Dear Reader, I advise you to do these things on rainy days (I’m not talking about the weather). Bookmark this article or link it or whatever the kids are doing these days, and open it when you’re f…
Source: 100 Things To Do If You’re Sad
Tag Archives: passion
Be Thankful – Be Positive
The National Novel Writing Month, affectionately called NaNoWriMo, is in full swing. Do you NaNo? I am honored to be the Liaison for my Region. I take care of small details and set up events for my Region. We meet together, for those interested, every week. I’m a sometime coach and general encourager.
This year we have more under 18 writers than last year. I’ve been surprised at how a small encouraging word makes a big impact. One author was ready to quit and is now strongly powering on to the finish. One young adult, barely over 18, made a comment to me in an email.
“I’m behind just a little in my word count but I really want to catch up, this is my last chance to be an author.”
Did you just hear the brakes of my virtual car slam on? I could swear they did and a 20 car pileup ensued. I wanted to ask, who has been filling your mind with rubbish but refrained. My job is to encourage not to solve the issue of world peace or even home peace.
I hope I managed to convince this precious writer that it is not the last chance. They are writing between 250-500 words in each 10 minute virtual word sprint. I have reasoned with the writer that if you can write that many words in 10 minutes, why can’t you find a 15 minute chunk of time to write every day. Hide in the bathroom; write in bed after lights go out. Write over lunch (I do!). It’s o.k. to write in public just as it is o.k. to hide your writing in secret. It is not o.k. to quit on yourself. Don’t give up your dreams no matter who tells you are not ______ enough.
Jesus only gave us two rules to live by: Love God, Love Others. During this Thanksgiving season, do your own personal reality checkup. Ask yourself:
- Do I express my thanks and appreciation to God and others?
- Am I kind to myself?
- Am I kind to others?
- Am I paying too much attention to what others say?
- Am I paying attention to my goals and dreams?
- Am I thankful?
It is a rare honor to be able to convince someone to believe in themselves and to reach for their personal dreams. Be so thankful and kind this Thanksgiving that someone will be encouraged because you are alive! Go change someone’s world for the better; it might be your own.
Filed under Inspiration, Writing
Peckish About My Lost Pict
It’s been nineteen months since my beloved was called home to help out Jesus. My beloved was always serving others, I don’t know of a time when he refused to help another. He had the gift of mercy down pat. Me, not so much. I struggle with a sense of right and fair.
I am constantly reminding myself that God never said life would be fair but that we should be. Mercy was my beloved’s best quality and the one that often frustrated me. You see it cost him his life, he kept nothing back and gave it all to others. He tried to follow Christ’s teachings as much as he could. I go from missing him terribly to being furious with him for not balancing his energies and saving something for himself.
I have come to grips with the realization that the people that manipulated him into helping them move while he was suffering from pneumonia will never express remorse or apology. I am choosing to believe that they cared for him and feel remorse; they too may have problems dealing with his loss at 52 years.
My beloved did not love perfectly, but he loved me. Our marriage had a couple of bumps in the road and one rocky patch where I almost gave up. I’m glad I didn’t. He was so sick and was making bad choices, everyone said I should leave him and cut my losses, that the illness would only get worse. For better or worse, right. We made the choice to love each other and our marriage found a new plateau. I loved nothing better than just laying in bed, feeling his arms around me. Now, I have good memories and no regrets. My mother is in her eighties, I may have twenty three plus years left to find peace and balance in my life. I’m working on it!
This emotional tug of war saps my strength. If only I could just wash the emo away with a good cry!
I saw a grief counselor for a brief time. She said people who love deeply, grieve deeply and I should be kinder to myself. I get depressed from time to time but refuse to stay there. He would hate that. I have his ashes on the floor next to my shoes. Mostly because I have to wait to do what I want with them. For now, when I behave badly, I simply roll him over in his grave, laugh, and go on as he would want me to with a, “Top of the Day to You” and a “I live to serve”.
