The Phoenix

Beautiful, glorious, and sacrificing self for renewal, you build a pyre and set yourself ablaze. For the sake of self.

Red bird of fire you come forth through your ashes a new bird shedding the old self which no longer is needed.

You embrace your new strength and fly to the heights of the sky to the city of the sun and give the ashes unto the alter of the sun god for your immortality.

Embrace your self for you are a child of the sun and will live eternal through birth, death and renewal.

Your spirit never dies.

Rebecca Wiles

My Dearest, when I read this, it reminded me of where we are and all that we have been through. I do believe that we rise from this experience stronger, wiser, and much deeper...both as individuals and collectively in this soul partnership. I have taken this opportunity to grow and have risen from the ashes a new man, capable of so much more than the boy that you married.

I love you truly, madly, deeply...

Love Is...

Love isn't an act, it's a whole life.

It's staying with her now because you need one another;

It's knowing that you and she will still care about each other when sex and daydreams, fights and futures, when all that's on the shelf and done with...

Love, why I'll tell you what love is: it's you at seventy-eight and her at seventy-one, each of you listening for the other's step in the next room, each afraid that a sudden silence, a sudden cry, could mean a lifetime's talk is over.

--Brian Moore

Beautiful...

When I tell you how beautiful you are, I am commenting on much more than what a mirror would project...for the image that I am admiring goes way further than skin deep.

I see an ocean of love in which I long to take endless swims, blue as your eyes on a Summer's afternoon.

I see doves flying high into the sky, reminding me of the peace that you are...long after the drama of the day's events has unfolded and been put to rest.

I hear the playfulness and the joyful laughter underneath the seriousness that we often create in the effort of achieving our Earthly goals.

When looking at you, I feel a comfort or deja vu of the way you looked and felt when we frollicked together in heaven's garden and agreed once more to embark in a human journey of living, growing, changing, loving, experiencing and understanding.

I see God in all of her perfection; blue skies, fluffy clouds, flowing rivers, sparkling seas, beautiful mountain tops, the changing of the seasons...Summer rains tapping on rooftops as our bodies lay entangled underneath.

Pictures of fiery horses running through Irish fields of green...the nobility that we had and shared in other times, places, and life experiences here.

I aknowledge your magnificent spiritual presence in all of its glory; the unwavering truth and unadulturated piece of this interconnected universe to which I too am attached.

In you, I see my salvation, my return to divinity, a oneness with God and Spirit, my pathway to knowing myself and honoring myself so as to know you and honor you just the same.

When I tell you how beautiful you are, it is my soul speaking to yours in a language that goes much further than how you may look at any given moment...I am letting you know of the overwhelming beauty I feel in my heart for all things good that you have brought into my life.

I love you truly, madly, deeply...my Dearest...

~David

My Dearest is a Superstar...

My Baby is a superstar and she doesn't even know it.

They fall at her feet in admiration of what she does, yet her sight never meets the floor to notice.

The room lights up when she walks in, gazes affixed as she walks by...(sometimes this makes it tough to be the husband :) )

She's really funny, yet keeps this hidden from those that don't know her well.

She could tame a wild animal with her Southern Charm and uses this like a weapon on me daily...I'm just no match for her!

Her music captivates so many and provides healing guidance for those that seek her assistance but she focuses not on the masses, but only on the one that sits in front of her at any given moment.

She calls herself "underground" so as to avoid the aknowledgement of noteriety. The stage could be hers, but take it she does not.

My Baby is a superstar...and me, her biggest groupie!

Another Sleepless Night

Another sleepless night last night but one always worth enduring for my heart and my soul rests with My Dearest, who remains so angry and disappointed with me. Abandonment is the feeling but I go where my heart tells me to go, say what my heart tells me must be said, and give love the way my heart instructs me to.

It is a good feeling to respond in love and to know that love is the only choice...yet certainly a challenge to ignore the fear that tries to creep into the mind when the one you love is pushing you away. My ego has no place in this situation and I give it no power.

I am blessed in this life for all that I have around me which brings me constant joy. I am blessed to be married to my best friend and to be so loved by someone, that she is willing to push through the pain so that we can grow and ultimately try and remain together.

