Month: June 2015

Good Sunny Day, my friends! Today I reflect on growing pains. From my own, to my loved ones, to perfect strangers I happen to come in contact with. I find myself reminding myself calmly that these growing pains are a part of moving forward with life, becoming more mature. A source for lessons. The college of life. I have patience and peace, because I have God and I know that He will not let me fall. That no matter what challenge I am facing, I have lived long enough to know, that no hardship comes without growth, without a positive. That I survive them all, and that new doors always open as old ones close. That when one well dries up, another always starts gurgling. In some ways, this makes it very hard to relate to people who have not had the time or healing to observe this factor. I feel very separate from people today. I have to keep reminding myself that there was a time in my life when that would not have seemed like menial drama and I would have lost control just as my friend is today. It applies everywhere I go. People hating on their neighbors because they dont like or understand a certain behavior. People gossiping about others. Snooz. So boring. I have a very busy life, listening to you drone on and on about a woman I will never meet is boring for me. Lets talk about me, or you, or politics, or God, or anything that affects us. Other peoples lives bore me unless I can be helping them in some way. I do not understand the need to read the tabloids, or know who is doing what, or to expend a ton of energy on things like Bruce/Caitlynn Jenners sex change. How does that affect us? Why are we wasting so much time having opinions on it?  Unless I feel God sent them to me, I really don’t care what or who they are doing. So today, when I saw a meme that said “A rumor stops at a wise persons ears” I decided that is a motto I want to embrace. The problem here, is that I have run out of polite ways to say “Your judgement of them only affects you, lets talk about something else”. or “are you shoulding on them?” My close ones know what this means. Its lonely though, watching people should on others and wonder why they are miserable, watching people have expectations and being dissapointed when they are let down. Seeing people struggle with patience time and time again, and the distress that waiting causes people. Social media filled with people saying “well I guess you are there for your friends then you need them and are all alone” in so many different ways, and wanting to reach out and say “Learn about codependency”. Learn about shoulding, fight or flight, shame, and trauma. Learn about validation and learn the difference between how man and womens brains work. Get over the notion of a perfect spouse. There are no perfect people, anywhere. Just two imperfect people who vowed to forever.  Its lonely trying to find someone who understands what the words “Joy is a choice” really mean, but also to have empathy for the knowledge that until someone teaches you how to choose joy, its an impossible notion. Wanting to see people soak up information overnight is painful. Seeing those moments when you realize how big their growth has been is amazing. I wonder how therapists do it? How do you resist the urge to quietly message every hurting person you meet and say I can help you if you want to do the work to heal. If you are open to spending hours sharpening your tools, I can show you how to build the foundation to a house full of joy. Faith. Patience. Acceptance. Forgiveness. and gratitude. All the tools you need. Lets gather and sharpen them, and joy will not be a hard choice. It will come naturally. I have this overwhelming desire to write a book about these five factors in life, and I will one day. Today, I have an overwhelming lack of time and a buffet full of plates to empty. It weighs heavy on my. Wanting people to understand connectedness. From our food to our air to our behaviors. Every single thing we do affects our joy, our happiness, our growth, our healing, and our ability to persevere. We have free will. Every single thing we do is a choice we have made. Why not choose joy? Why not look for the best case scenario instead of the worst? Or even better, think of best and worst and figure somewhere in the middle is reality, accept it, and move forward? Just an idea, I could be wrong. Finding a middle and most realistic scenario gives a stable balanced approach to handling it. Why choose the high or low road. Its never really best or worst case scenario in the end. It is almost always, somewhere balanced in the middle. Life is not meant to be lived in a constant state of highs and lows. Life is meant to have weather. rain one day, partly cloudy the next. Not a hurricane one day and a tornado the next. How we approach our challenges quite often affects our perception of hurricanes and tornados. Is it really a natural disaster or is it just a little rain to feed the thirsty flowers? One way that works really good for me in evaluating ‘freak out’ value of a situation is to ask myself how will it alter my dying day? Will I have to apologize to God for it? Will I feel confident in the value of the decision I made? Will I feel shame at my behavior? Will I even remember this day, or this moment? You would be amazed the perspective when you insert it into your deathbed moments with your maker. Real perspective change. Today, I am looking at people everywhere, and feeling sad at the small percentage who know how to choose joy, how to find faith, patience, acceptance, forgiveness, and gratitude. Those are tools all humans should come equipped with the latest model of. Sharpened and ready to get you through the hardest of times. Watching people hurt, ache and cry through the days it takes to sharpen them. The heartache of that nose to the grind job that makes you weary and pushes you to your limit is heartbreaking to watch. It often surprises me how long it takes even with the information available to help people heal. No one likes instruction manuals. The process of retraining your thinking. Retraining your habits and behaviors into healthy ones. Man, that is painful to watch. Its frustrating, It brings with it this quiet sense of helplessness. The urge to say “Seriously? THIS is what you are giving all of your energy to?!!?, and having to suppress that urge because they would not understand. Having to remember that there was a time I would not have understood either. Oh how I wish I could get the message to everyone. It doesn’t have to be as hard as you are making it. It is not as complicated as you think it is. It is simple. Beautiful. There IS still good in the wold. Joy IS still an option. All you have to do is choose it.

