Tag: God

Categories
Bible children

Samuel

No connection to what I’m going to explore but he just looks so cute. Photographed by me November 2023

I’ve been trying to get down to some Bible study as I have been a bit lax on it recently. So I’m following 24/7 Prayer’s Lectio365 app and trying to hear something different. Sometimes it is hard when you are reading the same pieces you’ve read for over 30 years [and when I first met with God I read my Bible loads and loads, reading it through twice in both my first and second years of meeting Jesus plus teaching on things, etc, etc and reading to my children] It takes a bit of concerted effort not to just go “yeah yeah I know what that says”

This was what was on the app for Friday –

 The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the Lord, where the ark of God was. 4 Then the Lord called Samuel.

Samuel answered, “Here I am.” 5 And he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

But Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down.

6 Again the Lord called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

“My son,” Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.”

7 Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord: The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

1 Samuel 3:3-5

What jumped out at me was verse 7. We don’t know how many years Samuel has been serving in the temple. It is possible he was five when Hannah weaned him – yes people used to wean their children much later than most of us do in our fast paced modern world. And I suspect as she knew he was going to live in the temple she probably waited longer just so she knew he would be ok. He was a small child not a baby or a toddler. Like I say we don’t know how much later God decides to call Samuel personally but I suspect it wasn’t within his first year.

So there he has been serving in the temple with Eli doing his priestly stuff and yet Samuel “did not yet know the Lord. The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” Goodness me what had been going on? Why had Eli not got around to helping Samuel know the Lord and know “the word of the Lord”?

Yet, as always when one lets God speak, I wonder how often we as Christian parents and children’s workers and youth workers [of which I have been all three] read the stories to our children, do the fun children’s and youth activities, etc but don’t give those young people in our care time to really know who God is and let God’s word be revealed to them personally.

Yes we tell them about God, we get them to pray, but how often to we stop and ask God to speak with them? [Note not a condemnation piece but a questioning piece wondering why so many young people don’t follow God after having been immersed in church]

I think too often, like Eli, we think we know how God will speak because that’s how they have spoken with us so we tell those young people in our care “this is God“. Then when God turns up to them personally often we are not as wise as Eli and don’t say “oh my I think that’s God talking to you in your language.” Eli did miss that it was God first of all and dismissed Samuel. It was only the third time [and that is a story telling technique and it may have been more or less times] that it dawns on Eli to tell Samuel to listen to God.

I have had to some major forgiveness from times when I was first talking with God and wanting to share it with others and was told that could not possibly God because God didn’t speak like that. But I think I have also been guilty of speaking of some of the young people who’ve been in my care because God was speaking to them differently. Or have seen them mold what they have heard to fit in with what I would like or what the group would like.

Like I say this is not condemnation piece but something that first made me go “Oh Eli why did you not teach Samuel about God in all that time” to hearing God’s still small voice asking me if there have been times when I have been like that.

The Bible, I believe, is always personal to each one of us, but too often we don’t like to really listen to what God wants to say to me. I believe the Bible is living and is God’s way of talking to each of us, not in one of those big sermon type ways but with us sitting, reading, getting involved with it.

Though I do wonder if that is why we don’t like to do it. Better to have something that one can say “this is what this passage says” than “God has just used that to open my eyes to some place where I have missed God’s mark [sinned]“

Categories
christmas mindfulness

Advent! Preparing!

View from my window. December letting us know it has arrived by giving us our first real frost of the year. Taken by myself 1st Dec 2023

I am going to be honest – like I am most of the time on here – I struggle with all this Advent prep, all this talk of preparing for Christmas, all this having decorations out more than a week before Christmas, etc. So whilst I was walking I was pondering why do I feel like that.

Since doing more of this QEC stuff and the ANSing I have realised that for every thing that feels like a “gut reaction” there is generally something in me that causes it. Sometimes it can be from my past but sometimes it can be just from who I am or from the emerging me.

