Searching for the Green Flash

Posted on December 6, 2016 by Donna Coulson

If you’ve seen the Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, then you are aware that in order to save Jack Sparrow, the crew sets out to see the green flash – which, according to them meant a soul was coming back to this world from the dead.   Well, I know that Jesus saved us from death by His sacrifice for us and that if anything, there’s a flash of pure love that indicates when someone gives their heart to Him.  However.  There is such a thing as a green flash, and for the past few nights, we have been on a quest for me to see it.

According to Wikipedia and several other really interesting but over my head websites, a green flash happens when the air at sunset is stable and clear and light is refracted through the atmosphere as the sun goes down beyond the horizon. (Apparently you can see them sometimes at sunrise as well…)  This refraction results in the appearance of green at the horizon, on the sun itself, and sometimes on the clouds above.

Cool.  I thought Karl was kidding me when he told me he’d seen a green flash once when I was not on island. Now I am a believer.

Many evenings here on St. Croix, there is a cloud bank at the horizon that simply swallows up the sun.  Those times leave the observer with a calm and colorless end to the day.  Other times, sunsets are spectacular.  The past few nights have been of the spectacular kind, and we have sat outside on our swing and risked burning our retinas by watching the sun disappear into the Sea.  Last night was beautiful.  Not only did we see a green hue just when and where the sun set, but then for a few minutes we watched as the bottoms of some of the clouds above the sunset changed, for a few seconds at a time, into varying and beautiful shades of green.  Magical.  Miraculous.  Beautiful.

After the light show was fading, I has this sense that God had created that beautiful sunset and its glorious colors just for Karl and me as we sat there.  I wondered if anyone else had taken the time just then to stop and actually pay attention enough to see the green flash or the accompanying orange and pink in the clouds that finally turned to gold before they faded into twilight.  I wasn’t being prideful, I just wondered if anyone else but us had paid attention.  That made me think about how often I don’t pay attention.  I don’t watch the sunset, I don’t take time to see the beauty and the blessings that surround me all the time.  I’m hoping and praying that you and I can be more mindful of the little but powerful acts of nature and of humanity that surround us in this world.  May we all continue to search and see the green flashes in our lives.

 

 

 

 

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Pot Holes

Posted on November 28, 2016 by Donna Coulson

It’s quite funny, really, that one of the great similarities between Wyoming and St. Croix is pot holes.  In Wyoming, the drastic changes in temperature – where it can be close to zero as a low temp and just a few hours later the thermometer can be reading in the 60s – contribute to the formation of these driving hazards.  In St. Croix, where it is – by the way raining and 71 degrees right now and downright chilly! – pot holes are not caused by the temperature span as much as by lots of rain and a lack of funds to upgrade roads.  So, I’ve been thinking about pot holes today.  I am convinced that we can learn a great deal from pot holes.

My first observation is that life, like Wyoming and St. Croix roads, is rife with sneaky little annoyances that can do real damage.  Tires take a beating on a rough road, and eventually the wear and tear can cause tires to wear out, blowout, or become out of balance.  Eventually, the damage can make your car difficult to steer or make it inoperable all together.  Isn’t life the same?  Small little hassles are no big deal at first, but after a while, they can chip away at our resolve or confidence, put our hearts and minds out of balance, and if not dealt with, can bother us to the point of making us ineffective or unproductive.  What started out as a bump in our road can put us on the sidelines.

