Thank God.

God, Gratitude, Joy, Life 0

Do you see it? Do you see what a special, precious opportunity each day of your life is?

Look more closely. See all the lessons you can learn. See how you can participate in your growth. Se how carefully God holds your hand, guides you down the right path, offers just the right words and opportunities at the right moments, sends just the right people your way.

You can feel. You can touch. You can agonize in despair and giggle with glee. You can make jokes. You can cry at movies. You can weep in bed at night. Then get up the next day, refreshed.

You can taste an orange, a lemon, a mango — and describe in detail the difference in each of those tastes. You can smell a forest of pine trees. You can hold your friend’s hand and feel how he trembles because he’s afraid. . . .

You can wait and thank God later.

But you might as well thank God now.

Maybe the best way to thank God is by living your life fully today.

— Melody Beattie, More Language of Letting Go, p.373

Forgiveness

Forgiveness, Letting Go, Love 0

Lack of forgiveness is perhaps the most common block to truly loving and to moving on in life. We stay stuck, holding someone on a hook while of course, in order to do so, we must continue to hold the other end! We need to forgive, and also to accept forgiveness for ourselves. It’s a pity to let someone take up part of your heart and stay fixated on something that’s past. Loving means letting go, and sometimes it also means deciding that the relationship as it was is over.

— Dr. Brenda Davies, Unlocking the Heart Chakra, p. 48

Success and Happiness

Gratitude, Joy, Life 0

It may well be that success lies as much in our ability to behold the world before us in gratitude and wonder as it does in owning things and doing things. And it may be, too, that happiness really is a state of mind we choose for ourselves, a way of being that we cultivate from one moment to the next, rather than the result of realizing our ambitions or acquiring whatever it is we think we most desire.

— Katrina Kenison, The Gift of an Ordinary Day, p. 56

Love Is Magic.

Growth, Love 0

And love is magic! The more love we give away, the more we have. And the more we love, the better we feel about ourselves, the happier we are, the more creative we feel. A bonus is that those who actively love, live longer!

Love is the most therapeutic commodity known, a powerful antidote to all ills, to hatred which infects great areas of the world and the fear that prevents us from denouncing it.

Dr. Brenda Davies, Unlocking the Heart Chakra, p. 41

Acceptance

Growth, Healing, Letting Go, Life 0

I put a life together with my family and friends and dogs. I learned to make use of the solitude I now had aplenty. I started writing, wanting to make something useful come from our catastrophe, and working hard, I began to be happy….

I lived with this shame a long time before I could speak of it. Finally I told my sister. “But it’s not about Rich’s accident,” Eliza said. “You don’t want to return to unhappiness. That’s all.” I will never forget that instant of absolute clarity. And just like that, I was free.

— Abigail Thomas, A Three Dog Life, p. 123

False Nobility

Growth, Relationships 0

I have met many women and a few men in what are clearly difficult, sometimes abusive, or extremely negative relationships who think that they are doing something spiritually wonderful by staying in a situation that is clearly eroding their soul. This is an example of the tribal belief Spiritual growth is hard, and you have to change yourself so you can be happy in any situation with any person at all times. Personally, I don’t believe this at all. It is responsible for more people staying in bad situations than any other tribal belief about spirituality.

— Christel Nani, Sacred Choices, p. 284

Grace the World with Your Dance

Core Value, God, Life, Love 0

God really does want you to know who you are. He wants you to be able to understand the story of your life, to know where you have come from, and to know where you are going. There is freedom there. Freedom to be and to offer and to love….

Whatever your particular calling, you are meant to grace the world with your dance, to follow the lead of Jesus wherever he leads you. He will lead you first into himself; and then, with him, he will lead you into the world that he loves and needs you to love.

— John & Stasi Eldredge, Captivating, p. 216, 217

Empowered Readers

Books, Children and Books, Reading 0

I am convinced more than ever that once the great global climactic catastrophe has destroyed the earth, when the stragglers dig themselves out from their damp bomb-shelter hovels and go hard-core low-tech, readers of young adult fiction will make up the core of the new society . . . because we are the only ones who will find living off the land fun.

— Lizzie Skurnick, Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, p. 218

Doing All the Work

Letting Go, Love, Relationships 0

Doing all the work in a relationship is not loving, giving, or caring. It is self-defeating and relationship-defeating. It creates the illusion of a relationship when in fact there may be no relationship. It enables the other person to be irresponsible for his or her share. Because that does not meet our needs, we ultimately feel victimized….

Are we doing all the waiting, the hoping, the work?

We can let go. If the relationship is meant to be, it will be, and it will become what it is meant to be. We do not help that process by trying to control it. We do not help ourselves, the other person, or the relationship by trying to force it or by doing all the work.

Let it be. Wait and see. Stop worrying about making it happen. See what happens and strive to understand if that is what you want.

— Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 325