My present submission to JPG Magazine’s Theme: Frozen. It’s a picture I took at my parent’s farm in Abilene, KS. I love that you can see the Barn and pasture fence in the reflection!
Frozen, from a Garden’s View
You can see all of the submissions to this JPG Theme here. My favorite in this theme is The Cold Path, by Pepjin Sauer
I’m rebuilding this site, to start writing again. So if you are coming here, you may notice most of my old posts are gone. I’ll be bringing them back as necessary, but I’m really looking for a clean start.
You can look for me to be writing again regularly Feb. 1st. Between house guests and site building, I should have some semblance of my stuff together by then 
Rest assured, I’ve missed being here, I’ve missed you and I’m looking forward to being back.
These are my core beliefs for the life I lead, but as I read them, I see that they easily translate to all that I do. I may fail daily of living up to my own code of honor, but in all I do, I try to ask myself, does this match who I am and who I want to be? That started with clearly identifying exactly WHO that is, and that is where this list came from.
MY CORE BELIEFS:
- I believe honesty, above all things, is sacred. Dishonesty removes choice from other people and that is not my right. I choose to spend my life with others who share this belief
- I believe that all things are incrementally attainable
- I believe learning is as much about experience as it is about school
- I believe knowledge is elusive and no one knows everything about anything
- I believe that imagination should never be limited by what we can see, but instead be encouraged by all things we can’t see. (I believe in possibility)
- I believe that the rewards that come in the next life far outshine any trial or tribulation I choose to live in this lifetime (I believe there is more to life than what I alone experience)
- I believe that my human understanding is limited and that one day I will have all the answers to all the questions that are no longer important.
- I believe we have a debt to existence to help those less fortunate than us
- I believe history is a gift and I travel to preserve it’s value
- I believe innocence is precious and I should seek to preserve it when I find it, not destroy it.
- I believe my greatest responsibility lies in loving my children as God would love them
- I believe in using the term “God” as it is meaningful to me. To encompass an ideal of fate, of nature, of a universal consciousness, of something greater than humanity, of something I know exists but cannot and do not need to define or limit
- I believe words are the greatest gift and the greatest weapon and people should put more thought into how they use them
- I believe that pessimism and fear impede progress and that blind faith and rash action lead to failure. Practical optimism is the key to success.
- I believe in the wisdom of my parents in spite of their mistakes
- I believe every life is blessed but that I can save more by understanding than I can by passing judgement
- I believe in the beauty born in every living thing. I should look more closely for the beauty.
- I believe that there are no excuses; everything is a choice and you make it
- I believe that life is best not lived in the finding what I look for, but instead in the finding what is true. I will not search for the love I think I want, but instead allow my life to write the love story that is mine.
- I believe Love is a gift best lived as the irreplaceable moments we choose to share with another. I value my relationships to acknowledge the choice they are making to share them with me.
- I believe my experiences are a gift that I should use to help others
- I believe that no one should have to hide who they are. I should strive to be my authentic self and likewise strive to accept those in my life as who they are on the path to discovering their authentic selves.
- I believe life is more vibrant with family than without
- I believe that family has nothing to do with blood
- I believe I was meant to be shared. Body, mind, soul and spirit
As I said in my previous post, there were several things that had a supreme impact on me this last Kansas trip. The funniest one? An evening where I was lucky my father didn’t shoot me with his shotgun. No listen, it’s actually a humourous story.
It was the end of the day and Bahram and I had gone back to the hotel. As usual for me in Kansas, I was all sorts of worked up in thought and heart; wanting to talk about the things I’d seen, heard and thought for the day. Bahram unfortunately wasn’t feeling well and no where up to talking about anything requiring thought. In my frustration but desire not to push him, I grabbed a blanket and told him I was going back to the farm for a bit – would be back later. Even though it was nearly midnight.
