life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “strength”
in the center of a labyrinth
This morning I am sitting in the center of a labyrinth in Robin & Scott Kissel’s yard! And as I sit here in the amazing space and talk to God and breathe in my spirit and the spirit around me, I am so full of love, joy, peace and gratitude.
It has not been the easy path to get here, but it has given me so much more than I ever dreamed was possible. I am amazed and so humbled by this love which has consumed my path, and as I rest right here in the center, I realize how many times when I thought I was in the eye of the hurricane, I was actually in the eye of the majestic God of glory, who is everything and in everything!
Who am I that I would be so loved? I am the beloved daughter of God, and I am loved just as you are, you fabulous creation! We are so sons and daughters! Praise God in the highest! Let my lips and my words never stop giving praise!!!
Presents
I give you an emptiness,
I give you a plenitude,
unwrap them carefully.
— one’s as fragile as the other —
and when you thank me
I’ll pretend not to notice the doubt in your voice
When you say they’re just what you wanted.
Put them on the table by your bed.
When you wake in the morning
they’ll have gone through the door if sleep
Into your head. Wherever you go
they’ll go with you and
wherever you are they’ll wonder,
smiling about the fullness
you can’t add to and the emptiness
that you can’t fill.
Norman MacCaig
Relax and let all of life flow through you…even the bad days! 🙂
more thoughts on ‘but if not…’
Job said, “I cry to you and you do not answer me;
I stand, and you merely look at me.”
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—
surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk?
Who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
Or who shut in the sea with
when it burst out from the womb?”
—Job. 30.20, 38.4-8
We want answers.
God gives us presence,
but not answers.
Loving attention, gazing at us from within,
faithful companionship,
walking with us through this amazing Creation,
all of it fashioned in a love and wisdom
that we can’t comprehend,
with wild art and crazy beauty
and boundless love–
this Creation that holds us and births us
and cherishes us even in our mortal unravelings,
offers us delights in its steady hands,
even in our tragedies–
reverence that ours can’t even imitate,
purpose that the human mind can’t read
any better than the poetry of the time before time,
forgiveness, mercy and delight–
but not answers.
Beyond all suffering and pleasure,
reason and meaning,
our desperate clutch at making sense,
the love God gives us
doesn’t need to become any less
than perfect mystery.
No answer,
just God.
______________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net
We tend to want what we want. Especially in our leaps of faith. I think most of us decide what we think we want before we take the leap of faith. I know for many years I had this vision of what life would be when I leap off the cliff. I had plans a – zz, and when things started going off track then I would try something new. I always had a new plan.
Over years of walking in faith, in which life was in NO WAY how I thought it should be, I came to a place in my healing where I asked the question, ‘What if my life never gets better? What if THIS is the life God wants for me. What if I die here in obscurity, in poverty, in pain, in a terrible relationship, with unresolved business, in hunger, never knowing my children, or doing anything very worthy as far as the world is concerned? What if this is my life? What if I never get to heal, hold my grandchildren, or help anyone else through tough times, or use what I have been through for good, or even eat good food again? What if never gets better?’
When I came to this question I was about 11 years into the journey. I had walked through 11 really bad years. I mean REALLY bad years. I had held onto my faith in this walk through year after year, always believing there was a reason. I had hit walls a few times, but always got back up. Always believed it would get better. Making very difficult choices towards healing, towards joy, living in thankfulness. Continuing to have hope during the darkness when the light within me was, sometimes, only a tiny flame trying to hold on during a wind storm of magnificent proportions.
Suddenly I came face to face with the horrible truth. All of these years it just kept being bad, getting badder. There was no movement in a better direction and suddenly I had to face this brutal truth. Maybe this was what I was supposed to be doing. Maybe this was it for me! Bam! In your face. What now? I had thought there was a glorious purpose for me. I had visualized standing on a world stage singing to many people and sharing my story. That was my vision. What if it was MY vision. It was a great vision…I had thought that God had placed those desires in my heart…but if not….what then? Could I accept it? Could I continue to praise? Could I bring God glory in the gray? Could I say, ‘not my will, but thine be done’?
