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Beauty Through The Fog

10/1/2018

When the morning fog rolls in, most of us are still asleep, and if not, it’s often too dark to see the slow white mist creeping in to cover the earth, turning sharp lively details into soft silhouettes. It’s interesting how something so slow and quiet can suddenly take us by surprise. If you’re lucky enough to have lived in or visited the mountains, you might have experienced traveling along on “autopilot,” maybe jamming to some tunes, or thinking of yesterday’s troubles, when a wall of white appears out of nowhere. Engulfed in this sudden state, you quickly turn off autopilot and increase your focus on what little you can see.

Maybe you’ve been there, or maybe you have had a similar experience of being suddenly awakened by silence.

Fog can be a menace. Planes are grounded, travel is delayed, the world is at fog’s mercy, slowing its pace until the heavy cloud eventually decides to move on – in its own good time. Fog, for something so intangible, is quite unmovable; so when it arrives, all we can do is wait.

I’ve been doing a lot of waiting this year. A fog has settled in and around my life and I’ve been stuck in a holding pattern, pleading for the fog to lift so I can just move on and move forward. It hasn’t lifted yet. For someone who is usually so in tune with silence, and regularly seeks out quiet meditative moments, I struggled almost immediately with the whitespace. I felt panic, and worse, my usual tools to help me bide my time were gone, vanished, swallowed up by the fog – stolen by the very thing that was causing me so much angst.

It’s been an awful year and I haven’t always handled it well.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, wrote in her most recent book for creatives, called Big Magic, “interesting outcomes, after all, are just awful outcomes with the volume of drama turned way down.”

So: It’s been an interesting year and I haven’t given up yet.

I’ve experienced a lot of failures over the past 12 months that have added to my frustration, but I haven’t let any of them destroy me. I’ve come close a time or two, okay maybe quite a few times, but here I am, beginning again. Again. And by the looks of it, I will have to begin again 1,000 times more because this being a beginner stuff is not easy.

I remain, after more than a year, waiting for the fog to lift, and it is still incredibly hard. I’ve been in a constant state of adjusting and adapting and I continue to wait for a diagnosis on my vision that I’ve become certain will never come. Not to mention the thousand other stressors that steal my sense of stability daily. I am waiting to feel the peace and security that I felt before the fog came in, and I’m looking for new ways to entertain myself and cope with these awful, ahem, “interesting” emotions until I get through this. However, I have a feeling that I should no longer be waiting for the fog to lift but be waiting for my eyes to adjust to the new normal.

Fog is not purely and simply a menace; it is also beautiful. I have stood at the feet of rolling fog that undulates like it has a breath of its own. I have peered out over mountain vistas to valleys of fog below, breathing in the cool droplets myself and soaking in the beauty. Fog is beautiful from a distance, and I need to remember that just as much when I am in the thick of it. So often we try to live through the fog as if it’s not really there. When we stop denying its presence, stop fighting its existence, we are free to explore, adapt, and grow.

“I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.” – Barbara Brown Taylor

There is so much to learn here, I’m sure of it. I very much want to feel stable and certain again, but contrary to what I want to believe, that is not where I will discover my growth. I can’t skip these pivotal steps that carry me an inch at a time. I have to avoid the shortcuts, or I just end up on the other side looking for a way back through.

I’ve already collected a few new tools to help me along this journey. My favorite is my handy dandy hip new magnifying glass. I still catch myself straining my eyes and willing my brain to see what can’t be seen. Somehow, I think “I can do this, I can train myself to see in a new way, I can look around the details instead of at them.” But you can only stare into the fog for so long before you remember you’ve got to turn the fog lights on. And each time I pull out that fancy magnifier, I exclaim, “oh yes, that’s better!”

Secondly, I’ve become quite enthralled with mandala work. Initially, the circular confines helped me to not feel overwhelmed by a page that was taunting me for not being the artist I once was. The mandala has been a safe place to explore and play without taking myself too seriously, and it has offered me a fantastic learning curve (forgive the pun). Lately, these mandala explorations have been evolving into something I am hoping to expand upon, and I have just recently begun the process of honing my skills in watercolor and ink. My new style focuses on capturing the overall sense of an image as opposed to the intimate detailed account which I am previously known for. Seeing beauty through the fog. The bold lines of a pen are easier for me to follow and manipulate, and I love how watercolors can fill a space on their own and create whimsical little details that I am not currently capable of making. Watercolor itself is much like fog – taking on a life of its own and filling the space however it pleases. When you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

When you enter into a fog, a place that was once so familiar becomes immediately more threatening and uncertain. But if I remind myself that I have walked these paths before, and my hand remembers what to do with a pen regardless of the fear of what I can’t see, then I can begin to thrive and grow. In fact, I’m already starting to notice less of what I can’t see, and more of what I can.

