Reflections

Today is my first blog post for 2012. Rushing through twinkling lights, gift wrappings and farewell toasts, the end of 2011 leaped into a brand New Year. So it is traditionally time to reflect on the old and ponder the new, right? The resolutions flow freely, diets and new company programs are jump started and frenzied activity seems to take up right where it left off with no real line drawn between the two years at all. As I have gone over the last year in my mind this morning, it is amazing to reflect upon where I find myself both professionally and personally.

We found out yesterday that Samantha, my daughter, is having twin BOYS! Wow…we have no clue what to do with the male species in our family. My mom had my sister and me, my sister had a daughter, I had a daughter, my daughter had Lorelai who is now going to be a big sister to snip-snail-puppy dog- tail boys. Everything has always been Princess Pink, tea parties on tiny toadstools, and fluffiness in our family. This will be a totally new adventure, but should be “interesting” to say the least.

In January 2011, I had a full staff and big visions for our staff and company. But in May…something changed. There was a great wave of staff turnover that began due to a variety of events…some needed to leave for family and personal reasons, some moved, some found themselves pregnant (!) and others were encouraged to leave because their performance was less than the stellar performance I promise my customers, or we realized they were not apt to embrace the awesome company culture we were dedicated to growing. Now in January 2012 we have had a complete staff turnover, but somehow I feel more at peace with the company and our current tiny staff and what we provide today than I have for many months. Changes that were pretty much out of my control when staff left resulted in an unexpected but refreshing purge of old attitudes and mindsets and made way for clearer thinking in myself and my current staff. It’s kind of like hanging onto a relationship that you know is bad for you and you cannot grow in…but you hang on and try and make it work because of your investment of time and self, and because it is all you know. But then you have to be away from the relationship for a while due to traveling with a job or visiting relatives and suddenly you find yourself saying “This is not working for me anymore, and that’s ok…and it’s ok to change”. Sometimes you have to step back…or be forced to step back…to find your real path and gather those who will walk with you, rather than pulling you toward their path.You may lose a meaningful someone just as I lost many of my staff. You may lose others watching from the outside that become experts on your relationship and are saying you need to try to find something you should have “done” or “become”  to explain your current state of affairs. Our company lost customers during this transition of staff coming and going, and it was not unexpected at all, although it has been quite a challenge. But in losing some, I have realized not all customers and not all staff are meant for our company….and that’s ok for all concerned. We don’t desire just any customer or just any staff…we want something more…we want extraordinary. We want those who walk this good path the Lord has given us, with us, not against His flow and His vision for our company.

And this brings me to today and accepting and embracing the fresh breeze blowing through my life now….

I have a general idea of my path today. I know where I am to live, I know who I am to love and spend time with, I know I am to grow in personal areas as a grandmother, mom, daughter and wife. I believe part of my professional path is to begin coaching cleaning business owners who want to strike out on this journey of service provider. Who better than someone who has been in dark and difficult places and then burst through to the other side?

But the most real and true thing I know about my path is that it is to be all about gathering bits of extraordinary. The year 2012 for me will be about sitting on my deck with a cup of tea and watching the birds eat from my feeders….. because I had the ability and time to offer something extraordinary to those who needed something I had to give.  It will be about stopping to bury my nose in the downy softness at the back of our new babies’ necks…and giving others permission to stop and just breathe in and enjoy the extraordinary opportunities and gifts of hard work, unending love, and a contented life. It will be about walking the block with my granddaughter picking up stones, shards of colored glass and leaves and pasting it into a magnificent picture…all fragments found along our path but becoming an extraordinarily beautiful work of art.

And I have every reason and hope to believe when 2013 arrives, I will reflect on 2012 as a year filled with bits of extraordinary. I vow to show up for my own life, where maybe I have not been in such good attendance in the past…and I hope you will show up, and begin your gathering, too.