ojovivo
Sade Olutola
h
PR's Tumblrdome
sheepfilms
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Cosimo Galluzzi
YOU ARE THE REASON
Game of Thrones Daily
EXPECTATIONS
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Show & Tell
cherry valley forever
Andulka
Discoholic 🪩
izzy's playlists!
Today's Document
RMH
Claire Keane
Sweet Seals For You, Always
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Nigeria
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from South Africa
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Iraq
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Indonesia
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from United States
@geckleisms-blog
Just a small sampling of the cookies our wonderful residents decorated tonight to take to the soup kitchen tomorrow! What an excellent way to prepare our hearts for Christmas! Such a blessing to share a wonderful evening with some wonderful ladies! @husmanhall @kaite_brown @stefmckelvey @alainawerling
Advent Reflecting Yet Again
I don't know if this will be an everyday until Christmas thing, but it is for now so we will just stick with what we've got and roll with it. Today I have been thinking a lot about what I have been holding onto in my heart that has kept the space a little too claustrophobic for anyone to fit in comfortably. I have come up with a list of some things and some reasons why they aren't worth any space or just aren't worth the space I am allowing them to take up.
1. The ideas and hopes of relationships that aren't there. I know that I am not the only woman who does this... keeping our hearts pure and totally open is a struggle that we as women face daily because we have such a deep set desire for love, connection and relationship with people. At the heart of it, that is a good thing. But, when we allow it to consume us it becomes a problem and takes up space in our hearts that should be used to foster friendships and relationship with Christ who wants so desperately to love and pursue us. Creating future scenarios with someone whom you haven't even met yet (dreaming too often of your future husband) or with someone who you have convinced yourself that you are meant to at least date can take up a whole lot of space in your heart and it can end up hurting a whole lot. I speak from experience when I say that this can hurt you and hurt your friendships. It can very easily consume you... and then when things don't work out the way you have convinced your heart that they would the easiest person to blame is Christ and He gets pushed back to the far corners of the heart that we leaved untouched... and how sad is that when He was the one who, in every moment that you were chasing after something or grasping after something that was not ever real, He was the one who was constantly asking to pursue and protect your precious heart.
2. My own fears... boy have I allowed my fears to take up way too much space in my heart and my life. It's so easy to let fear consume you because then you don't have to deal with what is true. However, at some point when we have used that fear as a crutch and an excuse for long enough it ends up becoming what cripples us. I know that my fear has not allowed room for Christ because I worry too much about what His plan might be for me and how it might push me outside of my comfort zone or how it might not be what I thought I wanted out of life; it's the fear that what He wants for me won't be the same as the story that I had written for myself. But what I have learned recently is that when I let go of that fear, even in the slightest, and ask to see His plan or leave myself, leave my heart, open to His purpose for me... I am so much more at peace than I am when I allow that fear to take up all of that space.
3. The past... I would love to say that I am one who can forgive and forget! But, if I am being honest, I think I would have to say that I am more than likely the one who forgives (and even then not all the way sometimes) and has a really hard time forgetting and letting go. Is it not just so much easier to hold on to negativity and the ways we have been wronged. When we do this we excuse our actions and why we are the way we are instead of the best version of ourselves. But what I forget is that when I let go of that past and don't allow it to control my heart strings, I am much more likely to discover the beautiful things that He has in store for me in the now. And inevitably the now is so much more beautiful than the yesterdays.
4. My worries. I wish I could say that everyday I wake up and get out of bed a warrior, but I know that every morning I wake up with that intention I quickly let life and the world take over and put on the worrier outfit instead of the warrior's cape. My worries take up so much space in my life and I know they control so much of my life and what I do or don't do on a day to day basis... This is a fight I still need to fight (and I don't think it can wait until I choose to be an everyday warrior) and still need to figure out for myself a little bit.
These are just a few of the things I have noticed that are taking up too much space in my heart. They aren't giving Christ the space he deserves... the space within me that he calls beautiful and pursues and takes pleasure in.
