Tag Archives: emotions

Finding Hope by Nicola Gayle

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Posted by kritzau on March 14, 2012 – 8:07 am
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Finding Hope

Hello My name is Nicola Marguerite Gayle….aka Nikki …. I was born and raised in Brooklyn New York by Jamaican Parents who as young adults  moved to England where they met and got married, then moved to New York where life began for both me (Nikki Gayle) and my older sister. Then when I was 6 we moved to California.

I currently live in Pasadena, California. My hobbies and interests have changed throughout the years but, what I found that has stayed consistent has been my love for the arts……especially dance.  I love traveling, eating/ snacking and cannot resist a good dessert!!

Writing is a tool that gets me to communicate more clearly with others but, I would never consider myself much of a writer………this blog entry is an experiment of my continued journey and adventure…..

Now I am rejoining self… reaching out for another thing that will or has fallen through or been rejected or even another  “failed” attempt …… but one thing I have discovered… I am still alive breathing and more alive than I have been in years. In the past, things were definite, for sure, consistent, constant, moving, shaking happening legit and “alive”. Things “made sense” (or so it seemed at the time) but inside I was dead, dying and scared… scared that I would do the “wrong thing” or that I would be “found out” and dead because I was not living up to whom I was and who I needed to be. The real me was beaten out by doing what “looks good” and won’t get me seen or heard or better yet “in trouble” because me and my individual thoughts, ideas, dreams, mistakes did not matter… (Mistakes were not allowed) or not accepted or I just did not know how to manage or accept or realize how to funnel it to a place of growth. I lacked a place and time for discovery because I filled it with others. Others dreams, others expectations, others hopes and others demands. That put me in a place where I did not have room for me.  No place to feel, escape experiment or just choose… I was constantly in a place of being told “ this is not you” and when I choose to speak it would come out “wrong“ or did not fit into a category that others would not/ could not understand or it was just not the space and time for me. I felt like I was suffocating. I made myself a victim and I didn’t realize it or even care.

A friend summed it up perfectly by saying to me once, “Nikki, people love/ like you but they just don’t know what to do with you”… ahh yes…. And that is where I began…. Or just started to begin. Beginning to understand the meaning of just being to truly understand me or just being/ my human existence, place and purpose in this world. Others may not have a place for you but you need to feel a place with ones self… what does that have to do with hope? Well hope believes in something greater/bigger than you. Well that’s my theory/ belief at least…that’s what keeps me going…  keeps me “on track”, keeps me from dying mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

I think I lost hope for a while…. Hope in trusting my self and others. I have my moments where I need to regain my hope but I know that hope /faith (whatever) that maybe keeps me going. So whether it is in keeping myself sane by going for an indulgent little treat or trying for the new job or new (or old) hobby or a new place to pray/journal/ explore it’s the little things that I enjoy that keeps me going… I can only do that if I know that I have hope in something bigger than me…. Hope gives me a break from trying to make up for things or keep trying for things that don’t really matter or are just a plain waste of time…. Hope is the help that gives you “wings” (Cheesy right) to keep flying so to speak…. Hope can look like a lot of things…

Like the scripture says we are made in his image…  and that’s a pretty big image… so guess what, there is a lot of room for all us and we all have and are all made up of unique pieces of him that add up to the big picture…. that to me, that image is my bench mark of hope…. and when I am rejecting myself, denying myself, ignoring myself… I am denying the very thing that I am created to be. No wonder…. when one is ignoring oneself you seem to disappear and parts of the big picture are missing…. That can leave you empty, lonely helpless, angry, frustrated, not at peace (the list goes on)… that makes a bit of sense to me because in my case when I am trying to be or copy something or someone that already exists (that’s not really who I am or what I am about) I am denying my place and purpose because a piece of the big picture that I am ceases to exist and what a tragic thing for oneself and for the entire picture or even the world for that matter.

Finding hope…for me is truly being me or searching for what makes me tick and when I am focusing on my true meaning… whatever that may be… I am filled and strengthened to pour out to others so they too can find their place in the big picture. What a tragedy, what a bore if all of our lives, dreams, talents, quirks, strengths and weaknesses all looked the same…. No wonder people loose hope when there is no variety.

So I leave you with this (you know I am speaking to myself when I say this)….freedom lies in feeling hope… hope that you have a purpose that is unique only to you. That YOU can contribute to this world… you are here for a reason for your particular ways, gifts, quirks, desires and dreams.  Leave room for yourself and others to explore…..

