Mixed messages

Are you sending mixed messages, like I am?  I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but until this morning I was almost positive that this didn’t apply to me!  Well, at least in my view, until a friend pointed it out.  I tried my bag of tricks (rationalizations) and they didn’t cut it.  I had to finally admit, I was and am part of the society of tangled web weavers.

How did that saying use to go?  Oh the tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive…..  quite a few months ago, I wrote a blog about people wearing masks.  I went on about how I wished that people would take off their masks and just be whoever they were meant to be.  I thought that then, I still think that now, the web being woven though was how I put into practice what I preached.

If I say I want to lose weight, but secretly snack on chocolate, if I say I want a relationship but never make time for one, if I say I want a new job/career but do everything in my power to put up boundaries that negate my availability, if I say I want to quit drugs or alcohol but always put off until tomorrow actually putting down the drug or alcohol……..I could want to for the rest of my life!  In fact, my new position in life could be the want to.

While not all of the above want tos above apply to me, some of them do and as a friend helped me see this morning, my rationalizations on doing tomorrow what I need to be doing today only prolong whatever God’s plan is for me as well as my discomfort.  Who in the world wants to prolong discomfort…..but we all do it, because again, as the saying goes, “better the devil you know than the one you don’t know” and you need to look at that line closely, it mentions the devil.  Satan is real and he does not want you to accomplish anything good thing  God has planned for you, so he will tempt and torment you into believing his lies.

C’mon one more bite of that chocolate, one more drink….you deserve it, it’s a celebration…..who’s to know if you cheat here and there? I won’t tell if you won’t.  Well let me tell you, no one might tell on you, but your pants will, when they don’t fit!

We have gotten so good at rationalizing that we have gotten to the point of avoiding the people who hold us accountable.  I’m not kidding.  It is difficult to hear that we are failing and we don’t want to be reminded of it, it is so much easier to hook up with people who say they love us, when in fact what they love is the company that allows them to stay in their perpetual state of misery and have a buddy to boot!

If I’m sounding harsh, I guess I am because I’m one of the ones in that perpetual state and I talk about trying to move beyond it, but find myself backsliding.  There are 4 stages of dealing with difficult scenarios, most notably used when dealing with an illness.  First is denial, then it is anger, then there is bargaining and finally acceptance.  Just because you make it through one, does not mean you don’t re-visit it.  Most of us get stuck in denial.  No we don’t have a problem, or in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a big deal, it’s a small white lie, no one knows….well you know what someone does know, You know and on top of that, God knows.  So often when we get caught in our webs, we feel remorse but I bet 99% of the time, that remorse is a product of only being caught, because if we hadn’t gotten caught, we’d probably still be doing whatever it was unless our consciences finally kicked in!

I have a friend going through rehab…..again.  Do you know how hard it is to break a sequence when you are only doing something because someone else expects you to do it?  That’s not the solution, each of us has to recognize our own problems, take ownership and then individually decide, for ourselves that we in fact want to change.  Nothing will stick, if we aren’t the ones wanting it.  How much do we have to lose before we understand the cost of what it is we are losing?

Is losing your job, your friends, your family, your financial well being, your self esteem, not enough?  What about your life?  What sticks in my mind, as a believer in Christ, as a person who speaks about the relationship with Christ, that when I do not die to that thing, whatever that thing is (aka sin also known as rationalization), then Jesus hung on that cross for no good reason.  Anything and I do mean anything that takes a precedence in my life (chocolate, alcohol, friends, jobs, fun) meant that God’s Son died for no reason.   And just so you know, all those aforementioned things are not necessarily bad, just because you are believer, it is all about moderation and perspective!  What comes first in your idol worshipping?

No, I’m not on some high horse mind you, this entire blog started because of my own rationalizations.  Recognizing yourself is the first step to taking the necessary steps of fixing what is broken – at least I hope so!

Looking up and forward to seeing you on the flipside!