Thank you Spirit for finding me, for filling me, for being my source of strength when I fear that there is none and a source of peace when chaos is everywhere to be found. Thank you Universe for the warmth that fills my heart in even the coldest of moments, just in knowing that this, too shall pass. Thank you God for helping me to accept the things I cannot change while giving me the courage to change the things I can.

I am eternally grateful...and your servant forever more.

To Those I Have Hurt...

This year is living proof that life's toughest times inspire the most growth. For it is in the most tumultuous year of my marriage that I discovered who I am, who my wife truly is and why I love her so much. It is as if I was sleepwalking through much of the last decade, living life and emotion on the very surface...never really diving down to see the beauty and sometimes the darkness of what was underneath. For we are driven by the very depths of our subconcious, where our strongest desires and fears reside and ultimately determine our actions and the resulting perceptions of success and failure...with the scariest thing about this being that we rarely see our biggest tragedies or mistakes while we are in the midst of them.

I wish it hadn't taken utter chaos in my life to wake me up to the beauty that I had around me, but such is the plight of all of humanity. It is often our bottom that allows us the opportunity for spiritual transformation to see things in a different light and create "new life" where pain and suffering previously existed. My life is a miracle and becomes more of a miracle with every passing day. Little by little, I source out the thoughts and and behaviors that have brought me pain and simply remove them from my life. I suppose that's how we should always live our lives, but I must have lost the instruction manual and frankly never been one that was patient enough to sit down and read a manual anyway. To summarize what it would probably say, is that it is our very thoughts and behaviors that create our experience and the quality of our relationships...tough thoughts bring tough times and thus my ill perceptions have made a mess of our lives over the past few years.

So nearly one year after I turned our family's lives upside down, I have the following:

To my wife and three little girls whom I have taken for granted, I am deeply sorry for a year of great pain and uncertainty that I selfishly and arrogantly thrust upon us. This extends to all who are close to us and deeply love us as well, who have also had to watch and experience pain on their own level. To My Dearest Elizabeth and soulmate, I am humbled by the strength that you have shown in holding it all together despite the many times that you probably wondered how and if you could. I will forever look upon our little family and see you as the glue that binds. You have "walked the walk" of  loyalty and integrity in this marriage and served as an unwavering example of courage and will through adversity. I learn from you each and every day and I appreciate you from the bottom of my heart.

I now wake up every morning and see the the miracle of my life, the miracle of all that I have been blessed with, the miracle of My Dearest Elizabeth...the miracle that I intend to honor, to nurture, to protect from this day forwrad for all the days that she will have me.

I love you and deeply appreciate you.

~D

What If ??

My Dearest,

What if, when we held each other, our flesh

became consciousness itself?

What if our flesh commingled
became the mother of light
and sound, the vast word,
the ocean forgotten at birth?

What if, when we held each other,
the skin between us slipped away,
and our old exasperated tongues
turned into everything that heals,
into one long kiss, the kiss that started
when the universe began.



What if, when we held each other,
nothing survived but one shared breath,
nothing survived but the sweet odors
of gentle and tempestuous love,
nothing survived but our sensual hearts
singing the only song there is.

What if when we held each other
we danced in that very moment of Now
and forgot all other moments before.

What if we lived every moment like that
in life and love's embrace?
no moments before, no moments after,
just the instant which the universe had blessed
us with no promise of future instants to be granted.

Sure......

Can I trust you, she asked...

Towering over me with only the flickering light of a candle illuminating her gourgeous angel features and associated expressions........the curves of her eyes, her cheeks, and soft lips, matched with a glowing of the skin on her naked body, matching that of her naked and vulnerable mind, which doesn't often enough allow such a question....



Sure as the sun will rise for every new day, I shall listen to you, hear your voice, and rise to meet your every need...


Sure as the winds move across the ocean's surface, so shall I always move across our own distances in love...and always toward you...


Sure as the sky turns gray, then blue...so shall my love weather all storms that come our way...


Sure as the stars shine brightly in the clear night sky, so shall my heart shine brightly as it bares your name... and only your name...even now it whispers your name as it beats to give me life.


Sure as the montain stands tall over the rivers and valleys below so shall I stand and watch over you...protecting you, never leaving your side...not ever again...


