Want to enhance your sacred noticing opportunities? This book will help encourage you in that quest. Just click here or on the image below to find out more. 🌺🦋🌸💜🌼🦋
Moving house 2 years ago meant a great deal of necessary sorting, sifting and discarding took place. We are slowly still going through our belongings, seeking to pare back to those things which fit where we are now and how we live. I’m attempting to adopt a “buy less/buy better” policy with my clothes as well.
Letting go and surrendering is tough. We get attached to stuff, and can struggle with the changes and upheaval required before we can reach a place of acceptance and calm.
It’s also really hard to let go of old mindsets, habits and thoughts, isn’t it? Yet we’re encouraged to notice what doesn’t fit who we are as children of God, and to seek the Holy Spirit’s help in weeding them out to give our souls room to breathe and be at peace.
If there’s no clearing out, we’re in danger of getting stuck in the ruts of past behaviour and negative thinking. The key to overcoming the pang of loss is to fill the gap with positive ways to live, think, and behave that enrich our lives, rather than diminishing it.
Beauty and strength come from surrender. It might sound counterintuitive but it’s healthy for our souls. In the act of surrendering to God, we give Him carte blanche to help us become the very best version of ourselves.
It’s the smallest things of life that can make or break our days.**Mini mercies and moments of grace.** An unexpected visit, call, text, email or snail mail, perhaps. A bouquet of flowers. A delicious meal we eat. A friend to greet. A great book to read. A new place to see.
A cup of aromatic coffee or a pot of tea to savour. Photos of our family to take and share. A loved one to hug and hold. Music and sounds which delight or give us pause for thought. And the pleasure of enjoying nature’s abundance outdoors.
Having M.E and chronic illness has taught me not to despise the tiny, mundane things of life. When I yield to my body’s need to rest and pause, I often get a soul lift when I slow down.
God’s presence seems closer. Prayer arises spontaneously. Creative ideas begin to emerge. Life’s small mercies bless me enormously.
Birdsong reaches to the depths of my soul because each throaty call is a reminder to stay in joy, to live this life by keeping the flame of hope alive.
It doesn’t take much to sense a heavenly touch. Life’s little things become magnified as we pay greater attention to them.
“A birdsong can even, for a moment, make the whole world into a sky within us, because we feel that the bird does not distinguish between its heart and the world’s.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
If you’d like to hear what some common British birds sound like when they’re singing, this little video will give you a clue. I learnt a few things from it, too!
Are you in a season of needing to slow? Seeking to recover a measure of strength, energy and health after a setback, perhaps? I would love to hear what helps lift and encourage your soul. Feel free to share below. Unsure what M.E is or how it affects people?This article will help. 😉❤️💜 Xx
Bless the dawn— the dawn of creation, the dawn of sentience, the dawn of creatures great and small, the dawn of gardens and plants, of flowers and waterfalls.
Bless the dawn— the dawn of mankind, the dawn of hope to encourage our hearts, the dawn of new life, the dawn of embracing it with joy, wonder, and love.
Bless the dawn— the dawn of invention, the dawn of innovation through the centuries, the dawn of creativity, the dawn of great ideas, of light igniting for you and me.
“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.” — George Washington Carver
“Attention is the beginning of devotion.” — Mary Oliver
Experiences flow through our lives, our days, resembling a gushing waterfall that cascades. They arrive as moments of quiet reflectiveness, an exuberant drowning in sound sometimes, or a sudden stir of the heart that takes our breath away.
We experience a snapshot of seconds, a microcosm of inhabited moments, and a movie reel of minutes that pass all too fleetingly.
We all have occasions when we long to turn back time. Wouldn’t it be great to freeze-frame the highlights and press pause on the best moments of our lives?
Perhaps we could try to pay greater attention to it all, especially the golden glimpses that warm our souls.
Observing our lives is a lot like prayer. It’s gratitude in motion. A sacred act of appreciation and devotion.
We see more when we look with deliberate intent, seek to record with our eyes, and store away in our minds.
I’ve attempted to do that here as I view a pear tree releasing its blossom, listen to birdsong in the trees and the midday hymn singing.
Friend, you are forgiven for thinking I’d vanished from this little home on the internet. Because you’d be correct, even though it wasn’t planned.
Worsening health, increased pain, a family bereavement and deep-bone weariness threw me into a prolonged season of hibernation and rest. One I didn’t ask for or expect.
And I’m still there. Not quite ready to bounce back into blogging or be consistently present yet. I need healing. I need grace. I need recovery more than I need to write.
But every now and then God grants me a slither of strength, a slight lessening of stiffness and pain, a smidgen of inspiration to write something.
That’s when I might pop up to share a poem with you here. But while I’m absent? Well then, I keep you in my heart, my thoughts, and prayers.
Dear Reader/Friend, as you might have noticed, I’m not as active here as I used to be, partly due to my husband’s own health decline and recent surgery which required me to try to step up and attempt to plug the gap while he’s been incapacitated for a period.
But the biggest factor is a slump in my own health, with a worsening of the M.E symptoms especially. It’s been accompanied by increasing flare ups of the arthritis, fibromyalgia and Ehlers Danlos syndrome symptoms I also struggle with.
ME feels like having a permanent kind of flu virus. A body and mind going on strike because they’re swiftly overwhelmed and exhausted by life. When your legs feel as if they’re trying to walk on sand and your head’s full of cotton wool as well.
This hasn’t been written to try to elicit your sympathy but to help raise awareness of ME. Because so many people are either dismissive of it or are suffering in silence that I can’t help but try to convey a smidgen of what it’s like to live with it.
I hope the poem below (previously shared on the Chronic Joy Ministry blog) provides an insight. And that the details I share about the DecodeME study I’m involved with might stir your interest or prompt a prayer, perhaps.
Poured out
I am spoonless
any energy I've had
it's all used up
poured out drop by precious drop
on life's simple, basic tasks
so I must rest
retreat to a darkened room
crawl into bed
and let my body relax
hope my mind switches off
too much white noise
issuing from my thoughts
like buzzing bees
unable to be at peace
blinded to their destiny
my heart aches
with this inactivity
I feel frustrated
because it's enforced on me
because time just slips away
pain infiltrates
as spasms seize my joints
acting like needles
piercing with intensity
I want it to go away
If you’re 16 years old and over and reside in the UK, you are invited to take part in DecodeME, the world’s biggest ME/CFS study.
It will collect information from tens of thousands of people with ME/CFS and analyse DNA to see whether the disease is partly genetic and if so, help pinpoint what causes it – which is the path to finding treatments.
The first step is to take the DecodeME questionnaire and then you may also be asked to provide a saliva sample. They can be done from the comfort of your home. I’ve submitted both myself.
Your experience matters. Future treatment and research are reliant on it. Please help if you can or pass the link below on to someone you know who has ME and fits the criteria above. You can take part at www.decodeme.org.uk
Let’s get serious about getting to the bare bones of what causes ME, a seriously damaging autoimmune disorder of the neuroendocrine system, because it plagues lives, steals livelihoods and has been greatly misunderstood. Thank you! 😉💜