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A Journey Into Beauty

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

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A Journey Into Beauty

Whenever I’ve gone on vacations, or visiting new places, I’ve always had the chance to discover the beauty of the scenery, the culture, and the people; in my life, I’ve seen some really beautiful and amazing places!  Recently, after visiting yet another new place, I had the opportunity to learn not only about the culture, the people, as well as to experience the amazing splendor   around me, but I also had a startling   realization about myself!  I’m not just the sum of my exterior parts, which have   come to symbolize beauty in my life, for   me- the woman …  height, weight, hair,   smile, eyes, figure, features- all aligning just right to be photogenic or to appear comely for some majority of people. 

The truth is, whatever I have had on the exterior was always thanks to God’s handiwork, with   some of my own   choices of makeup, hair, and clothing,   with diet and exercise.   Now, as I have also realized, that truth is changing every day.  It’s not so easy to maintain the exterior version of “me” as I’ve come to know   it . . for   I’m changing on the outside  as I age. It’s not easy as we all learn! I wonder how others see me now, as I go through those changes.  I wonder, will I be beautiful in their eyes?    Or will they see me as I wish to be, beautiful from the inside out? We cannot stop the tracks of time from making their obvious way across our physical bodies, it’s inevitable. We are just flesh, each day decaying bits and pieces at a time.    Some struggle with that process, myself included!

When a woman has been told she’s beautiful on a regular   basis, she can come to identify with that observation as her ultimate truth. The real fact which eludes that truth is that physical beauty fades, changes, or is altered often in the blink of an eye … we are suddenly faced with transformations of ourselves which force us to make friends with a new reflection in the mirror, which was once our friend! If only we could find the proverbial fountain of youth!  Perhaps the real secret of youth and beauty isn’t found in some hidden, mysterious source which makes it eternal, but rather in our interior realm of esteem from   the Eternal Source.  Were we to really believe our beauty was not found just in the way we wear our hair, nor in the color of our eyes, nor in some size upon our clothing, then we would truly know our beauty comes from an interior realm of mystery- where   our spirit, our soul, our divine heart intersect in God’s very creation. This is exactly what I witnessed and experienced on my recent travel, beauty exuding from an interior realm!  My recent trip to a lovely island reminded me of interior beauty as the   ideal, as I met the most wonderful and big-hearted people.

I was effusively greeted, warmly received and treated like a goddess!  I felt like a million dollars, even though I was often sun burnt, had hair plastered by the salty sea, and was wearing an assortment of beachy clothing, so as to fit into whatever the situation and event called for.    I was relaxed, at my ease, and felt like a million dollars, even though no one did my makeup professionally, nor my hair, and my wardrobe reflected my satisfaction with a body which now is not the same boney size 2 I once proudly displayed as my ideal. Was this all just a reflection of my setting changing, or perhaps a deeper insight to what life is like when I am comfortable and at my ease?!    Is it possible only when on an island far from home?  No, I think this confidence is the seasoned outlook of someone who realizes that what truly matters in life hasn’t anything to do with the exterior features which make us who we are! It’s lovely to receive compliments and to be known as a beautiful woman, but it’s even more important to be known as a beautiful person on the inside, that’s what always comes through to the outside anyway!  

I’m appreciative for being esteemed and   lauded for beauty during my life,   it’s been gratifying, and I’m thankful to God for all compliments I receive!  Confidence, a sense of healthy esteem, and a desire to be a positive light in the world are the most attractive qualities no matter what the exterior looks like though.  A person who is content with their interior will project that and the exterior light will glow like a galaxy of a zillion stars!    Shining from the inside out is the way to be eternally beautiful, especially as we age, our confidence reflecting the fact that we have matured as spirits as well as maturing on the outside!  Learn to age gracefully   by believing in yourself, nurturing your confidence by being a great human being and letting your inner light shine through your spirit as you interact with others in the world! I am practicing these principles of beauty for myself, aspiring to be a   better person each day, and I’ve gotten to meet so many wonderful people who seem to be using these same secrets   for eternal youth!

Angel On My Shoulder

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

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Angel On My Shoulder

I am aware that there are angels amongst us . . . those of divine form, and those of human flesh, performing their functions sometimes unaware of their role in influencing our lives.  They are also angels, those without wings, those who live amongst us and take human form, able to show up and be there just when they are needed.  Accidental you ask?  No, I think not.  I am sure of God’s grace in this as well.  For when we but only take notice, there are many instances of prophetic intervention, when those we love, those we know, and those we have never met before somehow intervene on our behalf, thus making our lives’ journeys take new shape, venture onto new pathways, or veer onto the correct course after all.

