Life is too short to hold on to anger and lead with fear.
A friend of mine died suddenly of a Brain Aneurysm last Sunday. And today I ran into an old coworker who told me one of our favorite patients passed away today. I know in my line of work death comes often and usually in waves but it doesn't always make it easier.
I had an awakening last week when I got the call. I know that none of us are guaranteed tomorrow but I don't usually think that it's possible I could go at any moment. I have a tendency of acting out through silent scorn and harboring negative feelings for people who I feel have hurt me. I don't Hate anyone and usually when I am Hurt deeply by something or someone it's because I cared a lot about that person or situation which caused the amount and depth of the pain.
If I were to never see the people I encountered today, ever again, did I act as I would like to be remembered?
No matter the depth of pain or hurt or sadness I feel, I do not want to be remembered in that way..angry, hurt, and sad.
It is ironic that the call came the night after the discussion I had with my mom and aunt (see previous post).
My lesson from the past week is one I have been aware of for sometime. But when I get wrapped up in my own mind my perception of things like what is important and what is just nonsense gets diluted and I can start thinking I have problems. I do not. I am very lucky to have everything I do and most importantly the things that are unseen.
Life is too short. I started setting goals for myself, like a bucket list but we will call it a 5 yr plan.
1. Go to Ireland
2. Go to California
3. Become a Nurse
4. Run 3 more Marathons (5 Total)
5. Get an apartment or house with a yard
6. Finish writing my Book
7. Get a Dog
And well the list goes on, but I absolutely think I can do all of the above. But should I die today I would have no regrets. I am not afraid of dying, but I'm not quite done here yet. God's got some plans for me I haven't really got cracking on yet.
What am I waiting for? I think that is the question I need to keep asking. It's like that saying 'why put off til tomorrow what you can get done today?'
Because I'm a procrastinator. But something's need to change and Life on Life's Term is something that can rattle me enough to put in the effort.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Wake Up Call
Monday Night when I was praying before bed, I asked God to help wake me in the morning (which I do every night) but I asked that he give me the motivation and/or distraction needed to wake up in time to run before work.
6:15am Tuesday I hit snooze again on my cell and rolled over. Then a truck that parked out front to unload and bring stuff to Rite Aid showed up. The sliding shut of each side metal door made me grumble. Then I had to pee so I rolled onto the floor to pray and said ‘Arg your Will not mine be done, I’m tired..”I got up and before I opened the bathroom door the truck pulled away. I couldn’t help but laugh.
My battle with my bed is never over once I get up. I sometimes use the bathroom and convince myself I can sleep another 10-15 mins and go right back to bed. Yesterday I got changed into my running stuff and hoped by the time I grabbed my sneakers I would actually want to go for a run. It wasn’t until I hit the fresh air that I was glad I chose to get up.If I didn’t I would have missed this:
This is the unaltered pic from my morning run. Look at that sky! As I was coming back up from the river I ran into my friend, Caroline, and it was just a really great way to start the day! My mind will convince me that my bed is the best place for me to be, but sometimes God wants me to see other things.
"Based on A Course in Miracles, this self-study program teaches the practice of love as an answer to life's daily problems and fears." So I am trying to stay open minded to the fact that it is okay to express AND vocalize it. It isn't that I came from a rough up bringing, that I am fearful to say it. Love has always been shown to me through actions from my parents, brothers, and friends. My parents were raised with the same mentality: love does not have to be stated, it is understood. Or something along those lines.
6:15am Tuesday I hit snooze again on my cell and rolled over. Then a truck that parked out front to unload and bring stuff to Rite Aid showed up. The sliding shut of each side metal door made me grumble. Then I had to pee so I rolled onto the floor to pray and said ‘Arg your Will not mine be done, I’m tired..”I got up and before I opened the bathroom door the truck pulled away. I couldn’t help but laugh.
My battle with my bed is never over once I get up. I sometimes use the bathroom and convince myself I can sleep another 10-15 mins and go right back to bed. Yesterday I got changed into my running stuff and hoped by the time I grabbed my sneakers I would actually want to go for a run. It wasn’t until I hit the fresh air that I was glad I chose to get up.If I didn’t I would have missed this:
This is the unaltered pic from my morning run. Look at that sky! As I was coming back up from the river I ran into my friend, Caroline, and it was just a really great way to start the day! My mind will convince me that my bed is the best place for me to be, but sometimes God wants me to see other things.