Sure as the cleansing rains are sent to nourish all that depend on it, so shall I provide for and support you, who often, but not always depends on me.


Sure as the tides ebb and flow with the changing energy of the moon, so shall my love remain flexible to your many moons and changing energy...


Sure as our feet find eachother easch and every night, no matter the state thta we may have been in while falling asleep, shall i find you no matter where your ego may mistakenly tell you to run and hide...

...and as her tears rained down upon my chest last night, they carried with it a message from her soul to mine...a message of wanting to trust me, yet aknowledging the delicate process to arriving there. This is where I stand in the fire no matter the heat, ignoring my own ego and allowing my own vulnerability. 


Can I trust you, she asked?


I'm Sure....

11.22 - A Heavenly Number and Birthday of an Angel

It is on this very day 33 years ago that My Dearest Angel opened her eyes and took her first breath. And it would be many breathes later that she would walk into my life and change it forever more. She would bring joy that I would have never known otherwise and wisdom through both pleasure and pain that could only be experienced through the deepest of loves...for it is only out of deep love that we grow through our challenges as opposed to drift apart.

My Dearest, I am humbled by your beauty, by the very thoughts of what your being in my life truly means to me and by what we have created in our 12 years spent loving one another. Even more humbling is how I have watched you change many other's lives, those that come to you for peace, love, and strength in their most desperate of times.

So it is on this day 11.22 that I raise my glass to you in clebration of not only all that you have done to change my life, but how you continue to change the world in your own special way...one soul at a time.

I love you, My Dearest Angel...truly, madly, deeply.

Holding You Closely - Loving You Deeply

My Dearest,

You have brought so much into my world and often without effort...for it wasn't until I met you that I opened the door for so many wonderful things to enter into my life, which I wouldn't have experienced otherwise.

You are the one who would start me on this journey of becoming a man although it wouldn't be an easy road and would take a lot of patience.

Maybe you knew that when you signed up for this assignment...knew that you would have to hold back and save your strength for the challenges that we would one day face and have to conquer in order to stay together.

I look back with admiration at the various times in our lives where you rose up and showed strength that seemed beyond that of the girl that I fell in love with. It seems that "Girl" no longer does you justice and even feels uncomfortable as it leaves my lips...it is the strength of a woman that I see whan I look at you today.

You are the strongest woman that I've ever had in my life...I can cite your strength in knowing how you have battled your ego, your own limits, your hidden desires...to stay in this place with me.

It is through this journey and through your love that I feel the man appearing as I admire the woman that you have become. In this very state of battle-weariness, I have learned the true meaning of life, love, and Spirit and how they relate with one another. And through these struggles, I have grown to know how to love completely, wholly, and without fear.

My Dearest, I give you my life, my heart and want you to know from the very depths of my soul that I am truly madly and deeply in love with you. In love with every part of you...the triumphs, the struggles. I understand you and know you from the inside out and shower you in unconditional love and light, wrapping you up and protecting you with my newly strong arms...holding you ever so close to me, warming you with the heat that is generated from the very beating of my heart...a heart that beats for you.

All of my love...David

A Different Kind of Amazing

The first words uttered to My Dearest when I met her 12 years ago was that she was AMAZING...she was amazingly beautiful, an amazing dancer, had an amazing air about her which I couldn't quite grasp other than to know that I wanted to breathe that air along with her.

She is all that today, but AMAZING has taken on a much stronger and greater meaning. When I first saw her, I didn't know all that she had overcome to bring her to the place where we first met. I didn't know the tough, strong decisions that accompanied her journey, the challenging pathways she had traveled, the roads that she had taken that I, myself, don't know if I would have been able to endure. I had my own roads of course, but hers were much rockier and with an unfair adversity attached.

When you look at My Dearest, who I and many others refer to as "supermodel pretty", you'd just never envision the cast-iron will and strength that she is made of. The will and strength that has pushed me so far beyond my own comfort zone to grow, change, and achieve...the same courage that keeps us together today after a storm of epic proportions, the integrity that serves as a mirror for me to reflect and learn from. Her strength has taught me to BELIEVE in things that my eyes can't see and to TRUST in things that my mind can't seem to envision or grasp otherwise. Her FORGIVENESS is something that she has extended to me for my wrongs where many others would surely have failed. She has shown me what FAMILY looks like as she has given me hers and what FATHERHOOD looks like as she has birthed our three children. Without her, I don't know that I would have known either...