St. Patrick’s Day was a big holiday for my Celtic lover. We didn’t celebrate St. Patrick as much as all things Celtic; he was all Pict as he used to say. He was seventh generation native Californian but still all Pict. His ancestors lived in the mountains and were sheep herders and lumbermen and later a purveyor of fine (and not so fine) Scots whiskey!
My Great Scot is gone (for now) and so ends his pict line. The little Irish girl in me abstained from the yummy soda bread and the St. Paddy’s fixin’s, maybe next year. I did wear green and an Irish sweater, drank pots and pots of tea, and cried for his loss. Maybe next year I’ll bake the Soda Bread with currants.
Sleep well my love; you have earned your rest!
Ti Amo, Tanta Ti Amo Mi Amore!
Foster: to help something grow or develop, to nuture
I never seem to be able to understand the cruelty of man, nor do I really want to. For in that understanding, it would forever change me. My beloved saw such cruelty as a child until he reached his majority. It made him not a cruel, but a kind man. He taught me the value of mercy, not getting what you deserve. I struggle with extending mercy where it is not deserved. I cannot save every child, just the ones brought into my life by plan or circumstance.
This weekend one that “got away” returned. I will call her Grace, she is graceful and in spite of all that has happened to her, kind and tenderhearted and more than a little bit gullible. I worked with her as a young girl but, she had so many years of damage. She had been in the foster system for years due to serious abuse and had several siblings. Her little sister was kept with her. The foster parents were train wrecks. (Thank you to the good ones out there!) They could pass a home inspection; answer all the test questions and looked good on paper. The constant verbal abuse and the difference made between the “good” biological children and the two girls was devastating. Would you be surprised to learn that both girls made bad life choices and have trouble with relationships? The little sister is strung out on drugs and bad relationships. Grace hit relationship bottom after three children and their parental abduction by the father. Grace is working with the police to find her children but decided to travel three states to come “home” to the last place she felt truly loved and accepted. I am so glad she did. She had one or two friends in town, my adult daughter and me. She remembered the kindness here and returned to us. I am a flawed person and to quote Patsy Clairmont, “God Uses Cracked Pots”! I hope we can make a difference for this one who needs to be loved on. I pray that God covers my mistakes with grace and mercy so we can find a way to help this beautiful woman to be happy.
Grace is actually the child who sparked a writing project of mine I’m passionate about. A guide for young adults who are about to or have “aged out” of the foster system. There is so much that they miss out on and don’t know. Their time was spent worrying about safety, where they would sleep, what they would eat, attending hearings or court sessions. They didn’t learn the how-to’s that you would expect them to know. Grace learned how to properly fit a bra at age 24, after three children, while we were shopping last night. I looked at her feet and realized, another day, too much for today. She was overwhelmed.
I hope this post travels far and you can comment on what basic things you wish you had been taught, even if you were never in the foster system. My beloved encouraged me to write this because he was raised in extreme poverty and saw many similarities in missed education and training as he tried to figure out what was normal and what he needed to know to be successful.
I would love to consider your comments to add to my guide: shopping, economics, personal hygiene, balancing a checkbook, food preparation, clothing, relationships, etc. Sometimes it is the little details that can derail you in life and keep the better opportunities away. Many foster children do not even realize they have missed the opportunities because they don’t know and there is no one to tell them. Your experiences could help someone. Thanks!
Filed under Family Times, Foster, Writing
An Undelivered Letter – To My Loved One
Kay has expressed my grief so well, some days are good, some days are bad. I push on because my beloved always wanted the best for me. He believed in me more than any other, he loved me and my rambling stories. I thank God for the time He gave me to be with my beloved. I now understand something of what God must have felt when separated from Christ for the first and only time. They await for me, my treasures. For now, I will be the person worthy of being called his beloved.
To you,
I don’t know whether to feel relieved, sad, or guilty. Right now, I feel a little of all three. But mostly guilty. I was dreading the day, watching the calendar as it crept up. But then I got so caught up that it came and went and I hardly noticed. I didn’t even realize until just now that I had missed it. And now I battle this gang of emotions and the only thing I knew to do was this: to write it out. To write it to you.
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Filed under Grief
Tessa Bertoldi 