Blue sky day

Finally . . . a weather warm up in Central Florida.

If you read the last post, you will know that I am one happy person today . . . temps in the 70's by this afternoon!!  Now I can get to the mounds of laundry that has been haunting me this week.

It really feels like a blue sky day.  That saying originates from a soap I watched for many years . . . many of you probably still watch it . . . All My Children.  The character Ryan spoke of his now departed mom, who gave him his blue sky days in the midst of a horrific childhood.  He fondly recalled his happy days often on the soap and I never forgot it.  Happy days are like that . . . even if they are not memorable.

Today is my mom's birthday . . . also my cousin Vince's birthday and my friend Rhonda too.  It is also the day my sweet girl dog Betsy passed away 10 years ago.  The date is memorable and bittersweet at the same time.  Any day can be a blue sky day . . . it is what you make of it, despite the life circumstances that surround you.

Rather than think negatively about this day and the passing of the sweetest little baby I've ever encountered in my life . . . she WAS like a baby to me . . . I'm gonna have a blue sky day even though I still haven't gotten over her being gone.  She was my constant companion and gave me years of love and joy.

Betsy was the little girl I never had and I treated her that way . . . look at how I dressed her up . . . I would even paint her toenails.  And she loved it.  When I painted her nails, she would hold her little paw up for me.

She was my prissy girl!

My husband passed away two years after . . . while I was still grieving the loss of my little baby.  These days I celebrate having both in my life and experiencing innocent, unconditional love that I was blessed to feel.  

Thinking back, I realize why I had so many years of being lost and screwed up, wound up tight like a spring, ready to uncoil and crawl out of my skin at any minute.  They were my immediate family . . . here one day and gone the next.  It can be devastating . . . and it was for me.  But I've come back to life again.

In all the years she has been gone, I have not replaced her.  We had another dog, who was my husband's dog, but that little bugger totally hated me, especially after my husband died, but that's another post that I've already written that is buried somewhere in this blog.

My nickname for him was Cujo . . . not a cool dog.

The Captain informed me this weekend that it is time for us to get a dog.  I agree wholeheartedly!!  Now that I am not working away from home, I have all the time in the world to give another baby dog all my love.  So it was decided . . . we will be on a quest to find another baby girl for me to love after the holidays.  I can't wait!!

"Our perfect companions never
have fewer than four feet"

Colette

Animals can be living proof of a simple abundant source of love . . . 
we just have to let them into our lives and allow them
 to be our creature comfort.

Dogs are definitely my creature comfort!

Hope you all have a blue sky day :)

  

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Dealing with conflict

One of the most difficult challenges we face in our quest to be compassionate is dealing with conflict. Those we love most tend to be the ones most likely to engage us in sparring that cuts the deepest. 

Why do we allow ourselves to use our harshest words and most acid tone of voice with the people we love most? Precisely because we love them most. We're counting on unconditional love. 

We know we are likely to be forgiven. We feel close enough to let our true ugliness shine. 

(Maya Talisman Frost)

The above quote pretty much says it all, but it is so ironic that we all seek that unconditional love from another person, yet these are the people who hurt us the most and we hurt back in return . . . or the other way around.

The quote also begs to ponder the question about using our harshest words that we know will hurt the most.  We should not want to hurt that person we love so much, yet we try so hard to inflict as much pain on them as we possibly can.  Why can't rational thinking people be kinder to each other when dealing with conflict, even if we totally disagree about something.

It is one of the absurd oddities of life!

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Love and appreciation

We don’t know what we’ve got

Until we lose it

But it’s also true

That we don’t know what we’ve

been missing until it arrives

Don’t let a day go by without
telling that special person in your life
you love them with all your heart
because they could be suddenly gone

I’m a widow who speaks from experience
and so glad that I did and it made a difference
We treated each other as if it was our last day
Never parting without a hug, a smile and
three little words . . . I love you

Life is fragile
We are here one day
Could be gone the next
I have no regrets

Losing someone is one end of the spectrum
At the other end is searching and finding love again
Treating it with great appreciation and respect

I know what has been missing in my life
Someone special and unconditional love
I anxiously await his arrival
As I hear his heart beat

I Love You
Donna Summer
Lyrics

Well he searched and searched for nights and days

till he found the one he loved

and he wrapped her in his arms again

and then he thanked the stars above

that he found what he’d been looking for

and he stared her in the eyes

He said “I love you”

he said “I love you”

love you, love you

She stared him right back in the eyes

with a look of disbelief

then she gazed off into somewhere else

was it real or just a dream?

and she pulled him, oh so close to her

and she whispered in his ear

She said “I love you”

she said “I love you too”

love you, love you, love you

So together they will always be

until the stars fall from the sky

They said “I love you”

yes, I really do

they said “I love you”

yes, I do

I do, I do, I do, I do

So together they will always be

until the stars fall from the sky

so if you find someone you love a lot

you must never let them go

you just hold them tight with all your might

and you say three little words

You say “I love you”

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Love . . . ageless and evergreen

“Like a rose under the April snow

I was always certain love would grow
Love . . . ageless and evergreen
Seldom seen by two”

lyrics from the song

Evergreen - Barbra Streisand

Many people live and die a full life, never feeling the emotions of this song. As I listened to this song today, I realized how blessed I have been to experience this kind of love in my life.