You see, there’s something about Kansas. It’s what makes it a necessary visit every year. Kansas has a sky that’s so vast and so beautiful. Literally, you stand on my parent’s porch and you see nothing on the entire horizon. No buildings, no roads, no power lines… just land and sky. Forever and ever. It’s something I’ve found no where else. I go there for some of the same reasons I go to the beach at night.
There’s something about beautiful vastness that makes you feel connected to creation. To be miniscule and yet still important is an important reminder to me. To know that the world is so huge and literally go on beyond my little life and issues reminds me that no matter what the issue at hand is, it’s not really that big of deal in the huge skeem of things. Similarly, it reminds you that in the midst of that vastness, you are important. To God, to the people in your life. God touches us, knows us, despite the fact that the world goes on forever. That for the people in your life – despite the expanse of land and people, it is YOU that they somehow have found important enough to fit into their lifepath. Whenever I start to feel lost, it’s here that I find my center.
So I drove as quietly as I could up the driveway, no lights, parking in the back (I knew everyone was in bed already). I took my blanket, found the spot between the feed lot and the house that had the clearest view of the sky, and laid down.
The sky was so beautiful. Clear and full of starts. Each one a brilliant shine against a stark black sky (you don’t really know what black is until you see the night sky without the glow of a city). Within 5 seconds, I saw a shooting star. I thought, “no way – I’ve never REALLY seen one clearly in my life. Can’t be. Must have been something else.” So I continued looking and in the next 2 minutes, there were two more. As alone as I was feeling on the drive out to the farm, I instantly had a connection – to that great vastness. I just laid there, letting it go. Putting it out there. Giving it all to God and peacefully listening and watching the glory of it all – the beauty and infinity of creation.
On the plane out to San Diego on my last trip, I read an article of things moms said that impacted their children. The one that stood out to me? A catholic mother, raising a daughter, repeatedly telling her “to go where you find God”, even if that led the daughter to an Episcapalian church. In the recent years, that’s where I’ve gone. I no longer feel the need to search for God in a building; instead, I find myself going where He is, where He reveals himself to me, where His glory seems the strongest. Where is that usually? The ocean. The sky above Kansas.
So there I was, in a field in Kansas, finding God when I was all alone. Giving it to him and allowing the peace I found there to take it all away for a minute.
Imagine my surprise, when my father looked out the back door going, “hello?”. Of course, you can’t sneak into a farm in the dead of night. When people only get two cars a day going by their house, they can hear one no matter what the time. I only found out later that I was lucky he realized it was me and put the gun away BEFORE he got too far into the yard.
He walked out and said, “Nikki… what are you doing here? Are you ok?” I just managed to mumble something about an article I read about going where you find God and that here, in the night sky, was where I found God. He was baffled at best. “Are you ok, do you need to talk?” “No Dad, I’m fine. I just needed some time.” I got back into the car to head back to the hotel in town. By this time, my mom was out, slippers and robe and all. “Do you need to stay? You can stay in the guest house if you need to.” “No, really I’m ok. I just needed to be by myself here. I’ll see you tomorrow”
They were pretty confused – especially my father. I don’t know if it surprised him that I would speak of searching for God, or that I would lay alone at night in the dark, or that I didn’t have some sob story to tell them of why I was out there. We didn’t speak of it again, so I still don’t know if he figured it out or even came close to understanding.
For once, I wasn’t sorry or embarrassed that I wasn’t looking for God in a Church. I know it’s been disappointing to my parents that I’m not an active member of a church family right now. I understand the value that companionship and fellowship provides in the church, but for me, I realized a few years ago that my relationship with God has to be about ME and GOD first and making that healthy has to be my first priority instead of just trying to go through the motions of what everyone else says makes a good Christian. So I’ve been “going where I find God” and feeling more whole because of it.
I was confident enough to tell my father that I was looking for God in the night sky and felt no need to justify or explain. It felt good to do that. For just that moment, I abandoned the “always trying to make sure my parents think what I do is ok” and just.was.myself. Freedom, I tell you. I can’t tell you what they thought, but I can tell you that maybe this was a connecting moment after what I found out the next day.
So tell me, where is it that you find God?