Observation number two:  There are many ways to deal with pot holes.   One can drive so very slowly – intending to navigate  gingerly with the intent to miss each one even if that means driving from one side of the road to the other in search of smoothness. Nothing aggravates Karl more to be behind one of these drivers. Other drivers  steer a straight but slow course that demands a careful climb down to the bottom of each hole and then demands the effort to scale the other side with care and intention.  Another strategy is to just go for it, hit the gas and bounce over them with speed, heedless to their existence.  The idea behind this approach may be to get it over with sooner.  Living gives us choices as well.  We can succumb to every fault in our paths by taking circuitous paths in order to miss problems – and end up not accomplishing anything except wandering through our lives.  Some experience each trial and temptation fully by going to the depths and then having to climb back out of trouble and challenge. Certainly this can lead to all kinds of issues.  We all know someone who climbed into a pothole of bad habit or addiction and then weren’t able to climb back out. On the other hand, full speed ahead delivers us a life of  adrenaline and excitement but also causes damage to not only ourselves but to those who are on the journey with us.

Looking back over my life, I can see that there were times that I plotted a path through life using each of these strategies.  I have been hell-bent and mindless.  The memories I am left with as a result of these times are full of bumps on the head, some regrets and some wonderful laughs.  I have been a wanderer – meandering all over out of fear or caution.  Sometimes that wandering was caused by my own fear and lack of faith and other times I was being prudent and adult. I know that I went places I didn’t need to go, but in reality, I’ve seen some really interesting sights that way.  I have also fully experienced some of life’s pot holes by steering for them, achieving their lows and regaining the smooth ground after a hard climb out.  Again, I don’t regret every one of those treks, though I wouldn’t be honest if I said I was glad for each.

Now, I am looking forward.  My path is definitely not going to be continuously smooth. Aging, politics, world events, in fact – life, is cooking up a ragged road ahead.  My choices will make all the difference.   I know that I can sometimes hit the gas and get out of there, take the slow route and enjoy the view, or be patient in the valleys.  God willing I will be brave enough and  wise enough to know which choice is the best at each turn.

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Now that we are here…

Posted on November 21, 2016 by Donna Coulson

I am a whiner.  Often.  I am aware of this and I try not to be.  However, small whines often leak out of me unopposed.  Now that I have confessed this huge character flaw of mine, I can tell you that for this month I have tried to pray only my thanks and praise.  I have severely limited my petitions to God, catching myself from launching into a litany of wants and worries and desires in favor of just thanks.   Frankly, this has been easy – mostly, because there are very few things I need right now. The prayers and desires of the last four or five years have been answered in the form of our sold house, our sold businesses, our joint retirement, and our move to our beautiful island.  We are truly in a season right now between any real storms or trials, and being thankful is easy.  Even before the house sold, I was able to thank God for our realtor and for the people who looked at the house – mostly because I was confident it would sell quickly.  Even before the business sale closed, I was able to thank God for the plan He had for us and the young couple who were working to get it purchased from us.  Even though we had to say “so long” to many very precious friends when we left Wyoming, I could thank God that they are in my life, that email and phones will keep us in touch, and that airplanes will bring us back together again. All is well with my life and my soul right now.

So why do I still whine?

Hmmm, that’s the question for the ages, huh?  The Israelites whined in the desert when the very hand of God fed them manna each morning but they wanted pizza or waffles, or filet. Thomas whined that he needed to touch the wounds in Jesus’ hands before he’d truly get it.  Job’s friends all advised him to whine when life got tough.  So, I have heard myself whine about the bugs and sand that invaded my house in the months we were gone, I’ve whined about the heat (not much, but when you are scrubbing and the breeze dies down and you aren’t yet used to the warmth and humidity, well…).

So here’s the plan:  I was going to just do this thankfulness experiment for the month of November – then, presumably I’d go back to a prayer life of serious whining and asking God for my usual laundry list of menial and quite unimportant desires.  I’ve decided that’s not enough.  It isn’t who I want to be.  I want to praise God in the storms as well as the calm days.  I want to have a heart that celebrates the Creator of the Universe for all His decisions.  I want to be intentional about what I ask Him for.  I want to be intentional about noticing how He works and moves in my life.  I want to be Thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

Categories: Living on St Croix, Random thoughts on being me | 1 Comment

Traveling

Posted on November 13, 2016 by Donna Coulson

I’m posting this on Sunday Morning instead of Monday for one important reason:  Tomorrow morning, at literally Oh dark thirty, we are heading to the airport to go HOME.  We leave out of Dulles at 6 am, go to Miami, then fly to St. Croix.  YAY!  By 5 o’clock on Monday, Good Lord willing, we will be home at Pirate’s Perch.

