Monthly Archives: September 2012

REALITY, WHAT A CONCEPT!

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

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REALITY, WHAT A CONCEPT!

Dreams are what drive us to compose our lives, they make our lives rich with color, beauty, and motivate us forward like our own inherent propellers.  Reality, though, now that’s a concept!  

I’m insistent in pointing out that the counter-balance to fantasy is reality.  Seems like that should be common sense, but many people live their entire lives wasting possibilities because they refuse to see the beauty and joy within reality.  It’s filled with imperfection, so reality isn’t going to be “picture perfect”.  Reality, once faced, can be imperfectly idyllic.  When we open ourselves up to the imperfections of people, those we love, our families, our friends, our mates, we experience love at a different level.  When we let love grow past the reflection of those flaws of reality, jumping through the looking glass and into the realm of deeper things, we can find love is based and rooted much more substantially.  We are all imperfect . . . looking externally and internally, we have that in common.  It doesn’t matter who you are, George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt . . . we humans are all commonly tied by our human imperfections, among other qualities.

Stating the obvious, we see imagery all the time which is close to perfection.  We see celebrities, movie stars, models, and athletes who seem to defy the real imperfect parameters the rest of us poor saps must live with.  They are glorious and radiate like luminous stars in some heavenly realm beyond our reach.  Truthfully, a great deal of what makes them so spectacular is not real.  It is the work of magicians . . . the squad of makeup artists, hairdressers, stylists, wardrobers, casting agents, trainers, plastic surgeons and clothing designers who have worked wonders transforming the physical “clay” of the human flesh.  Then add in the photographers, photo editiors, stylists, producers, and all those who are capable of taking photoshoots and commercials, films and promotional events to a new level through skillful manipulation of their talents upon the work in progress.  What we end up with is a lot of illusion, a world which emphasizes the perfect and idyllic!

Never fear, it is with maturity that you learn to grow through the stages of personal development which restrict a human being to that narrow space of appreciating only perfection!  With time, hopefully, if this is your issue, you can learn to find imperfections just as beautiful as what you interpret as perfect.  When you can look at the people whom you love and assess them as beautiful, even though they are imperfect, then you know your love is genuine!

RIGHT NOW . . .

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

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RIGHT NOW . . .

Right now in my life, I’m like an unfinished masterpiece.  I was reminded today when looking at the infant niece of a friend, who is ill and facing heart surgery, that life’s brevity is enough inspiration to constantly let yourself be shaped and formed!  I whine too much.  I moan and complain over such silly things.  I know nothing of pain, nor enduring it, in comparison to that of a tiny little 2-month old baby fighting for hers!

When God gives you challenges, it should automatically make you rise up and put your suit of armor on.  There shouldn’t be any question about whether you are able, or even whether you have enough artillery to fight.  Who cares!  If you have a challenge, you are equipped, as you were made to make it through.  We are not a sum of failed parts, but rather the realization of creation born of divine perfection.  Even in our imperfection, our purposeful lives make us meaningful and anything but failures!  So why is it, that when we reach a rough patch in our roads, we start to cower, not sure we are able to drive further?  Shouldn’t we just proceed, knowing that we are God’s most armed fortresses, with the Holy Spirit dwelling inside, filled with all the inherent strength, bravery and knowledge we will need.  We might not actually have the physical prowess, the actual bravado, nor the skills to know how to do something, but we have the best warrior we could ever hope to have, we have God in our corner!

So the very next time you encounter something, anything, even almost nothing, which challenges your ability to know what to do, or how to react, or which way to proceed, I challenge you to do what I have learned to do . . . ask God to help you!  It’s so simple.  In every aspect of life, I keep my inner ear open to God’s consult for direction.  I don’t consider anything to small nor too simple to call upon God for help.  If you get in the habit of constantly making contact with God about life, as you are living, you will soon learn that He wants to be a part of everything you are, all that you do, and the totality of what you aspire to be!