Stop comparing yourself to others…. Once you are living your life intended  (no matter how big and or small you may think it is that doesn’t matter) YOU have a purpose, YOU matter and in this life that is only unique to you and that can bring hope not only to you but also, to those around you……

Hope in Letting Go by Amy Vogt

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Posted by kritzau on March 1, 2012 – 8:32 am
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Finding Hope

Amy, her husband Danny and their soon to be three kids live in snowy Colorado. Most days she is a wife, mom, neighbor and friend who values genuine relationships, pursuing the extraordinary in the ordinary, and most carbohydrates. Amy desires to make life memorable, and loves to capture moments from behind a lens, namely her 50mm. She shares more of her family’s story on her blog.

 

 

I am proud to claim my oldest child title. Of course I am, right? My love affair with being bossy started at a young age and peaked in marriage…I mean motherhood… Okay, I’m working on the bossy thing. I am motivated, action oriented, relational, type A, mostly responsible, and many of the other things that you probably associate with oldest children. If I’m honest, I am also, at times, too goal oriented, controlling, self-absorbed, and particularly self-dependent.

Perhaps a more interesting fact is that I am also married to an oldest child, and for 2 years we only had one child, a boy, who by default was also an oldest. As you might imagine, the battles of will in our home are fierce! Thankfully, our baby girl arrived soon enough to add a little grace and balance to our mix. God, protect her!

I am blessed with two beautiful children and one on the way. I have experienced success in the workplace. My husband walks with God, has an amazing job, the highest level of integrity, and a passionate devotion to our family. I am not going to lie and say that we have not spent many hours over the years working to shape our vision for where we want to be, creating a path of how we think we can get there, and then working our tails off to make sure that we did. We are driven by nature – go-getters from birth.

Oh, Lord, give me faith to trust you more.

I am challenged daily to fully grasp how to function as my driven, make-it-happen self while serving a God who desperately wants to direct my destiny toward His standard of success and perfection.  I am pulled by a world that woos me to create my own future in a country and era where success and happiness seem dangerously within my reach.

While my opportunities to pursue joy and satisfaction on my own terms are seemingly endless and astoundingly tempting, it is my experience that my greatest hope and ultimately my greatest contentment comes in my release of control and usually from the greatest depths.

Someday, Lord, may I be strong enough to relinquish control on my own. For now, thank you for taking it from me at just the right times.

Not even three months ago, our driven spirits were quieted as we watched the projection of our precious, unborn baby girl dancing around on a screen during an ultrasound. Her amazing life was on display giving us joy and confirming a fear. Our baby girl will be born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate. And amidst our joy, tears streamed down our faces, and my belly shook as I cried a violent, silent cry. We clearly saw, for the first time, the deep grooves in her lip and palate. And, while there was so much to be grateful for, even in that moment, we eventually let ourselves succumb to the despair.

We had lost control.

Over the next few weeks we mourned the loss of a low-risk pregnancy, the addition of the many surgeries that lay ahead for our baby, all of the doctor appointments we would be scheduling, and the medical decisions we would make, the challenges our family will face as we welcome our precious daughter and sister into our lives.

The grief I have felt for my child is so much deeper than grief I have ever felt for myself. But, more importantly, I can now say that my hope for this baby is exponentially larger than my grief. Hope has a way of growing from dark places, and I have to release control to gain a grasp of it. Hope grows, and then comes the joy, contentment, and peace. I don’t believe I could have planned it this way.

Father, I praise you for you are all-knowing.

In a cathartic twist of fate I am reminded that my ways of planning, striving, and directing my life seemingly limit my ability to have the deepest, most true hope – a hope that is rooted in faith and trust in God instead of myself. I can only get myself so far. And, thank God, because I’m pretty sure that the places I want to be headed, the places I want my baby girl, children, and family to be headed, are places that are much better than what I can meagerly conjure up on my own.

I am driven, but my God is mighty.

Baby girl is due in April, and it feels so close and so far away. I know that things will be challenging, and I am sure that our planning, driven, controlling natures will be ever emergent. But, in my heart is a prayer of surrender; my spirit is filled with hope and peace.

 

Noticing Hope by Ivy Zequeira-Russell

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Posted by kritzau on January 25, 2012 – 11:30 am
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Finding Hope

Ivy Zequeira-Russell is a woman I admire and respect.  She is true to herself, her voice, her values, family and community. She is a dear friend and teacher to many, including her boys who she home schools.  These days she is also preparing to welcome Baby #3 who will be surrounded with lots of love and much hope.