Barb

Seize the moment(s)

I feel compelled to put my thoughts to paper tonight.  I’m really struggling and it is one of those moments where I feel I am on the precipice of a decision that needs to be made and for some inexplicable reason, I don’t feel ready to make it.  I wonder if this is my moment like Peter’s when he says he wants to step out of the boat and walk on the water to Jesus, and Jesus says come and he does, but once both feet get out of the boat, he reconsiders the impossibility of the situation and loses sight of the one who makes the seemingly impossible, possible, thus making Peter doubt and then start to sink.

This is one of those soul searching moments where I am being asked to overturn rocks that hide truths hidden that I’ve allowed the moss to grow over rather than deal with them.  It would be relatively easy for me to allow that moss to stay right where it is, but God has a way of making me very uncomfortable about remaining in the status quo.

I can easily look at others whose lives hang in the balance of success and defeat and know without a shadow of a doubt what their next move should be and I don’t mean to be overly simplistic.  Parker Palmer wrote “The divided life is a wounded life, and the soul keeps calling us to heal the wound.  Ignore that call, and we find ourselves trying to numb our pains with an anesthetic of choice, be it substance abuse, overwork, consumerism or mindless media noise.” (A Hidden Wholeness).  I might not know the exact method I’m employing, because in some way I think I’m  retaining the services of all four to an extent of some sort, although without the benefit of being paid, I’m not doing much in the way of consumerism!

Somewhere in my formative years, and no this is not about placing blame on anyone, I learned the knack of minimizing my needs for others.  Who knows maybe this is something I learned watching my mother as she dealt with four of us kids, while also taking care of her mother and being a wife!  That was the role back then afterall, at least as displayed by Donna Reed, Harriet Nelson, Barbara Billingsley etc.  For those who don’t know those women, they were actresses playing the perfect Moms who cleaned in pearls and dresses.  Dinner was always on the table, their husbands always pleased and their kids perfect.

There were times in school and because I was number 2 in line, I toed the line because of our family reputation.  Good grades were expected and to a certain extent the pressure of performance on the athletic fields was the price I paid to “keep up” with my older sister.  But I woke up every darn day with a sense of fear inside, afraid of failing, of disappointing someone and I never let on about it.  I mean really, who misses 40 days of first grade?  Well that was trauma of a different sort – that damn red light/green light sign for going to the bathroom!

Anyway, I went to college to be a teacher, something I thought I wanted, but I went for the  wrong reasons, which no one, myself included, knew enough to question.  Halfway through I wanted to change my major (like every kid does now a days) but was unable to do so without having to start over, so I covered over my desire and plodded along.  Student teaching was fun, but afterwards I remember the job opportunities being extremely competitive and my Mom tried to encourage me to make myself “different” than the other possible candidates.  In that statement, I somehow heard that I wasn’t good enough on my own to warrant that position or any other and I never applied for thereafter.  My Mom was the encourager for us kids all those years and I don’t mean to smudge her good name.

This many years later, as I am now at the age my Mom was, when she made that remark, I know what she means.  See, when we are young we think we know it all and we think the world revolves around us and that jobs are just going to line up at our doors and we will start whatever position making a boatload of money.  When you are up against kids who might have gotten better grades, or had better skills or a better network – you have to have something that distinguishes you from the other applicants.  I didn’t have that and in learning that “truth” I then too learned about vulnerability……my own.

That lesson unfortunately shaped me.  I learned to settle for jobs that didn’t challenge me, half the time they didn’t even interest me, I really didn’t care or so I thought.  I lived life, worked for the money learning those numbing skills already mentioned, and eventually married and became a mom.  Motherhood I absolutely loved and at this point in my life, I actually stopped waking up with that fear lodged in my stomach!

Unfortunately, the economy faltered in the 80s, as it is now, and we wound up moving and I wound up having to go back to work.  I landed my one and only teaching job when we moved to NC.  It was at a private school and I was 36.  To cut to the chase, I hated the job, I was too long away from what I had learned, and feared that I’d be found out.  That damn fear was back and if you think that kids can’t sense that, you are sorely mistaken.  It was during this job, that I found my passion.  My co-worker was diagnosed with breast cancer.  This was secondary to 4 years earlier when my nephew died of leukemia.  My passion was caregiving.