Some of us closest to My Dearest refer to her as a little lazy given her love to sleep and roll around in the sheets through the morning hours. We even pick on her for her huge appetite for creative information and networking that she acheives through the internet and her many electronic gadgets; but how could "lazy" fit the work that she has done to arrive here today, the glue that she represents which keeps our family together, the willingness to show up everyday to help others with no materials other than Spirit and Faith passing through her like radio waves through an antenna. We all have our work, our contributions to this Universe and to our own little families and surrounds...and I now recognize how AMAZING My Dearest's collection of work, through her young life, contributes to the greatest good of this world, and particularly in my own small world. Like many of us, she often gets paralized thinking and wondering what her potential is...but not realizing that she has risen up many times in her life and achieved greatness. Thus, in a time when she feels as if she isn't achieving anything, to me she is overcoming and accomplishing everything in spite of what has been thrown her way.

Elizabeth, today you continue to show me AMAZING...and I love you more today than ever before. Thank you for being YOU and for all of your hard work. You saved my life...and now I shall mirror your AMAZING and GREATNESS back for you to see.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?' Actually, who are we not to be? You are a child of God: your playing small doesn't serve the world.

Nelson Mandela

Your Heart

My Dearest,

A famous poem to let you know where my heart is today and likewise where yours is as well. I love you and shall never let anything come between us (or our hearts) from here forward.

You are the love of my life...

I carry your heart with me(I carry it in my heart)

I am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)

I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)

I want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)

And it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart(I carry it in my heart)

E.E. Cummings

An Invitation

My Dearest...I have been afraid of living, afraid of loving, afraid of giving myself to you; all the while asking you to live, love, and give yourself to me.

I have asked you to abandon the walls that surround your heart without fully abandoning my own.

I have held onto pain and darkness and allowed fear to invade me to the point of losing myself and all that I stand for.

When my pain got the best of me, I avoided asking you to help me through it...thinking that your fears and your pain would only seek to shame me for my own.

I have looked for reasons to be annoyed, angry, or depressed instead of counting my many blessings and reasons to be happy.

I have been human...I have been humbled...and I've witnessed my own Hell as a result of allowing ego to rule my world. With this pain, I step into a place of tremendous personal growth and am finding a strengthening of Spirit that is helping me to grow with every passing day. A strength that has shown me how and why to fully love, give, and trust in all. As I grow and I look at our life and our love with a renewed and enlightened vision, I give to you the following Invitation with no expectations other than for you to know how truly and deeply I love you...

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living

I want to know what you ache for

and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love

for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon...

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow

if you have been opened by life's betrayals

or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain

mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade itor fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day.

And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine

and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon,"Yes."

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be doneto feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

---Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Finding Spirit, Finding Love, Finding Myself

When we fall, why do we often fall so far?

Its easy to know when our paths have taken us away from Spirit but yet so tough to understand why we can't stop ourselves from some of our greatest crashes.

Its almost as if the very circumstances that lead to our demise are also the very things that cloud our judgement and thinking by just enough so as to not be able to truly see ourselves falling or see ourselves straying from the path. We all know the feeling of being at the bottom and being sure that we didn't reach the bottom on our own account...everyone else was to blame, of course.

But when we finally quit the blame game and realize that we don't have to blame ourselves nor anyone else for that matter, we see that the only importance is today and getting back up and getting back on the spiritual path. The path of love never left us...It was we that left the path. We left the path because our ego told us that our rules were more important than the guidance of Spirit. The crash is simply a reminder to us of how far we may have strayed from that path and to remind us that the goodness / oneness of living in Spirit still exists and is waiting for our return. The harder the crash, the further away we stepped from our highest selves.

I'm so plugged into Spirit right now that I feel like I am starting to sparkle from the inside. My eyes water every hour or so from a cocktail made up from the the goodness that I feel and yet also from the sadness in knowing what I have put My Dearest through during this "Crisis of Spirit". I am humiliated, embarrassed, and ashamed to a great degree; but, am less defined and reactive from those feelings with every passing day. It feels like a hangover of sorts that reminds you that you never want to repeat the unspiritual binge that gave you this great headache and nausea that accompanies you this morning.

