Tag: God

Night Seasons

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

There’s a few good things that are interesting to note, when you are going through one of your “night seasons”, as my aunt calls it. First of all, it’s the numbness. My mom used to call this “God’s anesthesia”. Yesterday, after my son’s seizure, while I had a few periods of crying jags and deep sadness, mostly, I was numb. I felt mostly calm and numb, and this was not caused by any kind of chemical outside of my body. When you go through a trauma, usually your merciful body numbs you right up, so that you can handle whatever you need to do. I think that this is a really nice standard feature of our bodies. I deeply appreciate the initial numbness.

Another thing that your night seasons show you, is that there are so many people who love you and who you can lean on. When you have several people in your life who you can call and/or you can text, and you can feel their deep care and empathy, it means the world. I think that I have friends of every religion praying for us right now, and this feels so great. Yesterday, one of my friends told me that her entire Baptist Church’s prayer warriors were “on it”, and another one of my more “new age” friends told me that she believes that people with epilepsy are getting downloads from God which the rest of us just can’t handle. She told me that my son is probably one of the most enlightened people on Earth. I don’t know if this is true, but all of the prayers and the insights brought me comfort. All of them did. God has many channels. Don’t ever be afraid of saying “the wrong thing” to someone who is hurting. I can always tell true care, over indifferent judgment and arrogance, and that’s never in the words being said. Ignorance being delivered with love, can be cleansed down to just the “love” part. Always err on the side of reaching out. I appreciate all of the love and the prayers from everyone, including my beloved readers of this blog. It sustains me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The final insight about your night seasons, is that you get the reminder that people are mostly kind. Most people don’t want to witness other people’s pain. We had so much kindness bestowed on us yesterday, by perfect strangers, as we often do, when my son has a seizure in public. People want to help. People want to show you that they care. It’s traumatizing to witness a seizure, but people seem to overcome their fears, to act with deep concern and warmth and tenderness. Did I ever mention that EMT people are some of my favorite people on this Earth? They always make my son feel so good, and just like he is one of the “regular guys.” Yesterday, the EMTs got a good laugh with my son, when they reminded him that when my son was first coming out of his seizure, and they asked him who is president, in his hazy confusion, he said, “Lamar Jackson” (who is the quarterback for the Ravens). They all, including my son, got a big giggle out of that one. The EMTs made my son feel like he is a real stud (because he’s a big gym rat, who also attends a prestigious university), just when my son needed it most. These simple, empathic kindnesses are noticed by me, always. Always.

When you are in your night seasons, numbness, your own spirituality (and a big helping of others’ spirituality), and the overall kindness of strangers is what gets you through to the sunshine right around the bend. God has many channels. Yourself, your loved ones, and often perfect strangers, are the passageways, which God uses to get you safely to where the sun rises again. We are in good hands – our own hands, the loving hands of our friends and family, and the kind, empathic hands of strangers, which all come together to form the biggest hands of all. And these Big Hands are firmly and securely holding all of us with Love. This I know.

The Best

25+ Best the Best Is Yet to Come Memes | Best Is Yet to Come Memes, Destination Memes, Situation Memes

I always say that the things that I worry about rarely happen. I tend to get blindsided by the things that I never even imagined could happen. I have to admit that I never saw a worldwide pandemic coming. I never did.

I also have to admit that I have never fully imagined all of the amazing things that have happened in my life either. True story: At age 40, I was at a time in my life that I assumed I would feel like my husband and I had “made it”, for all of the effort that we had put into our shared lives, by growing my husband’s career, and by focusing on raising our happy family. Instead, our lives got “blown up” by the Great Recession. We checked every box: lost job and income (banking industry), large, expensive home now worth half of what we owed on it (with no buyers in sight), quickly emptying savings and quickly rising debt, and four young children left to raise, and to educate. Instead of feeling like I was at my pinnacle, I felt like I had been thrown into a pit. I was shell-shocked. I was scared out of my mind and I was angry. I felt cheated and wronged. I had lived “the formula” that I had assumed would bring me “overall success” and it had tanked, miserably.

