A Nightly Visitor

Just when I thought I was about to sleep all night without interruption from the 3’5” person who runs our household, our bedroom door flyes open at 5:00 am.  For the fifth night in a row, in comes Franki.  She’s already had a good nine hours of sleep, so in her words, “it’s morning time, mommy!  Time to get up”!  Well, it may be morning time, but I’m not ready to get up and neither am I as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as she is in this moment.  I help her up into our bed and she slips in beside me in spite of her previous announcement that it’s time to get up.  She does her best to be still…well, no, not really.  She squirms about and I feel her toe nails scraping my leg, then ever so gently down my back.  She puts her head on my pillow, then on my head…apparently the pillow isn’t quite as comfortable as my noggin.   She hums, “the wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round”.  She rubs her suce (French for soother or pacifier) repeatedly on her nose, then on the back of my head, then proceeds to ask me if I want it.  Afterall, she does have three of them to share.

What I really want right now is to sleep.  What I really want right now is for Franki to settle down, be quiet, lay still and go to sleep.   What I want is for her to stay in her bed rather than crawl into mine at 5:00 am.  What I really want is for her to behave in a way that would be conducive for me to sleep.   What I want is for her to conduct herself in a way that pleases me, so that I can feel good.  I want to express my displeasure in such a way that she’ll understand that I’m not happy with her behavior and she’ll do exactly what I want her to do which is to settle down, be quiet and let me sleep. 

Instead, I realize that it’s my job to align and to feel differently first; before I speak.  What I know is that if I speak to her from that place of feeling irritated and frustrated and holding her responsible for how I feel right now, I’m offering conditional love – needing her to be different and needing what-is to change so that I can feel better.  I’m also aware that as I offer that conditional love, I begin the process of training her to please me and others as opposed to following her own guidance.  The more I do that, she begins to interpret that she’s inappropriate or wrong and therefore needs to adjust to gratify me. 

I take some deep breaths; I align with my dominant intention for her...which is to allow her to be whoever she is; I decide I want to feel better, regardless of what she’s doing and regardless of how little sleep I get.  I focus on her body squirming next to mine; the warmth, the vitality, the well-being.  I feel appreciation that she’s so vibrant and happy.  I feel appreciation that she’s with me; that she likes being next to me; that she offered me her most prized object…her suce.  I feel appreciation for being mom to this most amazing little girl.  I make a decision that I’m just happy that to have her here; sleep or no sleep.  I feel appreciation for myself; for taking the time to feel better rather than uttering words in a moment of displeasure.  I find myself really glad that Franki has decided to join us, squirming or not. 

Because I wanted to feel better and I knew that it was solely my responsibility to do that, I focused myself right into feeling joy for this moment in time; a condition that just a few short minutes ago, I felt irritation about.  Within minutes of me reaching for and finding a better-feeling place, Franki settled down and fell asleep.  It didn’t matter to me…I was just happy to have her beside me. 

The Best Thing That's Ever Happened To Me

I’m laying in bed next to Franki, looking up at the stars and the moon reflecting on her ceiling from the night light turtle on her dresser.  I turn my head to look at her and think, “you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me”. 

 And while I bask in that thought and that feeling, Jack comes into my awareness and I think, “you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me”.  My thoughts flow easily and freely and in flows my ex-husband and my divorce from him, then comes the idea of mom leaving when I was three and my dad being the way he was as I grew up and my step-mom and step-dad and the bankruptcy and the events of my life; all flowing freely into my mind’s eye appearing as snapshots of monumental life moments.

 I feel more deeply than I’ve ever felt before, the utter perfection of all of my life just exactly as it has unfolded; each moment leading up to the next, all of it unfolding to my benefit in such excellence to lead me to who I am.  I hold the belief that everything always works out to my benefit and that without the knowledge from a personal life experience, I wouldn’t know so clearly what I prefer.  There’s rightness in every moment; there’s flawlessness in every experience.

From each one of those experiences that could have been interpreted as “bad”,  I came to understand things about myself with more depth than I would have ever discovered.  The people, the timing of things, the events and the way they played out to match my point of attraction…none of it could have been, or could be, more perfect.   There truly is perfection in every moment.  Nothing is ever going wrong; everything is always going right.  I trust and know that whatever I create next is the best thing that’s ever happened to me because everything is the best thing that’s ever happened, or happening, to me….

Bounce Away....

Franki and I were in the party store, and as she eagerly picked a ball up to bounce it, I said out loud,(not just in my head),“Franki, don’t bounce the ball in the store, ok”?  With precision timing, a friend that I haven’t seen in a while appeared and said, “what fun would that be?  We are in a party store”!

I like having fun and I like to play and I like being silly, and in that moment, I was focused on something other than having fun.   The simplicity of her statement helped me recognize that I was operating on “auto-pilot” under the guise of some sort of a rule for appropriate behavior in a party store.  Here is this child, zealous about life, seeing every place as an opportunity for play, filled with delight at the sight of these balls, and I, the “reasonable and rule-bound adult” in her life, asking her not to bounce a ball in a party store?!?  I recognized the irony of what I was saying and I immediately grabbed a bouncy ball and bounced it myself.  There are rules to play by and there are socially acceptable behaviors to which we comply and live by, but in every case I want to encourage Franki’s play and love of life and mostly, her freedom within any self-imposed boundary that I or anyone else has established.  Every day I find myself asking this question, “how can I be more flexible” and every day, I give myself opportunities to be just that.  I know my child and I know that she’s not destructive or disrespectful of other people’s property and I know that in that moment, she demonstrated and provided me with an opportunity to be more flexible.  And why would I bounce a ball in a store, a party store of all things???  Because it’s fun.  Go give it try….

