balance – Embracing Second Half Wonders

The Brilliant Contrasts of Life

There are many weeks of my life that I could not recount the key moments when looking back. However, the events of this recent week will be a permanent part of my story as I experienced mountain top highs and the deepest valleys. The highs and the lows, their juxtaposition running concurrently together, reminding me “this is life”. And where my gratitude for the light AND the dark places in my life rests, there my heart, life, and joy is.

I recall my mother saying many years ago when she was alive that she thought everyone should have to take an art appreciation class, as she had learned so much in that university 100-level art class. As for me, I have a hard time discerning all the meanings in works of painted art. But when my friend (a trained artist), shared with me that in the most enriching and vibrant life, the highs are going to be extra bright and the lows will be super low, I could definitely visualize that analogy, especially after the past week. A week that was a complete roller coaster from the highest of life’s highs to the lowest of life’s lows.

Yes, even I can recognize that a painting is flat and boring without the striking differences of color and the use of light…and shadows.

My friend and I were walking through the forest, walking the dogs, reflecting on the challenges and joys of the previous week. I was sharing with her the details on how I was asked by our daughter’s boyfriend (now fiancé), to help pull off a wedding proposal to our daughter. He wanted something private and scenic. How exciting and I was able to take part in the planning!

I had ideas, one of a beautiful hike to Burg Eltz, a 2-hour drive from here in Germany. But nothing really clicked on how to successfully pull that off until I bumped into my local German friend, who I knew would have local recommendations. And… she did. She recommended the Schlosshotel Kronberg, just a 15-minute drive from our house. The Schloss (castle) also happened to be on a golf course, which our daughter is passionate about, featuring a breathtaking view of the Schloss from one of the greens. I checked it out several times in advance, speaking with the people at the front desk, and worked in secret with our future son-in-law on how this could work.

This was my view of the Schlosshotel when I visited earlier in the week to check things out. Stunning, but grey.
It would have to do though, rain or shine.

When the day came last week, we were so happy to see some little bits of sun outside. In Germany, we only see rain and clouds and more rain and clouds this time of year. But that day was different. After a beautiful lunch at a local French cafe together, I invited her to check out this local golf course with us, saying that a friend recommended that we see it. Everything went according to plan and as I casually said, walking up to the 14th tee box as the sprawling Schloss came into view, “I need to tie my shoe, you go ahead”…that was his cue to keep walking hand in hand to the spot where he wanted to propose. I stayed back and couldn’t hear a word, but when I saw him go on one knee and our daughter jumping up for joy and then, their kissing and embracing…I knew that this was one of the best moments to witness in life. It was absolutely perfect. Peaceful. Quiet. Colorful. Loving. And the skies were even blue, just for that moment.

The day of the proposal, just several days later from when I visited.
Simply perfect.

The view from our Airbnb rooftop in Athens

Fast forward 48 hours and we then were together as a family on our way to Athens, for a weekend getaway while our daughter and future son-in-law were here in Europe for a few weeks. We arrived in time to check into our home for the weekend in the Athens City Center and celebrated the setting of the sun with a glass of wine on the Airbnb rooftop featuring a beautiful view of the Parthenon. The special evening was topped off with an incredible Greek dinner outside, with some of the best Baklava for dessert. What a way to begin our Athens experience!

And then, the next morning, I woke to the news that my dad had received his biopsy results that we were waiting for, but not the results we had hoped for. Aggressive prostate cancer. In that moment, everything else in the world slowed and faded into the distance, making my peripheral vision cloudy and muddy. All I could hear was my heart beating rapidly in my chest. This news quickly sucked me back almost 24 years earlier, when we had received the news of my mother’s inoperable glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor. Is this really happening, I wanted to wonder? But I knew it really was.

And then soon after, we were faced with the juxtaposition of a new day in Athens. The e-bike tour that we had planned and were so excited for. The cats upon cats that our younger daughter was so excited to see. And dad, and the rest of our family, thousands of miles away, and we were there helpless.

I knew that we had to go on our bike tour, even though we were grieving and pained at the same time.

I reminded myself to keep putting one foot in front of the other, take deep breaths, and pray.

On our tour, the tour guide led us up to Observatory Hill where we could see the Parthenon in the distance. She offered to take photos of each of us and knew exactly how to make these photos original. Right before we were going to leave, I felt the urge to ask her to take one photo of me. She asked me to jump up in the air like our daughter, and crazy enough, I tried. And thought, I failed. But what I didn’t realize is that in looking at the photos afterwards, she caught snapshots of me laughing. Joyful. Amidst the pain. Amidst the sadness. Joy can exist in the pain.

The highest of highs can exist with the lowest of lows.

After our weekend escape to Athens, we boarded the plane and as I buckled my seatbelt and put my headphones in, my mind began to race to my father and his diagnosis. What’s next? I could have easily been sucked down with grief. But I decided I should listen to the Ash Wednesday sermon podcast from the past week by our former pastor, Rev. Dr. Lorne Hlad, of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. And as soon as I heard his first opening sentences, I knew I needed to hear that sermon (you can see and hear his full sermon here).

