Being Sick

For the past weekend I have been sick.  Coughing, running nose, sore throat, the whole nine yards.  Tom was even picking on me tell me that I sounded like a dog barking.  Yea I can feel the love…but he did take care of me making sure I took medicine and making me hot tea.  But me being sick this weekend has gotten thinking about a few things.  When people got sick in the old testament what did they do?  What were the herbal remedies they could have used?

The more I think about it the more I wonder if we have hindered ourselves because we are so dependant on medication whether it is prescribed or over-the-counter.  I tend to wonder if our immune systems are a little more weaker because of that.  At the first sign of a sniffle we run to the pharmacy.  what would happen if we tried to let our bodies fight the infection and drink tea and rest?  Yet with our busy schedules and hectic lives we don’t have the time to just rest and let our bodies do what they were designed to do.

The more I think about that it makes me wonder…would we survive living our lives the way people did in the Bible?

Showing Thanks

This is the time of year when we celebrate thanksgiving with cooking and eating alot of turkey,mashed potatoes, cranberries, and of course pumpkin pie.  Sometimes I wonder if we have forgotten the beauty of the holiday.  Sure it is giving thanks to the Native Americans for sharing crops and whatever with the Pilgrims.  But while we give thanks for that we also give thanks for the things we have throughout our lives.  I do that every week, or at least I try to do that every week.  But November 25 (this year) is one day set aside to show thanks to the people who made a difference in our lives, give thanks for the things we may otherwise take for granted, and in general be thankful we have this pathway called life.  There sre different ways we can say thanks to those around us.

Send a thank-you note. You know, it’s nice to get a little note thanking you for something you did. You don’t need to send someone a formal thank-you card.  Or even a little note to say thank you.

Give a free hug. OK, only do this when appropriate … but if you have a loved one in your life, give them a hug! Often we can go too long without showing our affection and gratitude, even to those who are closest to us

Give someone a list of all they’ve done that you’re grateful for. Take 5 minutes and make a list of 10 or 50 things you love about someone, or things they’ve done for you that you appreciate.  I am doing this with the next few weekly thanks posts.  My mom read hers and it made her cry.

Say thanks even for negative things in your life. This is the hard part, in truth. When things go wrong, when we’re not happy, when people are mean to us, when we are worn down by the million slings and arrows of everyday life … we don’t want to say thank you. But in truth, this is the time when it matters most.

Throughout life we go through various things and sometimes people drift apart and are ever changing.  I am thankful for everyone I have met even those who have disappeared and are no longer as big a part of my life as they used to be.  We should be thankful for even them.  Everything in our lives is a chance to be thankful.

Thanksgiving

Each week I tend to give a short list of the things that I am thankful for.  This week is no different but instead of doing the things and people I am thankful for, I think I am going to do something different.  I am going to pick one of the most important people in my life and give thanks for the things that person does for me and has done for me.  Throughout life we always have someone there supporting us, helping us and whatever else.  I think we need to take time to give that specific person thanks for everything.  I might do this for a couple weeks Im not sure.

This week is someone who I could never live without.  I would not be the woman I am today if I didn’t have this woman in my life as a wonderful role model, support, and friend.  My Mommy.

First and foremost I want to just thank my mom for being the woman she is.  There is so much to learn from her and even though I am 28, I will always need her.  So Thanks mommy.

Supporting me through every hardship; being there when I needed to curl in your lap.

Raising me and Brandon on your own.  It takes a strong woman to be able to that and I think I get my strength from you.

Giving us discipline.  Who knows what we would be like if you didn’t discipline us the way you did.  We may not have liked it then, but thank you.

Teaching me so many lessons that you may not realize that you taught me.

Encouraging me and Brandon go fight for our dreams, and what we believe in.

Providing for us; even if it meant sacrificing your own needs.

Being there to listen to everything we wanted to tell you good or bad.

Pushing us to do our very best and not accepting any less, and showing how proud you are of the accomplishments we both have made.

Those are just a few things that I thank my mom for.  There are so many other things that this could end up being such a HUGE post.  My mom has done so much in the 28 years, that thank you doesn’t seem to suffice and do justice to how much I appreciate my mom.  I love you momma.

Roles In Life

This weekend my brother, Tom, and I went to Anime USA where Tom was cosplay judge. Cosplay is where you dress as a character from an anime like in April or so I am going to be a character from Samuri 7, and then later Sailor Moon.  But that got me thinking.  While it is fun to dress up and play as different roles in life and different people.  What roles in life do I play?  I know I did this not to long ago, but it is always good to go back and think and analyze things some more to see if those roles are still the same.  Some roles have remained the same but others have changed.