In the past month or so I’ve had some really bad waves of sad emotions that like to slap me down like the waves of the ocean in the midst of a fierce storm. The sad feelings from a broken romance momentarily make me promise myself to never fall in love again, to run when I feel it happening.

I have received messages and comments from friends that have made me think otherwise. One of those messages was one of the most beautiful I have ever received . . . his exact words . . . “Sorry u keep getting hurt, but if one stops trying they’ll never find love again. True love is worth the pain.”

He is so right . . .
to live the words of this song is worth it.

I used to think that one could not be lucky enough to find that kind of love twice in a lifetime, but I did . . . and I found it again with my first love, even after being hurt by him since I didn’t close my heart to love. 

Not just once and at different stages of my life . . . my first love has shown up at those different stages and perhaps we will reunite at yet another stage of our lives.

I’m trying to accept circumstances of life . . . once again. Just as I was so blessed to feel this kind of love several times in my life, God won’t let me keep it . . . love lost too many times, one to death, another to world politics and yet another to impossible life circumstances again and again.

Fate and destiny are strange that way . . . when God deems me worthy to experience true love again I won’t want to run away.

Have you experienced love

 that is ageless and evergreen?

Lyrics

Love soft as an easy chair
Love fresh as the morning air
One love that is shared by two
I have found with you

Like a rose under the april snow
I was always certain love would grow
Love ageless and evergreen
Seldom seen by two

You and I will make each night a first
Every day a beginning
Spirits rise and their dance is unrehearsed
They warm and excite us, cause we have the brightest love

Two lives that shine as one
Morning glory and midnight sun
Time we’ve learned to sail above
Time won’t change the meaning of one love
Ageless and ever evergreen

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Unconditional love

Unconditional love is a concept that means showing love towards someone regardless of his or her actions or beliefs. It is a concept comparable to true love, a term which is more frequently used to describe love between lovers. By contrast unconditional love is frequently used to describe love between family members, comrades in arms and between others in highly committed relationships. It has also been used in a religious context to describe God’s love for mankind.

When my husband died, I was left with an overwhelming feeling of unconditional love that will never fade away, it will never die and no one will ever be able to take it away from me. It is the most beautiful gift anyone has ever given me and I will cherish it and take care of those memories for as long as I live, no matter what happens or who I spend the rest of my life with. His love for me is part of who I am and one reason I am such a hopeless romantic . . . I felt it and lived it.

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Love yourself first

My romantic experiences of the past couple of years have taught me the valuable lesson of loving yourself first.  Desire alone can make you crazy and a shell of a person.

Even in my wonderful married relationship . . . I was lost in my status as part of a couple, not an individual whose life was being enhanced by a wonderful partner. The result was devastation and the feeling of being lost and alone in a cold world when he died.

For the first time since JR died, I am feeling empowered and content being alone with no prospect of a future partner to share my life with. Finally, my future is not to be feared, rather eagerly anticipated . . . a new adventure.

All because I love myself now . . . I have accepted myself, even with my many flaws. It has taken me six years to get to this place in life. No longer do I beat myself up because I am alone and have not found the one God chose for me. (I still have my bad moments though.) The chosen one will accept me and love me as I am at any moment when the time is right . . . if there is another one chosen for me.

A loving relationship should not be an exhaustive effort to conform, rather it should be a breathless excitement that feels awesome from both sides just because you are both yourselves and the butterflies in your stomach are for that reason, not because of who either of you will be in the future. If you have to change to make the other person happy, you end up letting yourself down for allowing yourself to do so . . . even if you wanted to make those changes to begin with.

Do it for yourself . . . dump the ones who will never make you happy since you never know when that bar is gonna get raised again. A no-win romantic situation is not healthy. Love yourself enough to recognize the “right one”.

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Express love

When I finally found that man who loved me unconditionally and realized that we could share a lifetime together in peace, love and happiness, I had no problem telling him how much I loved him.

My heart had been broken waiting and waiting for the one who never came back from the military and I always blamed myself for having too much pride and not letting him know how I really felt about him . . . how madly in love I was. When I fell in love with my husband, I was not about to lose him for the lack of him knowing how I felt because of so many regrets I was feeling about the other guy.

There are differing degrees of love . . . and they are all important . . . all of them must be expressed often and appreciated for the jewels that they are. 

Love is the one thing the human spirit and money can’t control, but it can be nurtured for the beauty that it is.

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