Last Night I went with my mom to my cousin's house to get my hair cut. while I was waiting for the dye to sink in, my mom, aunt, and I somehow got to talking about saying the words 'I Love you' to our family members. Love is more of an action word for me, I love my family, pretty much all of my friends, (when I think of Love I think 'would I take a bullet for this person?'), but I do not say it out loud. My mom is the only person I say it to regularly and we talked about why do we make it weird?
A friend of mine says I love you on the phone to me whenever we talk, and I cringe a little and forcefully say it back but it just feels weird. Do I love her? Of course I do, but saying those words is like painful on some level. As we continued talking my mom and I were able to pin point when we started to say it. It was when she got cancer.. 9 years ago. It was then that I wanted to make sure I said it everytime, in case for some reason that was the last time we spoke.
Thankfully it is 9 years later, and it is no longer weird or painful to say it to her. And I am also not fearful it will be the last time I say it, but I like it being routine. I am reading
"Based on A Course in Miracles, this self-study program teaches the practice of love as an answer to life's daily problems and fears." So I am trying to stay open minded to the fact that it is okay to express AND vocalize it. It isn't that I came from a rough up bringing, that I am fearful to say it. Love has always been shown to me through actions from my parents, brothers, and friends. My parents were raised with the same mentality: love does not have to be stated, it is understood. Or something along those lines.
I can't even get into the romantic type of love because I really do not know much about it. I know that I have felt real love in that way once in my life; over 7 years ago but I can't explain it. Def would have taken a bullet to say the least. I know that every person is capable of the kind of love God wants for us, the kind of Love that he has for all of us. We are capable of giving AND recieving it. Some of us have to learn how, but there is hope. I do want to experience the type of love that I would want to share my life with someone, but I can not predict who or when that will be. Until I learn to practice showing that love with my friends and family I may not be able to recieve it once it does come.
In the Mitch Albom book, "Tuesdays with Morrie" the underlying lesson to be learned is that Love really is the purpose of this life. If we do not have someone to share this life with (friend, family, or partner) then none of it really matters anyway.
My friend Ellen, taught me that Love truly is all that matters. When I visited her in Hospice last March she smiled and told me how grateful she was for her husband and family. She said that I should never compromise because real Love is out there and life is too short to sit hoping that the person you can't let go of could some day possibly give you what you want. When she passed away, my heart ached but knowing that she knew what life was about eased the pain.
I don't want go through this life with walls blocking me from others because I am afraid of getting hurt. My automatic response to pain is to recoil and fight back, but that is not what Love and God are about. I have a long way to go but I want to take that journey. Today is just one day that I can practice trying to be open, for God to work through me, regardless of my fears and pain.. And maybe a few days in a row like that, and I will break down one of those walls to the outside. The tricky thing is, I don't know how many walls there are to break, but I am willing to start that destruction of self preservation.
I think this entry turned into a self help journal entry but it helps to get it out there :)
"A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love."~ Stenhal
Monday, October 17, 2011
Getting Off the Wheel
This morning I was able to meditate and even when my mind wanders in those few minutes, acknowledging it, and bringing it back is still better then not taking the time to attempt to try and sit quietly. My mind has a tendency to be a hamster on a wheel. I can repeatedly think about the same thing over and over and over again (usually the past) but here I am still in the same present moment unable to do anything about that. I know I cannot change the past or future, but can only attempt to be present in the present and hope to make a difference Now. Easier said than done.
This weekend I was able to spend time with my parents. Without making their lives internet (ly) available, I will just say that the word miraculous cannot even begin to explain their current compared to their past relationship. They are friends today, which ten years ago I would have thought impossible.
The funny thing about God is that when you truly surrender and are ready to grow past the pain he allows you his grace and the ability to forgive. The past is past but it can never be forgotten, however today it is our decision whether we want to relive it over and over and over again like that hamster running around in that wheel. I think that the pain has to be great enough for us to have it stick with us… otherwise we would have no incentive to want to change or to do anything differently. That being said, once the decision is made to change, because we do not care to relive that pain…we can begin to let it go.
I have always heard that ‘pain is the touchstone to all spiritual growth’ but there are a few out there who follow it up with, ‘but suffering is optional.’ I agree with the second part as well. My college crew coach always said that ‘Pain is weakness leaving the body,’ and for a long time I held those words true for me. I disregarded the rest (the spiritual growth and whatnot) and just visualized myself as becoming a stronger person because pain is allowing this ‘weakness to leave my body.’ What I didn’t seem to understand was that Coach was not talking about emotions, he was talking about Physical pain in our physical bodies and my pain was taking a LONG time to get out. Having your emotions hurt, is not weakness. My entire life I have been taught to be strong, don’t cry in front of others because they will know they have gotten to you. But when I decided to form a relationship with God, He started to change my thinking about all of this.