This many years later, it is still my passion and it is now that I’m finding myself in a quandary.  I have taken the necessary steps to get my license to be a certified nursing assistant as well as taken the steps for training as a hospice volunteer, so I don’t understand what is holding me back in my pursuit of my passion.  Part of me feels I’m just too old (55), part of me doesn’t want to give up some of my freedoms which include volunteering ops with hospice and cooking for the homeless and while my stating the aforementioned makes me sound good, in some ways I think I’m still hiding, I have the "fear" again!

Well now, I’ve typed 2 full pages and will publish this to my blog.  I have promised to always be open and honest in my writings (another passion of mine).  I started this with tears in my eyes and more questions than answers, but I end here with a semblance of thought that as I wish my course to follow God’s will, I need to stop making excuses about the why I can’ts.  God knows I am so tired of excuses and here I sit making ones of my own.  When we grow uncomfortable enough in our scenarios, we will ultimately make the necessary changes and as I once read a short time ago, and may have even written it in my blog……sometimes God lines our nests with thorns so that we can’t get comfortable thus necessitating a move.

I’m telling you, uncovering the stones on your path of truth may not always be fun, but it is ultimately beneficial.

Looking up!~ Barb

Random

Getting back to basics.  I think I’m going to be showing my age but I just have to say, I liked things better in the old days.  I mean, computers and technology have their place in some places, but they are definitely taking over and I’m not sure I like it.

I don’t even know where to start, because like many of you, I’ve become addicted to the instant gratification of the internet.  That is until my computer(s) start acting up and I don’t have a clue how to fix them and then I have to pay for someone to do it.  Yes, I’m there right now, and I have 4 computers – I’m ashamed to say that.  Two of them are for work and they don’t have enough internal memory to do both design work and book keeping and at home, I have a laptop and a desktop that I rarely use.  Anyway, all four of my computers are on the fritz.  I plead innocent if there are any typos as I type this, because my cursor just arbitrarily positions itself elsewhere in the middle of my typing.  It is like playing Where’s Waldo? ™ with the blinking button.  At work the other day I printed a check and it dated itself 6/26/2006…..how the heck did it go back 5 years?  I had to reset the internal computer date and time?  Ok, that probably means I have a virus, but I’m running all the up-to-date software!

This morning my friend asked me when I was going to get texting.  Yeah, like I need another thing that costs more money and then breaks or frustrates the heck out of me!  I do realize the advantage of it (ok, now my computer just blinked all the way back to the opening screen!....I better save this quick!)  The advantage being that she just wants to say let’s meet at such and such time and place we don’t have to talk?  LOL!

She and I spent two hours this morning trying to get through two chapters of a study we were doing – yes, we can get on verbal overload….  We talked about how we prefer books to Kindles ™ because we like to be able to turn pages, dog ear them, and we like the smell of the dust they collect over the years as they adorn our bookshelves.  I don’t know about you, but a book especially as a gift is one of my most precious receivings!

This led me to think about letters.  There is something special about getting a letter in the mail, hand addressed, special in its own right because it is time taken out of someone’s day whereby they thought enough of you to practice this lost art.  A letter is something you can re-read without the need of worrying that your hard drive is going to crash…..ok, now my stupid “V” isn’t always printing.

I miss friends stopping by just to say hi, I miss the casualness of entertaining without plans weeks/months in advance.  I miss coffee without lattes or frappes…..you know not the designer stuff, but coffee and a cigarette (ok, you weren’t supposed to hear that part I quit long ago!)

I’m not trying to go all the way back, yes, we’ve come a long way baby!  But some things didn’t need improvement on.  I liked when people sat out on porches.  Do you know that my husband and I sit outside almost every night and for the most part we don’t hear a soul?  I mean no one is outside, irregardless of the time because we are outside all of the time even when it is sweltering like today’s 110 degree heat index.

