When Forgiveness is Enough

I taught my children as my father taught me; people will not always be good to you, Be good anyway. People will not always speak kindly to you, speak kindly anyway, and the lines I will never forget; It's easy to love those who love you, but it takes courage to love those who don't.

I think that I misinterpretted this message somewhere along the way in my life, because I have been there for/helped people that I probably should not have because of the history with them all in the name of being a kind and good hearted person, I mean heck, if Jesus can speak to people as they are killing him and bless them with love and forgiveness, I should surely be able to deal with the fact that people have wronged me, and still be a good person to them, right?  I've never been sure where to draw the line between who I should help and who I should just pray for and move on from; so when someone calls me in need, I'm there, because I genuinely care about people overall.

Sometimes we learn lessons the hard way, and I am absolutely no exception to that; I am too often set in my ways of how I feel I should conduct my life, and my good intent sends me down paths that end up being less than good for me. As I sat here today thinking about things, and how some people are just straight up ego filled assholes, I realized that my mistake all this time was in not really knowing when its okay to just not be there for someone and still be a true loving and spiritual being. I do good because it's important for me to put goodness out there into the world, I care because that's what we should do as human beings for each other, but the reality is that there really just are some people that we can give ourselves permission to close the door on and send love and light through the universe for them.
I need to be better about that, for the sake of my Self and my own heart. It hurts when you step out for someone else, even when they have hurt you in the past and they just use that opportunity to twist the knife they had already planted in your back.  I learned today.

When the Bough Breaks

When the Bough Breaks:

 

Life changes without our permission and most times without any notice;
It just transforms into something else in the blink of an eye.

They say everything happens for a reason, but honestly, I am still

pondering some of the moves and working to just trust that they are and have, happened for reasons that just have not become clear to me yet.
How does something that feels so completely right in a moment, turn into something that you feel you need to escape in the next? How do friendships that have been built on trust and honesty dissolve into nothingness because of that same trust and honesty?

Why do children die? Why do horrible things happen to good people? Why do heartless people get to keep existing and inflicting pain on the world?

Do you have the answers, because I sure don’t.
What I do know is that no matter what happens and how badly we want to stop moving, breathing, and managing; we cannot stop, we have to keep moving, even if it’s just one small step, one short breath or one simple heartbeat. The universe continues to flow around us, birds still sing even on the mornings that we wake up with broken hearts and puffy eyes from all the crying we did the night before. The boss still expects you to be on time for work, and dinner still needs to be cooked. Life goes on; whether you’re participating or not.

As we journey through Life, we lose lovers, friends, and pets and so much more; so much more like pride and arrogance, selfishness and greed; or at least that is the hope. Time is supposed to bring with it wisdom and humility. Maybe we lose things and people we are attached to so that we can learn that nothing is permanent here, nothing and no one is forever, but merely experiences that we navigate through to learn the things we need to learn?

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right?  What if it just makes us colder? What if it makes us hateful for what someone else has that we don’t? What separates that person, from a person who just accepts each life altering moment and pushes forward?  My thought?  FAITH.

Faith is not strengthened in moments that we already know what’s coming, Faith is conceived in those moments when the staircase is dark and we can only see the step we are on. We move slowly up the stairs, not knowing what awaits us on the next one, but we step anyway.

When we stop expecting that Life will always play fair, we begin to get somewhere; we accept, through tears and heavy hearts that friends grow apart, lovers fall out of love, and people die. We don’t accept it because it makes a damn bit of sense, we accept it because we have come far enough to understand that now and then things just don’t make sense at first glance, and they do not always feel good, but we inhale, we exhale, and we have FAITH that the Universe has a plan and that in each challenge we face there is a gift to uncover to elevate us to the next level of our journey here.

STAY FAITHFUL- We are all in this together.

