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Happy Canada Day!

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant. Robert Louis Stevenson

Today dawns overcast with raindrops glistening on the leaves. I’ve always loved Canada Day. Being Canadian is being part of something, a great experiment, an idea, and a promise.

We cannot see the world through someone else’s eyes. We see through our eyes and everything that has happened in our life colors that vision. I grew up in Saskatchewan with big beautiful skies, glorious sunsets, and wide-open spaces. I rode my horse with the wind in my hair and a song in my heart. It was an idyllic childhood in a large loving family on a farm, in a valley, near a small town. Why was I in such a hurry to leave? I don’t have an answer to that question even though I have been asking it for over forty years. I was compelled to leave that warm wonderful incubator like a freshly hatched chick who didn’t know what adventures or misadventures she might meet, but like the fool in the tarot deck went off to seek adventure.

My quest for adventure didn’t take me far. I never become the world traveler, never back-packed across Europe, or saw the seven wonders. My husband and I have built a wonderful, happy, loving family. We have a business that keeps body and soul together but never affords the rich life we dreamed of when we started. Maybe striving toward a goal is better than reaching it too quickly, or is that what those who don’t reach their goals say? On the farm, my parents always said, “This is next year country.”

The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow.  Sow an act, and reap a habit: Sow a habit, and you reap a character: Sow a character, and you reap a destiny. James Allen

Living in next year country is a great way to live. No matter how good this year is, or how bad, we must prepare to make next year as good or better. We need to get our seeds ready for planting for next year’s crop even if this is the best crop we’ve ever harvested. On a farm there is no resting on one’s laurels and nor is there in the rest of life. We always need a new goal when an old goal is reached.

If we want to pick a watermelon on a hot day we better have thought about that when we were planting our garden. Of course, we are so blessed in most parts of Canada we can go to the supermarket and buy whatever we want without planting anything at all. Even if we don’t literally eat what we sow the law of sowing and reaping is evident in our lives. We do not get to ignore the law of sowing and reaping because we live in the city and not on a farm. Even the thoughts we think are subject to the law of sowing and reaping. Our mind is a garden our thoughts are the seeds, we can plant flowers or we can plant weeds is a cute little saying but if we take it to heart it may help us monitor the flowers and weeds of our thoughts. 

This Canada Day it seems we are on the brink of getting back to normalcy. That means different things to different sectors, different people, and different businesses.

I’ve sat on a grassy knoll and watched fireworks with my husband, family, and friends beside me. People from everywhere part of the experience of watching fireworks go off celebrating Canada Day. If we were lucky and the line wasn’t too long we would get ice cream. A band would play before the fireworks and we would feel oneness with those around us, experiencing what we were experiencing and watching what we were watching.

This year the local fireworks celebration doesn’t look like it is happening. It was always a crowded event and social distancing is still the order of the day.

Wherever you are, have a wonderful day. If Canada is your home, was your home, or is a home you dream of, it is partly a dream we hold in our hearts for all of us. Canada is a Camelot that we are building, a story we are telling ourselves and a reality we are living. We are not all telling ourselves the same story, we are not all living the same reality, but we are all under the same sky with the same sun, stars, and the same moon and the hope that tomorrow will be better than today or at least not worse.

One of the great joys in life is picking the flowers we’ve planted. When we harvest bitter fruit we need to go forward better.

Happy Canada Day!

You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut. Stephen R. Covey

Words are seeds they do more than blow around they land in our hearts and not the ground. Be careful what you plant and careful what you say. You might have to eat what you planted one day. Unknown

Good or bad you will always reap what you sow – you will always harvest the consequences of your choices. Randy Alcorn

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.

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

Thank you to everyone that reads my book. A special thank you to those who leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you click on the picture and purchase an item through the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the affiliate program.

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Posted on by BWThomas

Reaping and sowing. We reap what we sow. We plant the seeds and watch them grow.

We reap what we sow. We plant the seeds and watch them grow. Reaping and sowing.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Life is like a garden, you reap what you sow. Paulo Coelho

One of the things my oldest sister has always said is, “If we put all our problems on the line with everyone else’s we’d take our own problems back.” It might be the same with success.

If we knew the choices someone else had to make to become the success they are would we do what they did? I was listening to one of my favorite speakers Jim Rohn yesterday. He was talking about what he learned about building a Network Marketing Business part-time.

