life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “Beginning”

Don’t get bogged down with all the details of how it’s going to come together. Just do the dishes. And watch the momentum build. – Brian J

Here are ten things to do even if others judge you for it:

1.Take care of yourself. – Your relationship with yourself is the closest and most important relationship you will ever have.  If you don’t take good care of yourself, then you can’t take good care of others either; which is why taking care of yourself is the best selfish thing you can do.  Read The Mastery of Love.

2.Do what you know is right, for YOU. – Don’t be scared to walk alone, and don’t be scared to like it.  Don’t let anyone’s ignorance, drama, or negativity stop you from being the best you can be.  Keep doing what you know in your heart is right, for you.  Because when you are totally at peace within yourself, nothing can shake you.

3.Follow your own unique path. – Every new day is a chance to change your life.  Work on making life all that you want it to be.  Work hard for what you believe, and keep your dreams big and your worries small.  You never need to carry more than you can hold; just take it one day at a time.  And while you’re out there making decisions instead of excuses, learning new things, and getting closer and closer to your goals, know that there are others out there, like me, who admire your efforts and are striving for greatness too.

4.Lock yourself away from the world and work on your goals. – Dream big dreams, but realize that short term, realistic goals are the key to success.  Success is directly connected with daily action.  The way we spend our time defines who we are.  Successful people keep moving, by doing small things every day that bring them a couple steps closer to their dream.  They make mistakes along the way, but they don’t quit – they learn and press on.  Read Getting Things Done.

5.Adjust your goals and dreams as life changes. – A great deal of pain in life comes from having a specific dream that you’ve fallen in love with, and when it doesn’t work out exactly as planned, you become angry that you now have to pursue a different path.  If you want to tame your inner demons and make the most of life, you must not become rigidly attached to just one specific dream, and remain open to there being an even better, equally as happy path ahead.  Life is unpredictable, but it provides plenty of opportunities to make dreams come true.  Just don’t forget that sometimes taking a positive step forward requires you to slightly adjust your dreams, or plan new ones – it’s OK to change your mind or have more than one dream.

6.Forgive those who have wronged you. – Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.  Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong and wise.  Forgiveness allows you to focus on the future without combating the past.  To understand the potential of everything going forward is to forgive everything already behind you.  Without forgiveness, wounds can never be healed, and moving on can never be accomplished.  What happened in the past is just one chapter.  Don’t close the book, just turn the page.

7.Show everyone your love and kindness. – If you are reserving your love only for those who you have decided are worthy of it – all strangers excluded – it may come as a surprise to learn that this is not love at all, it is called judgment.  Judgment is selective, love is all embracing.  Just as the sunlight and the wind do not discriminate, true love does not make any such distinctions either.  Love and kindness is a way of living.  Where there is love, there is no judgment.  Where there is judgment, there is no love.  Read The 5 Love Languages.

8.Stand up for others, even if it’s the unpopular thing to do. – Sometimes you will say something really small and simple, but it will fit right into an empty space in someone’s heart.  Dare to reach into the darkness, to pull someone else into the light.  Remember, strong people stand up for themselves, but stronger people stand up for others too, and lend a hand when they’re able.

9.Fight through your failures. – When you are feeling down or dealing with failure, don’t be ashamed.  There’s nothing to be ashamed of.  You are going through a difficult time, and you are still pushing forward.  That’s something to be proud of – that you are fighting through it and slowly rising above it.  Let everyone know that today you are a lot stronger than you were yesterday, and you will be.

10.Keep your head held high and keep on smiling. – Every day of your life is a page of your history.  The only time you run out of chances is when you stop taking them.  Don’t cry over the past, cry to get over the past.  Don’t smile to hide the pain, smile to heal the pain.  Don’t think of all the sadness in the world, think of all the beauty that still remains around you.

http://www.marcandangel.com/2012/08/01/10-things-to-do-even-if-they-judge-you/#more-493

Fear is the thief of dreams – unknown

When nothing is sure, anything is possible.   – Margaret Drabble

…feel it deeply…but don’t get stuck…

Dealing with Disappointment
A Bridge to Acceptance
by Madisyn Taylor

The gift of disappointment is to bring us into reality so we don’t get stuck in the realm of how things might have been.

Whenever we do something in life with an expectation of how we’d like it to turn out, we risk experiencing disappointment. When things don’t go the way we had envisioned, we may feel a range of emotions from slightly let down to depressed or even angry. We might direct our feelings inward toward ourselves, or outward toward other people or the universe in general. Whether we feel disappointed by ourselves, a friend, or life in general, disappointment is always a tough feeling to experience. Still, it is a natural part of life, and there are many ways of dealing with it when we find ourselves in its presence.

As with any feeling, disappointment has come to us for a reason, and we don’t need to fear acknowledging it or feeling it. The more we are able to accept how we are feeling and process it, the sooner we will move into new emotional territory. As we sit down to allow ourselves to feel our disappointment, we might want to write about the experience of being disappointed—the situation that preceded it, what we were hoping would happen, and what did happen. The gift of disappointment is its ability to bring us into alignment with reality so that we don’t get stuck for too long in the realm of how things might have been.

