A Graceful Home is a blog I love visiting, because it always promises encouragement, optimism and inspiration. Sallie often comes up with thoughtful ideas for women, mothers and homemakers. This year she proposes us
A Year of Abundance in which we can contemplate on what we've already got, feeling abundance and pleasure by actually using the goods we already have. This is a concept that is dear to my heart. I believe that the mainstream of downsizing is about deprivation and doing without, whereas what Sallie proposes is the exact opposite. It is about feeling content with what you've got, which is both financially and psychologically sound!
Sallie also sponsors
The Carnival of Beauty, with some intersting subjects. Now that my commitment to blogging seems to have taken root, I thought about this idea and decided to join. I see it as an opportunity to stop, take a breath, sink in our souls and minds, listen and think, and come out renewed and rebirthed in our spiritual and emotional quests. So I hope to be able to participate. In fact, I am publishing my fisrt entry today!
The Beauty of a New YearTime. A precious gift, not a menace. A reminder to encourage us to move ahead in becoming the best we were created to be.
Christmas and the New Year. The most godly of times. Forgiveness and union. Time to look back and think, time to look forward and create.
Time this precious gift of life, what did I do with it so far? In what ways do I honor the divine creature that I am? What am I willing to do this year?
It is so easy to overlook who we are. But as
Lindsey nicely puts it, "We are spirits having a physical experience - not physical beings embarking on a spiritual experience". The New Year actually makes us stop and reminds us of this fundamental truth of our existence. For a moment Time comes to a standstil and we allow ourselves a moment of quiet. Silent night.
Say: I am here. I breathe the fresh, crystal clear air. I am. Grateful and humble. I stand here, sometimes in fear, sometimes in expectation, sometimes totally full of love and replentishment.
Those joyful moments of my life so far, come to mind and I sometimes wonder "Did I really live that?" I remember New Years past, like expecting my first child and decorating my very first Christmas tree as a married women, or bringing home our second daughter.
I am here. I lived this. My children sleep and I can hear my husband's snoring. I am alive. Inside me I may feel frustrated and tired and confused. But there isn't a place for that right now, because right now I just am, me and the Universe, God, All that Is, in this quiet moment in time.
There are so many things I want to do. So much time wasted here and there. I grow up, I can feel it now in ways I didn't in my twenties. Before, I didn't think of Time; now I need Time, I NEED this year, and the next and the next and those that with Gods' grace will hopefully come.
I need this year to be more structured to make time time for the things that really matter.
I need to feel that I am doing my best to accomplish what is important. Dishes are washed and clothes are being ironed. But I have to be the mother and wife I need to be, not just for my husband and children, but for my very own self.
What do I need to do?
I need is to do that course that has been siting on my desk for ages.
I need to learn more about my computer and be able to use it in specific segments of time.
I need to supervise and support my children more, especially as F enters her teen years.
I needto spend more time playing with J as he grows out of the preschool years and he will be going to school this year.
I need to make the effort to connect with little D, to make her believe that she is loved and cherished, I need to hold on to her hand while she takes life in her stride, charging ahead.
I need to pay more attention to C. Stand by him, control my frustrations and insecurities, help him grow along with me and be more responsible, organised and accomplished in his quests, too.
I need to make time for my friendships, real life and on-line. Invite customer-friends and my kids' friends and create an atmosphere of community in this part of the world where we were planted.
I need to think about my relationship with C's parents and not get so involved in matters that I cannot change, or that take too much effort to even influence.
I need to look after my soul and my spiritual path. I need to take care of my spirit lovingly, with devotion and faith.
I need to take care of my body and I need to teach my kids by example the importance of nesting a healthy mind in a healthy body. So I need to make time for my beloved outdoors, my yoga and perhaps some other form of physical activity that I long to do, such as tennis.
I need to make time for our home. I need to teach my kids as they grow up to show respect and perseverence in their material posessions.
I need to look after my books and my writing that so easily, actually more and more easilly, gets pushed aside, in favor of some more pressing tasks.
This is the beautiful life I want to live. And this is the beauty of the New Year. A new view through our soul's window to the beauty of our lives, its grace and its gifts.
A new book with crisp white pages that waits to be embelished by beautiful handwriting and scrapbooking, stickers and tickets to the opera, and travels to beautiful destinations, inside and outside ourselves, paths we long to travel but never dared, friends we wanted to have but never settled with a hot cup to meet and cherish, music we didn't listen and plays we didn't see.
This is New Year's gift. In the middle of the winter it gives us the promise of a new beginning, of many new beginnings, of a growing circle that will lift us to who we were ment, to who we can be. Let the seed grow! New Year is here!
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