I miss people helping people out, building porches or decks.  I missed out on bridge and no, bridge for dummies did nothing to help me learn, I guess I’m a real dummy!  I can play pinochle though!

I miss food that tasted like food…..you know like pork chops.  Pork chops were our steak growing up, because steak was just too expensive, but Mom made these juicy tender pork chops that melted in your mouth.  I don’t know what the heck they did to them, but mine always come out dry and tough and I’ve taken quite an interest in trying to perfect them…..to no avail! 

How about lemonade and the Good Humor man, the milk man, the bread man who delivered their goods right to your door, newspapers that reported news not a certain slant because they want their "side" to score.  I miss honesty and integrity.  I miss that someone's word was enough and that just needed to be said, even though it is implied in integrity.

Last thing before I sign off, while I might miss the fact that at some  point way in my younger years I wore a bikini, I don’t miss wanting to wear one right now and I only wish that some of those I’ve seen on the beach recently shared my same view!  OMGosh, are you kidding me?  I think the line is Anything is permissible, but not necessarily beneficial!!!   REALLY, we are scarring our kids!  That and scaring them too!

Looking up! ~

Barb

Strife vs. peace

I just got done looking up the word “strife.”  I love my built-in Thesaurus on my computer, it makes research so easy!  Anyway, the word strife means trouble, conflict, discord, contention, fighting, dissension, friction, rivalry.  Anyway way you paint it, having this as part of your life is going to make for problems to exist between you and others!

I am on a quest for peace in my life and while listening to Joyce Meyer’s broadcast this morning, she made this statement, “there will always be people in your life that you just can’t stand to be near……you know, like one of you is the armpit and the other is the nose!”  OMG, isn’t that the truth! But I’ll add, once in a while you have a cold!

The fact of the matter though, is that we have been called to a life where if we portend to live as Christ has instructed us, then we are to live what would amount to being peaceful lives.  Now, the last time I looked at peace, it didn’t have strife associated with it!

A friend and I have been taking variouis books of the Bible and breaking them down chapter by chapter for the past 6 weeks or so.  We then get together and discuss our thoughts.  Anyone who knows me well knows that this is so different from anything I’ve ever done in the past, and it has opened a whole new world to me.  I can only say that I reached a time in my life when I felt God was not just knocking on the door, but in essence emphatically rapping with a persistence that ignoring Him wasn’t an option for me.

Listening to Him though is quite different, because you have to listen in the little things or you get walloped by the big things!  Take this issue of wanting peace in my life.  It was pointed out to me this morning that if “I” want peace in my life than “I” have to be the one to not take offense or be hurt or angered or anxious or disappointed by each and every little thing that happens to me, which may or may not be caused by you.  “My” attitude has to be one of forgiveness, even if I’m not in the wrong.  You may need to go back and re-read that sentence……I typed it and I had to!

See “My” peace is up to me, no one else!  This is then where it starts to get complicated.  Let’s say you and I don’t agree on something, and I know that I am right….well, the lesson about all this is not about who is right or wrong, it’s about peace and as long as I have to be right, then peace isn’t going to miraculously happen.  It was stated that the most beneficial way to handle this, might be to state, "I believe I’m right, although I may be wrong, I just don’t want to fight about it" – end of subject.  Let me know how that works for you!

What happens though is that many times, we put on our “holier than thou” smile, gritting our teeth as we “give in” and wonder why God’s gift of peace still eludes us, I mean, we did acquiesce didn’t we?  But did we?  Can you not tell when someone begrudgingly allows you to have your way?

I know people who think that just because they pray, or go to church or do a Bible study, that they are extoling Christian attitudes……but what was pointed out to me this morning was that it is all fine and good that they do these things, but God’s gift of peace will continue to evade them like same poles of a magnet and the reason is, because they have only covered over the problem, not dealt with it.  Try as we may, we can’t dodge God when He aims to hit us!  He knows what we hide deep down inside!

