Tag: sacred
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010
We do not see things as they are.
We see things as we are.
(The Talmud)
While we physically see with our eyes, it is our brains that tell us what we are seeing. The act of seeing involves the physical, the mental and the emotional. That is why two people can see the same person or thing or event in totally different ways. I remember going into a restaurant to celebrate our anniversary. Our four-year-old daughter and almost nine-month-old daughter and my parents were with us. As we ate dinner a woman at a nearby table kept turning to glare at us. The children were being quiet and well-behaved, but, obviously, in her eyes, they were being “bad.” I found myself feeling worse as time went by. Every time the woman turned and glared at us I felt my heart sink a little more. As we were leaving the restaurant two women were sitting on a bench by the door. They stopped us and said that they had just had dinner in the restaurant. One of them said, “We couldn’t help noticing your children. They were so beautiful and well-behaved.” Same situation, different eyes.
I read a story several years ago that showed me again that “We see things as we are.” In the story an elderly woman was sitting in a wheelchair in front of an elevator door in a nursing home. Someone was talking about the room that was waiting for her upstairs. She answered, “I love my room.” The other person said, “But you’ve never seen the room.” She responded, “I have already decided that I love it.” She chose, sight-unseen, to love her new “home.” I’m sure it wasn’t a home where she ever wanted to live. The story reminded me of my mother-in-law. When she was in an assisted-living facility she always said, “Everyone is doing the very best that they can.” She chose to see her caregivers through the eyes of loving acceptance. Because she was a gentle, kind, loving person she saw other people in the same way.
Seeing through the eyes of love is a sacred gift. I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: child, love, sacred, sacred gifts
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Monday, July 5th, 2010
“These are the times that try men’s souls.
The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
On Christmas Day 1776 George Washington read these words from Thomas Paine’s American Crisis to his troops. The men were hungry, cold, dispirited. Many of them had their feet wrapped in rags because they had no shoes. It looked like their fight for independence might very well be lost. Waiting across the Delaware River in Trenton, NJ, was an army of British and Hessian troops. Early on the morning of December 26 the Continental soldiers rowed across the ice-clogged river. It was only 20 degrees. They launched a surprise attack which ended in the first American victory of the war. As Thomas Paine wrote, these soldiers did indeed win “the love and thanks of man and woman.”
The The men and women who have fought and continue to fight to preserve our freedom deserve our thanks and our love and our prayers. The question, “What price freedom?” has been going through my mind. For too many of our soldiers the price is injury and death. As has been quoted through the years, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This quote is a modern version of words spoken by Edmund Burke, the 18th-century British statesman. Sadly, freedom is always paid for by the men and women who refuse to let evil triumph no matter the personal cost.
May
Tags: freedom, sacred, sacred gifts, surprise
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Thursday, July 1st, 2010
Instant. Instant rice. Instant pudding. Instant messaging.
We are the society of NOW. We are able to instantly communicate. There was a time when the telegraph was the fastest way to communicate. Even then it involved three other people – the person to key your message in Morse code, the person to receive the message in Morse code and write it down, the person to deliver a written message to the recipient’s door. It was the fastest way to communicate, but it definitely wasn’t instant.
The telephone greatly improved our ability to communicate. We could hear the other person’s voice and they could hear our words. The next big communication change came with the introduction of the fax machine into the workaday business world in the late 1980’s. We could send words and graphics. The speed of transmitting the written word has grown rapidly since then. We have achieved instant communication via e-mail, texting and social networking sites. The other person can receive our words NOW. We can send photos and graphics, video and audio in literally seconds. What a wonderful change.
I have always felt sorry for the immigrants who came to America that could not read or write. Unless someone came from their hometown after they came here they never knew what happened to their loved ones back home. The family and friends who stayed behind had no way to know what happened to them after they sailed for America. Now we have the ability to know what someone is doing right this minute. One thing has never changed, though. Our ability to communicate with the Lord. We speak to Him through prayer. How do we receive an answer? We wait. We wait until we hear a divine message in our hearts.
“God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer.” (Mother Teresa)
We wait until we see His hand in changes that happen in our lives. Our communication with the Lord is “then,”not “now.” We pray and, then, we wait for the answer. Communication with the Lord requires trust and patience, in some instances over long periods of time. Waiting for the Lord’s answer is even harder in our society of instant answers and NOW communication. Having the patience to wait peacefully for the Lord to answer us is a sacred gift.
Tags: communication, patience, sacred, sacred gifts, trust
Posted in Inspiration, spirituality | 4 Comments »
Saturday, June 26th, 2010
A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.
