Taking the next step. Moving forward with courage, perseverance, and hope.

Moving forward with courage, perseverance, and hope. Taking the next step.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

There are no wrong turnings… Only paths we had not known, we were meant to walk… Guy Gavriel Kay

Last night the speech contest went ahead with no technical difficulties. I was one of four contestants. The other contestants each presented interesting, touching, heartfelt speeches of overcoming, dealing with, and getting through the challenges of life and coming out the other side better.

When we compete in anything we are competing with ourselves. Did we do as well as we could have? Are we proud of our performance? When we step up, enter a contest, and show up we are accomplishing something. It is easier to not bother, but we don’t get growth from not bothering.

The winner from last night came in third last year but someone kept dropping out and she kept moving on to the next contest. She got to the Division Contest where she also came in third. The Division Contest last year was the last contest before Covid closed everything down. This year we will be rooting for her to go farther.

This year the contests are on zoom and we don’t get the energy from the crowd we get in an in-person contest. At these contests, we hear stories of what people have had to deal with and overcome. People have been brought to their knees and when we hear their story we wonder if we could have handled it as well. We hear stories of courage and perseverance.

Telling our stories can change our life, and Toastmasters helps us tell our stories. Someone said, “When we find our voice, we find ourselves.” How powerful is that? We all have stories to tell. We may not have the heartbreaking story someone else went through but when we hear their story we can be grateful, inspired, and hopeful that people are strong, resilient, and courageous.

There’s no time for regrets. You’ve just got to keep moving forward. Mike McCready

We don’t know what we will have to face in our lives, but knowing what others faced, and how they dealt with it can help us in our time of need. We may think back on a story we heard and their experience may give us strength. In any good speech, there is a message, something we can take away, and think about.

Today I am richer for participating in the contest. When we get a chance to add a little excitement to our life by entering a contest we should do it. We often think we need big accomplishments to grow but big accomplishments are comprised of small steps that build toward something. Even writing my book isn’t a big accomplishment. It is a series of small accomplishments, one word upon another word, one chapter added to another, without all the small accomplishments there can be no big accomplishment.

One of our contestants is a medical student. That is a number of small accomplishments just to get to medical school and he has many more steps to become a doctor. Why are some of the greatest speaker’s ministers? They give speech after speech every Sunday honing that skill. Practice, perseverance, and moving towards a goal will push us forward.

Martin Luther King Jr. probably didn’t set out to give one of the most memorable speeches in history; he probably just set out to give a speech. We don’t know what will happen when we show up. Who we will encourage, how we will impact others, and what forces may be put in action.

A big part of life is showing up and doing the best we can in the circumstances we find ourselves in. One of our contestant’s quote was, “This too shall pass.” This is true of our opportunities and our challenges. We must make the best of where we are so tomorrow is at least as good as today. If we are lucky we can make tomorrow better. Is failure or making things worse our biggest fear?

We regret what we don’t do more than what we do. The only way forward is forward. Are we ready for the next step? We can only change directions going forward, we can’t correct our course when we are standing still.

Sometimes a catastrophe is simply a course correction. James A. Owen

You can’t have a better tomorrow if you’re always thinking about yesterday. Unknown

Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer. Denis Waitley

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

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Momentous moments. Building our lives one moment at a time. The soundtrack of life.

Photo of pink roses by Belynda Wilson Thomas

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“Many of the most deeply spiritual moments of my life haven’t happened just in my mind or in my soul. They happened while holding my son in the middle of the night, or watching the water break along the shore, or around my table, watching the people I love feel nourished in all sorts of ways.” Shauna Niequiest

As we gear up to a momentous moment in ours and my daughter’s life. I recount the momentous moments in mine. They are fewer than the regular moments, they punctuate ordinary life.

In the garden of life we have our show stoppers but the background creates the scaffolding around which the show stoppers shine. There is no show stopping without the background.

Building a good life is all about the back ground and the scaffolding, the every day. The show stopper is the ice cream sundae, or cheesecake in our diet. A great treat but not something to live on.

We live only for the high points at our peril. Sarah Ban Breathnach in her book Romancing The Ordinary tells us women have not five sences but seven. As well as sight, sound, scent, taste, touch she feels we have “knowing” women’s intuition and “wonder” our sense of rapture and reverence. We are encouraged to find what moves us to tears, what feeds our soul, what makes our blood rush, our heart skip a beat and our soul sigh. We are encouraged to look at the unwrapped gifts that come everyday.

“Life is not made up of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years, but of moments. You must experience each one before you can appreciate it.” Sarah Ban Breathnach

We experience the glimpse of a sunrise we see because we are up early because of a child, the rush to get something done, or writing a blog. The morning hours before the house stirs is one of my favorite times. Sipping black coffee as I write. I used to love it with cream, “that’s another story.”

My dog Lulu woofs a low woof, what does she hear, what interrupts her sleep on the stair? I wonder as I sit here, after this wedding is over, what will we remember and cherish about this time. The planning, bonding over bouquets and boutonnieres, shopping for “the dress,” the hair and makeup tryouts?

There was a movie I watched about a man who only lived the high points, the rest of life zipped past as if on fast forward. Of course he missed his child growing up, his marriage because these are the everyday moments that build a life. We can’t remember them as easily as the highlights. The everyday builds to the big moments. You can’t just have the highlights, no one can. I don’t think we live life unless we go through the deep, the shallow, the highs, the lows, the important and unimportant.

My husband played his pick for the father daughter dance last night. I cried, I can’t remember the name of the song, only that it is a perfect choice. It seems to me there is a sound track that runs through life. I remember the songs Dad and mom used to sing as the sound track of my youth. The songs we danced to in the disco days are the sound track of my early adulthood.

Our last trip to Jamaica there was a sound track. There will be a soundtrack for this trip as well. Songs take us back to where we were, how we felt, and what we were going through. As corny as it sounds “A DJ Saved My Life” might be true.

Each person’s soundtrack will be as individual as themselves. Where our soundtracks intersect we find a bond. I’ve heard when they play the music seniors grew up with they act younger. I believe it, songs take us back to places we’ve been and people we were with.

Life is rich with sights and sounds, tastes, touch and scents. A woman from my Horticultural Society says she can’t smell Hyacinths without thinking about funerals. Smelling the air before rain I think about my mom who used to say a robin told her “there’ll be rain, there’ll be rain.” When I walk on crunchy snow, I think about walks with my dad to check on the cows before going to bed. The crisp winter air, the moon in the sky, a cow with a brand new calf beside her.

When I smell the smell of our garage in the heat of summer, it sometimes reminds me of kittens, because we found our momma cat one day with brand new kittens on a bed of nails in the garage.

Memories bring us back to special moments in the tapestry of our life. Special moments are both big and small; the small ones are often the most poignant. They are the ones that bring tears to my eyes.

“Sometimes it’s the same moments that take your breath away that breathe purpose and love back into your life.”  Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You

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