So here I am in my next chapter, the one that is earmarked retirement, and I find myself full of expectation. I am also a little embarrassed at how selfish my prayers sometimes feel. I find myself behaving like a child by asking for selfish things that my earthly father used to call ‘bicycle prayers’. My focus recently has tended to be all over the board and includes typical things like financial comfort, a little travel, the ability to paint and sell some of my work, as well as little material toys and gadgets and comforts. You get the idea.

Some of these come from increased hope for this newest chapter in my life and some, I suppose, from rationalizing expected rewards for diligently staying the course for decades, despite hardships. My logic mind knows that’s not how this works. My faith mind knows the reward comes later. My child mind, of course, is all about wanting a reward now and is perhaps exacerbated by seeing those appearing to be rolling in good fortune despite long histories of bad behavior.

I know it is absolutely destructive to start comparative thinking, especially knowing the foundation of the appearance of rewards rest on smoke and mirrors perceptions, so I find myself in the ongoing internal dialogue of a mature woman settling her impatient child. I tell myself I must be patient and have faith in what I know to be truth.

I have always believed in hope. I have hoped for good weather, and good jobs, and good friends, and . . . well, any number of things, just as we all do. I also tend to believe that hope is synonymous to faith – the optimistic belief that God will provide those things that you hope for, or pray for.

My entire life God has answered and provided good things in answer to my prayer, both for myself and for others. And like any good father He has given me what I need when I needed it, even if it’s not exactly what I prayed for, or when I expected it.

It was always better.

These last few weeks have been a reminder that I am blessed, and protected, and loved, and very much the child in this relationship. While I hoped for toys like a child my Father protected me, my husband, and our home from great harm done by spring storms.

So now I take a quiet moment to stop and smile. I remember to count all of the blessings God has given me. I stop seeing the illusions and see the truths; resume hearing the subtlety over the noise; and remember that things are just exactly as they should be.

We all have so much to be thankful for. I know that each one of us could list things that we are thankful for and find worthy of celebrating. For some it may include the people in our lives; for others it may be prized possessions, or food, or a home, or warmth, or employment, or health. All are worthy blessings, to be sure. Sometimes, however, we get lost in a process of ranking them in an order from what we consider the most splendid to the most mundane, using criteria rooted in guilt, or monetary value, or social status.

When we gather with others we may start recounting the recent vacations, or big work accomplishments, or valuable material items we acquired recently. We proudly add home and family to the list. Does our car measure up? Is this party impressive? Did we feel the need to one-up someone in conversation?

Did I lift up what I know are my real blessings when I was asked?

It is harder and yet so very important to look at something that doesn’t make the top 5 grandious cut and realize it is that small and subtle and seemingly insignificant thing that is the real object worthy of thanksgiving.

The things that are truly important are often the intangible and simple ones like love and peace and joy. Finding these things in our surroundings regardless of how humble, and in the people around us no matter how quiet, are the real blessings in our lives.

As we drove home on Thanksgiving Day after a truly wonderful meal with warm and loving family, I found myself looking over at my husband and the tranquil landscape through the window beside him. The sun was already below the horizon line and the light was peaceful and subtle. It was not a glamorous sunset. There were no fancy fields or lovely farmsteads right there. I saw no dramatic silhouetted trees against the fading light. What I saw was the simplicity of the day’s end and the whispered, peaceful prayer of Thanksgiving for the day. What I was seeing was overwhelmingly beautiful.

I’ve tried to capture that image for you on this 16″ x 20″ oil on canvas. I am not ashamed to say that I have fallen quite short of that goal but I feel better for having tried. I had planned to have fancy sales for black Friday or small business Saturday but for this moment I’m OK with my choice to sit at the easel for both days. I hope you did have some fun and added to your list of blessings through these holidays, and that maybe you even supported a small business.

I pray peace to you all and may your blessings be plentiful and ranked first by the joy they bring your heart.

Thresholds come periodically in all of our lives and always prompt a blend of excited anticipation, subtle terror, and steeled resolve. The next threshold has been stepped over and it is time to act.

I must now reconsider and make adjustments to all of the things that impact my personal life directly or indirectly. It may be an action that impacts someone I care about deeply, or someone I may never know. It may involve my material wealth or my moral currency or my physical wellbeing. It will likely involve these, and more.

So knowing that time is upon me, I will sit quietly, and think deeply. I will consider carefully, and make my choices. Choices for myself. Choices for my family. Choices for my community. Choices for my country. I am ready. I am strong. It is time to be fearless.

Today’s painting is a 5″ x 7″ oil on canvas board entitled “Contemplation with a Cordial Sunset.”

Retirement – what a wonderful new adventure. After years, or perhaps even decades of living a very prescribed life with all of its security and predictability, I have launched into a new adventure that feels more dependent on the fluidity of a moment. It sounds exciting, but I have decades of habits in place and it can be pretty unnerving to feel so little control over the path ahead when derailment can lurk at each turn.