I’m looking for things all the time.  “Mom, where’s my Lego magazine, my shoe, my baby, that little piece of paper I wrote on?”  Really I could go on.  So I look.  Often times, its right where we left it.  With a little searching much is found and peace is restored.  However, a few months ago things got really messy.  I wasn’t as available to find many things…not toys, keys, cell phones, clarity, joy, or hope.  You know, all the necessary things in life.

It started when I was 10 weeks pregnant with our third baby.  We have a 7 year old boy, a 3 year old boy, 2 cats, 3 chickens, we homeschool, I volunteer as a La Leche League Leader, and then my husband, Ben, broke his foot playing soccer.

Initially that broken foot helped me realize what a helpful, kind, and fully engaged partner I had in Ben.  His way of showing our family his love is primarily by being physically engaged, playing hide and seek, going on walks, running errands, helping with dishes, doing yard work, etc.  All of a sudden this loving person didn’t have his language available.  He felt so mute to me.  I missed sharing the life and rhythm we had created.

But then after 8 weeks, his foot didn’t seem to be healing.  That was 8 weeks of me doing all the cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, potty runs, driving, taking the trash out, and getting up to attend to our 3 year old every time he needed a parent and I was pregnant.  Thoughts of my 20 year old single mom of three kids flashed through my mind.  I hated it.  I had so little space to grieve, empathize, and integrate these new meanings of my childhood.  I began to say things to my children that again reminded me of my life as a child.  I argued with Ben about how right I was to give the kids a piece of my mind.  I felt so justified.  The tears came from all of us.  I tried to talk to Ben about his healing when I felt I couldn’t handle it any longer and it always ended in an argument.  I felt he needed to do more, consult with another doctor, keep searching for help, just something!!

I cried the kind of cries that come from your gut and leave you wanting to vomit.  I was so stressed about stressing my little fetus.  I couldn’t believe that I was pregnant and in this mess.  I had planned, charted, and seduced to get pregnant!  I was so in control of it all.  How could this amazing pregnancy have become so overshadowed by the craziness?

So fuck looking for shoes, Legos, books, toys, or even food.  Find it yourself!  Then I’d cry, take a nap, and eat.  And luckily some semblance of the good enough mom reappeared.  The family survived.  They found food, played, visited friends, sang lots of Christmas carols, and little by little I joined in.  I gave up trying to understand what was happening to Ben’s foot, I simplified, kept simplifying, changed my expectations, and then I simplified some more, but after 4 months I wondered would his foot ever heal?  Would our relationship be restored after all the frustration and exhaustion?

Hope came in the form of wise women who looked at me straight in the eyes and said, “Its time for you to get help with the kids, housekeeping, cooking, and yard work.  Its time for you to pay attention to how much you’re giving to others and not taking care of your self.  Its time.”  I listened.  I especially had to listen to the baby inside of me.  And then I was able to take in the resilience of my boys.  My 7 year old was kind, creative, and began to tap into a very responsible part of himself.  My 3 year old was saved by the Christmas season and its wonder.  He sang loudly as he memorized his favorite Christmas carols, wrapped lots of presents of little things he made for baby and me, and he was always eager to do whatever I had energy to do.

Hope came all around me.  Not hope in Ben’s foot healing but hope in the moment. For right now, we’re okay.  It was a deep knowing that just as the bread and juice sustains and reminds me of all that’s come before and that I’ve endured, we will make it through the next few hours.

I’m slowly making sense of it.  Its in my mind, body, and soul.  This time hope found me because I sure didn’t have energy to look or care about it. It seemed to gently spring up and I began to notice its presence.

RELAUNCHING A BEAUTIFUL MESS!!

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Posted by kritzau on January 4, 2012 – 9:04 pm
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Art Journaling, Home.Food.Garden, Poems and Blessings, Spiritual Direction

Well the site never got “turned off.”

This may have been providential in the midst of shifting my focus to my new site kristinritzau.com (which still exists).  As I have been doing some vision planning for 2012, something became quite clear… TOGETHER WE ARE BETTER. Through the workshops, events, and open mic nights, this has been so evident and so refreshing.  As I thought about it, this is what ABM was birthed out of – a safe space to be yourself, authentic and true.  Why not have a blog where we can continue this community?  Where others can join when they want to and contribute.  Where we can find our voices and share our gifts as well as honor and respect other people in the space.