I want to make one thing clear, I really don’t like having emotions. I mean I prefer it to the alternative, which would be a robot walking around going through the motions, however they are frustrating, annoying, troublesome, and unpredictable. But they can also be wonderful, exciting, liberating, and eye opening… It took a long time to see the positive ones. I don’t like not knowing when they will hit, to what extent, and what the heck I will do with them once they do come. Let’s get back to the pain… When I am hurt or feel hurt, my initial, gut check response is to stuff that feeling and don’t let anyone know about my ‘weakness.’ That thought is usually (unfortunately) followed by a thought of revenge or something evil in which I can return the hurt to the person or situation which caused me pain. Because in my world, I feel as though you all should feel my pain, because if I have to then everyone does. And now that I have come clean with my crazy immediate response to pain and hurt…I can change it before it is materialized.
Identifying the emotion, finding the root of it, seeing why I have come to this place (usually fear driven), and talking to God AND another person about all of this is just the beginning of me choosing to get off the wheel. Now that I get to that point…moving forward is the next logical thing. Even though I know that wheel leads no where I am wired to want to get on it, every day…maybe it will unhinge itself and I will time travel back to make things the way I planned, is the thought I frequently have. Not likely.
So if pain is the touchstone of spiritual growth, how then is suffering optional? Get off the freaking wheel! I have to stop torturing myself by playing out conversations and situations that I can’t go back to. Or better yet planning out the way a conversation will go when more times than not I never even see that person. All of the time and energy I spend trying to change things I will never control is wasted on this moment which is the only thing I can change. This lesson is something I continuously learn: “I control the amount of suffering I endure as a result to the pain I experience.” I say continuously because I do tend to think things will be different and stumble over the same stones over and over again until I hit my thresh hold for pain and uh like a light bulb this lesson comes back full circle. Today I am going to ask God to help me stay here, in this moment, so I can have an opportunity to grow through the pain and forgive the past. The only person I am hurting is myself and I don’t want to suffer, for today.
"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again." ~Maya Angelou
This weekend I was able to spend time with my parents. Without making their lives internet (ly) available, I will just say that the word miraculous cannot even begin to explain their current compared to their past relationship. They are friends today, which ten years ago I would have thought impossible.
The funny thing about God is that when you truly surrender and are ready to grow past the pain he allows you his grace and the ability to forgive. The past is past but it can never be forgotten, however today it is our decision whether we want to relive it over and over and over again like that hamster running around in that wheel. I think that the pain has to be great enough for us to have it stick with us… otherwise we would have no incentive to want to change or to do anything differently. That being said, once the decision is made to change, because we do not care to relive that pain…we can begin to let it go.
I have always heard that ‘pain is the touchstone to all spiritual growth’ but there are a few out there who follow it up with, ‘but suffering is optional.’ I agree with the second part as well. My college crew coach always said that ‘Pain is weakness leaving the body,’ and for a long time I held those words true for me. I disregarded the rest (the spiritual growth and whatnot) and just visualized myself as becoming a stronger person because pain is allowing this ‘weakness to leave my body.’ What I didn’t seem to understand was that Coach was not talking about emotions, he was talking about Physical pain in our physical bodies and my pain was taking a LONG time to get out. Having your emotions hurt, is not weakness. My entire life I have been taught to be strong, don’t cry in front of others because they will know they have gotten to you. But when I decided to form a relationship with God, He started to change my thinking about all of this.
I want to make one thing clear, I really don’t like having emotions. I mean I prefer it to the alternative, which would be a robot walking around going through the motions, however they are frustrating, annoying, troublesome, and unpredictable. But they can also be wonderful, exciting, liberating, and eye opening… It took a long time to see the positive ones. I don’t like not knowing when they will hit, to what extent, and what the heck I will do with them once they do come. Let’s get back to the pain… When I am hurt or feel hurt, my initial, gut check response is to stuff that feeling and don’t let anyone know about my ‘weakness.’ That thought is usually (unfortunately) followed by a thought of revenge or something evil in which I can return the hurt to the person or situation which caused me pain. Because in my world, I feel as though you all should feel my pain, because if I have to then everyone does. And now that I have come clean with my crazy immediate response to pain and hurt…I can change it before it is materialized.
Identifying the emotion, finding the root of it, seeing why I have come to this place (usually fear driven), and talking to God AND another person about all of this is just the beginning of me choosing to get off the wheel. Now that I get to that point…moving forward is the next logical thing. Even though I know that wheel leads no where I am wired to want to get on it, every day…maybe it will unhinge itself and I will time travel back to make things the way I planned, is the thought I frequently have. Not likely.