And so a choice was upon me.
And as I lay there thinking of this most startling and horrid thought, the words of Job came to me, ‘though he slay me, still will I trust Him’ – Job 13:15. My obedience was all I was able to give to this God of such magnitude and mystery who I had experienced on this journey of grace and miracles. I wouldn’t trade this love, peace and joy for anything this world could offer me. Being uncomfortable, being hungry was a small price to pay. I would follow on, and die right there if that was God’s plan.
I began to understand what it means to ‘take up your cross daily’. To stop visualizing ‘better days’, but to find the grace to be in that particular moment and create my life each moment for God. Not in the future, but the right now. I began to understand why ‘mercies are new every morning’. I began to live, like Mother Teresa advised, ‘If you can’t feed one hundred, feed one’. I began to see, even more intensely, how important it is to live this moment. This moment is your life. We have no guarantee. Don’t wait. Don’t cling. Enter this moment and live it. It has changed me, and changed how I proceed, how I view success. How I experience my own belovedness. How I interact with the people who filter through my life every day. It lead me to begin the newsletter. It has lead me right here.
The hardest thing for me is to step out in faith without a plan. I want a plan. I have great plans! I have a wonderful imagination! I want ideas to try, and people to ask. I want to ‘make things happen’ – I can run myself in circles, stay busy doing nothing of value and make things look like I got it under control. I’m good at it! ha What I’m not so good at? Patience. Waiting. Resting. Letting go. I have learned I am free to choose – and I have decided to choose God.
I am currently living, once again, on the delicate limb of faith, hanging off a cliff with sharp rocks, raging water and hungry alligators down below me. It is a difficult, uncomfortable and exhausting place to be. I am living every moment with the choice of what I do in the space of ‘but if not…’
and, here I stand and I say, ‘give me grace for today, Lord. strengthen me in this moment and the next. My God is so big, I know there is only good from this love beyond my comprehension. Not my will. Move me out of the way. Help me let go. My God will deliver, but if not…I still will not stop my praise for my God who has poured out so much blessing on me. For all that’s been done for me! I am loved and I must pour out my love in return. Freely. I pour out my life as a puddle of praise and obedience. I have found this love that has healed my life and I am blessed beyond what I can ever comprehend! Blessed am I among women. In everything give thanks becaue everything is grace.
This is not the easy choice – but it the only choice which matters!
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
word of God speak
The Word knows the difference between what is truly you and what is false, imposed, and needing to be removed. God’s knowing presence, God’s judging, is not cruel, not against you (you’re still thinking of that sword). God looks on you only with reverence and love. God sees you, with the eyes of “mercy and grace,” of one who can “sympathize with our weakness… who in every respect has been tested as we are” (v. 16, 15). God’s Word is the living presence that loves you from the inside out.
The living and active Word listens you you deeply. Let that Presence pierce you. Let that Listening lay bare the intentions of your heart, so that you can see yourself clearly, as God sees you. Let that Love sink deep to the marrow of your fears, the bone of your desires, not to cut you up, but to see what does not give you life and free you from it, so that you become more truly and wholly yourself, for the sake of your lovely, precious, holy life.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net
Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you. – Gandhi
If you have a talent, use it in every way possible.
Don’t hoard it.
Don’t dole it out like a miser.
Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke.”
– Brendan Francis
Get on with your own creative life. Ideas are free. They don’t cost you a thing. You can live in the world of thought all the days of your life and never go broke.
You will also die unfulfilled, because an idea that never incarnates, that never becomes physical and grounded in this world, will eventually feel like the most painful burden you ever had to carry – one that you can never put down.
People who have had near death experiences report that there is indeed a life review that happens upon our death, and that a part of that life review is to make note of what could have been in our lives had we chose otherwise.
Falling into that category are all the creative opportunities the universe provided for us that we let fall by the wayside because our fears carried more authority within us than our faith.
Trust in the life support system that is inherent in your creative spirit. You will draw to yourself all that you need as you need it, but you must first be willing to risk it all. – Caroline Myss
life: acoustic & amplified 