Tag: Blessed

Let Me Tell You About My Day

Every now and then, life likes to show us who is boss. Life likes to throw us curveballs and keep us on our toes. Lately, this has been me in full force. I feel like everywhere I turn, there is an obstacle, something going wrong, or receiving news that I don’t want to hear. I feel like the world is working against me, but I keep trying to climb my way to the top.

Today, some pretty amazing things happened to me to show me that life has a way of gifting us as well. After what feels like constant chaos in my life lately, something going my way was a very welcomed surprise!

Let Me Tell You About My Day

I had to run some errands today and one of those errands was the local store. I am the kind of person that doesn’t go to the store without a grocery list. If I don’t have a list, I always forget a bunch of things. I see most people don’t use one, I wish that I had that brainpower! Anyway, on my list were some things that I needed to buy in general and also a few things that I needed to get for a specific reason.

Some of you may remember that I planted my garden a few weeks ago! Sadly, a little creature ate some of them. You should have seen my face when I went out to water them. Several were uprooted, but ALL of my yellow flowers were eaten. I bet you can guess that yellow flowers were on my shopping list.

There is a cookout party happening this weekend and I wrote down a few things that I wanted to bring on my list. I wrote chips, cookies, and ingredients to make a cold pasta salad. I got my shoes on and headed out the door. Walking down the sidewalk with the sun beaming warmly on my skin, I got into my car and played some of my favorite songs as I headed to the local store.

The Gifts Begin 

Once I got to the store, the first thing that I saw outside was the flowers. They had a small, but beautiful display of red, pink, white, orange, yellow, and a few hanging plants. Above the yellow flowers was a clearance sign and guess how much they were!? One dollar! I checked all of the colors because if they were all a dollar, I might as well go crazy and get them all, but it was JUST the yellow ones, I was in awe. I got an entire large pot of yellow flowers for one dollar; I walked inside smiling. It was just the color that I needed to replace the yellow ones that were eaten out of my garden.

I got some of the other items on my list and then went to the snack aisle to get cookies and chips for the cookout. Ironically, both of these items were “Buy One Get One Free.” I couldn’t believe it. I was on a roll! I literally had to stop for a second because life hasn’t been too kind to me lately, this felt too good to be true! It is something so small, but the fact that many of the items that I set out to get were such a steal, made me so very happy.

Then, as I walked through the store, a familiar face caught my eye. I kept looking, I knew I had seen this face before. She was maybe in her sixties now, and I stopped and asked her if she recognized me. She said that she did, but she couldn’t remember where. Once I knew that it was her, I knew exactly where I had known her from. We used to work together, almost twenty years ago! I was in shock that almost two decades had passed and I was standing in front of someone that I last saw when I graduated high school. We caught up a little bit and had a nice conversation. It took me back. What a surprise!

Thoughts

I drove home in awe of how a grocery trip could add some joy to my day. It’s all about the small things in life that can bring us so much happiness.

I love when life has a way of showing us that we still matter, that we are being cared for and that we can expect good things.

Sometimes in life, it seems like the world is out to get us and that everything is working against us, but this is not true. Things can fall apart and possibly fall together, but I want and try to believe that the hard parts of life are there to make us and not break us. We become stronger, wiser, and unstoppable through all that we have conquered and have yet to.

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The Path of Redirection

Can you recall a time when you wanted something so badly, but it never happened? A time when you wanted A, but you got B? Maybe you were upset and mad at the world for a while and wondering why me?

For the most part, we generally have a direction that we want to go in life. We have a path that we want to take, dreams, goals, and aspirations.

Life will take us on many journeys and they won’t always be the ones that we expect or hope for. While this sounds like a negative outcome, it can end up being the most beautiful thing ever.

A Different Path

The path of redirection may be what we least expect or hope for as we navigate through life. We have this vision for our lives, and we anticipate most of it happening to us as we strive and work hard every day to create the lives that we want.

Being taken off of the path that we were originally on can be discouraging, frustrating, and can leave us questioning so much about ourselves and our lives.

Fate

We all have our own beliefs about life. I believe that we all have a destiny, a designed path that we are to be on. I truly believe that everything happens for a reason and somehow, we all end up right where we should be when the time is right.

Our path is unique to us. Traveling down the path of redirection can put us farther away from where we want to be. What we may not realize is that this redirection may lead us to our desires despite it feeling like a huge curveball.

Life Experiences 

There have been so many times in my life when I’ve been redirected. I remember feeling frustrated and lost. I couldn’t understand why I was being taken so far away from what I wanted.

As time moved forward, things started slowly falling into place. Many of the times the desired outcome was reached even if it was the complete opposite way of how I expected it to be. Many of the redirections in my life became some of my biggest blessings!