So if pain is the touchstone of spiritual growth, how then is suffering optional? Get off the freaking wheel! I have to stop torturing myself by playing out conversations and situations that I can’t go back to. Or better yet planning out the way a conversation will go when more times than not I never even see that person. All of the time and energy I spend trying to change things I will never control is wasted on this moment which is the only thing I can change. This lesson is something I continuously learn: “I control the amount of suffering I endure as a result to the pain I experience.” I say continuously because I do tend to think things will be different and stumble over the same stones over and over again until I hit my thresh hold for pain and uh like a light bulb this lesson comes back full circle. Today I am going to ask God to help me stay here, in this moment, so I can have an opportunity to grow through the pain and forgive the past. The only person I am hurting is myself and I don’t want to suffer, for today.
"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again." ~Maya Angelou
Friday, October 14, 2011
God's Presence
God has a way of speaking through people and every time I am quite enough to hear him, life gets back on track. Last night in my Philosophy of Religion class we had discussion on Religious Experiences. The teacher wanted to know from us if we had specific moments in our life that we remember knowing there had to be something more. I started to think and there are too many to write. The bottom line is once my initial awakening happened the spiritual experiences I had following were able to be recognized as God and not coincidence.
A woman in my class shared about her be woken up in the middle of the night just in time to get herself and her family out of her burning house. She is a very religious person but she shared her ‘moment’ that she was able to pin point in time.
It made me think of my summer 5 years ago. I was working Part Time but for the most part I was working on my tan by the pool in the apartment complex I was living in at the time. In the summer you got to see the same neighbors out every day. My immediate next door neighbor was at the pool one day with her son and one of his friends. I smiled and went back to my word find as they were splashing around. I had a tendency of getting so tired from sitting all day that I would nod in and out all moments of the day. I tend to twitch right before I fall into a deep sleep and/or I drop whatever is in my hands. I started to nod off and when I twitched, I woke myself back up and did the typical scan of the pool to see if anyone noticed I was nodding off. Right then, my neighbor made eye contact with me and she went underwater. Her son was in the deep end laughing. “Come on Mommy…come over here” I looked up at the 15 yr old lifeguard but he was not checked in. She came back up for air and I saw her eyes were completely blood shot. I jumped in and was able to get her to the side of the pool. I am in no way a hero, that’s not why I am telling this story. The point is that I would have never noticed or heard her had I not twitched at that exact moment. I don’t think I have that courageous heroic blood but something got me out of my chair and into the water without thought.
There is no other explanation for that other then God. After we were at the side of the pool I looked up and the lifeguard still hadn’t noticed anything had happened, which is a pretty scary realization. It turned out my neighbor had just started a new medication that had been making her weak, but she thought she would be okay swimming and when she got into the deep end her body wasn’t able to keep her afloat.
I thought of this when I heard the woman in class’ fire story.
There was also the time I choked on a chicken sandwich in a diner and was given the Heimlich. That night I went out with some friends, and there was a woman I had just met who came with us. When I started choking one of my friends tried to give me the Heimlich but didn’t know how and the woman I just met jumped up from the table and was able to get me over to the bathroom and do the proper maneuver. Turned out she was a nurse. She was a nurse who had lost her daughter, who was around my age, only a couple months before that night. When we started talking she was sharing about how she wished she could have been able to help her daughter (who died of a drug overdose) and she was filled with guilt. She had just saved my life and went back to our diner like nothing had happened, she was a nurse so she was used to it. I couldn’t thank her enough and I pointed out that she helps saves lives for a living. Obviously that in no way can replace her daughter but she has saved other mother’s daughters and that God had put her in my life that night because, well I obviously don’t chew my food well enough but there are no coincidences.
My teacher also asked if there were moments in our childhood that we specifically remember having that Joy/Sense of safety that we no longer have in adulthood. I think I am very lucky. I can remember having that sense of calmness the first time when I was 14 years old and I was terrified to sleep in my new house. I was always afraid of something horrible happening to me and my family when I fell asleep. I prayed to God to help me and I felt like an invisible warm blanket come over me and I fell asleep within seconds. I say that I am lucky because I continue to have these moments now. Pretty regularly when I am in touch with God. But the innocence of youth sometimes allows us to be more open to opportunities like that, is what my teacher I think was trying to get at.