I am

A sister              daughter                 a niece                 grandaughter

cousin                girlfriend                 friend                  “twin”: Best friend

employee         survivor                  Christian              writer/poet

driver                singer                       photographer     nature lover

volunteer        pet owner                 counselor               neighbor

cook                  music lover               Irish                       student

teacher            

Giving Thanks

Its getting close to that time of year, Thanksgiving were we tend to give thanks for the things we have and things that we have overcome throughout the past year.  And its the time of the week were i give my list of things that I am thankful and grateful for.

A Loving Family

Wonderful teachers in school; without them I don’t think I would have made it.

Lessons learned every day

Tom: I am so thankful that I found him and grateful for all the little things

Meeting new people

Breaking through my comfort zones

Friends who are there through thick and thin

My job, while I struggle from time to time, its worth it and means a lot

My eyesight, while my vision is bad without my glasses, I am thankful I can still see with them.

Being able to have luxuries such as a car, warm running water and other things we tend to take for granted

We tend to take so many different things for granted that sitting here thinking of the things that I am grateful for makes me think of why I am grateful for them and why they are important to my life.  Too often we take for granted the things we do have and don’t realize that things could be worse.  Take time out of your day to give thanks for the things  and people you are able to have in your life.

Suffering

“ …accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it.”  Yet another great quote from C.S. Lewis.  When we are suffering through something we constantly want to find something to do with our suffering, to take us away from having to suffer through whatever it is.

I talked about accepting our struggles for what they are earlier, and this has the same idea.  There is nothing we can do about the times when we need to suffer except to suffer through it.  When we strive and push forward things slowly get better and look up.  We see solutions to things that we wouldn’t have seen if we didn’t suck it up and struggle through our suffering.  Sometimes in order to get to where we need to be or want to be we need to suffer through some hardships.  Its a part of life and we need to accept that.  I know its hard to accept that we need to suffer and sometimes it seems and feels undeserved, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

We always want to escape suffering, get it over with or not even deal with it.  Some people try to hide their suffering with alcohol, drugs, sex, and other addictions.  But that doesn’t help, if anything it tends to make it worse.  We cannot escape suffering and struggling it’s all a part of this journey called life.  Its how we deal with it, how we accept it that matters and makes a difference.  I have decided to face my suffering head on and take things a step at a time because there is nothing we can do about it other than deal with and take it one day at a time.

Sharing pain

C.S Lewis says something interesting in his book “A Grief Observed” that he says “You can’t really share someone else’s weakness, or fear, or pain.”  This is such a powerful quote as I read it, it started to make me think.  But there is so much truth within it.  No matter how close you are to someone, how much you love someone, you cannot share their weakness, fears or pain.

Its hard to understand what someone is going through even if you have been through the same situation.  Every situation effects people differently.  What happens to me will effect me different and cause me a different pain than someone who may be going through the same thing.  You can understand to an extent, but not fully.  While we go through our hardships and pains we learn different lessons experience different thoughts.  No two people think the same.

I love Tom with all my heart and he loves me, but no matter how much we love each other and connect, we couldn’t share in each other’s weakness, fear and pains.  We can try to understand and support each other and be there, but sharing it, experiencing it step by step, thought by thought is a different story.  How could we when we aren’t the same person?

Battle Within

I just finished reading a novel by Ted Dekker called “Three.”  It is an amazing novel that I couldn’t put down, I wanted to see how it ended and the twists that Ted would put into it.  The basis of the novel was the battle between good and evil, but not from an outward viewpoint.  The battle of good and evil within ourselves.  In the novel good and evil manifested themselves into alternate personalities of  the main character, an interesting viewpoint. 

Every person no matter who you are, what religion you are, is capable of good as well as evil.  Some of the “evil” we do, we try to justify in some form or another.  For example we may not go out and kill someone in our neighborhood, but we do sin.  How often do we gossip about the couple next door?  or tell a “little white lie.”  We may not all go through alternate personality manifestations, but when we struggle with the good an evil inside I do believe there is a sort of reaction.  People around I believe notice a difference.

While in the book to destroy the evil personality the main character had to “kill” him.  But there is no way for us to destroy the evil within us because we are…human.  The only way we can deal with the evil and let good prevail is to rely on our faith no matter if you are Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Catholic, Jewish or any other religion.  Faith, prayer and reliance is what we need to survive the battle between good and evil within us all.