Making room in my heart is a big deal... As I have been remembering all of this and reflecting upon all of it I have realized how much worth I hold within my heart and how truly precious it is. How could I not want to make room for Christ in there? How could I have not wanted to make room for someone who will love me more perfectly than anyone has ever been able to and more than anyone will ever be able to?
Your heart is a precious precious gift! It is whole and beautiful! Leave room within it only for the things that fulfill you and bring you serenity. Don't allow frustrations and lies and negativity clutter the most beautiful depths and spaces that are within you! Save it for someone who will always love you unconditionally (and also for that special someone who will make a vow to you some day to do all that he can to try to love you and take care of your precious heart in the same way).
It looks like it's time for some winter cleaning... time to open up the windows of my heart and throw out all of the ickies. It's going to be a lot of tough work, but if all of what I believe to be true is then it seems as though it will be worth it and a great deal of love and purpose will come from it!
Until Next Time
An Advent Reflection Part II
In the first part of my little informal and insignificant reflection on Advent I talked about how we need to confront our sufferings honestly so that we might make room in our hearts and in our lives for Christ. What on earth am I talking about? Let me try to explain further...
I forgot until yesterday that for a long time my mom would challenge us to choose a word to focus on during Advent. This was supposed to be a word that we wanted to make a bigger part of our daily attitudes and relationships with God and others. I was thinking that maybe this year I wanted to get back to choosing word and really focusing and meditating on it. Originally I thought that maybe my word should be serenity because the Serenity Prayer has been playing an important role in my daily life recently. And serenity is obviously an important part of keeping yourself sane... Basically serenity seemed like an obvious and easy choice. But then today I read some brief something somewhere about Advent being about the fun of Christmas preparation, but also about taking time to make room for Jesus in our hearts. It's not like I've never heard this phrase and reason for Advent before, but for some reason it really struck me today. And so now I think that my word for Advent will be Room. Not room in the sense of the place that I eat, sleep, work, live and breath; but room in the sense of space in my heart. (Super fantastic side note... I just looked up synonyms for room (another side note... if you don't use the thesaurus you should because it's awesome) and some of the words I found were: allowance, capacity, chance, expanse, opening, opportunity, and vastness! How unbelievable are those words when we are talking about our hearts and there being space for Jesus)! This is my reflection on that word and that idea...
I have spent so much time in the last year limiting and refusing Jesus the space that He is constantly pursuing within my heart. Now, I'm not saying that I was always willing and accepting of the fact that He was doing this in my life and I'm not saying it's something that I am always comfortable with but that is all a part of this Advent meditation and preparation I am working on. What I have found though is that in refusing Him the space He asks for, which may not always make me the most comfortable, I have become more uncomfortable in other ways.
So today my question is simple (or maybe not so simple). Is there room in my heart for You? That's a simple yes or no question, right? It sure is... but I have spent a lot of time saying, "maybe not, but it's okay because of x,y, and z" or "I just am not really sure today" or "I don't want to think about it" or "yeah, of course, duh." I think we all know what the more honest of the answers are... but I think the thing with all of these responses that is striking me is that I seem rather indifferent to how much space I may or may not have for Christ in my heart (because of my excuses of fear or not having time or not knowing or whatever else) when the reality of it all is that never once did He or has He hesitated to make room in His hear for me... and even more than that He has never stopped pursuing a space in my heart! This Advent season is going to be a really good time for me to make that space and to clear out some of those things that I have been allowing to take up space in my heart that either don't need to be there at all or I give to much space to. I know that regardless of how roomy my heart is, Christ has a presence in it, but the question is whether or not I am able to recognize it and whether or not I can find Him there and am open to that relationship with Him. And so it's time to do some winter heart cleaning and get rid of those things that I allow to take up space in my heart that someone else is so much more deserving of. (and that will be the topic of my next reflection)
Until Next Time
An Advent Reflection Part I
I was sitting in my Ignatian Spirituality class today and listening as we were discussing the third week of the exercises and how it focuses on suffering and what that might mean for us in our meditations. Ironically enough as we were talking about suffering I began to think about Advent and quickly realized that I was getting my liturgical seasons all messed up. Lent is when we focusing on our suffering and Advent is when we are supposed to be entirely celebratory in preparation for Christ's coming, right? In some ways this is true, but I think that even this misses some of the intent of the season of Advent. Advent is a joyful season and is meant to prepare for Christmas and we celebrate a new liturgical year and so many other new beginnings, yet I still think this can relate to our suffering. I know... I sound crazy, right? Let me try to explain myself. Our sufferings (regardless of how insignificant they may seem to us or others or how consuming they may be) have a miraculous and beautiful way of bringing us into deeper relationship. When we are able to be honest with ourselves about our sufferings and confront them we can do something with them and make something of them. I think that often we worry that our negativity might be pulling us away from Christ, but doesn't complete and total honesty in a relationship only serve to strengthen it in some way or another? And so, I think that our sufferings play a large role in our advent preparation... and it isn't focusing on the sadness and disparity of them, but on clearing them out so that we may make room for our Savior.
