Life EQUALS change !!!

PLEASE......... understand I am not in any way

preaching, I am just relating something in a parenting
sense that I learned long ago........

following what I have written,  I've included a copy
of THE MOST POWERFUL PRAYER that I personally
have ever encountered in my life.........

xo xo xo
Deb

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Life EQUALS change !!!

A few weeks after

January 28, 1986
I learned the most valuable

parenting lesson I could ever have learned.

On that date, 73 seconds after liftoff, the Challenger Space Shuttle

blew up.    In the blink of an eye, it’s 7 crew members were gone

from this Earth.

I am sorry to say that I don't recall which male astronaut

it was who said this to his young children, but one of them, prior

to his going up in the Challenger shuttle said to his children….

“Don’t worry, Daddy will be okay”.

The point was made at that time, that you can never tell

children ‘do not worry everything will be okay’.

At that time, my daughter Nicole was almost 4 and my

son Vincent was 1 ½ yrs old.

There are unknowns in life and there are times when

you will not be able to say with 100 percent certainty that ….

“Everything will be okay”.

Children need life explained to them in an age appropriate

manor.    You would not speak to a 2 yr old in the same way

that you would have a conversation with a 15 year old.

Telling a child do not worry everything will be okay,

is paramount to saying ‘You will have blue sunny skies

for the rest of your life’.   ‘No darkness will come,

no night, only blue skies’.

You can not take your 5 year old child and keep them

a 5 year old forever……

Our job then as parents and teachers of our children is

to be able to balance the truth of life, that everything does

change, with the fact that today is the day you get to live in.

This is NO EASY task, because we as adults don’t fully

understand every change that comes our way.!!!!!!!!!

Yet, change happens and change is inevitable. 

Time moves, seasons change……….

When we teach our children that life equals change,

we empower and equip them to stand tall and look

change in the face and keep moving forward.

The FACT is that we will NOT always be at their side

to assist them with ALL of life’s changes, but IF we have

laid down this foundation of understanding,

they will be better able to deal with the uncertainties

that will come their way.   

D. Estep

3-24-2006

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The Serenity Prayer 

God, grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdome to know the difference.

Reinhold Niebuhr

 

Waking

Waking

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that
encloses your understanding.
(Khalil Gibran)

There is no coming
to consciousness without pain. (Carl G. Jung )

LIFE is indeed a great teacher, but until the time comes

that we awaken, we have NO hope of learning.


People are sent to cross our paths, you know the ones
who greatly PUSH our buttons.... they are sent to wake us up.
Yet sometimes we view them as an annoyance or a bad dream.


Asleep, some journey on, with a pack on our back.
The pack is our cares, our anger, our fears, our perceptions of past wrongs....


ALL things passed. Loaded we attempt to
trudge forward, and we are weighted as with a ton on our back.
We grasp at that pack and hold the whole of it ever so
tight to our bodies.


The pack hurts, and at times parts of the past poke up and
stick in our bodies. Through the hurt of the pack we
CHOOSE to see doom and gloom..... But continue to laden it
with MORE CRAP....

But one day........ something happens...
The "something" can be VERY good, OR VERY bad.... but
slowly...... your eyes open. Streaks of
light and goodness shimmer in...


You have the awareness that you can at any moment set that
pack DOWN and journey onward....


This IS...... "breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding"
AND ........ with this understanding is pain.... Some pain, but you
are now aware, and you grasp the understanding that the
pain was all a learning to becoming awake.


You can not EVER grasp that pack and load it on your back again.
Once you start walking forward on your journey
you realize you have a lightness of~spirit~ that you never ever
had before....


With this awareness you want to SCREAM out to others, get
that damn pack off your back... Let me help you PULL that off,
but you know what.... quickly you come to the understanding that
you can NEVER help a person remove their pack.


They have to be the ones to wake up and remove the pack.


With apologizes and admittance of past wrongs
toward another person, and we can lighten their pack........
IF they choose to accept what we are saying to them. If they choose not to
accept an apology, it is their pack STILL fully loaded.


So what CAN we do for others who are asleep........
Have you ever had a friend come up beside you and touch
your shoulder with loving kindness.
Sometimes they have no words, only a touch.
Sometimes they have a word of support, showing
you the kindness of their ~Spirit~.

Those are wake up nudges...


But some from the day they are born, until the day they die
carry that pack. They not only carry it, they
have their hands so tightly clenched around the straps it ain't never
coming off.


That brings me to my favorite of quotes...
"I can not control another's actions, I can only control
my reaction"


AND............ once awake, you can NEVER EVER pick up
that pack again.


PS..... also remember...
"I am not better than
anyone else here,


but I am a better person
today than I was yesterday"