This is strife.  We perform well in most or even all areas of our lives but one or a few, and wonder why God doesn’t answer our prayer for peace.  We work harder, but not in the area where the attention is really needed.  Other times we might just have to declare the issue a moot point and move on.  I have found myself at this point recently and will admit to being unwilling to let it go….probably because I know I’m right!  The only thing I can do in these situations is to totally hand them over to God, allowing Him to work through the circumstances and realize that these relationships are ones where I must not be meant to be in them, whether it is at this time or ever!

I kinda take those things hard, because I “think” I see a positive where there isn’t much of a connection at all!  Peace does not have strife at its roots and excuses just seem to me to be embedded with rationalizations of discord.  These areas are the ones where God may need to take His pruning shears out.  Pruning isn’t fun, but it does grant new life and health!  Sometimes God's pruning is the equivalent to a bad haircut!  I've had my share of those!  But, with God, the ugly duckling, turns into the beautiful swan.

Looking up! ~ Barb

Did you know you are part of a story?

This morning as I was sitting outside enjoying a cup of Blueberry coffee while reading my morning devotional material, I sifted through a myriad of thoughts and it is the last thought I’m going to try to make sense of in today’s blog.

God is the author of our lives.  Which means God is writing a book.  In His book, “His story”….. (history) sorry, I just love that…..He has an immense cast of characters.  Guess who?!  Us!  We are part of God’s story.  Did you already know that?

Now, if you can’t tell, I’m a wannabe writer.  I have in fact started a book, well numerous ones if you must know, but somewhere along the line, stuff gets in the way of my finishing them, but always in the back of my mind, those characters I’ve created are waiting to become complete, it is just that each character needs time to develop and also that other parts of the story have to be hammered out.

Hmmm…..sounds like God, as the author, has some of the same issues with His writing as I do with mine and just for the record I am NOT saying my story is in any way shape or form comparable to Gods!  Nor is my talent.

God’s story in each one of us is an ongoing script that is being written on a daily basis.  Some of his characters are villains – you know the ones seemingly not on the same plains (I'm thinking midwest lands) or should it be plane (air travel) of thought as He is, others are the good guys, who aren’t necessarily perfect but who appear to be headed in the right direction.

Any good story has conflict, I don’t know about your bit part in His story, but I have enough conflict in my script to share – let me know if you want some!  I haven’t quite figured out what chapter He has me in, and I definitely don’t know how long my book is going to run, but I have finally figured out, I need to start paying attention to the fact that I’m about to reach the most pivotal point in the story of my life, I can’t just be a run-on-sentence forever! 

What is your story saying about you?  He may have sculpted us, but He has given each of us two scripts to read.  Sometimes we start out thinking that the more interesting script is the bad guy, because of all the drama and intrigue associated with this role, and sometimes it appears like there is the reward of never getting caught!  For some, the good guy role might seem to be more of a milk-toast part and for people who don’t know what milk-toast is, it is bland fare, nothing much, as if there is no spice so as not to upset the stomach.  Here’s the final thought I had this morning though before coming in to type this up.

The good guy role has its “spice” buried like treasure.  If it was all on the surface, it might be stolen, so instead God plants it deep and it is only when one goes on a quest to find it, that they come across it.  What is then immensely satisfying is that once you start on the treasure hunt of the role, you want to dig a bit deeper, mostly because you keep finding clues that He has left letting you know that there is more to this story than you originally thought.  By the time you get that deep into it, there is no turning back, you are hooked!  Meanwhile the bad guy can’t fathom what it is that has you so intrigued, because they haven’t been given that insight. 

Each day I find more and more buried treasure, but I’ve gotta tell you, it takes work and some days I dig and come up empty handed, but other days I seemingly hit the jackpot.  Also, just so you know, villains can be changed into the good guys, that’s part of the allure of writing, the author can do whatever he/she wants with the character! 

What’s your character?

Looking up!~ Barb

God Complex

I’m not sure I have the correct title of the position on a football team right, but I think if I played I would have probably been a guard, probably a nose guard.  Why?  So glad you asked!