Let go and let God is a saying not because it’s catchy!  It’s a saying because others like you and I thought that somewhere along the journey we needed God.  So we made a habit of asking Him to help us with even the most mundane, as even in our comings and our goings, we can be assured, God is interested in our reliance upon Him.  He actually desires it.  He wants us to trust in HIm and to grow dependent upon Him.  It isn’t being needy nor is it being strange, it is the way your Father wants things.  So when you find yourself in need, give your cares to God.  Even in ordinary daily stuff, give it to God and ask Him to make the most and best of everything you do and say today!  Each day you rely on Him will be remarkably notable for its distinguishable calm, simple flow, and naturalness.  In other words, relying on God allows you to live life according to His will and therefore to be in His care!  You will probably notice a big difference when you give up control and let Him take over.  Life is simple, trust in God to lead you in your journey, if you make a mistake along the way, you will find Him willing to help you make the mistake into something beneficial for you!  God wants to bless you and love you if you’ll give Him the chance!!   Ask God to be your coach, your captain, your commander and your chief, let Him arm you for any battle, and trust that He will see you through anything, since He knows what you are going  through!  Have faith, don’t give up the fight!

THE HEART OF THE MATTER – LOVE

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

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THE HEART OF THE MATTER – LOVE

You know, no other organ retains a sense of your emotion like your heart!  It is not just functional, providing the life-giving beats which drive the oxygenated blood through your body, in rhythmic fashion to keep you alive.  It does this without even one action on your part, it is part of a “subliminal” system, an unconscious system which keeps your body going.  The heart also monitors your emotions though, as it most assuredly senses the changes of love’s breezes blowing over it’s bows.  The heart is the register for all your life, the functions and the feelings.

When you feel something, it passes from all your awareness within the mind through to the heart.  The most sensitive point of your being, where some have said the spirit resides within you, is also the place where love collides with thoughts, feelings, hopes, faith, dreams, and all the realities you have ever known.  The heart is truly the place where Cupid has aimed his arrows, for when we love, when we feel what we know to be love, we are the most vulnerable creatures, even more so than were we walking wounded!

Love is the most ominous of all the sensations as it crosses the magnetic field of electricity within the brain, but when it gets to the heart, it becomes a stream of current unrivaled by any force of nature!  Love would allow a grown man to hurl his own body in the path of an oncoming train to save his beloved child or spouse, love would throw itself upon a fire to save another’s flesh, and love would climb any mountain, ford any stream . . . well, you see my point.  Love transcends anything known in this world which is understandable and interpretable!  It defies our complete ability to even assess a word which pinpoints what exactly it is!  Love is . . . the immense capacity to put another person’s needs, desires, and care above your own in this world!  Love is magical, love is infinite and love is beyond our human understanding.  Love is from God in my opinion, therefore, it’s definition lies in the great unknowns which encompass other Divine features of life, unseen but surely proven!

AN ADAGE A DAY

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

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AN ADAGE A DAY

Have you ever stopped to realize why all the adages you’ve heard your whole lifetime exist?  Because they’re true!  Somehow, the good and smart people before you, involved in similar circumstances, decided to forewarn you.  So they made up some clever and precise adages, which people toss around and some actually pay heed. 

My favorite is: no good deed goes unpunished.  That is so true.  When you do something for someone else, no matter what it is, if you have any expectation attached, you will feel “punished”, or perhaps let down at least by the outcome.  It’s usually the case that the other person or people never really know your agenda, nor your motives, so they rarely do things in the same manner or with the same desired outcome.   Sometimes too, it is as if the world is backhanding you when you attempt to do something right.  Perhaps it is the case that you are trying to do something for all the wrong reasons, those which garner you attention instead of doing it anonymously, as should be the way of doing gestures like that.  Or maybe, this adage is true because we are in some state of guilt over something we didn’t do well enough when doing what we are called to do in life, so a layer of bitterness forms over our giving hearts, which prevents us from feeling anything but guilty for our actions.  And finally, we may just find we are giving things, or of ourselves, to people who just don’t want what we are giving.  They either don’t feel the same, or they don’t want what we deemed so special a gift.  There could be a million different explanations, but the world seems to display a counter-balance for every action, so it seems logical that for the good deed will come the punishable aftermath.  

Another adage I enjoy is:  an apple a day keeps the doctor away.  Now this I am beginning to believe in earnest!  I have reached that time in my life when things go wrong just because.  There aren’t definitive moments of injury or illness I can note, just constant degradation of the “mechanism” which is me.  Something aches for no reason, this feels strange for a different day, that hurts when I do this or that . . . it makes no sense.  It’s called getting old and we all must do it with grace, hopefully.  I choose to fight against it, maybe this is the universe fighting back??  I was always so healthy and without injury when young, now I ache here, I moan there.  It’s a neverending story . . .this perceived battle between time and our bodies.  Aging gracefully might just mean not struggling so and letting all the feelings wash over us, changing what we can, accepting what we cannot change, and learning, as they say, to know full well the difference! 