In his message, Pastor Lorne talked about how we live in the tension of the uncertainty of this life and the certainty of death. He shared how we try to overcome and outrun these realities, however, we can’t.

He then asked, “What’s that like FOR YOU? …

In what ways have those two realities, the uncertainty of this life and the certainty of death, made themselves known to you in your life this year”?

Boom. I felt like a weight had just dropped on my chest. I knew God was talking to me through Pastor Lorne, thousands of miles away.

Through his sermon, he challenged us that perhaps the first step is just naming and facing those realities. “We are reminded, life is fragile, life is precious, life is fleeting”. It is easy for us to become ‘cynical or jaded’, but through Ash Wednesday we are reminded that ‘everything matters’. We are reminded of God’s faithful and overwhelming promises to us. ‘Every person, every breath, every relationship…matters.’ Then he suggested that perhaps our failure to recognize the value in all of those things, is what is behind our pain.

His words reminded me where my priorities lie and helped me process those mountain top highs and the darkest valley lows of the past week. His challenge was clear: for us to re-value precious moments, both the grand and the ordinary, people, and relationships. In doing so, we are to not be mournful about how we will all be dust someday, but to be encouraged and empowered, because everything matters. We can “re-claim our lives, ‘for where our treasure is, there our heart is’ (Matthew 6:21)”.

The next day during my daily prayer and devotion time, God led me to several devotional plans by the author, Kara Tippetts, who was a mother of four, wife, author, blogger, and died of cancer at the young age of 38. I had never read any of Kara’s works, but I was feeling called to read more of her wisdom, written down from her life years earlier. One of Kara’s quotes was “One of the things we’ve learned this crazy year is to enjoy the moments. The thing about suffering is it makes the sweet moments so much sweeter…The joy in the mundane feels so much more real when sadness has been walked through and tasted”. What a blessing she is still able to continue sharing her words of wisdom on living a life filled with joys and suffering.

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118:24

The highs. The lows. The light. The shadows. A life without the light and the shadows is lacking full definition and vibrancy. The more brilliance, the more shadows, just as in the most treasured of paintings.

With the brilliance and the shadows,

the greater is the total life experience.

Where can you experience more brilliance in your life? How close and present are the simultaneous shadows?

May we extend our gratitude for the brilliance and the shadows. All of these intertwined produce abundant living, an abundant life bursting with colors.

Here is to cherishing abundant living.

“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”
John 10:10

A Changing Dawn

Always darkest before the dawn? We were soon proven otherwise with a brilliance of color spanning the horizon of Uluru.

The morning alarm came way too early for me. “The bus leaves at 5 am tomorrow morning”, we were directed by our CEO (Chief Experience Officer of our G Adventure tour). I find it hard to get super excited at 5 am, but we were headed to go watch the sunrise over Uluru in the red center of Australia. I honestly had no idea what to expect.

We had savored the sunset the evening prior, where with each handful of minutes, the shadows and colors changed over Uluru and across the spanning Australian Outback horizon. But our bus driver promised that this would be even more spectacular. As we drove, we could just barely make out hints of pink and yellow on the vast horizon. This was going to be special.

The land that we were travelling on is Aboriginal land, now Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. The traditional owners of the land, Anangu (Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara people), have been joint managing their land with the Federal Government (Parks Australia) since 1985 when the title deed to Uluru-Kata Tjuta land trust was handed back to them. Land that has been theirs since the beginning of time, where their ancestors have lived for over 30,000 years. We were being welcomed here today to look around and to learn: to understand Anangu, to respect their knowledge, and to open our minds and hearts to appreciate their enduring culture.

We had learned about Tjukurpa (pronounced ‘chook-orr-pa’), the foundation of their culture and why Uluru-Kata Tjuta is such a sacred place for Anangu. Tjukurpa is more than just our western views of laws and culture. Beyond being the traditional law that guides Anangu, Tjukurpa refers to the creation period when ancestral beings created the world. Tjukurpa provides answers to important questions, how to live and care for one another.

“Tjukurpa refers to the past, the present, and the future, at the same time. This knowledge never changes, it always stays the same”.

– Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Visitor Guide

As we exited the bus, small white lights lit up a visible short path, headed into blackness. We followed each other, one by one in our group until we came upon a rainbow of light sprinkled off in the distance. Field of Light.

Artist Bruce Munro was inspired by a trip to Uluru in 1992 to create Field of Light, a collection of 50,000 interconnected, solar recyclable lights that now span over 7 football fields, like a sprawling garden of desert flowers in the darkness.

We were encouraged to take our time, slowly walking through Field of Light, and to absorb. As in a labyrinth, we meandered at our pace along the paths, not really sure where any path would take us. Each path was dark, lit up only by small white lights on the side, bordered by the brilliance of ever-changing reds, greens, and violets.

