What haunts your soul?

What haunts your soul? What dark thing dwells in you that hinders you from growing and moving forward?

Is it the regrets you allow your mind to linger in? Regrets deep within that no one else can?
Is it the torment that flows through your veins when you dwell on the mistakes you’ve made?
Is it the pain you’ve allowed for so long while you dreamed of freedom from the tormentor?
Is it the guilt that overwhelms your nights as you lie bathing your pillow with tears?

When you look into your past and focus on it to the point where you cannot move forward, you have to stop and ask yourself why?
Why are you allowing it to have this impact on you?

No matter how much one dwells on the demons of our pasts… nothing changes.
Nothing becomes focused or clear.
Nothing grows from it.
Nothing blossoms into beauty.
nothing…
nothing good comes from dwelling on past hurts.

Some of us have lived with the demons because of others insecurities.
Some of us have chosen to stay in situations because we can’t grasp the thought off moving away from it.

What are you afraid of?

Is it the thought of being alone?
Is it the dread of failure?
Is it the threat of ….

What is keeping you from the freedom that your soul is longing after?
What is holding you in bondage?

We all desire peace and happiness. We all long for the freedom that allows our soul to live unencumbered…

…dancing in the light of the moon…
…singing in the rain….
…strolling through a quiet wood listening to the leaves rustle in the trees…
…feeling the warmth of the sun and its power to direct your path.

Life is filled with demons.
Life is filled with fears.
Life is filled with…

Today choose the path that will lead you away from those things that haunt your soul.
Today step away and trust in the power that is within you to be strong and live.

Fear will consume.
Freedom will blossom.

Believing in your self-worth will bring you to a point where you can find joy in your life.

Until next time,
Jean

 

 

 

Soul Mates

Soul mates.
Serendipity.
What do they have in common?

It seems that should be obvious doesn’t it?

Serendipity is the stumbling upon something wonderful without ever looking for it.
A soul mate is someone whose inner light is interconnected to your own…
You could spend a life time searching, but when you stop looking and allow fate to have her way, wonderful things will transpire.

One day you stumble upon each other…. and you just know.
A memory of being forever together while never knowing the other.
An interconnection kept them ever united.

There’s no struggling for words… within the first moments, you’ve known each other forever.
You laugh about things that no one else gets.

There’s an electricity even when you’re apart, it’s there surging and rippling.
The way waves billow upon the shore…. reaching and connecting yet never leaving…

There’s an aura when you’re together enshrouding you both.

You feel that way because even though you just discovered each other physically… you were always united spirtitually.
I believe the two souls were born together and then separated to roam the earth searching for one another.

Not everyone finds their other half…
Not everyone stumbles into that joy…
Not everyone will know that fulfillment…

But for those who have… what an incredible feeling it must be.

Until next time,
Jean

 

Live Freely

“She fearlessly left her own cage.”

Brooke Danielle Reniger
https://m.facebook.com/brookereningerauthor

 She fearlessly left her own cage.

What cage are you locked in?

Perplexing thought as I read the above quote on Facebook the other morning.

As I pondered it, my heart was overwhelmed.
The truth behind the quote gnawed at my soul…

Because I knew this is what I just did…
I left it… to live freely
yet not without fear… but bravely… oxymoron….humph.

We’re all in a cage of some sort.

I know I was… the sad thing was, I put myself in it.
I kept myself in it.
The agony of that self-inflicted cage became an overwhelming and delusional place.
I believed that it would stop… that things would get better.

Don’t go back to the past because you will only rewind it over and over again.
It never changes.

What’s amazing is this cage can only be felt by the constrained in it… the captors don’t see it.
They don’t believe they’d do such a thing.
Why did I stay in that cage for so long?
I know within my heart why… but those that I sacrificed for mock…

People can be fed poison without even knowing it.
They can become so engrossed in the activities… that they become the norm… the toxicity becomes what is normal.
But it’s not.

How do you teach them something different?
How do you teach them the truth when they believe the lie?

Living the truth and seeing the lie eventually becomes their reality.
You’re not there to blame for the behavior anymore… but the behavior never changes.
Difficult as that may be to comprehend.
The innocent become the victim and suddenly take on the form of the oppressed.

Walk away friend.
Walk away and be live freely.
You who are living it understand.

Walk away….
…and live freely.

