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Steady Chevy I hope you will read this because you may not be aware of it but you played apart of where I am living today. I hope you remember when you posted a while back about looking out your window and describing what you saw. It was so beautiful and peaceful sounding to me. I wanted to experience that beauty and peace. I longed to have that ever since Dday. Well I finally took the leap of faith and moved to the country. Six miles away from the nearest sign of civilization. I am now surrounded by large majestic cottonwood trees, rolling hills, lilac bushes and cattle. Yes, Steady Chevy, that's right cattle! No more hazy large city skies. No more traffic, sirens or stalking from affair women of WH's. Moved out of state and moved into the country. There is even a creek about 200 yards from our back door that have fish in it. Living in my previous home was taking a toll on me. Living with the ghost of WH's affairs he brought into and slept with in my home I just couldn't live with anymore. I tried my best but failed. I just kept getting pulled down more and more by the home my heart had dedicated to God. It was once a beautiful home that I felt God had provided for me. My WH had desecrated that home with his sex addictions. His AP's desecrated that home even further by stalking my home on more than one occasion after WH dumped them. WH's FOO continued to behave badly too. It was all just too much. I needed peace so much. I kept praying for peace in my life. It was becoming difficult to see God in the midst of it all. But finally my prayers were answered and I now have peace. I got it when I moved here. I can see the beauty of God's creations once again and I pray I will continue to see them until I am called to my heavenly home with the Lord. FYI, WH just told me he just saw 3 deer at the creek behind our house. OMG I am filled with delight!

[This message edited by hihn at 5:56 PM, February 13th (Tuesday)]

Hi People,

For the next several Sundays I'm going be offering up prayers for some of my friends over in the Wayward board. Hope you don't mind.

Holy One,

I pray for BadMom9. Watch over her. Take care of her. She's hurting. Her family is hurting. She's betrayed Swatter in the worst way. She needs your care to help see herself. Touch her. Help her see light. She's been closed. Help her see new patterns and ways to live. Open her up to new ways of communicating.

I pray for my fellow wayward Root. Help her in her depression. Help lift her fog. Help her find ways to bring spark back into her life and show her light.

I pray for my fellow wayward Pink. My heart is breaking for her Lord. Help her. Help her H. She is broken and on her knees. Now is the time. She needs you now.

I thank you lord for bringing Evolving Soul to us Waywards. Thank you for her spark. Her nurturing. Her care. Her wisdom. Her time. She is such a gift.

I am so thankful lord for hikingout Thank you for helping her share her story. She is working so hard. Thank you for her courage. I admit her story was frighteningly close to mine but from that I can learn.

I thank you for that pain in the ass Zugzwang ha ha. He's good for me.

[This message edited by Lucky77 at 6:28 AM, March 5th (Monday)]

Apparently I haven't looked at support through prayer for a while. I missed your post, hihn. I'm so glad you found peace and tranquility. Your place sounds beautiful. There's so much beauty in God's world. And the quiet. Isn't that something.

It's been cold here and we've had lots of snow. I watch the cows come up out of the draw for water. Today they are bucking and jumping from good health and just feeling good in the sun. Two bulls I bought in February were delivered today. They look awesome. Now I have to wait a whole year to see their first calves.

For me this is God's paradise. Some people don't like the country. Their paradise looks different. It sounds like you've found your paradise, hihn.

I've got half a dozen white tail deer and a solitary moose most mornings eating my best hay.

I pray your healing continues and you experience peace like you've never felt before. God is good.

[This message edited by steadychevy at 6:50 AM, March 7th (Wednesday)]

Steadychevy,

I said a prayer for you that those two bulls end up being your best producers ever in God's paradise. Also that you are provided with ample best hay so those deer and the lone moose will continue to give you enjoyment watching them eat with their discriminatory taste for your best hay.

Thanks for the prayers, hihn. I have high hopes for these two bulls but I do every year when I buy new bulls. One of this years bulls is sired by a bull from Argentina that was brought to the US as an embryo. The other one was sired by a bull born in Montana and whose sire is from New Zealand. The sire died a couple years ago just before heading to the AI stud to have more semen collected so not many more offspring from him. My daughter and son-in-law also bought two bulls at the sale and my nephew bought one. Sorry to go on and on about this but I get enthusiastic about genetics.

