How Well Do You Take Care of YOU?

How well do you take care of yourself?

Do you take a retreat every year- 3 days or more, to spend time reflecting and getting your life back in focus?

Do you have a day or an afternoon every month to catch up on things?

Does Sunday find you resting?

Each day, do you find time to spend with the Lord in prayer and study?

Does Sunday find you resting?

You haven’t met your spiritual and emotional needs. Do you neglect

your physical needs as well?

Do you schedule annual physicals, mammograms, bone density, glucose testing etc?

Do you exercise 3- 5 times a week?

Is your blood pressure under control and weight within a normal range?

What about daily needs? Do you take care of them? Food? Water? Medications? Family Relations?

Do you let your family and friends know how much they mean to you: phone, visit, e-mail, small

gifts, prayers for their needs

Peace

Romans 5: 1 We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 33: 17 The work of righteousness will be peace

Genesis 34: And these men are at peace with us. 

How easily the term is banded about. 

Dinah’s brothers use the term to get the Hivite to lower their guard. 

Have you ever told anyone go in peace or may peace follow you? 

Jesus greeted His disciples offering peace. Just as the angles told the shepherds

 Peace on earth at Jesus birth. 

May you find peace in your life and not have it taken from you. 

Revelation 6: 4

Names

Names

The recent TS Cindy reminded me of when we evacuated for Hurricane Rita which hit western Louisiana a month after Katrina hit the east side of the state. Dutifully, we headed north right up Hwy 171. In Des Moines, Iowa we stopped for the night. The clerk asked my name, I told her she said, “is that with one or two ‘r’s?” I was not use to the question but soon discovered it made a difference in what part of the country we happened to be whether my name was spelled with one or two r’s/                                                                                                       
Strange but my father always spelled my name with two. He also spelled my sister’s name with ‘ie.” The rest of the world spelled it Betty but Dad said ‘y’ was for a boy and ‘ie’ for a girl. Spelling do make a difference. I misspelled my daughter’s name on her birth certificate; I put an extra ‘I.’ She’s stuck with it.                                                                                                               
I think about boys who have ‘junior’ tacked on the end to distinguish them from their peers. My younger brother added a Roman numeral I after his name. He intended to be an ancestor not a descendant. Little did he realize that he was descended from a long line of men with his name, (Steve).                                                                                                                                                
In the Bible, when Elizabeth gave birth to her son, the people wanted to name him after his father. Because of his doubt, Zacharias could not speak, he wrote the name John and was given back his voice. A name can be a powerful thing. (Not to be confused with the apostle John.)                                                                                                                                                                 
Homesick, people placed ‘New’ in front of their past to indicate a start somewhere different. I am so glad to clear up the confusion of the spelling of my name now if I could just get the pronunciation of ‘Shaw’ down where this would not be an issue.

Change

Nothing will change unless you make it change.

Be flexible.

Put yourself in their shoes.

Pain motivates.

What do you want?

What do you think is the best way to get there?

What is holding you back?

What do you need to achieve your goal?

Must take action to move forward.

Standing still will bury you.

Doing the same old thing over and over creates a rut.

http://twjmag.com/fiction-nonfic-poetry/letting-go

I am always amazed that God wants me to be still and listen. In the growing dusk, 

I recline and let the darkness descends around me. 

I try to keep my mind from racing but these images keep crowding in

When you have a weakness do you build it up or concentrate only on your strengths?  

Often you are told to build on your strengths and surround oneself with someone 

who can shore up the weakness.

     I love learning so I tackle each new area with a veracious appetite. 

Frustration sets in when the concepts do not come.

Organize Your Day

Organize your day:

Daily make time for :

1. God

2. Devotional time

3 Prayer time

4. Exercise

5. Something creative

6. Quiet time

Once a week, make time for"

1. Yourself

2. Family

3. Friends

4. Take the afternoon off

5.Catch up on sleep

.

I look in the mirror and I don’t know that person.

It’s not the person I was and maybe it’s not the person

I can become but I am taking charge of my destiny.

I want to be the one to change things so that I ca n be

happy and fulfilled. If you have an empty feeling inside,

you don’t have a reason to get up in the morning, there is

nothing to look forward to in your life, then you have lost you.

If you have no original thoughts or ideas, you give someone

else’s opinion when asked for yours, you may be lost. 

If there is a gnawing emptiness inside that food can not satisfy and 

you think there should be more to life than cooking, laundry and cleaning, 

then you need to find yourself.

    

It’s not easy to reclaim self, especially if you don’t know when you got lost.

If you can answer yes to any of these questions, you may be lost and need to find what happened.                                                                                                                                                  

Alternative

I had a terrible headache. So I took a pill.

It got me to wondering, I think we have come

to the point that we no longer tolerate pain and pop

a pill without thinking.

There are alternatives but it means that we might have to change.

It seems no one wants to change.

Change can be good but it takes effort.

