Category: Personal Improvemant

Debris

Jeanne 1 Comment

Last weekend was General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and I was impressed with a challenge given by Russell M. Nelson, President and Prophet. He spoke of the renovation taking place on the Salt Lake Temple. Apparently there is considerable excavation as they dig down to the foundation, and much debris to be screened for historical finds and then the remainder to be throw out as trash.

Our lives accumulate debris. I hope it’s not as bad as I sometimes see in every corner of my house…lurking unfinished projects, ‘things’ I’ve long forgotten why I saved them in the first place. Going through them is usually overwhelming, and exhausting to be prioritizing so many things at once. Do I really have time for this? Am I still interested in that? Why do I have so many of those? and, Oh, is that where that is!

President Nelson challenged us to identify debris in our lives and eliminate it. Just like cleaning up a discouragingly cluttered room, the thought of looking inward for a clean-up, is not exactly exciting. It would be interesting to see how we spend our time each day. We all have things we consider of supreme importance, and I suspect they aren’t cleaning the house, or games on our phone, or watching TV, or reading facebook posts.

I suppose the first step would be to identify what those really important things are and if we are really getting around to them, or, are you like me, and keep saying, “I’ll get to it next week….” I’ve said that about a couple of projects for more than a year now. So, I’m going to try to clean up. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to involve some habit breaking and changing, and that’s hard.

I need to post a poem about it. But I don’t have one. Do you? Somebody post us some lines about our debris.

Listen to the General Conference message on www.churchofjesuschrist.org

WHY FISH

Jeanne 1 Comment

For some people, it’s fishing. Some really get into gardening, or walking. Some of us travel. Photography, art, singing. Hobbies. My Dad always said that everyone needs a hobby. His was building radio-controlled airplanes and then flying them. He also played the guitar and taught me. That became a passion for me for many years. What is it for you? What beckons you? What is it that is so compelling that you even forget to eat?

Fishing brings us to lazy rivers, streams & bayous, or lakes wide & deep,
Or sand & waves, or oceans wide, with dreams where large fish sleep,
Where small & large, thick & thin, black to white, fish wish to stay,
With live bait, flies & lures, we fish night and day.

And when at last, we catch a fish, from a bass to silver king,
We have a fight from great to sleight, that makes our spirits sing!
Some fish for food, some fish for sport, some catch & then release.
Some fish to relax in our Creator's art.  God's canvas brings us peace.

As we hold this life force within our own two hands,
It's up to us to free that fish, or cook it in a frying pan.
If I decide to keep this fish & take it's life away,
I take it's life reverently & before we eat that fish, we pray.

We thank God for all the miracles of fish to meats on land or sea,
From fruit to nuts, peas to melons; all here to set our taste buds free.
We thank God for everything we smell,  touch, taste, hear, sense & see.
For the Gifts to talk & walk, & sing praises unto Thee.

We are grateful for every living thing:  mammals to birds, shrimp to fish.
We thank God for Jesus the Christ.  He grants us each worthy wish.

Gratitude

Jeanne 1 Comment

This is the last and 5th psalm of Thanksgiving:

Gratitude is the gateway to Christ's pure charity.
Let's strive to be grateful for all we know, taste, touch and see,
Like rainbows & different flowers, insects, mammals, reptiles, 
birds, fish, lands and sky,
Let our hearts by filled with gratitude, and let us share it by and by.

#givethanks

Be Grateful

Jeanne 1 Comment

Psalm #4 

Be grateful for each pain we have that gives us greater light.
Heartaches from our dear ones can help us gain insight.
Let us be more grateful, for everything we learn and see.
Remember, just past death's door, we join in God's eternity.

Giving Thanks

Jeanne 1 Comment

This is the 3rd psalm of Thanksgiving….I think I missed a day. Yesterday I was feeling a bit down, you know, when everything goes wrong, and you can’t seem to focus on anything, and you don’t feel like doing anything, and you feel guilty for it?

And I thought about gratitude and knew that was the gateway out of my depression…But….Knowing something and doing it are 2 very different things. It’s easy to be grateful when you feel good. Tell me what you do to be grateful when you don’t especially feel like it?

Let us try giving thanks when life burns and stings.
Through many kinds of emotions, God's hope gives us wings,
To fly above life's turmoil and feel God's healing Son,
And warm us & friends, as we grow and live as one.

Attitude = Gratitude

Jeanne 1 Comment

The countdown to Thanksgiving Day (November 26) ought to spark an attitude of gratitude and turn our hearts to reflect upon the blessings we enjoy, even though 2020 has been characterized as a year of disaster. We have been conditioned to almost expect unfortunate events–to the point that we fail to recognize the ‘good’…the things all around us that bless our lives.

Yesterday I was swept away with the spirit of decorating for Christmas as I saw neighbors and family doing this in abundance. As I opened boxes and once again beheld items of sentimental importance…little things: a train, a string of bubble lights, miniature houses and battery lighted tiny trees…all, exactly the same as I left them last year. There was a ‘sameness’ that brought great joy and comfort. Despite the 2020 disastrous events, there was still happiness, just as it always has been, and, for a few short hours of decorating, I forgot the dark 2020 world outside, and all was well.

Gratitude = attitude in all we strive to do.
If we're caught in Covid-19, this title still holds true.
Some see this pandemic through sorrows and swollen eyes.
Our prayers are for all who mourn.  Our hearts feel your cries.

We are an older couple.  We strive to live each day.
We call and text our loved ones and help in our own way.
Jeanne decorates for Christmas as we prepare for family,
In hope and prayer that all are well to join us.  We will see?

