Tag Archives: Maturity

Because Life Is Hard . .

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Attitude, Contentment, Faithfulness, God, Lessons, Peace, Wisdom

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Some things just hurt. They go beyond our ability to reason, to comprehend and to accept. Some things we will never be able to fully understand. The death of a child, the sudden loss of a loved one, the onslaught of tragedy or suffering or hardship which we endure just by living full lives, or the seeming unfairness and inequity of how things play out in life are all truly difficult tastes and realities to swallow. I wish I could pass along a trick which makes everything easier; but I can give you a way to make peace with what seems hard to handle, accept or process. encouraging quote (4)

Once we learn to accept that we aren’t here for our purposes, but that we are here by God’s choice, His design, at His timing, with the parameters and specifics of life He has assigned to us personally and exclusively for His purposes, we can be at peace with life! It doesn’t mean that we will be able to tolerate everything which occurs to us, or to process all things which we must; it won’t even mean we’ll always be amenable to God’s will for us. After all, we cannot help but want what we want, when we want it, because we have egos which drive our desires and drives. But in accepting our role in God’s plan, for His purposes and according to His will, we learn how to put God at the center of our lives with each progressive day we live! Each day we draw nearer to Him, growing in our relationship with Him and towards Him, we learn and practice relegating our ego to a secondary position. By putting God first, we are able to accept things which others find intolerable, which we ourselves would have found intolerable once when our egos were a priority! We are able to remain at rest and in peaceful contentment progressively more and more each day we learn to let God be the center of our lives. bible-verses-6

By making this choice to focus on God at the helm in every aspect of our lives – our will, our desires, our wishes and our emotional reactions to life as it happens – all becomes secondary to our trust and faith in Him! This is maturing in our relationship with God; our process of learning to put Him first for our own sake, honoring Him through our faithfulness, obedience and trust. And the rewards for our increasing maturity in our relationship with God are more peace of mind, better emotional control and more contentment for life! Signature02

REALITY, WHAT A CONCEPT!

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Dreams

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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!

The Trouble With Me

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Uncategorized

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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!