Tag Archives: abuse

happiness

The River

Likely because I’ve been working so hard on forgiveness and surrender, I have been given the opportunity to really put them both to the test these last few days. I’m tired –  really, really tired –  and I know the only way to release the burden is to turn it to God and ask Him to carry it for me.

Sunday when we were at church we sang this hymn:

and I felt it in my soul. I downloaded it on Spotify and I’ve been listening to it non stop ever since.

Today as I felt completely wiped out by the stresses I’m dealing with in my life, I listened to this song over and over – playing it in the background as I went about my daily routine. It brings me peace – when I listen to it I can feel Jesus sitting with me, holding my hand, letting me know it will all be alright. It will be – and this time instead of reacting with rage and anger (which I really, really want to do) I’m going to just keep working on forgiveness, surrender, and strengthening my faith.

Lately I’ve witnessed a really moving example of people responding to malicious cruelty with kindness and compassion, and I have decided that I want to be more that kind of person than the one who responds to it with outrage and a victim mentality. The only thing I can really control is how I respond in this situation, and even that I can only do with God’s help. I realized listening to the hymn that I need to meet Him at the river. Not that I want to, or would like to, but that I honestly need to meet Him, I need help, support, and love that only He can give me.

If happiness comes from within (and I believe it does) then I can choose to stand in my own happiness and love no matter what is thrown at me.

 

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Riding on the buckle 

I realized today as I was tacking up Drishti that the only thing worse than being afraid of riding would be giving into that fear and being too afraid to ride.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was afraid of everything. I feel like over the last few years all I’ve done is face my fears, stand up to them, walk through them. Honestly, I’m kind of tired of it.

We went out in the field, I climbed my way up in the saddle, and off we went. My first instinct is to have a good, steady contact on the reins. Part of that is my English riding training where contact is a good thing, but the need to hold onto his mouth – that is fear. Drishti is not a fan of it, but I’m not ripping on his face so he’s taken a quieter, sneakier approach to getting me to let go. The longer we walk the more he stretches his head out. He will stop every once in a while and take big, long looks all around – which could be taken as curiosity, but I’m starting to realize it’s a very effective way for him to get longer reins.

I thought about how we are building this new relationship and how it will only work on trust. I know him well enough to know that at a walk he’s not going to buck and bolt on me, so I got to thinking – why aren’t I giving him his head more? I’m not schooling, we are just walking around – why aren’t I giving in. And bam! the reins went to the buckle.

And we just chilled and walked around the field – and it was happiness.

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Happy for no reason

When you’re happy for no reason, you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them. You don’t need to manipulate the world around you to try and make yourself happy. You live from happiness, rather than for happiness (Happy for No Reason by Marci Shimoff)

I have been reading these words over and over today and they have totally shifted my perspective of happiness. I have long known that happiness comes from within and that we can’t depend on other things or people to make us happy, but somehow reading these words helped it all fall into place.

When I started, I had to look for things to make me happy. I didn’t have any happiness inside, my life was scary and fearful. I had to start looking for daily experiences that made me feel happy on the inside – some days they were pretty hard to find. As I said yesterday, I’ve been realizing lately that my quest for happiness is shifting.

I am finding more and more happiness inside myself. I am starting to believe in myself and seeing my value in ways that not too long ago I didn’t think would be possible. Because of that, I am able to bring happiness to my moments instead of looking for moments to bring me happiness.

It’s powerful stuff. It’s happiness.

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Fearful living, hopeful living

I have a confession to make – riding Drishi scares the crap out of me. Not because of him – he is awesome – but because of me. When I get on him I realize how my first reaction to a situation is fear. I’m scared he’ll take off, I’m scared he’ll buck me off, I’m scared I’ll just fall off, I’m scared he’ll trip and we  will crash… basically I’m scared of getting hurt. Just like in the rest of my life – I’m scared of getting hurt.

Drishti is awesome, he is exactly what I prayed for even though I didn’t know all the details when I was doing the praying. I prayed for heaven to give me a big, beautiful horse who was still green enough I could put some schooling time on – one that I could ride out in the fields here but could also teach some things to. He is green and certainly could do with some schooling lessons… but make no mistake, the one doing the teaching here is Drishti.

I am learning so much from him.

A few years ago when I was in the pits of my dark night of the soul, my anxiety was so bad that I could barely function. Just doing the bare minimum to get through the day took all the bravery and strength I had and I think it’s important for me to remember that as I think of how I’m learning to face fears while riding. I have already experienced all the big things I was afraid could happen in my life in the last couple of years, so I find it interesting that these smaller fears can be so powerful. But life happens in the small moments and I want to make sure mine are filled with hope and peace instead of fear.

