Drops of Inspira

 Friday night was not a good one. I spectacularly blew it. I had the biggest meltdown in the history of this month. In this year.  Now, the meltdown was stupid. I will admit that. The house was a wreck, but that doesn't justify a meltdown. During the meltdown, I reached out to a few friends via text and asked for prayer. Besides praying for me, one of them coached me through some breathing exercises and told me to step outside and just breathe. Everything within me wanted to say that it wouldn't work, but I grabbed a plate of food and marched myself outside and sat down at our picnic table and ate. Sometime during the stillness, I looked up and saw this moon. It was stunning. Wreathed in rainbows and clouds, it lit up the night sky. And as I gazed at the moon, everything else subsided and I was able to breathe. I could hear the rumbling of a few cars passing. Frogs began to sing somewhere in the forest and the neighbor's dog barked a few times. The stillness and the relativ...

 Hello! When I was thinking about patience this last week, I kept thinking about taking the time to breathe. Maybe because there's been a lot going on in my life. Things going along at such a rapid pace that I feel disoriented and desperately needing things to slow down so I can catch up and take in a breath. The problem is that we live in a world where things are in a constant state of movement. We pride ourselves on filling our schedules to the max and then some. When people ask how we are doing or what we are doing, we often reply, "I'm busy" or something like, "my week is so full."  I'm looking out at the main street of my small town right now and noting how busy it is.  Earlier, I was talking with someone about how busy it is compared to even three years ago. Three years ago, it didn't start getting busy on the weekends until 11 in the morning, Today it was busy at 9 and according to him, it's been like this all year. What happened to the sl...

 Hello! I know last week's post was a bit heavy, so this week, I wanted to tackle another angle of patience that is near and dear to my heart: Patience and How it Affects Mental Health. If you've followed my blog for awhile, you know that I struggle a lot with both anxiety and depression. As a kid, I never thought I would be dealing with either, but it happened.  Lately, I've been fascinated by just how much impatience takes a toll on the mind and body.  Did you know that impatience can raise your blood pressure, raise your cortisol levels and adrenaline? When these are raised, your body enters a fight or flight response and your stress levels raise. When your stress levels rise, your body is prone to physical illness as well as mental illness. Many illnesses start in the mind. It controls more than we realize. And no, I'm not saying it's all in your head. That saying is one that has been going around for far too long in my opinion. It basically means that the sick ...

 Hello! Today I want to discuss what I mean by the phrase, "tilling the earth." In the farming world, it's the stage that someone takes before you actually plant seeds. It's the breaking up of ground, the pulling out of weeds and the removing of rocks and boulders. It's hard work! But it's necessary. There are areas in our life that seem monotonous. We would rather do anything but be in these places. Given the chance, we would run.  I'm in a season where I'm tilling the earth. The job I am at, I once thought of as a blessing, but it's been very hard. Most days, I want to run. I'd rather do anything but be where I am. This Thursday, I got hit with a weird sickness out of nowhere. It drained my energy and forced me to rest. I didn't get the message. I did everything that I could to get up and move on with my day. I had just started a new exercise program. This sickness came at an inconvenient time! I had work to do, writing to do and gosh dar...

     Hello! Last month I talked about cultivating a sense of wonder, and this month, I want to go off of that and talk about finding magic in the ordinary.  When I was little, I loved stories of magic, of knights and princesses and epic quests. To be honest, I still do. I do wonder though, if in that search for the otherworldly magic, I missed the magic that is present in the day to day.  When the world sort of shut down in 2020, I was out of a job for months. One of the things I did was to go on more walks. It was a novelty for me to not be rushing everywhere, frantic to get from here to there. I could do nothing about my situation so I was forced to slow down. In that slowing down, I began to notice the world around me. To really notice. There was magic in every aspect of life. I didn't need a fairytale quest or magic that came with a whiz and a bang. The ordinary magic of the every day was soft and gentle like a whisper on a breeze, but it was there, and read...