No matter which adages are your favorites for whatever reasons, wisdom is what made them so.  Wisdom born of someone else’s aggravations, time, encounters, feelings, pain, and situational summarization, just so that you could say, “Gee, I’m not alone!”.

WHIMSY

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

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WHIMSY

Whimsy, the art of finding joy in doing the silly things you love to do!  I categorize whimsy as the random desire to frolic, twirl, doodle, lolligag, linger, twiddle, and even dally!

Whimsy is the non-deliberate pursuit of nothingness, of pleasing oneself by partaking of happy-go-lucky random silliness.  I recommend that each one of you partake of random acts of whimsy each and every day, as that is the only way to alleviate the burdens of this world’s big weights upon your shoulders.  Whimsy is to our spirits, as taking in a fresh breath of air is to our lungs!  We celebrate our days spent wandering through our own unscheduled whimsy.  What, you may ask, might a great whimsical day include?  Well, in best measure, a day of whimsy might include, but surely not be limited to, dancing through your house on your day off listening to your favorite songs from the past; or twirling about the slippery kitchen floor with your daughter; or making wishes upon the shooting stars rocketing across the ebony night sky.  Whimsy is letting your childlike joy and desire to play take over for the regimented adult need to be disciplined, structured, reserved and shackled in maturity.  Whimsy is letting the grown up in you find the child all over again!

What do you do if it’s not natural for you to be whimsical?  Well, I suggest you run right now to the nearest open portion of your house and allow yourself five minutes of unadulterated twirling, or air-guitar playing while singing along to your favorite oldie-but-goody songs.  Just play!  If you need instruction, you might need more than my help, but try.  Bridge the part of you that is hesitant to let their inner child out.   Remember, life is a very precious and all-too-short journey, live it fully with passion and don’t allow yourself to be anything less that the star in your own life, be whimsical and love your life today!  Live it like there’s a party going on!! 

FEED YOUR SOUL

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

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FEED YOUR SOUL

Feed your soul with what you require for this life, starving it of anything you truly need for its preservation can lead to its slow demise.  The soul, just like the physical body, requires certain essential nutrients.  Those for most are:  love, companionship, joy, laughter, spirituality, close relationships born of confidence, and peace of mind.   Some may find they can exist easily without any or all of those, but rarely with a contented soul.  The being which dwells within, your spirit, starts to erode.  Feeding your soul, also means feeding your body, your mind, your heart, and your spirit.  When something is lacking from your inner set of needs, you will begin to feel an ache, a longing, a perpetuation of intolerance building within the cellular walls surrounding your most vital organs.  From there, the disease of the ultimate death of the soul which dwells within you, the wonderous and beautiful creation living on the inside of you, can and does eventually set in.

For me, when something is aching inside, it means it has gone unnourished or untended to.  It is not implausible to garner that for a reason of neglect, disturbance in patterns, inability to reach the “dream” or any other of a number of reasons, we cannot achieve what our souls demand for their very prosperity to thrive.  An example of this is richly quoted on the social media forum, Facebook.  It is often bandied as a profile post:  don’t give all of yourself to someone who sees fit to give you in return only crumbs!  Meaning, if you are more for someone than they can be in return, then the imbalance might cause your inner self to feel a sense of longing, of need, of less instead of enough.  It’s only up to you what you will tolerate in life, but I do know that settling for less than you deserve or than you truly want, will feel like you are starving your body!  Give it what it desires, without harming it with excess.  You must be aware of the internal desire your soul has to not in fact be selfish, but instead, to be the ultimate protector of self.  If you are out of bounds, off track, not in right step, starving the innermost sanctums of your being, you will feel discomfort, sometimes even to the point of a physical sense of pain for that lack!  Learn to listen instinctively to those things happening within your soul, they are in direct link with your spirit and body, if not in right step, you will soon pay in health, happiness, and hope lost!

How can you feed your soul?  It is so easy.  What makes you feel good?  What things do you enjoy that no one can take?  Maybe you love music and deny yourself that extra 1/2 hour of listening time in the car while driving to return phone calls instead.  My thought on that is this, driving and talking is hazardous, it slows down your reaction time, so keep the phone calls until you are stopped and listen to the music instead.  Even if you are a business person, you should just pull over, take the call and then commence in your driving again when you’ve finished.  I bet you learn how to more efficiently handle your cell-phone calls this way!

