Simple Lessons from Our Littlest Selves

Simple Lessons from Our Littlest Selves

Do you have a lifelong love? An interest or passion you’ve held since childhood?

Mine is flowers. I can’t remember not loving them. I look back through years of albums and there they are – random pics of lilies, roses, daisies, etc.

When we were little and living in Connecticut, my sister and I made chains out of dandelions and white clover (they looked like flowers to us!) and draped them around our heads and necks. We were princesses, ruling our tiny brick patio kingdom and its fuzzy caterpillars which we collected in Cool Whip bins lined with lush green leaves.

Flowers remind me that life – while fleeting – typically unfolds slowly. It should be colorful. Varied. Fragrant. Blooms and blossoms are part of a cycle which points to never-ending beauty.

Apparently, I was treasuring flowers even before I started making those dandelion chains. In the spring of 1975 when I was 2 and my dad (a Coast Guard officer) was out at sea, my mother and I rode the train down to Washington, DC, to see my dad’s parents who were living there for a short time while my grandfather took a work assignment from Boeing. We visited Mount Vernon, and I immersed myself in tulips.

Age two. Spring 1975. Mount Vernon.

For the next 40 years, that photo hung in my grandparents’ kitchen after they returned home to Seattle, WA, a treasured memory of a special day and a granddaughter they loved so much.

When I was 20, I visited the Keukenhof Gardens in Lisse, Netherlands, when the tulips were in full bloom. If you ever have the chance to go – go. The colors were extraordinary. And I thought of my grandparents’ photo and asked my friends to help me reenact it on the spot.

Age 20. Spring 1993. Keukenhof Gardens.

When I look at these two pictures – especially the first one – I realize that my childhood still has lessons to teach me. And here are three simple ones:

1) Rushing is learned. When I was following my whims and exploring those tulips – which were at eye-level when I was 2 – I felt no pressure. How often do we allow others to create stress in our lives? How much of our stress is self-induced? When we feel tension, we can ask ourselves – is this truly necessary? My pace is my pace. In so far as it is possible, we should embrace our personal speeds as the way we were made.


2) We have 5 senses. This may seem like a silly statement, but really – do you ever just stop – and sniff? Taste? Look? Listen to the natural world? My mind is a whirl of information and I can go days without appreciating the scent of my child’s hair, all the flavors in every meal, or the concert the doves, cardinals, and finches perform outside my windows every single morning. Are you reveling in the world’s delights like a child does? Like you did when you were very, very young?


3) Someone is looking out for us. Toddling among the tulips, I knew my mother and grandparents were close by and I was safe to explore. Small children are innately trusting because they can’t do anything for themselves. But along the way we develop skills to help us navigate, and then we become arrogant. We begin to think we’re actually in control. But that’s a lie. None of us is fully responsible for where we’ve ended up. Some individual somewhere along the way was kind to each of us, gave us a piece of advice, or opened a door of opportunity that enabled us to become the people we are. Today, let’s offer gratitude for that person (or people), and acknowledge the possibility that his or her involvement was not an accident or coincidence, but a movement of affection by a divine Source of Love that wants us all to enjoy a fuller, richer existence.

Our childhood selves – the purest, most untroubled versions – believed and hoped and loved boldly before we were ever told there were limits. We moved at our natural pace, opened ourselves to life’s wonders, and trusted that all would be well.

Though we learned that people – even ourselves – can let us down, God has promised us that He never will.

Our Father in heaven longs for us to follow Him with a childlike love – a faith and hope without constraint, made possible by a renewal of daily trust in His slow and steady work in this beautiful world.

5 Wholesome Things I Learned in January

5 Wholesome Things I Learned in January

Wholesome. I love this word. It means anything suggestive of good health and well-being. It has a connotation of warmth and nourishment, virtue and pure intentions.