I have always enjoyed the notion of the phrase, “all who wander are not lost” but maybe it was the militant declaration I actually loved. Suddenly, I find myself asking what that actually means? If I don’t have a map I feel lost. I plan and list and run scenarios and make contingency plans and habitually over-think. It is exhausting.

These last couple of months, however, I am also beginning to understand the benefit of letting go. I wasn’t always so plan heavy and can vaguely remember my early 20s when I was driven by discovery and celebrated the surprise benefits of living in the moment. I wasn’t afraid to turn on a dime and head a new direction knowing that all of the possibilities had the potential to be wonderful. It was exhilarating and imbued with hope. That is the wander!

I can feel change happening. I can feel it in my day to day structure as I determine when or IF a plan is needed and I can feel it in my work. It is true that planning is necessary for budgets, for meal planning, for scheduling social events, and more. On the other hand, planning for potential negative scenarios with their probability ranking too low to give any credibility to, is self sabotaging. It will take me a little time to break some seriously bad habits but thankfully the change is already happening.

I have been gifted the opportunity to wander several times these last two months and gratefully, have a husband who is helping me keep the planning more fluid. We are allowing ourselves the flexibility to talk about wants and needs and change our minds as much as we want. We didn’t build in excessive plans and commitments and we enjoyed the simplicity. We found ourselves remembering what we liked and didn’t like about historical reenactments and reaffirm why we continue to do them. It is a gift to be able to look at all kinds of behavior in my life and decide, like I would a poker hand, what should stay and go. Once a person allows themselves the grace to change after objective introspection it begins to pick up speed, and feeds peace.

Throughout this process I have no doubt that it will directly impact my work and I daresay it can only be positive. Last week I began a 16 x 20 oil on canvas of a photo taken of me several years ago. I started to feel uncomfortable with it and realized that I wasn’t fond of the size or layout. I found myself staring at a half done canvas and realized I couldn’t go on. That isn’t unique. What happened next was. I decided that I could choose to change it. Paintings, while in process, aren’t precious! They are merely insight of what is going on in me as I synthesize what I see and should not ever have the power to dictate my actions. This is a breakthrough for me. I decided to take it off the stretcher bars, find an oddball size frame in the basement (I have too many to admit to), and crop this silly thing to see if it’s redeemable. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t but I get to choose.

In the weeks and months ahead I will no doubt continue to evolve and grow and become. I like that idea. We have an art show in Freeport, Illinois next Sunday and several historical events coming later in September as well. It will be good to go into the fall with an open perspective, and even though I don’t know what the future holds for us I am celebrating the growing happiness I feel. I will pop back in here and show you how this painting turned out – actually, it is my intent to be more active here overall.

Remaining sufficiently disciplined to be consistently creative while being employed in a different field is a delicate balance that many of us understand. Owning and running a small fine arts business on the side is certainly challenging as well. Doing this while working full time in higher education as a faculty librarian and administrator (the library director) is even more challenging.

I love both environments and professions very much and strongly believe that keeping a strict separation between these two simultaneous careers has been ethically imperative. I also believe that both passions need a full commitment of time, focus, and finance to do them well. Working – and I daresay living – this duality is surprisingly hard to sustain long term, and yet is what circumstances have determined necessary my entire adult life. Now, however, I realize that I am at a point of decision. I am at the diverging road of Robert Frost’s poem.

There are professional affiliations that I must engage with for both careers, and participation in each of them demands serious financial commitments, intense intellectual contributions, notable energy and an active presence. Judiciously choosing even a modest level of participation for each of them can still add up quickly and drain me. Perhaps I could get by with some bare minimum distributed across a broader scale but in good faith, I cannot. When I commit, it is fully.

As I have begun to grow my art business, I have become increasingly aware of the complexity of juggling an overwhelming number of balls in the air. With the art business this involves (aside from making the artwork itself) a demand for participation costs (shooting, jurying, booth, framing, travel and more), calendar deadlines (submit, ship, travel, and the detriment of scheduling errors), and even the aging of each piece to assure currency compliance requirements.

In the past year, I have had some modest success with the sale of several pieces of artwork and for this, I am enormously grateful. I have re-invested the proceeds in much needed technology for the business, in gichlee prints of select work to increase ready cash flow, in expanded affiliations, and now in underwriting entry fees to more competitions than ever before. All are tough decisions that need to be made thoughtfully and strategically and they burn through the profits quickly.

I can feel that tipping point in both the monetary support and the service juxtaposition of my two careers and am aware that a decision must be made to address this bittersweet imbalance of serving two passions effectively, let alone well. It is time for me to choose, and move from that place of transition; to step forward in faith.

After 25 years in my library, I will be retiring this summer from my position as University Library Director to focus on my art fulltime.