Monthly Archives: September 2012

Conquering Our Challenges

30 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Commitment, Conquering Fear, Trials

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Conquering Our Challenges

Some of our trials can honestly seem less like a hill & more like a major peak which we must scale. If you find yourself on one of those, midway up & wondering how to finish, I suggest you take a moment to hunker down & find your own steel inside. Renew your commitment to finishing what you started & make a decision that you are going to get over this one day. That there is no turning back. That going in reverse & failing by falling is not an option!! Often we simply do not realize how much tenacity, strength, courage & will we actually have within us until that very day we are midway up on that high peak, wearily wondering what we’re doing in such a predicament, looking upward at how much further we have to go!

 Our problems rarely go away, our dilemmas rarely ease up on us, we just learn how to conquer our challenges by facing them head-on, standing up again & finding our way to the place where the difficulty is then behind us – the top of the peak! Conquer your biggest fears, doubts, worries & concerns by believing first that you can!

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Wherever love is, I want to be

30 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Change, Love

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Wherever love is, I want to be, I will follow it as surely as the land-locked salmon finds the sea. 

~JEANETTE WINTERSON, The Passion


Love isn’t meant to tear us apart or leave us in pieces, it’s meant to shape us as we are into something even more for the sake of loving. We are shaping & forming lives based on how we love & whom we love, we are changing our own life as well as those of others. We are the artisans of love, not only in the way we make love, but also in the way we make our love something of value to others. In how our love changes their lives – hopefully for only the better! If you aren’t able to love yourself completely, your ability to love others is impaired, for you must first know the love within to understand how to share it externally. You are helping to create the world based on how well you know love, don’t you think that deserves your best? If not for love’s sake, then what? Your ability to share the internal light of your being with others is the most important aspect of your humanity, consider it the worthiest of your endeavors accordingly. Learn to love so that it is evident to others that you are love!

Pay Attention

28 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by in Fullness, Joy, Love, Strength

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Pay Attention

The holes in the human heart are there not only to remind us of what we lost, but what we once had. Although holes hurt & pain us for so long, that pain is what reminds us of what we lost! If we aren’t able to recognize the strength & fullness of our heart prior to suffering whenever a hole is formed & we endure a loss, we’re forced to see a blessing only after it is gone. Pay attention to the fullness of your heart while it is strong & beating, filled with love & the blessings of those whom you love, for when it is healing & torn, it must work so hard to remind you of how it all initially felt! Savor the times you have when you have them, practice dwelling in the moments of love, contentment & joy, for those memories you are now making are what will keep your heart going when it is once again weakened. Appreciate what you have while you still have it, there is love all around you after all!!

A Big Tug Of War

24 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by in Compassion, Empathy, Giving

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A Big Tug Of War  

Sometimes the world seems like a big tug of war . . this one pulls, that one pulls harder back. If we all just committed to doing, being & giving our best, I believe the tug of war would inherently lessen!
If there were no perceived injustices, because we knew that we all were doing, being & giving our best to one another, then there would be no need to seek retribution or justice. We would just be able to relate to one another’s mistakes or inabilities because we were giving them the benefit of the doubt for just having done the best they could!

If we related to one another with humility, with empathy, compassion & a desire to treat others as we wished to be treated ourselves, ego & selfishness would take a backseat to the desire to be humane, unselfish, respectful, compassionate & polite. We need to be civil in the world to share it . . to show our humanity by individual acts which reflect that to others. First, it is up to each of us to mirror how we wish to be treated, for how can we expect in others what we haven’t nurtured in ourselves? Have a great new day!

Lead by example, take the higher road & leave the fray – Cheryl Ries

16 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Choices

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Lead by example, take the higher road & leave the fray

A snappish response would be name calling, yelling, or taking the opportunity to demean someone. The better response would be to learn that emotions, being right & having to maintain pride aren’t as important as your own development, your own maturity, your own appraisal & your own humility. That’s life sometimes, we can know we are right, but rightness isn’t as important in the long run as our own righteousness. Sometimes it isn’t so necessary that in being right we make sure others feel so wrong! Opinions, thoughts & ways will always vary from one of us to another, what is wrong to one of us, may just be right to another. All we can do is our best to express the real, honest & genuine self which we wish to share with the world, but realize others are doing the same!

For the sake of the world, it is only when we all start to accept the different thoughts & our individial right to believe each as we do that we will have civility in this world. Surely we see intolerance & bullying in the world is not the way to coexist! Those of us who believe that another way of tolerance is better, should always stand for that by our own example & through how we respectively treat others even when they disagree with us! I refuse to become anything less than I am when confronted by intolerance, bullying, or outright ignorance! Lead by example, take the higher road & leave the fray to those who are battle ready & armed. Stand up for what you believe, but never resort to losing your integrity by using bad character traits in the process!