I was riding today and poor Drishti was upset. His friends are gone for the day and he was feeling quite sorry for himself being all alone. I also haven’t ridden him in a week and what he really wanted to do was go for a big long gallop across the field (not happening). I rode him around the field and really paid attention to how he was. He was looking at everything – cows over there, dogs underfoot, tractor over here… lots to look at. But he just kept walking along – he’s pretty much the same all the time. Me on the other hand was more like will he spook at the tractor? what if when he puts his head down to rub his leg he then grabs the bit and takes off?  (thanks to some awesome childhood ponies this fear is real) What if he bolts back to the barn? Meanwhile Drishti is still walking along looking at the world.

Hmmmmm

It got me thinking about trust. The two of us are working on building an extremely close relationship that has to be built on trust. Does he trust me? I think so. Do I trust him? Apparently not so much. Have I ever done anything to betray his trust? Not really, but I hold onto his mouth a lot more than I should afraid he’ll bolt which shows a lack of trust. Has he ever done anything to betray mine? Besides that one time when he took off with a couple of  happy bucks? No. And I totally got the happy bucks – he’s a horse, he was having fun, it was a beautiful spring day.

The trust issue is mine.

What I love about this horse – aside from the fact that he’s an amazing gift from heaven, that my soul is complete now that I have a horse again, and that he’s so incredibly cute – is that he’s teaching me how to trust completely and to let go of my fear. Learning how to reprogram how I approach my life and relationships – this is happiness. I love this guy.

I’ve been redefining happiness over the last few days with the understanding that I am now at the place that I need to be searching for ways to have happiness part of my life all the time and  for no reason at all – just to have happiness be my way of living in every moment. I started this blog needing to find one happy moment in every day to give myself hope that I could have more happy moments. I think I’m ready for more – more hope, more happiness, more love.

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Just be happy now

Just be happy now

Out of this will come the miracles you seek (The Key by Joe Vitale)

Once I realized hope was missing from my life, I’ve been focusing on bringing it back to the centre of my being. If I don’t have hope what is the point? I don’t mean that my life was hopeless and that I was deep in dark despair or the world was ending. I mean I had forgotten to keep hoping for better things, that the rainbow is coming, that I can dance in the storm –  I forgot to be happy now.

My life has been a series of miracles over the past two years. Sometimes in the day to day stuff that stresses me out I forget just how much God has provided for me. Slowly but surely I am getting everything I ever wanted and just because there are some blips along the way does not mean that if I keep hope, if I stay happy, if I am clear about what I want,  that these miracles won’t continue.

I spent a big part of the day today in quiet meditation, clearing my heart and mind and focusing on what I want. I said to my friend while we were standing on the beach the other day that maybe I need to make a list of exactly what I want in life so I am clear about where I want to be going – so that’s what I did. Amazingly, I already have a lot of the things I want, which gives me faith that the other things are possible as well.

I realized that even with daily stress stuff, divorce stress stuff, kid stress stuff, I can just be happy now. Because if not now – when?

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Back to reality 

We crawled back into reality this morning after a very late night arrival from our vacation. Tired, but happy and more relaxed we are able to start catching up with life. 

I extended my soul happy relaxation time and met with one of my healers today. He’s so wise and so good at guiding the healing system – I am so grateful he’s part of my process. I talked with him about my realization that it is time to properly forgive, and that it is time to open to new hope and joy. I’d gladly just do the latter, but it seems the former is part of the process. 

I hugged my Drishti and thanked God that he’s in my life. It was great to get away, but we have a pretty blessed and happy life here too. It is good to remember that. That is happiness. 

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Easter – a time for hope

We went to Easter service at the Anglican Cathedral in Victoia today. It was meaningful for a few reasons – obviously celebrating Christ was one, but also it’s the place my parents took us when we used to come to the Island for Easter and is filled with happy family memories. One reason I hadn’t thought about until we were sitting there was that Ansley who had been the priest at my parents’ church in Calgary and who walked with us in the last stages of dad’s life and after he passed away was preaching there. I knew she was there, but I wasn’t really ready for the emotional kick I got when I saw her. Interestingly although there was a sadness when I saw her, there was also a lot of peace, joy, and comfort – she was part of a very important event in our lives and one that brought about great change for me. 

I cried through most of her homily. One thing that I have really realized on this little vacation is that somewhere along the way I had lost hope, and over the last couple of weeks I’ve been finding it again. I had been saying I was feeling overwhelmed, but I think what I was really feeling was hopelessness. That’s a bad feeling. 