Since last week, we have driven from Cheyenne to Des Moines, Iowa for lunch with our daughter Hillary and her beautiful girls.  Then we made it to Dundee, Michigan and had breakfast with our daughter Amy and her husband – we missed seeing the boys 🙁  – then we stopped at Karl’s aunt Gwen’s house in Ohio for lunch – and finally arrived in Purcellville, Virginia and our son, Sam’s house.  This is our mainland staging area from now on.  The truck and trailer are staying here and it is Sam who will get up in the morning and drive us to the airport.  That’s truly heroic!

Karl and I have been working toward, praying about, and looking forward to this move for nearly five years.  Now that the time has come, I’m humbled at the blessings we are receiving and excited to see the plans all come together.  For the past few weeks, friends and acquaintances have bid us farewell and God speed. Quite often, the next comment is “What will you DO there?”  That’s the most exciting question of all.  First, I’m retired and so is Karl, so we don’t exactly feel like DOING is obligatory.  That being said, it will be such an adventure now to actually figure out what we will do with our time.  I have some ideas and I have some goals.  We’ll see what the Lord brings!

 

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Karl is Retiring today!

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Donna Coulson

Today is a great day!  Today my husband retires – we are selling our business, a business he has given heart and hard work to for 14 years. He signs the papers this afternoon and hands over his thriving center to a protege, confident that he has taught her best practices and wishing her all the best.    My wonderful husband has worked hard all his life.  He’s been a Navy sailor, a bus boy, a mechanic, a trucker who drove over a million safe miles, an award winning electronics tech, an uranium miner, a steam train engineer, a real estate agent, on a road crew for the State of Wyoming DOT, a carpenter, a house mover, and most recently – the owner of the two best child care centers in Cheyenne.  It isn’t that everything he touches is golden.  He’s had troubles and made mistakes – really, real estate is not his forte.  But no matter what, he always gives everything a deep degree of consideration and insight that I admire and esteem.  His brain works at the details of finance and how to satisfy his customers while nourishing and growing his employees.  He THINKS about things and goes slowly and carefully.  The result is that he is successful and respected.

People around him may not always agree with him, and I’ll tell you he can be stubborn and bull-headed and he doesn’t leave people wondering what he thinks when he is passionate about an issue, but everyone around him also knows that he cares and that he will always go out of his way to help someone in need.

Today he retires and tomorrow we leave Cheyenne to begin our lives as full time island dwellers. We will be “stuck on a rock” that is a sum total of 81 square miles. After the unending wide open spaces of Wyoming, we wonder if we will get ‘rock fever’ and if we will love it as much there in a year as we do now.  One way or the other,  I am so very thankful that I’ll be stuck on an island with this man.  After 33 years of being married to him, I still can’t get enough of his company or his laughter. I sleep at night with his warmth beside me and  I wake up in the morning looking forward to spending the day with him. I feel his absence even if it is for a few hours.  I can’t wait for tomorrow – when I no longer have to share him with a job, when he doesn’t have to be away from me more than he isn’t.  I realize that not every marriage is like ours, and I don’t take it for granted.  I am thankful every day for it.

Now – there’s just one hitch.  In all our years of being married, we’ve never shared a vehicle.  Right now, we only have one vehicle on St. Croix.  Hmmm.  Love does have its limits.  We’ll see how long I last with this…

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Heroes

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Donna Coulson

Today is Halloween. Tonight, people of all ages will be dressing up in costumes for parties and for trick or treating. Some people may choose to dress up as a hero. Some may choose to dress up to resemble an athlete who has achieved great fame and accolades for his or her physical abilities. Some may be rock stars or movie star personalities. I am sure that Spiderman, Batman and many other “superheroes” will show up at my door tonight.

