Category: #lifestyle

Natural State of The Mind

~ blacklilymusings ~ 1 Comment
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Nothing Left to Natural is Better.  Weeds Take Over.  Rodents and Varmints Invade.  Helter Skelter is Never a Good Look.  The Mind is No Different.  The Mind in its Natural State is Messy.  Weeds Grow Quickly.  Those Little Foxes Move in Quick.

Every Day it’s a Beautiful Thing to Tend to Our Minds.  Clear the Weeds of Doubt, Fear and Worry.  Plant those Beautiful Flowers of Faith, Hope and Gratitude.  Take a Few Steps Back from this Precious Garden and Survey the Condition of Your Mind.  Is it Neat and In Order?  Is there a Clear Purpose and Direction of Thought?  Does it Radiate Purpose?  Is Your Mind a Place that were it Physical, would you want to Leisurely Sip Tea?  Would there be a Beautiful Fragrance to Enjoy of Love, Joy and Peace?  Or would you have to Clear a Spot on the Forsaken Bench of Resentment, Anger and Fear?

I’ve Learned to Love to Tend to My Garden.  I Stretch My Heart’s Limbs Up to the Warmth of God’s Love Every Day. I feel His Sun on my Face. His Kindness makes me Excited for the Day’s Adventures.  To Allow Him to Once Again Woo My Heart with His Precious Miracles Meant Just for Me in Every Day.

For Some, they may see the Dirt on My Knees and Under my Fingernails.  They may see Labour.  But if they Come Close and Join Me in the Garden of My Heart, I want my Guests to have Something to Enjoy.  A Little Rest Spot.  A little Sweet Fragrance.  A touch of Beauty.

For me, Natural is Certainly Not Better.  I know the Inclinations of My Natural Heart.  So I will Treasure the Labour.  For I am the Greatest Benefactor of what Grows There. Or Alternatively, the Great Sufferer.

Happy Gardening Dear Friends,

xo

 

 

Clean the Dust off Your Life Filter…It’s Just Dirt, Folks…

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My Filter can Get Pretty Dirty Real Quick.  And it Makes Sense.  If the Dust Storm of Doubt comes Rolling Through, it Can Clog Your Filter Almost Instantaneously.  Some Storms are Pretty Fierce and Can Hit Out of the Blue.  One Moment You’re Walking on Air in a MultiColoured Fairy Land of Optimism and Hope.  Then a Phone Call.  A Text.  A DejaVu Memory. The Clouds Roll In.  The Wind Starts Kicking Up Dust and Pretty Soon the Windshield Wipers of Prayer and the Water of His Word is Needed. There’s Always an Antedote.  Let’s Not See our Lives as the Colour of Brown when it’s Just the Dust on Your Glasses.  Nothing Changed.  Your Unicorn Land of Dreams is Still as It is.  Maybe a Storm Went Through and Things are Repositioned.  But it’s Still Unicorn Land My Friends.  There’s Still Magic. There’s Crazy Opportunities to Explore.  Unopened Doors to the Coolest Paradises to Be Discovered.

Don’t Let Some Silly Little Brown Particles of Doubt Keep You From Seeing Beauty…It’s Just a Little Dirt on the Filter Honey.

Life is Pretty.

xoxo

Loving Life Today…

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Not Everyday is Stellar.  I don’t Mean That because Things Go Wrong Some Days.  Some of our Best Days just don’t Feel Good.  Our Attitude is Off.  Our Brains are Dehydrated.  The Cat Missed the Litter Box Again.  Simple Things can Set Up our Thoughts for the Grumblies.  Then other Days it’s Polar Opposite.  Today to Be Truthful I’m Feeling Sick.  I’m Achy and Painy. My Brain is threatening another CSF Leak.  But Honestly, My Heart Might Just Float Away if it Wasn’t Tethered.  I feel H.A.P.P.Y….I feel positively Happy.

Life is so Crazy.  It’s a Multicolored Roller Coaster.  Some days there’s a Dark Tunnel.  Some Days it’s the Spin Wheel.  Upside Down and Backwards.  I Want to  Learn to Munch Nonchalantly on my Multi Colored Cotton Candy in the Tunnels.  Because Pretty Soon, it’s out in that Crazy Wonderful Summer Air.  The Awesome Spin Wheel Section.  The Gut Twisting Smile Enducing Heights and Extremes of Joy.

Life, I Love You.  You Crazy Wonder.

xo to all My Crazy Lovin Cotton Candy Nonchalant Tunnel Riders.   You’re my Favorites.  You know Who you Are.