As I wandered and reflected, I could feel that each viewing of Field of Light was unique, as each light changed second by second. In contrast, Uluru, having been here for hundreds of millions of years, stood quiet and resilient somewhere in the distance. As we traveled the paths, we could see more and more, glorious pinks and purples on the horizon, a sign of the sun’s arrival. But little by little, the 50,000 solar lights, were starting to lose their energy and brilliance. They would be dim soon until the blazing Australian sun would charge their cells once again.

I felt that connection that artist Bruno Munro wanted us to experience: a connection to something bigger than our lives. Just like those lights, our lives exude brilliance for a time and then, dim and fade. While shining bright, we are intertwined, making something even more spectacular together than one single light. However, generations of light will come and go, all just a minute in the span of the time of Uluru.

But the sun still arises at Uluru.

And the beauty continues.

Looking Through Your Own Lens

To photograph or to just be? My constant struggle with how to experience amazing wonders around me.

Overlooking Doubtful Sound in New Zealand

Our overnight boat cruise of 58 passengers in Fjordlands National Park was setting sail out of the glacially-formed, remote Doubtful Sound in New Zealand, into the Tasman Sea. To get here, we had taken a 45 minute cruise in a catamaran across Lake Manapouri, followed by a 45 minute bus ride over the steepest commercial road in New Zealand, through dense rainforests across Wilmot Pass. We were nowhere close to anyone.

“Wow, we only get a few days out of the season when we can go this far into the sea”, our captain said, as we soaked in the ocean breeze, staring over the water becoming illuminated with the setting sun. “Someone here must have done something good for this”. The Fjordlands National Park is one of the wettest places on earth getting 7 meters of rain a year, with over 200 rain-days a year. All we had that February day was bright blue sky.

Our luck was continuing as the naturalist on board alerted us of seals ahead bathing on surrounding rocks. Everyone rushed to the boat, mobile phones in hand to capture any bit of video or photos of this wonder: seeing seals in their natural habitat.

I could already feel that tension of whether or not to take a photo or just soak it in.

I love to tell stories, so it is hard for me to just sit and soak it in. I want to share this wonder with my family and friends who are not able to be sitting with me and also to better savor it again in the future with a visual reminder.

Not long after we saw the seals, we learned that Bottlenose dolphins were nearby. What luck! At first they were out in the distance, where we saw just small glimpses of grey, sleek bodies poking out of the water causing a splash.

Slowly we saw more and more splashes, not sure if the dolphins had told their friends about their requested evening performance or if we just finally learned what to look for. It was not long before we saw 10 to 20 splashes getting closer and closer to our boat. They were coming right for us.

Soon we had several dolphins traveling parallel with the boat and their friends. They were so playful, rising up and swimming down, speeding through the currents. You could sense their passion as they streamed through the water, up and down. We were in their home, and they were thrilled to give us a warm welcome show.

Again, I quickly felt that tension. Take a picture. Take a video. How can I get that captured on film? Should I just sit and admire? I could sense that I was not alone in this dilemma, as phones went up and down, trying to balance between both. Capturing this for others, for the future or recording this just for us, right here and now in our own memories. “Just sit and watch”, I could hear one of our friends advise. So I sat and just embraced the moment of watching these playful dolphins, living carefree in their sea haven.

The following morning, our boat traveled up into the quiet Hall Arm of the sound, for a ‘moment of silence’. As we pulled up facing the carpeted green fjord, the fjord’s mirror image flipped onto the still water, the captain said he was going to turn off the engine and the generator. He asked us to sit down and not move for 10 minutes. He wanted us to soak all this beauty in, in silence.

“Put your phones down. I promise you after 10 minutes, the scenery here is still going to look just as breathtaking”, our captain directed. How thankful I was that I was given no option. I zipped up my pocket after stowing my phone.

“Look through your own lens”, he advised.

As the engines sounds sputtered to silence, I surveyed the scene before me and then closed my eyes. As if an orchestra, on cue, I could hear there were waterfalls. I had not noticed them before we stopped. Next, cued the birds. I could hear a distance bird call to my left. One to the center. Then another unique one to the right as the conductor announced their entrances. A whole orchestra was at our feet, just waiting to be heard once we turned down our noise.

After our ten minutes of meditation, the engines slowly started up and the boat slowly took up speed. The orchestra of nature was now covered up again as we sailed away.

As I reflected on that experience in Doubtful Sound, I could only come back to the world ‘balance’. Is it crucial that we turn off the noise in our life so we can hear the music around us? Absolutely. Is there value in sharing pictures of life wonders with those who are not able to be there? Absolutely. Is there value to create visuals to enhance your future recall of incredible life experiences? Absolutely. It is a balance. If one pulls you too far in the other direction, your scale will tip. It is a balance.

Tag: balance