Moose just eat a hole into a bale and waste very little. Deer nibble around the edges. Had 6 bucks in the hay yard a couple of years ago. This year it's does and last years fawns. Every year there's a fawn born in the hay yard in June. Tall grass and safe. I've never seen twins there. These are God's creatures and I enjoy them a lot. Wish the moose didn't wreak so many fences, though. Elk ruin way more hay than they eat. Three or four years ago 13 elk ruined about $4000.00 worth. They all like the best hay.

Sorry. I get carried away.

Pray you continue finding peace and tranquility. With the beauty of God's earthly kingdom can you imagine what Eden (heaven) will be like.

Steadychevy,

I can completely relate to your enthusiasm though. Those are some amazing genetics! The moose, deer, and elk, well I grew up in a small town that was one of the entrances to Yellowstone Park. So I know the wildlife can reek havoc with the local rancher/farmers and even towns people. But I was blessed to have grown up with it. It was one of God's paradises. Jesus said in my Father's house are many mansions (John 14:2). I would want a mansion that wasn't a mansion. More like a country farm house. LOL

West Yellowstone? I've camped there. Went into Yellowstone by going over the Beartooth Pass south of Red Lodge, Montana.

Steadychevy, no It was Gardiner, Mt.. The north entrance, the one with the arch entrance. But the Bear tooth pass I have traveled many times. It's a superbly breath taking view of God's work.

wanted to share....

Our Unfinished Symphony

“Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our life. It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is the fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness. But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to that day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us.” (Henri Nouwen)

In this life there is no such a thing as a clear-cut, pure joy! I want to reiterate those words, coined by Henri Nouwen, in the light of some criticisms that I received to a recent column which quoted Anita Brookner saying that, in marriage, the first duty of each partner is to “console the other for the fact that we cannot not disappoint each other.”

That line provoked a number of critical reactions, ranging from: “Not true!”, “Unduly pessimistic!”, “He should stick to sacred rather than secular sources!” to “I am worried that this can give the wrong signal to young people who are getting married, suggesting that marriage will disappoint them!”

I appreciate the criticism, especially the last point, but feel that the real message was missed. In essence, I wasn’t commenting on marriage, but on life in general, where, sadly, our fantasy of finding some “messiah” to take away all of our loneliness tends to be precisely what makes us too restless to remain happily inside of our commitments, including marriage.

I’m not so worried about sending a bad signal to a young couple contemplating marriage if I tell them that inside of marriage they will not find a panacea for their loneliness. I am more worried that I would be sending them the wrong message if, like our romantic novels and movies, I should give them the impression that the final answer to every loneliness lies in simply finding the right mate. Over-expectation and subsequent disillusionment kills a lot of marriages. If I marry someone because I nurse the fantasy that this other person is the final solution to my loneliness, I am doomed not just to be disappointed but also to place every kind of unrealistic and unjust expectations on my partner. Only God can fully measure up.

St. Augustine began his autobiography with the now-famous line: “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you!” Thomas Aquinas taught that “every choice is a renunciation” and that is why commitment, particularly a life-long commitment in marriage, is so difficult. Karl Rahner famously stated: “In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable, we finally learn that here in this life all symphonies must remain unfinished.” And those of us who are old enough remember the haunting line in the old Salve Regina prayer: “To thee to we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.”

What each of these captures, in essence, is precisely what Nouwen states, that in this life there is not such a thing as clear-cut pure joy and that we will live more peacefully and happily if we can accept that and not put false pressure on life, on our loves ones, and on God, to give us the full symphony right now.

Every day of their lives, my parents prayed words to the effect that, this side of eternity, they were “mourning and weeping in a valley of tears”. It didn’t make them sad, morbid, or stoic. The opposite: It gave them the tools that they needed to accept life’s real limits and the real limits and imperfections within community, church, family, and marriage. They were happier for knowing and accepting that.

My worry is that today we aren’t equipping our own children in the same way. Instead, too often, we are helping them nurse the false expectation that, if they do it right, they can have it all already in this life. All that is needed is to have the right body, the right career, the right city, the right neighborhood, the right friends, the right vacations, and the right soul mate and they can have the full symphony here and now.

It’s not to be had, and Anita Brookner’s maxim that in marriage we “cannot not disappoint each other” simply states, in secular language, that no one, no matter how good, can be God for somebody else.