Proverbs 16:9
I have been thinking about steps constantly. I am using a walker in the house and trying to learn to use a cane. So far walking forty steps is a small victory. Of course, I am impatient to be back to normal. Will I ever be totally recovered? I don’t know. I do know that eventually I will be functioning as I did before the accident. Of course, I am impatient for recovery to happen NOW. Waiting and struggling reduces me to tears, but that too shall pass.
I have to keep reminding myself of these words:
“Life is a series of steps. Things are done gradually. Once in a while there is a giant step, but most of the time we are taking small, seemingly insignificant steps on the stairway of life.”
(Ralph Ransom)
Thinking of life as a series of steps helps me to remember that victory is reaching the top of the stairway and the only way to do that is one step at a time. It also helps to read Helen Steiner Rice’s words:
“No matter how steep the mountain –
the Lord is going to climb it with (me).”
Being able to take even one step is a sacred gift.
May your blessings be many, your worries few. I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: God, patience, sacred, sacred gifts
Posted in Inspiration, spirituality | 4 Comments »
Friday, June 18th, 2010
Waiting is woven into the fabric of our lives. We wait in lines. We wait for phone calls. We wait for job offers. We wait for babies to be born. We wait for healing from heartbreak or illness. We wait for answers to questions that we don’t even know how to ask. We wait for so many things, from the boringly mundane to the sublimely beautiful.
We wait for the answers to the big questions. Where is my life going? Where do I want it to go? Can I possibly get there? How? In the midst of these questions I remember the words of Jeremiah ( 29:11-13):
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
As I remember these words I pray:
“Dear Lord, help me to trust in You while I wait for the fulfillment of your plans for me.
Help me to feel You standing at my side.
Help me to hear Your voice whispering in my ear.
Help me to seek you with all my heart.”
Believing in God’s plan is a sacred gift.
May your blessings be many, your worries few. I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: God, prayer, sacred, sacred gifts
Posted in Inspiration, spirituality | 2 Comments »
Sunday, June 13th, 2010
I have sometimes wondered if coincidences are just God’s way of getting our attention. I experienced one this week. On Wednesday my physical therapist came. He is amazingly wonderful because he ministers to both my body and my spirit. I told him I was having the same problems physically and was also feeling down. He told me that I needed to control my “stinking thinking” in order to heal.
Two days later I opened my e-mail. There was a message from Kimberly Floyd (kimf@takebackyourtemple.com) As always her words spoke directly to me. She wrote, “When it comes to taking back your health, the biggest obstacle to overcome is what motivational speaker,Zig Ziglar, calls ’stinking thinking.’ Those negative thoughts make you feel defeated, discouraged, and depressed – all those ‘d’ words!” Obviously, I need to pay close attention to all my thoughts.
In Ephesians 4:23, we are told that we need “to be made new in the attitude of (our) minds.” Of course this is easier said than done. The problem is that positive thinking is conscious while negative thinking (stinking thinking) is unconscious.
Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) made the concept of positive thinking famous in his book, The Power of Positive Thinking. Most importantly, he showed us the tool to use to practice positive thinking. He wrote: ”through prayer you … make use of the great factor within yourself, the deep subconscious mind … [which Jesus called] the kingdom of God within you … Positive thinking is just another term for faith.”
The ability to pray positive thinking into your life is a sacred gift.
May your blessings be many,
your worries few.
I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: God, prayer, sacred, sacred gifts
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Monday, June 7th, 2010
Since I had my accident, I have watched far more television than I have ever watched before. It fills the time and distracts me from my pain and worries. I shouldn’t be amazed, but I confess I was the other morning when I was watching a movie . It was as though the Lord was speaking directly to me. As he was preparing to leave to serve in World War II, a young minister said to his girlfriend, “God never forgets to answer our prayers. Sometimes we just don’t like the answers.” Those words were words I should say to myself frequently.
The minister went on to say that we should turn our lives over to God and pray, “Not my will, but Thine.” That is not always easy to do. I read a devotional by Katherine Kehler (todays-thought@thoughts-about-god.com) Just like the movie dialogue her Morning Prayer spoke to me. She prayed:
“I realize now that my discouragement can be because of the lack of trusting You.
This day, Lord, I pray that You will enable me to trust You each time a problem arises.
Whenever I get stressed, remind me to turn my eyes on You and Your sufficiency.
My help comes from You, Lord. Amen.”
The ability to trust the Lord when we have a problem is a sacred gift.
May your blessings be many,
your worries few.