For most of the past year I’ve been running interference for God, but today realized it wasn’t for God, it was in place of God.  This was one of those teachable moments for me…you know an aha moment as Oprah calls them.

I have a huge heart, which can be both a good and bad thing, depending on the circumstances.  In the good sense, God gifted me with the desire to help others, in the bad sense when I take on challenges that only God can work through and instead of helping, I get in His way.

I am in His way currently and I realized being here has given me a “God Complex.”  God’s ways are not necessarily our ways and as much as I want to do what is “right” in a given situation, even with the intention of love, the person on the receiving end needs to suffer the bumps and bruises of their situation in order for them to reach bottom.  My “help” is impeding progress because I have an inkling of what I see as the end result, and it scares me!  Not too big of a God complex?!  Geez!  Sometimes you just can’t save someone from going where they are going, especially if they aren’t willing to read the road signs on their own map!

I don’t have the market cornered on hurts, frustration or anger.  There is plenty of it out there and my little bit of help doesn’t make a dent in the big picture of an ongoing battle, in fact it is prolonging the journey.  I keep applying a band aid when surgery is what is required!  We were born into a fallen world, and it is up to each one of us to make the choices necessary to assure the life that God intended for us, in other words it isn’t up to me to guarantee your salvation, I might point you in the direction and offer encouraging words, but you, yes you, are the one who has to do the work.  Sometimes that means you need to be alone to recognize it and even if you are severely incapacitated, God will make a provision for you to be able to work toward Him.  It is the ol’ proverbial statement about being able to lead a horse to water, but not being able to make him drink.

I hate that people have to suffer, but when one abdicates their suffering to another person, they relinquish their lesson and thus are forced to repeat it until THEY learn it.  Isn’t like a parent doing their child’s homework, so that they get a good grade?  What did the child learn from that?  Ok, I’ll admit I did a project WITH them now and again….oh what we learn in hindsight!

Our identities should not be based on our performance, or our kids’ performance, nor should it be based on our mistakes, because not only will we make occasional mistakes, we need those mistakes to help us learn and thus grow.

So, it is in hindsight that I recognize my position as the nose guard, because I have been in God’s face protecting someone, instead of allowing God to do His work, which is always perfect, even when it doesn’t seem like it to me!

Some lessons are just more difficult to learn than others, I’ll be on the sidelines encouraging you, I wish you better days ahead, see you on the flipside!

Looking up!~ Barb

Weakest part

Where or what is our weakest part?  For some this question would take an archeological dig to excavate the layers we’ve buried this beneath!  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stated, “Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.”  Hmmm…

Too many of us stop, thinking our weakest parts is part of our outward design, meaning we think our hips are too large, our noses crooked, our teeth bucked, our waistlines bulging…but this morning I was challenged by a devotional that pointed to my heart as my weakest part.

What we take in from the world we take in through our senses (sights, sounds, tastes, smells and touch) which in turn gets filtered through our minds and many times is distorted before it finally reaches our hearts.  Our hearts are the parts of us that then send out the messages the world receives, but having gone through the above filtering process, many times the messages sent out are warped.

God wants us to open our hearts wider for Him.  In doing so, He will enable us to comprehend His truth about Himself, which will give each of us a greater, deeper, more wonderful understanding; one beyond our imagination of who He is and what He can do through us.  Each of us has a soul that longs for significance and in opening ourselves up to Him, He and He alone can satisfy the deepest yearnings because He is the one that created that space within us.

The catch is, the only way to get there is to be broken and in need of His gift.  See, what is broken to us, is beautiful to Him.  It is only in our brokenness that we reach out to take His proffered hand!

I am aware of people, caught in the throes of addictions, depression, diseases; all are calling out and some are hearing the apparent silence of God and it would make one wonder why!  Again, I will state, I’m no authority on the given subject, but the thought crossed my mind this morning, as a parent, when one of my kids did something “wrong” by my standards, it wasn’t until they were caught, that they showed their remorse.  But what was the onus behind the remorse – sadness in disappointing me or sadness at getting caught?  God is the supreme “Parent” and as any parent knows, some kids are just more ornery than others and no amount of discipline on our parts will change that child until that child sees the destruction for what it is.  No that doesn’t mean we give up, but we certainly don’t enable their behavior or make excuses, they need to feel the full consequences of their behavior.