Why am I writing about all of this? Why not? God has blessed me with the knowledge of his existence and continues to demonstrate that my relationship with him is not restricted to boundaries, no limits, it can go as deep and as pure as I chose to take it. My morning meditation today was only 12 minutes but those 12 minutes give me a 24 hours of knowing that life will be okay, God has this and if I open my life I can help Him show others around me too. Just by smiling at someone on the street or letting the older woman at the bust top get on before you (which should come naturally as common courtesy but this day and age I feel like it is dwindling).
Bottom line: If I do not take the time to thank God with prayer and meditation, I will not stop thinking about myself long enough to become useful for Him. The ‘next right thing’ is not always apparent to me, but when I am tapped into that Conscious Contact I can again feel the innocence of a child who feels the breeze kiss their nose for the first time and is filled with Awe at the amazement of this life.
A woman in my class shared about her be woken up in the middle of the night just in time to get herself and her family out of her burning house. She is a very religious person but she shared her ‘moment’ that she was able to pin point in time.
It made me think of my summer 5 years ago. I was working Part Time but for the most part I was working on my tan by the pool in the apartment complex I was living in at the time. In the summer you got to see the same neighbors out every day. My immediate next door neighbor was at the pool one day with her son and one of his friends. I smiled and went back to my word find as they were splashing around. I had a tendency of getting so tired from sitting all day that I would nod in and out all moments of the day. I tend to twitch right before I fall into a deep sleep and/or I drop whatever is in my hands. I started to nod off and when I twitched, I woke myself back up and did the typical scan of the pool to see if anyone noticed I was nodding off. Right then, my neighbor made eye contact with me and she went underwater. Her son was in the deep end laughing. “Come on Mommy…come over here” I looked up at the 15 yr old lifeguard but he was not checked in. She came back up for air and I saw her eyes were completely blood shot. I jumped in and was able to get her to the side of the pool. I am in no way a hero, that’s not why I am telling this story. The point is that I would have never noticed or heard her had I not twitched at that exact moment. I don’t think I have that courageous heroic blood but something got me out of my chair and into the water without thought.
There is no other explanation for that other then God. After we were at the side of the pool I looked up and the lifeguard still hadn’t noticed anything had happened, which is a pretty scary realization. It turned out my neighbor had just started a new medication that had been making her weak, but she thought she would be okay swimming and when she got into the deep end her body wasn’t able to keep her afloat.
I thought of this when I heard the woman in class’ fire story.
There was also the time I choked on a chicken sandwich in a diner and was given the Heimlich. That night I went out with some friends, and there was a woman I had just met who came with us. When I started choking one of my friends tried to give me the Heimlich but didn’t know how and the woman I just met jumped up from the table and was able to get me over to the bathroom and do the proper maneuver. Turned out she was a nurse. She was a nurse who had lost her daughter, who was around my age, only a couple months before that night. When we started talking she was sharing about how she wished she could have been able to help her daughter (who died of a drug overdose) and she was filled with guilt. She had just saved my life and went back to our diner like nothing had happened, she was a nurse so she was used to it. I couldn’t thank her enough and I pointed out that she helps saves lives for a living. Obviously that in no way can replace her daughter but she has saved other mother’s daughters and that God had put her in my life that night because, well I obviously don’t chew my food well enough but there are no coincidences.
My teacher also asked if there were moments in our childhood that we specifically remember having that Joy/Sense of safety that we no longer have in adulthood. I think I am very lucky. I can remember having that sense of calmness the first time when I was 14 years old and I was terrified to sleep in my new house. I was always afraid of something horrible happening to me and my family when I fell asleep. I prayed to God to help me and I felt like an invisible warm blanket come over me and I fell asleep within seconds. I say that I am lucky because I continue to have these moments now. Pretty regularly when I am in touch with God. But the innocence of youth sometimes allows us to be more open to opportunities like that, is what my teacher I think was trying to get at.
Why am I writing about all of this? Why not? God has blessed me with the knowledge of his existence and continues to demonstrate that my relationship with him is not restricted to boundaries, no limits, it can go as deep and as pure as I chose to take it. My morning meditation today was only 12 minutes but those 12 minutes give me a 24 hours of knowing that life will be okay, God has this and if I open my life I can help Him show others around me too. Just by smiling at someone on the street or letting the older woman at the bust top get on before you (which should come naturally as common courtesy but this day and age I feel like it is dwindling).
Bottom line: If I do not take the time to thank God with prayer and meditation, I will not stop thinking about myself long enough to become useful for Him. The ‘next right thing’ is not always apparent to me, but when I am tapped into that Conscious Contact I can again feel the innocence of a child who feels the breeze kiss their nose for the first time and is filled with Awe at the amazement of this life.
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