Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Gratitude

 In the mornings, I sit on the front porch or the back deck.  It's a quiet neighborhood.  The breeze stirs the leaves on the trees.  Sometimes there are birds, sometimes squirrels and always my precious kitties.  They get some strokes and then are content to lie nearby washing their paws and faces.  I breathe and believe that in this moment, Life is perfect.  I know it won't last, and I like to breathe in the gratitude as deeply as possible, filling my cup for whatever the day brings.
 
There is a silver lining.  This movie is teaching me.  Awkward, uncomfortable situations are part of life, heck, maybe they are most of life, maybe it's our trying to avoid them that sucks the most.

I keep getting the same message.  From my mother's minister on Sunday. From other spiritual talks. Sit with the pain.  And Joe Dispenza's training keeps popping up, saying that the more often we return to the present moment the more energy is available for healing.  These are things that I've been working on.  When I feel really stressed, lol, having a strategy as Pat's therapist tells him, and then Tiff talking him down and helping him breathe.  I'm doing that.  Just breathe and don't get on the field of death with a reaction.  Just because I'm invited doesn't mean I have to go.  Those demons delight when I lose it and get angry, I can almost hear them laughing.  Bleah on you, I'm determined, through the power of the Holy Spirit and my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to win this battle. I will do whatever it takes, because I am a beloved daughter of a loving Heavenly Father and he knew this would be what is best for me.  He knows my heart, he knows my needs.  So, for now, I sit with it.  And the Universe opens to me. 

Victor Frankl's book, "Man's Search for Meaning" came to me in college as an assignment I am ever grateful for.  I highly recommend it.  Here are some quotes from a man who survived a Nazi concentration camp and went on to become a very distinguished neurologist and psychiatrist.

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”

 “Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge.”

“Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.”
 
“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.”

“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.”

“No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.”
 
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.”

"I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and he answered me in the freedom of space."  (which paraphrases Psalm 118.5: "I called upon the Lord in distress: the Lord answered me, and set me in a large place."

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."
 
"What is to give light must endure burning."
 


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