As we consider other disappointments in our life and how we have moved past them, we may even see that in some cases what happened was actually better in the long run than what we had wanted to happen. Disappointment often leaves us feeling deflated with its message that things don’t always turn out the way we want. The beauty of disappointment, though, is that it provides us a bridge to its other side where the acceptance of reality, wisdom, and the energy to begin again can be found.

www.dailyom.com

never, never, never quit! Winston Churchill

If you try anything,
if you try to lose weight, or to improve
yourself, or to love, or to make the world a better place, you
have already achieved something wonderful, before you even
begin. Forget failure. If things don’t work out the way you
want, hold your head up high and be proud.
And try again.
And again.
And again!
– Sarah Dessen

When things just don’t work out as good as you really thought
they would… It’s not rotten, it’s not over, it’s not
finished, or the end. All it means is something better is
waiting for you around the bend.
– Doe Zantamata

Who is my neighbor?

“Love your neighbour as yourself” the Gospel says (Matthew 22:38). But who is my neighbor? We often respond to that question by saying: “My neighbours are all the people I am living with on this earth, especially the sick, the hungry, the dying, and all who are in need.” But this is not what Jesus says. When Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan (see Luke 10:29-37) to answer the question “Who is my neighbour?” he ends the by asking: “Which, … do you think, proved himself a neighbor to the man who fell into the bandits’ hands?” The neighbour, Jesus makes clear, is not the poor man laying on the side of the street, stripped, beaten, and half dead, but the Samaritan who crossed the road, “bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them, … lifted him onto his own mount and took him to an inn and looked after him.” My neighbour is the one who crosses the road for me!

– Henri Nouwen
http://www.henrinouwen.org/

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Last week Ann Voskamp, and her son Caleb, were in Haiti for Compassion http://www.compassion.ca/child_list.asp read her blog posts about this experience http://www.aholyexperience.com/ – if you are not moved to action, you must be dead!

Check out the newest issue of my newsletter at www.songsfromthevalley.com – it is a very personal one. At the preent moment, I am in the middle of a big faith walk, so please pray for me today as God calls me to your mind.

I read Martin Luther King, Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail yesterday and one sentence especially jumped out at me – ‘Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively.’

What are we going to do with our time here? It is always our choice!

Fill my cup, Lord

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. – Henry Ford

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I am emptied out that I might learn new things. I step into the void of this space with the same faith it took for Abraham to leave Ur, for Moses to part the waters, for Joshua to march around the walls seven days, then seven times. The same faith it took for Gideon to take his 300 and blow the trumpets. I am in very good company, and have been learning this way for 22 years now – just a tiny grain of sand in the hour glass of time and the baton of faith. Pretty good stuff!

friends with benches

Benches are special things aren’t they?

They themselves sit and rest, in the sun, in the shade, in the rain, in the snow, at three in the morning…
there to welcome whoever might pass by.

And for what purpose?

To give a soul a moment to rest, to look out, to think, to plan something, or to get over something.

And in their most special times, most special for these benches, are when two people meet and share themselves. Communicate and think more completely than they could or would if they were still walking.

Then after minutes or hours the people rise.
They are different forever because of those minutes, or hours.
Different in very minor ways most times I’m sure.
And at other times, profoundly changed.

They look back and the bench seems physically unchanged, but we know otherwise.

A person was there, moments after measurable warmth remains,
albeit slowly spreading out to be no longer measurable.
The world is different.
Relationships,
interconnections,
changes in perspective.
A reaffrimation of love in the broadest sense.

That maybe god did not make man in his image. That maybe man arrogantly makes god in his image.
God did not make only man,
and I don’t think everything else was made for only for man’s purpose.
Maybe what we find so beautiful and comforting is that nature,
the cosmos,
god,
free will,
the opportunities to do good or ignore other’s needs,
the choices to try and give more than we take,
or take all we can,
the always present capability to pursue happiness…


are all here as are we,
with a purpose we will always look for,
and never completely find,
and all of it as part of a whole incomprehensible to us.
Such joy possible just knowing we are so fortunate to be part of it.

God has no limits, none whatsoever.

On a bench,
realizing we are part of it all,
and always will be,
and sharing
that there is no necessity to understand it all.

– Sunny

http://pinterest.com/al513/friends-with-benches/

just one of my adventures with God

In 2008 God took me to live up near Boston – some people may think it was for other reasons, but I know the truth. It was one of the most amazing times in my life and it set me up for these years that have followed. Sooo many adventures to talk about, but today I need to talk about Brian Stack.

The first place I ended up is a little town called Woburn, MA (pronounced by natives: woo-burn) it has one of the coolest libraries ever built http://www.woburnpubliclibrary.org/ a gas station that looks like the Taj Mahal (the original builder was planning to franchise these, but unfortunately, they didn’t take off! Darn it! He only built 2), it was the city in which the movie, A Civil Action, was taken from (I worked very close to that dump site for about 6 months) and Horn Pond, where our adventure story for today, takes place!