Put people who mean the most at the top of your life!  You aren’t going to keep them in your life for long if you let them feel diminished or take them for granted.  Life is precious, quit thinking there are tomorrows enough to make up for all the time the excuses used up today!  If you are making excuses for not doing something consistently, chances are you just didn’t want to do it anyway!  It’s a reality.   With the people we love, we must tend to the relationship every day, as though it were a garden and that without our care, something each day would wither and die.  Eventually, enough parts will have perished, that upon your unexpected return, you will find the garden has in fact completely gone, nothing is left.  Now I believe real love doesn’t die, but in that moment of such repetitive disregard, it has learned to shut itself off with all the negative things . . . like when weeds ultimately choke out the living, thriving plants in a garden.  They didn’t die, they were overtaken by something else and replaced!  If you love and value someone, you want to put them high up on your list of priorities, that relationship is something you don’t wish to forget to take care of each and every day!  

In feeding your soul, you can feed the world!  The souls and bodies, spirits and minds of this world are linked, and therefore, when we feed and nourish that which lives in us, we help to nurture the world.  No life is distinguishable from another, it is connected through humanity, and of course, the sum total experience of that humanity.  Live life with your soul nourished, and you shall give yourself back to the world, healthier, happier, and filled with hope! 

THE SEA OF LIFE

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

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THE SEA OF LIFE

Life is like a sea, sometimes we are on top of the waves, feeling like surfers tackling our problems and making headway with a big grin for all the success we feel. Other times, the waves are complacent little bobs of nothingness,which although still slight swellings responsible for some motion, which barely take us anywhere and we end up feeling stagnant, like we’re stuck. Then every now and then, we get those tsunamis, sometimes even in clusters of multiples, which not only scare us, but take us so far and so fast in turbulent distress out of our norms, that we are shocked, dismayed, and disturbed by the sheer fact that our sea of life sent them our way. Most of the time, we hope to be in the constant calm of a crystal blue sea, able to see our direction ahead, surrounded by others whom we trust and love, responsible for our own journey with a definable compass and equipment we can rely on, and with the knowledge that we haven’t had any upsetting tides nor stagnant times to stress us. 

When life’s sea sends us in strange and unknown waters, those uncharted and with unknown markers, we can feel fear. We can find ourselves more afraid to proceed in life than ever before . . . and fear is the vast darkness of depths yet unseen. Fear robs us of so much joy in life, it steals our peace of mind and catapults us into places of despair and evil. If you could equate it to the realm of the sea, it would be like finding either a shark’s fin cutting through the water’s surface near you, or even a school of sharks swimming underneath you. Nothing screams more primally of fear than imagining the fear of the top predator of the sea crossing our pathway! Our fears are like that. They live in the darkest recesses for a reason. They prey upon our peace for a reason. They are disturbing and unsettling to us for a reason, they are imagined, they are unseen, they are usually unrealized. So why do they garner so much power? Well, fear is the realm of all the negative thoughts we have, so in that negativity lives all that is wrong within us. 

We can also dwell in the drift of nothingness, when it seems as though the sea hasn’t enough current to propel us anywhere!  We become frustrated and puzzled,wondering how to find our escape, to swim ourselves free from the confines of stagnation! Is that so bad?  Normally we like a bit of calm, but in stagnation, means a floundering without direction, with no definable goals, our aspirations falter and we suffocate when finally, in fatigue, we sink into the endless sea around us.  It’s tiresome and overwhelming, this state of affairs!  We must learn to have faith and to leap forward when life stops dead in its tracks.  There are motors on a sailboat for the times when the wind is not anywhere to be found.  Sometimes in life, we need our plan B’s to guide us to another place where we are more ready to wait out the dead spaces of nothingness which surround us.  Don’t be afraid to use your motor when the sails won’t fill with air!  Call upon the powers which guide you, for me it is God!  Always and forever, I will rely and trust in Him.  Use your strength to move past the moments of stagnancy and consternation, press on!