Angels are all around us really, those from Heaven and those whose origin was born in heaven . . earthly angels.  Have you ever felt that someone came into your day to alter the course of it in some dramatic or profound way?  Have you ever met up with someone in some momentary situation, which in fact made such an impact upon you, that it caused you to alter your direction or amend your behavior?  Have you ever felt placed prophetically or purposefully in a way that your role was obviously designed to be shaped or formed just to be influential to another person’s life?  Or perhaps their’s in your’s?  In other words, have you felt destined, or designed to be somewhere at a particular time whereby your presence made an impact upon another person, seemingly like a miracle, or providence, or at least life-altering?  Or maybe that has been the case for you with another person in your life, they’ve walked through your day, a relative stranger even, who altered your circumstances just by you taking notice of them and their contributions.

It is often what I’ve noticed and label the hand of God at work.  I truly believe He graces us with benevolent interactions with others which can and do impact our lives, if we choose to witness those events.  Sometimes it is merely the idea of seeing the action before us to know that God is helping us through another human’s involvement in our life.    <span>How and why does God interweave our actions this way, even with perfect strangers?  Well, I suppose it is usually to teach us something profound.  I have found incredible people to bond with in life, even over mere fractions of time, just by speaking in a few moments over a joint purposeful activity in common.  Meeting in a doctor’s lobby, a grocery clerk who has a similar experience, being drawn to someone who turns out to know a good friend, finding out that your family will help you out of a bad situation, someone who finds something precious you lost.

Angels are people we know and love, as well as complete strangers who just happen to find their way into our day-to-day lives for a reason.  We might not even understand the reason when we meet or have our connection with someone, but eventually, a shaping and change because of the connection does occur.  It’s inevitable!  I remember the woman I spoke of in this blog a few days ago . . I met her in the waiting room while doing some scary health-related tests.  She was familiar with what I was feeling, but in her being there to share the space with me, she was a calming and comforting witness to not fearing the unknown, even though she knew it well.  I will never forget her, even though I have no idea who she is . . she just showed up that day to change that moment of the day!  She was my earth angel in that situation.  I’ve probably had too many to count in my lifetime, those I would recognize as the special people God enlists to help me in little or big ways.  It might be a compliment given at just the right time, a friend coming around to visit when necessary, family supporting a decision which was difficult to make . . it could be anything really.  The common thing I notice is the feeling I get, the sense of purposeful interaction, as though I must notice, I’m called to witness the blessing.

Perhaps the event lasts a minute fraction of time, but in that moment, I am given the chance to evolve into a better version of me.  It’s God’s purposeful growth formula, earth-angel supplements!  He gives them out freely and it is merely up to us to take notice of them!

Most Avid Reason

03 Monday Sep 2012

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Most Avid Reason

I usually regret the time when I have “dry spells” of either motivation or insight, or perhaps I have distractions which cause my blight.  I don’t know all the reasons this time to explain away a few months of silence in my thoughts, but I do know what, or rather who, has inspired this latest entry.  I have a very special reason for wanting to share something from my heart, and the avid desire to write now is only explained by the unbearable ache of his approaching death.  Yes, my dear uncle is soon to pass, and I wish above all things which inspired my “voice” that it wasn’t due to this most tragic reason.  I’ve always had him in my life, like those who’ve passed before, my father, … his older brother, both his parents, my dear grandparents on both sides.  I don’t know if one is ever ready to lose someone they love, but for some inexplicable reason, his death is conjuring up painful reminders of those whom I’ve lost before, I guess that is typical with death; it reminds us of how we felt before.  But, in this case, it reminds me of how I felt losing my dad, many years ago now, the single worst event of my life so far.  

My uncle’s impending death is sorely not just bringing an ache of its own, but it is also tugging at a wound from long ago.  The past doesn’t stay there, as it really isn’t the past.  It’s our history surely, but it is what we are now.  Hence, our past is just as recent as our last second and as far away as what used to be.  The past is what we can often objectify when we wax older, seeing the mistakes we made then as either more noble choices or more costly in error, acknowledging our own fragility, we cannot make some things easy to digest, they just stand out as unbearable states of “before now”, which still haunt, still burn, still stab, still…

Where once we stand sure of the here and now, we are drawn down a pathway of what used to be, reminded constantly of that pain, that presence of those ghosts of long-gone souls.  I cannot imagine a time ahead when I will look back to now and remember how this still feels all so strange to have lost my uncle in this way.  It’s been a lifetime already without my dad, I lived without him almost as long now as I lived with him.  How can we hope to render those things impotent in our lives when they seem to mark our history so significantly?!  One day very soon, I will only have my aging memory to remind me of yet another incredibly important part of my life, I wonder if there are ways to learn to imprint more memories upon my mind than I have been able to do in the past, as I’ve failed to recall simple things like birthdays, voices, favorite things, moments treasured once before.  

