Tag: choice

Categories
being real magic

We Can Do Magic

Magic of a river in full flow after a storm. Abergywngregan August 2023 Photographed by myself

Did you know you could do magic? In fact you do it every day by the things you think and how you hold on to your feelings.

I tried to write this without mentioning the people concerned but realised it didn’t make sense otherwise so I’ve had to name the relationships. Bit of tough vulnerability here!!!

This revelation came to me whilst I was having negative jealous insecure thoughts around my daughter-in-law. As I was journaling and pondering and, I suppose, justifying my feelings, I got a picture in my head of the Snow White’s wicked stepmother. From that picture this came.

Snow White’s stepmother would have been a kind and beautiful woman when the Snow White’s father pick her as his second wife. He didn’t have to marry to have someone to look after his daughter after he was widowed as some men do. He could have had servants to do that for him. He chose her, I am sure, for her beauty and beautiful nature. But she had been wounded in childhood by someone so as Snow White grew into a young woman she got jealous. Then I am sure there were times when Snow White went off and did things just with her father. This would have exasperated the stepmother’s wound. I wonder too if she also pondered whether the father looked at his daughter and remembered his love for his first wife. All this added to the stepmother’s insecurities making her feel angry dark thought inside. She then chose to act on those thoughts and, if she had been successful, instead of helping her step daughter through teenagehood and out into the wider world, she as good as killed her.

It made me realise that we can choose what magic we use and how we act on our feelings. I had a choice – 1. to be jealous and angry with this person and to send out negative vibes. Ok not a poisoned apple but something close to that which would have killed our relationship and killed my relationship with my son 2. I could accept that this was how I felt but then let those feelings slide from me, know that my relationship with my son was not based on who they were with now but on some “deeper magic”.

I could trust in the depth of the relationship with my son and no longer be jealous of his wife then give life to our time, or I could spoil everything with my jealousy.

[I was going to say petty jealous but actually it was very real and I had to accept it before I could let it go. I think too often we dismiss our feelings and so they fester about because they haven’t been truly banished.]

The stepmother did not accept her jealous feelings, instead she acted on them and went into destroy mode. I decided to accept my feelings, let them go, go to my safe place of deep gratitude, and allow a better magic to flow.

And of course as you know the answer to the Snow White story so you can guess the answer to this story. Yes we all had a great time together. There was no negative animosity. I grew in love for my daughter-in-law and got some great times on my own with my son.

The magic I made was my choice, but it comes through the healing I’ve gone, my relationship with myself, my trust in God/The Universe to have my back and love me unconditionally. Without all that I would still have that wound and be wanting to hold too tight, to poison what was, not be able to enjoy what is going on around me.

Though sometimes I think we don’t realise we can do magic so we say things about a situation or person that are not uplifting or positive, we work towards a worst case scenario, and we are not disappointed. Snow White’s stepmother “knew” that eventually Snow White would be more popular and more beautiful than her so she had a plan on what to do with her then. If I had planned in a “I know this time will be hard work” I am sure it would have been. But instead, once I’d free wrote/journaled around it, accepted what I was feeling and accepted that this was not a good place to be, ANSed myself, etc then I could believe this was going to be a lovely magical time with my son and his wife.

Because it was deep magic from being healed and knowing I am an amazing person then it wasn’t a “trying hard” but was from a place deep in my heart.

We need to all remember we are all making magic every day by what we think, feel, do and believe.

Categories
choice lifestyle

Lifestyle

Isle of Bute May 2023 photographed by myself

Since doing QEC I have come to realise that it is the things you do regularly that become your lifestyle and it is what you choose to be healed of that helps that lifestyle. Also sometimes, I believe, you hold on to things because actually you quite like them – whether that be a way of looking at life or what you do.

The apostle Paul says about “praying continuously” [1 Thess 5:17] and I remember thinking how that must be impossible. That was because I saw prayer as something set apart, as being something one does with ones eyes closed. But once I worked out that prayer is just a jargon word for chatting with God/being with God I realised I could do this all the time. It has become my lifestyle to know that God is with me all the time and that I can talk with them or not as I feel. And sometimes it is things like “did you just read that text/email/hear that conversation with X? Can we focus on that a wee bit? Can you work with that?” type of conversation. But actually that is no different to conversations with friends, family, spouse, where we can be together talking or not talking and then the conversations veers towards something specific. Same thing.

