Hope

There is hope...

Even in the hell of life, hope can be born, held onto, found. 

Even if it's just the hope of taking one more step, living one more day.

Focusing on one solid, positive truth - even that can lead to hope.

So hang onto it, however you find it.

Seek it out.

Believe.

And take the next step, the next breath toward...

You fill in the blank.

Bumblebee

I'm one of those weird people uniquely wired to be strong in both the tactical and the strategic, to need high-level work as well as hands-on "doing" work. Cerebral as well as creative. As a result, I've become very aware of how tough energy management can be for me and what sources give me a recharge on both sides of my internal wheelhouse.

One of the biggest sources I've found? Sci-fi. The concepts, depictions, capabilities of characters and physics within sci-fi genres provide an incredible source of ideas for creative problem solving, connections thinking and allegorical lessons. Keeps me open to new ideas and my mind fluid and adaptive - helps me roll with the punches, embrace change and wrap my brain around new platforms of communication and technology a lot more quickly and easily. I remember a few years ago, watching the movie Deja Vu with someone, and they could not grasp the time travel component at all - to the point of such frustration that they gave up watching the movie all together.

A favorite sci-fi franchise of mine is Transformers, and my fave Transformer is Bumblebee, pictured above. For those of you who have never seen Transformers, Bee is the main character's body guard and protector, robot in life, Camaro undercover. He's got personality and heart in spades, but what I've been thinking about lately is how Bee communicates. He is unable to speak. Voice chip problems. So the only way he can communicate is through audio clips he's picked up from movies and music. He very effectively combines the circumstances around him and his body movements with just the right audio clip in order to be understood. But you have to watch and listen carefully in order to put 2 and 4 together and fully grasp his messages.

With my recent focus on this "godwink" concept and making a purposeful effort to look for and recognize the godwinks around me, I started thinking about how God communicates with us. He could just bellow down from the skies anytime he wanted to get something across to us. Can you imagine? Complete chaos here on the planet, I think. Kind of an interesting picture, actually. But with all his unfathomable vastness, he chooses the Bumblebee route. Chooses to communicate using the circumstances around us, combined with just the right "love" language individually specific to each of us. I find that pretty amazing. I'm a word girl - quotes, music, books, letters, kudos. Words impact me in enormous ways, as do symbols (like rainbows). So what did God use to communicate with me specifically? My personal "love" language intricately woven into every day circumstances.

I used to get pretty upset with God for not bellowing from the sky. Used to question, "Why do you have to make this whole hearing you thing so damn hard!?" But I'm starting to truly appreciate the lack of bellowing. It takes a lot more love, effort, personal attention and commitment to communicate with someone in exactly the way THEY need - over and over and over again. It would be so much easier to disregard all of that and opt for a cookie-cutter communication style applicable to the entire human race en masse. To know God chooses to be Bumblebee to each one of us - chooses to communicate uniquely and specifically in the way each one of us needs it - I'll take that kind of love any day. And I'll gladly accept the work it takes on my part to watch and listen so I don't miss those special, tailored-for-me, Bumblebee moments.

Ask and you shall receive...

Two weeks ago yesterday, at the end of myself, I made a plea to the heavens for God to send a godwink my way - to use my circumstances and situation to let me know He has me in His hands, sees every intimate detail of my life, and is leading me with purpose and love. Really needed to see it this time, not just believe it. Note that I asked for just one godwink.

