Posted on by BWThomas

Spring is here. Is it time to clear the clutter?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Clutter is nothing more than postponed decisions… Barbara Hemphill

Is it time for spring cleaning, clearing the clutter out of our lives and out of our minds? I look at little houses that used to house families of six to eight children, and now we have massive houses, often with few or no children. How did we get to need so much space? I watched a realtor on YouTube who downsized from 5400 square feet to 2900 square feet and said it wasn’t enough room. I’m pretty sure her children are grown up, so I’m questioning what she is doing with all that space.

I remember going to my aunt and uncle’s house, in her closet, she had a few clothes hung up with lots of space in between. Her closet held the clothes she wore, not ones she hoped would fit one day, or might come back in style.

I’ve been clearing out bookshelves, and I lost count of how many bags of books have gone to Value Village. My son left books here when he got married, and when he went through them, I had five more bags of books for Value Village. How many authors have made a good living selling books to people who never read them?

Does having certain books on our shelves make us feel smarter? I did read that one of the big things to influence children toward success is growing up in a home with books. If just owning books can have an effect, then maybe my collection is justified. With all the books I’ve gotten rid of (and some bookshelves too), I still have some double-lined rows of books on the bookshelf, which means I still have too many books.

What if I could only keep one hundred books? Which ones would make the cut? How many clothes do we need, how many coats? Is less more, or do many of us think more is more? Do our closets look like Value Village instead of a closet where we can quickly find what we want to wear?

Anything unfinished, unused, unresolved or disorganized, is clutter. Clear your clutter to create space for new energy and creativity. Unknown

How many glasses do we need, how many sets of dishes, and coffee cups? Even in rooms we’ve decluttered, I’m wondering if a minimalist would remove one half again. When my husband pulls out an old iron we haven’t used in twenty years, I have to admit we are hoarders. Why did we find a place to store an old item when we replaced it with a new one?

One of the things I’ve realized is not to worry about throwing out something I can replace in twenty minutes for twenty dollars. When the kids were growing up, they complained we didn’t keep enough snacks in the house. I said, “The store is my pantry.” It was my way of controlling how many snacks we consumed. What if I’d said the library is my bookshelf?

Managing our stuff, the kids’ stuff, and business stuff can be overwhelming. We can ignore it for a while, but stuff has to be dealt with at some point, or we can leave it for someone else to deal with upon our death. Is clutter taking peace, joy, and calm from our lives? When we clear the physical clutter from our lives, do we make way for inspiration and good, orderly direction to enter?

Clutter is not just the stuff on your floor – it’s anything that stands between you and the life you want to be living. Peter Walsh

When there is clutter, there is no room for calm and content. Be ruthless. Clear out the chaos and make space in life for things that really matter. The Organized Life

Clutter doesn’t just occupy the house in which you live, it occupies your mind. Avina Cleste

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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

Family and relationships are worth the trouble!

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Building and repairing relationships are long-term investments. Stephen Covey

Our granddaughter walks confidently, holding onto her grandpa’s little finger, but falls to her knees when he loosens his grip. She doesn’t need the support, but she hasn’t realized she can walk on her own yet.

It might seem like it takes forever to take those first few steps alone, and with our grandson, it happened while I was away visiting Mom. When I returned home, he walked down the hall to meet me with a proud look on his face.

Life goes by quickly, but at the same time, sometimes progress seems slow. Time hasn’t flown by as quickly these last few years as they’ve been punctuated with milestones.

We are never ready for the phone call that tells us we’ve seen someone for the last time, but it comes, and life goes on. Our life gets bigger until, at a certain point, it starts to get smaller. Sometimes we make it smaller before it needs to be. If we don’t make an effort to see people when they are alive, how great is the loss when they die?

I’m watching a show, and the father of the main character shows up after they haven’t seen each other for fifteen years. His Mother died, and because of a rift, instead of keeping a relationship with his father who he still had it was like he lost them both. His children didn’t even know they had a grandfather. Of course, they patch things up, but fifteen years have gone by that they’ll never get back. The main character didn’t tell his father when his own wife died four years ago. The father finds out when he finally goes to look for his son in the last place he knew him to be. He left the state after his wife died without informing his father.

It’s fiction, but how many families are fractured like this? Sometimes there’s drama before someone dies, and sometimes the drama escalates with their death. How sad for children not to know grandparents they are lucky enough to have. I deprived my children of knowing my parents as well as they could have by moving across the country. It is one thing to not visit grandparents often because of time and distance, but time and distance are not the obstacles; broken relationships are.