We have remote controls so we don't have to get up and change the TV channel.

Maybe because we now have so many channels to choose from that it is inconvenient

to get up each time we want to see what is on. Could be we just need the exercise.

How about those pills, if there was a magic pill that could help

you loose weight or get over a cold faster, it would see out in no time.

What are so of the alternatives to pills? Interesting question.

Only the Beginning

This is not the end; it’s only the beginning.

“Reclaiming Me” is an on going process.

If you stop, you revert back to where you came.

Each year you need time alone to listen,

to communicate with God.

A retreat will help rejuvenate your spirit.

Help others by first helping yourself and

then be a living example for them.

Journal your thoughts.

Hang out with friends.

Add thinks that make you feel good.

Have a getaway.

When I’m broken, I don’t want you to fix me.

Maybe I don’t know what I want but

I do know what I need.

I need time to grieve for the things I’ve lost.

I need to be heard, please listen.

I need to find my voice so I can figure out what to do.

Who Am I?

I am taking this journey alone. The prospect thrills and frightens at the same time.         

In reality, we all take the journey sometimes with family, sometimes with friends 

but ultimately alone. 

I must make the decisions which way I go and that determines my next step.                

Guess I knew from way back that destiny would bring me back to where I started, 

Living my Life out of a Suitcase. 

It could be worse; I could be minus the suitcase with all my possessions on my back. 

I swore that my father must be at least half Gypsy but that might be putting them down 

so I take it back. 

There is a song, “I was born the next of kin to the wayward wind.” 

Trouble began when Dad had a family and drug us alone as he moved where ever the wind blew.    

I love the wind, I love to feel it blowing in my hair but tumbleweed do not set down roots 

and get tossed 

about at the mercy of the wind. 

At least I have the choice to get in out of the wind on occasion.                        

Talking About Dress

Talking About Dress

Will’s typical outfit is shorts, T-shirt, tennis shoes and baseball cap.

His wife has been doing a great job up dating his attire.

She has gotten him to wear Polo shirts with khaki pants.

Looks good, but he still has plenty of room to improve.

I was actually denied a job because of my dress.

The dress had a high neck and the skirt came over my knees

when I sat down. Only problem, the dress was sleeveless.

Seems the ‘Hard Shell’ religious group did not approve of


sleeveless dresses or Go Go boots. (Wasn’t wearing boots.)

I saved my boots for Missouri.

I was under the impression that people up ‘North’ would wear long skirts

in the winter. Long skirts were a lifesaver in Little Rock when the wind blew.

However, up north, boots and shorter skirts were the norm.

It is very difficult to climb over snow banks and drag a skirt that now has a

sopping wet hem.

My cousin Lou, had dressing for the cold down pat.

Her future husband picked her up for a date.

She was fully dressed from head to toe.

She ordered him to open the car door for her.

While he was complying, she pulled off her shoes, ran and jumped into the car.

Thus the necessity of him preparing the way.

Lou did not want to get her new shoes wet. She reasoned that her feet would clean but

she wasn’t so sure about the shoes.

Now when I taught first grade, I wore slacks a lot.

I opted for comfort and cover above style.

Teaching special education, I could again wear dresses. I believe that

teachers should dress professionally. I took to wearing only dresses.

Treating the Symptons

Treating the Symptoms Not Taking Care of the Problem

                        In pain, the doctor gives you a medication to alleviate the symptom. 

What caused the pain? Is there a plan to discover what exactly caused the problem in the first place? It is so much easier to just fix the symptoms than to dig deep and find out what the problem is. 

Think this is only for medical problems, think again. If you have an issue in your life, how easy is it for you to discover what is at the root and fix it. We have a tendency to either ignore the problem until it can no longer be ignored or we run from the situation, thinking that time and space will make the problem go away. Neither works and both can be detrimental in the long run.                            

For instance, you have chest pain and you put it off thinking it is just indigestion. 

You chomp down on antacids until you have a full-blown heart attack. Happens more than you think.

The faucet drips, you take a wrench and tighten it. One day the pipe burst and your bathroom is flooded. See I told you putting things off is not always the best policy.

            How do you get the doctor to take you seriously that something is wrong? Be persistent. 

Be your own advocate. Be informed. Doctors are only human and if you don’t stand up for yourself, no one else will until it could be too late.

Laughter

If relationships are hard, they are also so very rewarding. 

Do you have friends that build you up and make you laugh just being around them? 

I have a couple of friends like that. It’s a party ever time Lucy walks in the room. 

She laughs and has such a jubilant attitude that folks want to be around her. 

Her laughter masks a troubled soul.

Be flexible

Nothing will change unless you make it change.

Be flexible.

Put yourself in their shoes.

Pain motivates.

What do you want?

What do you think is the best way to get there?

What is holding you back?

What do you need to achieve your goal?

Must take action to move forward.

Standing still will bury you.

Doing the same old thing over and over creates a rut.