Interestingly this past week at church, the minister related stories about our EGOs (edging God out), which I’ve blogged about before.  But as a refresher, our identities are not in our status, our cars, our homes, our friends, our jobs/careers, our toys or our families, especially our children.  We can and are supposed to teach our children, but they are free to make their own choices and sometimes they don’t make good ones.  But take that one step further…….we, (you and I) are also someone’s children, in fact more than just someone’s meaning our parents, we are God’s children!  We don’t always make good choices either and sometimes we can be just plain obstinate in our choice to NOT do something.  We do, whatever we do, to get results or a reaction and whether or not the reaction/result is positive, it is still an indication of someone paying attention to us and ultimately that is what we seem to crave…..attention, which in turn is a need for some sort of adulation, which is our EGO booster.

In the workplace, we work harder and longer as proof of our abilities to handle whatever comes at us.  As a volunteer, it may be our need to be needed but in each of these circumstances it is all about our egos and this I can state from personal experience because it aptly has described me!  Ouch!  EGO –edging God out?! 

I keep reading about God wanting me to be still and know Him and I can’t quite figure out how to just be still.  The world keeps getting in my way, beckoning me with its cheap thrills, but you see, it’s my mind that is the filter that keeps enticing me sending me false messages about the sweetness available out there, when all the sweetness I need is present inside my heart, if I would only open it wider to His possibilities.  EGO – Exalting God Only!

Our weakest parts really then become our wills, which translates into our desires, which originate in our hearts.  Are you filled to your heart’s content?

Looking up!~ Barb

What's your secret?

You know, the one thing that if anyone found out about you, you would feel you would die of mortification?  We all have them, whether or not we admit them, some might be worse than others, but that really is in the mind’s eye of the one retaining the secret.

We all have pasts, and our pasts aren’t perfect but instead of allowing our pasts to hold us captive, we need to re-think that past as being part of the experience that led us to where we are today.  Certainly if your or my past is something we are ashamed of, we hopefully aren’t continuing on with it and should let it go.

Sometimes our pasts have hurt people, even people we care about and sometimes we can tell them we are sorry and other times we can’t – because we’ve lost touch with them or they have passed on, in these cases we carry around heavy loads of guilt that keep us from being able to experience life in the manner which God, our Father wishes us to.  My answer to how to handle this, would be to write a note, releasing that which binds you to error in judgment and then give it to God and then burn the note.

Sometimes we confide in a friend, and if I am that friend I want you to know that that confidence is being held to the grave and beyond.  My point being that in sharing sometimes that burden can be released and hopefully allow the clog in the system to open and allow for movement ahead.

There is another source though, and this source is the one who knows you better than anyone on earth.  He knows you from the time you were formed and He knows your faults before you’ve even committed any errors in judgments.  It would be natural to then think, since God knows all about you, then why does He allow you to make missteps in your life?

The answer – because He wants you to choose to want to walk toward Him.  Anything forced is well, forced and when I’m put in that position, I rear back and don’t go willingly.

The same go for friendships.  The people who bless my life are those who willingly want the connection and make the effort, as do I, to perpetuate the bond whether it is familial or not.

I have recently had the experience whereby a friendship was put to the test and it was a grueling test and one where it would have been quite easy to give up on, but in maintaining the association and facing the glitches head-on, it is my sincere hope that a stronger foundation is being poured and it will allow for growth.

We are not whatever our worst mistakes are.  We are human beings prone to screw-ups, even repeated screw-ups.  I just find it sad when people think they are beyond anyone being able to understand that they are not the only ones screwing up in life.

The saddest days for me are when I see people I care about floundering about, projecting needs but denying them, maybe even thinking no one out there cares enough to listen or that if they admitted to a mistake, they would be laughed at or scorned.

