Tonight finds me writing from my deck. My new deck. It’s the first time I’ve sat outside and written as I am tonight. My table is set up overlooking the pagoda where huge wisteria have grown over the top to make it look almost as if it is covered.  The fountain I moved with me is flowing with the most restful sounds of water as my satellite radio playing my favorite meditative music can be heard lightly in the background of water falling. Basically it’s a moment of peace for me. A moment that I am finding to be more rare these days.  Soon I will take pictures of my new patio and the pagoda to share what it is I overlook these days.  Funny, I still have the sounds of summer all around me. Perhaps I don’t have the toads I did at the old place, and yet, I still get that sort of sound.  Because the interstate doesn’t run through my front yard anymore as it did before, I believe it’s more quiet here.

The past few days have once again been so busy and covered up I found myself too tired to even think about writing. I keep telling myself this is all going to slow down before I know it!  I will finally be all moved in, everything unpacked and in its rightful place,  I will have quit my job at the university and won’t be doing all this maddening driving, and well, before I know perhaps life will resume back to normal.  Whatever that may mean?  Or so I hope!

I’m still contemplating going back to school next on the journey. I probably should work, but it seems I continue to search for something I’m just not quite finding.  At one time I would have felt so restless with this feeling of uncertainty, but restless these days seems to have been replaced by some sort of calmness and a spirit of peace.  Since I actually jumped off the cliff by selling family property and moving to the unknowns, it seems I found peace. Is that from moving forward………finally?  Yeah, maybe.  So whatever it is I am searching for at the moment I think I’m enjoying the journey!  It’s all like some sort of looking for sign posts along the way and KNOWING that something is up ahead I just can’t see, yet.  The journey of faith.

I guess I haven’t really talked much about that journey of faith lately, which is actually related in some sort of unexplained way to the soul mate journey I’m on and have been since 2001.  Since I met this man so long ago I continue to weigh out exactly what it all meant?  Or perhaps I weigh out where he was coming from, still finding his actions so unexplainable.  I can weigh it this way (puts hands up as to weigh something) where he said so many things to me and a friend of mine that basically states he felt it as I did, and yet, his actions never really quit were that of his words or gestures, so I weigh it that way………………….and I come up with the same things I have come up with for almost 9 years now………………..mystery!  What does it all mean from his viewpoint and his heart?  And I laugh………….”Sunshine, mystery is good!”  He once said to me as if he understood so many things I didn’t.  Perhaps he did.  Perhaps in his 10 years ahead of me on his journey he just seemingly seemed to know what I didn’t.  Now that I am almost at the age he was when we met, perhaps I understand a bit more than I did back then simply because I have so much more experience on the journey?  But back to the journey!  Sometimes I get SO mad at him!  That’s honest, I do.  He could have at least let me know along the way, or at least tried to have more of an open friendship where we spoke on the phone now and then……..rather than leaving the door cracked.   I say cracked because he ALWAYS, ALWAYS found a way to make sure that door wasn’t closed. He always wanted me to know that he was still thinking of me, even if it was 3 years later from the last time, he always wanted me to know.  Perhaps he never really wanted the door closed either.  Surely he feels this connection I do. I mean who am I that after all this time he’d remember me too?  And I ramble! As I always do when I think of him or speak of him.  I wonder if it will ever go away, but I think after all this time I finally realize, it won’t.  So the next best thing is how to make it enhance your life and I think I’ve found the way to do that.  I cherish it for what it is.  And it remains.

