Life’s Toolbelt

Welcome to my blog, today I just want to touch on a few things that have been on my heart of late. Last weeks run of mud in my life which I am learning to love thanks to a very good sermon on Elevation Chruch’s website called aptly “Love The Mud”. I try to find nuggets in the dark places to use in the light so here goes.
I struggle with depression, my physical circumstances at times go hand in hand with it and I know many can relate. I think it is so important to stay in the right frame of mind and I thankfully have a wonderful network of loving, faithful, God believing friends and family that keep me pointed in the right direction. Last week on one particularly difficult day, I went to my attic to look for things to sell and realized how much I have accumulated over the years. I am an advocate of saving things for repurposing but I have a melancholy heart too which makes me hold onto memories.
For the most part the memories are boxed, filed and organized but the rest is boxed and sitting waiting, for what? I am not sure. So amid my boxes it overwhelmed me and I sat down and cried. I called out in a prayer, more like a what do you want me to do here kind and waited. The epiphany was pretty clear to me…look at all of this stuff, you spent years of your time working for money to get it all, you spent time away from your family chasing it, you compromised things to obtain more and more. And here you are today, all alone, in pain, needing help and it cannot help you. The time wasted that I saw in this was heartbreaking to me.
I realized that the thing I focused most of my energy on is worthless to me now. I was so good at it too, gathering things, that is. I was in the corporate world, on a fast track, career, nice house, nice car…holding up all of the appearances. But what are appearances? Apparitions, imagery, ego….yes all of them.
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When illness took me hostage and I could not quickly find my way out of it I fell off of the wheel. Physically and mentally unable to keep up, the job went away, the salary went away, the shopping for fun went away, going out to eat went away, the friends went away too unfortunately, the ego could not keep up so it went too, thank God. I had to learn fast how to survive and not take down the ship with me, there are 2 other passengers who depend on me and need me so failure is never my goal.
I struggled past the pain and problems and began to re-invent our lives, I did not come to this place by my own planning and design, I found myself here and began to dig for a “how to” manual to carry on. There was not one to be found so I set about writing my own for us, I did so many things, learning all the way, we all did. So now that we have arrived here and are all on board we are sailing into clearer water. Habits and schedules keep things flowing, we cannot plan for my bad days but we work around them. My husband and son are the ones that do most of it with me coaching right now but I will not be sidelined forever.
We are blessed to call 38.3 acres of PA our home, we live alongside a lovely fresh water stream and have equal woodland and tillable land, barns for livestock and nature abounds all around us. It is hard to step outside and not see something beautiful..so I look to this natural world for my solutions.
I believe that God provides everything we need to live, the plants, the trees, the wildlife holds healing for the physical and emotional being. How many times do we find that communing with nature heals our anger, frustration or sadness. How many times have we tried aged, natural approaches for physical healing and happily see that they work?
I do think we as a culture have pulled away from much of that. In the name of convenience we sold ourselves to clever marketing, a brainwashing of sorts, listening to the TV keeps us there. How many young people are programmed from an early age to just go get what they want? I think one of the worst ideas to date (and have experienced this) is handing a small child a gift card and saying go get whatever your heart desires, does this happen in any other area of life? It is an unrealistic thing to do and develops expectations that cannot be sustained. You only need to look at the end of driveways at what gets thrown away on a weekly basis to see our homes, lives and habits are not sustainable at all.
Sustainable Choices is not all about food, it is a whole lifestyle to embrace …try it today is what you are doing able to continue indefinitely? Can it sustain itself? You may not like the answers and some won’t even bother to pose the question.
I hope that you can open your mind and continue on this journey with me. I will take you along with me as I re-invent us from a fast track, tired and typical American family to a thoughtful, quiet existence that is filled with peace and love. Let’s create simplified lives that don’t require this upkeep, I promise you will learn to breathe again.
One of my favorite things to do (once it is warm out) is to walk in the morning to loosen up (barefoot is best for grounding you) and smell, see and feel the energy that comes from the morning. Everything is awake, the birds singing and flying, the water rippling by, warm air blowing over the grass, it is impossible to not drink it in and feel the glow. Breathe in gratitude and breathe out love…
Stuff is nice, stuff can be fun but shedding the stuff allows for these other things to come and the best part is that it is free.
Today I am looking up, there is no other direction for us to go.
Sending love to all,
Marla
Hello friends,
I am coming of a rough run of long days that were not very kind to this body I live in and trying to rise above it can be a real challenge but is something that anyone with a chronic illness knows is important to do. My faith in God is the rock I stand on and he helps me find perspective to share.
Part of what I have done in the last year was clean up my body. During the journey of this illness and the enduring of the misdiagnosis I found every specialist I went to was ready with the prescription pad and set to send me out the door to the pharmacy. After a time when my body was failing in many ways and I was only in my 30s I paused to look at what I was taking becuase I just didn’t feel good. I was on 10 prescriptions from 4 different doctors and felt over medicated and mis-managed.
I now have completely made it through getting all of the detoxing, getting all of the chemicals out of my body, I am clean. My theory is how can you truly know how you feel or see how your body is really doing if you are pumped full of things that cause other problems and mask pain.
This is not something for the faint of heart, I will be honest, there are days raw with pain and physical misery but I have found that with my faith being strong I can see the other side of it. How many of you achieved a gaol without some type of pain or struggle? I’m not scared, I know God won’t let me suffer without His comfort, I fully trust in what I believe. The beauty is that I know exactly what my symptoms are now so helping my Functional Osteopathic Doctor seek the root cause is simpler because there is no guessing.
I had time on my hands during this illness, time that I spent alone. I study the human body and have a certificate in Anatomy and Biology that I earned during my training for Massage Therapy and Reflexology. I have an understanding of things because I pay attention, it interests me. I do not resist the norm and conventional thinking to be different and to lose friends over my opinion, I was also trained in the financial industry where I analyzed things, people, data, learned to question things and challenge roadblocks. So when I saw the deception in the food and drug industry and can see behind Agriculture and Pharmacology to understand the financial gains I have to see it for what it is, I cannot bury my head and ignore it.
maglie calcio poco prezzo
As I changed what I ate and how I gave my body nutrition there are many things that improved as a result. If you have had a similar experience I ask you to speak up and share your story.
There is a lot of talk about conventional medicine that uses pharmacology and homeopathy. Some try to comare the two but this can’t be done equally. You can’t compare an apple to an orange and be fair, they are totally different. I wish the people trained in conventional medicine would quit knocking the clean, natural approach especially since they more than likely never tried it. How can you have such a strong opinion over something you never experienced? Whose opinion is it?
In all fairness let the people who have fully embraced and experienced both worlds have their time to speak.
Healing is an important word, what is the definition of it?
heal (hēl) v. healed, heal·ing, heals
Marla