Thankfully, I have always been a faithful, spiritual person (not necessarily a religious person), but I am one who believes that there are much higher powers in play. I have always believed in the overall goodness of the Universe. And so I leaned heavily on my spiritual side, at that time. I also leaned heavily on my love for my husband, and for our children. I realized that we had lost a lot of material, physical things, but I was not going to let the horrible recession take what was most dear to me: my marriage, our loving family situation, and our physical and emotional health. So, during that time, I prayed a lot, I leaned a lot on our loving family and friends, and I lived every single day in faith. I just took my life ODAT (one day at a time). I am not going to go into “the ins and outs” of it all (nor into the ways that situations often seemed to almost miraculously turn out for the best), but let’s just say at age 50, I now have the life that I always dreamed of, and more. Everything that we lost, has been replaced with something “more and better.” And because I went through that experience, I appreciate everything more than I ever did. Life is deeper and clearer to me. Life resonates like it never did before. I am so much more attuned to what truly matters to me. It’s a cliché, but I can honestly say that I am grateful for the changes that the Great Recession brought around for me, and for my family. The Universe knows what it is doing.

Now this is not to say that my life is “perfect”. There have been a lot of heartaches, and losses, and growing pains, and grieving of many people and things, throughout this past decade, but I understand that this is just part of living and experiencing a worldly life. I do believe that the life that I am living is “perfect for me”, flaws and all. I just tell my Higher Power to take over the wheel every single day, and I live in faith that the journey that I am on is wonderful (even on the days that it doesn’t feel like it). In its own way, my own little path is a vital part of every other journey on Earth that has ever happened, or will ever be. When I look in the rear-view mirror of my life’s journey, it makes sense to me, for the most part, and I am grateful to be experiencing my journey. My journey is a gift. And I can’t wait to see what’s on the path ahead of me now.

Always, always believe that the best is yet to come, because it is. It might not arrive in the package that you expect it to arrive in, but that’s good. I have been blindsided by happy surprises in my life, far more often than by pains. And if I am honest with myself, the pains have very often turned out to be “blessings in disguise.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Shared Loves

I saw this on Think Smarter (Twitter) today. I smiled. It reminded me of a conversation I had with my husband just the other day. We were sitting on the couch with our daughter, and of course, all three dogs decided that they should be close by, too. So there was the three of us, and all three of our canines, all squished together in one small space, of an entire house. We liked our shared energy, I guess.

Looking over at our daughter, and Trip, our spaniel, all cuddled up to my husband, I said to my husband that I think that a big part of every love story is your shared loves. A huge part of any close relationship (family, friends, lovers, etc.) is that you share a deep love and appreciation, for a lot of the same people, places, pets, homes, plants, neighborhood spots, schools, spiritual houses, restaurants, teams, vacation spots, activities etc. You share a profound love for a lot of the same memories. And it’s these two individual loves that are co-mingled to form this very strong and protective cloud of love, over you, and over the object(s) of your shared love.

When we were on vacation, all four of our mostly grown children were blessedly with us. Sometimes they would get into “teasing mode” and they would start laughing about little bedtime songs which I had sung to them when they were young, or goofy things that my husband and I said to get them “into line.” Not in a morose way (moreso in a reassured, peaceful way), when they were doing this, I thought to myself, “When I pass on, these are the things that they will laugh about together, when they are old and grey. These are the memories that will keep them intimately connected.” The great truth is that all four of my children all love, and yet, are also deeply, deeply loved, by the same mother. We all share a big, big love. And that love is extended with their father, and with each other, and with our shared family and friends, and with the houses we have lived in together, and with the pets who have shared our lives, and with the adventures we have shared together. This is how Love connects everything.

I love the Earth and creation. I know that you love the Earth and creation. This is how I know that we are all covered by a beautiful protective cloud of love, together, all around this Earth. We share a fathomless love for the miracle of life, and we are all loved by that same immeasurable force of Love. Sometimes I sit with this thought for a few minutes, and I just sigh into the peace of that thought, and I try to keep that wise, knowing peacefulness with me, all day long. Love’s got us covered.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Welcome to the quietest, most introspective day on the blog. Welcome to our poetry workshop. What is the song of your soul? Write a poem. You’ll find out.

Yesterday, my husband and I were making newspaper bricks which he uses as firestarters for his very simple, old-school grill. My husband loves to read the WSJ in paper form, but I think that he has an Earth Mother guilt complex about this. (We had compost piles long before compost piles became a hipster status symbol.) Therefore, to alleviate his conscience, my husband bought this cool contraption on Amazon that condenses wet newspapers into paper bricks. Our back porch is a currently a brick drying platform, and our hands have a not so attractive grayish tinge to them. (And these are the things that make me love him, and “us”, like I do.) As we were placing the papers into the water bucket, my husband stopped what he was doing and handed a sheet of the newspaper to me. He and I both knew that it had to be one of Soul Sunday’s poems. This one is by the great writer, Walt Whitman:

I have a poem of my own to share today, too. Here it is:

Confession to My Children

My dearest children,

For years I have fervently prayed for your strength, and your health, and your safety, and your vitality, and your happiness, and your sense of purpose, and your creativity, and your faith, but I often left out one crucial element in my prayers.