No matter what the sea of life brings your way, be happy always and thankful for the fact that you are still afloat!  It is important to be grateful for your life, your current circumstances, your blessings, your joys, your family, your friends, no matter what you can say is something of value in our life, even life itself!  Be grateful!  It is better than drowning in the dark sea, giving up, and never knowing the true measure of life . . . promising and beautiful, filled with reasons to celebrate, even the smallest reasons exist in each moment of the day, every day!  Appreciate your sea!   Your waves might become this great set of surfable ones which carry you to a place of previously unknown successes, growth, love, happiness, desire, dreams, and inspiration!  

LEARNING AS I GO

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

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LEARNING AS I GO…

Life’s a series of lessons, learned as we live, not known beforehand.  They’re sometimes scoldings, sometimes they are trophies, awards, and accolades for “jobs well done”.  Mostly life lessons are an uncertainty, a way to evolve through the knowledge, discipline, experience, and time, which will all help to form the final form which makes up you.  Life is a way to become more than you started out being, and if you’re fortunate, you take your lessons and make the later versions of “you” new and improved! 

Do you ever tire of lessons?  I do.  Plain and simple, I long for the day when I don’t have to learn something which makes me feel a sting of shame, remorse, anguish, or self-abasing pity.  It’s not easy to be learning all the time!  Some days, we just want to be established, based, founded and ready . . . no more lessons, please!  Lessons can teach us, but after enough lessons, don’t we just feel fatigued?  It has happened to me.  I’ve been beaten down and done in by my lessons learned.  I sometimes eagerly crave the day when I don’t have to assume I have failed, faltered, or just missed the boat.  I want to be successful, don’t we all?  So learning lessons can weaken our exterior belief in our own strength.  It takes a special hard shell to know, a lesson learned doesn’t mean we are stupid, failures, or disappointments.  We all make mistakes.  So letting yourself be open to learning lessons, without being judgmental and self-abasing, is key to growth!

Lessons are like time-delayed gifts.  They will always give us a gift, but sometimes it is years after the fact before we can appreciate the lesson fully!  You might have the tendency to carry the guilt or shame like a weight around your neck for a long time before you find the benefit of that lesson!  The important thing to remember is, that no matter how much you need the lesson, there is a positive element to it!  You just need to convince your attitude of that!  It might require an adjustment, afterall, most people can get hooked into the negative way of thinking about lessons, as though evolving is a bad thing.  It isn’t, it just requires your guts and fortitude to make it through the hard times, until the sun shines on your wisdom, and a lesson leaves it mark!  Let yourself be open to learning about life through the lessons presented to you.  They happen for a reason, to make you a better human, by making your attitude more positive in the process!

LET THE FUN SHINE

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

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LET THE FUN SHINE

Let your sun shine, let the fun shine . . . be your joyful self, let the joy within you out, let your inner child reign!

I realize that as adults, we are all inundated with adult dilemmas.  We are overcome by problems, situations, a world plagued by worries and doubts, troubles and tribulations.  Where does that leave us these days?  We are often unable to find our own sweet natural smiles.  How many days do we walk under a dark dreary cloud, not able to muster a smile, nor to enjoy our lives?  It’s tragic, our days are numbered, so therefore, we are wasting such a precious commodity each time we waste one moment in our woeful turmoil.  I surely dread the thought that my last day would be spent muddled in mires of trouble.  I hope that I have pushed that aside and made a commitment to enjoy my every day, even the ones which are complicated by various situations, which I would wish away.  There are going to be those days, but I don’t have to be effected by them.  I can choose to look past them, to have a good attitude and to put my brightest beacon of a smile on, facing the world with an attitude of conqueror . . .

If you have done that, wasted days in perpetual condemnation, then you need to decide right now, enough!  No more wasting your most precious commodity, time!  God knows your days, but you don’t.  Believe in this day, believe it may be your last, and then ask yourself, do you want to waste it angry, frustrated, bitter, worried, conflicted, tense, or upset in any way, shape or form?  Ask yourself, “Self, how do I wish to spend this, my most precious day, today, the only one I know I have for certain?”

Hopefully, when you accept the realization that each is not promised but rather a generous gift, then you will believe your only choice is to correct your attitude, make changes in your behaviors, knowing that you are responsible for the outcome of your day.  We will all know good and bad events in our days.  That is a given.  No one is immune from the negative events which can hurt, harm, and chisel away at our security.  But bad events are only negative truly if we never learn from them, never see any opportunity to grow through the lessons we learn in them, nor if we never experience life as a survivor but rather always as a victim.  Even through the worst events in my life, eventually, after the pain subsides, I can see that I learned from the experience, I grew and improved from the living of that time.  It is all in our view of what we live through.  Change your view, be as positive and filled with faith, hope and a sense of determination through all your troubles as possible.  It is not always easy, but it is what makes us gritty and preserves our self-integrity, helps establish our sense of self in a strong and consistent way, and helps us to realize our full potential by eliminating the limitations we often place on ourselves when in “victim” mentalities.

