Posted on by BWThomas

Living the good life, our choices make our lives.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Bertrand Russell

What does a good life look like? Does it often look like someone else’s life? Over there, we see someone accomplishing more, having more fun, going on trips we’ve never gone on.

Do we want the reality of other people’s lives, or just the fantasy? The positives sound great, but what about the negatives? Everyone has negatives in their lives. I think about a month-long trip one of my nephews is taking, trips friends and family are taking, but then a part of me thinks, if you really want to do it, why don’t you do it? There’s the rub; it is easy to fantasize about actions others are taking, but if we want what they’ve got, we have to do what they are doing.

Our choices have shaped our lives, and their choices shaped theirs, and then there are choices we don’t make but are made for us. Management is important, and often we think we should have managed things differently. Choices that seemed good don’t end up being what we thought they’d be.

But what if we take a deep look at those we admire or envy? What is it about their lives we like better than our own, and what would we give up to have or be like them? I know some people who have travelled a lot more than we have, but were unable to have children. They made the best of the hand they were dealt.

Have I done the best with the life I’ve had, or is that where envy comes from? When I talk about my grandchildren, some people look at me with envy because if life didn’t give you children, it will never give you grandchildren. Some have children, but the children aren’t deciding to have children yet.

Life itself is a privilege, but to live life to the fullest well, that is a choice. Andy Andrews

Life is what we make it. What is it about travel that we love, or think we love? Do we really want to experience time shifts, sleeping in strange beds, and eating nothing but purchased food? Is it the sense of adventure? After all, travel seems like an adventure, but do we need to go halfway around the world for adventure?

What does a satisfying day encompass? Sometimes, when I look at everyone going everywhere, I tell myself we’ve built a life we don’t need a vacation from. Yesterday I spent the day removing wallpaper, my three-year-old grandson said, “You need some help.” As my one-year-old granddaughter crawled over, he said, “Here’s your helper.” A little later, he looked at me solemnly and said, “Your littlest helper isn’t much help.” He is much more helpful, pulling off the top layer and spraying water on the bottom layer to remove it.

It wasn’t an exciting day, but it was a satisfying day. I said no to lunch so I could complete it. I chose to remove wallpaper over lunch out with my husband. Was it a good choice? The wallpaper is removed, but we could have spent time together; every choice to do one thing means we can’t do something else.

Our daily choices add up to our lives. Are we making the best choice every time one is offered? Can some of the choices we think are least important be the most important? Are there moments we wish we could go back and make a different choice? Is a life of few regrets a good life? What are our choices today, this week, month, and year that will make a difference in our lives or someone else’s? Do we sometimes not see those choices until we are looking back?

Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough. Oprah Winfrey

A secret to life: Know that none of this matters, and yet… live as if every single moment does. Kamal Ravikant

Life is like a book. Some chapters are sad, some are happy, and some are exciting. But if you never turn the page, you will never know what the next chapter holds. Unknown

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

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Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Change is coming, it’s always coming. Do we embrace it, or fight against it?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. Alan Watts

“Did you enjoy your visit to heaven?” Peter asks someone who just passed as they reached the pearly gates. On the podcast where I heard this, the host and guest burst into laughter.

What more do we want from heaven than a beautiful day filled with sunshine? Why is it preposterous that this is heaven? Yesterday, we got our first snow, and our three-and-a-half-year-old grandson and his one-year-old sister couldn’t wait to go outside and play in the snow. The dog wanted to go out more often because she loves playing in it too.

I wasn’t excited to play in the snow, and this shows how I’ve lost some of the excitement about experiencing new things. The more we embrace what each season offers, the more we enjoy life. If we never had any sour in our lives, would we enjoy only the sweet? I’ve met people who come from countries that don’t experience winter who say winter is their favorite season.

There is a quiet joy that comes from sitting inside, warm and comfy, well-fed and secure, watching the snow come down. I think this is why we see Christmas cards with a little house, smoke coming from the chimney, surrounded by trees covered in snow, and this scene warms our hearts.

I’m not against living somewhere without winter, but I think I would miss it, at least a little bit. My daughter and I just set up a date for next Saturday to take the kids tobogganing, if there is still snow.

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. Socrates

Are we enjoying everything as much as we can? Do we celebrate enough, the big and the little things? We never know when it might be the last time we see someone. We used to laugh among ourselves when we’d visit Mom and Dad, even in their fifties and sixties, Dad would say, “You never know if you’ll see me again.” It sounded morbid, but it is also true, and looking at life that way might make us make the most of what we have while we have it.

