Well this is interesting. I am feeling calm and creative. I actually feel like writing. This is good news. The jam is loosening up and I am coming unstuck.
I want to say that I am feeling more brave and more grounded. I no longer feel afraid of what comes next. What is to come will come, and that is OK.
I have been inspired to start studying and practicing mindfulness and am noticing space starting to free up in my mind and my spirit. One of Brene Brown's 'Dig Deep' challenges from "The Gifts of Imperfection" was to notice when I am feeling vulnerable, and to use this simple affirmation "I'm feeling vulnerable, that's Ok. I'm thankful for...". Brene argued that gratitude is an 'antidote' (my own interpretation) to feelings of vulnerability, and I couldn't agree more. Shifting my gaze from fear and shame to gratitude and connection is helping me to gain my ground again.
Perhaps the only barrier to living love is not knowing that it is already there? Perhaps the mistake I make is thinking that love needs to be created? Perhaps I am somewhat mistaken in my belief that love is a decision - that it is a choice? If God is Love.... and God is the Life in every breath that we take... then is Love the Life Force in every living thing around us? Perhaps the only decision is to embrace what is already right here - ebbing and flowing in every breath that I take? Perhaps it is only because I do not choose to stop and experience it, that Love may feel elusive?
For today, I am breathing and creating...and choosing to see Love in all the places it already exists.
Aloha,
Emily
Saturday 15 March 2014
Thursday 20 February 2014
February 20
Hmmmm... so you've been waiting for a blog have you? Well,
I've been avoiding writing.
I suppose I am here now because I am working on being more
courageous, more compassionate, and more connected.
You see, I have been feeling hurt and lonely. I gather that happens to us all, and we all
deal with these things in different ways.
My whole goal in starting this blog, was to work out some
guideposts on a journey of living love every day. I wanted to figure out what it means exactly
to "live love", and to be clear about what it looks like and what it
doesn't. Cue the rigid, black and white
part of my personality that likes things to be clear and uncomplicated. What I am learning is that living love is
anything but clear and uncomplicated.
Here is the problem that I have right now. How do I live love when I do not feel loved?
How do I show love to myself, my husband and my children, others -
when there is a void in my reservoir of love energy to tap into?
None of this is to suggest that I am not loved, or that I
believe that no one loves me. In fact, I
know with 100% certainty that several people in my life love me deeply, or at
least, like me and are concerned for me.
However, I have a legacy of life experiences that left me feeling
unloved, betrayed, and neglected. And
regardless of my conscious decision(s) to forgive and forget, old pain has
recently welled up from the deep and flooded my soul.
This is not how I want to feel and it is not how I want to
live. I have been in a sort of paralysis.
I have been unable to face the damage deep inside which threatens to
overtake me, but unable not to do exactly that, and move on. I believe that God has sent me a clear
message over and over in the past few years "I want to fill your life with
Love and Light" and who am I to stand in the way just because my feelings
are hurt? So I am putting one foot in front of the other and I am cleaning up
the mess.
As so often works for me, I have been looking for ideas - and
as always, the amazing power of "seek and ye shall find" has
manifested itself again. It all started
one day when Chapters Indigo sent me an email saying that they had a 50% off
sale on several of their bestselling inspirational books. I ordered three. One of the titles caught my attention
immediately, and I just finished reading "The Gifts of Imperfection: Let
Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are" by
Brene Brown. That is where I got the
inspiration to live with courage, compassion and connection. I highly recommend this read. There were times when I was buzzing through a
chapter thinking, "this is nice, but doesn't really apply to me..."
and bang - the next sentence would hit me square between the eyeballs. She raised my awareness of some important
issues in my life.
You see, another reason why I started this blog is because I
really want to be a good parent - the kind of mom who raises amazing kids who
are going to be an amazing force of good in the world. I believe that this is one of the important
ways that I can be a force for good myself.
I want my kids to feel love, and to be strong, and to be able to give
love. I know that it is impossible to
protect them from fear and loss and harm...but I would like their legacy to be
the strength to live love through these experiences.
So one day, a dear friend posted a blog on Facebook: momastery.com/blog/2014/01/30/share-schools/
and here was a mother talking about the power of love and connection in
children's classrooms...