• The next day, Thursday, there were double rainbows in the sky. I cannot tell you the last time I have seen one rainbow live and in person, and I would remember because I love them. Yet there they were, decadent twin reminders of the promise they represent - that God cares so deeply for us and has only our good in mind.
• Friday - there were double rainbows in the sky again. As if to say, "No, yesterday wasn't by accident. These are for you, and I wanted to make sure you know it."
• Saturday, as Squish and I were packing up the car to head out on our road trip, the weight of our current situation was really heavy on me, as it has been for many months. My precious 2-year old walked over to me, put her hand on my arm, and said, "Mommy, trust in God." Then she repeated it, looking straight in my eyes with all seriousness.
• Sunday, she and I made it to our destination a couple states away. We stopped to have dinner and visit with dear friends who recently bought a new home that I hadn't seen yet. This couple has gone through many tough times together, lean times where they weren't sure where the next paycheck was going to come from, times when their prayer seemed to bounce off concrete skies right back at them, yet they held fast to their faith as I am committed to doing as well. Knowing their rocky journey and the home they used to live in, I walked into the foyer of their new home and could not hold back the tears. It is the home of a movie star's brother. It is all wide open spaces, luxury and grandeur. And the price was miraculously within their reach. I felt, clear as day, God assuring me He absolutely does answer prayer and provides above and beyond what we can dream up.
• Later that night, as we drove to our lodgings, we entered a part of town that held a lot of painful, fresh memories for me. Intense loss, broken dreams, confusion, horror. And as the wave of all that crashed over me, the words "Behold, I will do something new" gently floated through the noise of my internal storm and caused the wind and the waves to be still.
• Monday, I had lunch with a friend I haven't seen in ages, and through our conversation, she unknowingly provided information that brought healing to some of those broken places.
• Tuesday, I began a four-day leadership development residency with 30 other women. Every session this day felt like it had been tailor-made to provide me more healing, validation, affirmation.
• Wednesday, we had a session on Ethics - four hours of ethics. Sounds completely boring, right? It was riveting. Truly. And through that four hours, I came to an understanding of what a gift the broken dreams I'd so recently left in ashes actually were.Such an amazing gift that allowed me seven months off work last year to rediscover myself, process and realign all my parts again. This session alone provided much needed clarity about the past year and gave me permission to step boldly into my future.
• That night, I was walking out of the conference center to my car at the end of an amazing day. Standing there in the lobby was a dear friend I had not seen in almost two years - had no idea she was going to be there. That hug alone was priceless.
• When I got back to my hosts' home, Squish and I were spending time with our hosts and their family, including the little Maltypoo (or however you spell that) we'd been loving on since we arrived Sunday. In the blink of an eye, the dog attacked Squishy and bit her in the face four times. It was like watching a slow motion movie, and it was pretty awful. I'm sure you're wondering what the godwink was in that? Well, it was 11 months to the day when my dog attacked and killed my Dad's dog in a horrific event I still have nightmares about. I put my dog down that same day at the insistence of the vet who very clearly explained how lucky I was my 100-pound dog hadn't attacked my baby instead of the dog. I followed her direction but have always wondered if I did the right thing - I so loved that old dog. Watching the Maltypoo, a little 20-pound dog, attack my now two year old almost a year later, and the damage it caused (not much, but still a couple cuts)...I know without any shadow of any doubt that putting my big dog down last year was the absolute right thing to do. And that realization lifted the grief and the deep sense of loss and guilt I'd been carrying without really knowing it.
• Thursday, I get to the conference, and there is another of my close friends I didn't expect to see in the state, much less at my lunch table! Another wonderful hug and open heart. I brought Squishy back to the conference center later that evening so we could spend some quality time with these "family" members from back home.
• Friday, for some bizarre reason, my alarm didn't go off, and this was final presentation day - a competition my team really wanted to win. And of course, I had the jump drive with the presentation on it! What is so weird is that my alarm has malfunctioned maybe two times in 40 years - I am kind of OCD about alarms and being on time to everything, and I had tripled checked the alarm the night before. Oddly enough, our hosts had offered to keep Squish that day instead of me taking her to school, so I didn't need to worry about getting her up, dressed, to school, etc. I flew through my morning routine and out the door, knowing I was at least 15 minutes late for a firm 8:00am presentation start-time. And as I finally got on the highway, the rush hour crush in front of me cleared a bit to reveal the license plate of a New Mexico car in front of me...URLOVD. Wow. I was completely blown away. God arranged all the seeming mishaps of the morning so I could see an unmistakable message directly from Him to me. Incredible. And...I made it to the conference center by 8:10, did the presentation, and we won the competition by a long shot.
• Later that day, one of the general session speakers turned out to be a former boss of mine. Right before she stepped on stage, she walked over to me and said, "Amy, the last slide is for you." Ninety minutes later, when she got to the last slide, it read, "Your life is an occasion. Rise to it." The quote itself isn't really important, although it is from one of my favorite movies ever (Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium). What was so meaningful to me was the memory of where my former boss and I had first shared that quote. It had been during an exclusive development program I was running for the final time after a few years of owning and absolutely loving the program. She used the quote in her opening speech that week...the week I was launched out of the familiar into a new role of awesome responsibility, growth, purpose. The week nothing could touch the 9th cloud I was on - I was confident, alive, excited about the future, hopeful. And now, hearing that same quote almost 4 years later at this time in my life where I desperately need to reconnect with that powerful Amy inside of me, at the end of a personally and professionally transformational week - it was like she handed me my own, personal little commencement speech. Again, I was completely blown away.
• The following day, Saturday, Squish and I got back in the car and headed back to where we live currently. We stopped for the night in a little tiny town I didn't really think much of until baby girl and I were sitting in Denny's eating dinner. I realized I was staring (out of exhaustion) out the window of Denny's across the parking lot at McDonalds. But not just any McDonalds. This was the exact McDonalds I'd been coming to since I was my daughter's age. Every year growing up, for a long stretch, my parents and their best friends would throw all us kids in the cars and take a massive road trip north to snow country. Other years we came in the summer. No matter what, this McDonalds was our pit stop place - every time. When I graduated from high school, I chose to come to snow country for my senior trip...and we stopped here on the way. Last year, with the remains of my smoking, ashy dreams packed in a U-Haul, little one and I had stopped at this same McDonalds. And this time, as Squishy and I walked back to our hotel, I took a moment to breathe deep the mountain air, to take a fresh new hold on hope for our future, and I turned my back on the now resolved past.
• Sunday, we arrived back in town, and I made sure I was overly prepared for the big game-changing event happening on Monday that would put Squish and I back on track financially and get us back in our own home. The event? The final interview for the exact job I've been looking for over the past few months. With the company I've been trying to get into.
• Monday, ready to knock this interview out of the park. Still soaring on the wings of the past week's events. Two hours before my interview time, I received a phone call from the hiring manager that they'd offered the position to someone else last week and had forgotten to tell me. I was devastated. Confused. Sucker punched.
• Tuesday, after a strangely wonderful night's sleep, I woke up with peace in my heart and my fighter's spirit back in the game. I felt something stirring in me - excitement, stronger hope than before, deeper faith that God is in control. Still was confused and a little scared of what the next couple months will hold financially now that I'm not getting this awesome new job. I told God, "I know You see the bigger picture and know what You're doing, but I could really use a glimpse of that on this one. Feels like I was set up here, but I know that is not Your heart for me - wish I could understand the why this one time." And I left it at that.
• Today, Thursday, I get an email with the exact answer I asked God for Tuesday. Turns out I dodged a bullet I had no idea even existed. And on the way home from picking Squishy up from school, out of the blue, she says, "Mommy, there are two rainbows in the sky again." I didn't see them, but I am 100% sure she did and that they were there for me.

Two weeks ago, I asked for ONE godwink. And because He is God and knows me inside and out, He gave me more than I could have even thought to ask - to make absolutely sure I know without any question in my mind He sees me, gets what's going on and has amazing plans for us on the horizon. Not sure what those look like, where they will take us, etc., but I have never felt more loved than I do tonight. Ever.