HEY LET'S TALK

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I love the picture above, got me to thinking about past holidays, warm as well as
hurting memories too.

The Christmas decorations are down now, my house, tidy, for the most part. The tree was the last to go. When it was down and put away, I sat down at my computer and sipped hot chocolate while listening to my Josh Groban CD, contemplating this new day. I reminded myself, for perhaps the hundredth time, that A NEW DAY - MEANS A NEW WAY,
meaning I'm being given a Do Over! Remember those? Remember how we always demanded one when we were kids; when we missed the ball, rolled the wrong number of dice when playing monopoly, or missed - when jumping rope?
   Well, each new day of our life (starting Jan.1, 2008, is a DO OVER, an opportunity to find a new way, perhaps a better way, of doing something. Failing at something doesn't make us failures. It simply means what we're doing isn't working; that we need to reconsider our words and actions, our goals, dreams 
and expectations of ourselves (and others too). It means taking advantage of the opportunity to DO IT OVER.

                                        

A friend asked, "Barb, where in the world do I start?
  "We start," I told her. "right where we are, by being honest with ourselves about ourselves; acknowledging that we're accountable for what our life has become. Next step is taking advantage of the NEW DAY, the NEW YEAR,
 the free DO OVER!
   The most wonderful thing is that we aren't offered just one DO OVER. We can change our minds several times a day, hundreds of times a day. What gets in our way is distortions of logic, those incorrect things that we not only say to ourselves, but believe.
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I remember telling you that when I was a little girl I looked at the sky and got upset - very sad. An Aunt asked me why. I said,"because the moon is broken." I was too little to know that it wasn't. I saw it as broken, told myself
it was, and believed it. 
   I'm grown now, but even as an adult  I've sometimes fallen back into the bad habit of telling myself things that are not true. Doing this keeps us down, for longer than necessary. But sometimes when problems pile up, when we're facing a difficult crisis, or perhaps fail at something, we start filling our heads with untrue statements like :
 "I can't do this." " This is too much for me to handle." " Nothing is ever going to change." "I can't lose weight," "I can't stop smoking."  "I can't stop losing my temper." "My life is going to end exactly the way itstarted - crappy." OR,
"What's the use of trying? I always fail." 
    I can recall saying many of these things to myself, and when I realized it, felt ashamed of myself. Why?
Because every one of those statements is untrue. So to say I can't do something is foolish. I've said it many times, and each time God proved me wrong.
   To say a problem is too heavy is distorting the truth too. It is only too heavy if I attempt to carry it myself.
   To say that nothing is ever going to change is downright stupid. Things will change when I change. 
  To say that my life is going to end up the way it started, is saying I have no control over my life, which of course
is untrue.  Sometimes it seems as if our life is out of control, but that's because
we keep trying to force things to go different than the way they are meant to go (like trying to put a piece of a jigsaw puzzle where it isn't meant to go).
   Too many of us say, and believe, that our best hasn't been, or isn't good enough. That also is a distortion of logic. For most of my life this particular distortion of logic has been the most difficult one for me. For many years I was made to feel that my best wasn't good enough. I had to retrain my mind, had to delete that mental tape and put in a new one, an honest one that says
If my best is good enough for the LORD, then it has to be good enough for me  too. 
   Some of you might be telling yourselves these things too.
If so, I hope reading this entry helps you realize what you are doing to yourselves. There is POWER in words. We believe what we tell ourselves, become the kind of person we convince ourselves we are.

  


CHOOSE TO BE.
The world needs a bit more sunshine, a bit more laughter. Yes, there are troubles in the world: war, starving people, hurting people, sad, lonely, depressed people. There is death too,
and a fear that is robbing people of
HOPE. The world needs strong people:
people unwilling to quit, unwilling to
remain discouraged, unwilling to focus
on what is wrong; people who are willing to step up to the plate and make a difference. Let's you and I be those
people, okay? Let's you and I decide
to Be Happy in spite of our troubles, to
show those around us how powerful a thing Hope is - and Optimisim.
  There will not ever be a time when life is not hard. It will always have its ups and downs. But we can choose not to embrace those dark moments, those betrayals, hurts, disappointments, failures, things that break our hearts. Holding onto them robs us of joy and kills our spirits. We cannot enjoy life when we're down. Life is what it is...
and that's a fact! We can but change what we can, and trust God with what we can't. 

2008.....May it be your best 
              year ever!

God bless, and Thanks for the LOVE,