Hopeful77 Thank you for the "share". That resonated in me on so many different levels. Good share very insightful.

Hopeful77, thank you.

Hopeful77, thank you.

Good Morning All,

Here is another from Fr. Ron Rohlheiser

Love Is Coming Home

The human heart is complex. Many of us have learned this through much pain. It can give us the assurance that what we are experiencing is truly love and then, itself, abandon the very feeling that it led us to believe was love. Most of us, I suspect, have had the experience of making a mistake in love – of mistaking infatuation for love, or having love go sour, or of having one love wilt before another infatuation.

Too late, we realize that the feeling we felt would last forever simply changed or disappeared and we were left with a sense of bitterness, disillusionment, and betrayal. Given that, and given the human tragedies we call divorce, broken friendship, and love gone sour, it is not surprising that there is a certain pain surrounding the question: How do I know what real love is? How do I know whether my heart is playing tricks on me? How do I know whether this person will make a good marriage partner, or friend, for me? How do I know whether I am just infatuated, or naive, or even using someone?

There is no simple way to answer those questions since love is always partly mystery, partly blind, and partly inexplicable. However, it is not totally blind and our responsibility towards others and ourselves requires that we do try to discern real love from that which is more ephemeral. What is real love? Real love is what we experience when we have the sense that we are coming home. Let me try to explain:

Robert Frost once commented that home is a place where they have to take you, it’s not a place you have to earn or deserve. Henri Nouwen, speaking about his experience of living with handicapped adults in L’Arche, recently remarked: “What is so unique about living in L’Arche is that here I am loved by people who are in no way impressed with me.”

What is contained in these comments can be very helpful in answering the question: How do I know what real love is? Real love is always a coming home, it’s not a place we deserve or earn, it’s coming to a place where you sense others will love you without necessarily being impressed with you. Thus, real love is always experienced as a security, a safe place, home, a safe harbor which we sail into. It’s a place of rest. For this reason, it is experienced as a place from which you don’t want to, or need to, go home.

Conversely, infatuation and other kinds of bonding that can feel like real love, are places of insecurity, of deep restlessness, places which “don’t have to take us,” places which we have to earn, places where we have to perform and impress, and places from which, ultimately, we go home. It is interesting how, in love and friendship, we can be infatuated and obsessively drawn to someone who is very different from ourselves – into whose heart we can never sail as into a safe harbor. It can be exciting and titillating being with that person. Perhaps, as in cases of infatuation, we might even need obsessively to be with that person, like a drug addict needs a fix. But, in the end, in spite of the excitement and obsession, after we have had our fix, we need to, and want to, go home. That person’s heart can never, ultimately, be home for us.

Real love and real friendship are home – you don’t go home from them! Whenever we experience love, however powerful, from which we need to go home, that love can be valuable and good in our lives, but it can never be a love upon which we can build a marriage or a truly intimate friendship. Hence the criterion to use when choosing someone for marriage, or even just for intimate friendship, is the sense of coming home. Love is home. Ultimately, if we cannot really be of one heart and mind with someone, however interesting and exciting that person might be, then that other will become just part of our world and we will grow apart and go our separate ways, that is, to our separate homes.

Given the complexities of the human heart, we can be obsessed with someone, painfully and hopelessly even, and yet, in that relationship, not be at our right place in the universe. In the end, our completeness, real love, home, lies elsewhere. But the heart needs to be scrutinized carefully before it will tell us that. It has, as Pascal once said, its own reasons.

Yet, at a certain level, it rings true and will tell us where our true rest lies, namely, at that place where we don’t have to impress or perform, or earn or win, where we feel safe and secure, and where we are at home.

peace everyone

Bump

Weird, now I can post.

I am checking it out as well.

It's here, so I want to use it.

I'm here lifting up 2 friends.

CaptainRogers who is truly struggling with his WW.

I also want to lift up Ohforanewme, who is struggling with cancer.

I consider both of these people my friends as do many of you.

God, I pray that this is an opportunity for you to shine in their lives and truly take care of them, as only you can.

Amen.

Thanks for getting this started back up Wool94 . I would also like to lift up Minnesota for his cancer battle as well.

Dear Lord...please give these men the strength and ability to overcome this obstacle in their life...and bring them to a place of peace.

Also...please watch over all of the people suffering now Dear Lord on this date...and thank You for the comfort You give to all of us every day.

Amen