Closer to Love

Early Spring morning, Wisco style

I'm just finishing up a retreat out at Holy Wisdom monastery and it was glorious! Sunshine, some warmth, deer, ducks, and a bunch of time to myself. Ahhhhhhhhh.

I ended up resting a BUNCH. I guess I needed it. I went on a couple of runs. I did some yoga, though that mostly felt hard so I did less than normal.

My primary goal was to do some writing, and I managed to do that too, which felt really good. I know that I will write a book, actually, I know that I will write more than one, but I still find the prospect daunting. I still go into my brain a lot and feel like I should figure out how it'll all go together. I know that's not how it works and yet...

Still, I'm proud of myself. I made the space to come out here and I got some delicious time alone.

I read, and I wrote. Part of what I read was this blog, which made me remember a couple of important things:

1) I used to write long, juicy posts and I haven't done that in a long time; and
2) I am really lucky to get to share my life with my love and I'm pretty sure we can do a better job than we have been doing at loving each other.

Heard this Mat Kearney song as I was packing up my little retreat center room today, and it seemed like a good one to mark my day (and weekend):

Oh it's your life
Oh it's your way
Pull me out of the dark
Just to show me the way
Cryin out now
From so far away
You pull me closer to love
Closer to love

Having time on retreat for sure pulls me closer to love.

Now to return home to my man and remember/allow all the ways he pulls me closer to love...

All I Need

This past weekend, I seemed to get a lot of advice about my lovelife. Specifically, a number of people, from some of my friends to a woman I don't know who was also at the yoga weekend, have strong feelings about an upcoming trip I have planned to the East Coast.

Here's the thing. I'm not the only one who fell in love with the man who moved from New England to Wisconsin nearly three years ago. My kids did too. And when he decided to move back, it was my kids who were most accepting of his decision. They really only wanted to know one thing -- well, in my daughter's case two things -- when they were going to see him again, and whether he still loved them (respectively).

One of the things that really worked for the four of us was going on adventures together. Camping, biking, climbing, hiking. And ever since he decided to move back, he's been talking about how much fun it would be if we came out there to visit.

So this winter, when we were headed toward reconciliation, I booked three tickets to Maine and a campsite in Acadia in August. What can I say? I'm an optimist. I like to travel. I love my kids. And, well, yeah. I love the man too.

Now that it is clear to both of us that things aren't lining up for a romantic partnership, I get why it doesn't seem to some people to be a super wise move for us to still go on the trip.

But we're going. And I know we're going to have a great time. And it'll be hard, yeah, to be all together and then go back to being separate again, because we all really like being together. But that's just the way it is.

In the meantime, after months of being uncomfortable with the amount of time I've been grieving, I've decided I'm just going to be ok with it lasting as long as it lasts. Because I really get why it's so big. For anyone who watches/watched Grey's Anatomy, it's a Derek and Meredith kind of love, and it's the kind of love that my new favorite hottie singer croons about in this song:

Here it comes it's all blowing in tonight
I woke up this morning to a blood red sky
They're burning on the bridge turning off the lights
We're on the run I can see it in your eyes
If nothing is safe then I don't understand
You call me your boy but I'm trying to be the man
One more day and it's all slipping with the sand
You touch my lips and grab the back of my hand
The back of my hand

Guess we both know we're in over our heads
We got nowhere to go and no home that's left
The water is rising on a river turning red
It all might be OK or we might be dead
If everything we've got is slipping away
I meant what I said when I said until my dying day
I'm holding on to you, holding on to me
Maybe it's all gone black but you're all I see
You're all I see

The walls are shaking, I hear them sound the alarm
Glass is breaking so don't let go of my arm
Grab your bags and a picture of where we met
All that we'll leave behind and all that's left
If everything we've got is blowing away
We've got a rock and a rock till our dying day
I'm holding on to you, holding on to me
Maybe it's all we got but it's all I need
You're all I need

And if all we've got, is what no one can break,
I know I love you, if that's all we can take,
the tears are coming down, they're mixing with the rain,
I know I love you, if that's all we can take.

A pool is running for miles on the concrete ground
We're eight feet deep and the rain is still coming down
The TV's playing it all out of town
We're grabbing at the fray for something that won't drown...

But what I've learned over the past year and change is that sometimes we have to let go of even the big loves. It's harder. It's hard as hell sometimes. But it is sometimes necessary, as it is in this case for me, and it feels more and more possible every day...

Ships in the Night

Things are slow at the office, so I decided to go to a yoga class at the gym over the noon hour. The instructor for the class is only going to be there for one more week before she "retires" -- basically working for herself instead of for the gym. I also got to meet the teacher who is taking over for the one who is leaving, because she was there as a participant today. She'd mentioned when she introduced herself to the class that she had recently moved to Madison from New Hampshire, so when I introduced myself after class, I asked her what brought her to the Midwest.

I'll give you one guess.

That's right:

Love.

I told her a bit about my recent experience with a relocatee (now ex-relocatee) from New Hampshire. I also told her I hoped she and her boyfriend would have more success, and not end up as we did, as my beloved Mat Kearney sings, ships in the night:

Like ships in the night
You keep passing me by
We're just wasting time
Trying to prove who's right
And if it all goes crashing into the sea
If it's just you and me
Trying to find the light

Maybe, hopefully, she and her boyfriend don't have as much stacked against them as we did -- maybe not so much baggage:

Chasing your dreams since the violent 5th grade
Trying to believe in your silent own way
Cause we'll be ok... I'm not going away
Like you watched at fourteen as it went down the drain

And pops stayed the same and your moms moved away
How many of our parents seem to make it anyway
We're just fumbling through the grey
Trying find a heart that's not walking away

Turn the lights down low
Walk these halls alone
We can feel so far from so close

Yep, that last line sure sounds familiar...

Like ships in the night
You keep passing me by
We're just wasting time
Trying to prove who's right
And if it all goes crashing into the sea
If it's just you and me trying to find the light
Like ships in the night
You're passing me by
You're passing me by
Like ships in the night

I also like these two lines:

Feels like we're learning this out on our own
Trying to find a way down the road we don't know

Uh-huh. And sometimes roads come to dead ends. One of the things Michael Stone said during the workshop that really stuck with me was that the goal of our practice is to move the dead end signs to the beginning of the road so we don't have to go all the way down it before realizing it isn't where we wanted to go after all...