What a difference a poopie makes

You’ve heard the saying, “what a difference a day makes”….???  Well, I’m making up a new saying, “what a difference a poopie makes”.  And, what does this have to do with you?  I’ll get to that….

Franki, “before poop” and “after poop” is a totally different person.   Before poop and constipated, she’s cranky, irritable, and certainly not the happy little girl we’re used to interacting with.  After poop, she’s full of energy, laughing, playful and cooperative and eager about life.   Anything that you focus on for a length of time, or in a way that consistently doesn’t feel good to you; that you continually regurgitate by thinking about or talking about in a way that holds you to a place of not feeling any improvement about it, that’s you making yourself constipated.  Energy is always in motion. Food in, food out.  Air in, air out.  Emotions flow naturally unless you stop them.  Your feelings always improve unless you keep revisting the same thoughts that feel bad.  So if feeling constipated doesn’t feel good and you find a way to get relief from that, why would you keep thinking and talking about those things that don’t feel good without trying to find relief?  The way to feeling relief about it is by letting it go.  And by letting it go I don’t mean just use words to cover up how you really feel; I mean, let it go by reaching for a different perspective that feels better; find a way of interpreting your experience in a way that feels better; find a way to substitute the thing that bothers you with thoughts about those things that don’t.  So what kind of poopie are you constipated with?

The “my employees are tools” poopie?

The “good employees are hard to find” poopie?

The “my boss is an asshole” poopie?

The “it’s all your fault I feel like this” poopie?

The “I never get what I want” poopie?

The “people are stupid” poopie?

The “life is hard” poopie?

The “I never have enough money” poopie?

The “that bastard cheated on me” poopie?

The “life isn’t fair” poopie?

The “I hate my body” poopie?

The “I’m not good enough” poopie?

The “I’m not satisfied with where I am” poopie?

The “let me tell you what’s going wrong in my life” poopie?

The “this is not happening fast enough” poopie?

The “relationships are hard” poopie?

The “look at the state of our economy” poopie?

The “this government needs to change” poopie?

The “I need you to be different” poopie?

The “what can I complain about” poopie?

Sooooo many poopies, so little time ;)  Clearly, there are all kinds of poopies that keep you from allowing things to flow.   So the next time you find yourself complaining, or regurgitating something that bothers you or repeatedly thinking about that person who irritates you, equate that to feeling constipated…do you want to feel better or not?  

A Blue bird, White Bowl and a Yellow Butterfly

The other day, just for fun and silliness and to distract Franki from something she was unhappily focused on, I said, “hey Franki…guess what?!?  Today we’re going to see a blue bird, a white bowl and a yellow butterfly”.  I said the first things that popped into my thoughts.  Did it matter if we saw them?  No.  Did I try to manipulate anything so that we could see them?  No.  I already know that I’m the creator of my reality.  I already know that anything I want is mine to have and to experience to the extent that I allow it and I don’t need to “test” Law of Attraction to see if it works.  So the point here is that I didn’t have a preconceived notion of how or where I would see these things and it really didn’t matter if I saw them at all, it really was just a way for me to bring Franki’s awareness to something else.   A little later that day, as we strolled happily along the streets of a nearby town, I was inspired to look down at the sidewalk and noticed a single wing of a butterfly…in blue.  I chuckled to myself as I made the association to what I’d said earlier and found humor in the idea that it was the combination of two things…the blue bird and a butterfly.  We were about to sit at a particular place for lunch that seemed like a great place, the food looked yummy and the place was full…all indications that this would be a good place to eat, but I just wasn’t “feeling it” and just as I was considering whether to sit down or not, someone took the last outdoor table that was available.   Instead, we went to the place that I’d felt drawn to go to that was just down the street.  Jack and I both ordered from the menu and I ordered a lunch made up of a combination of things for Franki.  Our meals came served on white plates, while Franki’s watermelon, sliced manchengo cheese and bread came in a white bowl.  That evening, just prior to putting Franki to bed, my attention rested on her t-shirt of choice, sprinkled with blue and pink butterflies, and among them, yellow butterflies and moments later as we were about to turn the television off, two blue birds came fluttering across the screen.  There are so many simple ways to be delighted in a day and there are so many ways to focus your attention on what feels good in your experience.  I believe I’m always being given impulses to think and impulses to go places and impulses to do things and I believe that it wasn’t by “chance” that we came to eat at the very place we ate at, and it wasn’t “coincidence” that I ordered something for Franki that came delivered in a white bowl and I believe that the Universe is always playing with me and eager to please me in ways that will continually reflect that I’m the creator of my reality.  Everything can be this easy, the only difference is “what am I putting in the way” of what’s so ready to be delivered to me?   In this case, it was all in fun; I wasn’t attached to an outcome; I didn’t need anything to manifest to test how good I am at manifesting; I didn’t need validation in any way, and I wasn’t “holding out” on having a really fun day until I got to see all of those things.   You get to have whatever you want, and the Universe has it all lined up for you, and there are multiple ways and multiple combinations for you to experience it all…the question is, how much crap are you putting in the way of it?