So one part of my lifestyle is to know that God is with me all the time.

Another part is that I am working on the whole thing of The Lord’s Prayer and specifically the “daily bread” and the “forgiving self and others” parts. So when I feel myself getting anxious or into planning mode I breath, bring my autonomic nervous system back into regulation, and remind myself that what I really need for today will be there. Ok yes I forget but I am working on it.

I’m also after an argument or a time when I’ve done something wrong/upsetting/not right or when someone has done that to me I forgive myself and them. This clears the slate for me to carry on.

As my desk diary says for June “Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today” For me that works by forgiving myself and others and by knowing my daily needs will be met.

Another thing that is not a chore/a job to be done is the ANSing. The getting my autonomic nervous system into regulation and balance whenever it flips out. And let me tell you once you get aware of this it happens quite often. Before discovering this whole ANS thing when I felt anxious/fight/flight/freeze/fawn/angry/etc I used to try to do an analysis of what was wrong, what was upsetting me, who had said what and why – very much looking with my logical mind. The more I’ve done with QEC the more I’ve come to realise that some of it I might never know. I might have been a gesture, a smell, a taste, a word, that set off a memory buried in my subconscious that made my adrenalin race and it was so buried that I would never find out why. Or I was just overtired or hungry or both. Very often I would finish up either blaming myself for losing it or blaming the other person for upsetting me. But now my lifestyle choice is to ANS, forgive and let it go.

I am not perfect and I do forget. But what I’ve realised are these are not “things I ought to do to make me a better person” but things I chose to do and how I want my life to be.

My QEC practitioner talks a lot about self-help books and how she sees them as not helpful because there is a lot of psyching someone’s self up to “be a better person” and I agree. But also I think if in reading these books one picks up something that one chooses to become a natural lifestyle choice, not something you feel you “have to” do [remember I am against have tos and ought tos and should dos], then go for it.

I journal because it frees my mind. Although I used to journal to figure things out. Once I let myself run free then it was just another way to get my ANS into balance.

So for me ANSing, forgiving, believing God/The Universe will supply what they know I need daily, and allowing myself to be in a place of constant communication with God/The Universe is not something I have to do but something I just do. It is as much a lifestyle choice as walking my dog, drinking beer in the sunshine and hanging out with my friends. All of which keep me sane and at peace with the world. But also I think it only works when one does it as an “enjoy doing” rather than a “have to”.

Categories
Menstruation periods

Periods

Image taken from https://www.healthywomen.org/created-with-support/questions-ask-about-periods

I found it interesting to read the article on BBC news about Indian Women getting rid of the shame of periods They are having large gatherings where they can talk about their periods, where they can share their issues that come with periods, and also have charts in their homes with their menstrual cycle on. This is totally amazing. But does it happen here?

I was thinking that growing up I was told very little about periods and was definitely not allowed to talk about them in the home. They happened. They were known as the curse. They were something women had to endure. I was thinking I never knew what my mother’s or my sister’s menstrual cycles were. I am presuming they both had periods??? And with my daughter it was only her pushing the whole thing with her apps on her phone, her wanting to keep things open and talk, and also because she wasn’t having an easy time with hers. I wonder if she had not had her pains and major mood swings if her menstrual cycle would not have been talked about. Like I say it was only her pushing the subject not me.

I’ve noticed too that I am having more issues with my typing writing “menstrual cycle” than I did when I was writing about “abortion“, though that wasn’t easy either.

Why is there such shame about it? Why until recently have period products, which every woman for a large part of her life needs, seen as luxury items? Only recently has the VAT been taken from the price of these. And it is only Scotland who have finally said that period products should be provided free to those who need them. About time!!!

EU law required members to tax tampons and sanitary towels at 5% since 2001, treating period products as non-essential.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-51629880

Did you know that in the rest of the UK one can get condoms and other birth control items for free but only in Scotland can you get period products for free? Now I have worked with young people a lot but I will still say that having sex is a choice, having a period is not. It is not possible to abstain from a period without medical intervention!