So some of the reason I struggle with this long lead up to things is that I am not very good at keeping something up for six weeks unless there is someone keeping an eye on me doing it, some sort of reward. So if I do a devotional book I get fed up after a while. With NaNoWriMo I managed until 23rd November, which is a record for me, but couldn’t make it to 30th. Fault in me? Or just how I am?

I am trying to live in the moment, be mindful, enjoy the now – to listen to that still small voice of God/The Universe/my heart – and not be rushing off to the next thing, which I think is what is bugging me about there being so so much chatter from Church, shops, media, and even some TV programs already having decorations up.

My daughter asked me yesterday if I’d got anywhere with Christmas present shopping because son and his wife had asked us what we wanted about 2 weeks ago! I had to say that I hadn’t given it much thought as there had been other things going on – preparing my husband to go off to America for 10 days work this week, my lodger leaving to go to her newly bought flat, thinking of when to visit my Mum before Christmas, getting used to not working, and just enjoying life in the slow lane.

For me with Christmas, when my children were little we used to wait till 1st December to start any form of Christmas talk. [Even now they are only allowed to talk about their birthdays a month before the event] So there were no home school Christmas activities till 1st or talk of presents or what we were going to do or anything. Decorations would go up around 19th December and it would be a thing we did together. Yes because I was on a very low income I used to have various savings schemes in the butchers, the supermarket, the toy shop, saving from January. But the event itself didn’t enter the fray till 1st December. Whereas this year I feel like from every angle, whether Christian or secular, I am being bombarded with Christmas – from giving to buying to thinking about how to spreading good cheer.

One of the big things about helping with one’s mental health is to live in the moment, to enjoy today for today, to be mindful of the now rather than worrying about tomorrow or yesterday. But what I feel with all this Christmas prep hype, whether good things or not, is that it is starting earlier and earlier and so we are living in the “oh my goodness it’s coming” state of mind rather than, like a good holiday, knowing it is around the corner but not making it a big thing until it gets closer.

As I saw on FB this morning, someone was saying how they are grateful every day and live in today so why should they be doing this end of year stuff. [Interestingly even this end of year stuff is coming earlier and earlier each year. At one time things like Sports Personality of the Year, film reviews for the year, music reviews of the year, etc would all happen in the week between Christmas and New Year or even in the first few days on the new year. ]

So I am not being a Scrooge and I do like Christmas but please, please, please can we start to have all the Christmas hype – whether from Church or elsewhere – nearer to the day rather than 6 or more weeks in advance?

Categories
autumn season

Autumn Tide

Photos from my walk this morning at Betws-y-Coed, a lovely town on the edge of Snowdonia, about 20 miles from my house. Dog and I were walking there at 8am watching the mist lift off the river. Was about 3 degrees with that lovely fresh autumnal/winter feel to it. Not quite a nip but almost. The sort of weather that makes dog walkers smile.

Today looked like it could be the first dry morning of the week so, even though I have quite a few other things to do today I thought I’d drive the 40 minutes to Betws-y-Coed, do the 40 mins walk around the golf course and see the two rivers meet, then go to the Alpine Cafe for breakfast and write some poetry. Renly likes both this walk and this cafe [there is a sausage involved so he gallops around the walk 🙂 ] I felt now that I had stopped working in the nursery/after school club, and Mum is doing ok for now, I thought I’d get back to at least once a week taking myself off to write poetry.

It is very much free writing from what I’ve seen and the photos I feel led to take so there is never a plan.

What came from today’s was all about autumn, understandably. But more about my autumn. Not that “oh I’m in the autumn of my life and the end and winter are coming“. Much more a “this is an autumn season where I need to shed my leaves”

I’ve just googled what goes on with leaves in the winter. [Here’s my take on it so all your biologists and amateur biologists hush!!] As light fades the tree sucks in as much goodness as it can from the leaves because they are no longer photosynthesizing and so they turn all those amazing colours.