I’ve decided that for 2019, I’m going to end each month sharing with you 5 things that I found to be wholesome, because to paraphrase Philippians 4:8 – we are to dwell on the things that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, excellent, and worthy of praise. In short – those things that contribute to the fullness of life that God intends for us. **

I know – that sounds pretty lofty. I’m not aiming for grandiose ideas, just everyday things I encountered that were notable, enriching, and/or helpful in some way.

So, here we go. FIVE wholesome things I learned in January.

  1. If a woman can’t have her family with her 24-7, the next best thing is a beautifully framed photo of the people she loves. I’m rather picky about photo printing. Now that film has gone the way of the dinosaurs, it’s hard to find a shop that delivers prints with true-to-life color. For years I have been looking for an online company producing premium-quality prints, and recently a friend suggested Mpix.com. This month, I chose from a nice selection of mats and frames to create a birthday present for my mom – a gorgeous, ready-to-hang 8 x 10 framed photograph of her two girls and 4 grandchildren that was taken last spring at my youngest son’s First Communion celebration. She cried when she got it. First-time customers get 25% off for sharing an email address. Check it out.
  2. The most important sentence we can say just might be: “Tell me more about that.” Jonathan Fields says this a lot when encouraging his guests to continue in the podcast that’s got me completely hooked – Good Life Project. The premise of the show is that every story matters, and Fields’s guests are purpose-driven, community-oriented individuals who have meaningfully processed both personal and professional issues. I’ve only been listening for about two months, but in January, I was gripped by conversations Fields had with Brene Brown, Bronnie Ware (author of The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying), and Mark Nepo (author of More Together Than Alone: Discovering the Power and Spirit of Community in Our Lives and the World). I also loved that my youngest son happened to hear the story of Maggie Doyne – a young woman who took a gap year after high school, only to find her passion in caring for orphans in Nepal and collaborated on the formation of a Nepali school, health clinic, and foundation for 350 children. Good Life Project. It’s good food for thought.
  3. The memoir Educated, by Tara Westover, is going to become a modern classic. If you haven’t heard of it, I’m surprised, but before long you will, because it’s an unforgettable story of a girl from a survivalist family in Idaho who is barely home-schooled, yet manages to teach herself enough to enter Brigham Young University and then Cambridge and Harvard, all while trying to negotiate unspeakably complex ties between herself and the people who love her in profound and profoundly unhealthy ways. Like all great writers, Tara Westover has a gift for drawing connections between the visible world and its invisible undercurrents, crafting electrifying sentences like these: “I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind.” (p. 304)
  4. Fermented goat’s milk from Answers Pet Food is healing my dog. I have two canines – Luna and Seamus. Luna is a Beagle with a host of allergy issues and she’s been suffering from a cough for months that comes and goes in intensity. We’ve been working with our vet to uncover the root cause, but three weeks ago a nutritionist friend suggested I try adding a natural probiotic – raw fermented goat’s milk – to her diet to help support healthy immune function. The fermentation process increases digestive enzymes, b-vitamins, antioxidants and lactic acid, and it’s been working. Luna is still congested in the mornings, but the cough is basically gone. Cheers to improvement in the lives of our fur-babies!
  5. Handwritten thank-you notes warm the soul. Okay – so maybe I didn’t really learn this one this month, but I received three very nice notes in January that are worth mentioning here, if only to say that when you take the time to tell someone that what they did for you touched your heart, you WILL touch theirs too. We are so glib with our thank-yous these days. Putting pen to paper and expressing gratitude in a few thoughtful phrases means so very much. Consider how it feels to read, “You are a treasured friend,” “You are truly amazing and appreciated,” “I treasure the bond that we have and thank God for you regularly,” “Thank you SO much for thinking of me.” For February – let’s go and put more encouraging words out there in the world.

That’s it for January’s wholesome list! I appreciate your reading time more than you will ever know, and I’d love to hear what you’re learning too. Email me via the “Contact” link on my home page. Peace and blessings in February!

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