My meditations lately have been about finding hope during times of chaos, my readings have been about how chaos takes us away from our connection to God and He’s the one who gives us hope, my prayer time and  chats with God have been about finding hope and believing that anything is possible. So, it makes sense that we were here for Easter to hear her story of  being Easter  people and  of finding hope as well. 

She told her own  Easter story about her sister and as she was talking I kept thinking of the parallels in my own life – my story with dad and leaving Mr. X, and all that has come with it. She talked about how Easter is remembering and celebrating that even in dark times we know that God puts things back together in different, beautiful, and usually better ways – sometimes it’s just a matter of seeing that. How important it is that we always hold onto our hope that the sun will shine out of the storm. 

I have always felt that the kids and I coming back home and getting out of that abusive and scary environment was dad’s last gift to me. It came with a lot of pain and a lot of change, but I am  starting to see the hope shining out of the storm. Tears were streaming out of my eyes (I will be glad when I stop crying in public all the time, but I’m learning to embrace it more) as I sat and listened and really absorbed the miracles that have happened in my own life over the past two years. There have been a lot of storm clouds, but rainbows and sunshine along with them too. 

Happiness is hope, happiness is celebrating Christ, happiness is time here at the ocean with the two people I love most in the world. 

Happy Easter!

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Back in balance 

We went to the beach this morning and walked logs. I used to walk logs along the beaches here when I was a kid and it was fun to continue the family tradition with my kids. 

I walked by the water early this morning and had a long chat with God about finding balance in my life again. I felt how that balance should feel later walking with the kids. Family time – it’s powerful stuff. It’s happiness. 

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Life hits you out of nowhere 

Yesterday I was brought back to the words of my acupuncturist: that even when you are focused on and connected to the Divine, life can hit you out of nowhere and throw you off balance. 

That was pretty much yesterday in a nutshell. One second I was thinking how great it was that I kinda had my crap together and things were under control and literally the next second full on, meltdown crisis in the parking lot. And it’s so much harder to deal with when the pain belongs to someone I love, but I can’t fix it. I know the cause of it, but not the cure. It breaks me. Maybe I need to be broken. I don’t know. 

A couple of weeks ago my aunt emailed me a psalm reading because I was complaining that God wasn’t shining His flashlight brightly enough on my path. 

Psalm 119:105

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

It wasn’t really the answer I wanted (I wanted to know what was ahead on the path), but the words have been sitting in my heart ever since. 

Today I was doing some studies, trying to rebalance myself again, and came across something similar. A reminder that it’s a process, that endurance is needed and that the light is always there. 

So, I got a little angry with God and went out and had my usual field temper tantrum asking why if the light was there it couldn’t be bright enough so I can see down the path and know that everything will be ok. 

This is a lesson in faith, learning to surrender control. I don’t like it. I like the illusion I have control enough to keep us safe and looked after.  I totally don’t. 

I realized that maybe the light is only being shone brightly where I’m standing because I need to pay attention to what is happening now, not looking ahead down the path. 

I also don’t like this. But I think it’s important. There are things happening that need my attention right now. And in this moment where the light shines we are safe. That should be enough. Should.  It’s what I’m gong to focus on anyway – I’m letting g of all the other distractions and looking at what is important. 

And for the moments when it’s not enough, I have Drishti. He forces me to have faith and trust when I’m scared, he makes me learn when to hold on and let go, he reminds me how to be in the moment. He’s  helping fix my soul. 

Tootling around the field with him, that is happiness. 

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Buddha’s birthday

The boy and I went to a service today that celebrated the Buddha’s birthday (while all the other Christians were at Palm Sunday), so I can now add that to the list of interesting things I’ve done. And it was quite interesting, and enjoyable, and very peaceful. I like the quiet meditation and the sensei is really very funny. The kids brought a (chocolate, this was very important, the buddha likes chocolate apparently) cake in and as they walked we sang happy birthday. When we were done one of the smaller kids asked the sensei how old Buddha was. He answered: how old is Buddha? Buddha is one – because Buddha is one with everything. Hahahah – truth.

Afterwards they had a celebratory lunch which we were invited to, so we had this amazing (free) meal and got the chance to meet some pretty interesting people. It was fun to be part of their celebration and it was a happiness moment I got to share with my boy who seems to find a lot of peace in this.

I had a moment of personal happiness later in the day after having conversations with two different friends. I chatted with them about somethings that have been weighing heavily on my mind and in my heart and came away feeling so much better – not only about the issues, but about the fact that I have such supportive, loving friends. This tribe I have is amazing and I am grateful for them always. That is life happiness.

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