Still not caught up! in A New Beginning

After a week, I am still not caught up on rest or sleep after our five-day trip to Sacred Space Conference!! But why would I be???? We got home on Sunday night and I went to work early Monday morning! And everyone knows my job is bust-ass! So, friends, lemme tell ya....I feel like I need a darn vacation! And not to GO anywhere this time, either....to just stay at home doing very little!!!! Heck, it took me til Wednesday to get caught up on the darn LAUNDRY!

But I am not complaining, just tellin’ how it is. I am still immensely thankful for the wonderful time we had at the conference, and although I’m worn to a frazzle (more from the past workweek than the conference at this point though!!!!!), I feel very empowered, still. I feel a great sense of myself, of (as Tevye says in “Fiddler on the Roof”) “who I am and what God expects me to do.” ;o) I am here to spread love and understanding, to be compassionate and in so doing, maybe by example show some others how to do that also.

Because ya know, “by example” is usually THE BEST way to teach people anything. Why’s that? Well for one thing, because there are some people who don’t walk their talk, and that can give Talkers in general a bad name. So instead of talking about it, just WALK IT. Especially the people who are the recipients of your Walk stand a good chance of, over time, beginning to do a similar Walk.

It was not until I began to feel confident and BELIEVE IN MYSELF, that I was able to begin reaching out to others, saying nice things to them, encouraging them, treating them with love and caring. It was not until I had had a great store of love and respect given to me, that I had enough inside me that it could spill out to other people. Now it doesn’t just spill out; it flows out. But guess what I’ve learned from that?? I’ve learned that EVERYONE NEEDS THOSE SAME THINGS!! They all need a LOT of love, kind words, hugs, compliments, recognition, appreciation, attention....all of the forms of positive attention. And they need to get them without ever having to ASK for them.

I’ve heard people called “whiners” or “attention seekers,” but ever since our kids were little I have realized that the only people (beginning with small children) who “whine for attention” are the ones who never seem to get any UNLESS THEY DO WHINE!

Everything personal, everything “from the heart” that we give comes from within us. And we have to have a certain amount for our own sustenance. Because that condition some babies have been shown to die of, called “failure to thrive,” isn’t age-restricted to babies. You see, there’s existing, there’s living, and there’s THRIVING. If we don’t even have enough “positive heart stuff” inside us to keep ourselves going, we’re barely existing. This is the sad place where Depression lives; this is the pool from which sad things like self-harm, including suicide, come.

If we have enough to keep ourselves going, then we can give some to others, but it’ll be a delicate balance and there will be times when we’re snipey or exhausted because we’ve given too much, and depleted ourselves, and it takes quite awhile to get our supply built back up.

But some of us eventually....and I say eventually because I don’t think many are born with it!....reach a point in life where we’ve weeded out nearly all of the negative, surrounded ourselves with the positive, and have managed to get this immense storehouse of “positive heart stuff” built up, so that it just flows, and it flows out of us to the point where an awful lot FROM our surroundings also flows steadily in. I’ve actually reached that place, pretty much! And it feels so good. I used to feel like I had a lot of hatred inside me. It came from growing up listening to a lot of verbal abuse....some toward me but a lot directed by my Dad toward my Mom and siblings....then being bullied and harassed in high school…then listening to verbal abuse from Joe’s stepdad directed toward me, Joe, and Joe’s mom. I took this hatred into me, because we DO tend to take in what’s fed to us, especially when we’re young. And so I had a very low threshold of patience and tolerance, and when I reached my limit, what started to spill out of me was hatred because it was what I was full of.

I’m happy to say, my Dad changed and evolved into a much nicer person, and he became one of my very best friend during his last sixteen years of life. :o) Joe’s stepdad only got worse, and I was glad when he died! Everyone who knew him was! But strangely enough, people outside his family had no idea how vile he could be, because he was kind to them!! So isn’t that somethin’? I remember my own Dad, back during his “bad” days, roaring that everyone but his own family liked him! I used to show my bad temper and anger only to the people I actually loved, too. So…isn’t that somethin’? They (both dads) had reasons for being the way that they were. One of them got to become a nicer person. At first I was going to say “a better person,” but then I thought maybe I shouldn’t, but then I decided yes, it would be ok to. He became a BETTER person, because it’s BETTER to be good to people, even one’s family! ;o) But I also realize that Joe’s stepdad wasn’t actually a vile person. He could sure act like one! And it did cause others to suffer. But he had a much better side; he just didn’t show it very often....the same way I used to be very sweet when I wasn’t being a bitch. ;o)

BUT ANYHOW!! I got off on that tangent and now I’ve written you a book almost, but before I go I want to tell you that yesterday Joe & I took my Sister Sandy to buy her a new Subaru Legacy, and she gave our son Joey her 2005 Subaru Outback, which is a very good car because she’s taken great care of it. Her Subaru Legacy is white…just like our Subaru Legacy!! :o) The only difference is, ours is a 2112 and hers is a 2117, and ours has a Sunroof. :o) We just got ours last summer, so now we ALL have new (to us anyway) cars and we are all happy!