I’m about to start my hospice volunteer work – no kudos please, I mention it in passing because I have been made acutely aware of a segment of the population who feels extremely lonely and the underlying feeling is that many of these people have gotten to the end of their lives and they just want to be connected, to matter……to someone. To not feel alone.  Might we all get there and feel that way?

I don’t know how many ways to say to those I love – please stop waiting for the perfect “time” to make your connections – you will make time for whatever is important enough to you, I am hearing more and more regrets being spoken as the end draws near.

Looking up!~ Barb

BE!

My mind is jumbled.  We have finished this years’ version of the weddings and I’m not quite up to the task of getting ready to jump into next year’s planning yet.  My brain is just a mass of mush.  From what I’ve been told, this is pretty normal – I mean the mixture of emotions I went through was enough to render any sane mind questionable, much less a menopausal one!

The older I get, the more fascinated I become with people.  The less I focus on myself, the more I see the interesting dynamics that play out in the dramas and power struggles and there’s a part of me that in this state just wants to cry out……stop!  Just be.  I often write, and will do so again here, I don’t have all the answers to most of life’s questions, but there is a simple truth that many people are missing in their day to day struggles.  The truth is the blessing called hope.

Are you a hope stealer?  People often become what they are told they are.  By this I mean if you tell someone they won’t amount to anything, it becomes their fulfilling prophecy, because you’ve stolen their “hope.”  By stealing this blessing, you’ve rendered the person inept in handling whatever their desire may have been, unless the person is of a very strong countenance.  There are no guarantees in life and any of our desires can seem far-fetched, but if we study and perservere, that in which we hope may be achieved.  I may say I want to be a doctor, but if I do nothing to move to that goal, then the end result won’t happen.  But if I say I want to be a doctor and I go through the motions of studying and applying myself to the necessary steps then there is a good chance of my achieving the desired outcome.  However, if someone, whose opinion I value, speaks of my learning disability and states that I will never be able to overcome it, there is a good chance I’ll give up before trying!

These past two weekends I watched alcohol loosen tongues.  I’m not against alcohol, I drink, but I’m no longer the 20 something person I once was and I don’t mean to make it seem like younger people have the market cornered on drinking too much!  The underlying feeling I came away with, was that the more alcohol ingested, the more the boasting became prolifent and with it, I sensed an underlying sadness of dreams not having been met.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that the weddings weren’t wonderful because they absolutely were, it was just in some of the more obscure moments when these thoughts flashed through my mind and they weren’t while I was in the middle of the dance floor!

I have since then read this “We forfeit the life God intended for us when we lower our souls to functioning as machines rather than living as soulish marvels who require more than a quart of oil or a recharging of our batteries.” –Soul Custody – Stephen W. Smith.  It seems as if we have become robotic in our roles, rather than in living lives and in our hopeless states we drink (or choose other methods of self-medication) to make us feel better about what “IT” is we are missing.  “IT” being our hopes, our dreams, that to which we aspire to be.  Notice I said be, not do.

We seem to be getting more and more lost in the maze of life.  While at the two weddings I did have moments to “stop” and they were moments I truly cherished.  In the mountains, I had the good fortune to have had a thoughtful husband rent us a room that had an outdoor hottub.  Wow!  The cool air in the early morning, post wedding but pre-morning after wedding breakfast, I was in that thing as soon as the last rumble of thunder was heard!  This past weekend – at the beach, the house our friends rented was just back from ocean front, so there was only a short-walk to the beach and I sat up on the pier at 6 a.m. loving the ocean breeze and the view.  I had to keep reminding myself to relax, to slow down, and to NOT think and in both cases, this was extremely difficult.  It shouldn’t be that way!

I would like to invite everyone I know to just be.  In my presence, know that you don’t have to do anything to “impress” me, just show up and enjoy the lack of pretense, the lack of perfection, be ready to laugh or cry or any other emotion you’d like to share, but always know that you will be received with a spirit of honesty and hope and value.  Come and just be!

Looking up! ~ Barb