He learned he could work at his day job to pay the bills and part-time he could work at becoming wealthy. He learned there is a ratio of success. If he could get ten people out to meetings one would join his organization. When he got better two would join his organization, when he got really good three would join his organization. Everywhere we look we have the law of averages and we don’t have to hit every ball to have a good batting average. We have to take the chance. Wayne Gretzky said he missed every shot he didn’t take.

Life isn’t different for us even if we think it is. Jim Rohn talks about the law of sowing and reaping. We all know we can’t reap what we don’t sow. Some of us would like to reap what someone else sowed. That doesn’t work very well. We can’t reap happiness if we sow anger, disrespect, and discord in our marriage.

He tells us that if we are a sower with good seed and a diligent sower some of that seed will be eaten by the birds. Should we run after the birds and leave our seed, and our sowing. NOOoooo! We should keep on sowing. The birds will get some of it but they won’t get it all. Some of our seeds will fall on rocky ground. It will sprout but the first hot day will kill our little seedling. Our seeds will bear different amounts but we shouldn’t worry about that. We need to let our seeds mature into what they are going to be.

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. Robert Louis Stevenson

This is a metaphor for our lives. As long as we live we need to be sowing and reaping. We will have good years and bad. Life is always opportunity mixed with difficulty. Sometimes it’s more difficulty and sometimes it’s more opportunity. For things to change we have to change. He tells us not to wish life was easier but to wish we were better. We need more skills to deal with the problems in our lives, and we need more wisdom to deal with the challenges. This applies to all areas of our lives, our relationships, opportunities, and finances.

I was one of the seeds that fell on rocky ground in Network Marketing. I’ve always liked the Rah, Rah of it but I’ve never stuck with any of them. I didn’t build my part-time business until now.

Writing is now my part-time business. When I fill out my income tax this year I will have “Royalties” to add as income. I have one book published, I am writing another, and after that another, and another. We never know where life will take us. We don’t know what seeds planted today will bear fruit in the future.

When we find something we love to do it isn’t only about the money. Sometimes it seems we are made to feel ashamed if we want more money. Don’t we all want more money if we are honest with ourselves? Isn’t prospering one of the blessings we hope to get in life?

Getting more isn’t the problem, throwing someone under the bus to get more, is. Taking what someone else has is the problem. When we build a business often we provide something that helps someone else and a lot of little businesses can create a prosperous town or city. Prosperous farms feed the people in prosperous towns and cities. Prosperous towns and cities create a prosperous country. Prosperous countries create a prosperous world. Artists, athletes, writers, and entertainers, who don’t provide the necessities of life only do well when the society is prosperous enough to support them.

We live in a prosperous society but not everyone is prospering. Is there a way to build our society so everyone prospers? Is there a way to make our relationships better? How is the law of sowing and reaping working in our lives?

The natural principle of sowing and reaping is always at work. Whatever you plant, whether physical, spiritual, mental, financial, relational, or emotional, will grow and someday return to you in a multiplied fashion. It can be incredibly good or terribly bad, depending on your seed. Paul J. Meyer

Every day you make a choice either to sow some of your seed or to eat it. When you exercise faith and sow, you release God’s law of prosperity. When you give in to your fear and eat your seed, or hide it, you release God’s law of poverty. John Avanzini

They who sow courtesy reap friendship, and they who plant kindness gather love. Saint Basil

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.

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

Thank you to everyone that reads my novel Secrets and Silence and a special thank you to those that leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you click on the picture below and purchase an item through the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

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Posted on by BWThomas

2020 a year in hindsight. Triumphs and struggles. Looking forward with great expectations.

Looking forward with great expectations. 2020 a year in hindsight. Triumphs and struggles.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny. James Allen

Wow! As we ring in the New Year how will we feel about this year just past? It has been a mixed bag for me. At the end of November, I received my first royalties from my book “Secrets and Silence”. Now I have that to look forward to at the end of every month. I moved some mutual funds into dividend stock and it has been fun watching the dividends come in. I don’t want to get like John D. Rockefeller who said, “Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It’s to see my dividends coming in.” There are so many things that make life worthwhile. I can’t wait until my husband and I can go out for coffee again. We still go out, but sitting in the truck drinking it, just isn’t the same. We will laugh about this time in our lives for years to come.

Yesterday a friend and I went for a walk along a pretty street with pretty stores we couldn’t enter. We still had fun, we laughed and talked, bought peppermint tea, and made plans for our next walk.