If I were required to dress up as a hero, maybe I’d dress up like ****. (I’m not using her name – she’d be embarrassed.) You don’t know her. I worked with her at one time. **** had lots of trouble in school, and once told me that it was hard for her. She has trouble reading and writing – though not from the lack of trying. Other employees sometimes don’t like to work with her, “She’s too slow.” So then, why would I choose her as a hero to dress up as? Because she is a hero. She knows what others say about her, and it hurts her, but she comes to work every day. Every day, on time. She is willing to work late and to take on the yucky tasks if needed. She does her very best. Yes, I have seen her sweep the kitchen floor before and then marveled at how long it took her. But. When I looked closer I saw that she was sweeping under the refrigerator and in the corners. When she finished, the job was well done. She’s quiet and unassuming. She doesn’t complain. She doesn’t whine when something is hard, she rolls up her sleeves and gives it her complete focus and her best effort. I think that’s heroic. In our instantaneous world, in our culture of perfection and beauty, this woman doesn’t measure up. She’s considered substandard and below par by many. Too bad our culture and society won’t take a few minutes to see her. Really see her. We’d all be better people if we recognized and imitated her attitude and persistence and her kind effort as heroic as opposed to some overpaid actor in tights pretending to climb a skyscraper.

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God loves infinite variety

Posted on October 26, 2016 by Donna Coulson

I didn’t blog of Monday because I was in Moab, Utah visiting my friend Mary Jane.  (I will blog more about her soon – what an amazing lady!)

If you haven’t been to Moab, you need to make plans now.  What a stunning place.  On Sunday, two friends and I got up early and made our way to Arches National Park.  OMG.  (I actually hate that acronym, but for this blog it is totally appropriate.)  Oh. My. God.  What an amazing world You have created for us to enjoy.  We took the hike up to Delicate Arch, then just sat for a while relishing the splendor of it.  I love the sea.  I love to snorkel and watch hawksbill turtles swim by me.  I love sitting on Bridger Peak to look at the horizon.  I have seen the Transylvanian Mountains, and watched crashing waves on the Oregon coast.  I try to always adore the infinite variety of the world God has created.  At Delicate Arch, it was easy to be awed.

 

Delicate Arch through a smaller arch.

Delicate Arch through a smaller arch.

 

Delicate Arch. That little figure underneath is my friend Judy doing a yoga pose!

Delicate Arch. That little figure underneath is my friend Judy doing a yoga pose!

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One goodbye of many –

Posted on October 17, 2016 by Donna Coulson

A few weeks ago I wrote about my fish, Filaya. Well, yesterday I bid a fond adieu to my little finful friend.  Since we are moving at the end of the month, to warm and beautiful St. Croix where I will be able to swim with amazing fish of many colors any time I want to, and it really isn’t possible to carry my fish with me on the plane (if I expect him to survive!), we found dear Filaya a new home.  His tank, his rocks, his bubbly home and trusting nature all now belong to Connor. He will take care of Filaya – though I heard talk of changing his name… and Connor was was happy to befriend my friend.

I am glad about this transfer.  Connor is the young son of a dear friend, and he will enjoy the company of my little fish.   I am happy that we are one more step towards getting moved.

But.  This morning when I walked into the office to turn on the computer, Filaya wasn’t there.  I know it is silly to admit this.  But I am grieving a little. Over a fish.

I have looked forward to moving to St. Croix for several years.  We have prayed about it and worked toward this goal.  Thanks to God, it is all coming together and it looks like in exactly four weeks from today I will arrive home on my island as a permanent resident.  I am so excited and happy and elated.