So I linked to the main Momastery blog... and found the
words "Join the re[LOVE]ution”. There
are other people on the same track as me! Not shocking, but deeply affirming. And here is another thing I read there:
"You belong here. Momastery is an open window. It's a place to take a deep
breath. It's a place to drop out and tune in. It's a place to stop striving,
stop competing, stop suspecting, stop hiding. To hear and tell truth. Mother
Teresa said, "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that We
Belong to Each Other". If we find peace here - it's because we
remember."
Well, this meant a lot to me, because I had started to
disconnect - to feel that it was less painful to disconnect than to
connect. But it wasn't a comfortable
choice in my soul. I was not at peace with myself, and was increasingly uneasy
with the world around me. I don’t get to
disconnect and still be happy. I don’t
get to disconnect and still live love.
So here I am, in the spirit of courage - being vulnerable
and staying connected, even though I would rather hide.
I have mixed feelings about the current trend of airing all
of our imperfections - and wearing them like badges of pride. But I get how powerful it is to share our
stories and to be real. I am striving
toward living the best life that I possibly can, and being a force of good in
the world. And, I am learning to be
comfortable with the fact that I am not perfect, and that imperfection is a
gift.
Love and Light.
These are my pillars.
These are my touchstones. One foot in front of another. Courage.
Compassion. Connection.
Aloha,
Emily
Wednesday 25 September 2013
Monday 29 April 2013
April 29
Making space...
Well, it has been a while...
I am really enjoying reading Mother Teresa's works... very enlightening...
But the lesson I am currently learning is that to experience and share love, then there must be space in your life for it... space to feel love, to see others who need to experience it, and to stay focussed on the mission.
That means creating 'margins' in life... extra time and space to 'just be' - to respond to others - to lend a hand without worrying about what I have to do next - to offer a listening ear or a hug...
It means creating financial margins - so there is room in the budget to give...
So I'm currently working on making space and filling that space with more love....
Emily
Well, it has been a while...
I am really enjoying reading Mother Teresa's works... very enlightening...
But the lesson I am currently learning is that to experience and share love, then there must be space in your life for it... space to feel love, to see others who need to experience it, and to stay focussed on the mission.
That means creating 'margins' in life... extra time and space to 'just be' - to respond to others - to lend a hand without worrying about what I have to do next - to offer a listening ear or a hug...
It means creating financial margins - so there is room in the budget to give...
So I'm currently working on making space and filling that space with more love....
Emily
Saturday 12 January 2013
January 12
Well, here we go.
Today's blog is long... so if you are interested to read it, sit down
with a cup of coffee and a bit of time:)
I know you'll be reading this Dad, and you've been encouraging me to write again. Thank you. I have said before that I wasn't writing because I wasn't feeling inspired. When I think about it now, that wasn't true. I've been inspired...I've just been uncertain and afraid of what I am supposed to write. I was waiting for some help to know what to say... a sign I guess... a jumping off point to pull a lot of things together. I've been mulling over some thoughts for over a week now...and the more I mull...the more the signs point to just putting it all down here and moving forward....because really this is the start...and it may be one more step in something really big - at least for me.
I started this blog because of something that happened to me
about 18 years ago. I grew up in
"the church".... a small-town evangelical church. I loved my church until I was about 16. Up to that point, the church was somewhere
that I felt I belonged and where I could learn to live the life that God had
created me for. Up to that point, I felt
that my church supported me to live God's mandate of LOVE for the world that He
created. Then things changed...I know you'll be reading this Dad, and you've been encouraging me to write again. Thank you. I have said before that I wasn't writing because I wasn't feeling inspired. When I think about it now, that wasn't true. I've been inspired...I've just been uncertain and afraid of what I am supposed to write. I was waiting for some help to know what to say... a sign I guess... a jumping off point to pull a lot of things together. I've been mulling over some thoughts for over a week now...and the more I mull...the more the signs point to just putting it all down here and moving forward....because really this is the start...and it may be one more step in something really big - at least for me.
