Get Back Up

Sometimes I have things run through my heart or my mind that I feel I just need to sit down and write about.  I have many notebooks where I've taken the time to let the thoughts flow across the pages, wondering where it all comes from.  Being somewhat of a spiritual person, though, I believe that God allows everyday things to inspire me and that he has also created a little voice inside of me that says to write it down.

I used to let those thoughts pass me by, not knowing really what to do with them.  While being involved in a building project at the church I attend, I believe that God placed on my heart a great desire to write and He offered lots of inspiration for it.  As words flowed onto pages of notebooks or in folders on the computer, I felt overwhelmed that all that was flowing from me.

I have to admit that I had many times that I wouldn't take the time to write when I felt inspired to do so.  I had to learn the hard way that if I didn't stop what I was doing and let the words flow onto some pages, that they'd soon be gone.  Now I carry a notebook with me and I will get up in the middle of the night if that's what it takes.  At this point in my life I realize that if I'm being inspired to create, even being inspired to write, then I need to get on task with it - I don't want those moments to pass me by and the inspiration erased from my memory.  So for today, I'm inspired to write...

We just made it through a big winter storm that left our area covered in a heavy blanket of deep, wet snow.  It downed power lines, snapped branches from trees, flattened bushes to the ground, and left everything buried in inches of that white - no, not fluffy - snow.  I couldn't believe how good sized lilac bushes in our yard just disappeared under that heavy blanket.  It was sad for me to think that we might have lost them and that this spring the yard might not be filled with the pretty smell of lilacs in bloom.

Yesterday the temperatures began to climb.  The snow started slipping off from tree branches and power lines that remained overhead.  Even the bushes started to shed their blanket of snow and branch-by-branch started to stand, once again.

This morning when I looked out the window the lilac bushes were standing tall.  Their branches aren't bent or broken, but are standing tall right where they were weighted down before.  They endured the storm.  They carried the heavy weight from the storm then got back up.

I believe that is how God designed us to be - strong enough to endure the storms and "get back up".  So many receive devastating health news,  experience financial struggles, or have other things in life that can bury them under a heavy blanket, but then they "get back up".  Many were forced to live through power outages in this winter storm, but that weight didn't hold them down - they got back up and did what they needed to do to survive.

I'm thankful for those little inspirations that come along in my life - little things like a snow-covered lilac bush - the things that remind me that I am strong enough to "get back up" when life's storms hit.  God designed each one of us to be strong under the weight of life's storms and to be able to "get back up".

If You Don't Know Where You're Going, You Might Already Be There!

Setting goals in my life has been a lot like, "I'm going to start fresh and set some goals for the first of the year".  Missed that one!  How about my birthday, January 30?  Missed that one!  How about on Monday?  Missed that one many times!!!!!

I've discovered that I've lived the majority of my life without much in the line of goals.  I think it was more that I was just living my life.  Why did I need goals?  Each day something seemed to come along that would get my feet headed in the direction I felt I needed to go.  If I had goals where would I even find the time to work on them?

That kind of thinking has landed me right where I am today - still wondering where I'm going.  The saying, "If you don't know where you're going, you might already be there" is so, so true.  I'm afraid that I've found "there" and discovered that it wasn't where I wanted to be.

I've had a good, full, life.  I have grown in ways I never imagined as I look back (even without goals).  I may not have had many targets to shoot for, but somehow, with God's grace, I hit a few.  Would I be in a different place in my life right now had I set some goals to shoot for?  Probably.  Maybe.  Would that place be better than where I am right now?  I don't really know.

With all of that said, I have to admit that I have fumbled through life from time to time.   Yes, things usually turned out alright, but I can imagine that with some good goals in place it may have been less painful at times, and maybe I would have had the joy of achievement along the way.  Also, with some good goals in place I wouldn't have wasted precious time waiting for "life" to give me direction... I once said that I was always waiting for the next crisis because then I would know what I was supposed to be doing.  I guess I've come to understand that if I would set some goals for myself I wouldn't have to be waiting for a crisis to know what my role is.  With some goals in place I believe that in the next chapter of my life that I can live a more meaningful life, on purpose, by choice, and not by sitting around and waiting to see what in life might give me direction.

Yes, I missed the first of the year, my birthday, a few Mondays, but tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and I feel that is a good starting point for some new goals.  The time between Ash Wednesday and Easter is just enough time to form some better habits, work toward some goals, and set me on a path to knowing more of where I'm headed.  I have had a good life and I do know my ultimate goal of where I want to end up, but there is a life here on earth that I still need to be making the most of. 

My new journey starts tomorrow.  I'm setting some goals for myself so that I will be headed somewhere and not just stuck "there".  "There" has been a good place but I believe that "somewhere" will be much better.