Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.
– Eric Butterworth
It was after the waves.
After the waves of contractions, after the waves of blow out diapers and wet nursing pads that leaked through the let downs and the damp spit blankets that piled high at the bedroom door.
Long after the waves of colic at 3 am and the 4:30 am crying, both the swaddled and terrified toddler, and the sleepless nights in that faded worn flannel that blurred into long stumbling years —
after she had used up all the young and just hung old everywhere, clung and nursed and pulled right out.
It was after all that decade of crashing waves that she stood on the shore with the children, tanned and limbered and long, and they dug castles. She had known visions of castles. What she hadn’t known is that things come true in the most unlikely ways.
Sometimes the crashing waves don’t wash you away, but wash you alive.
She still stood.
She stood and she didn’t know how –
because she’d yelled about tossed socks and abandoned bowls and slamming doors and flipped up toilet seats and she’d hollered and fallen so many times, her skin was right grass-stained with this tripped-up world.
She hadn’t known: Grace is the backbone of every woman still standing.
She was over half way now.
If she was given a full seventy years, she was over halfway now.
Half the sunrises behind her, half the harvest moons, half the fading summers — and all the beginnings and the firsts and all her own babies, all that behind. And it made her hurt and it made her smile: It’s all the things already behind a woman that bring her beauty to the front.
She wondered then if it had been a lie? For women, men, everyone…. It had been a lie and she didn’t know where it had got started except maybe back when it was all paradise and is that why they had lost paradise, because they’d believed the lie?
“You can have it all” — isn’t the whole truth.
No matter where you — it’s never all easy. A crop is made by all the seasons and the only way to have it all — is not at the same time… but letting one season bring its yield into the next.
This is how to have no fear —
each season makes a full year.
The girl ran through the waves.
And three of the boys dug with shovels and hands and pails.
And the firstborn stood with his father at the edge of the water, shoulder to shoulder, talking man to man on the rim of the world.
She had delivered this. And she had been full and round and she, together with him, they had delivered this, each of them, and now she stood full all over again. A mother fills, only to empty, and empty, and empty, which fills her full again, and isn’t this giving away the way to have it all?
And she could feel it, there on the beach with all the children birthed, the light in their hair, in their eyes, all the time passing under her like sand:
There are a thousand ways to be stretched thin and it’s the stretchmarks that a woman wears that can be her thin places, giving her more of God.
The only way to have it all… is to have Jesus – and like Him — to give it all away.
Fall was coming. Summer fading.
She could feel it in the air, on her face facing right into wind.
She watched how the boys wrestled a log off the beach. She watched how they launched it into waves, into sun, into that endless horizon and everything unknown.
And in the goings and the launchings, she stood there brave — all the seasons were going to do nothing less than make a full year.
The seasons could turn. The seasons could bring it all as He meant it to be.
And she could stand there after the waves and before the waves and she could feel it –
She wasn’t afraid of swimming in the deep end, way out of her comfort zone.
When you can’t touch bottom, you touch the depths of God.
– Ann Voskamp
The Truth about really having it all
http://www.aholyexperience.com/
The most powerful tool we have at our disposal is the power of choice. Almost everything that happens in our lives is the result of a choice that we have made. And for the things that happen in our lives that we didn’t choose to have happen – how we CHOOSE to respond to these events is still our choice.
Choice is everything. And what I’ve come to see after doing TDL for so many years and working with thousands of people is that a lot of folks don’t think they have a choice in their life. It is not until we investigate where their actions come from that we discover they actually DO have the power to choose.
We don’t always get to choose what happens in life, but we do get to choose how we respond to what happens. There is a BIG difference between reaction and response. Reaction is when something happens and we just react – without thinking. It’s like the animal in us takes over and wants to either fight or run. We react with defensiveness, judgment or shock. We react with anger or even hate. We react with disgust. We react with all kinds of emotions that don’t represent our highest nature.
I’ve come to believe that our journey is to first become aware of how we react and not make it wrong. To understand that we and everyone we know are doing the best that they can from their point of view. And we can investigate where these reactions come from. And slowly over time we begin to see that when things trigger us “out there” – there is a precious space in between something happening and our reaction. And in this space we now have a choice – a choice of how we want to respond.
To me, the ability to respond is far more powerful than unconscious reaction. This is respons-ibility is – the ability to respond. And in this space, where we can choose, lay our power.
What are we going to make this mean? And why? What’s the root of the trigger I’m having? What do I have to believe about life to have this reaction? And then what do I want to believe about life, what empowering perspective can I take that will allow me to see the lesson in this moment and then let it go?
This is like spiritual fitness training. Emotional muscle building. To be able to choose a response instead of be at the whims of our unconscious reactions.
Mastin Kipp
http://thedailylove.com/
In receiving we heal others
In giving we heal ourselves
– unknown
Both sides of giving are equally as important and this truth is one of the most important parts of healing – ourselves, others and our world. We are here to help each other. It takes understanding of both parts and the willingness to be both the healer and the healed. Vulnerability and tenderness. This is community. This is my path of learning today – my dear friends, so many God has brought into my life right now – are teaching me so much! God is definitely in the neighborhood. 🙂
Instead of putting others down, try improving yourself
instead. The only person you have a right to compete with is
you. In the meantime, treat others how you’d like to be
treated. One trait that some of the best (communicators) share
is empathy. A couple of kind words can not only make a
person’s day, but earn you a friend and supporter for life.
For the rest of the week, whenever you see someone you want to
judge negatively, pay them a compliment instead. See what
happens. – Neil Strauss
It is an ongoing temptation to think of ourselves as living under a curse. The loss of a friend, an illness, an accident, a natural disaster, a war, or any failure can make us quickly think that we are no good and are being punished. This temptation to think of our lives as full of curses is even greater when all the media present us day after day with stories about human misery.
Jesus came to bless us, not to curse us. But we must choose to receive that blessing and hand it on to others. Blessings and curses are always placed in front of us. We are free to choose. God says, Choose the blessings!
– Henri Nouwen
www.henrinouwen.org
Just as darkness retreats before light,
so all anger and bitterness disappear for the fragrance of humility.
-John Climacus
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor
and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
Ephesians 4:31-32
Maritta Terrell
Thoughts are also posted at:
http://thoughtsaday.blogspot.com/
life: acoustic & amplified 