life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “Reality”
be soft. do not let the world make you hard – Kurt Vonnegut
photo by Nici Tietjen Derosie
http://artshapedworld.com/
http://artshapedworld.blogspot.com/
Just a few timeless life lessons we all learn on the road of life…
1. Beauty comes from within. – You will never be beautiful like me. You can only be beautiful like you. One does not become beautiful by trying to be beautiful. One becomes beautiful by finding beauty in what’s already within.
2. Pain has a purpose. – Pain doesn’t just show up in your life for no reason. It’s a sign that something in your life needs to change. This change takes strength. But remember, it’s not that those who are strong never get weak in the knees, or that they never gasp for a breath. It’s that while their knees are shaking, they force themselves to breathe and to take another step. Read The Road Less Traveled.
3. There are right people, and wrong people, for you. – There are fake people, and those who are true friends. There are people who take the heart out of you, and those who put it back. You have a choice of who to spend time with. True friends have an honest heart, and will go out of their way to help you when you need it most. Stick with the people who never let you down and keep their promises. You can’t fake that.
4. What you focus on grows. – Do not let the negativity wear off on you. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Promote what you love instead of discrediting what you dislike. When you choose to focus on the things you love, you end up finding more joy and more love in life.
5. What you don’t start today, won’t be finished by tomorrow. – There are seven days in the week and someday isn’t one of them. Ask yourself if what you’re doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow. Read Getting Things Done.
6. Sometimes taking your own advice is hard. – You know what to do, but you can’t seem to accept your own good judgment. You’ve said the same exact words to others, but listening to your own words is a struggle. That’s why friends are priceless. Because sometimes you just need to hear it from someone other than yourself.
7. You can’t live your life solely for other people. – When writing the story of your life, don’t let someone else hold the pen. You’ve got to do what’s right for you, even if the people you love disagree with your dreams. Live your life so that when it’s time to ask where the time went, you can answer: “It went to joyful moments of self-discovery, to my search for passion, to doing work that felt like play, to standing up for what I believe in, and to exploring this beautiful world with an open heart. My time went to living MY life!”
8. Forgiveness is the first step to recovery. – Sometimes we don’t forgive people because they deserve it; we forgive them because they need it, because we need it, and because we cannot move forward without it. So cry, forgive, learn, and move on. Let your tears water the seeds of your future growth and happiness.
9. Your beliefs become your reality. – What you believe has more power than what you dream or wish or hope for. You become what you believe. Even though you cannot control everything that happens, you can control your attitude toward what happens. And in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you. Read Awaken the Giant Within.
10. Success is rarely easy, but always worth it. – Those who have achieved their dreams know that life is about willpower and persistence. It’s about hanging on to hope when your heart has had enough, and giving even more when your mind and body want to give up. Yes, each step may get harder, but the view from the top is priceless, and well worth enduring the journey to get there.
http://www.marcandangel.com/2012/10/11/10-timeless-lessons/#more-473
and so we start fresh today
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
– Lamentations 3:22-23 (NIV)
it may just look like a huge wave from where you are
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/
live brave and free
Be fearless. Have the courage to take risks. Go where there
are no guarantees. Get out of your comfort zone even if it
means being uncomfortable. The road less traveled is sometimes
fraught with barricades bumps and uncharted terrain. But it is
on that road where your character is truly tested. And have the
courage to accept that you’re not perfect, nothing is and no
one is — and that’s OK.
– Katie Couric
the ‘pour-out-your’ bucket list
The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone,
but the things you do for others remain as your legacy.
– Kalu Kalu
Ann Voskamp’s writes on her blog yesterday over at A Holy Experience was her thoughts on Bucket Lists –
I’ve never had a bucket list, and I’m thinking that I don’t want a bucket list as much as I want a poured bucket list. I’m thinking:
The best lives don’t have Bucket Lists as much as they have Empty Bucket lists.
Because the thing is when I kick the bucket, I don’t want there to be anything left in my bucket. When I kick the bucket, I want the bucket right empty.
I don’t want my life to be how I took experiences — but that I gave exceedingly.
That I gave every last drop, that I poured it all out, that I held nothing back. Because the way to really live is not to try to fill your life up — but to spill your life out.
“Where do you want to go?” the editor urges.
“What do you want to see — and, most important, with whom? Then just do it! Figure out a way to make it happen, and 20 years from now, you will not be disappointed. As we have the opportunity to check items off the list, not only are we given fantastic stories to share, but we also gain memories that will last a lifetime.”
This is what has changed me: writing thanks down on the list — and who can hoard their life when they see the abundance of His grace?
I hold the magazine in both hands and it’s unexpected — how wild I feel to rewrite this whole thing:
The question is really is not what you want to see — but who do you want to serve — and yes, most importantly, for Whom. Then do that!
read the full post at http://www.aholyexperience.com/2012/08/best-bucket-list/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HolyExperience+%28Holy+Experience%29
I concur!
The secret to life is to begin living with thankfulness for a glimpse of grace – and then finding that EVERYTHING is grace!
How then can we not pour out our lives for this gift, this love beyond our human comprehension, we have been so richly and freely given?
live your life – all we truly have is this moment!
If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you
can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep
moving forward.
– Martin Luther King Jr.
how much do we really have?
Some people say, ‘the glass is half full’. Others say, ‘the glass is half empty’. Still others say ‘the glass is always full’.
Abundance or scarcity – which do you live in? What do you choose to see?
Yesterday I had a moment when I didn’t think I had enough for myself and as tears came streaming down my face, I realized a woman next to me try to pay for a paper was counting her pennies. I debated on giving about a second – I didn’t have very much to give. Then as I put the dollar down on the counter for her paper, she turned to me and said, ‘Thank you so much, I am down to my last bit of change.’ I was so caught in my own personal distress of that moment and I was already on my way to the bathroom to compose myself. As I stood in the bathroom, I realized what she had said and the fact that she had nothing and I had 26 dollars! I could share. I was abundant!!! Why did I doubt? I have seen it over and over – there is always plenty enough to share.
I quickly went to find her, but she was nowhere to be found.
I have been thinking of it ever since.
Down To Earth
Took a leap of faith
Thought I’d learn how to fly
Lookin’ for rainbows
And dreams passing by
Searching for answers
To a whole bunch of lies
Tryin’ to be anybody but me
As I crashed to the ground
Here’s truth that I found:
Learned I must bend
So I won’t break
How to get real
Not be a fake
Chose to smile through the pain
And never to hate
Now I’m flying so high
While I’m walking around
Cause the sky doesn’t end
Till it touches the ground
Living each day now
One step a day
It’s so good to be
Where I want to stay
Just you and me
Found a few answers
Stopped asking why
Now it’s time to be free
And I’m flying so high
Right here on the ground
Cause I’m walkin’ on sunshine
Hooked on the feeling
On top of the world
I’m one happy girl
Learned to find rainbows
Right in the rain
Found out I had more
The more that I gave
Chose to be happy
Not to complain
Living with passion
I know what it’s worth
Cause life doesn’t start
Till you get down to earth
al 8/08
life: acoustic & amplified 