Wide-angle vs. Telephoto

It's been years since I worked for a university PR department and hefted my twenty pound camera bag up to my shoulder, taking off across the campus to shoot a groundbreaking or a basketball game or a student assembly. But it's amazing how my mind still defaults to photography metaphors.

This week was a stressful one for me. For a couple of days it seemed that all I could see was a wide angle view of dead or dying possibilities for my own life, like a panorama of a dry and barren desert.

The more I studied the picture the worse I felt. It's comforting to know that with so many other families currently in job-hunting mode like mine I'm in good company. But comfort won't pay the bills. So many choices are out of my hands and it seems there is precious little I can actually control these days.

When I can't make sense of the big picture, it's time to change lenses.

I reached into my virtual camera bag and exchanged my wide angle lens for a telephoto. Instead of the looming forest of trouble I tried zooming in on just one tree at a time.

Sometimes stress fills the frame until it's all you can see.

The longer you look at it

the worse you feel 

and the harder it is to cope.

Maybe you're looking at a long list of troubles, feeling like you'll never fix them all. But you can take a step toward fixing just one.

It could be a step in the right direction.

While you can't get anywhere by ignoring problems or side-stepping them, you can develop selective focus. You decide what to focus on and how long you'll stare.

It's your choice.

What do you see when you look at this photo...

the dead leaves...

the cactus thorns...

or the flower?

Rainy Days

It's a rainy day at my house.

I used to love rainy days when I was a kid. Sure, I couldn't do things I had planned to do, like riding my bike or climbing the neighbors chinaberry tree or playing football in the backyard with my brother.

But then I also didn't have to do other things my mother had planned for me, like working in the flower beds. Instead, I was free to discover something new and spend time on things I usually didn't slow down long enough to notice.

Like curling up with that big-kid book... the one with no pictures and more chapters than I'd ever read before.

Or playing dress-up with my big sister's old clothes and see if any of them fit me yet, wondering if I'd be as pretty in them as she had been.


Life is full of interruptions like rainy days.

Illness.

Unemployment.

Accidents or death of a loved one.

Even as we face these challenges we know we’ll eventually get past it all and go on to something better. Still, living right there, in the meantime, can be very difficult.

I’ve lived through a couple of significant interruptions in my life and I’ve learned a thing or two about how I cope with the stress of the unknowns…

…or how I don’t.

I actually led a seminar on this topic for a ministers wives retreat a few years ago and I've toyed with the idea of writing a book about living “in the meantime”, but I think I’ll start with this blog.

How do you cope with the interruptions and in-betweens of life? What do you when you're stuck at Point A, wondering if you'll ever get to Point B?

Do you shake your fist at the universe…?

Or do you see it as an opportunity

…to learn something new

…to be something new

…to see something new that you might never have seen

...if not for that darned interruption?

Room to Bounce

Do you ever use up way too much energy on something that really wasn't worth it? Waste hours over something that made very little difference in the long run? Care too much about things that apparently matter only to yourself?

I find myself occasionally rushing around trying to fix everything that's wrong with my house, my kids, myself, etc., only to discover that they're not really broken after all.

When I get stuck in that pattern I know I need to give myself room to bounce.

Remember what it was like to bounce a superball when you were a kid? I do. I remember when they were invented...a wonder of modern technology. One little bounce and they'd fly up higher than the house. Do it inside and it would bounce back and forth between the ceiling and the floor until it finally lost steam.

And then you just had to try to catch it in an over-turned shoe box.

Holding your shoebox as high as you could reach, you'd catch it on its way up, watch it hit the floor again, then lower the box little by little till it was just a blur of motion as it beat up and down till there was no more bounce left in it.


I've had days like that.


I just need to find a way to get out from under the box and give myself room to bounce.





This blog post was inspired by this blog post.

Christmas Memory Chain

Here's an idea my family has enjoyed for almost 30 years now that has kept us from getting too distracted by the little stresses and reminded us of what's most important....

Years ago, when my husband and I were first married and about to join my parents, my sister, brother-in-law & 2 nephews and my brother and sister-in-law for a Christmas Eve dinner, I was anticipating all the little stresses that would go along with such an event. Which serving dish was appropriate for what...whose recipe to use for something-or-other...did the napkins match and did somebody remember to iron them...do you want me to wash that for you, no, I just did that, Mother...etc., etc., etc. Not to mention the commentary on my haircut and my outfit! Maybe your family isn't like that, but mine was back then, or so it seemed to me at the time.

I was determined to find a way to deflect all the tension and remind everybody to have fun and enjoy each other. So here's what I came up with...a Christmas Memory Chain.

I cut strips of construction paper to make a paper chain. On each link I wrote a Christmas memory. I started with the kind of things you think of when you say "It's just not Christmas until..." or "You know it's really Christmas when...." and then branched out to funny or sweet things I remembered from Christmases past. I had no trouble coming up with things to write! Here are some of them:



Red & Green Hershey's Kisses in a silver candy dish (My mom put that out every year!)

Candles lit in every room

"What size does your mother wear?! (My dad could never remember!)

Steve & Eydie on the radio

Christmas Ideals magazines sent every year from Aunt Fiesty (yes, I really did have an "Aunt Fiesty!" That wasn't her real name...we just called her that because she was!)

"You can't come in here!" (something my mother always yelled from behind a closed door when she was wrapping presents!)

A Charlie Brown Christmas on TV

The weatherman's radar showing Santa's getting close!

Aunt Becky's "pregnant" Christmas tree (flat on one side and rounded on the other...it fit perfectly up against her window!)



So many more, but I won't bore you with them all here!

I gathered my paper chain and we took it with us to my sister's house.

At some point in the evening I got up and I hung this paper chain around the bookshelves in my sister's living room. Right away everybody started asking what it was and what it was for. I just told them to go read it. They did.

They'd read one and smile. They'd read another and grin even bigger. By the time they read a third they'd be laughing and reading them to each other out loud!

We had a wonderful time reliving some great Christmas memories. Good thing I'd brought along more blank links for the chain because we thought of lots more things to add to it.

Now, each year, we all notice things that should be added to our Christmas Memory chains, whether figuratively or literally. Whether I use an actual paper chain now or not, there's always something that happens every year that makes me say "Oh, there's a good one for the Memory Chain!"

So, whether you're looking for something to get your extended family laughing or just an excuse to tell stories to your kids, you might want to give this a try this year. It might become a tradition for your family, too! (You can keep the kids busy decorating the links of the chain, too!) Let me know how it works for you!