Tag: love

The blood, sweat, and tears of homemade gifts.

As I close in on 2 am, exhausted yet satisfied with tonight’s accomplishments, I recalled a countless number of folks who dismissed homemade gifts over my accumulative years of life.

The candied pecans, Christmas cookies, or crocheted crafts. A patchwork quilt, knitted sweater, or embroidered wall art.

Continue reading “The blood, sweat, and tears of homemade gifts.”

The mindful acts of love, patience, and acceptance.

We’ve heard it said often, that love is an action. It’s something that must be put into practice each day; a decision, a commitment.

This doesn’t mean we’re always loving. Quite the opposite. There are many times when we don’t feel loving, or take for granted those we do love.

The same goes for patience. That, too, is an action. It is something we need to be mindful of and put into practice. It’s quite easy to lose our cool, to grow irritated and lash out.

This also applies to acceptance. The saying ‘accept the things you cannot change’ rings true, and people certainly fit into this category.  We must put acceptance into practice,  reminding ourselves regularly that we don’t have control over people and many other things in life.

Love, patience and acceptance. These are mindful acts that we need to consciously put into practice each day. We are not saints. We will be unloving, we will grow impatient; and we will try to fight, or change, the things we won’t accept.

But we have the option to stop in our tracks, stepping on the brakes on and shifting our perspective when we find ourselves veering off course.

We can remind ourselves how it feels to be loved, even when we don’t feel very lovable. We can remind ourselves how it feels when someone is patient with us, even when we have been exceedingly irritating or annoying. And we can remind ourselves how it feels to be accepted, for better or worse, in all of our flawed beauty.

“It doesn’t matter how old you are, there is a little child within who needs love and acceptance.” – Louise Hay

 

 

 

Boys, don’t make it so complicated (girls, too)!

In sharing time with one of my oldest (not in age) and dearest friends this evening, we took a deep dive into relationships – and relating, period.

As we reflected and reminisced about the countless things we’ve both learned through love and loss over the years, one poignant point was the fact that men and women can, and often do, think quite differently.

Continue reading “Boys, don’t make it so complicated (girls, too)!”

Music moves the heart and stirs the soul. Remembering Karen Carpenter.

I’m a big music gal who couldn’t narrow my tastes down to a favorite genre if you paid me – or simply asked.

I love all music and my collection has no rhyme or reason. From world music to classical, funk, rock, and decade mixes. Blue grass, Cajun, Christian and soul. Easy listening, big band, Gregorian chant. No matter what the genre, you are guaranteed to find it when you scroll through the countless playlists on my apps – or on my Classic iPod (yes, it exists in my car). There are even remnants of my past on CDs at my parents’ house. Continue reading “Music moves the heart and stirs the soul. Remembering Karen Carpenter.”