I can only ask God to give me more memory space the longer I live to make room for all the beloved souls who now must reside there and within my heart!  God please, make the space big enough to hold them all forever in perfect form!  And for my dearest uncle, whom I haven’t had nearby for years, but I have gotten to fondly think of as the part of my dad whom I could still access, I wish for you a gentle surrender into the arms of our Lord and Savior.  I know you will be greeted by your older brother, my dad, and your parents there.  Other await you as well, as does the most perfect love and perfect health to which you may surrender your current over-taxed body.  God will hold you in His most-loving embrace there, and you will always be ahead, keeping yet another pair of eyes, another warm heart, another familiar voice there to guide us all, who remain, home.  I love you very much, and miss you already more than you’ll know.

REMARKABLE DAYS

10 Sunday Oct 2010

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REMARKABLE DAYS

 

We know these days, the ones which each year stand out and become our most hoped for days!  I’ll call them remarkable, but in truth, all of our days should be remarkable!  For us to not label our days this way, each and every one, we cheat ourselves of our precious time.  We have only what number we were promised when we were designed by our Father.  From our first to our last, we decide how and what becomes our legacy of days.
 
This day, 10/10/10 is only going to happen once.  We with our mortality, will not know this measured time again.  We will know other special days noted for their curious specialty in time, such as next year’s 11/11/11.  But in truth, yesterday mattered, today is crucial, and tomorrow is our dream hoped for.  We shouldn’t decide that only today is special for the relevance of three numbers lining up so methodically.  It’s more than that . . our days are precious for the fact that each one becomes more valuable as we live the last . . . the minute today passes, tomorrow becomes the only one which matters.  It is the single most significant day that you will have to live.  Live it fully, with intention to see your dreams realized through faith, hope, and perseverance to endure!  

Life is rarely easy any longer, seems we all are suffering and enduring something.  But the most important thing to understand at this critical juncture of time is that we don’t have time to waste!  Life isn’t limitless, infinite and expendable.  We shouldn’t allow ourselves to waste time nor to be so mocking of circumstances, just because we feel compelled to cower down and wait out the storms!  Waiting doesn’t have to mean that we are watching life pass as we lie in fear hoping for new events to prevail.  Decide today that it means the world to you!  

Today, the only day you know for sure you are promised, it’s remarkable for that very reason!!

THE FABRIC OF OUR LIVES

01 Friday Oct 2010

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THE FABRIC OF OUR LIVES

 

You’ve all heard this little jingle, at least in America, that the fabric of our life is cotton.  Well, I say, the fabric of our lives is love.  It has been and always will be the binding tie which connects us all.  We are all united by humanity, which is a byproduct of love.  Love is the seed of all creation, whether or not your birth can be a recognizable as the personification of something loving or a result of something less noble, such as an act of lust between two strangers, or even scientific intervention through laboratory procedures, at the root of all love in this world is the Creator of this world, God, whom is the ultimate source of love.

How do we know love from any other feeling or mood, sense or notion we experience?  Love is transcendence, it is a desire to live more for another than for self, to give of self to the betterment of another’s life, to improve the life of another human being by your compassion, care, and nurturing.  Love is the most selfish, yet riskiest proposition that is known to mankind.  Without love, no one could dwell peacefully anywhere . . within our familial homes, with our spouses, with our children, in our more modern lifestyles, with our neighbors, our friends, our communities, and with our God.  Without love, nothing good could prosper, we wouldn’t desire anything good like nature’s well-being, we wouldn’t procreate nor would we want to see the longevity of those we love.  We would selfishly take life for ourselves, then we would be unable to share our time, our space, our innermost beings with anyone, much less those close to us.  Love, were it to wither away and die, would leave a bleak existence in its wake!

So how can love be revived, refreshed, perpetuated, and prolonged?  Love is the most beautiful sensory garden that we can create inside our beings.  When we love, we are most connected to another human being, to such an extent that we actually are at an elevated risk of being easily offended, hurt, harmed, and brokenhearted if things don’t go our way.  Love isn’t a guarantee, nor a sure-thing, but it’s a promise nonetheless!  Believe and have faith, let your heart be open, and let yourself feel love when it comes to nest in your garden!  Be alive in those moments, don’t shut down, nor let bitterness rob you of love’s potential.  Love only stands a chance when it is given fertile ground to grow!  Love needs you to be a constant and present gardener, whom cares, gives, endures and hopes, faithfully and earnestly letting love flow into what you are nurturing!