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Gestalt

10/20/2017

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Gestalt theory emphasizes that the whole of anything is greater than its parts. There is no exact equivalent for the German word in English. “Form” and “shape” are the usual translations. The opposite of a gestalt oriented person, would be a detail oriented person.

We’ve all heard it before, there are so many things in life we take for granted, but it seems even when we go out of our way to experience the joy of little things, it still hurts immensely when they are taken away.

I like to believe I’ve always had an eye for the little things, never wanting to miss the beauty of the simple and mundane, and giving fierce attentiveness to that which often goes unnoticed – not wanting to take one little thing for granted. My vision was never good, needing glasses at 6 years old and the prescription was only made stronger each year since. With the help of corrective lenses, all those little things have continually come to life. There’s something magical about getting a new prescription and once again being invited back into a world of magnificent subtle detail. The trees that I barely noticed the day before now have my full attention with their thousand little dancing leaves moving singularly and yet as one glorious entity in the wind. I could stare for hours at the long shadows that the late summer sun throws across the ground behind tiny little pebbles that have scattered on the road. It’s hard to take that beauty for granted when it is so often presented to you how easily it could be taken away.

I’ve become a very visual person over the years, moving me to study art therapy and help others to find the freedom to express themselves visually and wholly. So much can be said in pictures that is too difficult in words. And on my own hard days I turn to the drawing table, or a notebook and pen, or more recently, instagram with the challenge of capturing a world of beauty in a little square snapshot. Being drawn into details slows me down to notice the world, experience the incredible complicated magnificence that lies within a simple inch of space.

The same that is true of that pebbled inch of road, is true for all people as well. Although taking up much more space than a square inch, a person is still often overlooked or misunderstood because we don’t take the time to notice, to be with, to listen, and see. There is so much to be gained from one inch of time that can connect you to an understanding of another being, if you only slow down to be in that present moment rather than stepping over it to move on to the next, hopefully less awkward moment. We very often take people for granted due to that same fault of our hurriedness. But we are more likely to eventually realize our mistake of not taking the time to spend with that important person than we are to regret not taking more time with those pebbles scattered on the road.

I assure you, you don’t want to take those pebbles for granted either.
My visual acuity has been taken from me again, this time not by an old prescription needing updating, but by blindspots in the center of both of my eyes. Now it takes me a full minute to differentiate a speck of dirt from a flea, and the middle of each written word is missing when I look directly at it. I can’t tell you when it happened, it’s been a gradual change that I’ve been adapting to overtime, and quite honestly denying the rest of the time. We all do it, the pain in your back, the limp in your step, we ignore it until it demands our attention and we are forced to face the reality that this is not going to go away, this is real and we should have taken care of it yesterday. But then again, maybe that wouldn’t have made any difference, and ignorance is bliss?

I’ve told myself I haven’t been sharing because I wanted the peace to come to terms with this myself first. I wanted answers before I let others in. I wanted to go to church without breaking down in tears every time someone asked me about it.

If I’m honest with myself, I think I haven’t been sharing because that doesn’t allow me to go on living in denial. But I need to shed this so that I can move on in acceptance. I even kept it from myself for a year, thinking it’s no big deal, it’ll go away, and sometimes telling myself that it was my own fault, I probably looked at the sun too many times and now it’s my own burden to bear. When I finally had to face the reality of it a couple of months ago when it either worsened or was magnified by another problem that made me painfully aware, I still didn’t tell my husband for a few days. If I had to pick a day, the day I told my husband was the day that it all became unabashadly real. Acknowledging this myself is one thing, but there is something about experiencing the reaction of another person that makes it so much more real. I can convince myself that it’s really not that bad, but when I have to face the emotional and intellectual responses of others (who are not so bent on living in denial), emotion grabs me by the shoulders and shoves me down into the mucky mud pit of truth, staining my denial with tears once again. And again. And again. Each time I tell of it, it’s like another shove into reality. As long as I keep my problem hidden, I can pretend it’s not there. Now I want to acknowledge it, so I can live with it, adjust with it as a part of who I am, rather than trying to go on living as though it’s not a problem and then continually be knocked in the mud with each reminder: “I can’t read that.” “Is this picture clear enough to share publicly?” “You say the television is blurry?” “Is that our friend ___? I can see his body but not his face from this distance.”