If we think we should wait until we have a big enough amount to start saving, investing, or tithing we may never start. Small amounts grow into big amounts. Nothing grows if we don’t start. I hope to have a herd of pigs “passive income generators” over time as I add more novels to my catalogue.

I laugh to myself as I write, “Catalogue” we think things can’t happen but they can. We can plant seeds that grow. It’s all about reaping and sowing but we have to sow before we can hope to reap.

Many of us will look back over 2020 as a year that changed our lives. Many of the changes that took place in mine weren’t started in 2020. Just like any harvest, there was a time of more importance. Harvest time is the evidence of things unseen. Things we put into motion that create a harvest.

Life is an echo. What you sent out comes back. What you sow, you reap. What you give, you get. What you see in others, exists in you. Zig Zigler

One of the most exciting times of the year is spring, watching new life emerging. When we plant seeds we may look every day for signs of growth. Finally, we see a green shoot. We may wonder what people are looking at if they are looking at the bare ground, but we don’t know if they’ve planted something. If we haven’t planted any seeds we don’t look at our bare ground the same way as someone that is waiting to see growth.

We need to build our lives in such a way that we are looking for growth. My daughter is being watched carefully now she has been married for two years. If she doesn’t feel well she gets a phone call. “Are you feeling better?” But, of course, that is not all that is being asked. People are waiting expectantly for news.

If we think of spring we can get through winter. One of the joys of winter on the farm was new calves were born. I remember walking with Dad on bright moonlit nights to check on the cows. There are many little joys in life we may overlook because we are waiting to be hit over the head by bigger things. A healthy calf suckling at their mother was a joy to behold. A litter of new pigs, kittens, or puppies was life-affirming. Birth brings joy but also sometimes heartbreak.

As we enter 2021 are we getting ready to plant new seeds? We can’t expect a harvest without preparing and planting. We can spend winter thinking about what to plant. Paging through seed catalogues is a great pastime. What we plant in our life will grow and we need to choose what that will be. Even our thoughts are seeds and perhaps the most important ones.

As we go into 2021 the choices we make will impact our lives. What we plant will be what we harvest. We may not think we are reaping what we are sowing but what else could we be reaping?

Life is a garden our thoughts are the seeds, we can grow flowers or we can grow weeds. Unknown

In your deeds and in your works, don’t expect to start reaping just as you start sowing. Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Words are seeds they do more than blow around they land in our hearts and not the ground. Be careful what you plant and careful what you say. You might have to eat what you planted one day.  Unknown

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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Sowing and Reaping [Annotated, Updated]: Whatever a man sows that shall he also reap. – Galatians 6:7 by [Dwight Lyman Moody]

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Secrets and Silence: What if your biggest secret became public? by [Belynda Wilson Thomas]

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Sowing and reaping. Is there no getting without giving? Are we reaping what we sow?

Is there no getting without giving? Are we reaping what we sow? Sowing and reaping?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. Robert Louis Stevenson

Yesterday morning we woke up to no electricity. No coffee, no writing, but by 8:00 am it was back on. How blessed we are when power outages last for such a short time. We were having a new furnace and hot water tank installed yesterday and if there was no power there would be no installation. Our furnace hadn’t quit completely but it had not come on a few times until my husband went downstairs and shut it off and turned it back on. Then it would start running a couple of hours after that. We are lucky we didn’t spend a few days in the cold and dark.

We don’t see everything behind the scenes that make our life work so seamlessly. Everybody finding a need and filling it makes life work wonderfully. If we want to send a package someone is willing to deliver it. If we want to eat out someone is willing to cook it and someone is willing to deliver it to us. If we want to go somewhere we can get someone to pick us up and take us there.

Ingenuity is everywhere. Wouldn’t life be better if? Someone came up with an idea and made it happen. If we want to do well in life we have to find a way to make life better for someone. If we impact enough people’s life it can make a huge difference in our own.

Everything in our life is a series of everyone doing their part to make it all work. Shopping local is a term being batted about. The more we keep our money moving within our communities the better our communities are.

With Christmas coming – the biggest shopping time of the year, how can we help our local communities? This is a big question that is coming to the forefront in many areas as non-essential businesses are shut down to in-store traffic. Is there a way to shop local without in-store shopping?