The Puzzle of Life

Have you ever noticed that our experiences in life fit together like a puzzle? Everything connects to something else as we march on.

Each piece fits together so perfectly. Each piece is important as it becomes a part of the larger picture.

The next time that you find yourself being redirected, hold onto hope that it might be for the best and that the biggest blessing might be just around the corner!

Until It’s Gone

Why is it that we don’t see the true value of something until we no longer have it? Yes, most of us express gratitude towards what we possess, and we are thankful, however much of the time true value isn’t felt until what we have is gone.

There are many things in life that we need to feel comfortable and happy such as food and water, shelter, love, and money. We realize that these are all huge things in life, and we are afraid to lose any of them. We strive to make sure that we do whatever we can to prevent such a massive loss.

We realize how much our health is important, but we don’t truly realize how inconvenient it is to be unwell until we break a bone and can no longer use our arm or leg, until we are diagnosed with a heart issue and have to take many precautions in everyday life, or until we have an eye issue and are losing our sight.

Our jobs can be very stressful and exhausting, yet we don’t realize how grateful we are to even have a job until it’s gone and so is our source of income. We then realize that what we are bothered by pales in comparison to the alternative.

The house that we live in every day, we wake up and think nothing of it most days until poof it’s gone. A friend of mine lost her home last year to a fire, we realize how everything we have is so precious.

We have to go to the store to buy groceries, but wait, we need a car to get from point A to B. What happens when your car is in the shop? You realize how much you use your car and don’t think much of it until it’s no longer there.

There’s a loved one that you lost touch with or had a falling out with. You let the days go by thinking that maybe one day you will get in touch, but sadly this loved one passes away. You no longer have the chance to say what is on your mind and in your heart.

My best advice is not to wait until what you have is gone
to realize its importance. Wake up each day with gratitude and be thankful for everything that you do have no matter how small it may be, for one day it may become a memory.

Truly Love Yourself

I’ve always heard that you have to love yourself before you can truly love someone else. To be honest, I never really believed that until recently. I always thought that I have plenty of love to give, why couldn’t I possibly love someone completely without 100% loving myself first? I have started to realize why.

We are our own worst critics, possibly because we know ourselves as no one else does, also we know all of our faults and our past. I’m sure that many of you have been given a compliment from someone and you appreciated it so much, yet you didn’t believe it to be true. Maybe you were told that you are a good communicator, that you are attractive, smart, and funny. It was great to hear a sincere compliment from someone, but you didn’t feel it inside and that took some of the joy away from those wonderful words. We are putting distance between ourselves and those that we love when we don’t truly love and have confidence in ourselves.

The act of loving oneself is not saying that you love yourself and your qualities 100% of the time. We all have things that we do not like about ourselves, however, the art of loving yourself comes down to forgiving yourself, being at peace with your past, having confidence in who you are and what you stand for, and truly being able to look in the mirror and tell yourself that you are proud and happy of who you have become.

When we love ourselves wholly, it opens up a brand new world for us to find, we are then able to sincerely love someone else as we can finally share pieces of ourselves that we may have hidden before accepting ourselves.
For those of you that love yourself unconditionally, I am very proud of you for reaching this level of confidence and peace. For those of you that have yet to reach this, I have faith that you will get there and I understand because I have been in your place, sometimes I still find myself there, but I can bring myself back.

The biggest step that I feel has been the most helpful in my life is negating every destructive thought with something positive, or at the very least, neutral. For example, if you are working on a challenging project at work and you are ready to give up, instead of telling yourself “I can’t do this, I am always a failure,” negate that thought to tell yourself that you acknowledge that the project is difficult, but you are trying your best and giving it your all. If you feel that you are not good at relationships you might feel that it’s all your fault and that no one loves you. Instead of this approach, negate that thought to tell yourself that you will work hard on communicating your feelings and that sometimes people are not always compatible.

Start working on all aspects of yourself until you are happy and can confidently say that you love yourself. Once you have mastered loving yourself, the whole world opens up to you and it is then that you will truly be ready to love someone else with your entire heart and soul. Get out a journal, or a piece of paper and write down all of the things that you love about yourself and the things that you are grateful for, you will find out what a mood booster this is!

Thanksgiving Reminder

A lovely holiday is here and what a great reminder it is to give thanks for all that we have. Each and every day we can keep positivity and happiness in our hearts by giving thanks for what we have and counting our blessings.

This year has been an extremely difficult and challenging year for us all, we are all facing something that we never have before along with other challenges that we face in life. It can be easy to focus on the negatives and what we lack, but we should turn that around and focus on the positives and what we have. This Thanksgiving and every day make sure to remind yourself of all of the great things you do have in your life. You may have to dig deep, but there is always a silver lining.