No relationship is all sunshine, but two people can share one umbrella and survive the storm together. Unknown

I’ve spoken to other people whose parents live far away, and how they kept a good relationship with them, and I’ve spoken to people who live in the same city as their parents, and hardly see them. We make our choices, and then those choices seem to take on a life of their own. We might not be able to pinpoint when a wrong turn was taken, but other times we know exactly when the rift occurred.

Life is what we make it, and so are relationships. Parents and siblings aren’t perfect, and nor are children, grandchildren, wives, or husbands. My nephew says, “We love them cause their kin.” I can’t think of a better way to put it. People struggle with the decisions they’ve made and the demons in their lives, and do we make it worse if we can’t accept them for who they are? I’m not saying we need to enable bad behavior, but can’t we love the individual even if we hate the behavior?

Do we have a place in our heart for the prodigal child, the prodigal parent, or the prodigal sibling? Can we hate the sin, but love the sinner? We all fall short of what we saw for ourselves, or at least I think we do. When we look back over our lives, we think of what could have been better, where we faltered and came short. Maybe we were lucky enough not to have an addiction, or strong enough to overcome one, maybe our missteps weren’t big enough to be public. Do we need to be grateful if we’ve lived a life free from the angst others face, but instead of looking down on them, say, “There but for the grace of God go I?”

We might not be able to help someone, and watching them struggle is hard, but doesn’t keeping a relationship, instead of cutting them off, seem like the thing to do? Would reaching out to someone make their day better?

Behind great relationships are hard fought battles. No matter what, if you’re in a relationship you will rub up against each other’s unresolved pain and wounds. It’s inevitable. But one of the main differences between growth and healing versus patterns and merry-go-round dynamics is the ability to repair after the rupture. Unknown

A relationship is like a house. When a light bulb burns out you do not go and buy a new house, you fix the light bulb. Unknown

It is possible for a difficult or broken relationship to be restored to a place of health and emotion again, demonstrate love, and forgive. Unknown

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more. 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 thanks 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

Bitterness and resentment poison our souls

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Never let hard lessons harden your heart, the hard lessons of life are meant to make you better, not bitter. Roy T. Bennett

How and why do we become bitter, and do we notice it, or is it only others who notice? Is it optimism, gratitude, or some other attitude that helps us get through life without becoming bitter? Do we lose faith in ourselves, society, or did unmet expectations turn life sour?

Did we want something out of life that we didn’t get? Instead of kissing the frog and getting a prince or princess, did we turn our prince or princess into a frog by expecting them to be someone they could never be? Did we think love was enough? Love is a verb, and a hard-working verb at that. I’ve seen a few marriages that seemed to enjoy a love that never got old, and I’ve heard the secret is to keep falling in love with the same person time after time.

How much of our lives do we live for ourselves, and how much do we live for other people? Are we putting on a façade for others and feeling like a fake to ourselves? Have we learned to love ourselves, warts and all? Do we dare to disagree? Do we dare stand up for what we think is right? Can we admit we are wrong if we find out we’ve been on the wrong side of something we’ve championed?

Last evening, my husband and I were discussing the destruction of bathrooms in schools by students. My take on it is a lack of discipline has come home to roost. It’s not Johnny’s fault because… has not built a good society. Unruly children growing up into unruly adults is a theme as old as time.

Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Saint Augustine

We need to learn to manage three things to live a good life: money, health, and relationships. How we do with those three determines much of our lives. We might think if only someone else would do better, act better, or be better at any number of things, then we’d be better off, and it might even be true, but we have no power over other people.

Do we build a good society when we decide to be a good member? When my Grandmother and Grandfather homesteaded in Northern Saskatchewan in the 1930’s, there were no schools for the children. Mom tells me her mother walked miles to neighboring homesteads, trying to convince other homesteaders to join her in getting a school in the area, but not everyone cared about a school. If they didn’t have children, they didn’t want the expense of supporting a school. Eventually, schools got built, but many children in their formative years didn’t have access to schools, and they had to build lives without that advantage, and they did.

Circumstances work for us and against us, but often it is our choices working for or against us. How are we managing the life we have? Are there better choices we could be making?

Life can change; spouses die, businesses close, jobs end, but if life is still going on, we have to adapt. We might think life can never be good again. Who are we without… We are who we’ve always been; we aren’t our marriage, our business, or our job. As long as we are breathing, there are choices to make. What can we do to make our health, relationships, and attitude better? How do we know a choice we don’t want to make because we are afraid of change, won’t open up a new way of life we will enjoy more? It takes courage to go forward, but what other choice do we have? If we regret the things we don’t do, then when faced with a choice, even if brought on by circumstances beyond our control, shouldn’t we make the best choice open to us and move on?