I felt that 2020 was the time of perfect vision but I think that we still haven’t seen all there is to see. I believe that the whole topic of Periods coming out into the open is a continuation of finding perfect vision, perfect clarity, and openness and a freedom to see things as they truly are – not just the political situations in our world, not just the economics of our world, but the day to day issues of our world, with women’s bodies being one of those. Please feel free to put in the comments box your own things you would like to see coming out into the open and being seeing and talked about freely and clearly

Perhaps until we can be open, honest and fair 2020’s revealing of Perfect Vision will continue for much longer than it has been.

A quick aside – I find it wonderful that it is a man, Sunil Jaglan, in India who has been helping woman to gather to talk about woman’s health issues, and that the Tayside ‘period dignity officer’ is Jason Grant. As women’s health comes more and more to the fore I think it is great that men are involved too. This cannot be a women only affair.

Categories
Me Too truth

The Truth Will Set You Free

A view to the Llyn Peninsular taken on a day out with my daughter July 2022

I cried when I heard the result of the RoevWade outcome. How could a country that calls itself civilised take such a backward step? Not only is it saying that women cannot choose but that it is saying women are not able to choose. Then I hear our government saying that abortion doesn’t need to be on The Bill of Rights! Again a major step backwards.

There is that big argument that the child that is aborted could grow up to change the world. Well what if they don’t? What if the child that does not get aborted is brought up in a household on a low income with many different partners in the mother’s life? What if the child is brought up and hated because of what the mother could not do? One cannot talk of “what ifs” when one does not talk about choice.

Did you know it is only recently that Christians believe a person did not become a living being until God breathed life into them at that moment of birth

“I think we know that prior to the Lord putting breath of life into Adam he had a heart, he had a brain with vessels, and these vessels and heart were filled with blood just as the vessels and heart of a fetus are filled with blood. However, Adam did not become a living soul until after the Lord breathed into him the breath of life.

—Robert L. Pettus Jr., MD, As I See Sex Through the Bible, 1973

And “Rabbis have long written that the soul enters the body at birth, with the first breath. For breath is the gift of life from the one who created us. From the God who is both our origin and our destination.”

–

I know medical science can now keep a baby alive from very early in gestation. I have had friends who have been blessed by this new technology. But that was their choice and that choice has effected their lives since.

I have just read a great article by Nadia Bolz-Weber entitled Stories>Opinions [basically our stories are greater than someone’s opinions] In it she tells her own story of her own abortion, which is very similar to mine, except that she did have a partner with her and friends supporting her. For me, I was in an odd place, sleeping around and did not know who had fathered my child. I was, like Nadia, on a low income and also not in a place to have a child. [I once told this story in a Christian youth group and got cross questioned by the young people, which actually was great because it made me think about what I had done, and I know I did the right thing at that moment in time] Would I have been a good mother then? Who knows. But I chose not to be a mother then.

Later I got my life a bit more sorted and have since had two amazing children. Children that actually I would not have had if I had not aborted the earlier one. Strange that. As someone in my writing group once told me “each choice we make determines where we are today.”

Jon Kuhrt wrote a blog piece a while back on Francis Spufford’s book “Perpetual Light”, which is a story about the children that died in a WWII bomb on a Woolworth’s in London, and what their lives would have been like if they had lived. This got me thinking about what my life would have been like if my first child had lived. I don’t know but I know it would be very different and I know I would not have the children I have now, or the husband I have now, or the life I have now. It would have been different.

When people say about the life of the aborted child they never seem to talk about the life of the mother who has that child, or the father who has to decide what he will do. Also too often the mother is seen as the enemy, as a bad person, who isn’t really thinking properly. I do not know of anyone who did not think through their decisions carefully and how it would impact them and their unborn child. It is not a decision to be taken lightly. But then I did not take it lightly to keep my next two babies. But having an abortion is a taboo subject very rarely talked about in Christian circles openly. Why is that? God knows what I’ve done and still thinks I am amazing. I know this because my first God encounter was of being covered in what felt like a warm, visceral glittery substance and being told I was loved just as I was – unmarried mum who’d had an abortion. I’m not sure what my church would have thought of me if they’d known. I wonder if I will now be asked to stop helping with the youth group that I volunteer at now?

