Soaring With A Grateful Heart

While I was at the swimming pool doing some laps before the summer heat arrived, I took a break to catch my breath at one end and paused to look up.  The sun was shining, the birds were chirping and a beautiful yellow butterfly danced in the air as it gracefully hovered over the water, as if to greet me on this particular morning.  Although for a moment I felt like this could be a scene from a Disney movie when the animals talk back to you and they break out in song, I smiled and simply enjoyed the wonderful scene that was displayed around me.  In the moment, I was in a complete state of gratitude and was simply absorbing all of this beauty, while I felt so appreciative of what I was receiving.  Interestingly, I always think about those instances when I am faced with this sense of abundant gratitude, while I contemplate how did I ever get to this facet of my life?  I can tell you that prior to getting here there were many instances of selfish thinking when I needed things to change because I was in an uncomfortable situation or simply that I wanted things my way at my time.  It has taken me many years to learn to appreciate from those periods in my life when things were not going right and still have a grateful attitude in the end.  I remember many prayers where I began asking for God's will to occur, yet in the end, I found myself suggesting that perhaps he could do something that I needed in the process.  I laugh to myself now when I think about how silly I must have sounded to someone that already knew the final answers to what I was requesting, while having to listen to my suggested plan for Him.  I am really thankful for the growth that I have experienced over the many years of my life, because it is so easy now to laugh out loud at my younger self versus where I am today.  I also feel compelled to share these experiences, as I believe that we all have a purpose in giving back to those that are in need, including those that are deficient in amounts of wisdom.  While we cannot save all young people from making the same mistakes that we did when we were younger, we can certainly empathize with their trials and offer some suggested advice that we hope will land in the ears of those that need to receive the message.  What I have also learned over the course of the years is that if you want family members to accept your advice, that also is a tall order.  What tends to happen is that a relative close to you will be more accepting of advice from a stranger or an acquaintance, than they will be from you, just because of the fact that you are related to them.  Hence, do your best to help others that cross your path and as a result, someone else will more than likely help your loved ones as well.  So the next time you are out and about in nature as you experience a moment where you feel grateful, don't miss the opportunity to appreciate all of that as you say thank you for the place you happen to be soaring over on that day.

Whispers From God

There are many times when we have a feeling or an intuition deep inside of us, that it is hard to define or label exactly what that is, however, people have called it all sorts of things from intuition to your inner voice.  Because the world is so vast and the universe is even bigger with many questions that are hard to answer, I like to call these occurrences whispers from God.  As a person of faith, I believe that these instances occur so that I can acknowledge that I am quite small and finite like a drop of water, floating along in God's great deep ocean.  It is that strong connection that as drops of water we all have to this great entity, which can call upon us or redirect our path from time to time that keeps us in sync.   In my experience it has also been true that the whispers that come to us in the late evening or perhaps as we wake up in the still and quiet of the early morning, can have a very specific message for us.  I have also learned that if it is not what we want to hear it can become a nuisance, as we believe that we are still waiting for the message that better suits our own preferences.  When we receive a particular notice that may not be what we wanted, we often convince ourselves that it must have been something else and it certainly was not God.  Our ability to discern what we want to hear as opposed to what we need to hear, can sometimes be an illuminating experience.  The difficulty that comes from hearing what is needed, is that it may not be pleasant or it means that we have to work that much harder in a different manner, in order to move in the right direction.  What experience has also taught me, is that if you decide that you don't want to listen to a message that is needed, God also has a way of re-sending it through another mechanism that will manifest itself in your life in a different way.  The bottom line is that it is still the same message and we just have to stop fighting back as we ultimately need to accept what He wants us to do next.  So you see, whispers can sometimes turn into loud voices that even a person who is hard of hearing, will be able to recognize.  In my own life, the whispers that tell us what we should do often provide the most ultimate peace of mind in the long run.  There is something to be said about accepting and receiving something that will ultimately be for our own good.  So the next time before you go to sleep or as you open your eyes, pause for a moment and listen not only with your ears but also with your heart.  Ultimately, it is those whispers that come to us at those periods of time that often prove to be the answers that we were waiting for.