So I’ve reached a place where I have been taking a lot of goodness from the projects and work stuff that I’ve been doing over the last few years but that means I need to be looking inside of my “tree-self” a bit more. I need to let those dead leaves go, let those projects and things fall.

But what I noticed as I pondered about walking in mulch and compost was that most of the leaves don’t fall that far from the tree so really the leaves are going full circle and being the compost to help the tree keep going.

I feel I have been fighting this process for a while. Trying to keep going under my own steam instead of letting go. I think I’ve been afraid that if I let everything go then there will be nothing. But in fact all that I’ve done will fall at the “base of my trunk” and so give me sustenance for whatever comes next.

Via QEC, God, and a book called Don’t Believe Everything You Think, I’m doing my best to give all my dreams to God/The Universe and let them bring them to fruition. I know there will be things I have to do but I must only do the things I feel deep in my heart and know to be from God/The Universe. It all comes without striving.

These trees don’t strive. They are just the best trees they can be. They don’t plan the seasons, the winds, the droughts, the floods. They just get on and do their thing.

The walk I did today is one I do every couple of months and today I noticed things I hadn’t seen before, but that was because there were very few leaves on the trees. I was looking through the bare branches and seeing the road, seeing houses, seeing sheep and things. If I am wise, as my leaves fall for this season, I can see other things and who knows what might come from my quietly just being, just really seeing and waiting?

Oh and I took this last photograph because the plant in the foreground has brown and green leaves and red berries too!

Categories
local Love

Love where you are

This is the view of my local park first thing in the morning. I walk I do probably five times a week if not six or even every day. Too often I forget how beautiful it is. I will then drive for miles to some National Trust organised garden to wonder at the colours of the leaves, etc, especially this time of year. But my local park, ten minutes down the road from me, is beautiful. I wish today I had brought my phone so I could have taken photos. Maybe tomorrow if the light is right and I’ll just share a load of photos?

But it got me thinking, especially as I’m in this down time of pondering and thinking, how little we appreciate what is on our doorstep – our friends, our family, our homes, our towns, our woods, our streets. I think we live in a world that is too often encouraging us to “reach higher” to “get out there” and to get away on holidays, with work, with life. But really everything we need is on our doorstep for many of us.

I know I have to travel to see both of my children and my mum and mum-in-law and old friends who live in different parts of the country. And I love the traveling. But if I go to them hoping they will fill some gap then we will all be disappointed.

I traveled a lot before I had children and I will always say that one of the things that spoilt my travels was that I took me with me. The me who was messed up and confused. The me who was seeking something to fill that gap. I came home and between meeting with God and letting them fill me and some real deep healing I now like the me I have with me now. But now that I like me I’m not running away from me either.

Perhaps that is why now I can see the beauty in my local park, my local beach, my local all – because I am not looking for something far away, something that will fill a space. Now I know that all around me is beauty from the autumn colours to the bare branches to the wild waves to the still grey of this morning. And then those amazing greens to look forward to in the spring.

My daughter and I always joke that there is a song for everything and I think today’s one would have to be “Everything is beautiful in its own way”

Also to let you know my Mum is doing okay at the moment. We had an awesome time together just hanging out together – something we’ve never done as adults before because we’ve always had partners with us. It was great just to be her and I – holding ladders whilst she changed light bulbs, buying laundry baskets, cooking meals, washing up, watching TV and realising we like some things the same and some we don’t. I’m looking forward to going for a visit again soon. Maybe too it was realising the beauty in what just was rather than in making it a “something”?

Categories
pondering waiting

Reluctant to Say …

Stourhead gardens, Wiltshire, just before the rains came. Oct 2023

I am reluctant to say … but as you may have noticed … the blog posts are not so frequent at that moment. I’m reluctant to say that I’m taking a break from posting to process things because often once I do a post like that it seems to release a dam and I start posting again. But at the mo it looks like I’ve got some stuff to process around family stuff.

