I don’t want to write this post. I am simply not in the mood. It’s my blog and my prerogative to be honest, I guess. However, I am forcing myself to write, because I know I need to. I need to process and wrap my brain around this concept because it simply isn’t going to change. Seasons, by mere definition, are a temporal state. They come and go and simply are unable to last, no matter how hard we protest. Summer’s death will always be announced in arrays of autumn colors as the life of the leaves cease. This is a truth, strung out on a linear existence of time, which holds us captive. There is no denying or changing it. I was once told that the only real power we have in this life is the power to choose our attitude. One can argue that claim semantically, however there is a core truth that cannot be denied. We have no power over summer becoming fall, but we do have power to see beauty in the death of the leaves. This is not an earth-shattering truth when simply analyzed cognitively; however, the matter of the heart is something else entirely.

I would venture to say that the impact that life-seasons has on us depends on many factors. First of all, personality. Some people welcome change or hardly notice when it happens. Others tremble in its presence. I would also believe that the embracing or resisting of change has to do with the depth to which the change penetrates. If one is simply putting away shorts and getting out sweaters, the affect is barely felt. However, if the season is the end of a life of a loved one, the adjustment and acceptance is monumental. This change of season is not gentle, like summer slipping into fall. This change is more like an earthquake. It comes in without warning and shifts us completely into a new season with vengeance and little warning.

How we are able to embrace a new season also has to do with our surrounding environments. When I lived in the US, my life was full of many constants, like family and friends and comforts and activities. The change of a season seemed cushioned by the many other constant factors. Now that my life is more simple in almost every facet, I feel like the raw shake ups are felt differently. The sensation of an earthquake is experienced very differently if one is in a brick house or a tin shack. But I did leave my fortified brick house of comfort, activities and distractions behind. The distractions that once kept my heart from feeling the quakes are gone. Now, I feel they rattle to the core. They rattle, shake, and make lots of noise to the point that I wonder if the tiny shack will hold. However, I am experiencing the quake to the full, and have a deep respect and fear of its raw power. No place to hide. I would prefer to be sheltered in my brick house of distractions, however, that can be an unhealthy state of delusion that numbs life’s realities.

I once knew a young woman who’s husband died suddenly, leaving her with two small children. She was told that the shock of losing her childhood sweetheart in such an abrupt way, in such a tender place in life would simply be too much to bear. She was told to go on Prozac so she could cope. The brick house was fortified. She told me two years later that she regretted that decision immensely. Her thought was that she never was able to grieve properly. Those shocking and overwhelming emotions that happen in the initial quake were all muted. She slid through them in a misty haze. She will never again experience those intense emotions from those early days and months. They are HORRIBLE. BRUTAL. SCARY. But she needed to look them in the face, she felt, and walk through them in order to shift into a new season in health and acceptance. She felt she would have been better off to be in a tin shack lacking distractions and buffers and really walk through the valley than in the brick house of insulation and protection that she stayed in. I have come to see the benefit of this myself.

I feel the shake up of the changing of seasons here in a powerful way. The windows rattle, the tin roof screams and I can easily believe that the whole tiny, sad little frame will come crashing down. It is not pleasant. I want to be insulated with a delusion of safety. But, I simply don’t have the brick house props with which to distract myself. So the season changes and I feel it. I feel it like an earthquake in a tin shack. It is during these times that I have to trust in the foundation of my shack. It will NOT be shaken. It will not give way. It will stand the test. On this Solid Rock I will stand.

So, even though I would never ask for the seasons of my life to shift in an earthquake fashion while my props and coping strategies pathetically frame me in, leaving me feeling vulnerable and exposed, I believe that the Faith in the ‘Rock of my Foundation’ that is consequently built is worth the suffering. I will be rattled, but not be shaken. I will be afraid, but not undone. I will embrace the new reality of a new season, stronger and with anew depth of understanding because I walked through it and looked it in the face. No anesthetics. No crutches. No delusion. Everything digested and accepted. A new season indeed.