The people of this church seemed to feel that the purpose of the church was to come together to fellowship and worship God. As I grew older, I felt that the purpose of the church was to be out in the community taking care of people - to serve the orphan, the widow and the oppressed. I saw people being excluded, judged...and not just in our community, right within our church body...I saw people turning a blind eye to the needs of people...the pain of people... people who wouldn't act when it was clearly the right thing to do. I began to feel excluded and judged...I saw people praying to God to cause harm to people's lives so that they might learn to follow Him...and I knew it wasn't right... And I couldn't be quiet about it, but the church leaders felt that I was just causing trouble... perhaps they thought I was just a kid who didn't understand - or who was just trying to cause trouble...maybe some knew what I was talking about and were afraid to act... either way, I didn't feel that I belonged there anymore....and even worse, when I applied for a church membership after my 18th birthday and my membership was denied, it was clear that the leadership didn't believe I belonged there either. This church had been my home for almost a decade... a real home... where I had experienced real LOVE and fellowship with God and His people... and now I didn't belong... AND I was distressed. If I didn't belong in the church, who did?
By that time, my sister and her husband were the youth
leaders in this same church... and they hungered and longed for change in the
church and for people's lives to be transformed by God's power.... but it
wasn't happening. As my sister poured her
heart out to me, I told her that I believed God had a message for her. At the time, I believed that my experience in
the pew that day was a message for her.
Now I understand it was just a start.
This is what the Lord led me to understand about my gruesome vision.
He could no longer work in the lives of the people of that
Church. He had loved them and called for
them to turn their hearts to Him. He had
called them and asked for their obedience, and in return for their obedience he
would bless others through them in a way that they could not even imagine. BUT the people of this church were not
willing to give up their pride, their own agendas, their own
self-interest. Despite their songs and
their prayers, the people of this church had turned their backs on Him and He
could not work within them. This was no
longer His church... He wasn't invited to be part of their congregation anymore
either.
In the last 18 years, I have been to a variety of
churches...but none that felt like a new home.
My pain was strongest in my early 20s. I believed that I should be in
a church - that I couldn't be a faithful Christian without going to a church
where I could worship and serve the Lord.
One day, God quieted my troubled heart and told me I didn't need to
go to church. What??? He saw my pain and
confusion and said simply, "Be still and know that I am God. Simply follow me and I will reveal Myself to
you". Confusing but peaceful.
Over the years, I have spent a lot of time
with God. He has spoken to me in so many
ways, and the message has always centred on LOVE. "I love you" he has said over and
over again. I have always believed that
the purpose of the church is to care
for the widow, the orphan and the oppressed, as in James 1:27. This is taken from the New
International Version (NIV):
27 Religion that God our Father
accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in
their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
In fact,
if you would like to know more about the scriptural foundation of my own faith,
check this out: It is clear and it is
powerful: http://www.openbible.info/topics/widows_and_orphans
and http://www.openbible.info/topics/love. And so,
that is what I have tried to do in lieu of church attendance..live LOVE and
take care of people...alleviate oppression and social injustice (please do not
expect that I believe I have been perfect in this endeavour... more on that
later). But through the years, I have missed the community, the fellowship of being with likeminded people. I have missed the LOVE that only God can express through people who are sensitive to His heart. I spent a lot of time talking to my sister. I have to say that, most of the time she was supportive, but really she thought I had lost my way. Until a year or so ago....
One day I get an excited call: 'I'm reading this book and this guy sounds like you!'. She was reading Brian McLaren...and so I started reading Brian McLaren... and in Brian's words I received the confirmation that I was not a crazy heretic...but that the Lord really had been leading me on a journey of LOVE, and I started learning more about the journey that others were on. Moreover, I believe I started understanding more about the people who feel the same way that I do... that God's people need to change things up and start loving and obeying Him in a way that we might not have understood before.
Then,
more recently, my sister called me and said 'I'm reading something else and
this guy sounds like you!...and Rob Bell's work entered my life. I
started reading, again confirming and expanding on what the Lord had already been
sharing with me...and then I read a chapter...dropped the book and called my
sister.