Please can we stop being ashamed of what we’ve done. Please can we start being open about every part of our lives and not just keep God for the clean and tidy bits and pieces. God is the God of the whole of my life – the good and the bad, the times I’ve got it right and the times I’ve got it wrong – and I am loved by God no matter what. That is totally amazing.

And now let us stand together and support those who have had an abortion, who are thinking of having abortions, and also those who think the whole this is an anathema. We are all made in the image of God no matter what we’ve done or what we think. And are loved because of and in spite of all that.

Categories
Higher Path walk

Choosing Pathways

Photos are of Newborough Beach and Forest, Anglesey and Llandudno West Shore. All photos taken by myself on either Saturday 5th or Sunday 6th March 2022.

With all the talk of the war in Ukraine and it being hard to forget it I thought I would show you some pictures my walks over the weekend just for a change of focus.

My husband was away for the weekend so the dog and I were home alone and the sun was shining. I wanted to go to Newborough Forest and beach. My daughter and I had been there two years ago just before words like pandemic and lockdown became common place. The weather was similar this weekend to the one two years ago and I really wanted to go, yet I realised I was nervous. Nervous of driving 40 miles to Newborough. Guilty that there are lovely places closer to me. But my heart was really craving to go.

So on Saturday I tried to make my heart change its mind by going for a walk by the sea. It was only 10 miles from my house and I combined it with a trip to get some colour charts to repaint rooms in my house. So fear and guilt were dealt with there, and also dog and I got to walk by the sea and enjoy.

Interestingly on that Saturday walk due to the battering the shore has received in recent months we could not go on our usual walk but had to take the newly constructed coastal path which took us higher up and so the view was different. Noticeably different.

But it wasn’t what my heart wanted and so on Sunday morning I gave in and decided to go. I was amazed at how nervous I felt. I can easily drive 40 miles without thinking about it yet something was nagging at me. I really had time to pray about some of my older friends who have been doing nothing since March 2020. Once their stimulation of going to groups, clubs, shopping, driving places, interacting with others was taken away their brains and bodies have reacted. For one it has moved her dementia forward quicker than if she’d still had that stimulation. For another it has caused her body to stop wanting to eat and she is exhibiting signs of anorexia. Fears and anxieties have grown in others where before they could have talked them through with someone else. So even though I could feel my stomach churning I decided to keep driving. Newborough was where I wanted to go.

Of course dog and I had a lovely time but even there due to the rain and winds we did not find the same paths and had to go a different way, which again led us to a higher path. Once again we were looking down on something we had walked along before. We walked for 2 1/2 hours, probably about 7 miles. And the sun shone all the time. I am glad I pushed through and did not let my fears and guilts and anxieties win the day.

As as you see on each walk I found a higher path. I feel there is something significant in that. I had to push down fears that would have made me pick somewhere else, and in fact even in my trying to pick somewhere else still I walked along a higher path. So maybe it isn’t whether I deal with my fears or stick to the easier way that will lead me to a higher path? But whatever it is I know I need to overcome my fears and push through.

With the way the last three years have gone – with Brexit, Covid and now Ukraine, plus climate change, rising prices, etc, etc, etc – there are a lot of things to be fearful of. Yet I think after my weekend walks that we need to push through our fears and walk that higher path – however that looks to each one of us.

Categories
choice hope joy

Choose Joy

View of autumnal leaves of the tree outside my house taken by Diane Woodrow
View from my study window today

It is the start of the Celtic Advent. Celtic Advent gives 40 days run up to Christmas and then on into Epiphany. I like it because it gives time to reflect and ponder without some of the same intensity as the Anglican Advent time of just that mad December rush to Christmas.

In today’s reading Christine Sine encourages one to “choose joy”. As I looked out of my study window to the gold and oranging leaves of the cherry tree, my constant companion through all the seasons I think it is easy to choose joy today. It is easy to choose joy when there is beauty just outside my window, when I can go and walk in the beautiful park ten minutes from my house and enjoy the changing colours of the glorious autumn season. But how does one choose joy when life isn’t so beautiful?