Anyway, there is so much to tell you about and so many fun things to add in to this story, but my time is short today and so I must stick to my main agenda. To introduce you to Brian Stack.

Everywhere I go I look for ‘spots’ beautiful places in nature, with a bench or rock near by for sitting and talking with God. I have ‘spots’ all over Connecticut, MA, several towns in Florida, in Kentucky, and in Ohio. They are holy and special to me. God meets me there. We sit a spell and talk about things.

It was maybe a day or so after I got to MA that I inquired about a nature spot and someone told me about Horn Pond and I headed over there as soon as I could to find it. It was amazing and beautiful! Everything I was looking for in a ‘spot’ and I was within walking distance!!! I had no car, so that was a huge blessing.

I think it was my first trip around the loop, I met Brian Stack. (If I am on a bench, and there is a plaque, I always read it and say a prayer for the family of whoever has loved so much they want their love to live on by dedicating a tree, or a bench, a building, for someone else to enjoy. It is a beautiful expression of love and caring. I love it and I acknowledge it with gratitude and prayer.)

As I sat down in a really beautiful spot I read the plaque, and fell in love. I fell in love with Brian, and I fell in love with his family. I had no idea who he was, but this was a special and blessed place and I knew this was my ‘spot’, along with Brian’s. I could feel the spirit of Brian and of God very close. This was holy.

I went to this spot as often as I could. I took other people there, I had picnics there, I had one lone swan who would come and sit by me very often when I would go there – we hung out a lot. I told a few of my close friends about Brian Stack. I had no idea of who he was, but I knew he was special. The more I hung out there the more I knew it.

In May of 2008, I went to a Women of Faith conference in the TD Banknorth Center, where the Celtics play (the name could be different now), at that conference, which was so amazing – the girl next to me (complete stranger) turned to me about half way through the day and said, ‘God told me to tell you that you are made whole from the inside out.’ I had been feeling this, but to have it confirmed in this way was wonderful, and my spirit soared.

The next day was Sunday, May 11 – the day 12 years earlier when my life exploded. I felt called to Brain’s bench. After church walked over to this amazing spot. I felt sure I was expecting something, or someone, I wasn’t sure what or who.

As I say there people kept walking by and I kept turning my head to my left to look for someone. I was only seeing backs. I noticed it was always the back of the person, and I heard the voice of God say in my spirit, ‘the past is behind you.’ I knew that was my gift, my message from God. I sat and wept and praised God, that He had healed me and brought me to this place in my journey.

This past Sunday, I just ‘happened’ to be in Woburn, MA and I felt the same calling to go to visit Brian Stack. It was very important that I go. I felt a real urgency to go to this spot. As I walked up I couldn’t believe it. There was a picture taped to the bench with duct tape, and, for the first time, I met Brian Stack!!! I sat and talked to him and God for a few minutes and said ‘thank you’ for this amazing gift.

I left straight from there to drive for the next 20 hours to Ohio! I didn’t think I would ever get here!!! I took a shower and went straight to work, and when I had a moment I looked up Brian Stack from Woburn, MA. Here is the headline from 1987: A funeral Mass was said yesterday morning in St. Barbar’s Church, Woburn for Brian C. Stack, 17, of Woburn, who died Wednesday at Children’s Hospital in Boston after a heart operation.

But, the story didn’t end there, because love is eternal and, we are His Beloved! God had a plan for Brian Stack that nobody could have guessed. They hang out together at a gorgeous spot at Horn Pond and they talk to people, and encourage them – the ones who are listening. I am so very blessed.

Have patience with all things,

but chiefly have patience with yourself.

Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections

but instantly set about remedying them …

every day begin the task anew.

~ Francis de Sales

 

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

The LORD is good to those who wait for him,

to the soul who seeks him.

It is good that one should wait quietly and

patiently for the salvation of the LORD.

Lamentations 3:22-23, 25-26

 

Maritta Terrell
Thoughts are also posted at:
http://thoughtsaday.blogspot.com/
If you wish to receive these daily thoughts, please send me an email to mt-ct@swbell.net

 

Art painting wonderful style by Podgaevskaya Marina on http://art-and-dream.tumblr.com/

 

the right words

I had an important job interview a couple of weeks ago (I am still waiting to hear), and at the very end of it I made a statement that I wished, immediately, I hadn’t made. It wasn’t something horrid – it was just something I wished I hadn’t revealed about myself at this point in the process, know what I mean?

For a couple of days I kept thinking about it and wondering why I even said it. Then I felt directed to open my Bible to Luke 21: 14-15 and the words of Jesus filled my heart. ‘Do not think about what you will say beforehand. Go in my Spirit and I will give you the words to say.’

I have done much preparation to follow God’s leading and I know that I a vessel willing to speak what God would have me speak, and so I relaxed…evidently that was what I was supposed to say. Whatever happens will be God’s plan unfolding – not mine. I trust that I have done what I am supposed to do, and if the job doesn’t happen, it is because it is not the right job for me.

As I wait to hear if I got this job, I am working on other parts of my faith – patince, letting go, hope, joy, peace, obedience. You know – the virtues which are the hardest ones ot master…pray for me.

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