I often forgot to pray for myself.

I often forgot to surrender.

I forgot to pray for guidance on how to help you with your strength, and your health, and your safety, and your vitality, and your happiness, and your sense of purpose, and your creativity and your faith.

I often forgot to ask God for my own strength, and health, and safety, and vitality and happiness, and sense of purpose, and creativity and faith, so that God could work through me, to best mother you. And to best be a model for you.

In my prayers, I often acted as if I had to make a choice. I always chose you, arrogantly forgetting that God has no hierarchies. Love is all.

By hinging all of my abundance on your abundance, I erased me. And I burdened you. And I disrespected God.

Luckily, God doesn’t wait for permission to work through our lives. God never leaves. God works quietly. My prayers are always for you, my deepest loves, but they are also for me, too. We are all God’s children. And now, I often just pray for my eyes to be opened to the all-encompassing Love which gently and evenly holds All of us, dear beyond measure.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Answer

The spiritual path calls on us to heal old wounds, to feel our feelings instead of ignore them, to use meditation as a tool to investigate our inner world's. Download a powerful meditation for deep heart healing at SuzanneHeyn.com

I am, once again, back to focusing on “acceptance” in my life. This lesson in acceptance comes up a lot, for us self-admitted “control freaks”. We tend to have to repeat the Acceptance class again and again and again. Acceptance has a hard time sinking in for us. Right now, with everything going on in the world, the universe is really testing a lot of us, on so many different levels, on how well we are faring in the “Acceptance” department.

I planned on writing/blogging on “Acceptance” today and I thought to myself, “Haven’t I already touched on this subject?” So, I went to the search function on my blog and I searched “acceptance” and three pages of many, many of my blog posts showed up. So, the answer to my question is, “Yes, lady, you have more than touched on the theme of Acceptance. You might even start boring yourself, with this one.”

I’m sorry to be so repetitive. I have a little pamphlet that I picked up in a spiritual store over a decade ago, at a time when we were rebuilding our lives in a new state, after the total fiasco of the Great Recession. I have referenced this pamphlet so many times, that it is wrinkled and torn and the pages are thinning. But its strength is in its words, which resonate with me, every single time that I read it. The pamphlet is entitled Acceptance: The Way to Serenity and Peace of Mind, by Vincent P. Collins.

Here’s my favorite passage from my beloved pamphlet:

“God is infinitely wise: God knows what is best for us. God loves us with an infinite love; God wants what is best for us. God is infinitely powerful; God can achieve it for us. We, on the other hand, are ignorant, weak and wayward. Yet in weakness lies our strength. Are we licked, beat, flattened, hopeless? Fine! It is only when we admit our utter helplessness that we can be sure of God’s help.

No one but a monster could pass by a starving, naked infant freezing in a snow bank without picking it up, sheltering, feeding, and clothing it. So it is with us. As long as we insist, “I can handle it!” – God says, “Go ahead!” But when we appeal to God as a helpless infant, God picks us up in God’s gentle hands, cradles us in God’s powerful arms and our worries are over.”

31 Acceptance Quotes That Will Show You How to Accept Life As it Comes

The Raw Real

Every morning before I write my blog, I pray. I know that I have daily readers. I have heard through the grapevine, that my blog gives my readers inspiration. In my earliest days of blogging, when I only had a sprinkling of readers, I would question, out loud, what my motivation was to write on a public forum like this. At that time, my husband said that there were a lot of ministers out there with smaller congregations than the amount of daily readers I had. He asked me if a minister would give up on their small, faithful congregation. That statement struck me and stuck with me. Now, I get that I am no minister. I am not nearly qualified enough, nor learned enough, nor pure enough to be a preacher. Truthfully, I’ve never felt called to be in the ministry. I’m not particularly religious. I have a very broad spectrum view of God, and yet I do have a deep, abiding faith in my big, broad God. I have a deeply personal relationship with my faith and a very individualized spirituality that works well for the both of us, me and the Universe. Our relationship is securely intact.

