One Child

This is One Child, a song that I wrote in the weeks that followed a mission trip I made to the Petrovsky orphanage in Russia. As I say in my introduction, I felt like what we had done was a good thing and a powerful thing but it seemed like such a small thing in a big and mean world. I wanted to do more. I wanted to bring a whole bunch of them home with me! I wanted to sell all my possessions and move in with them and be their mama. I wanted to really really really make a difference. In the end, as Mother Theresa said, "we can do no great things. Only small things with great love." We may never know how much of a difference we made for those children, but we can know that we loved and we tried and, if not for them, that will make a difference for us, in us, and so, the world changes ever so slightly. Ever so slightly, multiplied by a million ever-so-slightlies, can change the world. We just have to start...........

Peace to you.

PS - A big thank you to Jon Elion for his lead guitar and Lorna Roberts for her harmony vocals on this performance

I am crying out to heaven. I'm so tired of being scared.
I'm asking God to send me an angel.
Won't you send me someone who cares?
Everywhere I turn I see such sadness.
Still I have this hope I hold inside
That someone will want to make a difference
And they'll start with one child.

I am one child, can you feed me?
I am hungry and cold down in my bones.
I am one child, can you see me?
I am lonely and longing for a home.
Change the world. Be the turning of the tide.
But could you start with one child?

So many times I've been shattered
By an angry world I cannot control.
I try to hide the ways that I've been battered,
Such a heavy weight for a tiny soul.
I would give you all that I hold dear to me
Just to see the sweetness of your smile.
You could change my world this much is clear to me
But could you start with one child.

I am one child, can you teach me?
I am willing to learn and understand.
I am one child, can you reach me?
I dream I see you holding out your hand.
Change the world. Be the turning of the tide.
But could you start with one child?
Start with me - one child.

-----Yours truly, One Child, June 2008

Thursday, November 3: On the occasion of the 105th anniversary of my grandfather's birth, I am grateful for the freckles that adorn my face and for the red tones in my hair, both of which I got from my grandfather. When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to hold me up to the mirror and smile at me smiling at her and she'd say, "Who do you look like? Where did you get that strawberry freckle face?" I was her favorite grandchild because of that strawberry blond hair and those gazillion freckles that light up my face. I grew up loving those freckles because my grandmother and grandfather loved them so. Years later, when my grandparents were gone, I would discover that my brothers and sisters and my cousins all had special, unique inherited gifts that my grandparents adored. We were all their "favorite" grandchild. My grandmother had that particularly wonderful gift of making a person feel extra special and extra loved.

I delivered a beautiful, healthy baby yesterday on my grandfather's birthday. And I felt proud to be his granddaughter. I am so grateful to have been loved so well.

Friday, November 4: I am grateful today for Friday afternoons and weekends off and the chance to have nowhere to go, to just be home with my sweet dog Baby and my strange but equally sweet, drooling cat Buster. Like Baby and Buster, I have become especially fond of naps. I am a skilled nap-taker. And I'm grateful this afternoon for the cloudy gray sky and the time to curl up under the covers and drift, unfettered, out into whatever world my mind chooses to create for me. It is good to recover. It is in my dreams that I fly, that I succeed, that I laugh with abandon, that I face my demons, that I battle and win, that I pray and sing and heal. And so, on this cloudy Friday afternoon, I am grateful for the chance to do just that.

Until later, peace all.

I am a day late starting my annual November gratitudes. And it is late. So I will be brief, I think, though I never know once I get started writing how long I might be. Back in 2006, I packed up my whole house and all my belongings, left everything familiar, and moved to the Eastern Shore of Virginia to take a job there. I sent Jacob to college in that same week and faced, not only a whole new place, but an empty nest as well. During that first winter there, I was living in a great big old beautiful farm house, a half a mile out a dirt road, on a 200-acre soy bean farm. I loved it there, but was prone to bouts of intense homesickness and, of course, the depression that generally seeps into my bones and my psyche about this time of year and takes up residence until the spring chases it off with her flowers and green and warm. I was having a particularly difficult time that first winter on the Eastern Shore. During a conversation about my sinking spirits, my mother told me about an article she had read about gratitude and how life-changing, life-saving it can be. The writer of the article suggested starting and keeping a gratitude journal and writing daily notes on things that bring about gratitude - a particularly beautiful sunrise, a baby's laugh, a call from a friend - any little or big thing that draws that feeling forward. The writer said that we should all go looking for gratitude.

And so I began. And I worked at it. My gratitude journal from those days is here on my blog and has continued, in all sorts of forms, since then. It was a very powerful exercise and helped me tremendously through that first long winter up there in the middle of nowhere on the Eastern Shore. And it continued to help me through the many changes and trials and struggles and celebrations and losses of the next four years there and my first year back here in Boone. I am trying to live a life of gratitude. I am not always successful. I sometimes forget. I sometimes don't forget, I just sometimes would rather not do it. But when I focus on living a life of gratitude, I am amazed at how different life feels to me, how much happier it is, how much more sense it makes.

