Looking Forward: 2016

 

Please consider this your open invitation to join me for Soul Care 2016.  Soul Care is a month by month, study, reflection, art journaling, discussion process that's main purpose is to deepen your spiritual connection to God.

 

You can join me here on the blog or over on the Soul Musing Facebook page. "Joining" Soul Musings 2016 can mean different things for different people. Some will simply read and reflect on what is written here or posted on Facebook. Some will comment or add their own thoughts. Some will buy an art journal or planner and create their own course of study or follow the one I am doing. Soul Musings is simply one avenue for you to walk the path God has set before you.

 

I'm excited for 2016!  God wants us to live a joyful life, and so often life here on this (at the moment) very rainy place we call earth can be complicated and stressful. Pain does exist and there are many storms to weather, both real and internally. As our faith grows and we seek God's will, some of those anxieties fall away and we are better able to cope with the multitude of things thrown at us.

 

I'm planning on a slightly different approach to Soul Care this year and I'd like to share it with you.

 

 

This is my new planner. It's a Happy Planner that I created a new faith based cover for. I have some other covers so I will most likely change them throughout the year. Last year I did both the planner and a Bible study so when I was thinking about 2016, I decided to combined both into one location. I'm not sure how it will work but we are about to find out!

 

 

At the beginning of each month there is a monthly page which I altered to work for my faith art journal. I haven't finished filling in all of the things for January yet. 

 

 

 

The inside of the planner has a monthly view and I will basically follow the same format in regards to monthly focus topics.  The first nine months of the year will focus on the fruits of the spirit.

 

Week One is always prayer week. This is a good time to ask for God's guidance for the month ahead and for him to open your heart and mind to Him.

 

Week Two is Bible Week and I look for and read verses pertaining to the monthly topic. It is amazing how often those verses speak to my life at the moment and uplift and guide me.

 

Week Three is Silence and Solitude Week which is the most difficult. Clearing my mind to hear God's voice is hard in this busy world. This year I am going to add the practice of lighting a candle during this reflective time as a reminder that God is the Light of the World and darkness cannot outshine his light.

 

Week Four is Express It Week which is when I tried to art journal my faith in some small way. The creative process opens our hearts to God in a different way than other forms of worship.

 

Any "extra" weeks in the month are bonus weeks to use however I wish.

 

 

 

The weekly views in the planner are set up a little different and I have a bit more room than I did in the spiral bound one in 2015. I plan to decorate each weekly view and use the sections as follows:

 

1. Top boxes will be used for the month Soul Care focus.

 

2. Middle boxes will be for art, doodles. inspirational pictures or other things of that nature.

 

3. The bottom boxes I am going to use to track my Bible study.

 

I am honored to share my ideas and thoughts with you and hope they help you on your journey toward a deeper relationship with God.

 

Hugs to all of you.

 

 



 

 

 

Fear: A Powerful Weapon

Fear is a powerful weapon of evil. It suffocates us with darkness and crowds the joy from our hearts.  It lures us into actions that perhaps we could otherwise avoid.  Unfortunately anxiety, worry and fear crowd in during the holiday season. The season of joy and peace can be transformed into a dark wasteland.

We can overcome fear, anxiety and worry by remembering to breathe. To let ourselves concentrate on the here and now with out worry of what might be around the next corner. God has our backs no matter what lies ahead. He never gives us more than we can handle. He teaches us through both trials and joy.

 

 

It's not an easy thing to do....to let go....and realize that God has this. Even when it feels like we are walking a tight rope hundreds of feet in the air.

 

Breathe

Pray

Look for joy

Do something fun

Sing

 

Give God a chance to work.

 

Hugs to each of you and may you let go of your fear and let God grow in your life in unexpected ways.

 

 

Living in Your Heart or Your Head

 

This morning as I headed out for a brisk walk/run I didn't know I needed to do some serious musing. I didn't know that God was going to bring into my life an experience that would bring clarity. Life has been complicated lately and it's easy for anxiety and stress to take its toll. As I looked up at the spacious blue sky filled with white clouds, it lifted me. My heart lightened and I knew there was a message here from God. The language of the soul is so often found in the wonder of God's creation. 

I started to ponder whether I am living in my heart or my head.

Living in your head is stressful. It creates versions of events and of the possible future that may or may not be accurate. Living in your head makes you think you are all knowing. When,in fact, most of what we conjure up are sheer fabrications that bring us to the brink of frustration and freeze our hearts with anxiety.

Living in your heart is a joyous experience. Now don't confuse this with being ruled only by emotion. That's not what I mean by living in your heart. Living in your heart creates an environment that allows faith, hope, and peace to fill your inner being. It fills you with a calm sense of knowing there is meaning in the universe.

At one point, I noted a plane's dark trail marring the seamless white backdrop created by the clouds. In life we experience dark trails that spread across the whiteness of our days. The beauty disrupted by so many human issues that cannot be avoided. As I walked I continued to watch that dark trail and reflect on it. While this is a "thinking" process it certainly felt more like a "heart" process because it came to me that over time the dark trail left by the plane was slowly dissolving and the white clouds gradually overtook it, sealing back together in seamless white beauty.

