Category: personal growth

Riding Shotgun Down the Avalanche

How Conflict Became Our Path to Connection

I listen more closely. This song is haunting, beautiful. Is it a song of exhilaration, like I hope, or one of sorrow? This best new song I never heard until Apple Music served it up to me last night is the latter. I have been fighting with it ever since.

I got home and looked it up.  Shawn Colvin  released this song in 1989, more than 30 years ago. As you might deduce from the title, the writer feels out of control. She deeply loves her partner yet there are deeply destructive elements in their relationship. I can relate to this.

We had a fight a few months back where I stomped out of the house. I drove off aimlessly, ended up in Cedar Key. It took far longer than the hour and a half travel time it would have taken me if that had been my direct intention. I wanted to see the Gulf of Mexico. It will always be the Gulf of Mexico for me. He provoked me one time with that Gulf of America nonsense.  I spent the night. He had my location. Still sharing location is a signal I know he understands.

There is a pattern where he comes in so sweetly to wake me in the morning with a kiss. And then we have a raging argument within the hour. I have come to realize that because he gets up so insanely early, that he’s had time to get something on his brain he HAS to talk with me about. Meanwhile I have not had coffee yet and want my early morning peace. It isn’t a great combination.

We both can get so distressed that we break things. And although I am generally the one who sweeps the debris from the broken dish, or the destroyed TV remote, we are both responsible enough to look within ourselves the for where we contributed to our conflict and make reparations with each other. Although sometimes it is “just because”, I get flowers quite often after such occasions.

I have come to understand that conflict is his way of getting to a level of emotional connection beyond superficial discussions of things like the weather or what each of us have done today. It gets beyond the next deeper level of logistical discussions about dinner or what to do together for fun this next weekend.

 Growth through conflict isn’t the greatest avenue, I think. But he makes sure we do connect. I deeply appreciate this. The glue that puts us back together is stronger than the perfection of a boring cup. The boring cup is what broke my first marriage. It took me over 20 years to try again.

I go back to thinking about this song, that I played over and over again, seeking to melt it into my soul. Exhilaration is what I want. I saw something magical and beautiful within him when we met.

Sunset Over Ramsau Bei Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany February, 2016

This man, this person, had lost almost everything that was important to him in the aftermath of traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and had back injuries he was just getting past. He had served what he had come to see as a dishonorable cause in Iraq. After that series of losses he had almost taken his own life. He failed at that and I am eternally grateful.

I didn’t know all that right away. What I knew is that on an early date he took a three mile walk with me around the perimeter of our neighborhood to enjoy the Christmas decorations. During the community parade of decorated golf carts that zipped by us, we strolled through darkened streets sprinkled with colorful lights. And I loved it.

It was quite a while later that I realized how physically painful that must have been. I know now walking anywhere is not his typical idea of a great time. He would have preferred to be in one of those golf carts.  He was truly smitten with me. 

What brought us together, this man from South Alabama who drove a pickup truck? Who I imagined I would go out with once out of curiosity and probably never again? He liked rocks and gemstones. “You will probably think this is crazy he said, but I think they have properties that affect people”.

And my heart took flight. I love rocks and minerals! There are bowls full of them around my house. I also consider that they have properties that affect their environment or the person who wears them. And as an antidote to boredom, not being able to go, or do or work, he had taken to learning to cut them. He took classes in North Carolina to improve his skills at the William Holland lapidary school while I was off visiting Croatia and then Germany for a couple of months.

We sat together falling in love over the next summer as he ground away on gemstones. The hum of the grinding and of the machine soothed me and drowned out the ever-present background drone of the television, the one that was literally never on at my house next door. And now he had a dream.

While I was off completing what I thought would be one last work rotation in Wiesbaden Germany, he cemented his plan to attend gemology school in Carlsbad CA. I encouraged his dream of attending GIA  to become a Graduate Gemologist. He wanted to know what he was buying to cut.  His GI Bill would pay a lot of the expenses. My credit score enabled us to rent an apartment with a view of the Pacific Ocean from the swimming pool and the exercise room.

