Increase your Joy by bringing Joy to others.
Light is love, darkness is fear.
A smile is God’s cosmetic. Let your inner light shine brightly, share kindness, love and compassion with a genuine caring smile, and help others find their way out of the darkness and seek Divine Love and Guidance.
There is no room for darkness in a room filled with light.
This post was written for the Daily Post prompt Burn.
With Respect, Hope, Joy, and Love, Carmela
Divine Love, guidance and wisdom become clear to us through our life experiences. My entire life God has introduced me to beautiful people who I have needed to help me better understand myself.
As human beings we all hold wisdom and understanding we have obtained from life’s experiences. We can choose to examine and put words to those events or we can choose to look away, ignore the experience, and continue on never grasping the wisdom we were offered.
Painful feeling and experiences are meant to be shared. This is the only way to fully understand, overcome, move forward, and improve our lives.
Life can be peaceful and full of joy but we have to be brave enough and take steps to fully find it.
Sometimes this means sharing the hurtful, embarrassing, shameful experiences that we have lived through. By doing this our eyes,hearts, and lives are opened to a deeper level of awareness, peace, and connection to humanity.
The words “It is in pardoning that we are pardoned” come to mind as I write this from St.Francis Prayer for Peace Susan Boyle sings it below.
I must tell you that I am so grateful for all of life’s experiences and Truly Thankful for the Many People who God has introduced me to that have helped me find Clarity, True Love For Life and the Longing to Share it with Others.
With Respect, Hope, Joy and Love, Carmela
Brave…… Spunky, Strong, Unafraid, Undaunted, Lionhearted, Herolike, Indomitable, Spirited, these are synonyms for the word BRAVE.
How does one become brave? Is it something that we actually contemplate and then act upon? This makes me think of my beautiful grandson Wyatt who was meeting the challenge of living with Mitochondrial Disease. He would often state before having to endure one of the many painful pokes or procedures required for that day “I’ll be brave”.
It is my belief that Bravery comes from within. It is also my Belief that we obtain it from Above. In my opinion as human beings we have limited abilities, knowledge and strength. When we rely on only what our human mind can plan for us we limit ourselves to small minded solutions.
By reaching outside of ourselves and inviting in Divine Solutions, Bravery will come forth from within.
This doesn’t mean we will function as the Incredible Hulk with a visible strength busting out of our clothing and a relentless hardhearted attitude. Boasting and singing our theme song and successes.
You may not know, but as we pray for Divine Support to fill our hearts and Guide us through difficult times, The Divine Spirit within your heart fills you with an endless wealth of Patience, Peace, Joy, Wisdom and Love.
True Bravery is not boastful and loudly visible it is more noticeable as a beautiful, quiet, gentle, nonthreatening calm, peace and comfort that we are able to function with through whatever daily life sends our way. A Brave person filled with the Divine Spirit is someone you want to draw near to, someone who you can tangibly feel their strength and wisdom. Someone you want to be with and get to know and share their secrets from within.
It does not mean though that we will be void of emotions. Even the toughest and bravest individuals even though they live with the assurance that they will have adequate courage to survive the challenges life sometimes deals us will experience sadness and tears from the life struggles we and others witness here on earth.
Pray for those in need, that they may be filled with the Strength and Peace for Above. Pray that the many humans struggling in “human survival mode” reach out for Divine Wisdom, open their hearts to “Be Brave” (as Wyatt so perfectly and simply said it.)
With Respect, Hope, Joy and Love, Carmela
Imagine the beauty of a group of people working, living and interacting side by side totally absent of negative competition, supportive of each other and allowing each other to flourish in a peaceful environment. As beautiful as the thought of individuals blooming and flourishing next to one another in total Peace is, what would it take to actually make this happen?
If you ask one hundred people to explain beautiful you may get one hundred diverse answers. This has also been proven true when asking a group of individuals who witness an event to explain details of the incident. How can it be that two individual that experience a moment in time when asked to describe the moment in detail relay it as two completely different situations?
I am not sure there is one correct answer for this. Have you ever experienced a moment in time when you caught a scent in the air that triggered a memory?
