Purposeful Living

I find that the more I live according to the messages my heart whispers, the happier I am. Unfortunately, sometimes the clamoring in my head makes it hard to hear, for the heart communicates in whisper. When things are chaotic, my brain is roaring at the decibel level of a jet. Add in the kids' yammering and the activity necessary to get through life (driving, cleaning, talking on the phone, etc.) and it barely seems possible I'd hear that sound at all. I know that when I'm irritated, I pretty much tell it to shut up and purposely block it out. When I'm being willful and pretending I'm not, I carry on about not being able to hear it.
The point I'm getting around to, writer-style, is that I need to hear it. I know I need to. I also know how to. Some call it prayer, others meditation. Some don't formally name it at all. Some connect to their heart by talking out loud and weeding the interlopers out. You know, the heart will never say, 'Uh-oh. Better batten down the hatches. Trouble ahead and it looks bad.' You see, the heart speaks softly in volume, but also in content. The messages are usually more about love and the need for it, and the ways that it shows up when and where we least expect it. Love can be keys when things need unlocking, or glasses when we need to change our perspective. It can be a cane to lean on, a friend to listen, or even a series of red lights to slow us down and keep us from some impending danger we will never know we were headed straight for. Sometimes the love shows up as a friend wearing glasses who drives so slow that you catch every red light. You never know.
Here's what I know to be true: The more I listen and the less I talk the better off I am. Sometimes I just need to be told, like a child, to shut it for a while. I hope I can lovingly accept the message. I'm listening...

This Life I'm Livin'

Life is good, but then, it's life. LOL I said this to someone the other day. I wonder if it makes any sense at all to anyone but me. I mean to say I'm practicing the art of being content. Of refusing fear, embracing love. Of jumping into life with both feet. I'm just doing it.
At the same time, I want to get better and thinner and smarter and faster. I want to be perfect. It's not that I can't be. I believe with the proper energy at work in my life, that I can achieve a kind of perfection. The perfect ME if you will. But I want it NOW. And as we all know, it doesn't really work that way.
See, I'm not looking for a Kate Spade handbag. I don't want to be meeting with a plastic surgeon this time next year. I don't care what my hair looks like at least fifty percent of the time. Maybe more. I don't want a new car or a new life. I just want to feel like I am my authentic self. I don't want there to be that certain issue that chews on me. I don't want there to be that person at work that I find the fakest things come tumbling out of my giant pie hole whenever she walks by. Please.
I want to stop criticizing my family and start accepting them at face value more often than not. I want to go back to school again. I want to get to the heart of the issues that cause me to get so enmeshed with others. I want to feel in control of my household, responsible and mature but able to laugh about it as well. I want to be the model of grace, the poster child for civility and the duck off whom all water rolls. I want to cultivate an attitude that says I'm love in motion.
All good things are coming my way. Having this stuff as my focus will bring me closer to it, I believe. Faith and love are my most powerful allies. God wants me to succeed. I am surrounded by a loving, spiritual, amazing group of people. I am both blessed and lucky.
I am also willing and ready to do the hard work. I want to get down to the nitty gritty. I want to have all my lessons. I want to be open to change, to growth and even to the pain that comes along. I am ready to walk through that fire and be reborn on the other side of it. I just have to stay the course. I'm where I am because I spent a lot of years refusing to see, ducking when I should have been stepping up and beating my head against many a brick wall. I don't like change. It's uncomfortable for most people but I'm a Taurus. We are renowned for refusing to budge. Oy...
In retrospect, God has never let me down. The power in that is phenomenal if I can only train my mind to accept that that is the outcome I can count on. The mental shift happens when I see that the blessing is not better than the lesson. Then lesson is a blessing in it's own right. I am being blessed if I am being charged a bounced check fee or a late fee. The message is 'handle your money more wisely' and eventually I'll be able to do just that. I need to learn more lessons about the way that it makes people feel when they're criticized if I want to stop doing it. That means examining all the painful ways I have been judged by others, not seen for my own inherent value or blamed for other people's pain or anger. That hurts, but it's worth it. I want to be able to smile at my children and offer them loving guidance instead of harsh appraisal. So every day, I pray the Lord's Prayer and the Serenity Prayer. Thy will be done, and in the version of the Serenity Prayer I like : God, Grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can and the wisdom to see that that one is ME.
It's all about me, and not in the Brittney Spears way. In the Buddha way. Today, I stop saying I want and start saying I will....
Wish me love if you will. I'm having a tough time not being so hard on myself.