Yet even when there is beauty around one still has to choose whether to see the glorious colours or to see that they signify impending death. As this season turns around again it is easy sometimes to see what hasn’t been done – the minimal progress at COP26, the impending next covid wave, etc ,etc. Or the path that was blocked or the job that hasn’t happened or the relationship that has gone awry.

But what is joy anyway? The Bible says “The joy of the Lord is your strength” Note it is the Lord’s joy not you trying to be happy clappy that is your strength. And I think that’s the depth of and truth of it all whether you believe in God or not, that you don’t have to build up that joy yourself but just need to turn to it, to accept it.

I read this from a blog post this morning. It is from Alcoholic’s Anonymous, which I seem to be coming across more and more these days in things I’m reading and I am sharing it with the young Youthshedz people I am working with

We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.

Call it what you wish – peace, joy, or as the Youthshedz girls were telling me the other day, hope – but you have to choose to walk in it. It is there all the time just waiting for you to reach for it, just waiting for you to accept it.

I’m learning a lot from these young people who have gone through so so much at such a young age and yet they have chosen hope. Ok so not all the time and they have down days and bad days, which is fine. If we are honest then we all have those days, though maybe not so openly, but they make an effort to choose hope/joy/peace.

So as the tree outside my window will soon cast its leaves to the ground and stand bare before me, even though the joy/hope looks like it has gone, I will, no matter what this next busy season throws at me, choose joy, choose peace, choose love, choose hope. It isn’t going to be easy but if these young people can do it then I certainly can.

Categories
choice priorities should, ought, have to writer writing

Have to, Should do, Ought to

 

DSCN0826 (1).JPG
Taken by me but I can’t remember where. This year I will be labeling my photos better 🙂

Tis the season of the have, should, ought. Sometimes in all this we miss out on the real reason for the season, which in many traditions has a basis for looking at light and celebration.

I have lots of decisions that are coming my way for 2019 which means that, to give them due consideration I will have to, in fact even now, will have to change how I live my life. I will have to give up on have tos, should dos and ought tos. I don’t have enough hours in my day. Some of the things I will give up are things I like but I am learning if I do this then I can’t do that.

I spent the last 10 days visiting family and friends this has meant that I haven’t done the usual Christmas newsletter or the run of Christmas cards. I have also been gentle working through “Finding the still point of your story” which again is making me look at what is important. Not that the things I can’t do are not important or the people I didn’t see, won’t send cards to are not important but that I have a finite time to do things and need to invest wisely. This means giving up being a member of the spa and not getting in my thrice weekly swims and saunas. This isn’t because I don’t like to go but because I want to take my writing more seriously I want more time to read and this will give me 3+ hours a week more to read.

I have not done the Christmas newsletter because I have decided that I want to message

my study.jpg
Taken just now. These are the books in my study that I want to read. There are more in a box downstairs, in my bedroom and in the living room. 

certain people individually because that is where I am at the moment. But I cannot message 100 people that could be on  my mailing list so it will be just a few. That way they can get special messages. Not that there is anything wrong in newsletters. In fact I had one from some friends which talked of her storytelling and has led me to using her story to tell when I am an elf at Santa’s grotto on Saturday. For me well worth having 🙂

So in all this I need to look at how I lead my life, what I want to do in it and not get rushed around by should, ought, have to. I am learning well this week too because my son is home for 10 days, which is lovely, but if I want to still write I have to leave him on his own. I am also asking him to help with things like walking the dog so that I am not run ragged there.

So for me this time between now and the new year will be of deciding that I do and what I will have to put to one side. I want to take my writing seriously – which means I have to stop doing other things.