What does it mean to Really Live? The quest for passion, adrenaline, and fulfillment permeates every inch of society. We fantasize, pursue and expend to all measure to eek some sort of rush- something that reminds us that we differ from drones. Yet for most of us, the sensation that we seek evades us, or at best, visits us in flashes of light that almost instantaneously fade. Is this the best we can hope for? The ultimate carrot on a string that continually escapes our grasp as we clamor and scurry after?

I find myself on the end of a weekend that had powerful emotion for me. Death will do that. It makes us pause, forces us to look a reality in the face that we otherwise ignore. This is an emotional place that we typically avoid at all cost. No one wants to enter into a place of suffering. It hurts. We don’t gravitate to pain. We desire to numb it, self-medicate it, pretend it isn’t real and utterly flee from it. We don’t willingly go there, but when it comes, we can willingly walk through it. We can look the pain straight in the face and not cower. We can boldly walk to the edge of human pain and let it wash over us. It isn’t a death sentence to do so, in fact, I believe it is one of the few keys that actually opens the door to life.

I often say to people that there is only a certain spectrum of emotion that a human can experience. There is only so much pain a person can experience before they go into shock and we all know to well the limitation of joy and elation that is ours for the experiencing. But I am beginning to discover that this spectrum of emotion, this vast range of human emotion is one of the things that enables us to really live. However, most of us are afraid. We are afraid that the negative end of this spectrum will simply over power us. It will entrap us, hold us prisoner and never set us free. It is true. Pain is a gracious-less captor. Relentless and ruthless to those it enslaves. However, this is where the mercy of God sets the captive free. With forgiveness, Grace and reconciliation, none of us need to stay in that place. We can walk boldly into pain, knowing it will not consume us. Knowing it has no grip on us. But, we are afraid. If you don’t know the God of redemption, you have cause for fear. But for those of us who walk next to a God of power, we need not fear. But we do. We don’t believe. So when pain comes, we numb it. When we numb our pain with whatever means we chose, we take that spectrum of human emotion and shorten it. The highs are simply not as high and neither are the lows. It feels better. We don’t sob as hard, the pain is less. However so are the joys. We don’t miss or notice the shortened spectrum of pain, but we do miss the joy. So the one-sided, imbalanced chase begins. We party, jump off of cliffs, spend ghastly amounts of money on vacations to try to push ourselves to the edge of the human experience of joy. It continually eludes us and we are puzzled. We continue to walk away, numb and ignore the reality checks in our lives and push ourselves to an unbalance edge of feeling happiness. But the very thing we are so desperately avoiding is the exact enabler of our ability to experience what we are insanely seeking. The pain enables the pleasure. Reaching the negative end of the spectrum allows access to the other. They are symbiotic and can not exist without one another.

In conjunction with fully entering into pain in faith and hope that it will not destroy us, is the other thought I have that I believe is a necessity for Really Living. And this is making the most of every opportunity. This thought is normally associated for me with evangelism and sharing your faith. But I have found this a powerfully life-changing mantra that also lends to the realization of the full spectrum of human experience. I spent my younger years rushing, pushing, and always being present in a different moment. I would be at dinner, planning my morning. Spent my class time wishing it would end. Constantly pushing to the next thing for no reason. Never being fully present in the moment I was currently in. This is the kind of behavior, if left unchecked, leads to a lifetime of regret. Questions like “where did the years go?” Of course, time flies for us all, but when I pause and reflect on my life, if I was really fully present in each moment, the memories and the lasting impact and legacy will be present when our time on this earth draws nigh.

Which leads me to my final thought. ‘Are they going to have to lie at my funeral?’ Everyone knows that negative words of the deceased are not the norm at funerals. Even if that corpse represents the most morbid soul to walk the earth, we focus on the positive. We ignore and lie about the negative. How much of the negative and nasty is going to need glossing over when I am the corpse? How do I work and live toward the end of genuine living and loving that gushes forth as a wellspring of truth when I am gone? Because we all know the truth, whether or not anyone has the guts to speak it forth. The legacy will not lie. The imprint left on the souls behind, the deeds done and the life lived with will be a truth teller when no one else will be. How do I live now, Really Live, in such a way that no one need lie on my behalf? The plain and simple answer to me is LOVE. It is the tiniest sacrificial act that blasts the truth. The acts of true love that come from our lives that we often are too busy for. It’s in these moments when legacies are built and Real Living happens. It’s the teary word spoken, the lingering conversation, the extra mile driven that pushes us into the realm of full spectrum emotion. The things, words and actions that we often can’t be bothered with. We are too busy because the tyranny of the urgent beckons us. May we all pause, breathe and reflect on LOVE. Loving our neighbor and our God. May we make the most of every opportunity and willingly and powerfully walk into the pain of life. Only then can we experience all that we possibly can. There is no higher calling. There is no better way to truly live.

