Mar 16, 2017 | Be Inspired
How do you speak the truth into your own heart?
For me, this question has a couple of different meanings.
One way of speaking the truth is affirming and declaring what God knows, what God sees as his beloved child.
There are times when I need to speak the truth that God knows and says to my heart. Those times when I feel sad, alone, sick, overwhelmed…
It’s a powerful journaling practice to free-write everything you think God knows and would say to you in a situation. Write in first person like God is speaking directly into your heart. Try it! I suspect you’ll find God’s truth very revealing, reviving and healing.
Another way of speaking the truth has to do with listening to our feelings and being honest with ourselves.
This truth I find the hardest to know and speak.
However, we need to live in our truth. And we can’t do that when we are not honest with our self.
I believe when we are unhappy, depressed, confused, frazzled…we are probably not living in our truth and not speaking our truth into our heart. So our heart feels off balance.
I’ve learned a lot in the past couple of years about being honest with myself. When I was desperately feeling the need for help, I’ve learned to admit it and ask for it. When I longed to spend time doing something that I loved, I’ve given myself those opportunities even if only for a little while each day. I’ve spent more time journaling, asking myself questions and writing down the answers my heart spoke to me.
Speaking the truth into our heart first requires listening to better understand our truth. I seem to be hungry all the time these days to know my truth and live my truth and most definitely speak my truth into my heart.
The more I succeed at this, the greater is my peace and satisfaction.
How would you answer the question my friend? How do you speak the truth into your own heart? What does this mean to you?
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Mar 9, 2017 | Be Inspired
This week I have more questions than answers to so many things in my life. Actually, I think this is always the way it goes in my life. As soon as I think I have an answer for something, I have a new question.
I have come to appreciate the questions. In fact, even when I don’t initially have a question I tend to try to come up with one. Ha! Call me crazy I guess! But I find questions to be a powerful way to gain clarity, direction as well as a feeling of certainty and comfort about a choice or decision.
I believe questions keep us listening and engaged with our heart, our feelings. And I am convinced our heart knows best. That our heart keeps us honest with our self.
By all means…give yourself some patience. Some questions require time to find the best solution. Time and again I’ve witnessed patience having its perfect work. I’m getting better with patience. This is huge for a jump-off-the-cliff kind of gal like me. But I’m learning to relish in the pause. To question a little more. There is beauty in watching transformation unfold a little at a time.
So do please try to love the questions. Ask yourself why this question and why now. Or question why not now. I’ve found answering “Why not?” to be one of the most revealing questions of them all!
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Mar 2, 2017 | Be Inspired
Steve Jobs shared many motivating and encouraging statements in his talks. Among them is “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
I hope I will hear from some of my blog readers about this!
The March 1st journaling prompt in my Color Your World Journal Club was “If you could write a letter to your 15-year old self, what would you say?” These words by Steve Jobs is what came to mind to include in such a letter.
But what about folks, like me, in their mid-life years who may still be in search of what they love to do? What would you say to them?
I am reaching the conclusion about my own life and loving what I’m doing has become a definite requisite! Life is feeling way too short to spend precious days not feeling satisfied or happy.
There are things that I do that make my cup run over with joy and contentment. And I’m concluding that it’s those activities that need to be the center of my work and how I spend my days.
Have you found what you LOVE to do? Whether that’s what earns you money or not, do you spend a little time every day doing what you love?
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Feb 23, 2017 | Be Inspired
I have no idea what the author was thinking when he wrote these words but they have been stuck in my head ever since I first read them.
There are things that I used to love that I did step away from. When I asked myself why I stepped away, a mixture of answers, reasons or excuses began filling my thought waves.
Regardless of why I stepped away, I do have longing to engage again with some of the things I loved and left.
The word that really captures me in this quote is LEARN…the idea that I will need to LEARN how to love “it” again!
Just as shown in this photo, for example, walking is one of those loves that I stepped away from and I do feel like I need to LEARN how to love it again.
I do have the longing. I miss my memories of how I felt before. The pure joy, contentment and calmness of being outdoors! I definitely miss the results I saw and felt in my body.
But I can see that there will be a learning curve this time around. It’s not as easy to get started as it was before. So this learning will require embracing a new way to begin, too. It could be I need to embrace a whole new approach, a new location and setting, a new time of day. Everything may need to be different!
I need to be willing to embrace the idea of “different than it was before.”
Perhaps my current challenge in trying to begin again is that everything needs to be different and that fact alone has been holding me back from starting.
I really believe I’m on to something. That these words in this quote are giving me the incentive I needed. It’s telling me I can go back to an old love but there will be a learning curve. That loving again will be different, fresh, new. That things are never exactly the same as they once were. And that is ok!
Be willing to learn. Be willing to let an old love become a new love whatever that may look like. Be open. Don’t limit the possibilities. Don’t confine the present and future possibilities to the details of an old memory.
We never really can go back. Life only moves forward, grows, develops, unfolds. That’s the nature of life! But the old can become new when we let it! So…off I go! Right now! Walking shoes are on! Not the time of day I used to go walking but I’m going anyway.
How about you? Do you have an old love you would like to learn how to love again?
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Feb 16, 2017 | Be Inspired
Our smile! This is a powerful gift to those we love.
Sometimes it can be easy to take those we love for granted or perhaps even let them be who we rant our grievances to and maybe we even direct our frustrations toward them.
Some of the people I love most have either passed on recently or in the midst of illness and senior aging challenges. It became vividly clear to me along the way the light that I can bring into their lives. And it all begins with a smile.
Your smile can be the only light in an otherwise very dark atmosphere of thought a loved one is dwelling. But make no mistake. Your smile is a light. It brings light and has the ability to totally brighten the weary struggling heart of someone you love so very dearly.
Indeed, your smile doesn’t cost you anything. Yet it may be the most valuable gift you give to your loved one. And it leaves a memorable healing imprint. And…it can also lighten your own burdens and even soothe your sadness.
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Feb 9, 2017 | Be Inspired
The song “For all we know” sung by the Carpenters would have been sung at my wedding if I could have found the sheet music thirty-six years ago. I thought the words perfectly expressed my feelings and wishes as I said my vows to a young man I had met only seven months earlier.
With Valentine’s Day next week, this song came to mind once again.
We may not be strangers anymore (although sometimes I still feel like we have much to learn about each other), I can’t help but think about the lifetime we’ve spent together so far. And I can’t help but feel that the lifetime we have remaining doesn’t seem as long as it did on our wedding day.
“So much to say…”
Indeed!
I wonder if I’ve said all the important things I’ve wanted to say. Sometimes I think it’s easy to get so busy and caught up in the day to day of life, that too many important things get left unsaid.
Yes….I have much I want to say this Valentine’s Day!
Or better yet…
Don’t put off for tomorrow what could be said today, done today, experienced today! Regrets can happen when we put off. And this is true for ALL relationships including the relationship we have with our self!
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