Moving On

Help Is All Around Us

Friday, June 18th, 2010 | Building Self-Confidence, Healing after Loss, Healing from grief, Help for Widows, Moving On, Principles of Wealth, The Power of a Positive Outlook | No Comments

“Open your spiritual eyes to the help all around you.”

I had just called in, a few moments late, to a seminar hosted by Heather Madder, and those were the first words I heard her speak. I immediately felt a confirmation that what she was saying was true – that I am not alone, but that there are unseen forces at work helping me.

I am studying to learn about the Internet and how to more effectively market my book and coaching services. I sometimes have thoughts that I am alone, and that it is too difficult, and that I cannot do it. Yet Heather says, “The whole universe exists to support what you want to build,” and tells us that we need to have a clear intention and belief that the answers and help we need will come quickly and easily, and that doors will open to pave our way.

Another thought I have frequently is, “I don’t have time to do all I need to.” Heather teaches that we are constantly scripting our own limitations, and that we need to be aware of thoughts like that, which become ‘programs’ we may be creating in our own lives that are holding us back.

We can change those scripts! I decided tonight as I listened to Heather that my old way of thinking and system of beliefs is not serving me! I am going to take her advice and open my spiritual eyes to the help all around me. I will envision, as she suggested, people all around the world, sitting at computers, making connections to help pave the way for my success. She also suggested there are spiritual beings ready to help us as we request that help.

I believe that. I love the promise in the scriptures:

“I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up.”*

We are not alone!

I believe each of us has something to give to the world. Longfellow said,

“Time is with materials filled;
Our todays and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.”

If we are to build something worthwhile to share with the world, we need to spend our time creating it – and we will need help. And I believe, with Heather, that it is there.

Open your spiritual eyes – and believe – and keep building!

*Doctrine and Covenants 84:88

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The Walk – Part Two

Thursday, April 29th, 2010 | Building Self-Confidence, Death of a loved one, Family, Goals, Grieving, Healing after Loss, Healing from grief, Help for Widows, Losing a Spouse, Moving On, Overcoming Disappointment, Personal Care while Grieving, Sudden loss, The Power of a Positive Outlook | No Comments

“I don’t know what lies ahead of me..”

So says Alan Christofferson, the main character in Richard Paul Evans’ new book, The Walk.

Does any one of us know what the future holds? I can think of so many times in my life when I had a plan all laid out for the next weeks, months, and even years – and then, in the blink of an eye, everything changes. A phone call; a chance meeting; a turn of events, and life is altered forever.

After Alan lost his wife, his business, and his home, he decided to walk across the country to the place furthest from where his dreams all died. As he stops each night, he writes in his journal. His entries are brief, but telling. One night he wrote, “We can be victims of circumstance or masters of our own fate…” and I thought, “How can you write that when you have just lost everything, through no fault of your own? How can you say you are the master of your fate?”

Then it hit me. Alan had learned what Viktor Frankl taught: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances – to choose one’s own way.”

The night his wife died, Alan’s journal entry read simply, “All is lost.”

Shortly thereafter, he sat in despair at the kitchen table with two bottles of pills, contemplating taking his own life. He could find no reason to live, and was ready to end it all quickly, when he heard, from somewhere, the words,

“Life is not yours to take.”

Then, he thought he heard the voice of his late wife, McKale, whisper, “Live.”

I believe that is what each of our loved ones would say were they able to communicate with us. Not to simply exist, but to live with purpose; to choose our own way.

Again from Frankl: “Man does not simply exist, but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.”

I believe we too can make that choice, and determine who we will be and what we will do with whatever circumstances we are presented.

There will be times we too will say, “I do not know what lies ahead of me,..” but in those times, we will also be able to say, “…but I do know what I want to become.”

That decision will change everything.

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The Walk – Part One

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 | Building Self-Confidence, Death of a loved one, Goals, Grieving, Healing after Loss, Help for Widows, Losing a Spouse, Moving On, Overcoming Disappointment, Sudden loss, The Power of a Positive Outlook, The healing power of Faith in Christ | No Comments

I just finished reading Richard Paul Evan’s latest book, The Walk. I needed a release from pressures and obligations that have been weighing on me, and it was the perfect escape.

