31 Days {Day 24 & 25}

I sure hope you read my Facebook fan page yesterday and realized I was sick...I meant to post here, too... just to let you know...but girls, I was OUT. I had a terrible migraine as well as the flu {i think it was the flu}. Anyway....how grateful I am to be feeling more like me today:) 

Hooray!

Yesterday was a rest day for our Creativity Challenge...we all need one of those don't we? As the day wore on, I became restless just laying on the couch {i do not like just laying around}. I grabbed my Art Journal and pens thinking maybe I would doodle and play...but the mood never struck...and that's okay.

I did end up being productive though...I set my Spring Goals and feel so good knowing where I'm headed in the next few months. I am a planner after all so this is exactly what I needed!
With a plan I not only accomplish my household tasks but I can focus on my art and blog, too. Love that "in control" feeling! 

Challenge #24 &25

I have a love/hate relationship with poems. I remember writing gut wrenching prose during my teen years about the one boy that never gave me the time of day. I would pour my heart into each poem, writing about my weight issues, being teased, the lack of love in my life and other, teen angst issues. It seemed I was obsessed with suicide back then, too. Not necessarily my own...death just always made it's way into my poems. {so grateful to be over that time in my life}. 

I have read hundreds of poems...funny, sad, love, old, new, famous, original, awful...the list goes on. I like some, I hate some. But there is one poem that touched me so deeply during my teen years that I carry it with me now...in my heart. I don't need a book to tell me the words...no, I can almost recite it from memory.

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay. 

Robert Frost

 

 I first heard this poem in the summer of 1983 when 

Pony Boy Curtis recites it in the film"The Outsiders". Not only did I love that movie {i mean who wouldn't...Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell as Pony Boy} but I remember hearing that poem and realized in my young years...that my life was as good as it gets right now. And if I didn't make the most of it now...well, then soon enough it would be over and that chance I had was lost forever. "Nothing Gold Can Stay"...

The summer after I graduated and the week before leaving for college, my last High School yearbook was delivered to my door. I eagerly opened it...hardly believing that this was it. High School was done and a new chapter in my life was about to begin. Imagine my surprise when written on the first page of my book was Frost's poem. It was fate. It sent goosebumps through my body. That poem that had touched me 2 years before and had stayed with me...was in my Senior year book. 

As I reread the poem I understood it differently. Now was the time in my life to treasure. Now was as good as it gets. This moment wouldn't last long so I better savor it...enjoy it while I could.

My life moved on, I graduated, got a job in radio then met the love of my life. Jacks and Em came along, I became a stay at home Mom and it's been one crazy, amazing, life altering experience after another.

Through it all Frost's words have come to mind hundreds and hundreds of times. Those few precious times in our life, those times when we become who want to be...those times we spend with our children, our spouses, our parents...those times are golden and they end way before we want them to. Those golden memories shall be with us forever...but they can only last a moment. 

 You see, I get it now. 

Now is the time to cherish our life.

Now is the gift. 

Now is the golden. 

Frost was a genius.  

Is there a poem that has touched your life...that has stayed with you throughout everything? Maybe it's just a funny one...create a scrappy layout, an Art Journal page or share on your blog. Really stop and think about why this poem means so much to you. And as always...let me know how you're doing...