Some of us are upbeat by nature, some of us are “realists”. Yeah, well, I would like to claim realist, but I am afraid that pessimist may suit better most days.

As mentioned in other posts, we have sheep. We have doubled our “investment” in the last year that we have had them. Now we have roughly sixty.

The subject title alone is almost too heavy to ponder. It makes me want to sigh. But after the week I just had, it makes me want to do more than that. It makes me want to fight, scream, and rave that there is simply no greater injustice on the planet. Of course, I know this is a matter of opinion, but it happens to be mine at the moment.

The Bucher kids (who this blog is dedicated to) always want to hear ‘the cool animal stories’. Costa Rica was never a disappointment in the wild-life category. Their nature is raw. The landscape lush. No one of these stories is blow-the-mind…but I thought it would be fun to muse.

When we moved to Costa Rica in ’05, neither Steve nor I had ever lived outside of Indiana. Born and bread Hoosiers from birth. Hail Purdue! So, it goes without saying that the transition would be a big one for us. We were advised to not make the first trip back too quickly, or it would only make the transition more difficult. So we listened and waited fifteen months before making a return trip. As we were preparing for our month back, I found myself becoming very nervous. I had had no experience “visiting” family and friends. We had always lived close enough. I had no idea what it would be like to be a visitor in Indiana. Plus, our first trip back, there were so many people we wanted to see…How was I going to work it all in? So many questions…I began to pray. I felt like the Lord was very gracious in giving me a very simple insight. “Be fully in each moment, and make the most of every opportunity.” It was a recipe that made for the best trip possible. It is also a recipe for the best life possible I have found.

I have a thing with roosters. Hate is a strong word, since I like chicken and well, who knows what comes first…but I do very much wish they made no noise. What is the point of the crow, anyway? Ok, I won’t go there. But the back story of the rooster-hate starts years ago. With my father-in-law. Earl Bliss. Are you out there Earl? What can I say about Earl. I often call him my number one fan. Not sure why, but I think taking that wild child off his hands has something to do with it.

Anyway, Earl and Betty live on 5 acres in rural Indiana, and several years ago, an insane rooster, most likely driven from civilization by sane folk, wanders onto his property. This thing didn’t just crow. It would half crow, like “cock-a-doodle….”and just never got to the doo. It was beyond my suburban mind why anyone would put up with a sane rooster, let alone…

Those of you who know me, know that I am a simple woman. I am married to the art, beauty and complexity that I am not. If it weren’t for this man that balances me, I would drive a 20 year old car, live in a one room apartment with an 18 year old TV and any money I possessed would be shoved in my mattress. So, I struggle with nice homes and possessions that this marriage bequeaths me. My husband calls it my martyr spirit.

I have lived near the equator (at the 9^th and now the 8^th degree latitude) for four and a half years now.  I have given fresh blood Hoosiers speeches about how the sun is closer than you have ever known it to be…yada yada.  I get the sun drill.  But evidently I don’t get the sun, plus elevation, plus cloud cover, plus rain and cold temperature drill.  We were invited to a birthday party in an area called Volcancito.  This area sits at elevations of 3,500 to 4,500 ft.  I live at about 700ft.  These drastic elevation changes make weather and temps a wild thing.  We have mini-climates that vary greatly.  So this bday party was a pool party, with some roughly built water slides.  Why anyone builds a pool in a location that rains 8 months out of the year and never gets warmer than 78 degrees is beyond me.  I don’t think about water until 90.