California

He could not have gone without me. Not with a 12-year-old son who would have to attend school. I would never have had the opportunity to go without him. It was a grand adventure.

After driving cross country out with the contents of that pickup truck, my car, his son, our two dogs, we furnished our dream with thrift store offerings. We also discovered suitable items from the leftovers of neighbors who’d discarded them. They had moved on in pursuit of their own dreams, or perhaps their dissolution. San Diego, the desert, beaches with cold water and cliffs and sunsets instead of sunrises, felt amazing.

Locked Bicycles. Commitment. Contrasts.
Bicycles Above A California Beach, Carlsbad, CA 2019

Meanwhile we fought about our differences. There are so many. Wonder Bread vs Dave’s Killer. Recycling vs throw it all away in the same can. Liberal vs Conservative. We broke up when we came back East. But it didn’t stick. It never stuck. We’d work things through. Our relationship deepened. It is not the easiest path, this growth through conflict, yet we persisted. Both of us.

Growth Through Conflict

Our relationship set me off on a course of deeper personal growth than I would have ever undertaken on my own. We’d have an argument, I would run away, determined never to return. After I few days, I would consider my own beliefs and question them. Where he was wrong, was clear from the beginning! It took more consideration to acknowledge my own flaws.

 Discovering sometimes obvious places where I also needed to grow, I’d write it out. When the inevitable call to come to dinner arrived, I would eventually return. We would discuss. We would both apologize. We’d course correct. I have journals filled with these stories.

After five years, we married. Ever the encourager, it was genuinely fine with me that he took his final exam to become to become a certified jewelry appraiser on our honeymoon. We have created a beautiful home together. And we continue to thrive into our third year of marriage.

 We are the irresistible force of water that meets the immovable granite boulder. There is stimulation and growth and deeper love in the smoothing of this giant piece of rough into an elegant polished specimen worthy of exhibition.

Large Crystals illuminated at the ABT Exhibit, Tucson Gem Show 2025
Polished Beauty. ABT Exhibit, Tucson, AZ 2025

We will result in a most beautiful specimen! We will be like the ones you in the gemological museum in Idar Oberstein in Germany.  Like the ones you see on display in Tucson at the gem show every February, we will inspire awe. This is my version of the results of the avalanche. This is my dream.

 I am certain that I am not simply riding shotgun when I am riding in the truck I willingly climbed into. This avalanche is the smoothing of the rough.  I believe this, the way I believe in him. The way he loves me despite my insistence that I am right, my Mighty Marian proclamations of Truth.  

Which I am quite often right, I am sure of it. That he is certainly the one who is mistaken or has been misled when he somehow continues to honorably serve a dishonorable master when it comes to our political arguments. And certainly, Dave’s Killer Bread is better that that white cardboard he still prefers even as he eats the healthier choice. And I observe in awe his ability to create beauty from rough stones or examine jewelry with an attention to detail I could never in a hundred years muster.

One of his fancy cut color change CZs, 2019. I loved the vivid green iteration of its color. Fantasy background Courtesy of Canva AI

I consider the possibility of a destructive version of a relationship avalanche. We argue. Occasionally we break things and then repair. We fight and reconnect. This is the story of choosing a relationship that smooths our rough edges, even when it feels like an avalanche Testing edges creates what comfort never can. We are getting better at it. It is exhilarating.

What That Sky and My Dog Had In Common

Chelsea was my master, teaching me honor beauty in difficulty like I could in a gorgeous sky reflected in water.

So many things pass through my mind as I gazed at those gorgeous clouds above the water that reflected them back to the sky. Present at that moment in Spanish Fork, Alabama, I recognized the beauty I wanted to honor by capturing it with my camera. It was beautiful like Chelsea, regardless of her difficulties.