Sore Feet Are The Worst…

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Yep.  That’s All Folks.

My Feet Hurt.  And So My Brain is On Strike.  So I’m Cabbing It Home.  Maybe I’ll Get a Serenade of a Old Haitian Hymn like Last Time by my Cabbie.  I will Put My Sweats On.  And I Will Banish These Dang Shoes to the Never Again To Work Pile.

Love From Blistey Blisterson.  Hobbie Hobbleson.  Cranky Crankerson.

Hope Your Feet Are Happy.

xo

Cargo Up!

~ blacklilymusings ~ 1 Comment

 

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Every Day we Either Sail or Take on Water.  Staying Still will Always Swamp the Boat.  Most of Us are Pretty Low Riders.  Our Boats are Pretty Cargoed Up.

Burdens, Responsibilities.  All Good Things.  But Unless we are Purposeful and Making Progress, Those Waves are Coming On Over the Bow.

So How Do we Keep the Sputtering and the Stalling to a Minimal?  How do we keep the Clean Fuel Burning and Engines Firing Steadily? For Me, Clean Fuel is Courage.  The Greatest Engine Oil is Hope. Gratitude.

Some Resent the Burdens Laid Upon Their Ship.  And Yes, Too Much is Too Much.  But the Boats with Heavy Burdens are the Most Stable in Stormy Seas.  When there’s Not Enough Cargo,  too much of Our Hull above the Water Line.  We become Top Heavy and Easily Capsizable.

Allow Your Burdens to Hunker You Down on the Sea of Life.  There’s Safety in Our Burdens.  And Plus, the Captain Trusts You with Your Precious Cargo. And we Have the BEST Captain.  Our Burdens are Our Privileges.  Our Responsibilities are Precious.

Love You All So Much!  Can’t even Explain It.

xo

 

So You’ve Been Bullied…

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Everyone at some point has Dealt with a Bully.  Taking your Gentleness as Weakness, they Push You Around.  They Need to Feel Powerful.  Loving to Oppress.  For a Moment they Feed their Need for Power and Relevance through You.

Silently Observe…

Look in their eyes….

You’ll Often See Fear.  Bullies are Afraid Insecure People .  When you can Understand this, it takes their Power Away to Hurt You.

Disarm them with Your Quiet Confidence.  Stay Comfortable in Your Own Skin.  Two Things Often Happen…

Their Attention goes Elsewhere…or as you Role Model Strength and Courage

Sometimes…

The Fear in their Eyes Melts away.  Confidence finds a New Spring in Their Step.

They’ve Become Inspired…

and…

The World Becomes a Little Kinder.  A Little Brighter.

One Bully at a Time.

It’s Worth a Shot…

The Proper Kinda Shot…

 

Watch Out For What You Need

~ blacklilymusings ~ 1 Comment
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need – verb

require (something) because it is essential or very important.

Whatever we Need will Control us.  We think of these things like Our Breath.  Without it we Feel We Die. Fade Into Oblivion.  We become Invisible.  Irrelevant. Purposeless.  Our life  Feels In Vain.

For some its External Validation.  Admiration.  Others, it’s Wealth.  Status.

Some Days we Have It All.  Some Years.  A Golden Decade. An Admiring Tribe of Supporters.  Money and Status Comes Easily.

For Some,  Circumstances Change. What we’ve come to Believe We Need, Slips Away.  We aren’t As Shiny.  Passersby Don’t Look Twice.  Our Bank Accounts Dwindle.  Our Status is a Few Levels Below Amazing.

None of it Matters.  Unless you Need it.  And Need is a Nasty Rollercoaster in Maybe Land. Maybe Today’s the Day.  Maybe this Will Work.  Maybe …Maybe…Maybe.  It’s like a Sipping a Straw in the Very Bottom of a Draining Well.  Mostly Nothing, but Frantic Hope.

So Today I Need Serenity.  It’s Free for the Taking.  I Need Joy.  It’s All Around Me.  I Need Simplicity, and that’s Up to Me.

What we Actually Need is Everywhere in Abundance.

Feeling Grateful.

xo

 

Those Dreaded Uninvited Guests Are Here….

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They Make Tears Run Down My Face Like Rivers.  The Wind as I walk Charlie Whisks them Away.  The Stain Still Smeared on my Cheeks.  Sometimes, they just Show up Unannounced.  Demanding Entry.  Smashing Down my Bolted Heart’s Door.