Rob was
talking about Cain and Abel and the blood that cries out from the ground. My spiritual world stopped and has been in slow motion
ever since. I'm not alone. There is a community of people in this world
who have heard the blood cry out... And as
of this morning, the Lord has even shown me that these people are gathering
together across the nations - and on places like Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=4874281742165&set=a.2290080298744.133235.1451076434&type=1&theaterIf you are curious about all of this, you have to read "Jesus Wants to Save Christians" by Rob Bell (another of my favourite is "Love Wins"). But this is part of what I read from the end of the Introduction to this book:
"For a growing number of people in our world, it appears that many Christians support some of the very things Jesus came to set people free from.
It's written in Genesis that when Cain killed Abel, God said to Cain, "Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.'
God can hear Abel's blood?
Blood that cries out?
To understand this cry, the noise that it makes across human history, and its importance to the times we live in, we have to go back to the first book of the Bible, the book of Exodus."
I've been feeling like human beings across this world are self-destructing at an alarming rate, and this scares me because I want more for my children's future than a world of violence and destruction. I want to my children to raise their children in a clean and safe and socially responsible world, and I wrestle with how to model this for them... Then came Sandy Hook...
When the children were massacred at Sandy Hook ES last month I could hear their blood crying out from the ground. I couldn't stop hearing it. I cried over and over again and I felt sick and I called out to the Lord - "How can you let these things happen??"...my faith, my security in the Lord was shaken. You see, God has told me over and over again, "I want to fill your life with LOVE and Light"... and I believe he wants that for everyone, not just me. But how can God want LOVE and light for people... and yet not intervene when children are being brutally murdered and torn from the lives of their parents and families. How could I live LOVE and feel secure in my relationship with God, if He could possibly allow that to happen to me? And moreoever, I couldn't even understand why the massacre at Sandy Hook pained me so badly, when the reality is that children are murdered every day across our world... I am told that every seven seconds a child starves to death somewhere... people are suffering somewhere far away while most of us close to home live in perpetual excess...
Well,
here is the answer I have to my questions so far. We
must live LOVE. We have no other
calling, no other mandate, no other choice if we want all of the good things in
life that God has created for us and promised to us. Every
day, in every corner of our world, people are alone...they are suffering...they
are separated from God's LOVE... God gave us the job to take care of each other
and His world. We are failing Him...He
is not failing us.
Thank you
to Carey Nieuwhof of Connexus community church in Barrie for your message this
past Sunday which confirms what the Lord had already told me: LOVE is a decision...and more than that I
believe it is an ACTION... it is a verb....Here is Carey's message on the subject: http://www.connexuscommunity.com/watch-online/likeitloveit/. So, here we are.... and what I know now is that I may have exiled myself from the church for a while... but I am not alone. People all over the place... on their own... in churches... on Facebook even... are saying the same thing:
The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
1 John 4:8 ESV
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.Exodus 19:5 ESV
15 “If you love Me, you will do what I say.
A message that is becoming clear to me is that the next step in the journey of LOVE is obedience... obedience to what God has commanded us to do... to LOVE Him. But what exactly does that mean??? How do we save ourselves and each other by LOVING God???
Aloha,
Emily
Thursday 10 January 2013
January 10, 2013
Happy New Year!
I am actually working on something good... just give me time to think and process...
In the meantime... isn't this what living love is all about??? Can you feel the love tonight?
I liked this video....enjoy!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0Fpl67p5qk
Aloha,
Emily
I am actually working on something good... just give me time to think and process...
In the meantime... isn't this what living love is all about??? Can you feel the love tonight?
I liked this video....enjoy!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0Fpl67p5qk
Aloha,
Emily
Wednesday 5 December 2012
December 5
I was reminded today that I hadn't blogged in a while... and asked why not....
I responded with "not feeling very inspired".
Well, that was not strictly true. There are sparks of inspiration rolling around in my brain. The issue is more that I have been busy, and sick. I spent a lot of free time recently creating digital scrapbook pages of my fabulous family.... a lot of love to enjoy there.
I did read something recently and saved it. I'll share it with you now.
I responded with "not feeling very inspired".
Well, that was not strictly true. There are sparks of inspiration rolling around in my brain. The issue is more that I have been busy, and sick. I spent a lot of free time recently creating digital scrapbook pages of my fabulous family.... a lot of love to enjoy there.
I did read something recently and saved it. I'll share it with you now.
MODELS OF SURRENDER
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