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Monthly Archives: September 2012

Moments of Reflection

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Uncategorized

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Joy, Pain

Moments of Reflection

Sometimes in life, what was once the best thing becomes the most painful. What once gave you joy now brings you sorrow, what was once your shining time is now your memory, what once brought you so much contentment & peace now makes you fearful & filled with doubt. It is inevitable that we will experience events which are capable of altering our perspective, but it always up to us as to how we react in the long term.

If we realize that something good became something bad, then surely we can see how something bad can then again become something better! Look at the aspects of how you can learn from every scenario, making the most of the moments of reflection in the change, then seize upon the wealth of that lesson & move forward knowing that all will once again be changing. Life events are like the changing currents of wind in the sails of a sailboat . . we need to be flexible, we need to appraise our position upon the prevailing conditions & we need to be able to adapt as best as we can to what we encounter! Then we need to proceed into life with expectation & faith!

When Pain, Grief or Hurt Come…

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Happiness

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Attitude, Fairness, Grief, Happiness, Pain

When Pain, Grief or Hurt Come…

When pain, hurt or grief comes to call in your life, it’s fair to give it some time, to ponder & to heal. But don’t let it become the reason for your life, or your sole focus, for then all you’ve done is cheat yourself out of your own happiness! Move through things as you are able, get help if you need it, but don’t let something tragic, or negative or painful be the story of your life! There are many more sunrises ahead in which joy, happiness & smiles can find you, but only if you learn to take each event as it comes, deal with it at the time & then close the chapter when it’s time so that you prepare yourself for moving onward! The only person responsible for your happiness is you!!!

Tolerance

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Uncategorized

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Respect, Tolerance

Tolerance

You know, tolerance isn’t accepting the same viewpoint as your own, it’s actually respecting & permitting others of differing views to openly hold & express those thoughts & opinions. That is truly tolerance! (For those who have backlashed against some who had the strength & convinction to speak their political minds this week.)

Tolerance, which is so easily preached, is not backlashing against a well-respected & talented performer who does what he believes is right! You may not like what he says or even begin to agree with his political views, but you should respect that he has just as much right to express himself as you do! To be truthful, are we really tolerant when we “diss” him as being drunk just because he speaks in an impromptu manner without a teleprompter?! I’m not even sure I agree with all his beliefs, but I do give him respect for standing up for them, for stating them from his heart & for doing so without caring who the heck cares! Shame on all those who bully the opposing voices all in the name of tolerance! You show your true colors, you don’t impugn anyone but yourself!

You Have To Set Boundaries

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Uncategorized

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Boundaries, Compassion, Empathy, Faithfulness, Love, Relationships, Respect, Trust

You Have To Set Boundaries

You have to set boundaries for yourself even in love. It is noble & good to give your love to others, but it is not noble to deny your own needs or to live without receiving a thing or things in return. We should not expect from others, but we have to have mutuality in relationships of all types, giving & receiving from all parties is what keeps the relationship healthy & functional. When one gives without regard to receiving, & the other takes without regard to giving, the imbalance cannot sustain the love even for love’s sake. Eventually there’ll be an eroding of some aspect or aspects of the relationship.

It is always right & good to give especially without condition & expectation, but never do so in complete disregard for your own sake, as then you will surely find that you have erred in setting sufficient & necessary boundaries for how you should be treated! Even Jesus said to wipe the dust from your boots & walk away from the town which doesn’t welcome you & receive you with open arms! You aren’t to give yourself away when you are giving your love away! Give, but also learn how to receive, for it is the healthy prescription for a life of love! Anyone who sees you giving without giving something in return isn’t nurturing you at the same level! Love is meant to be generous, unselfish, unconditional & unexpected, but it is not meant to inflict wounds to your own sense of self-worth in that process!

Healthy relationships shouldn’t make those involved into door mats! Love is mutual respect, trust, faithfulness, empathy & compassion. Learn to love in a way which betters all those with whom the love is shared, yourself included!

When It Is Time To Let Go…

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Life

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Life, Loss, Pain, Separation

When It Is Time To Let Go…

 

Sometimes in life, we have to learn to say our goodbyes.  It’s inevitable.  Life happens, situations change, circumstances occur and those we love leave.  It’s not ever easy . . if it were, there wouldn’t be a whole industry dealing with grieving and therapy wrapped up in helping people to cope with losses.  The simple fact of the matter is that we are always going to have to learn to face the inevitable thief who comes to steal our steady contentment and joy, replacing it with fear, anger, pain, hurt, and a flood of loss washing over us.  On any given day, people may come happily into our lives anew, but we may have to learn to say goodbye too.  No matter how many times you have said goodbye to someone, whether in a breakup or by death, the feeling is usually the same.  It’s grief.  It starts with shock and sometimes mixes immediately with anger, but always sadness swirls in to take your happiness temporarily away, much like the clouds moving over the sun.  Even when you have purposefully extricated someone from your life, you still feel much the same way about it, for it is a loss, albeit by choice.  