Shame.  Regret.  Grief.  Longing.  Fear.  Pain.

Gosh What a Family.

 Obnoxious.

They Rip the Living Room Carpet Up Every Time.  Exposing the Elephants in the Room.  There’s a lot of Elephant Excrement too under that Dang Rug.

They Demand my Attention.  That they be Acknowledged.  Their Needs Attended to.  Which Always Includes that Dumb Elephant.

When they Show their Ugly Heads Around, I know my Dream Day is Gone.  That I will now be Engrossed in this Flipping Family Fraught with Failures.  Feelings.  I will Cry Inconsolably.  I will Wish.  I will Repeat “I’m So Sorry” to No One and Everyone Inparticular.

But You Know What, Each Time They Come, They Lay Claim to an Elephant.  They Drag its Lumbering Behind Out the Door with them.  Like they’re taking Some Treasure.  If They Only Knew.

I Feel Lighter.  The Living Room Rug is One Less Elephant Lumpy.  And A lot Less Smelly. I Got More Heart Leg Room.  Room to Stretch.  Room for Good Guests.

And hey, Look Who’s At the Door….

Humility.  Forgiveness.  Gratitude.  Love.  Joy.

Come In, I’ve Missed You.

xo

Hinchcliff & Lee

~ blacklilymusings ~ 1 Comment
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The Greatest Gift I can give myself in our Lovely City of Calgary is to take a little wander down to Hinchcliff & Lee. To visit  John and his Shop Dog.  Cash.  After a lovely meander through the Farmer’s Market with Helen yesterday, we met Beautiful Julianna at The Eden for a Delightful Lunch (a blog on that later under restaurants I love).  A few doors down is my  Favourite City Treat.

It’s the most amazing Trip through Asia at Hinchcliff & Lee.  A Second Generation Establishment.  John’s Mama’s Dream Child come to Fruition.  Always greeted by the most gorgeous caramel floaty haired dog, he’s Shop Dog Number Two.  When I first discovered This Gem, Doggie Jack was meeting me at the door.  Now Cash has taken up the torch, a Little Wilder and Floating His Freak Flag more than Jack.  Cash buries his nose in my purse looking for “Cookies”.  He pulls out my passport and has a solid hold.  I’ll Treasure the Teeth Marks.

John is a Gorgeous Soul.  I can’t even Explain It.  So Earnest.  So Engaged.  As Full of Character as his beautiful Asian Antiques.  I love the way he crosses his arms and gets that faraway look in his eyes and you know a Great Story is going to be Told.  An Asian Tattoo (I’ve yet to ask the meaning) scrawled up his forearm.  He pushes up his dark rimmed glasses with his middle finger, and tears fill his eyes.  His Papa has Passed.  We stand sharing his sorrow, tears rimming our eyes as he Gathers his Emotions.  He’s one of those People who make you Glad to Be Alive.  Enjoying this Journey of Life. He’s Got Passion.  Heart.

We wander through the Pergolas.  Paintings. The Heavy Wood Tables and Armoires in the Asian Reds and the Gorgeous Blue and White Porcelain.  Downstairs is another Treasure Trove.  The Weight of History of both the Old Building and Asia Mingling in the Summer Air.   Upstairs the floor is Creaking So Lovely under the feet of other Happy Saturday Wanderers.

I’m Glad it Graces our City.  I Highly Recommend a Trip to Inglewood to Hinchcliff & Lee.  Behind the Wooden Door is the Cutest Shop Dog eating the Sales Tickets.  The Shop Owner John and His Glorious Tales both New and Old.  Asian Antiques that will Take your Breath Away.

It’s Worth the Trip.

 

 

 

 

 

Morning Serenades

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I awoke to the electric guitar floating over the morning airwaves.  Two houses down is a garage band.  It’s an odd time to be practising your chords, and if it didn’t Stir My Belly maybe I would’ve been a little annoyed.  After all, the electric guitar is rather ear piercing more than it’s melodic.  But it Stirred Me.

When I pondered why it awoke  Butterflies Of Excitement in my stomach I realized it made me Grateful….

Grateful for Music.  For Passion.  For Those Who Dream.

It made me grateful for another day to Ignite My Own Passion.  To work towards my dreams.  To embrace this beautiful land of promise.  To allow Hope to blow its soft gentle wind into my sails again.

I Inhale and listen to his Happy Although Screechy Chords, and I Smile.

Thank you Garage Band Electric Guitar Player.  Thanks for the Inspiration.

I’ll Sketch My Dreams Today.  Because of You.