But. Every time changes occur – whether small or large, every time I move from one place to the next – there is a trade off. I love moving.  I love, as my son describes it, “Reinventing myself”.  But I also know the cost.  I know that moving forward means leaving behind. With elation there is loss, with excitement there is fear. Maybe it is the unknown and the challenge that calls to me and prompts me to take part in the reinvention, but the dear and the familiar have a strong hold as well, and the leaving hurts proportionately with the joy of arrival.

We have four weeks left.  In that time I have dozens and dozens of things to do.  I have lists and calendars and more lists to help me accomplish it all.  The business of going will keep me moving.  In the next four weeks, I want to treasure every smile from friends, every hug, every moment, so that I can take them with me and keep them forever.

 

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Winter is coming!

Posted on October 10, 2016 by Donna Coulson

Last Fall it got really cold early in the fall and all the leaves just died and fell, becoming an unceremonious pulp under the snow.  It was ugly.  This fall has been picture perfect.  In mid-September, it got pretty chilly and I had to turn the furnace on in the evenings, but since then, it  warmed up and the trees have had a nice period of time to show off their most vibrant and beautiful colors.  We live in the oldest part of town, so the trees that surround us are tall and full.  It has been joyful to drive or walk in our neighborhood,  happily assailed by the silent voices of  our living mosaic.  The nearly neon blue sky has been a fitting backdrop to the yellows and scarlets and crimsons and greens the trees have provided.  Bliss.

This has been a gift to me from my native Wyoming.  We are leaving here in just a month, to move and live full time on an island of perpetual summer. If life events go according to our current plan, I won’t be in this country for another fall.  That is perfectly fine with me…I detest the snow and cold. I hate the howling of the wind – and while I like watching the tumbleweeds dance across the prairie, the cruel harshness of gusts and chill factors doesn’t make that dance worth it.  It makes me sad to see the grass turn brown and the flowers I’ve loved all summer die. I’m ready to forego the winter in Wyoming.  But still.   I am thankful beyond words for the beautiful send off this fall has afforded us.  I rejoice at the variety of colors as the leaves play with the last of the warm breezes.  Thanks, Wyoming.  Thanks, God.

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Collecting People

Posted on October 3, 2016 by Donna Coulson

When I was in college at Texas A & M, I befriended a young married woman named Margie.  I have lost contact with her, we never were BFFs, but even though we were only friends for a little while, she made an impression on me.  She was deeply and genuinely kind.  I remember spending an evening with her.  We ate a nice dinner and then sat and watched the angel fish in her large tank as we talked.  She told me that something she liked to do was “collect people”.  Don’t be afraid, she didn’t have bodies in the freezer.  She explained that she realized that every person she meets and interacts with is important and helps to shape her, so she tries to ‘collect’ them, and keep their touch on her life alive and meaningful.

Clearly, even though that was over 30 years ago, I took her idea to heart and ‘collected’ her for myself.  When I meet new people or enjoy time with people I cherish, I try to absorb them and make them and what they have added to my life a permanent part of my heart.

Our plans are becoming more and more solid, and we are getting close to making our permanent move out of Wyoming and to the Caribbean.  We have many very dear and precious people in our lives who won’t be going with us.  I’d like to think that I will stay in touch with all of them and that when we come back to visit everything will be the same, but I know that this just isn’t true.  It isn’t possible.  We will move on and so will our friends.  Now is the time for me to be very intentional and ‘collect’ my friends and their love and influence on my life into something that I can keep and hold on to.  So, I begin to consider what special, unique gift each person in my life has generously given me.  I will hold on to: Betty’s bell-like voice as she sings the descant of “Seek Ye First”  at Sunday morning worship — Jordan and his eternal greeting of “Youou look nice.” — Charlotte’s undeniable talent at the piano — Jeff’s enthusiasm for the God he serves — Maxwell, the little kid who lives two doors down and always wears one red shoe and one blue shoe, who knocked on our door one evening and came in to watch TV for a while.  …  These are just the beginning of my thoughts and the clear glassy surface of a deep lake of people who have shared themselves with me through the years.

 

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