Christmas

Dove of peace




Christmas is a special time. But it can also be a hard time for some people. It shouldn’t be, but it seems to be that way in many cases. During this time of year there can be more depression, more sadness, more debt, more stress, more loneliness, and way too much busy-ness. This type of Christmas is not what it was meant to be like. Sometimes there is not enough love, peace, contentment, happiness, simplicity, and spirituality!! Think about how you could make it this kind of Christmas.

One word stands out for me….SIMPLICITY.

The things we take for granted

We get so comfortable with our life style and the things that make ease of living. But then one day, for whatever reason, those things temporarily cease to be there for us….and we realize how much we have taken it for granted.

For instance…telephones. Have you ever had service to your regular telephone or cell phone interrupted? My goodness, but we can’t function without it!!!! We feel that we are cut off from the human race.

Another is electricity. When we have a power outage lasting longer than 10 minutes we wander around lost, with nothing to do. Everything is run by electricity. I have been known to enter a room and try to switch on the light....out of habit.

Then there is our water supply. When the city decides to turn off the water for whatever reason… that’s when we realize how often we do use water. Automatically I am at the sink trying to wash my hands, or get a drink, or get a pot of water for cooking or rinsing food. Oh yah... then there’s flushing the toilet.

Computers that die….well say your prayers. Life almost ceases to exist then!! I really dread the day when that happens to me….again!

If you had 24 hours...1 day...with perfect and complete health, how would you spend it?

The title of this post came from the wonderful movie, "Tuesdays with Morrie", starring Jack Lemmon. He plays a professor who is dying from Lou Gehrig's disease and asks that question. It is a must see movie!

I was touched and inspired by that question and decided to write a post about it.

Whatever your health conditions are right now....pretend you have been given 24 hours of reprieve from whatever it is that you might be suffering. Maybe you have depression; or memory loss; or a physical deformity; or artificial limbs; or cancer; or are paralyzed; or are blind, deaf, mute; or have some terrible irreversible disease; or a zillion other health maladies of life. Whatever your health situation, close your eyes right now and visualize how you would spend the next 24 hours if you had perfect and complete health.

Any of you readers of this post who care to, please comment and leave us your impression of a day spent with perfect health, compared to your limitations or health struggles you now experience.

If you were to create another holiday, what would it be for?

image courtesy of Celine Chamberlin

My friend L. asked me the above question. He sometimes gives me topics and thoughts to think and write about. So here is my writing about a new holiday:



If I were to create another holiday...it would be to honor the OLDER PEOPLE...everyone age 70 and over. It would be a celebration of their golden years and of a long life and their treasure trove of learning and wisdom. The name of the holiday would be "Senior Citizen's Day". They would also enjoy, on that day, a free dinner compliments of their favorite restaurant!

My nasty and eerie computer!

I am having some very strange experiences with my computer. I think someone put a spell on it, because it is out to get me. Let me relate a few experiences I have been having.

I enjoy watching a movie in the evenings to relax, and maybe it gets over around 10:30 or 11pm. I then consider going to bed…BUT…and here is the eerie part….my computer starts calling out to me, “come here, come here”.

I really try to resist but I feel helpless against it’s magnet-like pull. I keep telling myself not to listen and to go to bed so that I can get my restful sleep. But I am no match for my computer….I am too weak to resist. And quicker than you can sneeze, I find myself seated before the darn thing.

Ok…I will just check my e-mails and then I will go to bed. So I check my mail and then the eerie computer starts in again.. “now you had better file all those hundreds of e-mails in your inbox so you can find things”. I want to go to bed! “It won’t take long and you will feel so good that you did that”. Ok, but then I am going to bed!

So I finish filing the hundreds of e-mail and then I look at the clock….it is 12:30am, 90 minutes since I first sat down in front of this eerie machine! The computer won’t let me alone…what is the matter with it?!!!! Now it is urging me to check on a clip art website that it remembered I wanted to visit. I will do it in the morning! “Why put it off till the morning…aren’t you anxious to see what is on it?” It is like I am in a trance…next thing I know I am into the clip art site. “Oh that one is cute, you better save that…and look here at this one, better save that one too”.

Well, I again look at the clock and it is now 2:30am! I need and want to go to bed…NOW! “In a minute, but just do this one little last thing first”. Oh my gosh…I can’t believe it…my computer has hypnotized me! It is controlling me….help! help! Now it wants me to go into my file that I keep my clip art and other images. I am urged to start rearranging and organizing all my images!

What a mess that was to take care of. I look at the clock again…it is now 4:30am. WHAT! Where did all the time go?!! That’s it, hypnotized or not…I MUST GET TO BED! I take one strong will-power move (against all other unseen powers)…and click on the words: TURN OFF COMPUTER. There…I did it. I won this time. That computer can’t control me anymore. Good night.

That was last night. Tonight is very hopeful of an early bed time right after my movie. The movie gets over and I start getting ready for bed. Oh, no! Not that voice in my head again: “come here, come here”…as I glance over at my nasty, eerie computer. No, please, no…not tonight. I am so tired. I must go to bed to catch up on the sleep I missed last night. “It will only take a minute….didn’t you say you wanted to check out something on YouTube?”