Until next time,
Jean

Relationships

“The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you.” John E. Southard

I love to watch the boys play and interact. It brings warm, fuzzy feelings to stand back and see the playful interactions…  although all too quickly those giggles of happiness flip into shrieks of, “NO!!!! THAT’S MY TOY!!!!”…. ahhhh yes, motherhood.  Sibling relations

Relationships can be like that too… mother-child, friends and lovers. Life is filled with challenges within those relationships… but how do we deal with them?

I believe all too often relationships can become toxic due to lack of proper communication. Feelings are bottled up. Lies are told and hidden for years. Trust is broken… never to be re-built. How we deal with these issues will determine the final outcome in a relationship.

Decisions.

Where do you draw the line?
Where do I draw the line?
What will you tolerate in a relationship?
What will I tolerate in a relationship?
… these are questions we’re all faced with everyday.

When you have a relationship that communication and honesty, along with God, are the foundations, it is one to be cherished.
One to be diligently worked on.
One to be appreciated.
… because I think it is rare.

As our interactions begin slowly and gradually build, we become comfortable with the familiarity of them.
This is when issues are more likely to arise…
But really… we saw the signs long before we believed them.
We felt the pain before we addressed it.
We hid behind our hopes believing the lies.

Step out.
Stop the noise.
Build faith.
Trust your gut…

Until next time,
Jean

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

“Mommy… I love you!” The words melt your heart because you know they are the truest ones you’ll ever hear from anyone. Your precious child… the one you carried and bore… the one that you would do anything for… no matter what.

Our children have the ability to inflict unspeakable joy as well as tremendous pain to our hearts and souls. Forgiveness and our unconditional love for them is what allows a mother to overlook the hurts… this level of love is reserved only to these souls who’ve entered into our lives. Spouses, lovers and friends are not subject to this type of unconditional love.

I’ve often told my children that their actions speak louder than their words… a cliché it may very well be, but so much truth is forced through this simple yet powerful statement. Our children may shower us with gifts and loving words, but actions of disobedience and disrespect reveal a disturbing truth. I understand fully that our children will do things that they’ll later regret and through their actions of genuine remorse, we see their love.

Relationships with adults are different. When you’ve opened up your heart and laid it upon the altar… bare and naked, you’ve given something of yourself. It’s the ‘do unto others as you’d have them do unto you’ kind of thing. Actions as well as words will create a loving bond between two people or drive a wedge between their two hearts. Love and trust must be nurtured or a necessary good-bye must sadly be said.

You find yourself at a crossroad and you have to ask yourself… “Are you going to do it again? Are you going to except the pain again?”

Before you step onto either road, consider your heart because actions do speak louder than words.
Until next time,
Jean

On Butterfly Wings

“Who would crush a butterfly on the wing?  Who would crush this woman under foot? ” Lyrics from “Soul Asylum” by The Cult

There’s something seriously deep in this quote…

As a psych major for most of my college days, I tend to analyze things to death. I want to believe there are secret meanings in a persons statement…
Some deep understanding  that I need to discover…
A pain… a joy… a fear… something… something that someone is trying to say in hidden messages.

I think I do this because it’s real to me.

I love music.  Not just the sounds, but more intensely the lyrics.
There are days when I feel the music in my soul… the words are my hearts ache and cry… my joys and laughter…
Words… hidden meanings within them.

For so many years I lived a lie… a secret that only we knew.
The smile I wore for so long was a façade to a degree… one that was hiding so much sorrow and pain behind it.
My heart ached for freedom from the pain but I clung to hopes for something better…
Something for my children.

But I smiled.
I was happy when I was away doing what I loved with people I loved.

Have you ever given your all out of such a deep love and devotion for someone else?
Laid your own joy, peace and happiness to the side for someone else?
If you’ve sacrificed like this, you understand that pain.
You understand the sheer agony that dwells within…trying to escape, but hanging on for them…

Love and sacrifice…. that’s what we as mothers give for our children.
I wonder what it all gained some days…

Some days I believe that I did more harm than good.
Yet I’m encouraged along to not feel like that… that someday they’ll realize the sacrifice.

I don’t know…

Until next time,
Jean

One’s heart…

We open our hearts to both love and pain.  It’s inevitable really…

To love, as well as hate are choices we as an individual personally make.

We choose to accept someone into our lives, into our hearts…
…and then all too soon we realize it was the best decision we ever made or the biggest mistake…

So often our ‘gut’ tells us what we don’t want to hear.
It’s honest, this intuition that God has intuitively designed into our being…. that sixth sense some refer to it as.