We stay at home the best we can to keep us virus free.
We read the scriptures every day to keep our sanity.
We work together on some chores.  On some dreams, we work alone,
But help each other when we're asked, to make our house a home.

We pray each dawn and eve and over every meal.
We feel God's love and comfort as Christ becomes more real.
Gratitude =  attitude.  Thank Thee Lord for good and bad,
For all life's experience with each lesson, happy or sad.

#GiveThanks

Get Out Of The Box!

Jeanne 1 Comment

Just some thoughts today…Once you think about it–it just might seem to get worse.

A health crisis is upon us. Cases are on a sharp rise. Hospital beds are at capacity. Wearing a mask and washing your hands is easy-peasy, but some other aspects are not…over time:

Staying at home, as we are asked to do…when we need grocery items (all the time)…When we crave a burger and fries that we haven’t cooked….When we need to prepare for Christmas and shop as we have always done in the past…When we are asked to limit physical contact and who we ought to be around…when we just want to take all day and stroll through a store and just ‘look’.

So, you begin to feel BOXED IN, and the walls seem to squeeze you, and

..that only makes all the things you want to or need to do seem bigger and bigger…and the box gets smaller and smaller and pushes all those ‘things’ against you–in your face, and you can’t see anything else. And there just isn’t room anymore.

And a thousand things are undone…then, none of them are even appealing, in fact, nothing seems appealing. You don’t want to do anything, but you feel ‘driven’ to do something, but what? You can’t see any answers because all your problems have wrapped themselves around your face, and blocked off everything. Sometimes you feel you can’t breathe. Sometimes you feel the whole world is against you, and any joy that used to be vivid is now muted and dull.

And in that closing box, even vision is now limited to not even beyond your nose.

I CALL THIS DEPRESSION !

It’s a very ugly thing. See it for what it is, and get out of that box!

getting out of the box will make the walls of your home seem even expansive! And your sight will lengthen out and discover the many things inside your new expanded space–the things that you CAN DO without even leaving the house. And you are so busy thinking of those things that you no longer notice what it was that you CAN’T DO.

That’s the trick…get out of the box

Sometimes, just knowing you’re in a little box is all it takes to step out and re-focus…but, we’re lucky if it ends up being that easy.

Sometimes we sit in the box, and we know we are in the box, and we want to be out, but we can’t break away.

Friends and family may help if we want them to. Call them. Doctors can help if we need them to. Call them. Jesus Christ will help is we pray him to. Pray.

Just get out of that tiny box!

I think it must also be dark in the box. Watch this to see images of light..

To Ponder

Jeanne 1 Comment 
To ponder is to meditate upon some special thing
Like a death or our Mother, or a psalm we read or sing.
Our pondering helps magnify the longings of one's heart,
As we choose to ponder, sacred feelings in us start.

If we ponder through deep sorrows, we can understand how to cope.
To ponder on the life of Christ, lifts us up and gives us hope.
Our Lord helps us to ponder if we strive through humble prayer,
We can grow through deeper feelings if we pray to learn and care.

We each can choose to meditate on each sacred day,
As we learnt to place importance upon our Lord's sacred way.
As we study God's true Son and overcome all worldly fear,
We will find more inner peace as we grow from year to year.

May we learn to truly ponder, as Mary did on her son, our Lord, Christ.
Then by true meditation, pure peace will lessen strife.
Lord, help us learn to ponder with a humble, searching soul,
For Thou art our greatest teacher.  Help us ponder, trust and grow.

This phrase, “..And Mary pondered these things in her heart.”, are repeated several times in the New Testament, in speaking of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. We define ‘ponder’ as to weigh or consider carefully. In our world, there is much competition for our attention, and we typically find ourselves busy, with our thoughts occupied with a task at hand… And, somehow have come to think of being busy as being a good thing, even a sort of badge of importance. We feel that we are lazy if we should sit for a few minutes and do NOTHING. Pondering is a quiet thing. It not only gives our mind a chance to connect with our heart, but also gives heaven a chance to connect with our heart too.

Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid.

Jeanne 1 Comment

This image is a watercolor I created from an illustration in one of my beloved Babar kids books (Babar the King). In the story, Celestville, the city of the elephants has an unusual number of stressful occurances (snake bite and house fire). These, like many things we worry about and stress over, caused Babar to fall prey to fear, but, in his dreams he envisioned winged elephants (hope, love, faith, patience, etc.) driving misfortune away.

These are troubled times. We read in the book of Kings about the prophet, Elisha, who finds himself and the city surrounded by the innumerable enemy. His young companion, upon seeing this asked what they could possibly do. (2 Kings 6:16) “And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them….And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about …”

And Joshua is promised, “..Be strong and of a good courage: be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest.” (Joshua 1:9)

Rudyard Kipling wrote, from his poem, An astrologer’s Song:

Though terrors o'ertake us
We'll not be afraid.
No Power can unmake us
Save that which has made:
Nor yet beyond reason
Or hope shall we fall--
All things have their season,
And Mercy crowns all!

Then, doubt not, ye fearful--
The Eternal is King--
Up, heart, and be cheerful,
And lustily sing:--
What chariots, what horses,
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses
Do fight on our side?

I don’t know what you do to reduce anxiety, but these verses of scripture and poetry really do open up a pathway for me, and, like the winged elephants, really do help chase away the grip of misfortune.

What do you do? What helps you? Your comments are so welcomed.