I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: God, prayer, sacred, sacred gifts, trust
Posted in Inspiration, spirituality | 2 Comments »
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
“Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
(Matthew 6:8)
Sometimes I wonder if God ever thinks He should have gotten an unlisted number. I pray all the time – for myself, for family and friends and people I know about who need His help. I pray to ask for help and I pray to say, “Thank you.” Of course, I still struggle with the times when the answer is very slow in coming and the times when the answer is, “No.” Even in those times I feel a sense of peace as I pray.
Just last week I read two new prayers that I loved. The first prayer comes from one of my daughters. Sara wrote, “Lord, give me the patience to deal with my blessings!” It made me think of all the times in my life when I could have/should have said that prayer. It is certainly a perfect prayer for all young mothers.
The other prayer is one that I came across on the Internet. It said, ”Lord, make my life A window for Your light to shine through and a mirror to reflect Your love to all I meet. Amen.”
Prayer is one of the greatest gifts that God has given us. It is a sacred gift.
May your blessings be many, your worries few.
I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: God, mothers, prayer, sacred, sacred gifts
Posted in Inspiration, spirituality | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
When we are young, I think we define strength as physical strength. How many pounds you can lift. How many miles you can run. Then, as we grow up, we realize that there is another kind of strength that is far more important. It used to be called “intestinal fortitude,” which meant courage and endurance.
Psalm 121 is a beautiful reminder that our strength comes from God.
I will lift up my eyes to the hills—
From whence comes my help?
My help comes from the LORD,
Who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to be moved;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel
Shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is your keeper;
The LORD is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The LORD shall preserve you from all evil;
He shall preserve your soul.
The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in
From this time forth, and even forevermore.
Looking to the Lord for your strength is a sacred gift.
May your blessings be many, your worries few.
I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: blessings, God, sacred, sacred gifts, strength
Posted in Inspiration, spirituality | 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
“If God shuts one door, he opens another.”
(Irish Proverb)
It probably sounds odd to talk about problems as gifts, but I have been thinking about how sometimes problems turn out to be blessings in disguise. We all have problems – illness, injuries, disappointments, loss. Some of our problems are merely worrisome while others are absolutely devastating.
I know that devastating problems may not have a blessing attached to them, but the sad, hard, worrisome problems may very well come with the gift of a blessing. I have tried to think of times in my life when problems came with a gift. I remembered when my second daughter was born. As soon as we came home from the hospital my husband flew across country to get a new job. Five weeks later, the day after Christmas, we threw the tree out on the curb and left to drive across country. It was especially traumatic because we would be leaving my parents and I would be leaving home for the first time.
When we got there, we moved into a townhouse in a development under construction. We had no neighbors. The builder had cut the phone line three times so we had no phone service and wouldn’t for weeks. Two days after we arrived my husband left to fly across country. He was gone for two weeks at a time. This was before cell phones so I was completely isolated with a four-year-old and a newborn. I remember one snowy morning when I bundled both of them into the car and drove to a phone booth to call a doctor. I waited 45 minutes in the cold phone booth for a return call which never came because the number on the pay phone didn’t actually belong to that pay phone. Thank God nothing bad happened to us when we there alone. If it had, there was no way my four-year-old could have gotten help.
From all this, though, a blessing came. After several months, we moved to another state where we had neighbors. It was still hard, though, because of my husband’s traveling.
Eventually he took a
different job which brought us only 3 1/2 hours from my parents. While he was at this new job, I received a gift. We went to a business dinner and the secretary’s husband, who was a professional photographer, showed me what he was doing. I had never seen a zoom lens and I was astonished that he could take pictures by candlelight. He went on to be my first teacher. He was a kind, gentle man and a wonderful teacher. If we hadn’t gone through the horrible moves, we would never have ended up here. I would never have met him and been given the incredible gift of photography.
Blessings in disguise are a sacred gift.
May your blessings be many, your worries few. I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: blessings, Christmas, God, photography, sacred, sacred gifts
Posted in Inspiration, spirituality | 2 Comments »
Monday, May 24th, 2010
“Butterflies are self-propelled flowers.”
R.H. Heinlein
(author, 1907 –1988)
In a post last week, “The Gift of Yellow,” I talked about how I was starting to see yellow strands in the fabric of my days. These strands represent hope and peace and thankfulness. They are slowly beginning to supplant the black strands of frustration, anger, pain, helplessness and fear that have overwhelmed me since my accident.
The day after I wrote about the yellow strands appearing something almost too lovely to believe happened. We started seeing yellow butterflies outside our kitchen window. This is the first time we have ever seen them there. Today they started flying by our bedroom window, too. What joy to be recuperating in bed and watch them flutter by.