~Peace

 

 

The Morning After

July 14,2013

 

I woke up this morning and sat down to write with tears in my eyes; how can life be so fickle? I spent the day with my son and daughter in law, and a terrific friend and came home riding the high from my day; to hear a verdict of not guilty in the Zimmerman/Martin case. My heart sunk, the outrage took over and I felt myself feeling uncomfortable in my own skin. Why? Because I’m white, and for a moment I believed that this was about color, but this morning, I realize it’s far deeper than that; it’s about the horrific flaws in this system of “justice” that we have in this country. It’s not because he was a young black man, because if that were the case, why did FLA let Casey Anthony go after the world knew damn well she killed her children; they were all white.  White parents, Mexican parents, native parents, NO ONE is excluded in this ugliness of the world, we all lose! And I know in my heart that across the U.S people of all colors were supporting this young man and his family, we didn’t see color, we saw the loss of an innocent life, period. I read things this morning about how this is the white folks getting back at the blacks for the O.J case. I scratch my head and wonder how feeding this line of thinking is going to get us anywhere good?  I responded to an online forum and was told that because I was white I didn’t understand and never would. Really!?

 

Let me clarify something; I am a MOTHER, that trumps your damn skin color bullshit, I’m tired of all this bitching about race, stand up and DO something about all of the injustices you feel instead of pointing fingers I know this world is biased in some ways, but we are not ever going to invoke change by sitting on our hands and letting it victimize us, stand up and be heard! DO something to bring about positive change with all of that emotional energy! Russell Simmons said that last night, “we must remain peaceful. No matter what, remain peaceful. If you have anger this evening, put that energy into challenging these horrible laws that allow overly-anxious neighborhood watchmen to carry guns and shoot innocent people.”

 

A man and a woman lost a son, it doesn’t take being the same race for anyone to understand that, it takes a heart, and human compassion; I had just spent the day with my son, don’t think I didn’t sit here last night imagining the horror of him being gone. We cannot let this become more unrest amongst us, we cannot let the ugliness of the world win, we have to rise up and come together and instead of people like Treyvon, MLK & so many others dying in vain, we need to bring about unity and change!!!

 

Stop fighting one another, stop feeding it, and stop being victimized by any of it, RISE UP AND UNITE in positive ways to change the world we live in! I don’t have the answers or the blueprint, but I look around and I listen, and I see and hear all of the ways we disrespect each other; men/women against one another, black women against white women, and the list goes on and on, its not stopping any of it, it is perpetuating it! Why don’t we recognize that?  We cannot stop hatred with more hatred, we cannot stop racism with more racial tension, we cannot teach non-violence when we are violent…Maybe this is a test to see how far we have come as a people; maybe it has less to do with the dysfunctional justice system and more to do with a Higher Power testing us to see if we will learn and this time come together in peace and for peace, or whether we will let this divide us even more than we already have. We can blame whoever we want day to day for being treated less than by others, but each and every moment of every day that we are given we wake up with the ability to freely choose how we feel and WHO WE WILL BE that day. You can choose to be angry because the world is unfair to you, you can blame it on your skin color, you can blame it on your weight, but ultimately, we all have a choice to either stand for something good, or fall for something less. I choose to love and to stand for my fellow people, no matter their color, creed, etc…I CHOOSE to think good thoughts even in the midst of pain and sorrow, because I know in my heart that good always prevails over evil, in some way or another I know that it does.

 

 

George Zimmerman is not a free man today; he was dismissed of charges yes, but for the rest of his life he will look over his shoulder and not feel safe, he will fear for his family’s safety, he will never gain back the life that he knew. He didn’t really win; it’s more a matter of where we imprisoned him because he is behind bars no matter how you want to see it.

 

My heart hurts this morning, we are a society and a government full of ills, and we just keep band aiding the issues instead of actually getting in there and building something better, but I’m going to send one more prayer up for all of us right now, I’m going to pray for guidance and for love and patience and compassion because we all need it, and then I’m going to dust myself off and go out into the world be the positive change I want to see; one person, one step at a time, because it’s better than doing nothing but crying in outrage w/no movement forward.

 

R.I P Treyvon, you are truly in such a better place than this mess we are left with here…

Everyone needs to bow their heads and pray to whatever God you pray to, and send something positive out for this family, for this world, for yourself and for me; turn this into positive energy and watch change begin.

 

~Peace, Love & Light

 

 

 

A Random Message- Holding on when Letting go is the answer

A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they'd be asked the "half empty or half full" question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: "How heavy is this glass of water?"

Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.
...
She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn't change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes." She continued, "The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything."

Remember to put the glass down.

Part 2- A father's Love

I don’t believe that things happen by accident or coincidence, even though we use those words redundantly in our lives; each person and every Xperience is put into place for a purpose; lessons that we need to learn or things we need to teach someone else.  With that being stated, it then becomes more of a matter of gaining insight into the why, and as it has been pointed out to me, in this human capacity, we don’t always have the ability to reach that kind of understanding.

So if my perception is that there are open wounds and empty places in relation to my biological father and our lack of a relationship; my job is then to figure out how to apply the correct medicine to heal those wounds from the inside out, right? 

The first vital relationships we have with the opposite sex are with our parents, boys are drawn into the softness and comfort of their mothers, while girls are drawn into the strength and protection they get from their fathers; so if we don’t get those things, can you actually miss something you never had? Yes, because society gave us role models like June Cleaver and Mr. and Mrs. Brady (just aged myself, didn’t I? lol) so we then compare and contrast, us to them, etc…or as kids we witness our friends who have more functional homes than we have and want what they have, and seek the loving relationships that our friends had with their mothers or fathers, feeling confused and resentful when we don’t get the same thing. I recently listened to a clip from one of my favorite authors, Iyanla Vanzant, and she said that the things we experience in this life, are things that our soul decided upon before coming into this body in this physical sphere; things that we wanted to experience to advance ourselves to a higher level of energy and consciousness.

That leaves me thinking that all of this had its place and its purpose then, I’m not a victim, I chose this life because it would offer me the insights I was coming here to gain.

I guess ultimately I need to be thankful for the blessings in all of this, I have to choose that over sadness and a feeling of loss, it’s all a matter of my perception, it seems. I have the pleasure of having his wife in my life today, someone who was as close to him as another can be perhaps, and she so openly and willingly shares her memories of him with me; I know that that is no accident, we both believe he led us to each other because it was time. I think the medicine I need is simple surrender, acceptance and a willingness to just trust that this is all exactly what it was meant to be; and that one day he and I will have that meeting on the beach. I'll meet you there, Dad.

 

©2013.NOVEMBERGOLD.All Rights Reserved. 

In Loving Memory:

 

 

I view the world sometimes and wonder how the sun can rise and the moon still shine so beautiful and bright when there is so much pain around.

It seems unfair to me that people still have to rise and greet a new day when their hearts are broken and holes are left gaping.

I don’t know what you’re feeling and I pray I wont ever have to; but I know the pain I felt saying goodbye to a little blonde haired girl that I watched come into this world, and I know the pain I felt as I watched you all struggle to breathe and fight the urge to quit.

 

 Emily is a gift we all received and were blessed by for a moment in time; a beautiful precious soul who touched so many people and left her mark forever on our hearts and in our minds. I don’t understand how it’s possible that she is gone already, but I have to believe that GOD knows what He is doing and that He has a plan for her that we just cannot grasp yet. I believe that you got it right, though my dear friend when you said that she was drawn to the wings He offered her. It’s apparent that she knew what she wanted to do while she was here and what she wanted to experience and she made sure that everyone else followed the directions so that all of it could come to fruition for her. She changed you, all of you, all of US, as she traveled through our lives and she was meant to. Andy said that she was an angel who was sent here to teach about Love. And she did.

 

I called to you Emily and asked you to watch over your family and take care of them while they hurt, I asked you for a sign and you gave me the rays of the sun through the window of the church and in the swirling winds in the trees as we stood at your grave and laid you to rest. I laid a rose on your chariot, and I whispered goodbye, but I only said goodbye to the vessel that carried you through this earthly existence, I will never say goodbye to the beautiful soul that shone so brightly from you because I know that that part of you lives on forever.

 

 

 

©2013.NOVEMBERGOLD.All Rights Reserved. 

*

 

Angst

Upward reaching
heaven bound screams
eyes wide shut, cold sweat and empty dark dreams.
Wake me up from this nightmare
and put me back on solid ground-
feeling so lost and alone and
just longing to be found.