I feel as though through much of my marriage, I have withheld. I withheld myself in order to assure that My Dearest didn't get more of me than I got of her. I think a lot of us play this game and I even think My Dearest plays it as well...but this is where failure begins. It's where our efforts to minimize the damage to our egos caused by a failure of a relationship actually result in the failure that we so dearly want to avoid. Okay, My Dearest, this is where I shamefully admit that I am a game player...but this is also where I end the game for myself, for you, and ultimately for our family. I don't need to receive any longer as a premise to giving. After committing to this and living it for a couple of months, I actually feel like it is so much easier to just completely put myself out there in love than it is to withhold myself in fear. Does it feel completely safe? No, it doesn't. Am I a little fearful on occasion and is my ego constantly trying to force its way back into my marriage? Yes, every single day.

But when I look at where My Dearest and I have come to in playing the "me, myself, and I game", I really don't feel that I have anything to lose by shifting focus completely to her needs and far away from my own (my group would have a field day with this one!!!). I also realize that my fears of giving myself whole-heartedly to somebody aren't arising out of anything that My Dearest has done, but from having given myself to my parents as a child and ultimately feeling as though they abandoned me. After all, don't we as children give ourselves, our safety, our security, our love completely to our caretakers for safekeeping? My parents are wonderful and they did the best that they could; and far better than what they received from their caretakers. I wouldn't change these tough feelings and actually I can't...but I now understand how those feelings have driven every decision made in my life ever since (the good decisions and the bad), inclusive of who I chose to spend the rest of my life with. My Dearest had me from the very words "I want to take care of you" and that was no coincidence nor accident that she spoke those important words to me. I still believe that she wants to take care of me...and even after all these years and all that we have been through.

It is as if I have been holding my breathe for 2 decades and finally being allowed to inhale...the force with which the Universe has opened the door and opened my eyes to see why we love, how we love and even what love truly it is. My head is spinning and my pulse alive with realizing how I got to this place and my heart confident in knowing how to stay on the path of Spirit in my marriage and all of my relationships from this day forward.

I can't change the past...but I can promise myself and My Dearest to make the future so beautiful and so lovely that we would be remiss to ever want to focus on what's behind us. I cretaed some beauty and I created some lovely today.

Tomorrow I create some more...

Far From Home

Business travel has taken me away from My Dearest which has become a HUGE challenge for me. I have anxiety around traveling away from my family and the burden of this weighs heavily on my heart and on my psyche. Our current trust issues compound this anxiety and it makes for a true challenge for me mentally. My Dearest is stressed because I am leaving and she doesn't feel that she can trust me away from home and I am stressed because I need support from her to "send me off", of which she cannot give me in struggling with her own void in dealing with my travels. It hurts...it hurts both of us in our different positions and we are thus working hard around this and through this.

If only My Dearest could see the "little boy" that I become when I am far from home...the longing to be able to feel her sleeping next to me, to hear her voice in the room, to see her typing away on her little computer. The counting down of minutes until I am back on a plane headed home. The nervousness of being on the plane and wondering what they would do without me should my plane fall out of the sky...craziness I know...but travel makes me think this way. I am here supposed to be working diligently and feel that I am just "faking it until I make it"...all the while longing to be elsewhere.

I know that these trips away from home serve as little windows of what life would be like without the privilege of waking up next to one another each morning for the rest of our lives and I am appreciative of this opportunity for spiritual growth in the form of appreciation. But God, give me strength. Throw me a vine that may serve as an alternative to this in the form of a greater career opportunity and one that keeps me warm in my own bed each night next to My Dearest and in the same house with my children. I have spent these days thinking of ways that I can be a stronger and greater leader for my family and thus the time has not been wasted.

Blessed am I for the beautiful life that I have, for it is this with this life and through life's challenges that I find spiritual growth when I am ready for it. The challeges always come at the point in time that I ask for growth and so the Universe is delivering as expected.

I Met a Mermaid This Week

I met a mermaid this week...