Here we are, having a seafood lunch caught from the local waters here in near Mobile, Alabama. I am visiting this area where my sweetheart grew up, for the first time. I had no idea how magnificent the sky could be.

Life is good! There is so much beauty to honor in the world, I thought, until I remembered that I found out only yesterday that my precious Chelsea Belle had cancer. “She is twelve”, I thought to myself. That is a pretty great life span for a dog.

And it is. I gave her a good life. She’d been dropped off at the vet tech’s house. I heard about her close to immediately. I had only recently decided I was willing to get a dog again. My last dog was only four when he died, also from cancer. He was a rottweiler, and also a rescue.

I am ready for a dog, again, I explained to my vet. My kitty Otter, had lost weight and she wasn’t that heavy to begin with. The vet felt concerned for her health too. Testing showed nothing amiss, but I knew. She was suffering heartbreak from Leon’s death. She needed another dog to replace Leon in her life.

My son had called me about Leon the Rottweiler. I felt skeptical. ” But, Mom, you gotta see this dog!” he pleaded. So I drove to Jacksonville. And I fell in love with him when he licked my hand. When he died I felt bereft like we pet owners do. I didn’t want to replace him. He cannot be replaced. My cat was lonely too, though, as evidenced by the lost weight. “She needs a dog to keep her company while I work”, I reasoned.

So I made a bargain with God. This dog needs to weigh less, maybe fifty pounds. Leon had been a lot to handle at almost ninety. This next dog also needs to be less fearless, I calculated. Leon gleefully sought to round up Fed Ex trucks like they were cattle he was in charge of. Once he literally threw himself at a pick up truck while I sought fruitlessly to keep him in check. “I’m so sorry!” this hapless driver proclaimed. “No, I assured him, my dog ran into you”. He was not hurt. It was cancer that got him.

I got my wish this time. God listens. I got an exactly fifty pound dog. And, instead of overly fearless, Chelsea turned out to be an anxiety queen. She was not afraid of nature, but sliding glass doors? Basketball hoops? Garbage cans along the street? these were fearful objects.

Chelsea’s Soft Eyes

One morning in the predawn darkness a mylar balloon tied to a mailbox to announce a neighbor child’s birthday party startled her. She took off, ripping her leash from my hands! I couldn’t find her and I had to go to work.

She returned home by way of the wetlands behind our house about a half hour later. Dragging her leash behind her, covered in swamp mud, she spent the day in the garage until I could get home and clean her up. It took a lot of work to settle her down, to teach her the world was mostly safe.

And then there were the shoes. I lost 8 pairs of good shoes to her 8 month old teething. “This, I thought to myself, is why she lost her first home”. I eventually learned to put my shoes away and to make sure she had dog toys to chew. She wasn’t much on fetching balls, but she was fast! She even caught a squirrel one time.

And as expected she and my kitty Otter were best friends. It felt amazing. I still cherish and honor the beauty of witnessing their friendship. Their eventual deaths can never take it away.

While she improved, she had that streak of anxiety. Always. New manmade objects were a challenge. I saw my own mental state reflected back to me. We grew together. She traveled both the Southeast and West Coasts with me. When she survived a rattle snake bite, it was a lesson that taught me that we were both tougher than we thought. She always would rather go home than anywhere else but grew easier with the world and was now a friendly dog.

All these things pass through my mind as I gazed at the reflected glory between the water and the sky. I noted what this sky and my dog have in common. The reflections between the water and sky, my dog and my own being. The way you’ll notice life mirrors your thoughts back to you, the way it will honor your beauty and sometimes your flaws, over and over again if you contemplate such things at all.

Sometimes what the world reflects is the beauty we can find in difficult relationships, the ones that require us to grow. I see this picture and remember where I was. What was going on in my world at that moment comes back to me as something precious and beautiful despite the sorrow of impending loss.

Stop Optimizing. Start Being. Your patterns aren’t problems to fix.