Part Two to come shortly...
Paulo Coelho, Brida
I decided today that either my love story is really epic...... or God keeps getting writers block... I am going with the option of it being really epic!
I am on Pinterest and all of these things keep popping up... "just because your single (insert any number of things here) it just means that God is/still is writing your love story!" This is super awesome and a great idea, but dang He has been writing this one for a while. So I came to the conclusion that it just must be that it is an incredibly epic story worth waiting for.
In reality I prefer to think that God isn't still writing my love story, but that He is reading it to me as I move through each and every day and we just haven't gotten to that part in the story yet. Which is frustrating at times and isn't exactly the way I had the story planned out, but it's cool because I am sure that He has something epic in mind. And maybe He just wants me to find me a little bit more and love that me a little bit more first! I don't know what the plan is or what the story looks like, but I guess that's the purpose in God writing it and reading it... we aren't supposed to know or try and figure it out for ourselves. And we aren't supposed to convince our hearts of things... let God do that.
So to all of you single ladies out there reading those things on Pinterest... don't start getting frustrated and rolling your eyes after the millionth time you read one. Instead trust that your love story is just extra epic and even more importantly remember (as I often forget) that you are living your love story right now as God loves you more magnanimously and eternally and unconditionally than any human being ever could or will (and He has probably given you lots of friends and family and other people to help you remember that while your storybook continues to unfold)!
Go be epically single! Love yourself epically! And live out your epic love story now and forever!
Until Next Time
'Since a woman is loved, it follows that the nobler a woman is, the nobler a man will have to be to be deserving of that love' (Bishop Fulton Sheen).
#Hope365 #ItIsNotLost "My heart changed my mind..."
It is sometimes a sad reality of life that there are times when we have to figure out how to work through or get past a struggle in friendship... I think that in the last two weeks I have chosen one of the worst possible ways to work through a struggle with one of the best people I know. What's hard in these moments of struggle in friendship is that no one wants to admit that they are wrong... not only that, but when you are in real and deep friendship with someone else it is easier to blame it all on them because we have an assumption that they will always be there. The reality is that there is no guarantee... so time spent angry and bitter and annoyed and frustrated and whatever else is pointless and gets us no where. If we imagine ourselves in a large expansive and beautiful wildflower field and imagine all those we cherish and love with us somewhere in that field, I think we have to picture those that we want to keep near us in the field so that they don't get lost within the wildflowers because the reality in all of that is that some people will get lost never to be found again.
So yes, there are things in life that we deserve and don't deserve. But whatever I deserve is exactly what someone else deserves. I can't say that I don't deserve to be left after having left someone and I can't say that I don't deserve to be hurt when in reality a great deal of the hurt being caused is no one's fault because it is just he result of life and how a heart feels.