What am I getting at here? Sometimes through this whole coronavirus thing, I want to be a constant source of inspiration. I want to be a positive, powerful, uplifting inspiration to my family, to my friends and to my readers. I want to find just the right words that are going to make everything alright. I want to find the perfect meme that turns this all into one big ridiculous joke that we can all laugh at, and then go on our merry ways, like this pandemic is just one big, giant, aggravating disappointment. But right now, many, many tears are flowing down my face. I’m sad. I’m scared. I’m angry. I’m frustrated. I’m tired. Yesterday, I was just overwhelmed with it all. Yesterday, I walked 6.5 miles, to the point, where even Ralphie, our Labrador retriever, who’s usually in the lead and pulling my arm out of its socket, was being dragged along, behind me, looking completely exasperated and utterly bewildered, tethered to a fast moving, mad woman. I didn’t walk in the many pretty green spaces which we have all around us here. Most of our parks are now closed, but I wouldn’t have gone to a park, or even a leafy neighborhood, anyway. I purposely walked beside one of our uglier, busier highways – a place which I would typically avoid at all costs, especially in spring time, which is when we have our peak level of visitors, here in Florida. I walked along the unsightly, hot, smelly highway for the sheer relief of seeing some cars. I walked there to remind myself that there was still a faint stream of life, flowing through our community. Our town still has a pulse – a weak one, but it is still alive. Where there’s life, there is hope.

Today, I choose to be painfully honest with you all, as to where my mental space is right now. I’m not feeling particularly inspirational, nor cheerful. Everything that is supposed to be funny, just pisses me off. I’m letting the feelings flow, because I know that they will pass. If I bottle the negative feelings up, and pretend that they don’t exist, they will stay inside of me and fester. The festering feelings will turn into rot and I don’t need rot competing with my healthy body and immune system. I can’t let rot sit in my body, allowing my body to become vulnerable to this terrible, insidious virus.

I want to be an inspiration to myself and to you, my readers/friends. But more so, I have always promised to be painfully honest and vulnerable, in my sharing with you. I have sworn to myself that in this second half of my adulting, I would be, if nothing else, as authentic as I can possibly be, in all areas and relationships, in my life.

As I finish up writing this blog post, I feel better already. The release of my feelings, in the most honest of ways, has been very intense, yet very freeing. My load has been lightened. I don’t want to pass that ugly, heavy load on to you. I question whether I should just keep this post in the private archives, and to look for some more inspirational stories or funny memes to share instead, but I don’t think that is the right answer. I hope that by me, hashing up my internal turbulence and spitting it all out, that it gives you permission to do the same with your feelings. Get it all out. However you have to do it, as long as it is not harmful to you or to others, get it all out. Write it out, yell it out, stomp it out, run it out, scream it out, cry it out. Whatever you need to do, to safely release your private storm, it is okay. What we are dealing with here, is a lot. It is A LOT. It will pass. Good changes will come out of it. We’ll be okay and maybe even better for it, but for now, this coronavirus is a lot to deal with. It’s okay to admit that to yourself, and to your loved ones, and to God. God can take it. Just like when we were little kids having horrific temper tantrums and caught in the swirl of all of our emotion, those elders, those loving ones, in charge of our care, even if they were giving us ample physical space, were still surrounding us with love. The Love never stops. God loves us through all of this and understands that sometimes we are going to be on the floor, kicking and screaming, and crying and pounding our fists. Still, the Love never stops. It will sustain us.

This situation is overwhelming. It is scary. It has taken so much from us already and it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Give yourself permission to feel the disappointment, the fear, the fury. Give yourself permission to question angrily “the whos and the whats, the whys, wheres and hows.” And then, when the tantrum is over, settle into some quiet. Catch your breath and if little else, blanket yourself in the warm, secure knowing that the Love never stops loving you. Love never, ever stops.

Friday, Praise God

Image result for friday quotes

Yesterday I was grumble-y. So much so, in fact, that in the middle of my ranting, raving, complaining, pissing in the wind, my daughter interrupted my sad soliloquy, with, “Mom, embrace the suck.”

I started laughing. It’s so funny when your kids throw your own words back to you. If you remember a few Favorite Things Friday, back, “Embrace the Suck” was one of my new favorite philosophies, courtesy of The Navy Seals. It was exactly what I needed to hear.

Today I am not grumble-y. I am happy, and joyful. It is a beautiful summer morning. It is Friday. Life is good. Even when you embrace the suck, it is still good!

New readers, on Fridays, I list favorites. It can be favorite websites, plants, books, clothes, miracle creams, etc. I encourage you all to add to the list. Please see previous Fridays for more favorites. It’s okay to enjoy the material side of life. We are meant to experience life fully, and tactically. That is why we have bodies and senses. There are so many delights in life to sample. It’s like a delicious buffet, a blooming bouquet, and an amazing, never-ending amusement park for us to explore, all at once.