Life is like that. The blemishes of life fade and are overcome with other things. Sometimes its difficult to wait for that to happen. Yet if we can wait in our hearts instead of our heads we will save ourselves a whole lot of grief.

 

Hugs to each of you and may all your caterpillars become butterflies!

Violence, Hate and God's Promises

I watched CNN most of the afternoon yesterday. I know it's not really a healthy thing to do. Yet another mass shooting unfolding just mere days after the last one couldn't simply be ignored. We cannot hide our heads in the sand. Paris, Mali, Colorado and now California. Has the whole world gone mad?

Things are troubling in today's world. This emptiness inside of people grows. We can talk gun control, mental health and terrorism all we want but the plain hard fact is that none of those truly tell the whole story.  They are but simple human terms to try to describe something that we struggle to understand. It reminds me of an earlier post about the nature of good and evil. While good strives to "become" to move higher and higher in a spiritual swirl toward God, evil is the emptiness of the soul, a lack of meaning, the "unbecoming" until only the darkness exists.

We can enact laws, we can limit guns, we can increase mental health availability, we can bomb terrorist strongholds but none of those truly combat the emptiness. I'm a Methodist, but I'm pretty eclectic, the God or higher spirit that you chose to worship does not have to fit into my belief system but it has to exist. And it has to exist in harmony with others beliefs.  This isn't a competition between my God and your God. Without the existence of God, The Great Spirit, there is only the darkness. I agree with the headline that reads  "God isn't fixing this"

I'll be honest....I didn't read the article but I stand behind the headline. Here's why. God does promise to make something good out of the storms that devastate your life but that assumes you are going to be an active participant. You can't be passive, you can't ignore God and good and love and then assume that God is stepping in to clean up your mess. Not going to happen!

Cleaning up the mess doesn't require pointing fingers, endless debates and rhetoric. It requires two things. One that we live our lives filled with love rather than hate. Two that we recognize the emptiness created by a lack of some kind of faith in God or a higher being. When we recognize number two then we are open to achieve number one.

By now, most of you are shaking your heads saying..."it's not gonna happen." and you could very well be right. But without an end to hate in this world, there will be no end to violence. Truly moving in that direction would allow God to create something great out of the storms.

To simply pray for God to "fix" this is not what's required. Oh I'm all for prayer and it's powerful but we need to move past conversations with God and onto the path he has set forth for us in regard to living our spiritual lives. Now more than ever we must offer others the gift of a deep spiritual connection to God. For in the end, the whole world may be destroyed and even the stars may fall but God will fulfill his promises.

 

 

Hugs to each of you during these very trying times. May you reflect on words of love and seek ways to bring others into faith so they are not consumed by emptiness.

Waiting and God's Promises

Just a couple days ago I was talking with a friend about prayer and faith and "waiting" to see what happens in different situations. We both agreed that we were rather impatient people and unrealistically wanted "immediate" answers. He shared the idea of praying about "what should I be doing while I'm waiting?"  This opened my heart to being able to pray and I have been using his suggestion since.

Perhaps his suggestion allowed my heart, frozen by anxiety, to melt just a bit and in doing so it has caused me to muse about waiting and God's promises. I've written before about how my prayer life has evolved and how difficult sometime it is to not just "tell" God what you want to have happen but rather to take the situation to God and allow Him to work through it in his time and with his unique and all powerful insight and wisdom. Now I want to muse about that most difficult of all things....waiting.

 

I think the first thing to address is captured in the image above. God has a plan. He does not bring you to something that he is not willing or not going to bring you through. No matter how difficult and no matter the outcome in the end, He has a purpose. If He brings you TO it....he will bring you THROUGH it....perhaps in unexpected ways.

 

 

Here's another gem to remember. God's timing is always perfect. Oh dear me, I struggle with this as I want every thing settled immediately. I want my answers like NOW. But what if going through the waiting is part of the answer. What if the struggles you have in processing your situation are exactly what's needed for you to move forward in strong and powerful ways?  What if a fast answer is, in fact, stunting your growth?

 

 

Sometimes waiting feels like wishing on a star. Is it just randomly throwing our hopes and dreams and heart into the vast darkness of the universe?  Faith, even strong faith can let doubt seep in. Wait expectantly for God's answer (which we all know may not be the answer we want or expect). But wait expectantly, knowing that in God's time He will bring about the resolution that is right.

 

 

God's plan is bigger than all of us, more powerful and will increase your spiritual relationship with him. Don't fear it, embrace it and wait with a light heart for His answers.

 

 

Isn't this the truth? God's answers come at unexpected times, in unexpected packages, in words that surprise us, and suddenly all that seemed lost is resolved in sparkling clarity. This isn't a promise of rainbows and sunshine but know he will answer in the best way at the best time. Prepare your heart to receive his answer and wait filled with love and faith.

 

Hugs to each of you and may God's promises fill your December days.