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The intention of this site is to provide women who happen to be mothers, grandmothers, aunts, guardians, and mentors spiritual insight and education in growing as a spiritual being. Practical tools and suggestions for growing spiritually, thoughts on how to deepen your relationship with God, along with prayers and devotions to help you along the journey, are provided on a weekly basis. Whether you already have a rich and fulfilling spiritual life, or you are just investigating how to be in relationship with our Great Creator, this is the place to enhance your spiritual well-being and transform your life.







Topics Susie Has Addressed

Topics Susie Has Addressed:

Becoming a Spiritually Fit Mom


The Family Home as the First Church

Praying Together as a Family 101

Eve, the First Mother, Creating Paradise in the Home

Women in the Bible and their Impact on Mothering

Committing to Forgiveness, the Cornerstone of Family Life

Light, Love, and Miracles - Reflections on the spiritual message of the dramatic Rescue of the Chilean Coal Miner's

The Prodigal Mother, Coming Home to Feast

Religion and Spirituality, Differences and Similarities and Their Impact On Our Families

Lessons In Change and Transformation

The Last Seven Statements of Christ, A Path to Love

Creating and Writing Your Own Prayers

Jesus, Man of Prayer and Teacher of Love

Simple Meditation for Busy Mothers

Practicing the Common Sense of God in Your Homes

Healing the Mother-Heart One Prayer at a Time


For information on these and other topics, Susie can be reached at 417-599-2388 Speaking fees are negotiable. References can be provided.















Friday, June 22, 2012

Gentle Streams.. Reproducing Trust instead of Worry


A new baby arrives in the world! Ready to go home, this new life is wrapped in a receiving blanket, gently placed in a car seat, and carried over the threshold from life on the inside to life on the outside… This new person went from the perfect conditions of innocence, happiness, love, nourishment, protection, warmth, and  growth, to its new environment of opposites:  hunger and fullness, hot and cold, health and sickness, largeness and smallness, togetherness and aloneness, love and fear.

And a mother now experiences a new world as well.  Worry has entered her mind in a  heightened and pronounced way.  The phrase, I am a mother and I will worry takes on a life of its own.  We have given birth to a new belief in our minds, that the world is a fearful place.  We have swaddled this belief in the blankets of what if’s., embrace it with arms outstretched, and  hold it close to our hearts,  treasuring its presence in our lives.  We feed it and grow it in the wombs of our imaginations…the umbilical cord of life being our feelings and emotions,  other people’s comments, comparisons, and observations.  This new belief we’ve given birth to needs us, is dependent upon us for life, cries out to us, and looks to us for support and encouragement.  

While we hold a new baby in our arms, we cradle a new level of worry in our minds.  When you are exhausted, physically on overload, and on call 24 hours a day, anyone who tells you Don’t Worry Be Happy is met with a look that could kill.
But it is exactly what God has “in mind” for us. In His mind is happiness and He wants our mind to be a mind of happiness, lest we kill ourselves with worry.  While we had a part in the creation of a new life,  we also are constantly in a state of creation when we worry.  In fact, worry is simply the misuse of our creative powers.  It is a misplaced intention.  It is a wrongly directed thought.  It is a curse rather than a blessing. 
In order for a baby to be born, there is  a system in place for conception, growth, and birth. Sperm and egg have to join and implant itself in the lining of a uterus in order to have a baby as the end result. Labor and movement of the baby through the birth canal, mom, baby, and nature working together, has to happen in order for us to hold a new person in our arms. Physically, we know this system to be the reproductive system.  In order for life to happen, all of this has to work in harmony in order for the miracle of life to take place.  
 
What we don’t always understand, is that worry has its own reproduction system.  A repetitive thought of lack, with a strong emotional feeling of negativity, is the conception of fear.  When these two conditions are joined together, this new cell of impossibility embeds itself in the lining of our womb-mind.  Its umbilical cord of negative creativity continually feeds that worry, grows it, and it solidifies inside our self, taking the shape and form of “life”.  We labor over our new worry.  We feel its pain, yet we love it!  We feel it kicking us and growing till there is no more room to grow on the inside.  Crowded and needing more space to grow, it too moves down the birth canal of our hearts and into the open spaces of  our mouth, through our speaking of fear and lack, and out into the world, in the exact form that our imagination has held.  And then we ask, “How did this happen to me?”  