Things pass away in our lives, things that will never happen again. It might be a small thing, like the last time a child asks for something particularly childish as they grow up, that stage passes. My grandson asked for hot chocolate with marshmallows this morning. His Nana sent him home with them, and he’ll get marshmallows in his hot chocolate until they are gone.

Children and grandchildren grow up fast. A friend is expecting her first grandchild in December, how exciting! People move from houses they’ve lived in for years, and away from areas they’ve built their lives. There is a last visit to a store they liked, a short conversation with a store clerk that will never happen again. People come into and out of our lives, things change, and we may want to hold onto what was, but we are onto a new chapter, even if we’d like to cling to the old one.

As we go through the seasons of our life and the seasons of the year, we may think the one just past is better than the one coming up, but we must embrace what is, not what we wish or hope for, but the reality in front of us. When we meet people who have embraced life with its difficulties and challenges, they are often the happiest. They don’t fight against what they can’t change; they make the best of what they have where they are.

I watched Dad do this after he lost most of his right hand in a farm accident. Choices Mom and Dad would never have made were on the table. They sold the farm and moved three times, and Mom moved four. I had thought Mom and Dad would be on the farm till the end, but home was wherever they were.

I wonder if we need a catalyst for change, because we like our comfortable life, even if it is like a worn-out shoe that needs replacing. Embracing change might not be easy; every change comes with challenges, but also opportunities. Once we make the change our life is calling for, we might find we enjoy our new circumstances more than the old, comfortable ones.

Is your life calling out for change? Are you embracing it, planning how to make it happen, and the opportunities change will bring?

Some changes look negative on the surface, but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge. Eckhart Tolle

In any given moment, we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety. Abraham Maslow

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Lao Tzu

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more, and have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Love is a verb; love is a beautiful thing to see, experience, and live.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Love without action is meaningless, and action without love is irrelevant. Deepak Chopra

If we want to see real love, we don’t see it among the young and beautiful; they still have to find out what kind of love they have. Will it get through the tough parts of life, and still be there when they are no longer young and beautiful?

I saw real love yesterday, while visiting the best friends of my husband’s parents. They got married in their late thirties or forties and have been married for about forty-six years. They live in a house with steep stairs, and one of her relatives said she could see an accident waiting to happen, so they got a stair lift installed. One August morning, the lady got up. Her husband was still sleeping, so she made her way downstairs and somehow fell off the chairlift. Her husband heard her fall and ran to help her, only to fall on top of her, and the chairlift then fell on him.  

The next Saturday, a lady from their church knocked on the door to deliver food that she and her husband delivered every Saturday. When she got no answer, she called the church office. Everyone felt that if they were going away, they would have told someone. The police were called, and they had to break down the door where they found the two of them on top of each other, unconscious.  Four days they were like this, and had this lady not been sure something wasn’t right, they would have died a heap on the floor.

Love is a verb: It’s an action requiring your involvement and your active participation. You cannot sit back and expect the world will serve it to you. You cannot expect that your relationship will continue to provide love while you’re not putting in any effort. Love has to be earned and must be continually fought for. Stephen Covey

They are home from the hospital, and they aren’t sure if they will be able to take care of themselves completely yet, but have a lady staying with them for now. As we talked to this couple, they are convinced they are alive only by the grace of God, because both of them survived a fall down a steep set of stairs, and four days without food or water feels like a miracle to them, and it feels like one to me, too.

When people tell us they’ve encountered Jesus or God in their lives, do we believe them? The lady said she encountered a vision of Jesus years ago on a bus and has been led to pray for people who recovered from illness. As the two of them talked to us, during parts of it, they held hands, and tears came to the husband’s eyes, as he said, “She’s my girlfriend.” He didn’t say it because he didn’t know they were married, but because they’ve led a life where, other than work, when you saw one of them, you saw the other.

Had they died in a heap on the floor together, it wouldn’t be as sad as it sounds, because living without each other is, I think, the saddest outcome they can imagine. They are grateful to be alive, to be together, and to be in their own home.

We don’t want to be in our neighbors’ business, and have the police knock down doors when they’ve only gone out for a while. But, I am wondering how the neighbors feel knowing an older couple who lived beside them lay on the floor in a heap for four days. One of the problems might be if we aren’t seeing our neighbors coming and going from their home, not seeing any movement will not make us think something is wrong.

When we have an intuition that something isn’t right, could the voice of God be speaking to us?

Love cannot remain by itself – it has meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service. Mother Teresa

Love is not words; it’s actions, and love isn’t feelings; it’s a decision. Stevin Furtick

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. John 3:18

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more and have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books—a special thank you to those who take the time to leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.