The worse losses are those, whether expected or not, which take those we love deeply away from us for good by death.  If you’ve never experienced a loss like that, you are very fortunate.  If you have, you know as I do, the sense of grief washing over you like a tsunami of pain and hurt.  It ebbs and floods again forward, with no rhyme nor reason, it takes its toll upon every part of your life, and when it finally eases up in the future, there’s no absolute recovery, only a tender daily lessening of the impact.  Love is never easy to leave behind nor to lose.  By choice, it’s a double-edged sword.  To give it up requires a sense that the pain without it will be less in time than the pain you experience with it.  When it just happens through the cruel twists of fate without your say-so, you will one day feel more like your old self again, but time is what is required, and at best, it takes a lot.  You’ll never be all the way back to the way you were before the loss, but then again, we are never, from one day to the next, the same anyway.  Learn to find the positive in all circumstances, even if at first that seems highly implausible, for it is what makes the hurt have less power for a shorter period of time in your life.  That’s the best you can hope for!

What's Ahead?!

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Dreams

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Change, Confidence, Doubt, Dreams, Faith, Fear, Spirit

What’s Ahead?!

There are always turning points in our lives, the places we come to along the journey when we have to veer, make an amended plan or alter our course because we’ve run out of usable road! It’s inevitable! We simply must correct as we go. The difficulty arises when we stalwartly cling to our familiar places, our constant patterns, the things to which we are most familiar. It’s not easy to adapt when we are hanging on for dear life to what we don’t want to release!  What is it about those turning points that makes us so afraid? Is it the fact that we are in fact changing something, even though we might not be happy with the status quo, that makes us face a different or altered direction? It’s just that, we are usually uncomfortable with too much change, as change means doing or being something different.

In change, we see the unknown, the uncertain, and the possibility for all sorts of problems. At least that’s how we see it when we look at change through eyes of fear or doubt. When we view change as an inevitable and necessary means of growth, personal development and advancing our spiritual maturity, it can become the vehicle for our success!  Turning points are like the curves in the mountain roadway, the only way to the summit is by making the criss-crossing switchback turns which will allow you to manipulate your way to the top! So, without regular turns, your life would soon grow stagnant and ineffectual for your necessary growth! You need those switchbacks to push you out of your comfortable places, forcing you to learn the fine art of adaptation, the ways to patiently deal with variation, and the feeling of accomplishment which comes from slowly winding your way up all the great mountains of your life, one turn after another!

Master the art of change, the skill of flexible adaptation, and you will successfully ascend to all the summits of your success!   The master of turning points will recognize the beauty in the changes which make their life different. Seize the day, take the moment in hand and believe that you have what it takes to make the change work on your behalf! Your ability to alter each step of your journey, whilst negotiating all the hazards of the unknown, will leave you feeling strong and capable, instead of fearful and impotent. You can even capitalize on your faith the most within change! It is when you are most beset with the fear of something new, that you are able to muster your strongest response, overcoming, excelling pushing past to the next obstacle in your path. It’s inevitable, when we are the most under pressure, the most fearful and the worries want to stranglehold our dreams, that we are able to rise up like warriors, certain of our faith and able to wage war against anything which threatens our peace!    Accept change as the benevolent teacher of great life lessons! That is truly what it is . . and as much as you might not like the sensations you experience with each change, mastering them with confidence can and will make you wear the medal of honor, having faced fear and won! 

The Trouble With Me

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Uncategorized

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Emotions, Failure, Learning, Maturity, Spirit

The Trouble With Me 

The trouble with me is that I can intend to not let my emotions get the best of me, but just when I am resolved to be determined to not let that happen, that is when they get to me the most!  Our mountains, those challenges which we face, are there to strengthen us, but in that process, they can take us down.  We might be stronger ultimately, but in the process of building our strength, of learning our lessons, in shaping our beings internally, we might just fall, flounder, and err.  We might just decide to fail our tests, not purposefully wanting to fail, but just through fatigue, anguish, weakness of our spirit, or whatever may be the case, we might not pass our tests initially.  Sometimes our challenges are hurdles which trip us up numerous times before we finally learn how to pass over them, get by them, or knock them down!  Usually it’s because we have too much invested emotionally in our situations, and those emotional swings are like extreme amusement-park rollercoasters, which we ride as unwilling participants in some daunting life adventure!  