 
Life was reverently and wonderfully made by God.  Worry was reverently and wonderfully made by us.  Worry gives us a false sense of power. It is how we keep ourselves distracted from the present moment.  It keeps us in the mindset of victim and gives us the excuse that life, or God, has done this to me.  If we fly into our heaven-minds, God must be there, not lack.  If God and all of life is for us, then worry is against us.  God did not create the conditions that we believe have caused  us to worry.  We create the conditions in our mind that give life and energy to worry.  When we pray the Lord’s prayer, we are praying to be delivered from our belief in worry and the temptation to believe in lack.  We don’t walk on worried waters, we walk on peaceful waters.  We don’t reach for the cloak of tragedy, we reach out to touch the cloak of happiness.  We lower our mats  to be in the presence of love instead of lying in our bed of fear.  
 
Are we better mothers, better women, better human beings because we worry?
Are we more loving human beings because we worry?  Worrying keeps us afraid to feel happy.  In fact, it makes feeling happy seem foreign and even dangerous.  We are more comfortable in the worrisome thought than a thought of paradise. We almost admire those bent over in the weight of struggle than the person standing tall in the lightness of perfect provision.  Worrying is “serious business” and is disguised as being productive and involved.  Laughter is seen as “monkey business”. A playful heart could never be as productive, right?  It is impossible to laugh and hold a worrisome thought at the same time.
 
The word “worry” is in our bible and what we are asked to do is easily grasped by its reader.  Therefore I tell you, Do not worry about what you are to eat, or drink, or wear.  Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing…..Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your lifespan?....Don’t worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will take care of itself.

How do we keep ourselves from worry?  How do we put a stop to the endless stories we tell ourselves about what might happen?  How do we put a halt to the what if’s, the how am I’s, and the but’s and the where is that going to come from?
If we try to resist, the worrisome thoughts will persist.  Instead of resisting, try replacing.  You can acknowledge the worry, thank it, and then give all your energy and feeling to the best outcome.   Just as the new mother holds her perfect baby in her arms,  while the rest of the world and all her cares melt away, as she gives her child her complete love and attention, noticing every detail of perfection – the child’s eyes, all her fingers and toes, her wisp of hair, and her ruby red lips...  the tiny sounds of stretching and the perfect rhythm of her breath… hold, in your heart’s arms, the perfect outcome, and allow the rest of your worry-world to melt away, giving all your love and attention to visualizing the details of a positive and happy experience.  
 
We take golden thoughts and little by little we melt them down into a golden calf and kneel before it, bowing at the altar of worry and fret. Prayer and grace will cause us to abandon that altar and, instead, take the hand of a happy angel who will deliver us to the altar built from a new earth, from  the rich soil of love, safety, contentment, and abundance.  A place at the table where we can rest our mind and let it feast on the riches of God’s promise to meet our every need.  A place to come and pray where even a mere sparrow sings because God cared for it.  A place where every hair on my head is counted and blessed.  A place  to simply behold the power and glory of God.  Just last night, my oldest, Clare, came to me well past her bed time, full of worry.  She is going to attend a sleep-over where she doesn't know the other girls who will be there.  One worry led to more worries, and pretty soon she not only worried about the sleep-over, she was worrying about the teacher she would have next year, and whether or not she was going to like her, and she would have found more things to worry over.  I stopped her, and we read the scripture about casting your cares upon the Lord.  We asked God to remove the fear.  I helped her find new thoughts to think until she smiled and even laughed.  Worries have a tendency to multiply at night, in the darkness and quiet, with no distractions, and no companionship.  Our minds tend to take on the darkness of our bedrooms, and we forget that God's light never goes out, that we must remember that the sun never has to set on our thinking.  Our thoughts can be as warm and happy and positive as in the daytime.  Even the night is not without light to you; the night is as bright as the day, for night is as light to you.  Psalm 139 

  Every day, I will walk with joy to the altar of life, and  when I lift my eyes to the hills of challenges before me, I will  know that my help comes from God, and not from worry.   Olivia once asked me what I ate when she was in my tummy.   What will we feed our imaginations?  What we feed our hearts and minds determines what we will see and experience in our world.  Whenever Olivia and I sing “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.  Merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream”,  it reminds me that our lives are really nothing but the dreams we conceived in our hearts and  minds, and casting aside all worry, the intentional thoughts of love, happiness, safety, and prosperity will keep our boats rowing ever so gently and merrily down the stream of life.   




 

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