A friend asked me what I want yesterday... I had to ask her if she wanted to know what I want in my wildest dreams or what I know is reality and what I want in that. The reality of that is that it is crucial for us to consider what is real and what isn't and what we do and don't want... and what do we really want. If what we want is selfish and unachievable and depends upon another person bending to our will then we should probably reconsider...
I don't know. I guess relationships are a crazy thing, but they are something to be honored and always cherished especially those that we know we don't want to lose. There is a reason for all things and a purpose for all people. It is time for me to start remembering to cherish and to honor people in their humanness mistakes and all. It really is all about forgiveness and then it becomes about forgetting and moving forward which is the harder part but maybe the more essential...
Crafting gives me hope. #Hope365 #ItIsNotLost
The time I spent cookie decorating with my hall #Hope365 #ItIsNotLost
Being home and getting ready for Halloween. #Hope365 #ItIsNotLost
Hoping someday I will improve on my bowling game... #Hope365 #ItIsNotLost
Trying to schedule classes for the spring... hoping I can make it another two semesters! #Hope365 #ItIsNotLost
Getting this picture this morning. Realizing how long a friendship has and can last and having hope and faith that it will be forever. It really is "true love!" #Hope365 #ItIsNotLost
It seems to be one of those weeks in life where relationships are frustrating and people just plain stump you... I was talking to my best friend tonight and I realized that no matter how hard we try and no matter how much we want to understand and just let things be okay these things are always going to happen. As much as we want friendships to be perfect and problem free... we are human beings and we have emotions and feelings that get in the way. And as much as we try not to get frustrated, sometimes we can't help it and the frustration we feel or the frustration other people feel affects us and in some way has an impact on our friendships. What is really amazing to me is that it seems that there are a lot of relationships in life that one party or the other always wishes that things were the way they wanted it to be or the way they envision it... this is so bizarre because without fail this creates ickies in relationships... I guess my questions is why can't we all just go with it? More than that, why can I not be okay with things just being the way they are? It is so easy for me to look at what someone says to me or how they respond to me and say that they are being a jerk and they don't understand... but whose to say that I'm not being a jerk as well and that I don't understand. I know that I suffer from a wanting to understand too much complex. I have a tendency to want to know and understand everything and forget to just live in and love the questions and laugh through the misunderstandings. What's hard is that we all have our people... they are those few people in our world that we know when it comes down to it regardless of what is going on we will be able to count on and rely on them. When we see these icky moments happening in our relationships we fear what will happen to these people. The question then becomes how do we hold on to them... I think the conclusion I've come to is that like in much of life we have to let go of our own plans and live instead towards a journey towards God's plan... instead of focusing on how I feel and how I treat and love people I should be focusing on how I can best love people and the love they need, not what I am receiving in return. I guess that I have discovered that in life when you find people that mean the world to you and the people who get you and get life you have to do everything you can to love them and hold onto them even if that means loving them and holding on to them in a way different from the way you wanted or the way you had hoped. A friend reminded me recently that the way you feel in your heart is never wrong... but the thing to remember is that we have to choose what we do with how we feel. When you love someone you have to make a choice on how to do that best whether or not they love you back. It's how our parents love us and it's how our Father God loves us. My no means is it simple... but it's about learning to accept our current situation as it is, to live fearlessly, to continue to hold onto hope and to let freedom be a part of our lives, to love selflessly and completely and to trust that there is a plan for everything without worrying what the end product will be... it's about learning to stop asking the questions and to just start living them.
Until Next Time!
Today one of my professors called me up as I was leaving class to let me know how much he enjoyed a reflection paper I had written. He then encouraged me to continue writing... write every day. I forget how important it is for me to write everyday. To write when I feel like writing and to write when I don't and to write when I have something brilliant to say and to write when I don't. That's pretty much all I learned today... I was reminded that I need to keep writing and how good it is for me to write and reflect on my days. And I found this quote the other day and I think it is a perfect representation of the importance of writing and how we all become writers...
Until Next Time!