Dell and I went to a wedding reception Friday night.  A guy that works with him got married in Florida a week ago. His family had this reception for him. We ended up sitting with another guy Dell knows and works with on occasion. His fiancé was with him.  They were quite a bit younger than Dell and I but these days I find I don’t feel so much of an age gap with anyone. Whether they be younger or older, it doesn’t seem to matter. I just learn so much from everyone these days because I think I’ve finally learned to be still and just listen.  Amazing what you can learn.  Anyway, back to this young couple.  Something came up on how long Dell and I were married.  When we said 33 years I think they were taken aback.  “Do you plan to renew your vows?”  He asked us.  Without thinking I immediately said, “NO WAY!”  Now that was bad!  All 3 of them looked at me as if I had said the “F” word or something.  “No, why would I?”  I tried to cover it real quickly. I felt bad for Dell because I think it sort of hurt his feelings.  “Dell’s a great guy…” I continued on,  “But for me, I think being married this long isn’t about romance or any of that. It’s living with my best friend.”  I guess it sufficed everyone as the young kid said, “Yeah, my grandpa said the same thing when I once asked him if he’d renew his vows to my grandma.”  I went on about how marriage changes through the years, but to myself I felt it so sad.  My thoughts were something like, “Yeah, I got married under a swingset in his mom’s back yard with streamers hanging down……I really didn’t think about it being vows, just some game we were playing……..”  I also knew that if I had to do it again I never would so how could I renew something I never did?  I realized at that point that I still have a long way to go on this healing thing, although these days I do respect Dell more than I ever have and know life without him wouldn’t be good.  He is good to me and the bestest friend anyone could ask for.  I guess I do miss the romance thing, but perhaps that’s where my writing skills will come in handy? I can write of romance and make up the most glorious stories in my head.  Perhaps I should become a romance novelist?  LOL.

The reception turned out to be nice and I was glad to get a break from unpacking and decorating and thinking of all I have to do yet.

Then on Saturday Dell and Jason went to a tractor show that Dell has been dreaming of going to for a year.  It was about 1.5 hours from our new home, whereas where we used to live it would have been almost 3 hours.  It was nice Dell had Jason to go…….the father son thing was even better for Dell.  Susie and I on the other hand decided to find some country/craft stores in that area.  As I said to Susie,  “I really don’t want to go to a tractor show, I think I’d rather have dental work done.”  She laughed at me and agreed.  She is starting to really get into this primitive/country/rustic decorating like I am.  It’s wonderful because she is beginning to love to go to the stores and look at my Country Sampler magazines.  We really had a great time! We got SO lucky!  Chad’s sister-in-law is from the area and told me of this teeny-tiny town in the middle of the hills that is nothing but primitive store after primitive store.  OMG!!!  She was SO right! It was so quaint and almost a step-back-in-time.  Susie, Elizabeth and I had a ball! (Elizabeth, grandbaby #4).  We shopped and walked until I about dropped.  Before either of us knew it we have passed 3.5 hours and we needed to head to pick the guys up.  This town was so desolate my cell phone didn’t work.  It was SO great and I found some neat things for the house.

Tomorrow is back to work. That means I will wake up at 5:00, try to be on the road at 5:45am.  I’ll work all day and head home. The good news is I think Jane is coming home with me. We’ll do some stuff in the city on Tuesday, she’ll stay again Tuesday night and ride home with me Wednesday morning. Then I’ll stay with her Wednesday night, work the ½ day Thursday, come home AND………………….get all ready to go to Florida!  You know, I am SO ready to get away for a week, spend some time at Disney, lay out on the beach, listen to the waves, mediate, touch God, touch my own heart, be still and listen, and seek what is next on this journey.  This journey of faith.

As the faith, love, and light lead me on.

Goodnight,

~Sunshine

GNTS:  I confessed a lot in the above statement of this journey of faith, which somehow is about you in so many ways………but it’s all true.  It’s been up and it’s been down, but in the end it remains.  I’m so glad you once told my friend I was “SO SPECIAL.”  It was then I knew  it remained for you, crazy as it all may seem, how special it was that we did find one another along the way……..even if you are living your life, and I am living mine, that special connection we share remains….and life is beautiful knowing that I found that special someone along the way…………………….Goodnight ~just me.

*Please excuse any typos tonight…………it’s late and I really need a moment of hot tub time before bed.