Daily Readings for Friday, April 17th

Meditation for the Day

I gain faith by my own experience of God’s power in my life. The constant, persistent recognition of God’s spirit in all my personal relationships, the ever accumulating weight of evidence in support of God’s guidance, the numberless instances in which seeming chance or wonderful coincidence can be traced to God’s purpose in my life. All these things gradually engender a feeling of wonder, humility, and gratitude to God. These in turn are followed by a more sure and abiding faith in God and His purposes.
Prayer for the Day

I pray that my faith may be strengthened every day. I pray that I may find confirmation of my life in the good things that have come into my life.

From Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Taking Care of Ourselves

We often refer to recovery from codependency and adult child issues as self-care. Self-care is not, as some may think, a spin off of the Me generation. It isn’t self-indulgence. It isn’t selfishness – in the negative interpretation of that word.

We’re learning to take care of ourselves, instead of obsessively focusing on another person. We’re learning self-responsibility, instead of feeling excessively responsible for others. Self-care also means tending to our true responsibilities to others; we do this better when we’re not feeling overly responsible.

Self-care sometimes means, me first, but usually, me too. It means we are responsible for ourselves and can choose to no longer be victims.

Self-care means learning to love the person we’re responsible for taking care of – ourselves. We do not do this to hibernate in a cocoon of isolation and self indulgence; we do it so we can better love others, and learn to let them love us.

Self-care isn’t selfish; it’s self-esteem.

Today, God, help me love myself. Help me let go of feeling excessively responsible for those around me. Show me what I need to do to take care of myself and be appropriately responsible to others.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie

Quote of the Day for Thursday, April 16th

“If we choose to focus on things that bother us, we will never be at peace. We will be at the mercy of those around us. The serenity to accept the things we cannot change must involve the ability to be patient with these things and decide that they will not alter our state of mind and heart.” — Father Jonathan Morris

Daily Readings for Thursday, April 16th

Meditation for the Day

I must try to love all humanity. Love comes from thinking of every man or woman as your brother or sister, because they are children of God. This way of thinking makes me care enough about them to really want to help them. I must put this kind of love into action by serving others. Love means no severe judging, no resentments, no malicious gossip, and no destructive criticism. It means patience, under standing, compassion, and helpfulness.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may realize that God loves me, since He is the Father of us all. I pray that I in turn may have love for all of His children.

From Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Letting Things Happen

We do not have to work so hard at gaining our insights. Yes, we’re learning that painful and disappointing things happen, often for a reason and a higher purpose. Yes, these things often work out for good. But we don’t have to spend so much time and energy figuring out the purpose and plan for each detail of our life. That’s hypervigilence!

Sometimes, the car doesn’t start. Sometimes, the dishwasher breaks. Sometimes, we catch a cold. Sometimes, we run out of hot water. Sometimes, we have a bad day. While it helps to achieve acceptance and gratitude for these irritating annoyances, we don’t have to process everything and figure out if it’s in the scheme of things.

Solve the problem. Get the car repaired. Fix the dishwasher. Nurse yourself through the cold. Wait to take the shower until there’s hot water. Nurture yourself through your bad day. Tend to your responsibilities, and don’t take everything so personally!

If we need to recognize a particular insight or awareness, we will be guided in that direction. Certainly, we want to watch for patterns. But often, the big insights and the significant processing happen naturally.

We don’t have to question every occurrence to see how it fits into the Plan. The Plan – the awareness, the insight, and the potential for personal growth – will reveal itself to us. Perhaps the lesson is to learn to solve our problems without always knowing their significance. Perhaps the lesson is to trust ourselves to live, and experience, life.

Today, I will let things happen without worrying about the significance of each event. I will trust that this will bring about my growth faster than running around with a microscope. I will trust my lessons to reveal themselves in their own time.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie

My Thoughts on it All – Pandemic 2020

Here we are, in the middle of April, a time where our minds turn to baseball and all those things we love to do outside. But this year is dramatically different from most any we’ve ever experienced, feeling the effects of the worldwide pandemic knows as Covid-19.

We’re well into the second month of social distancing and one thing that I’ve noted is that quite a few friends are sharing that they’re having problems sleeping. The reality of this whole situation is I’m thinking more than our conscious minds can handle at any one time. It’s an unprecedented set of circumstances, unlike anything any of us has experienced before. Most people, including myself, don’t know quite how to handle the reality of it all.

There’s definitely a feeling of disconnect that most all are feeling. Even with the technology that affords us virtual get-togethers, meetings, and the like, it still can’t replace actually being able to connect with people in person. Even acknowledged introverts such as myself are finding it difficult to not be able to get out and about and be around others.

It would seem to me that the general feeling among most is that we all just want this to be over and done with. We want to be able to wake up tomorrow morning and return to our lives as they once were. But then there’s the stark reality that it’s not going to work that way at all. We will one day slowly begin to relax being socially distant, but some things are never going to be exactly the same. And I think that’s what scares people the most. Life as we once knew it is not going to exist.

Do we resign ourselves to defeat? Certainly not! But in the realistic world of the great unseen enemy, we all need to realize that the process will take time. Large gatherings of people at restaurants, ballgames, concerts, and other social events will be slow to return. And it would seem to be that the worst thing we could do is rush back into the mindset of “life as usual”. And as I said, some things are never going to be quite the same.

Do I know what the end result will be? No. But I thought I would share my thoughts on it all and will have faith that although the journey is long, the outcome will leave us all the much stronger.

David Lee