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.