We Need Room For Joy

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

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We Need Room For Joy

 

There are two common emotional responses to bad experiences which are not advisable ways in which to deal with our pain, grief, anguish, anger, frustration, despair & sadness. First of all, we are not to not feel anything, stuffing the pain away somewhere deep inside the recesses of our souls & spirits, only to deny ourselves a process of healing in the end. Those things always have a way of resurfacing when we haven’t dealt with them. Secondly, we cannot dwell in those negative places once we’ve begun the process of healing for a duration longer than necessary.

Some take years of their lives or worse, their lifetimes, wearing their badges of “honor” which are only badges of injustice in reality for the loss of all their precious years of happiness, contentment, productivity & peace lost when those negative emotions we should only feel for a time have become encampments in which we have chosen to dwell for longer than necessary! We often want to wear our wounds like badges of honor because we feel some need for vindication or wronged by the injustices which we have had to endure, but in truth, the real badge of honor is one of strength & courage when we learn how to overcome our feelings moving beyond that which hurts us, keeping check on our own self-pity & going ahead with our lives as we know we should! We need to feel, to accept what life gives us, but we need to balance good & bad, not letting our negative baggage take such precedence that we no longer have room for joy in our own lives!

YOUR LIFE IN AD LIB . . .

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Dreams, Life

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YOUR LIFE IN AD LIB . . .

When I was young, there was only one reality for me.  I was only interested in being a wife and a mother.  Looking back, all the things I did, all the activities I practiced, my play, my favorite times, my significance, all was vested in that journey.  Lo and behold, the two things of significance I have not done in my lifetime are those very things which I spent my childhood playtime and chore time in preparation.  I knew how to cook, bake, clean house, sew and I observed with admiring eyes, the most giving examples of women who were devoted to lives at home with husbands and children.  So, why do you ask, have I not accomplished that yet?  Hmm, it never seemed right the times the roles were offered to me previously.  It’s simple.  Life isn’t always the way we write the script, but rather in how we read the script which was given to us for our lives!  Or perhaps, even more daring in theory, how do we go off script, and ad lib our lives?

Don’t be a victim all the time!  It’s easy to complain and admonish yourself, or worse, others, for what has or hasn’t transpired according to your preconceived script.  Simple to understand but difficult to believe, we may have to live ad lib.  Yikes!  It’s not that hard, haven’t you ever had a time in life when you have had to wing it?  It’s our faith, our magical molecules, our vast capacity for determining things with reasoning, thought, and cognition which permit us to make our way up as we go.  Pretense, acting, it’s all the same really . . . we might feel slightly better were we to know things ahead of time, but imagine if you actually knew the exact moment of your death ahead of time.  The only people I know who are truly eager for that are suicide bombers, who believe in their supposed heroism that the action of death will lead to glory somehow.  They are delusional.  The rest of us, with healthy psyches and emotional personnas, know without a doubt, that some things are much better left unknown!  

So, let go, let your faith guide you, believe in your own journey’s validity, have dreams, but sometimes let yourself make it up as you go!  You might discover the person you were really meant to be lives under the shadow and forced shell of the troublesome rigidity of that other person you think you should be.  Dare to dream, but also dare to let your heart, your instincts, but most importantly, your trust in your higher power be your guide.  The zig zags of life are what you’ll remember more than the sure steps you  planned ahead of time, I guarantee it! 

MY THOUGHTS ON HUMANITY … THE ROLE OF GOD

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in God

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MY THOUGHTS ON HUMANITY . . . THE ROLE OF GOD

As long as we have evil revealed through infertile thoughts, words and deeds of men, we will need to find our comfort and our rest in God’s abundant, verdant pastures. – Cheryl Ries, September 9, 2010

We are fast approaching an another anniversary of September 11th, a most notorious day for realizing in modern terms the extent of man’s hatred. It is based on a centuries-old tradition of religious intolerance.  We’ve seen it played out all too often throughout the history of civilization. As long as human beings have existed, an animosity for someone who believes something slightly different or in great measure differently than another.  

I wish it were simple to believe that a wave of love could ease and one day heal this rift between people, ending this inhumanity, this barbaric and most ungodly desire to slaughter one another, often in the name of a god.  My God is a God of love, therefore, there is no reason to believe He could or would condone it, this murderous desire to be all one religion, one category, one race, one nationality, one of anything . . . I believe He created the world, with many of everything, because He enjoys diversity.  He is offended by our foolish desire to fight and squander our lives, our resources, our eternities upon this mistaken notion of overcoming, besting and beating into submission for His sake.  Who is at fault originally no longer matters, but to find a place of peace between people, a way to share the world’s plenty without someone always thinking with greed towards overthrow and overpowering others is the question which has haunted Him surely since even the days of Cain and Abel.  But, since He knows our days even before we are born, does He wait expectantly upon the braver better people He knows we can be, having given us the freedom of choice, to make a different choice?  I think so.  I think He waits for us, one by one, to rise above the imperfections which can take us back towards the pulls of evil, the fleshy things which don’t give us what only He can, eternal life in a place so perfect, we cannot even hope to find anything worth murdering, stealing, slaughtering, nor decimating here on this earth.   If one by one we rise to the occasion, we will soon be an army of good marching over the land instead of always good fighting bad, evil seeking to conquer His rule.  Fight for what you believe, now more than ever!  If you have God in your life, stand up and be the Godly person you were meant to be, shine that light and shine it brightly for all to see, and maybe your light will be a beacon to someone who stands upon a precipice wavering against temptation.  