She had long brown hair and the figure of a goddess. Her eyes were electric blue against the backdrop of the beautiful ocean, but with a fire in them that remains unmatched of any eyes that I have seen in my days. As I came upon her in the water, I reached out to her and we embraced in the salty surrounds as the ever-moving ocean kissed both of our bodies.

She was soft to the touch as I held her close to my body, yet strong as the awesome force of the waves that I know so dearly, having spent much time in the ocean. She playfully swam away from me on occasion as if to declare her independence, but always returned so as not to allow distance to spoil our rendezvous under the sun.

She giggled a lot and the sound of that laughter made my heart smile and had my senses dancing with every echoing tone of her voice. We ducked under the waves together and hid underneath the water's surface...more laughter as we would come up for air as I would have to breathe if I were to stay in my human reality and not permanently slip away into the ocean blue along with her.

At night, we danced on the beach in the latest of hours under the moon and the stars, the wind blowing her hair in many directions and the starlight glistening in her eyes as we spoke to one another...mermaid language being the language of love, of course...and this carried on until nearly dawn.

I spent several days with her, never venturing too far from the ocean and her safety...

Duty has now taken me away from the beach...away from her and this morning, I am without without her shimmering and glistening skin to look upon and admire, without those firey blue eyes from which I am able to draw so much power from, without her silky voice and the laughs that make my heart sing.

I am sad and feel empty...and long to return to her...and the ocean. When will I see her again? When will my heart dance again?

The mermaid was My Dearest...Elizabeth.

Asking for Miracles - Lost and Found

Sometimes we ask for miracles not really knowing what that miracle will look like nor when it might arrive. The Universe has a funny way of delivering when and how you least expect it. There are many miracles in my life and I suppose I asked for all them in one way or another and in keeping with Universal Law, those things that were asked for just sort of migrated their way into my life, caring little about my timeline for arrival either expressed or implied when putting my request in.

I must say that sometimes the Universe can surprise us and seem to deliver in a bigger, grander fashion than we could sometimes even try to imagine or put our minds around. My Dearest and I had an amazing experience last weekend in our quest to find a miracle and so I felt the need after a hiatus from blogging to share this experience to help get myself back on track.

My Dearest and I have been "doing the work" so to speak of trying to find trust again after my betrayal, which is a challenge to say the least. Many exhausting conversations have been had in an effort of picking up the pieces and trying to salvage our relationship. After a couple of hours of some painful talking the other morning at the lake, I sort of threw my hands up in frutration asking My Dearest, "What do you need, what are you expecting to happen before you can truly move forward from this".

Her reply, a very cute one...but one that caught me off guard was, "A Miracle!". My Dearest needed a miracle to heal her heart and who could expect any less, right?? So I think to myself and realize that the only problem is I'm not qualified to deliver a miracle which clearly takes this out of my hands. Nonetheless, I told her "well then lets go make a miracle today"...was the best answer I could come up with although I don't mind sharing with you that I could feel the beads of sweat starting to form on my forehead in knowing the great task at hand and my likely impotence at delivering.

So I prayed...no secret that I prayed for a miracle, any miracle, THE MIRACLE that My Dearest needs to be reflective of some sign or endorsement to build some faith and trust upon. Ive been praying a lot lately and with good results, but I must say that on this day I would do exceptionally well as someone in the heavens was smiling upon me and My Dearest Love.

So we head out on the boat with family and friends to do some wakeboarding and hang out at cool island in the middle of the lake known as Pine Island. I'm the first to wakeboard behind the boat and so I jump in the water but quickly realize that my wedding ring and necklace is still on and so I swim back to the boat to hand them to my Brother in Law to put away. Needless to say my wife has a panic attack while I am handing them off in 30 foot of murky water, knowing that with one slip...those precious items would be lost forever. She was very vocal about this and I didn't blame her although tehre was certainly some bite to her advice!