Being in my 60s with one parent gone and another coming up to mid 80s it is inevitable that thoughts move on to becoming an orphan, what ties there are with parents, what ties there are with my children, and such like. All those things need to be process. And processed slowly. And with God who sees much more clearly that I do.

So there is a lot of taking breath, of rethinking, of not speaking out too soon, of waiting. So I am allowing myself to process and to think and to have time. I also need time to visit with my family because for me one of the things I realise is that as my parents age so do I and so not only does my time with them start to come to an end I realise that my time with my children is finite and I want to make the most of that.

It is interesting to me how one of my big realisations as I see my parents age is that I want to make the most of my time with my children.

But also I realise how grateful I am to have got to my 60s and still have parents. Too many people have lost them much sooner than that.

So as I ponder, as I think, yes I’m sure thoughts to blog will come out so please don’t give up on me, but also please be kind as sometimes I’m not ready to share my thoughts so readily.

Categories
Encounter prayer

Cart Before The Horse

New Forest ponies photographed by myself June 2021

Too often we put the proverbial cart before the proverbial horse and wonder why nothing happens.

For instance we pray for world peace, for people groups to forgive each other, for people to consider the earth and the climate change issues, for people to stop abusing each other, yet I have realised that with the stories I read with my youth group Hagar and Gideon only changed when the had an encounter with God.

Hagar could only forgive Abraham and Sarah for their abuse of her and let go of her own anger and pride when she had met with the God who fully saw who she was. Gideon could only go and do what God asked of him calmly and without anger when he had met with the God who calmed his fears.

I think too often we expect ourselves and others to forgiven, to do just as God says and no more or less, to walk in peace and deep joy, when they had not had an encounter with God. I also think it often needs to be a regular different facet of God we encounter to fit with the things we are dealing with at the time.

So I am going to try to start praying for my friends, my family, world leaders, situations, and asking if these people will have an encounter with God. That sort of encounter that makes them feel fully known, as Hagar did, fully trusted as I think Gideon did, fully loved just as I am as I did and do regularly.

I also think that to be able to have those true encounters we need to be healed so we can truly see God when they come visiting. As you know I’m very pro QEC and also Sozo, but there are other ways of allowing those false beliefs of self-doubt, unworthiness, expectations of life, etc, changed and replaced by Godly freeing ways. For Gideon it was giving a sacrifice. For Hagar it was believing God say her.

So let’s get praying for people to have God encounters and then trusting God will change them, will speak to them, will be with them, in the way that is right for them and their situation rather than telling them and God what they should be doing.

Categories
let go of fear peace

Calming Fears

Last night’s youth group was a great follow on from my blog yesterday and, for me, helped me know how to move in this crazy world we live in.

We have been looking at the names of God and last month I was encouraged to note that it appeared that Hagar could only forgive Abraham and Sarah and go back once she had seen a side of God.

Last night we were looking at Jehovah and one of the verses was Judges 6:23-24 – The LORD our peace. Although in my version, the English Contemporary Version, it says “The LORD who calms our fears”. Now to me that really says something.

Gideon has just been told by God that he has to go off and tear down the idols to Baal and then kill the Midianites [of which if you read on in chapter 6 God has an awesome plan on how to do that]. Gideon has told God that he is weak, his tribe is weak, and basically he’s not up for this. God responds by say “oh yes you can” and Gideon’s response is to make a meal for God. Then when God consumes the sacrifice Gideon is terrified but God says “Don’t be afraid” and Gideon believes God.

Again there is this encounter with God; this meeting with God; this knowing God is who God says God is. The reassurance and the knowing comes from meeting with God. Once Gideon has met with God and been told not to be afraid he can say he has met with “the LORD who calms our fears.”