The truth is, I am adjusting, and it’s easy to forget at times that my vision isn’t normal, as long as I don’t try to do anything that would require any visual acuity. But visual acuity has been my life for so long, and here I am smack dab in the middle of my life, not ready to give it up yet. But I have to. So the things that used to bring me joy, now bring me much grievance and I am looking for new ways to discover simple joys in this life. My adjustment over the last two months has me encouraged. I can read with more ease now. I also listen to a lot of audiobooks. I have stopped relying on my visual acuity for the understanding of things and have come to understand the world through a more gestalt lens – seeing the whole of things, the generalization rather than the minute details. Will I create art again? Absolutely. Will I draw again? I hope to, I intend to. But it will take some time, as what had become so natural will take some re-training of my eye and brain.

Meanwhile, I am undoubtedly experiencing some bouts of grieving, depression, and anxiety, but not without the reciprocating hope and expectation for this new chapter in my life to take hold. I view this change as a limit that God has set on me to change my focus so to speak, onto new things and new directions, and only good will come of this. There is something waiting in the wings, and I am anxiously anticipating it’s unfolding.

“As the hard frosts in winter bring on the flowers in the spring; and as the night ushers in the morning star: so the evils of affliction produce much good to those that love God. A sick bed often teaches more than a sermon. Affliction teaches us to know ourselves. In prosperity, we are for the most part strangers to ourselves. God makes us know affliction, that we may better know ourselves.” Thomas Watson

You might ask, how do I see now? I see well enough, probably better than you might think. Although there is missing information at the center of my vision, my left eye, the better of the two, is doing most of the work. The rest of the work is done by my brain, using what has been explained in the psychology realm as the Gestalt Law of Closure, which states that the mind will fill in missing information to create a cohesive and understandable whole. The fun part is, sometimes the information my mind fills in is correct, and sometimes it is not. My brain is getting better at using context to fill in the missing pieces, and mistakes are happening less often as I adjust. For instance, the word I see visually as “p|__|t” might be registered to me as “plant” when in actuality the word is “print” if the context doesn’t give me enough information to quickly fill it in. I simply go back to the word when I find it doesn’t make sense, and spending more time with it allows me to fill in the blanks visually instead of intellectually. The brain is really an amazing thing, but without the full use of the five senses, perceptions of the world are drastically changed.

I don’t know how long it will take me to find my way through this. Perhaps it will be a continual learning. I might even come across more change again, for the better or the worse. For now, I know that my vision hasn’t improved as some doctors had hoped, and it also hasn’t gotten worse, though the doctors also say that a change might give a clue to the cause. Please be patient with me, as I learn to be patient with myself. Life looks so different to me now, and I am hoping I can hold onto excitement for a new point of view.

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New Direction vs. New Distraction

3/21/2016

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Mondays usually have a long to do list. All of the creative studio things are supposed to take precedence, but somehow the day often turns into running errands, cleaning the house, and trying new recipes. The Saturday things spill into my Monday things. I wish it was Monday that spilled into the rest of the week.

Today I found myself hopeful to make makowiec (Ma-KOH-viets) for Easter, planning to use time between the lines of my agenda for kneading and baking. Grandma’s poppyseed roll was always something I looked forward to on holidays, and I was content to pursue that tradition today and bury my hands in some sugary dough. Then I found my yeast was three years expired (could it really have been that long?). No worries, I’ll just run to the store, and while I’m there I can fill my cart so I don’t have to go back again (multi-tasking!). But as I penciled out my list, I realized my error. I was once again putting “second things” first, and before I knew it, Monday would be gone and I would be feeling guilty once more for not stepping foot in my studio.

Often, it is the good things that distract us from the better things.

Lately, this has been a much heavier problem for me than the question of “bread or no bread.” Over the past three years, many new directions have been surfacing. Doorways presenting themselves wide open, requiring nothing but a step forward. So far, although each has offered enticing rewards, they have each revealed themselves truly as distraction; and each time, I have eventually found myself at peace for leaving those doors open for others to walk through.

With each new opportunity that comes, I feel my eyes open a little wider. I do not have to jump at everything that is offered or available to me. And this can be more freeing than filling my life with whatever comes my way.

It is true, sometimes I feel anxious of waiting, ready to leap into the next thing, striving for more, tired of feeling empty, lost, or bored; but if I don’t wait for the right thing, that leap will only lead to empty rewards and I’ll soon be looking to leap out. So I am content in waiting anxiously and letting the world pass me by until the right moment comes with clear new direction that does not distract from my higher purpose. Most of me hopes that moment will come tomorrow. But the small part of me, the trusting part of me, knows that tomorrow may tell me to continue to wait.