So here we are in 2012, with a website that never got shut down, and a philosophy to support it.  So why the heck not?  I am over the moon about this idea so here it goes: Each week, at least to start with, a different voice will be featured sharing an original essay, photo, collage, art piece, or poem.  These ideas will revolve around a seasonal prompt which will change every four months.  So for example, if the prompt for this winter is “Finding Hope,” then you would use that to create something to share with this community and your own of course.  It could be just a short poem to a picture that inspires that prompt in you to a story to a painting (which you would take a picture of)… hopefully it will make sense as it begins.

I have contacted a handful of people to initiate the blog which will start next week, but as we get the ball rolling if you feel like you want to contribute something, send me a message and I will send you the prompt for this season.  And remember TOGETHER WE ARE BETTER! Happy New Year everyone.

On becoming a godmother

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Posted by kritzau on August 2, 2011 – 3:19 pm
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Thoughts on life

I was recently asked by a dear friend to be her daughter’s godmother, and not just in the figurative sense. In the case of a tragedy, we are the literal guardians of little Maya. The request came over lunch: two friends eating tomatoes and mozzarella catching up about the last month we hadn’t seen each other was about to get a lot more serious.

“So Erik and I are working on our will and we wanted to ask if you and Nate would consider being guardians.” She went on to say of course they understood this is a big request and we could of course say no.

My heart fluttered and an overwhelming feeling caught up to my tear ducts as I remembered the Winter of 2009.

I was one of the first to find out about this precious little being. I took her mama to the ER because she had violent morning sickness that lasted for months on end, all day long.

We didn’t understand then how this little girl would change our lives. My friend’s, of course, in becoming a wonderful mother and me in how you expect to be there for a friend in need – expecting nothing in return.

My expectations were the same about being a godparent: I didn’t expect it at all. I would never assume that decision of anyone’s family. So I became flushed with gratitude and honor at the thought that someone would want me to raise her child.

I went home and through tears explained the request to my husband. By the end of the conversation we were both crying.

“She said that she loves how intentional we are with our life. That we believe in something bigger than ourselves – our connection to the earth and to God and to them,” I felt the tear journey down my cheek as I journeyed into the memory of Thanksgiving last year. We invited her and her family, new baby in tow. It felt like a natural family as we went around the table saying what we were thankful for.  There we were, our small extended relatives, our neighbor who lives by himself, and this new family.  Suddenly DNA didn’t matter – we were all related.

“My first response is yes, but I want to pray about it for a bit to see if there is any hint of a ‘no’,” my husband responded with later on in all his wisdom. Read More »

The Cost of Busyness – an ode to my 80 year old self.

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Posted by kritzau on July 27, 2011 – 3:00 pm
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Home.Food.Garden, Spiritual Direction

I feel like a cranky grandma right now.  The other morning I found myself in my garden getting mad at insects and waving at drivers to slow down on my street.

I can’t be serious? Who am I?! I become a faculty member and suddenly I’m 80? (I might be in this pic)

I am starting to understand why my grandpa watched golf all day.  It was his meditation and escape.  His dream life on screen and his naptime all wrapped up with the lullaby of shushed applause and the melodic “ooohs and awwws” cooing away all that is wrong in the world. Even the speeding cars.

There is the occasional, “What the crap kind of ball is that?” But then it would switch to another player and life would go on.  It is like a person having a bad dream, only to roll over and drift off again.

My grandparents weren’t busy.  They read the paper, drank coffee and golfed. A lot.

Today I can’t escape busyness.  Even in the past two weeks, where work has slowed and the normal 9 to 5 ceases, I still have classes to plan and meetings to attend.  However, there are these times of lull.  Times where I am tempted to turn on the TV or watch the free episodes of Barefoot Contessa on Hulu.  Times where I want to check out.  I look at a picture on Facebook and suddenly an hour has gone by.  It’s not that I never do those things, but I’m just not sure how so much time is gone by doing them.

Summer is disappearing and I am letting it.  I’m beginning to think this of life too.  I was raised in a family that thought, “Once you’re old enough, you’ll understand.”  Somehow though, I am always 12.  I’m almost 2 decades older than that, but I got lodged in my father and older brothers’ memories as a struggling adolescent, and I’m wedged there between their 80’s mullets and my dad’s memorable but awkward mustache.  They have moved on (and shaved), but somehow I did not in their minds. Read More »