See yourself as your own superhero of mood, attitude, emotion and determined effort!  Don’t just wait to react to things with emotions which tear down your defenses, but rather establish your own undeniable strong fortressed walls of healthy esteem, firm attitude, and positive energy.  Believe in yourself, accept that your life is a reflection of how you can shape your own emotions around life’s events, and don’t let anything tear down your sense of well-being, positivity, nor your assurances that all will work out for good in life!  Expect good things, dream big and don’t settle for less in life because you assume you aren’t worth any more!  You are worth the very best!

THE UNFAMILIAR PATH . .

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

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THE UNFAMILIAR PATH . .

You know, you can have your whole way known, your whole life pointed in certain directions, but things can happen which change those courses without your permission as it were.  Suddenly, your pathway isn’t the familiar one you were just traveling.  You are pushed into an area of discomfort and fear, all the way around you is cast with a pall of something foreign to you.  
What do you do when you don’t recognize your way?  How do you know what to do and how to proceed?  I’ve found those places this year or so, it is a fearful journey if I let myself feel it.  I’ve struggled against the current, fighting to swim as hard as I could, but realizing, it is like a rip tide, I’m not able to fight it . . . I can only ride it out and recover from wherever it takes me.  To be on this ride is to be washed out to sea on a rip tide.  It is a battle, exhaustive and frightening.  It is not the worst thing people have experienced surely, but it is one of the worst times I have known.  I’m confronting things I haven’t had to confront as a “mature” adult . . . insecurity, lack of confidence, doubt, fear.  All those conveniently coming at the same time as this major challenge to further make things difficult.  It has been a bit of a struggle some days.  I don’t recognize the fighter I was, for the “adolescent” who now feels all those same tumultuous emotions of youth again.  It is to bring a woman who knows herself to a point of being a stranger before her own eyes.  

So, in that bleak place, how do I keep my faith?  That too has been a struggle at times.  I wish I were made of metal, hard and perfectly strong, but I weaken at times.  Life is like that.  We move and then we survey our progress.  We move some more and then we survey again.  We very rarely do as we did when we are younger, which is just move and move and move, and maybe some day, survey!  We are much more cautious generally as we age.  It is our nature to know the cost of our actions, versus the insolent youth who seem to defy the knowledge that life is not a constant.  We seem to need more caution when we just live, as we also find our faith less blind as when we were children, since as adults, it is more aware of life’s inevitable truth . . . bad things happen to good people.  But there are also lessons we hopefully learn as we age, about our struggles, which can define our ability to ride the tide calmly to our new destination.  Those lessons are that even in the bad there is something we can know of good, positive and which teaches us for the future to come.  It makes us better.  Well, most don’t like this, but it is true and it is good for us, like our vegetables! 

Another lesson concerns faith.  Without it, I would be and have nothing.  I would surely have given up on this world a long time ago had I nothing to believe in and if I didn’t have my sense that a greater power carried me during those times, like now, when I am not so sure of my own abilities.  Faith abides in me, it is my constant learning curve in life to be riding out the troubles I am in by believing God will make them all for my good one day.  Now it’s surely not an easy nor constantly abundant resource within me, but with the Word to ignite me daily, I can restore and renew the Spirit within me which keeps the torch of faith burning, much like a symbol of hope from within my own self, to inspire me to fight the good fight, keep my head held high, to cast my cares upon He who loves me unfailingly and wants my life to be joyful. That may not always mean He wants me to have what I thought I should, and that may mean sometimes I must learn a lesson or six about something which helps to shape me into a better human, but it also most surely means that I am in great and abiding care!

So the lesson I can pass on is this:  through the storms are made the better sailors.  God is our ultimate captain, helping us find our way, leading us back when we get lost and enabling us to discover, in the world and ourselves, the humanity He encourages us all to find.  Greater is He who is in me, than he who is in the world.  Believe the God who designed you will help you find your way, He is more powerful than any force which mankind, or otherwise, has designed to destroy you, distract you, and to deny you from your true potential!