As I watch them I think of these words written by (Jeffrey Glassberg, Butterflies Through Binoculars):
“Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. And everyone deserves a little sunshine.”
I think also about the difficult journey the butterfly took to transform itself from a caterpillar into a butterfly. A few months ago I saw a poster that said, “Just when the caterpillar thought the world had ended it became a butterfly.” What a reassuring thought that our trials can transform us into more beautiful people who can bring solace and joy to others.
Butterflies are a sacred gift.
May your blessings be many, your worries few.
I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: butterfly, joy, sacred, sacred gifts
Posted in Inspiration, spirituality | No Comments »
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
On the Internet I came across the advice to make a list titled, “50 Things I Love To Do.” Piece of cake! That’s what I thought when I started writing the list. So far I am up to only 42.
Then, this morning, after I had actually forgotten about the list, my inner child came up with something I wanted to do. Frankly, I had also forgotten I had an inner child. Fortunately, the Internet reminds you of things like that. Anyway, my inner child wanted to eat ice cream. I got an ice cream sandwich out of the freezer.
Since I was temporarily a child again, I ran my tongue around the ice cream sandwich between the cookie outsides. I leaned my head back and laughed at myself. My tongue was frozen and ice cream dribbled down my chin. For those minutes I had no worries. I was just a prickly tongue licking smooth, slippery ice cream.
It was so much fun I’ll have to add, “Let out my inner child,” to my list of 50 things. I hope you let out your inner child, too.
May your blessings be many, your worries few.
I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: blessings, child, fun, gifts, sacred, sacred gifts
Posted in Inspiration | 1 Comment »
Friday, October 9th, 2009
Since I hope we will become blog friends, I have to confess that I am a chocoholic. I LOVE chocolate. Dark chocolate. I love the feel of the smooth, soft, nearly sinful confection as it melts in my mouth. I should wear a t-shirt with the following saying:
EMERGENCY ALERT: If wearer of this shirt is found vacant, listless, or depressed, ADMINISTER CHOCOLATE IMMEDIATELY.
After all, the four basic food groups are: solid dark chocolate, dark chocolate with nuts, dark chocolate with peanut butter and dark chocolate truffles.
Imagine my joy when scientists proclaimed dark chocolate to be an antioxidant powerhouse. It prolongs life while making it richer and more fun. Obviously, chocolate is nature’s perfect food. I can’t even imagine why I would want to heed the advice found on some websites to “cure (my) chocolate addiction.” That would be like “curing my addiction” to sunshine or life. For me, chocolate is a very big little blessing. How about you?
May your blessings be many, your worries few.
I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: blessings, chocolate, friends, sacred, sacred gifts
Posted in Inspiration | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
Last night I was sitting in bed working on my book proposal. For two-and-a-half hours as I worked the deep-throated rumble of thunder rolled across the black sky. It was so loud it sounded like it was coming from next door. Lightning flashes bathed the windows in a yellow-white glow. Just as I would get a thought a new clap of thunder would startle me and the thought would vanish. Finally I stopped trying to work and just watched the storm.
The show was awesome! Being able to see and hear it while snuggled in a soft bed was a blessing.
May your blessings be many,
your worries few.
I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: blessings, sacred, sacred gifts, storms
Posted in Inspiration | 2 Comments »
Monday, October 5th, 2009
I went on a photography field trip. We were taken to a weed-filled field on a drizzly day and told to take pictures. My initial reaction was, “You have got to be kidding!”
I lay on my stomach in the wet grass and photographed a tiny purple flower that I was surprised to find in the middle of “nothing.” I was even more surprised when I loved the resulting image.
Finding this tiny flower in a field of weeds was a small blessing.
May your blessings be many,
your worries few.
I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: blessings, flowers, photography, sacred, sacred gifts, surprise
Posted in Inspiration | No Comments »
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
I find joy each day in celebrating life’s little blessings, each one a sacred gift. I hope you will come back to this blog often and share your blessings. So, put on comfy clothes, sit back and enjoy!
Since this is my first blog, I want to explain the title, Sacred Gifts. While I was writing a book on marketing professional services, another book just came to me. I referred to the first book as my big book and this book as my little book. I believe the Lord sent it to me. Hence, the name.
Even in the midst of these frightening times I look for little blessings. They feel even more important now. I am grateful for summer, for finding a perfect rose. Its sweet scent reminds me of happy times.
What blessing are you grateful for today?
May your blessings be many, your worries few.
I wish you countless sacred gifts.
Tags: blessings, joy, sacred, sacred gifts
Posted in Inspiration | 2 Comments »