Talk unbelief, and you will have unbelief, but talk faith, and you will have faith. According to the seed sown will be the harvest. Ellen G. White

I don’t know who I’m buying for in our Secret Santa gift-giving. This is our third year of doing Secret Santa. As families grow cutting the number of gifts to buy and still being able to have a fun Christmas without breaking the bank is the goal. Where to buy that gift may be a challenge and it’s time to put my thinking cap on. I hope I get my name soon.

The small gift I am going to buy will not make a difference to anyone’s bottom line, but if enough of us make an effort to support small retailers this Christmas we can help them through these tough times.

Even buying on Amazon is helping many small businesses. We don’t think of Amazon as helping small businesses but many of the products are put there by individuals who have created a virtual store on Amazon with their own creations or products they’ve found to sell.

I’ve received my first royalties for my book Secrets and Silence. My own little passive income generator, hopefully, sales will increase and continue over the years as I add more books. We don’t know where something will go when we start, but it won’t become anything if we don’t start. We need to plant a seed and watch it grow. If we eat all our seeds we can’t plant them and if we plant sparingly we will reap sparingly.

What are the seeds in our life? What are we doing with them? Are we expecting a harvest without planting the seeds? Are we waiting for our ship to come in that we never sent out?

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later. Og Mandino

You must give to get. You must sow the seed, before you can reap the harvest. Scott Reed

I inherited that calm from my father, who was a farmer. You sow, you wait for good or bad weather, you harvest, but working is something you always need to do. Miguel Indurain

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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Sowing and Reaping by [Booker T. Washington]

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Listening so others talk, talk so others will listen.

Photo of Cherry Tree by Belynda Wilson Thomas

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I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening. Larry King

We can only talk if someone else is willing to listen. We can only listen if someone else is willing to talk. How can we become a great listener, encouraging others to talk, and the great conversationalist enthralling our listener?

Is there anything we hate more than hearing our idea put forward by someone else and getting praise for such a great idea? What was it that made our idea fall on deaf ears when we said it, and everyone’s ears prick right up when it came out of someone else’s mouth?

It might have to do with the way it was presented or the credibility of the person presenting it. The way they spoke with authority, expecting to be heard, expecting to be respected, expected to be the one with a good idea.

We hardly notice our speech patterns. We need to watch the clichés and phrases we use. Also keep in mind how many umms, ahs, likes, basically, frankly, honestly, extremely or really slip into our sentences. Do we speak like we are apologizing for taking up space?

We need to know who we are speaking to. Our style of speech needs to be adjusted depending on who we are addressing. We don’t speak the same way to our kids as our spouse, our friends, and the boss.

What is the main point we want to get across? Many of us are not as quick as we’d like to be thinking on the fly. Taking the time to think about what we want to get across can help us say what we mean to say.

We need to get to the point. Often we try to over explain and we lose our audience. Sometimes we make the mistake of using big words when simple ones will do. We need to get to the point and be as clear and concise as possible.

If we want to get serious about this we can record our self and listen to our speech patterns. This is an exercise that makes most of us cringe. It is useful especially if we are going to do any public speaking, we want to see how we come across in an interview, or see how we use eye contact.

When we are the listener we need to fully listen, giving them our full attention. We can acknowledge we’ve heard with “oh…mmm… I see.” Instead of asking questions or giving advice we should just listen. It can be hard to finish our story when we are questioned, blamed, or advised. Encouraging sounds and a caring demeanor are invitations for people including children to explore their thoughts and feelings.

Encouragement to others is something everyone can give. Somebody needs what you have to give. It may not be your money; it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. Who knows? Joel Osteen

It can be helpful especially when listening to children to give a name to what they are feeling. That sounds frustrating, scary, unfair, etc.

What we are hearing people and children say may be things they can’t have right now. It might be small things or big things. The harder we explain why we can’t have fairness and justice in the world the more they protest. Sometimes we just need to understand how much they want something, and being understood makes not having it easier to bear.

When we want to impart information to people so they will change, blaming and accusations are not helpful. What is also not helpful is name calling, threats, commands, lecturing and moralizing, warnings, comparisons, sarcasm, or dire prophecies.

It will help if we describe what we see as the problem, without making it a criticism about them. “The snow being tracked into the house is not good for the hardwood floor,” is more effective than, “you are ruining the floor.”

When we express our feelings without attacking character and we state what our expectations are we are giving them the information they can work with. We can show them how to make amends, and how to make a choice between two or more acceptable choices. Making a choice is not the same as being told what to do.