Here are four of my recent favorite books that have helped me to find my way and to stay on the straight path:

Susie Larson: Your Beautiful Purpose: Discovering and Enjoying What God Can Do Through You

“Life is too precious to live simply in reaction to our busy schedules or to our binding fears. We have work to do that will change us, fulfill us, stretch and beautify us.”

Lysa Terkeurst: The Best Yes: Making Wise Decisions in the Midst of Endless Demands

“The decisions you make today matter. Every decision points your life in the direction you are about to travel. No decision is an isolated choice. It’s a chain of events. If you choose wisely, your future will reflect that. But if you don’t choose wisely, the decisions you make now will take you to places you don’t want to be later.

Bonnie Gray: Finding Spiritual Whitespace: Awakening Your Soul to Rest

“Sometimes, it’s time to say goodbye to what once gave you comfort, so you can face the place of empty and surrender yourself to what your heart truly longs for.“

Emily Freeman: A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live

“You are in a season of waiting. When you finally show up ready to release your art by being the person you believe you are created to be, there may be nothing more disheartening than to be asked to wait. The waiting can drive us mad if we let it. It can become a merciless dictator, shoving us into shapes we aren’t made for, shapes of worry and doubt and short tempers. But the waiting can also grow us, shape us from the inside out for sacred work. “

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The Seed - Uncovering the Art Within

2/29/2016

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I have been working at living and breathing "whitespace" for about 8 months now. I've felt stalled in my own art making, not stirred or passioned about my projects, and so I've been focused on listening. Trying to quiet my own rantings and stressings so that I could uncover that small inspired voice within. I've been making time for rest and allowing myself to breathe instead of striving for more.

In December I was challenged to hang an ornament that represented my spiritual life, and this empty glass globe presented itself. It has sat here on my shelf since then, serving as a reminder of my need to empty so that I am more open to the whispers of my design. I get so cluttered with thoughts, ideas, and stressors, filling with things that are not as important as I make them; and it causes me to miss out on the greater, and sometimes simpler things.

Today, change happened. Or not really change, but an uncovering of what was already present, woven into the very fiber of my being. I've been waiting for change, for an awakening to what lies next. But Emily Freeman, author of A Million Little Ways has made me realize that I needed to look within and look back instead of straining to see what lies ahead. And there I found it.

A seed. A seed of what brings joy to my heart. What brings tears to my eyes. What moves me to true hope and passion. A seed that I can remember being planted as early as Kindergarten. A seed so simple and obvious that it has really been right here all along but I have been dismissing it and looking for something else. This seed bears a call to give a voice to those without voices. An idea that anyone can see has been wrapped into my life, but there is so much more. That seed is stirring.

But for now it is a seed. And I will continue to wait, because I am not the one who can make it grow, but I am the one who can receive and follow the design laid out for me. It may be a year, it may be a decade. But I know this seed will grow, and I can't wait to share it with you when it does.

And my glass ornament is no longer empty.

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On Planning and Flexibility

9/21/2015

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I grew up with a free spirited family. I never used to be a planner and loved the idea of living spontaneously, enjoying the moment and cherishing the adventures that came with unforeseen challenges. Now spontaneity has a twinge of fear to its name. I like a well-developed plan because it is safe. Becoming an adult can do that to you and as a therapist I've learned the delicate balance of planning, but being ready to move to a back-up plan (or a back-up back-up plan).

I have a client who has recently been challenging me with this in the most difficult of ways. She's a teenager, let's start with that. She has a hard time trusting, but she has told me how she finds refuge in words, poetry, and metaphors. And so I prepared the perfect activity for her, incorporating all of these things, excited to help her move towards growth and the change she so desperately wanted. We got halfway through the project and she looked at me and said "this isn't helping me." I was dumbfounded for a moment. I had put so much effort into devising this perfect plan, and I knew that if she just tried a little harder, opened herself up a little more, she would find the most rewarding growth at the end! And then I remembered. It's not about me. It's not about my plan or my education, or experience, or knowledge, or insight. It's about relationship. And so I let go.

My plans fell to the floor and we moved forward together in our mess with no plan and no agenda. At that point, the session moved out of my control, but perhaps that was the best thing that could have happened. I may have had no idea where we were going or what we were achieving, but in that moment I realized it didn't matter. When I get focused too hard on the outcome, I lose the process, and when I lose the process, the outcome falls apart. The best way to the end isn't always the most direct and clear and concise. It usually never wraps up into a neat package, but rather looks like the disheveled, destroyed package that no one wants. And that's how we get there. Together. Flexibility may look messy, and may be painful, but this is where the growth happens. This is where relationship happens.