Good afternoon and Happy Saturday my friends! I hope this post finds you all well and enjoying the freshness of Spring. As of late, I have found myself so completely overwhelmed, that I have not had the focus to figure out which responsibilities need to take priority and which need to wait. after a couple nice sit down meetings with a couple of my board members, I have some focus, and a better grasp of my priorities, but still just feeling so overwhelmed with the mundane. I have refused to let myself stop going. I have been determined to continue to keep going, no matter how tired, overwhelmed, or even just completely exhausted I may be. I keep thinking “There will be time for fun later”. How did I ever let myself fall into that trap? And so, with new priorities in hand, I still face the mountain of things to do, and am accepting new expectations for myself. For a few weeks now, I have heard a specific forest area calling to me, and on a random, spur of the moment whim, I whisper to my husband “Wanna go for a drive”. Of course he was as surprised as I was, since our plan was originally to bust out a couple big projects together. It just feels like all of our time is about seeing how much we can get done together, and the desire for a vacation, and the chance to leave it all behind for a minute, is just overwhelming me beyond words. So I embrace the desire to walk away for a minute, and we take a nature drive with my new camera. Hubby and I both have photography backgrounds, but lighting was awful. Still it seemed the thing to do and so off we went.

I am so glad we did! Wow what an amazing evening for a drive. A specific wealthy man owns a very large, very pristine piece of forest near us, and it is open for the public to drive through. We were so blessed to see tons of wildlife. It felt like we were in a drive through zoo. We saw a Moose mama and babe. A couple different sets of Elk with offspring, lots of Bison, a pair of coyotes lounging on a hillside, a Sandhill crane, a Bald Eagle, a few deer, and on the way home, a cute little Rock chuck. My favorite was the moose. How often do you get to see such a beautiful site? Moose are hard enough to spot in the wild, but with a baby too?! I was thoroughly refreshed by the time we drove home. 

Just look at her majesty! Breathtaking, awe inspiring, intimidating. Powerful and gentle, all at once. Clumsy and graceful, embodied within her. Protective and nurturing over her young. A force to be reckoned with. Thank You God! Thank You for her! Thank You for this glorious Earth, and for a season of rebirth, for inspiring me to go out and relax, and for rewarding me so richly when I heard you saying take a break, and finally gave into it. You are amazing. Your creatures are amazing. My heart went from racing fast with anxiety, to racing fast with the adrenaline that comes from getting a very special glimpse at nature. I am so thankful that I got to see so much of that primitive state last night. Thank you for letting me steal a glimpse into their worlds last night Father. It was just what I needed to get me refreshed and rejuvenated and pounding the pavement with a smile again (and I promise, nature breaks).                         

Oh my darlings! It has been so long! I have missed you. Of course, start-up has been so busy, and life so consuming, that combined with my hand injury, typing my blog had to get moved to a back burner. I find myself longing for this place, and have moved it back to the front burner. I cannot wait to tell you all how far we have come by the grace of God. A major injury to my hand shortly after my last post has made typing quite painful, but I have learned how to function through it. So much to tell you all! We are finally filing for non profit status with the federal govt. We were granted state non profit status last summer. I have been working with people around every corner to help them achieve growth and healing. God has been my biggest supporter and we are getting this done. It feels the closer we get, the more satan meddles, but I will not let him stop me. God is stronger every time. I have learned to use God as my most effective tool against satan, and to recognize his ridiculous meddling as God allowing him to give me a message or lesson, with the knowledge that I am protected and God will ultimately protect His will, which I am trying to do. I have so much to say that I struggle today, to decide whats important. Instead, I am here to say, “Hello, I have missed you all. I look forward to catching up”.