Peace

The Inner Journey

/ jennced15 / 2 Comments

So . . . I have been thinking . . . A lot.

The last 3 years have really been transformative years for me. Shedding the skin that is no longer serving me and finding the better me in the process. So many things have been working behind the scenes as I have been transforming to get me to the point I am right now and I am very grateful for the process even if it seems to be somewhat slow.

I was thinking about the travel post today and decided that instead of sharing about another place that I have physically been, I would share with everyone the inner journey that I have been on and the new insights that I gained this past weekend.

What sparked me this weekend was this statement—Living in fear isn’t living.

So simple and yet for me, it hit me hard.

Fear really does stagnate us. It eliminates HOPE, PEACE, FAITH, and JOY from our lives. We shouldn’t be experiencing sudden bursts of these feelings in an otherwise fearful life. Since we can’t eradicate fear; let’s at the very least flip it.

So I thought of 5 things that I have been living in fear of over my life and how it manifested for me. Take a moment and think about your own life and what you have been living in fear of and see if you have somehow been falling into the trap of fear—then do everything to flip it around and start living in HOPE, PEACE, FAITH, and JOY.

  1. Fear of Disease

We live in a world where we are bombarded by all the things that are “better” for us. We also live where we have an abundance of options. Because of the mass overload of information and the fear of making the wrong choice—I have had moments of giving up and making no choice except what feels good. That creates the moments of eating food that does nothing to nourish me, being lazy in physical effort, and participating in habits that cause damage to my overall physical well-being.

  1. Fear of Not Having Enough

Do you ever wonder how you ended up with so much stuff in your house? I think there are a lot of people that have this fear. For me it manifested in spending money and at some points—to excess. That is why credit cards have such a place in our lives. Instead of seeing if I already owned it or could make do with what I did have; I would automatically spend more money so I had the “right” thing.

  1. Fear of Not Being Enough

Every one of us tries to do our best and be our best but my whole life I have never felt good enough. I have had moments of feeling “on top of the world” but really I compare myself to everyone ALL of the time. This has been such a hard habit to break because it is so ingrained in my psyche. For me, not being enough has manifested itself as me being OCD. I am always trying to make everything perfect ALL of the time. I even have done it to the point of insanity but . . . I am trying to break this fear once and for all.

  1. Fear of Love

All of us want the most fundamental part of us and that is to give love, feel love and be loved. We wouldn’t be human without this most fundamental trait because all emotions pass through it on some level. It would take me forever to explain how this fear has worked in my life but to tighten it up: it puts me in or keeps me in situations that are not a good fit for me. I then feel like the failure. While this one will take my lifetime to work through because it is based on experiences that are constantly occurring in my life—the least I can do is stop getting into situations that I know will not serve me well.

  1. Fear of The Present

Have you ever wished that your life could just be a little better? Is the grass greener when it is down the road and where changes will make all the difference? If we only live our lives in the future of what-if then we are actually not living right now and we are allowing fear of the present situation to hold us back from our real potential and all things that are at our doorsteps now.

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Blissful Saturday

/ jennced15 / 2 Comments

Not going to lie . . . it’s not really Friday. In fact, it is Saturday and a very busy one at that. My house is a HUGE mess right now. I have laundry cycling through the washer and dryer. I have a box from storage and about six smaller boxes sitting all around my front room while I decide what to use for a special Mother’s Day at church tomorrow. I have a kitchen and dining room table taken over by the food that I am going to be serving on the items in the boxes at church tomorrow. I have the sheets off of two beds and a thousand pillows all over the floor in the two bedrooms and another bed with an open suitcase sitting on it with the start of a packing session. Needless to say, my house is in complete disarray . . . total chaos.

But . . . I find myself perfectly content. I am glad that I get to use my mad cooking and party skills tomorrow. I am happy to be getting some cleaning done in the house and I even find myself secretly excited about my upcoming business trip. A week away sounds like a lot of fun until I realize that all of the days in their ENTIRETY will be monopolized by work (including next Saturday) which is why I am sitting down a week early and writing my Friday post. Can’t always be running a marathon.

I am looking at everything; not sure where to begin again but I find myself content. I stepped out on to the back patio tonight. The wind is rushing through the trees every now and then like swells in the ocean. I feel the earth breathing and living and it makes me feel peaceful. I get little shafts of light glinting around me like the sun on water and I realize that this is what happiness looks like. I  hear birds chirping to each other. A cat came and drank water out of my bird bath and another one was slinking through the trees in search of something. There truly is beauty all around when there is love.

Today is high on my perfect but perfectly normal days. What is your perfect but perfectly normal day?