So we make it Pine Island later and we are hanging out throwing footballs and frisbees, letting the kids play and swim around and I migrated my way over to where My Dearest was standing. I noticed right off that her anniversary bands were on her finger but her wedding ring was missing and so I brought that to her attention. The bewilderment in her face at that moment was not comforting and we both immediately jumped in the boat to scarmble around looking for her ring. I had seen it on her finger in the water earlier and so I think we both felt in our minds that it wasn't going to be found in the boat. More specifically, in my mind, the ring was at the bottom of the lake somehere and flat out wasn't going to be found. While she is looking around, my knees are buckling and I'm starting to wonder what this may be a sign of...Dear Universe...what are you trying to tell me?? My mind is racing and I am telling Elizabeth that the ring is gone with practically no chance of finding it. My Dearest is even starting to go so far as apologizing for the lost ring...the one that we are both wondering if we are likely to ever find.

If you know anything about my wife, it is that she is relentless...and so she quickly directs our family and friends to start stirring around the lake with their feet. We are in a HUGE lake and a huge recreational area consisting of many thousands of gallons of murky water over a clay and sand bottom. My brother in law is starting to quote the rediculous statistics about this ring ever being found again and within thirty seconds, our eldest daughter reaches down and pulls up from the muddy bottom of the lake one platinum and diamond wedding ring stopping my brother in law in mid sentence of his "impossible statistics". The ring was found...My Dearest starts shouting with joy "its a miracle, its a miracle" and all I could think of was the impossibility of this happening on this day when I should ask for a miracle and one that would symbolize my wife's and my commitment to one another. I shouted to my wife who was running to reclaim her ring,

"Honey, remember what we asked for??"

Her face lit up and I think the finding of the ring at that moment became more than just a miracle, it became OUR miracle. A miracle that symbolized that we had lost our way and have been found. A miracle that reminds us to never give up hope. A miracle that tells me that peace and affirmation is sometimes closer than we think and can be delivered just by simply asking for it and affirming that it be done. This is our miracle to build and grow upon. Our miracle to symbolize that we have more work to do together on this Earth...a miracle that strengthens my relationship with my One and Only Love...My Dearest Elizabeth.

Fear or Love...Destruction or Creation?

Fear is destruction...Fear is only as real as I may think it is and lasts only for as long as I hold unto it. Fear can be the theif of a life and the killer of a soul, but is dispelled the minute one takes action to face it head on and / or decide to let it go. Once we place fears aside, we realize that what held us captive were simply what we fed our mind and it really had no power over us...only what we gave it. To let fear go can best be described as "freedom".

To love is to live and to love is the essence of human existence; we cannot function without love and even further can die without it. Love creates; it touches the very core of our being and gives us the unseen force to believe, to grow, to try, to change, to give, to be. Love is faith and love is empowering. To some degree we've all had a taste of what it means to love and be loved unconditionally; yet it often doesn't remain alive and strong and certainly as we move away from creation (love) and toward destruction (fear). We've all made decisions based out of fear and damaged things that were dear to us. Nonetheless, in the midst of destruction, love is a mere decision or choice away...the decision...simply to release the fear or release the destructive force that is keeping us from loving and start to create again.

Freedom from the fear of failure, rejection and the unknown makes room for love and faith to grow. But without the release or dismissal of fear, love is smothered, cannot bloom and reach its full potential. Love, faith and fear cannot dwell together, one will always over-power the other, with that power coming from the force that one decides to feed. Fear is always seeking to paralyze our thinking as is the force of love and faith always seeking to strengthen and free us.

My Dearest, as I pull these words together, I work tirelessly to stay in a place of love and likewise work with the same effort to hold your hand and pull you close to me...so as to keep you in the same place. I miss you when fear takes you away from me and aknowledge my responsibility for bringing you those fears although it is only you that can ultimately let those fears go and allow our love in its place. Please don't close the door to love. We have important things to create and deliver to our home and to our family, to our Monday Night Classroom!!!

All of My Love...David

The Only Therapy I Need is Spirit

So much has changed of late and I have been remiss not to catalogue all of my feelings along the way, so here goes...

My Dearest and I just spent the most fantastic week of our lives in Paris where we lived like French people and breathed in the French air while exhaling all that we had gone through over the past year at home. We renewed our vows on our tenth wedding anniversary in the Eiffel Tower Park as the Tower sparkled in the background. We dined on bread, cheese, wine, and crepes and allowed ourselves to be captivated by the history of the region and all of its glamour. The Eiffel now ingrained in my psyche as a symbol of light.