Emotions are the great wasteland of our lives, if only we could learn to let them not wear us, to not impact us so completely!  Learning to live without reacting to your every and constant emotion is the lesson of a mature spirit.  I’m on my way, but the journey to emotional and spiritual maturity is a long, hard-fought trip through explosions of anger, hurt, futility, pain, pride, and all that makes you feel vulnerable! I aspire to such maturity one day!    In the meantime, I will probably continue to express the same responses to the same emotions to the same situations.  I don’t like repeating my lessons, it makes me feel incompetent, stupid, and truly immature, but it won’t happen until the day I learn to give my emotions absolutely no control over my life.  I must learn to feel what I feel in a moment, but then to let it go instead of letting it ruin my day, letting it take my happiness, nor allowing it to fester unresolved inside my spirit. Emotions aren’t even always truthful!  They can be manipulating, destructive and false!

Why then do we give them such power over our daily happiness?  Learning to be mature spiritually means not living by our emotions, but rather by what we know to be true and real in every single moment. We don’t have to always give our feelings such merit and such high regard!  Learn to not be ruled by your own emotions, live in the moments of reality, not your own emotionally-altered versions of reality!  Spiritual maturity means learning to be content and at peace with your life no matter the situation, the condition, nor the emotional response evoked. It takes practice to be in such a state of being.  I will keep on practicing . . for as long as it takes!  I aspire to such maturity one day!

So Many Choices

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Choices

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Choices, Faith, Freedom, Learning

So Many Choices

The best part of life is having choices whereby we can make the most of our dreams.    The worst part of life is having so many choices whereby we can become lost in all the confusing options we encounter   trying to make our dreams come to fruition!  I don’t know how we get into stages of life with virtually no sense   direction, but we do sometimes.  We can honestly be so overwhelmed with our own freedom, so frightened by the sense of absolute emptiness   in our life, that the very knowledge of rebuilding from the ground up is just too much to take!  I’m at that place . . I’ve been in situations which have now come to a closing point, and at this moment, I would seem to have the entire world as my oyster!  That would be an idyllic state for most people, but it can be completely disturbing too. I’m in over my head, I haven’t direction at all times, and I seek maps and landmarks to help me make my way! It’s not always easy to see the directional indicators of life, those that seem to lead us, to guide us, to point us through the times of uncertainty.  Where are the signs?  What should I look for?  Where do I turn?  Well, in my overwhelmed state, the only place, yet the best one,  I know to turn is God.

 I heard it said that in anxious moments though, we can lose our ability to hear His voice of leadership.  I pray that this is not the case, as there is so much pressing upon my soul and spirit right now, I wish I could hear Him guiding me in everything!    My heart longs to know what lies ahead. I’m surely feeling adrift. My faith is the only thing I have in these moments right now . . faith don’t fail me now!  As I ponder what lies ahead, I consider for the first time in a long time, what is it that will make me happy?  I haven’t thought as much about my own happiness in a long time.  I’ve been putting others first and that is not advisable, as we lose our own focus and direction when we give ourselves last billing in our lives!  Make yourself important enough to be the absolute center of your life … others who want to be there will either agree or move on, but you have to remain true to yourself nonetheless!    Without knowing what you want, doing those things which bring your soul joy and soothe your spirit, you will live a lesser life. That would be a shame, and you would sadden God to do something so selfless. It’s in your own ability to find what makes your spirit soar that you allow His will to be done in your life! He has given you gifts in line with your spirit’s desires, if you do what you passionately are implored to do, you will find your heart’s contentment!

 I’m there right now . . I’m in the place of learning what will make my heart joyous!    When I discover that, I will surely let you all know.  Possibly you will have already seen it or noticed me doing something which brings me great joy, thus you can be assured I am onto something!    I’m just making my way through all the choice open to me, exploring my options and deciding what it will be that will bring me joy in this life!    Seek yours and you will never leave with regrets on the last day, wondering why you didn’t do what you were meant to do!

Rainy Days…

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Uncategorized

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Faith, Problems

Rainy Days…

Some days our cares rain down on us like a torrent … they pool at first, we hardly notice.  Suddenly, we realize we’ve been getting our feet wet, we’re not comfortable anymore.  The puddles amass as our cares compound; we can no longer find a way to shelter ourselves from the storms.  They come too frequently, they’re too intense, we are soaking in troubles, uncomfortable and wishing for a day when we are carefree again, but it seems so far off now!  Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of drowning in our worries, troubles and concerns, we could instead be flooded with faith?  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to stop the tears than rain down, the troubles that fall like torrents, the worries that seep through our souls like sloppy puddles drenching through our shoes??  