I believe in it.
I trust it.
It has never led me astray… even when I’ve chosen to ignore it.
It was right even when I chose to shove it off to the side.
It was right when I hated it because it wasn’t what I wanted to feel.

We want love because love fulfills.
We want to love because giving love fills a void of emptiness and longing.
Our hearts are open battle fields.
Some will use and abuse it, while others will cherish and nurture it.

It is up to us what and who we allow into our lives.
It’s a conscious decision to open ones heart up to an individual… to let someone in.

Someone to know your strengths and weaknesses…
Your good days along with the bad.
It isn’t easy… and the decision is that much more difficult…
How do you know?
How does one trust when there has been so much pain and lies in the past?
How?

The gut.
Trust the gut and don’t shove it aside…

I believe the gut is the Holy Spirit given by the Lord to protect us.
He will protect one’s heart… if allowed.

Until next time,
Jean

Writing Naked

A different kind of post today….

I often read other writers work and wonder how they were able to express their inner pain and struggles, their passions and regrets, their fears and anxieties in a way that bears their soul. Bears it so humbly… so raw… I feel it’s writing naked.

Not literally of course… well maybe some do, but I mean it in a proverbial sense. I mean it because I dream of writing in this capacity.

It’s scary. Laying oneself out bare and open. Do we ever really write what we think? Do we bare our inner soul’s minds deepest, darkest thoughts?
Our hates.
Our loves.
Our fears.
Our demons.
Our tempest soul?

I think I worry too much what people will think of me. Although for the most part I don’t really care what people think of me. Oxymoron???

The dirt is clean.
The dirt of the mind… is it clean?

Writing naked.
We are self-protecting creatures by nature. Whether it be our ego that steps up and screams, “NO YOU DON’T!”
Writing naked.
We are self-preserving creatures by nature. Our mind won’t allow the door of our heart to swing wide open.
Writing naked.
We are self-fulfilling creatures by nature. We can make what we believe happen if we believe it hard enough.

The tempest of the mind is screaming. The mistakes. The anguish. The tears that have soiled the bed.

What is writing naked really?
What does it matter when the chances of someone reading it is slim to none?

Until next time,
Jean

Thoughts

“We think too much and feel too little.” author unknown

Our thought life will determine our attitudes and feelings. It can be the light that shines the way or it can be the darkness that controls our fears. Either way, I am a firm believer that it your choice in which line of thought processing you live with.

I’ve always told the children that what they feed will grow and what they starve will die. This is true with living creatures as well as our thought life.

I try so desperately to reiterate they’re need to use the Lord as their guide for all their thoughts and actions.
It’s Him after all that we are striving to please…
Him that we invite into our heart and mind or shun away ashamedly at what we’re feasting our soul on…

Life if filled with temptations. Sadly though, poor choices seem much more readily available.  The world and it’s allurements entice ones mind to stray away from what they know to be good, true and right.

I often wonder why…
Why the Lord allows things to happen…
Why such bad things happen to good people…

Faith. Strength. Trust.
On these three things we rush on to each day.
We can stumble along in wonderment and constantly questioning… but really, where will we be in the end with this line of thinking?

Lonely. Afraid. Confused.
So many are tempted with these thoughts.
We don’t have to stumble. He is there to ever lead and direct our paths so that we can rise above the circumstances.

Rise… be calm… be alive…

Your thoughts will have two consequences, and they are simply joy or sorrow.
What are you feeding your soul?

Until next time,
Jean

The End Equals The Beginning

We come face to face with a decision that needs to be made.

It’s not the easiest choice to make, but the most necessary one….
One that will lead to peace…
One that will drive you in a direction… a path… a motion…

You’ve stared at it for so long… so long that you’ve memorized the lines that would be said.
The facial expressions you’d make…
Felt the tears running down your face…
Nurtured the fears… the racing heart…
Soothed yourself from the torment that loomed over you for long.

The end.

It’s amazing how it feels…
Passions that were quenched rise to the surface.
They were suffocated for so long.
Stolen away for the right reasons… at least at the time.

The sun is shining and there will be clouds ahead, but the peace that fills your soul and mind is breath taking.
You look out the window with renewed vigor.
You feel again…

Life…
The end equals the beginning of something so much more wonderful.