We teach others how to treat us. Others teach us how to treat them. When we treat each other with respect we get respect. If we criticize others we will get criticism and judgment back. If we are mean and petty and can’t overlook little things, they will be nitpicky too.

The patterns of communication we grew up with travel with us through life. We can change them if they aren’t working for us, but first, we have to recognize what they are. What works well with one person may not work well with everyone. We are all different. If we are willing to adjust to different personalities in our families, workplace and the greater community we can talk so others will listen and listen so others will talk. We can seek to understand and seek to be understood.

Are there people in our life we can seek to understand better? Can we listen to their point of view without telling them why that point of view is wrong?

When people express opinions that differ from yours, take it as a chance to grow. Seek to understand over being understood. Be curious, not defensive. The only way to disarm another human being is by listening. Glennon Doyle Melton

If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating by [Alda, Alan]
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Healing your life. Making the changes you need to make.

Photo of Tomatoes by Belynda Wilson Thomas "We Reap What We Sow"

 

“The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.” – Muhammad Ali

I bought a book years ago You Can Heal Your Life by Louise L. Hay. I picked it out of my book shelf this morning. I’m having a nagging problem with sinus, gums and swollen glands.

In Louise L. Hay’s book she tells us gum problems are an inability to back up decisions. We are wishy washy about life. The affirmation to counteract this is “I am a decisive person. I follow through and support myself with love.

Glands represent holding stations. Self starting activity. The affirmation is “I am the creative power in my world. Glandular problems mean poor distribution of get up and go ideas. The affirmation is “I have all the divine ideas and activity. I move forward now.

The mouth represents the taking in of new ideas and nourishment. The affirmation is “I nourish myself with love. Mouth problems represent set opinions, and a closed mind. It is the incapacity to take in new ideas. The affirmation is “I welcome new ideas and new concepts and prepare them for digestion and assimilation.

Sinus problems represent irritation to one person, someone close. The affirmation is “I declare peace and harmony indwell me and surround me at all times. All is well.

Some people believe this is silly. I feel it may be right, it may not be but if you look at the diseases some people get and the troubles they’ve had in their life there does seem to be a correlation. What is the downside of working on our inner self? What is the downside of forgiving others who have wronged us and give up the burden we’ve been carrying, sometimes for years, sometimes a whole lifetime?

Is there a downside to loving and approving of yourself more? Trying to figure out what would bring more joy into your life. Figuring out what part of our life is out of balance?

It makes sense to me we are what we eat, and what we think, do and feel. The good side to believing you can change things is it gives us something to do. We are not passengers in our life but the driver. I read a book written by a lady my mom knew. She said when her husband died she was in the supermarket, she had no idea what she wanted to eat because he wasn’t there to tell her. It was an honest read. She wrote about being a war bride. The title is To Follow a Cowboy the author’s name I forget.

Writers that write books, blogs and poems worth reading have to be honest. Writing is not self aggrandizement about the best of our self. It is digging deep and writing about situations that resonate with others and giving them an ahha moment. The books I love are the ones where I feel, I’ve been there, I’ve thought that. Fiction makes us think things we wouldn’t otherwise think, and see things we wouldn’t otherwise see. I hope my blog will also work like that.

Looking at the set of symptoms I’ve outlined above I think she might be onto something. I am set in my opinions – perhaps a little too much. I might be guilty of irritation to one person. I’ve had a hard time putting my writing and art out into the world. The question I have is I’m doing it now, why would the problem show up now? There are people who believe that as we heal we go through healing crisis. Perhaps that is what this is now. It too shall pass, but I will look into her suggestions to see if I can speed it along.

I’ve always had a bit of a problem with affirmations. Like I was looking in the mirror and telling a lie. The problem with positive thinking is if it remains just thinking you aren’t going to get anywhere. In the book Afformations by John Assaraf he tells us to ask why. Why will our life get better? Why will our health get better? Then you can start putting the steps together. If I just thought about writing a blog all the positive thinking in the world wouldn’t have done anything.  Thoughts without action are just empty thoughts.

I need to take a look at Louise L. Hay’s list and figure out some actions to take. I feel more empowered than if I thought I just have to live with this. Too many of us say, “we’re just getting old.” Then why do some people get old without major health problems? I want to be one of them, my mom is.

It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts. ~K.T. Jong