I hope you all woke up today with grateful and open hearts. I hope your day is filled with much love and happiness. Don't forget to share the love and happiness with others.
So today I want to get back on track with speaking about mental illness and disorders. A tough subject for some that I want only to give you hope for healing and new beginnings. This goes out to all children and adults. New beginnings come with a new mind set. A new mind set comes with having faith that anything and everything is possible. We go through life struggling and we fail to understand that we are not meant to struggle forever. We are meant to learn from our struggles and continue to grow and share with others so they can grow too. Educating others around you is necessary in order to feel peace and hope on a daily basis. I educate in many ways. I have learned to not only write my feelings out, but I have learned I must share with others while conversing as well. Some people are visual people. They need to see the expression on someones face as they are telling their story. I have learned that I am a person that loves to see and embrace those who are struggling. If they need an ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on before the words of hope come, if they simply need to scream it out...I am that person. I don't have physical body strength because of my own brokenness, but I have a beautiful and loving heart and mind that longs to encourage others. I wish only for others to see the beauty in their faults. I have found the beauty in my faults because I was ready to take on myself and my feelings. I was WILLING to get to know truly who I am and who I will always want to be. This was the start of my healing and my new beginning.
I know I don't have the same struggles and journey as all of you, but we ALL struggle. Some people struggle as children, some as adults...but we all suffer from struggling and we all need someone in our time of need. We don't always need an audience, but there is usually a go-to person that pops up. Whether it be your mom, dad, spouse, friends, siblings or someone at your church...we all need somebody. I for one had every single one of these amazing resources at hand and STILL felt incomplete and empty. What did that say about me?? Was I the person that some would say "You are never happy with anything", was I that person???? NO I was not. However, it became very clear at the beginning of this year that my mom was right when she said "You have to love yourself before you can truly love someone else." Let me tell you, my mom has been telling my sister and I this very thing for MANY MANY years. And she is a pretty smart lady and I am blessed to call her mom. My mom said that very same comment to me at the end of 2014, the difference was...my ears were FINALLY wide open to hear her message. Not only were my ears open to her, but I found they were open to hear EVERYTHING anybody wanted to share with me. And when they would share, I would not get defensive anymore. I realized my time had come that I was done with my past struggles that had already broken me down. I no longer suffered from a distorted self-esteem anymore. I was willing and ready to build a better and blessed foundation. I am given the gift of grace, patience and hope each morning I wake up. My foundation VERY RARELY shakes now when I stumble across a struggle. Instead of getting hyper, vocal or sick, I have found myself surrounded by a peace I cannot explain. I still witness so much ugly in our world every day, but I have chosen to pray about it and for them instead of gossiping and judging them as I did before. In my own weakness and fear, yes even I can admit I used to judge and gossip. Judgement and gossip was taken from my life in January this year, and I have not missed either of them ONE BIT! I am thankful that they exited stage left.
Now that judgement and gossip is gone from me, I have been freed from the fear of getting to know me. From the time that I was a small child I suffered from fear of others judging me. Most kids do and most adults are not understanding enough of this. Some adults have the mind set of "They are kids, they don't even understand what being sad is let alone depressed." Children look to adults for guidance and answers and we need to be more aware of our duty as the adult figure to be filled with the knowledge and wisdom they are in need of. As a child I always assumed that no matter what, the adult is always right...RIGHT??? Wrong. Human Nature is a crazy thing and causes us to make many mistakes in our daily lives. We find ourselves doing things we THINK are right, instead of truly seeking out the right in our actions and thought processes.
NONE of us are perfect here on earth, but we have the ability and control to be the best US we WILL BE. When we are blessed enough to wake in the morning, will our first thought be "what will I wear?" what will I eat for breakfast?" "I hope the traffic isn't crazy because of the accident up ahead" "what bad thing will happen today?" or will your first thought be "Thank you for another day of blessings God, please guide my steps and my heart today so I may bless others." We can choose to wake up bitter or hopeful. It is very simple when you break it all down. And be sure to teach your children to wake up daily with a grateful heart. Celebrate them each morning you see them. Don't take for granted one second of the special job you have been given to be their parent. Your children may not say this to you, but they are thinking it..."I want my parents to be proud of me." Remember that while you are celebrating them. Show them love so they may know what love looks like, what it sounds like, so that they may love themselves and love others. That is the one truth you can offer them that will live with them FOREVER!
Our parents are so important and we do not tell them nearly enough. I have been given a second chance at not just changing my life, but I have been give the opportunity to finally tell others what they truly mean to me. My parents have always been amazing teachers. And they were YOUNG parents. They were 17 and 19 when they welcomed my sister. Though my dad was blessed with the opportunity to work for Ford Motor at the age of 18, that didn't change the fact that they were kids raising kids. They had many many struggles. Maybe one day my mom will be encouraged to write their story, but I will sum it up by saying IT WAS NOT EASY! They both had broken pasts at a young age and that made the struggle even more tough to raise kids of their own. However, my parents were AMAZING!!! They struggled, and struggled, but they survived. They not only survived, but they raised two daughters who are so loving and we are so strong. Sure we have made many mistakes, but we are grateful that our parents were always there encouraging us to keep moving. They never allowed us to dwell in our own brains to the point of no return. I am so blessed to have such loving and caring parents. Thank you both for never giving up...and thank you for teaching me to never give up.
I am going to wrap this up for now, but I will finalize this by saying, reach out and hug your children, hug your family, hug your friends...and don't stop there, hug others who need love and hope. Make a difference!!! I love you all. I am praying for you all to have peace so that you too may see, hear and feel what is right.
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