Categories
Barefoot At The Kitchen Table being me change choice christmas empty nest no newsletter

No Newsletter This Year

mail-chimp-no-newsletter-square-fiI’ve not done a newsletter this year. The reason being that there is so much to say, so much has changed, but also that life is not standing still. I could have written about my volunteering work at Gwrych Castle but just as I was about to write things changed. Not majorly but just a little slip and change. I could tell you about my writing workshop business and what is going on there but then something does a little change. With the Barefoot At The Kitchen Table things I would have said that I was giving up doing overly writing for well-being and only doing creative writing workshops at Gwrych and the Memoir ones. But then I got an email from someone in the health service asking if I’d do some well-being with her clients, which was swiftly followed  by a text from someone saying her friend would like me to do some well-being writing with some homeless people works with. I could tell you how I’ve worked out the pattern of Airbnb hosting in this area but then for the second half of the year we have had one room booked out by the same person for over 4 months, the other room for over two and now have someone staying longer term. There is no pattern!

I could tell you how my children will be here for Christmas and what they are doing. You282-million-of-good-turkey-meat-trashed know I even ordered a turkey just before the end of November. But then my daughter says she’s off to New York with her boyfriend to have Christmas with her boyfriend’s family, and my son, who’s halfway through his basic training for the army says that even though he’s got a fortnight’s leave that this year they’ll spend Christmas with his fiancee’s family in Cornwall. Oh yes son got engaged in the spring!

I could tell you of the places we’ve been which have been good but then I realise that we’ve only had one week’s holiday in the whole year together. We’ve both had time off separately and been away for prayer support, seeing family, etc. But even then just when I thought of writing I would have had to squeeze in another place because we went to a wedding at the beginning of December.

kte335e7dd26I could list so many things that really you don’t want to here and so this Christmas/New Year I’ve decided not to send out a newsletter. My hope is that those who want to know what we’ve been doing will have kept in touch and if not will now use this as a time to say Hi. I love knowing what others are doing but most of those I care about I message – email, letter, phone, text – often, or follow on Facebook or Instagram. So my Advent vow has been to keep things simple, keep things relevant, and keep in touch more regularly.

Categories
accepting allthingsarenew belief Bible choice deciding faith God Grace grief hope Jesus joy memories mixed emotions pain True freedom trust well-being

Give your pain to Jesus

I have just finished reading a really good trilogy, who’s only fault was that each book was 7b2da202b0-281b-4eec-8c63-eb09297dfab97dimg4008-900 pages long. So for the last month I suppose I have been hanging out with these characters and so I am missing them today. The trilogy is The Liveship Traders by Robin Hobb. Well worth giving a month to.

There are many bits where the books really spoke to me. One part is where one of the ships talks about attempting to take his own life. (The ships are made of a wood that makes them alive, able to talk, think, have minds of their own, and have memories of those who have lived and died on them – can’t say much more or it would spoil the books). Anyway the woman talking to him says “how could you hate yourself and the world so much to want to take your life?” And he replies that all he wanted to do was to take the pain away. That really helped me to understand why those we loved took their own lives. It was because the pain was too much. There was nothing we could have done to stop that.

But then later in the book one of the main characters is dealing with the pain of having been raped and it is stopping her from giving herself fully to the man she is meant to be with. Her ship says to her “give me the pain. I will not take the memories of what happened but I will take your pain.” She does wrestle with him about this but eventually gives her pain to him, is able to tell her man about the rape and her heart is more open and able to cope.

I believe this is what Jesus asks of us and what I believe I have done without realising it,

Jesus Christ crown of thorns and nail
From https://www.rhapsodybible.org/the-humanity-of-jesus/

to give the pain of what we have walked through to him. It won’t make those memories go. It won’t make us wary in similar situations. It won’t even “cure” our mental health problems. But it will make us be able to look clearly at what we have gone through and say “this is what happened to me.” I think we are often afraid to give that pain to Jesus because we are afraid that he will take our memories and that what happened to us will not be validated. That if we continue to hold the pain of what we have endured – be it rape, abandonment, seeing someone we love taken from us, and many many more things that escape me at this hour of the morning – then we will keep knowing how awful it was. That if we let go of the pain we may forget a loved one who has gone, forget a incident that actually has made us wiser now, will forget all that we have been through. This is NOT true. Jesus does not want to take our memories. In fact earlier in the story it is revealed that the ship did try to take the memories of one of the main characters but this then stopped him from being able to fully give himself to others. He was holding something back and often that was because he did not want to look at the memory because he was holding both the memory and the pain, and the pain totally overrode everything else – including his judgement of situations.