It has been a tough road to get where we are, but with every step a building block to a stronger us. I find myself more in love with My Dearest than I have ever been, more understanding of who she is and why she is the person that I so dearly love, and most respectful of her strength as a partner, a friend, and lover. Words cannot fairly describe the pain that I have put her through and the many reasons that I have given her to run...of which she endured with a grace that I have seen from none other in my life. She stood by me and our family when so many were calling for her to do the opposite and surely with her own heart doing the calling on many sleepless nights and anxious days. It's weird how roles reverse as I once considered myself the rock in our relationship and all of a sudden I am viewing her as our solid foundation with an awe-stricken gratitude felt at the very depths of my soul. She has sheltered me and our relationship in this time of intense weather...picked me up, dried me off and pulled me back onto our path while letting me know that she wouldn't ever be able to muster up the energy to do the same ever again. I love her for this...

I have left a support group that I had reconnected with in favor of standing on my own two feet and choosing Spirit as my guide...as opposed to seeking guidance from external sources that are just as human as I. In my renewed commitment to my wife (and self), I vowed to abandon any and all things that didn't support our goals of "one-ness" and my heart was telling me that my support group was more interested in labeling me and / or my relationship than strengthening it...more intersted in analysis than healing. Thus, overall, I am making a commitment to choose Spirit and Strength rather than declare that I am broken and "my life unmanageable". My life is manageable albeit with good decisions and friends / family to talk to when times are tough. Therapy was good for analyzing how I got here, but won't serve me or provide the kind of nourishment that I need for the road ahead. Nourishment will come from prayer, meditation, and listening to my Spirit Guides as they breathe life into me and help me to get back on the road to fulfilling my greatest potential. I used to be really good at listening to my heart and somewhere that got lost long the way. Just like riding a bike, I have once again started listening to my heart as sliding doors and forks in the road approach.

My Dearest's family and I had a very inspiring talk to put this ordeal behind us...a talk that was very painful but one that begun the process of healing that is required for us to find and nourish the love that we shared amongst each other prior to the distance that I created in my actions. I took turns listening to the ways in which I had disappointed each of them and hurt them and at the same time was handed their forgiveness. We vowed to become our own support group to be called upon when either of us appears to be headed for a train wreck. As we all have our stuff and can veer off path when life's challenges become too much to handle, this was a bold idea in favor of strengthening our family and assuring that each of us as individual links in the chain have a support system around us that won't allow failure. This is Spirit and I am lucky to have so much of it around me to draw upon as I fill myself up and step into the light.

May the light wash all of the shadows away and cleanse us of our painful memories to begin anew.

Fighting Through the Armour - Trying To Find You

Sometimes its really difficult to tell the one that you love most in the world how devoted you are to them when you have made such painful mistakes that might imply the opposite.

Its just as difficult to tell the most beautiful girl in the world how beautiful she is when you have mistakenly described another as being beautiful...

Nonetheless, My Dearest, I love you from the bottom of my heart, inside and out and that love is as strong as it has ever been. There is no greater respect or admiration than that which I have for you, your pain, your endurance and patience.

You are the most beautiful person that I have ever laid eyes on...even in your pain although its really tough knowing that when you drift into that pain, you are agonizing over where I have taken our relationship and the challenges that we are enduring as a result. This is excruciating for me to take and gets tougher on me with each passing day.

You are a devoted mother to our children...devoted wife and friend to me. I appreciate every day that you have been in my life even though there were times when I got lost and abandoned our relationship, failing to aknowledge who you are and what you mean to me.

You are a comfort to all of those that seek your spiritual advice and understanding in their darkest of times and I am glad to have you near me in my darkest hour for the same. It is a privilege to be your husband, to wake up next to you each morning no matter the difficulties involved in the day or evening before as we struggle through our pain to build a greater understanding of one another and thus a greater friendship, love, and ultimately a trust that can only come with time.

I love you, My Dearest with a love that is greater than any other although I can't and won't expect you to be able to take that at face value given the circumstances. My actions through time will show you my commitment and devotion to you and our family. I appreciate you for all thta you are and all thta you are battling through.

All of my Love.....