God bless us all this September 11th, all around the world.  May we know a continued sense of His abiding hand of loving rule, not the kind that beats, nor tortures, but that which nurtures all creation.

LEARNING AS WE GO

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in God

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LEARNING AS WE GO

I wish I knew then what I know now.  I didn’t, and so, I made mistakes, I lived my life with a flawed sense of reality, sometimes quite selfishly focusing on all the wrong things, the things which don’t really matter when it comes right down to it.  But you know, I suppose that is what separates me from sainthood, I didn’t know, I wasn’t perfect, and all I could do was the best I knew to do when I knew to do it!  Lighten up . . . we are imperfect creatures, designed with flaws, made in flesh with all too human characteristics.  We hurt, we bleed, we covet, we need.  But we can strive to be better each new day, to do better each new year of this life.  I am not where I want to be yet, but I’m headed in the right direction, facing my demons, conquering my enemy fears, and looking for my dreams!
When we make mistakes, do we know that we have two choices?  We can forgive ourselves, as easily as we would probably forgive our friends or family theirs, or we can harbor the harm as though it has ownership on some part of us.  It is often the case that we mold ourselves around our upsets, shape our lives to fit our troubles and create new forms out of the dented clay we have battered in just being humans.  Is that fair?  Does anyone deserve an onus of responsibility which requires perfection?  I have set such lofty standards, that I almost made it impossible at times to exist in this world with my portfolio of follies, those things which I would label the collective mistakes which altered my life significantly.  No, in terms of the world’s turning, they are not earth-shaking, but for my life, perhaps I would have had an entirely different life had I not made these mistakes or lived with these choices.  Can we go back and change the past to ease our burden of guilt?  No  . . . we are left to process, to forgive ourselves our failings and to proceed.  Failing at something doesn’t make us failures as human beings.  It is not the case.  If I cannot come to terms with that significant difference in defining my life, then I cannot move onward to the future with peace of mind.  And I must!  That is what I must do.  I must move forward, so I must forgive myself for being human.  If God can and does forgive me, why can’t I forgive myself?  I must!!

Learn to be all too human, it is what God made you to be.  You are not the exception to the rule, but just another one of us, doing your best each new day!  Let go, trust in God, and try to do better and be better each morning.  But, remember as you live your life, you will make mistakes, you will fail along the journey, you will suffer disappointments and you will let people down.  That doesn’t make you a failure, nor does it destroy your life.  You must forgive yourself, just as you would ask God or others to forgive you, let yourself find a kind and loving heart waiting there within to give nurturing back to yourself!  It’s the requisite condition of our very human design. 

 

HOW TO DREAM BIG!

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Dreams, Life

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HOW TO DREAM BIG!

I’ll be frank here, dreaming is always in competition with my more practical side, the realistic side which screams, “Don’t you open up your heart to those foolish dreams, you’re just asking for trouble!”  I’ve admittedly been broken down, busted apart and found myself wondering why I ever dared to dream when they pan out and fall to pieces.  I’ve always gotten back up, stepped back into my “fantasy”, and hoped all over again.  The true nature of a positive thinker is optimism, but also the very personification of that optimism, is in the ability to re-form visions, to dare to dream again!

Living in this most arduous world today requires great faith.  We are bombarded with realism.  It’s not that everything we contend with is in fact new, but we didn’t actually hear about it every second of every day before.  We literally hear about the world’s issues 24/7, through our tv’s, our internet services, our phones, our friends, our constant communication!  It’s true that our world can crush our dreams.  We must learn to rise above the heartbreak, the disappointments, the devastations, the anxieties, the traumas, and all the dramas which play out each day upon our senses!  Learn to filter for the preservation of your own sanity, but also to encourage the nurturing  of your dreams!  They need bright light to grow to maturation, not the dimness of futility and despair!

Bring your heart along for the ride, let your imagination guide you and direct you.  All ideas are yours from Divine providence, so you should be encouraged to believe that each and every idea fostered inside your imagination has merit, has possibility, and has great chance for success!  Don’t let anything deter your dreams from living full, healthy, complete lives.  Let your dreams develop from their infancy as little seeds, born inside your thoughts, to full-fledged accomplishments, which you mark upon your checklist of lifetime significance.  Believe in the dream and believe in you!