Now my youth group aren’t really afraid of world wars, of poverty, and at the moment they are not quite concerned about making the right choices, but they are afraid of grandparents dying, of pets dying, of fellow pupils on the bus with them and how to handle certain remarks, of coming to new things, etc. These are important to them. It was great to be able to say that God will calm their fears of this because it says so in the Bible.

So in follow up to yesterday I think what we need to remember most of all that in the midst of this chaos, in the midst of our fears, whether about world events or personal events, God promises to calm our fears. Let’s claim that. Let’s live in that. And then show the rest of the world that God has something to offer to our hearts, to our peace of mind, to ourselves. And once we do not fear then we can go and do as God wishes us to do.

Categories
crisis Trust God

From Crisis to Crisis

This was my dog’s latest crisis – being trapped on the stair by the cat whilst I hoovered downstairs!!!

We seem to lurch from one media reported crisis to the next. All of which are pretty scary to say the least – whether it is the Russia/Ukraine war or what is going on with Hamas and the Israelites in Israel and Gaza, as well as our lurching UK NHS and education system crisis and the cost of living crisis. We are constantly being pulled to worry about things outside our control. I think this is why in my area at the moment there is so much focus on a local council threatening to ban dogs from its beaches all year round to the new 20 mile per hour speed limits. These are things we can control, things we can do something about.

I had been planning a post about how trivial these complaints are when so much else is going on but over this past week I “got it”. Yes we can send money to UNICEF for Ukraine, Gaza and Israel but we can’t do much to change the situation. But we can sign petitions for both the 20 mph changes and the dog ban on the beaches. We can moan to our local councils, who more often than not will listen to us and definitely will not shoot us. We are so lucky in this county to be able to do that. And, especially with local matters things often change because we could bump into our councilors in the park, in the pub, in the supermarket. And many of them are where they are because local matters are important. We can make a change

We cannot stop the atrocities in the Middle East, in Ukraine, with modern day slavery, with drugs, with all sorts of awfulness that actually we do forget about once it has moved away from the headlines. Even with our own health and education systems, if we are not affected personally we do forget about them.

The media encourages both that feeling of panic and of worry but once we “get used to” what is going on they find something else to cause us panic and worry. So we do then look to something, like dog bans or 20 mph speed changes, to vent that worry and panic on. It is all short term but it does sometimes help.

Prayer is one way to go. Although sometimes that can feel like God isn’t listening. How long does one pray for peace and watch people die? For people to stop abusing those more vulnerable than they are? For people to not need drugs and alcohol to find peace of mind and wholeness? It takes a certain type of person to keep hammering at God on those subjects when nothing seems to be happening.

So how do we trust that God is listening? This I cannot answer. I’m hoping when I get to heaven I will. But I have to have faith. Faith that my little, often half remembered prayers, get heard and thrown into the bigger pot.

He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. 4 The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand.

Revelation 8:3-4

Though, like with much of the book of Revelation this is confusing because all these prayers get sent up and given to God then the angels cast down all sorts of nastiness on the earth. But I do have to have faith that God hears, that God listens and most importantly that God knows best.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see

Hebrews 11:1

This isn’t easy in the small things – like the death of a fellow dog walker, the death of an acquaintance from stomach cancer and another acquaintance from secondary breast cancer in this last month. But if my hope and faith isn’t in God then where is it? It can’t be in the media because that is fickle, as are the politicians, the economists, the world leaders, the leaders of terrorist groups, even my employers, parents, etc. They are fickle all of them. All are searching for keeping themselves safe.

God on the other hand doesn’t care what we think of them. In fact God doesn’t care if we give them a gender or not. God made us all so that we can love them completely, love each other completely and unconditionally, and they can love us with relentless conditional love. When we don’t do our part because we are scared, wanting our own way, fickle, fearful, etc then we to often pray “my will be done because I’m scared if you don’t do it my way things will get worse” rather than “your will be done because you know best and I trust you”

So with all this madness of people hating each other, of people fearing each other, of money being the biggest goal, are you, am I, willing to trust handing things over to God? Whether our worries are the wars and poverty in the world or personal things like 20 mph speed limits can we tell God our worries without telling them how to sort it. And will we be able to trust they have heard and trust that they can sort it?