Giving our pain to Jesus is an on-going thing. Often when we remember things the pain will flair up again so we need to give it again. Very often it is not a once and forever thing. If we have lost someone dear to us through an untimely death there will be many times when the memories of them come with searing pain and that is when we pass on that pain.

Jesus died on the cross to take our pain as much as he did anything else. By taking away cl_after_easter_964813935that pain it gives us resurrection. According to the Anglican and Catholic church calendars we are in that period between Easter and Pentecost and it is a time to reflect on resurrection. I was at a wedding of my dear friend who’s first husband committed suicide and during her talk the vicar said that this was my friend and her new husband’s resurrection time and that it was significant that they were marrying just after Easter. It’s true. She can now give her pain to Jesus, keep her memories of her first husband, but open up into the new life she has said yes to. And yes I weep through writing this because I have my own pain with it too. I can only give my own pain to Jesus again and again. I will still have the memories not only of the times when he was alive and the crazy things we all did together but also the memories of the fateful day and the aftermath of it. But they can be viewed as memories and a constant giving to Jesus of the pain.

“The joy of the Lord is our strength” (Nehemiah 8:10) is not some fully leaping around

joy-post-hein
From http://www.sharefaith.com/blog/2015/04/live-joy-lord/

being happy stuff but a joy that settles deep, pervades one’s whole being and, I believe, comes from knowing that you can give your pain to Jesus, walk free from it, and yet still know what happened. It is a full and rich joy of living free from pain but of a life filled with memories which in turn guide and strengthen your future.

Categories
accepting belief carpe diem change choice deciding faith goals hope mindfulness new year

Predictions for 2017

happy2bnew2byear2b20172bposterOk so I’m a bit late. All the papers, etc had their predictions within the first year of the year. But I’ve been pondering and reading them and have been amazed at how, when they were so inaccurate for 2016 why they are now rolling them out again for 2017!

Most seem to be doom and gloom and that we need to be fearful and worry. Some of this might come to pass but some of it might not. Donald Trump may end the world as we know it but he might not. Brexit may be another end of the world as we know it but it might not. Things may get better or they may get worse. We could be overrun with refugees and as someone told me we could all die because “all the refugees are coming here to kill us.” I am thinking that one might be a bit over the top, but it is what this person believes.

I tell you what I do know will happen this year: there will be countries that in the West we unknown-futureeither do not know or do not take that much interest in that will be at war and atrocities will be committed in them but our newspapers will ignore them; the cost of some things will increase; people we know and love will die – whether friends and family or celebrities; people will marry; children will be born; some will move house and some will stay put; etc, etc. I could go on but won’t. I hope you get what I am saying. There are a lot of things that will happen but we don’t actually know what.

And in all this we have a choice – do we live in fear that things might happen? Do we ignore it all? Do we try and do our bit? Do we believe we can change something? Do we live in peace with the world? And again there are many things here that I have left out. It is our choice what we do and how we think. We can choose to live, as the person who fears all the refugees does make her act in a certain way. We can choose to ignore there are any people in need and that will cause us to act in a certain way.

How will I choose to live? How will you choose to live? As a friend and I were saying soulspark_year_in_the_making_ilo_inspired_edited-1yesterday we need to set little goals and then not beat ourselves up when we don’t achieve them. For me my goals revolve around writing and people. For others it will be other things. I know people who are fired up about politics and that is great and I want to encourage them. I have people due to circumstances who are fired up about disabled – both physically and mentally – people and are doing something about it, big and small.

I believe we need to get up each morning and see it as a blank page that we can enjoy whatever our circumstance. And actually I met with a friend yesterday who has cancer and does not know how long she might live and yet it was the most joyful lunch I have had in ages. Every thing was fun and enjoyable. Yes we did talk about tough things too so we didn’t ignore what was happening to her but she has chosen to be alive for however long she has left. Not Pollyanna-positive, but real, open and honest but living every moment. I have also spoken with other people who are fit and healthy and ok financially and who live with worry and fear.

It is a choice how we look at this year and how we live it out which is not based on circumstances.