What is a home?

A home can be many things to many people.

A home can be a place where our precious family abides. A home can be a place of refuge, safety and protection from the world and the elements. A home can be a large debt that weighs us down. A home can be a place filled with love, peace, happiness, and God. A home can be a place where we store all the accumulated “stuff”, or items, we have collected all our life. A home can be a fancy showplace with expensive furnishings and such. A home can be a place of learning and growth. A home can be a haven for a friend in need. A home can be a “heaven on earth” for all who dwell therein.

The word "Happiness"

(see the January 18th post)

HAPPINESS is....enjoying; marked by great pleasure. (according to the dictionary).

How many of the things in life do we thoroughly enjoy? What value do we give to each of these things that we enjoy? I am using the word things in a very broad sense. Do we feel that these things bring us happiness? And what level of happiness do they bring....momentary, for a day or week or a month, or longer.. say years? And here is the big test of happiness....will it bring Eternal joy and happiness? What could possibly bring us this Eternal (forever.. without end) joy and happiness? I will let you think about that and ponder and meditate on it.

Maybe you could make a list of all the things that bring you joy and happiness...then rate each one on a scale of 1-10. Ten being the most happiness. I expect “family” to be on your list!

Valentine's Day has come and gone

I had a friend ask me this last Tuesday... “Well, are you ready for single’s awareness day?” I am sure I had a puzzled look on my face as I said, “I have never heard of that.” She said, “you know...Thursday...Valentine’s Day...the day we are made very aware of our single status if we DON'T have a husband or a boyfriend?”.

I wish she hadn’t have told me that, because ALL DAY on Valentine’s Day I was sad because of MY status.

Hmmmmmmm.....maybe I should have posted this article on my depression blog..... http://upsy-downsysblog.blogspot.com/

Grieving

We have all lost someone we love through the process of death. And we all know how hard and difficult that time is for us.

Yesterday I attended the funeral of a family member. It was a very special, uplifting service. One of the speakers made the following comment, that I would like to share. I am not sure I have the wording exact. He said, “The only way to get rid of the pain of grieving, is to get rid of the love in life”. Pretty profound, I thought.

What is a legacy?

Webster says it is “something left by will; a bequest; something handed down or derived from an ancestor or earlier time”.

Do we have any legacies left by any of our ancestors? Their journal, diary, or life story? If we do, we know the great value and treasure these things are to us. These legacies left, help us to know about that ancestor.

What if we did not have anything left by any ancestor? What if they never wrote anything about themselves? What a tragedy. How would we be able to know them?...To know the kind of person they were, their feelings, thoughts, the kind of life they lived, what they did and accomplished. Honestly....how would we feel?

Would we want OUR posterity, in time, to feel that way about us? Would we want to be a great big question mark in the mind of our descendants? Think about it. Down through the generations of our family...no one would have a clue about US...because we did not take the time to write about our self and leave it as a legacy (a gift of ourself) for our posterity. Our life story...what we are all about...will have been buried with us. What a tragedy that CAN be. But it doesn’t HAVE to be.

Let’s begin today. Let’s start writing our life story for our future generations of family. We do not want to be forgotten or unknown to them, do we?

So what do we do....how do we begin to write our life story?

Near the top of this blog home page, on the right hand side is a section titled “visit my 4 other blogs”. Click on my blog titled “Writing Your Life Story...one memory jog at a time”. Here I give you step by step instructions for getting started, some tips, and a multitude of questions that will help to jog your memory of happenings and incidents in YOUR life. These are the things you write about. These are the things your family would want to know about you.

So begin right now. It will be fun and extremely rewarding to you....AND a priceless possession in the hands of your family. It will be your gift of love to them.