When I am driving in my car to work or driving back home, I try to remember to focus my mind on gratitude. When I am feeling sorry for myself, I do the same and, amazingly, I can stop that self-pity drain. When I am tired and aching and wanting to whine about the tough aspects of getting older, I think about how grateful I am to be as young as I am (in spirit!) and as healthy as I am, and the aches don't bother me quite so much. I know deeply that I have been tremendously blessed in this life. I sometimes just need to remember. If I forget for too long, there will generally come a trial or a crisis to remind me anew. If I let the activity of acknowledging all of my blessing slip, if I forget to say "thank you" for all that I have been given, if I get to complacent or lazy to just open up my eyes and see, my spirits will sink and sadness will likely take over. It is a daily, conscious process. And decision, too. And one that I try to respect. I am trying to live it.

So in celebration of Thanksgiving month, I would like to try to make a note, every day, of my blessings and my gratitudes. I did this last year and the year before on Facebook. I thought I'd do it smaller this year. And write it here.

In keeping in tradition with my unfortunate and lifelong lateness (yes, I will be late for my own funeral, I am sure), I am starting a day late. So here are two days worth:

November 1: Today I am grateful for the morning. Every day above ground is a good one. I am not much of a morning person. I am slow in the mornings and quiet. Not grumpy. Just not quite with it. But I am learning to appreciate mornings more. The older I get, the more I appreciate the turning slowly and that first blinking, yawning, sighing recognition of the light of the day coming in through the window. Another night is passed and here is another day, another chance, another hope. Nights are for dreaming without direction. Days are for dreaming with hope and intention. I am grateful for every morning, every day that I can begin again.

November 2: I have a sense of myself again. I kind of lost touch for awhile. A lot has changed in the past two years. And I just lost focus. I didn't lose me. I gained some new dimensions. It was like I was walking through a maze for awhile but the path has gotten easier and the ground more even and the way more familiar. I was very intensely introspective there for a time but my insides were so muddy and murky, it was mostly just like wallowing in the mud. I wasn't able to see myself from the outside. I couldn't get out of my own way! I am glad to have steadier footing again and to appreciate what I've just come through and how it has affected me, changed me, strengthened me, given me some wisdom. I am very grateful for that. I am grateful for my own strength and my own will to survive, not just as a living being, but as a living, caring, contributing, productive being. I have been blessed.

Peace and love and all that. Till later.

Ranford Almond - Where Have All the Average People Gone? [Tosco Music Pa...

This is for Margaret. But also for anybody else who might happen along and take an interest. I have songs posted on a ReverbNation page. Kind of like My Space but less confusing. You can find it at www.reverbnation.com/lisastevens. If you'd like, you can hear some songs there. I think I'm a much better songwriter than poet. But then, I guess the difference between the two is a thin veil. There is a song that I wrote for my son Jacob already posted, and I'll post a song I wrote for my Daniel this evening.

I haven't forgotten to write. I've just been hanging on. Sometimes my "hanging on" gets fouled up in my body and most I can manage is getting to work and getting home and the rest of the time I am sitting still, wondering where my energy went. Winter is especially a "hanging on" time for me. Double whammy these days - winter and heart-sickness. But it will get better. It always does.

I have so much in my head.

Peace all.

I haven't written anything in a long time, though my brain has been very busy and I have lots of ideas and lots of things I want to write. In the coming weeks, I'll write more. I promise myself that. And I promise YOU, too! (All two of you!)

Life is good. I'm adjusting to a big change and loving it. I've been regrouping and reconnecting and reorganizing. I've been hanging on. I've been letting go. I've been singing aloud. I've been being quiet. I've been struggling to sleep. I've been greeting the dawn. (and those of you who know me know that greeting the dawn is NOT a common thing for a night owl like me!!).

I've been working at...... working at.......... hmmmmm......... I guess I've been working at living the life I thought was hanging in the upper branches and was too far out of reach. I've been stepping into a dream that I've had for more than fifteen years. I've been realizing that coming home is really and truly, and simply, stepping into the beautiful picture that you painted for yourself out of hope.

And I am here. And I am happy to be here. My husband joins me soon. His dream goes back even further than my own and is much more ethereal. I say a prayer every day that it will become solid so that it might hold him up and propel him forward into a world where he will thrive.

Peace all. I'll write soon, I promise.

Almost home...............

For every slow, soft lob that comes your way - the ones that you can spot, take aim, and over the back fence for a home run - for each one of those, there are hundreds of fast balls and curve balls and those bizarre, twisting knuckle balls that'll come right at you so fast, you won't know whether to swing or duck or bunt or run or just, by God, throw down the damn bat and walk away from the game.

It's that way in baseball. It's that way in life. I get tired sometimes of swinging at the hard ones, trying to make a connection. I get tired sometimes of ducking the ones that are just coming too fast, the ones that leave you out of breath and grateful that you were quick enough to dodge another. And I get tired sometimes of running the bases, only to get tagged out trying to make it to home. Just when I think I'm going to make it, I'm diving in, I'm almost there..........

Is it okay to just sit the next inning or two out? Please? Could I just do something simple, like carry water to others and carry the bats and the balls back to the field house? Would it be okay if I just had one little bitty breather?

Ah. I didn't think so.

Peace all.