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