So be flexible with your family.
Be flexible with your friends.
Be flexible with your coworkers and peers.
Be Flexible with God.

Because sticking to our guns and following our perfect plan may get us there quickly and efficiently, but it gets us there alone.

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Blessed to Rest, Blessed to Work

8/3/2015

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It's been a strange summer that has forced me to really take a look at how I rest. I have my go-to stress relievers: music, reading, painting; but somehow my sources of relief were recently causing stress? I suffer from the disease of too much - too much doing, too much trying, too much striving...it could even be said that in my search for rest, I was trying too hard.

My husband and I took a weekend trip mid-summer and I brought along my normal "relaxing" items, some of which I was looking forward to finally getting to after long hard weeks at work. But somehow I didn't. I did nothing. And THAT somehow tired me out. The week following I was more exhausted than I had been.

I'm reminded of my days in college when the days leading up to finals filled with endless momentum and driving forward finally came to a crashing halt after the tests were over, and I had nothing more to give. Once the momentum stops, it's even harder to get going again...until you have the proper rest.

Proper rest. I thought I knew what that was. Bonnie Gray, author of "Spritual Whitespace: Awakening Your Soul to Rest" says "We try to control the journey of what a restful life ought to look like. But the journey of rest paved by faith is a living story. It cannot be contained. It is beautifully mysterious and personal." I like to contain things. I like when things fit into neat little packages and when 2+2 always equals 4. But the beauty of life is that this is not how it works. It is also the pain of life.

Thankfully, that first "exhausting" weekend trip was just what I needed to prepare for our big summer trip. A week and a half of mountain bliss. I'm not going to lie, it was not all blissful, I had my grumpy mornings and my husband and I had our disagreements, but what good relationship doesn't? Finally after a week in the mountains, I felt I could breathe again. And just when I was learning to rest for real...it was time to go back to work, and BAM huge pile of unexpected paperwork on my desk, a long stream of voicemails, and rumblings of more problems in the workplace. Sigh.

Life is a balance, and often it is about perspective. I am blessed to rest, and I am blessed to work. All I need to do is take the next step into what is right in front of me. God will lead the way.

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Addicted to Noise

11/30/-0001

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We all know what quiet means, don't we. We've heard it enough times, first at home as an urgent request from a mother tired of squabbling siblings, then at school when it's time to dive into books, and at the movies, where hushes are thrown quickly at even the slightest sound. Everywhere we go there seems to be a time allotted to quiet.

As a kid, I loved going to summer camp. Just when staying at home started to lose it's intrigue and began to turn to boredom, camp was a welcome retreat from the mundane, and from aggravating siblings. The week brought excitement and energy to swimming, crafting, hiking, singing, playing games, making friends, and just simply being silly. But always after lunch was the dreaded "quiet hour." Here we learned that "quiet" meant finding ways to do all of the normal pre-teen activities with a careful finger on the mute button. Quiet meant stringing mini ziplines from bunk to bunk so we could send each other notes. Quiet meant muffled giggles, and our own made up sign language, and paper airplanes. Quiet meant anything goes as long as the counselor doesn't wake up.

Later in my life I was introduced to "quiet time," the term coined by Christians to define time spent with God. Many denominations interpret this differently, but I was taught a routine of reading an appointed verse or verses of the Bible, reflecting on it, sometimes writing down responses to a prepared set of questions or journaling, and following up with discussion and/or prayer.

Our daily lives are full of overstimulation, and we are starting to overstimulate even our quiet time. We fear the quiet, fear the empty. Silence often coincides with the adjective "awkward."

I had a roommate in college who kept the TV on every waking hour, because she needed constant background noise, the quiet drove her crazy. Until recently, I wasn't able to fall asleep at night without some white noise to fill the space. We are addicted to noise. When we become overwhelmed we look for something else to fill with, as though we can only medicate our souls by adding something more. But what we really need is less.

Somewhere along the road we have lost the real meaning for quiet in our daily lives, and as a result we have lost the benefits of being comfortable with quiet.

To be quiet, we must be still, and listen. Without judgment, without response, without comment. Just quiet.

Let your soul breathe.

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Taking Monday

Beauty Through The Fog

Gestalt

New Direction vs. New Distraction

The Seed - Uncovering the Art Within

On Planning and Flexibility

Blessed to Rest, Blessed to Work

Addicted to Noise

Author:Rachael

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