In a moment in time the smell of a familiar fragrance can transport you back to a memory that you experienced in the past. Whether the memory is a fond memory or an unpleasant one “the memory” is written within your previous consciousness in a way that only you would be able to explain.
What may fill one person with good feeling may fill the person standing next to them with bad feelings. What may make one person flourish, may hinder the next person.
I want to believe though that Peace is attainable among human beings apart from total uniformity of thoughts, opinions and perceptions.
In diversity there is also beauty. The quote below helps to envision a thread of hope for changing ones past experiences for the better.
The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering. ~Ben Okri~
I often laugh when I have a moment of forgetfulness. I joke that “every time something new enters my brain, something old must fall out.” In the case of traumatic memories or patterns of negative behaviors, it would be a blessing if we were able to easily make this happen.
I believe the true beginning of healing can not begin until we stop trying to live in survival mode….. believing that we are the only one that knows what we have to do to keep going. As long as we are in “survival mode” we are relying on our own learned behaviors that have been imprinted from our past situations. In doing this we are trapped in a vicious circle of our own demise.
When fear traps us into thinking that we are the only one that we can trust our journey is life will be very limited and lonely.
It is not until we honestly examine our hearts, our life situations and attempt to truly understand how our own actions play a role in every situation we encounter, only then will we be able to play a significant part in our own recovery and journey to experience true Joy and Peace.
We cannot do this on our own. As much as we want to believe that we are the only ones that can know what we need to do, we can not be more confused and wrong. Our view of events is distorted and we are reacting in a defensive manner.
Pray for your heart to be open to the true picture and pray for understanding and help feeling and accepting the Love and Wisdom of God. When you realize you do not have to be perfect to be Loved, that the person you are is the exact person who God made and He loves you exactly as you are, this is when you can except help from others, things will begin to change for the better and you will flourish.
If we feel insecure from within it is impossible to see and appreciate beauty.
When we know and experience unconditional Love from God it is impossible to not share this same Love with others.
I once heard someone say “a flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it, it only blooms.”
Pray for a world where people can live side by side and bloom and flourish in selfless Beauty and Peace as the flowers do.
With Respect, Hope, Joy and Love, Carmela
This post was written in response to the daily post: pensive
Someone shared this with me a few days ago and I am feeling the need to share it with you.
With Respect,Hope,Joy and Love, Carmela
We may not always see eye to eye but we can walk hand in hand and promote peace
In my travels as a caregiver, I have met many amazingly courageous and beautiful people. Each person, who I was fortunate enough to meet and take care of, I carry in my heart. They truly have changed my life and taught me many beautiful things. These experiences I believe to be a greater education than any textbook or classroom education that I have had in the past.
I have a plaque that hangs by my door. I can’t remember where, or even when, I came across it however, I treasure it. I see it daily, and try to live up to the words. It goes as follows:
A teacher’s prayer……
One day I would like to teach,
just a few people,
many and beautiful things,
that would help them
when they will one day teach-a few people
I have 5 beautiful grandchildren. One of my grandsons faced many difficult chronic medical issues each day. My heart breaks each day because of the many challenging situations he and other children in similar situations endure. He was an amazingly strong person. The dignity with which he embraced life and all the challenges each day brings, leaves an unforgettable and remarkable imprint on my life.
Often times the chronic sorrow that one lives with, makes us truly grateful with heightened awareness every moment of every day. It is because of this awareness of how precious each moment is, that makes me strive to want to teach children from a very young age awareness and gratitude for life. If we have our eyes opened to gratitude and are taught from a young age to recognize the positive characteristics, and contributions that surround us the outcome will be one of respect for all humankind and animal-kind as well.
I truly believe that Peace and Respect for all living creation is a very attainable goal. Every person can be a teacher. When you practice respect, you are teaching respect.
Perhaps the answer to attaining this is as the Teacher’s Prayer states. If each one of us starts with teaching just a few people, many and beautiful things, so they can one day teach a few people. As this continues on and on we can make Gratitude, Hope, Joyfulness, and love abound.
With respect, hope, joy and love,
Carmela
Carmela Snelbaker 