What do I want to do, or be, when I grow up?

In my senior year of High School many years ago, I thought (for a short while) that I would like to join the Navy (Waves) when I graduated. That didn’t last long. I never learned to make goals and work towards them (still don’t). I just lived a day at a time back then, and come what may. If someone would have told me back then that I would religiously be where I am now…I would have laughed at them.

After graduation my Grandma must have been doing some heavy thinking in my behalf. Evidently she did not like my step-mother (I did…she was very good to me) and she thought I needed to get away from home life (or whatever her reason really was…..I don’t remember at the time). Anyway, she made arrangements with the family across the street from us. Their daughter just graduated college and about 5 other of her friends were going to California to be school teachers. I ended up traveling with them in two cars and my grandmother had made arrangements for me to go to the home of her nephew and his family, of whom I did not know.

I stayed with them for a few weeks or so and then they helped me get a car, a job, and a place to live. After several months, I met my first husband and we were married 3 months later.

Anyway, it seemed as though my life was being planned out for me by others after graduation. And after I became so close to my Church and God, I received a personal revelation about my life…and that is exactly what I truly believe that God was doing with this inward, shy, full of potential, young girl. He was leading, guiding and helping her to where he would like her to be…because he had something great for her in her life. And if she did not balk, and “do her own thing”…great things were spiritually in store for her.

Through the years of my life since then, it has been like many, many puzzle pieces of my life that was all coming together and forming a grand picture….mine for the taking!! But not without sacrifice and hard work. We all have the gift of free agency…to choose for our self what we want for our life. Do we want happiness and joy, or sadness and misery?
It all depends upon our choices.

If I Had All the Money and Time in the World, What Would I Do?

My friend L. gave me this question to ponder and write about.

1) I probably would not change my life style much because I am me and never have desired much of the things of the world. I can't justify spending money on worthless trinkets that can't help and benefit other people, OR MYSELF.

2) I would NOT desire large fancy homes or luxury cars...no matter the money. Never cared about that, ever!

3) It would be wonderfully fun to randomly pass out a $100 bill to people as I walk by them and see their reaction of surprise and delight.

4) I would love to stand by the check out stand in a grocery store and see the look on peoples faces when I pay for their groceries. THIS HAPPENED TO ME ONCE....but my groceries came to less than $20. The guy had a big roll of money and I was told that he did that quite often in the store. It was a wonderful feeling to have someone want to do that for ME.

5) I would pay off all my family members house mortgages and car loans. I would pay for all my grandkids to go to college.

6) I would donate money to the city for the purchase of a huge area of land to be made into an arboretum complete with animals and birds.

7) For myself, I would love to take a trip to Germany with all my kids, and spend several months or so just touring around. That is where my ancestors came from.

8) I would pay for a live-in maid or for a full time nurse in the homes of the very elderly who struggle along and who can't afford this and who need it very much because of their health conditions and circumstances.

9) I would create a large animal refuge park (like a zoo) with lots of activities and rides for families and have sort of a circus atmosphere to it. IT WOULD BE FREE FOR EVERYONE TO ENJOY.

10) I would pay for nannies to come and stay with children, while I would send their parents off on little romantic get-away trips so that they can have little honeymoons all the time to rekindle the flames of love and closeness.

11) I would go to small towns that do not have many wholesome activities for kids to do. I would build an indoor and outdoor facility large enough to hold all kinds of things for the youth to enjoy, such as skating rink, skate board area, game rooms, amusement park and rides, dirt bike trails and hills, etc.

Family

When you think about the evolution of a family it is quite amazing. We are born into this world as tiny helpless babies, totally dependent upon the care and nurturing of two other people….our mother and father (our parents).

We have grandparents…who are the parents of our parents. Our parents once were little tiny babies just like we were, and so were our grandparents, and so it was on down the line back through our ancestors.

Our parents take very good care of us and we grow and learn and grow and learn until we are old enough to find a companion and get married. Then we begin to have little babies of our very own. We become parents.

We raise our little children and take good care of them. They grow and learn and grow and learn until they are old enough to find a companion and get married. Then they begin to have little babies of their own. They become parents and we become grandparents..

The cycle goes on and on and on, through time.

Each family is very unique. The mother brings with her the background, culture, and traditions of the family that she was raised up in. And the father is the same. So here are two people from different backgrounds coming together and blending their different heritages. They bring forth children who inherit something from each of their parents backgrounds. Then each child in that family marries someone who comes from totally different backgrounds, cultures, and traditions. Then they have children who inherit the combined cultures not only from their parents, but their grandparents on both sides of the family on down through time. This creates all different backgrounds of heritages within the family.

What an awesome and marvelous thing it is, when you really ponder about it all. And life goes on and on through the ages….blending all these people and their different cultures and backgrounds together. What a tremendous potpourri of heritages.

Can you imagine what it will be like in the spirit world after this life, when we all meet again as a complete family. So much diversity! It will be very interesting, indeed.