure the gift

Dancing; taboo to therapy 

I covered the phone receiver in my hand and whispered to my co-worker, “Is ballet a sport?” Clearly I knew nothing about ballet or sports. (When I was asked to cover my first county-league baseball game my completed article had little to do with the action on the field and everything to do with the community feel at the park. It ended up a cover for the weekly community paper instead of in the sports section as originally intended.) 

But I digress. 

I was trying to keep the caller inquiring about an article on her ballet studio from hearing my howling coworker laughing at my gaffe. “Ballet is ‘the arts’ Regina,” she gasped between breaths, “not sports.”

Being raised in the Old Order Mennonite faith, all dancing was taboo. Other than witnessing occasional polka dancing at my dad’s non-Mennonite family functions and uninhibited childish hopping when our “worldly” friend played the accordion for us, dancing wasn’t even in our vernacular. But oh I felt music in my soul. 

Mom’s nickname for me was the Pennsylvania Dutch word for clumsy, and I lived up to that like a bull in a china shop. I did enjoy the Monday night square dances on the deck of the lodge at Deer Valley Ranch the summer I worked there, but no one seemed to mind my lack of coordination. 

Imagine then, I birthed a daughter that lives and breathes dance! She was two when I took her to see the spring recital of a parishioner who owned a dance studio. I was so out of my comfort zone, I chose a seat near the back exit of the auditorium. Our little girl had never seen “professional” dancing before, and she was mesmerized. She got down from my lap and in the dark at the back of the room, she followed every move the dancers made on stage. From that moment on, all we heard was dance. 

She was determined to attend their summer dance camp, and when I told her she needed to be potty trained to participate we had instant success. Really! Since then she has taken ballet and tap, and this year she is loving acro. 

I’ve shared before about my health issues this spring and summer, and once it was determined that my Psoas muscle was being problematic, my chiropractor suggested I find activities to strengthen my core. Since that initial “just going to support a parishioner” dance recital, the studio owner has become one of my best friends. When I was talking to her about the chiropractor’s advice, she suggested I try an adult lyrical ballet class as part of my therapy. 


I never once considered a dance class for myself. Ever. But something about the idea stirred my soul. I asked our daughter if she would like mommy to take a dance class too, and she was ecstatic. Yes! 

Imagine the young dance teacher trying to instruct this extremely insecure, totally inhibited, self-conscious non-dancer to stretch my non-dancing body like bubble gum. No finesse, no aplomb, more like a chicken after meeting its demise on mom’s block in my childhood years. But this date with other women, all with their own stories, has fast become one of my favorite spaces in my week. 

I still don’t know much about ballet, or sports for that matter, but the day I stop learning is the day I stop living. Ballet has been the most unexpected productive therapy I have participated in, stretching me literally and figuratively in ways I never imagined. These words of Bob Marley sum it up for me, “Forget your troubles and dance.” 

The tension of grief and joy

“Making the decision to have a child — it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
I have found this quote from Elizabeth Stone to be true wherever your child might be walking. 


On golden streets…


Or grassy yard..

Yesterday our first born would have been 9 years old. Instead of an elaborate birthday party, we went to her now moss-covered grave and read a story about the Invisible String (by Patrice Karst) that keeps us connected no matter where we are. 

There were tears. There was laughter. There was a particular gift in sharing the day with a young child living their own grief. Sometimes spoken, sometimes without a word, we danced the sacred rhythm of grief and joy and were reminded that the depth of our grief is a testament to the depth of our love. 

Together we found there was much to celebrate about the ones we were missing. And we gave thanks for the invisible string of love that connects us all. 

“Mothering is to teach the art of living to children.” — Elaine Heffner

It is this mother’s joy and challenge to teach the art of living in the tension of present and hereafter, to live with purpose, intention, and to instill eternal values. To model (so clumsily most of the time) the calisthenics of a full life balancing sorrow and hope, grief and joy. 

“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” –Anne Lamott

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