Returning

8/17 I've just returned from accompanying the kids to school this first day, and already I am feeling the pangs of a quiet, empty home. These first days of school are glimpses, the days when we mothers get a taste of the "empty shell," when we are faced with ourselves, with no family revolving around us, sometimes left with our own doubts and fears and shaky confidence. We are faced with aloneness. I light of an unknown future, it can be scary to face. In the present moment, it can be a welcome respite, a new opportunity to listen clearly and grow stronger. There is only today, right now; and to everything there is a season.
It is especially quiet after our wonderful week together at the beach. I am grateful for time on the island. It proves to be so therapeutic for me. On the island I have found spiritual inspiration, found restoration of natural rhythms, refound my sense of humor and the eyes to see beauty! I relinquish that which burdens me and trust is restored, broadening my world, opening my eyes and setting me free! I have found a peaceful perspective. Daily I am reminded to let go and place my fears in capable hands.

Anne Lindbergh writes... "It is fear that makes one cling nostalgically to the last moment or clutch greedily toward the next. Fear destroys the winged life. It can only be exorcised by love, in which there is no room for fear, doubt or hesitation. Each loves so completely that he has forgotten to ask himself whether or not he is loved in return; only knows that he loves and is moving to its music, in tune to a larger rhythm, a natural swinging between sharing and solitude, intimate and abstract, the particular and the universal, the near and the far. It's the swinging between contrasts that makes it nourishing... absorbs, yet frees, separates yet unifies, (like being immersed in a common sea, or looking up to see a bowl of stars overhead.) ... we have so little acceptance for the winged life of relationships and their eternal ebb and flow, their inevitable intermittancy. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, love, relationships. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping even, but in living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now..."