 

ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

27 Monday Sep 2010

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ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

 

When we are young, we look at our lives ahead as endless, infinite expanses of unfulfilled promise.  We see days stretched out before us as limitless miles left in our tanks, nothing to restrict us, nor to restrain our momentum.  We don’t consider ramifications, complications, situations, or implications.  We only take one day after another like we’ve all the time in the world!

Somewhere along the way, hopefully later rather than sooner, we begin to see small foretellings of the possibilities that life is truly not so infinite.  Some elderly relative dies, or we hear of a tragedy which has befallen someone near to us, but it’s still not enough to force reality into our heads and hearts.  We still thrive in our carefree youth, denying the adult notion that mortality truly exists for us.

Soon we reach a time when responsibilities of life seep in enough that we start to pay attention more.  We’ve our instant communications to remind us that in fact, life is ebbing all around us like vast tidal pools; life comes and goes, but still maybe not for our realization, to us.  Maybe we haven’t yet felt the sting of personal tragedy, nor prolonged illness or disease threatening at our doorways.  Perhaps we have been blessed with intolerably good health and have a feeling of impenetrable well-being.  We are invincible, even though we surely see others are not.  It’s our good fortune and God’s blessings.

Oh, but then it comes, the threat of all threats.  We find the impenetrable barriers of our happy-go-lucky walls have in fact been knocked a bit; something foreign has entered our safety zones.  We taste illness, we taste death, and we understand mortality, usually at a time when we start to sense our own coming rapidly through life’s progression.  We can see, along with our newly formed lines of character, which mark the triumphs and failings of life upon our faces, our bodies seem to resemble those of our elders, those of our parents, or grandparents, something we just cannot understand.  Where did our time go?  How do we now relate to time as our enemy?

It is then, when time is daring you to see it as a finite human measure that we must find what we are made of.  We must conquer our fears and press forward in life, bravely deciding that, in its most precious element, brevity, time is now asking, no … pleading with us, to be more diligent, more efficient, more appreciative and less wasteful.  Time is demanding us to mature along beside it, knowing full well the most important concept of life other than love is to appreciate this gift of time!   It is precious, rare, and no matter which part of life’s spectrum you are standing, it is an unseen commodity which one must assume to be finite.  When we are young, we make our choices without the benefit of wisdom, when it finally comes, it is crucial to make certain the wisdom learned through our life lessons didn’t arrive too late to make a difference!

 

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED

26 Sunday Sep 2010

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THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED

 

Call me special, call me unique, call me one-of-a-kind, but I will not live my life according to the paperdoll cut-out images copied by anyone else!  I want my own life, my own pathway, I don’t want to shadow anyone else . . . I want a life that is authentically mine, not a carbon copy, nor a duplicate, nor a contrivance, but rather, reality . . . my own sweet, messy, sometimes stressful, but always real, and a bit bumpy, less-travelled road!

I’ve had some successes and some failures in my life.  I’ve done good and bad, made my decisions and lived with the consequences.  I will always be the sum total of my choices, combined with genetics and the family life I was given by God.  I am like no one else, but that’s alright by me!  I have modeled my life after no one else.  I have copied no other human being, much less any other woman.  I have made choices which reflect what I needed and wanted at the time, so I must always give myself the credit for living authentically for myself! 

Was I always this paragon of implicit strength?  No.  When I was young, I did what most younger people do, living in some regard swayed by the trends, our friends, our ability to comprehend the world’s influences upon us at each and every new rung of the ladder.  I read magazines, watched videos, dreamt of the day I would be just like the supermodel on the cover of some fashion magazine, or emulating my favorite celebrity, wishing I could have their life.  But I was young and oh so impressionable, that’s what we do when we are younger, we mimic, we learn by observing, we are not yet mature and developed.  Now, because I am happy with being me, I don’t strive to follow any trend, to change my look to suit any other person’s style, nor to be anything other than authentically me!

I choose to live my life being the very best me I can be!  I walk independantly in my own shoes, wanting to set goals and dream dreams which pertain to my desires.  I don’t complicate my life by usurping a friend’s ideas of what life should be, nor assuming their dreams as my own, I let my own roadway play out before me, remembering too that staring in the rear-view mirror of life will just slow me down on my way to reaching my next destination!  I am able to coexist with family, friends, and even my significant other while remaining a separate and distinct person.  If you are not being genuine, nor living authentically, nor discovering what your own dreams look like when played upon the movie screen of your life, then you will never experience the full range of highs and lows on your life’s most thrilling amusement ride!  Give up chasing, with eager intent, someone else’s version of life, make it all your own!  Take the road less travelled, you might just like charting the unknown!