Categories
expectations family

Family

Cobwebs interconnected. Photographed by myself Sept 2023

Hands up who has been upset when a church you attend uses the phrase “we are family” and then you feel shut out? I’ve been there. One of the most recent times was when the large congregation we were attended kept going on and on about how we were all family and then announced a very messy divorce by someone in leadership that those of us in “the family” knew nothing about.

My first thought was that surely if we were family then we’d know before it was too late so we could be helping, supporting, praying, etc. But this morning on my dog walk, out of nowhere, because I wasn’t even thinking about church and family, though was pondering what I should be putting in blog post today as it had been ages since I’d done one, I got this revelation that I felt I had to share. And it was that my disappointments and hurts over this whole “church being family” thing was because of my expectations. [I have pondered expectations before]

As I have found that God is the perfect parent, beyond my wildest expectations of what a parent could be, so I expected when a congregations says that they are “family” I expected something way beyond what I knew of family, something I had hoped and dreamed of. But it isn’t that at all.

My family is small. I don’t remember ever meeting any of my dad’s wider family, apart from a cousin and his children, and that was for a short time only and I thought he was very rude anyway. On my mum’s side I knew my grandmother until she had a major stroke when I was about 6 and then my mum’s uncles who came to visit my grandmother, but then I never remember seeing them again. My mum talks about a cousin and his children but I’ve never met them. My sister and I drifted apart as we got older and of course now she’s died well …. And her son doesn’t keep in touch and really I don’t keep in touch with him. So family and the mechanics of it I really don’t quite understand.

But as I was walking God showed me that this whole “family” thing that the church talks about has nothing to do with being close but has to do with being “related to”. In fact it goes way beyond just a congregation. It goes way beyond those who profess to being Christians.

If God made the whole world and everyone in it, if we are all made in God’s image not just if/when we say we’re trying to follow Jesus, then we are all God’s children. Thus, whether we like it or not, we are all family. Some of this family we will be close to, will get on well with, will spend time with, will know each other’s deepest thoughts and feelings, but others we just won’t.

My husband’s family does a good example of this. The parent generation all knew each other well and the cousins all played together as children. Then the cousins all drifted apart and got on to doing their own thing and not communicating. But the parents kept hanging out, kept phoning each other, kept in touch with each others lives. But when something happens, when there is a need, the cousins appear and help out, or the siblings form different cliques to help and support depending on their schedules, their needs, their space in their lives. So sometimes it looks like they don’t get on, don’t spend time together but there is always that thread of “family” running through.

Once one starts seeing the whole of human kind as “family”, as God’s family, then one does start to realise how much time we do connect and we are part of something. Like my friend who bought a homeless man a pizza the other day, she was just feeding her brother when he was in need and when he came across her path. I was deeply affected by the death of a fellow dog walker, went to his funeral and have been grieving his loss, but that is because he was a brother I got close to.

My revelation was that I need to stop thinking small. Stop wanting to part of some small congregation, even large congregation, some clique where I can “fit”, and realise that I fit into this whole world and I need to be aware of the God prompts when I’m pushed to connected with a brother or sister. This isn’t always to give to them. Sometimes it can be to receive. Or in the case of the fellow dog walker, and with many of my friends, it is to give and to receive in mutual friendship. It is about being there for others but also realising there is a whole world of fellow “relatives” whether they say they are follow Jesus or not, who are there to support me too.

As I walked in the large open park, that is my special place each morning. I felt God was saying just look at the big because that’s what I’m part of, but then like with the spider web to also look at those small connections. Those small connections that make something strong.

Perhaps I need to be looking at connections rather than craving the impossible of some close knit family? Perhaps we all should?

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.