{"id":10121,"date":"2022-02-04T03:33:10","date_gmt":"2022-02-04T08:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lyndalambert.com\/?p=10121"},"modified":"2022-02-04T09:04:01","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T14:04:01","slug":"the-evergreen-journal-4-walking-on-a-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lyndalambert.com\/wordpress\/the-evergreen-journal-4-walking-on-a-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"The Evergreen Journal #4 – Walking on a Cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Evergreen Journal<\/em><\/strong>, #4 – Walking on a Cloud<\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
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I\u2019ve adopted the word, \u201cevergreen\u201d for this year.<\/em><\/h5>\n

During 2022, I\u2019ll\u00a0<\/span>search out the deeper meaning of my ONE WORD.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be sharing\u00a0<\/span>creative non-fiction stories, thoughtful personal essays, and spare poems. Thank you for visiting today. Please tell me what you think in the \u201ccomments\u201d section.<\/p>\n

~Lynda McKinney Lambert, American Author<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Everyone wants to walk on a cloud. Right?<\/p>\n

How about you? What does this mean to you?<\/p>\n

Do you ever think about how you can walk on clouds?<\/p>\n

I am writing the final draft of this post at 2 am. I listen as the snowplow goes down the road beside my house.\u00a0 The cats and dogs are sleeping in soft doggie beds. My husband is upstairs asleep, too. It’s quiet here in my office and it’s a peaceful place where I can be any time of day or night.\u00a0 I think, my office is like Walking on a Cloud, to me. It’s my happy place and where I find solace.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking about what it means to Walk on a Cloud.\u00a0 My thoughts go to some of the little comforts I enjoy in everyday life. There is always value in contemplating the everyday mundane activities in our life, I think. We have wonders that surround us every day. We have to stop and pay attention to them.<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

I enjoy cloud-soft comfort in a number of ways.<\/p>\n

Last year, I purchased a new mattress.\u00a0 It is a VIBE.<\/p>\n

I learned about this mattress brand from my chiropractor and some people who work at his office.<\/p>\n

I put it on top of my older mattress. Yes, it made the bed very high.\u00a0 I use a step stool to get up onto my bed at night. Each time I do this I think, “Well, this isn’t bad for an old lady to get this bit of exercise just before I go to sleep!”<\/p>\n

I can look out the window.\u00a0 It is a great landscape facing the east. At night, I can see the stars in the dark sky.<\/p>\n

It makes me feel like I am Walking on Clouds as I lie in my bed and survey the world mornings and nights from this 2-story vantage point.<\/p>\n

As I grow older, I appreciate things that are soft and comfy.\u00a0 Clothing, shoes, and furniture in my home give comfort that feels like walking on a cloud day and night.<\/p>\n

In the late 80s, I was an MFA student and studio assistant at West Virginia University.\u00a0 An artist friend was coming to visit me from upstate New York. She was a good friend who shared a studio with me at another university where we were painting majors at that time. She was an MFA major at Bard College at the same time I was working on my MFA in West Virginia University.\u00a0 I asked my friend to stop at the Birkenstock store in her area and bring me a pair of Birkenstock shoes which are made in Germany.<\/p>\n

Since that time in my life, as I continued on my academic journey in fine art and literature, I walked on the clouds in Birkenstock shoes. I am sitting here today in my western Pennsylvania home, wearing a pair of Birkenstocks. They are the Classic style in Oiled Leather – sturdy and comfortable.\u00a0 \u00a0 I get a lot of miles from one pair of shoes.<\/p>\n

Another find in the past year was the Bomba’s socks that work so perfectly with my Birkenstock shoes.<\/p>\n

The socks are thick, warm, and make my feet feel like Walking on a Cloud every day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As a caregiver to my husband who has dementia, some days and nights seem endless. It’s easy for me to slip into a little self-pity party.\u00a0 It is exhausting at time. During those times, it feels like I am walking inside a layer of endless dark clouds.\u00a0 I have to consciously choose to turn my thoughts around and look at a bigger picture.\u00a0 I think about the sky and look up into the distance. I turn my attention to the higher purpose for our lives.\u00a0 We are eternal beings, created by a loving Heavenly Father who never leaves or forsakes us. And, I know at those times, I am living out my purpose in his plan for my life.\u00a0 We are to be servant-leaders in our home with those we love.<\/p>\n

Even on the darkest days, I stop to remember there is a blue sky hidden behind the clouds.<\/p>\n

This is an icy cold winter night but there is a blue sky and beautiful clouds behind that storm and darkness I see outside my window.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a caregiver to my husband who has dementia, some days and nights seem endless. It’s easy for me to slip into a little self-pity party.\u00a0 It is exhausting at time. During those times, it feels like I am walking inside a layer of endless dark clouds.\u00a0..<\/p>\n Continue reading →<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trusting-god"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lyndalambert.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Clouds_Girl_pexels-ike-louie-natividad-6121164-1-scaled.jpg?fit=1953%2C2560&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gbwn-2Df","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10011,"url":"https:\/\/www.lyndalambert.com\/wordpress\/one-word-evergreen\/","url_meta":{"origin":10121,"position":0},"title":"The Evergreen Journal, #1","author":"Lynda Lambert","date":"January 21, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Each year, American Poet, Lynda McKinney Lambert, selects ONE WORD for the entire year. For 2022, her word is EVERGREEN. She will be creating a series of articles and poems with the theme of EVERGREEN this year. 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