The book is about Alan Christofferson, a man who has everything, and how, through a series of tragic losses, he ends up homeless and begins a journey, walking across the country. At first, he walks to get away from everything in his past – but as he continues, he learns lessons that change his life, and realizes he is really walking to face his future. In his words, “This is what I’ve learned. We can spend our days bemoaning our losses, or we can grow from them. Ultimately the choice is ours. We can be victims of circumstance or masters of our own fate, but make no mistake, we cannot be both.”

“We are all on a walk. Perhaps not as literal as mine, but a walk all the same . . .”

It hit me in the early hours of the morning as I finished the epilogue that he is right. I too am on a walk, and I’ve been shuffling my feet. Some days I have even refused to take one step. I had once again slipped into that seductive passivity of victim mode.

Yet I have opportunities before me, all around me, that, if I embraced them, could burn more of the dross out of my soul, and help me to become a better tool in God’s hands. On the other hand, if I continue to resist them, that dross will grow darker and thicker, becoming even more permanently adhered to the chambers of my heart.

I want to grow. I want to be able to look back on this time of my life with no regrets, knowing I truly did the best I could. But I will need God’s help. The compassion and charity I need are not within me, but are gifts only He can give. I pray He can soften my hardened, selfish heart and as promised in Ezekiel 36:26, replace it with a new one.

There are more lessons to be learned from this powerful book. I will share them as I continue on my walk, and encourage you on yours.

Stepping out, once more,

Roslyn

Sacred Ground

Friday, February 5th, 2010 | Dating after loss, Death of a loved one, Grieving, Healing after Loss, Help for Widows, Moving On | No Comments

I believe that after we leave this earthly sphere, we go on to another sphere of existence, where we may have the ability to see and be involved in (in limited ways) what is happening with our loved ones still on earth.

As we stood around my husband’s casket, the funeral director told my children, “You still have a father. He’s just in another place, but he will have the ability to see you, and be involved in your life when you need him to be. Know that he wants your greatest success, and he will do all he can to help you. Remember he is there.”

I spent frequent time recently with a widower. He is another traveler on this often-rocky road of unwelcomed solitude. I enjoyed his company, and I appreciated the opportunity to talk, one-to-one, to another adult about life and family in an enjoyable social setting.

I enjoyed conversing with a man again in a way different from the reserved way I interact with the other men in my life right now. I felt I could be a little more open, and the more frequently we went out, I felt I could be a little less aloof and freer with my words, actions, and emotions.

However, as I sat near him, and as we talked and went places together, I often felt I needed to exercise caution; that I was on sacred ground, where perhaps I didn’t belong. Although it had been years since he lost his wife to cancer, he still had great love for her, and admitted that it was hard for him to be out with another woman.

I sometimes wonder how much our partners who have passed on know and care about how we are carrying on with our lives. I’ve heard some widows and widowers who have remarried say that they felt their deceased spouse led them to their new spouse, and that they would be happy that they have once again found someone to share life’s burdens, joys, and sorrows.

However, I’ve also heard that there can be, in the human heart, places too sacred to be entered by more than one person. I have read that once a person has loved deeply, and then lost that love, their heart can never be free to really love another.

Perhaps that is what I felt when I walked next to my friend, and perhaps that is why eventually we stopped seeing each other.

I had been walking on sacred ground, and, as it turns out, I had been trespassing.

Abel Keogh in his book Room for Two found that, at least for him, there eventually came a time after his first wife died when his heart finally opened to the thought of loving again. He was able to move on and feel comfortable in a new relationship and build a new life with a new wife.

I don’t know how common that is. When I have been with widowers, I have felt an underlying, unwavering devotion to their first spouse – and, although it keeps me from entering their heart, I see it as a beautiful, tender thing. I don’t know that I would want it any other way.

All I know is this:

Walking on sacred ground can sometimes burn your feet.

I’ve determined to tread softly.

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