Today’s favorites are my favorite inspirational, spiritual songs. These songs are my jam when I want to connect with our Creator in a fun, musical way. There are a lot of them, so I couldn’t narrow them down to three. But these are my very top favorites that never fail to uplift me and to remind me that we are LOVED and we are gloriously interconnected. Here goes, in no particular order:

New World Son’s “Sweet Holy Spirit”

The Beatle’s “Let It Be”

Toby Mac’s “Get Back Up”

Nicole C. Mullen “Everyday People”

Salvador’s “Heaven”

The Black Eyed Peas and Justin Timberlake’s “Where is the Love?”

Wade Imre Morrissette’s “Om Narayana”

Jeremy Camp’s “Here I am to Worship”

Aaron Shust’s “My Savior My God”

Audio Adrenaline’s “Big House”

David Newman’s “Love, Peace Chant”

Scott Underwood’s “Take My Life”

Brandon Heath’s “Give Me Your Eyes”

The Guru Singh Experience “Ong So Hung”

Now go sing your song and have a fabulous, miraculous, awe-inspiring weekend!!!

No Grandchildren

“God has no grandchildren.” – Proverb

I read the above proverb yesterday in one of my meditations. I love it. I find it comforting. Currently the oldest person alive is a man in Germany who is 113 years old. Probably, as I sit here writing, there is at least one baby being born somewhere. So the Universe’s earth family has children in the age range of just being born to 113 years old. It would make for a beautiful family portrait.

I have four children who I love deeply with all of my heart. My oldest has eight years more experience in this world than my youngest child, but I am their Mom. Nothing has changed about me. I am not a different “Mom.” They are my children and I love them infinitely.

That’s how it goes with God/Creation/All-Loving Presence. Some of His/Her children are clergy. Some of His/Her children are outlaws. Some of the children of Earth are still learning to walk, and some are using walkers. The same God loves us all, infinitely. You cannot divide infinite love to see who is loved more. It is not possible. We are all God’s children and we are all loved infinitely.

The Same God loves us all. Clergy do not get a different, wiser, stronger God than the desperate, homeless, addict roaming the streets. The connection is there to all of us. The love is freely given in pure grace. We are all God’s children and we are all loved infinitely.

Happy Birthday Beethoven!

Happy Birthday to Beethoven and to me! Beethoven is 248 and I am 48.  I’ve actually reached the age that when someone asks me how old I am I have to roll my eyes up into my head, think, do some math and finally come out with the right answer.  When I was a kid, I used to think that was a lot of bunk when adults did that, but I now realize that forgetting your age, really does happen.  You reach middle age and you know that you are in a certain age range, but the actual number never sticks with you.  I’m not sure it that is a sign of early dementia or subconscious rebellion/denial, but I now know that whatever causes it, it’s a real thing.  However, for today, I know that I am 48.

I guess being 48 means that I really am approaching age 50, in a very serious way.  Honestly, I really don’t mind.  My body is definitely slowing down, and that gets frustrating.  I wore some pretty high heels to the Christmas party last night and I feel like I ran a marathon in record speed this morning, my body aches so much.  Still, from a mental, emotional, and life stage point of view, I am very optimistic about my fifties.  I feel like I know myself better than I have ever known myself.  I think I approach life with more curiosity, appreciation and acceptance than I ever have before.  I no longer try to conquer and control Life.  I’m better at letting Life flow.

When I was on the brink of my forties, my whole life changed in many, major ways.  Let’s just say that my husband and I were the Poster Kids for the Recession.  Our life as we knew it, completely and irrevocably disappeared and we ended up having to move our large family to a whole new city and state, to begin again.  And, guess what?  It’s a cliche to say it, but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to our family, on so many fronts.  I strongly believe that God/the Universe knows what it’s doing.  My faith lies in that.

Years ago, I read a very fun, upbeat book in which the author insisted that everything that happens to you, is meant to guide you to joy.  Now, I get that statement can be a tough pill to swallow, especially when you are going through one of those really rough “Why me?” times in life, but if you really look for it, there is a glimmer of goodness and transformation in every single experience.  I believe that with every fiber of my body.

I once again want to thank you for reading my blog, commenting on my blog, bolstering me and rooting for me.  You, my readers, have been a wonderful gift in my life this year.  Happy Birthday to me!  It’s going to be a great year and a great upcoming decade for all of us!!