Bitterness and resentment only hurt one person, and it’s not the person we’re resenting – it’s us. Alana Stewart

Resentment is nasty. What makes it so ugly is that it has a tendency to turn you an otherwise kind and reasonable person, into someone who is so angry at their own life situation that it is nearly impossible to recover. Bitterness and resentment make it hard even for the people who love you to be around you. Martha Bodyfelt

Resentment is often a woman’s inner signal that she has been ignoring an important God-given responsibility – that of making choices. Brenda Waggoner

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

If we take no risks, do we leave no room for luck in our lives?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Luck and risk-taking go hand in hand. Thomas J. Stanley

How do luck and risk play out in our lives? We might not want to think luck more than good management or smarts has helped us get to where we are, but if we are honest, and things could be much worse than they are, luck probably played a part.

I listened to a podcast with Martin Housel, author of “The Psychology of Money” and “The Art of Spending Money.” He started out thinking he’d be lucky if he could sell 500 books. He says, “If you can’t repeat how well something went, then luck might have played a role.” He had to write his first book, “The Psychology of Money,” and it had to be a good book, but it sold millions, not hundreds, and he credits at least some of that to luck.

We might be lucky if things aren’t as bad as they could be, or much better than we imagined. We might be lucky if we have a better-than-average life instead of a less-than-average one.

There are many times I’ve felt lucky in my life, especially when things could have gone really wrong but didn’t. Some of life is up to us, but I’ve often thought of the song, “If I didn’t have bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.” Does what we expect have something to do with it? If we expect good things, then good things happen, or we expect bad things, and they happen?

The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks. Mark Zuckerberg

Sometimes we hear about people who never seem to have taken many risks in life. Can luck play out in our lives if we never take any risks? If we don’t take a risk on love and building a life with someone, how can we be lucky in love? If we don’t take a risk at going after more than we think is possible, how can luck play a part? If we don’t take a risk to make a friend, how can we be lucky in friendship? If we don’t take a risk in investing in something, are we making room for luck?

We might take it like a slap in the face if someone credits much of our success in life to pure luck, but what if believing in luck is part of being humble? If luck didn’t play a part, what did? Our own magnificence?

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction. John F. Kennedy

Big risks will always be disregarded: small risks always blown out of proportion. Morgan Housel

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. T.S. Eliot

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, 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

Do we fear the changes coming, or are we embracing them?

Painting by belynda Wilson Thomas

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. Rumi

Change is coming, but is it good change, and is it good for everyone? Who has the right to be the catalyst for change? Do fools walk in where angels fear to tread? What will happen if there are unexpected consequences? We might agree that change is needed, but what changes things for the good, for most people, and what about the people for whom the change is not good?

Am I writing about world events, changes going on in my own country, or changes within my household? Change is always happening, and how do we decide what the good changes will be? What fundamentals do we need to hang on to, and what are the ones we need to change?

I’ve grown up in a democracy all my life, but I told my kids our family wasn’t a democracy, because how can you parent if your kids hold the same amount of power and they would vote for gummy bears over broccoli every day?

To fear change is to fear being challenged. To fear being challenged is to fear growth and new possibilities. Ty Howard

Do we only like democracies when we are the ones in power? When we don’t hold the most power, if our ideas aren’t the most popular, then does democracy no longer seem like a good idea? What if the most popular ideas are not the ones that will build the best country, and who gets to decide which ideas these are?

Will the best ideas win out, even if some bad ideas take hold at times? Can we live in a pluralistic world, and entertain some crazy ideas, but as we see the fruit of those ideas, change to what works better for the society we are building?

Strong, resilient, honest, and truthful people build a good society, and if we want it for our children, do we have to build it for everyone else’s children, too? This is what I tell myself will win out if anything can.

Sometimes it seems the only thing we can do is pray. We can pray for wisdom in our own families, wisdom for our local, national, and world leaders. What if faith is what is needed to get us through the hard times? What if faith in a higher power gives us the strength to go on when we feel like pulling the covers over our heads and rolling over? Is gratitude and faith what we need to carry on with a positive attitude?

If something is wrong, fix it now. But train yourself not to worry. Worry fixes nothing. Ernest Hemingway

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely sticking to it. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life. Amelia Earhart

Change is always tough. Even for those who see themselves as agents of change. The process of starting a new thing can cause times of disorientation, uncertainty, and insecurity. Joyce Meyer

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.