Having faith strong enough to weather the storms is the key to all of our happiness!  Without faith, we are like ships which are cast about on the seas of turmoil, far from safety, pummeled by wave after wave of ceaseless anguish as trouble takes it toll!  Without faith, we haven’t an anchor to keep us tied to anything strong, anything capable of keeping us afloat when the biggest waves of trouble strike.  Without faith, we are lost.    Faith is the belief that God is in charge, simple!  But in the human world, where we face situations every day requiring answers, solutions, our immediate action, we forget how to truly place our lives, in total, in His hands.  We are experts at living in the world of humanity, where we are sure our participation negates waiting upon His timing, His answers, His gentle prodding, and His guidance.  We feel apart from God, because we have all come to a stressful, high-paced, immediate-response place in life . . we’re all deluged with multi-tasking, problematic lives, which make it quite hard to wait upon God with a sense of patience and with faith.  It requires more and more discipline to live a life committed to faith in God.  

It is almost implausible sometimes that we would stop, pray, wait upon God to give us guidance!  After all, we need to act, to do, to be, to complete . . it’s what we’re taught in our very busy world!  Those who wait are surely going to miss their deadlines, lose their edge, delay their gratification, and/or fail!  But what does it mean to wait upon God?  It means to seek His guidance, through prayer, for everything!  With faith, believe, expect, and wait when uncertain.  Learn to listen to the subtle instinctual voice of God which once was so easy to pick up, but now that life is busier, is muted by the sounds of chaos all around us.  Still not sure you can or will hear God, much less take the time to wait upon His guidance?  You will, when you quiet yourself in situations which require His help and guidance, prayerfully request His help, and wait patiently upon His answers, expectantly!  Always expectantly!

Getting Close

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Cheryl Ries in God

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God, Grace, Learning

Getting Close

When I lost my dad, it was the worst thing yet to happen in my life. I went through months of grieving, anger being the strongest emotional reaction to the feeling of loss I had. I spent many hours dealing with healing, and in that time, I had to learn again why I believed what I believed, as for a while, I couldn’t believe in anything!    The hardest period of my life was living without believing, feeling so much pain and anger with God for taking my dad away, that I had trouble releasing that anger just to allow myself time to move through the stages of grief. I was changed in that time, into someone who doubted things, but through that doubt, I learned the most important thing I have ever learned, that I do believe in God, I know Christ died for my forgiveness, giving me eternal life, and that my dad’s death wasn’t a punishment He gave to me for something I had done in my life.   

Losing my dad actually gave me the ideal reason to re-examine my faith at the very core . . I had to, it was completely shaken to my core! I had nothing to do but to test my beliefs, asking many questions, learning how to heal, growing closer to God and becoming a greater believer in the process! The worst thing that has ever happened to me, also helped to make me a much stronger person, forcing me to learn to adapt, giving me reason to explore and examine my faith, and allowing me to find God again, in a relationship which has grown more intimate each and every day!    Through loss and the ensuing grief, I turned heartache into the most rewarding way to develop my faith to a whole new level! I learned through it what spiritual maturity is, why it mattered and how to rely on God for everything each day! I took anger at God and turned it to constant love, even realizing that sometimes God’s actions are not comfortable, do not make me happy, and can even hurt! Sometimes, I have to accept what God does, even though it is painful, for it is a part of life and a part of our process of living a faith-based life! I matured into the person who accepts God’s will in my life, knowing that bad things will happen, but He will always see me through those times!   

I can honestly say that it was in the ultimate   trial that I learned how to let my spirit soar! Without the breaking, without all my anger at Him, I wouldn’t know how deeply I love God, how much I need Him and how much love can live on even after someone leaves. I am so much stronger, better and more mature spiritually because I went through something which could have broken me for good! Instead, I let Him lead me through all my pain, heal my heart and help me see that it does pass, and soon, we are able to stand up to even more challenges in our lives as a result! God helps us through the bad times, knowing that we become better people just by going through them! He gives us His grace and strength sufficient for each day, knowing that with faith, we will come to rely on His new daily dose of grace again tomorrow!    I’m not happy to have lost my dad so early in life, nor anyone I love, but I can say that I have   learned how to take something which was devastating and make it into something with a positive impact upon my spirit, after some time, by asking for God’s abundant grace and love! Through Him all things are possible!

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