New Beginnings

This is the second week of advent 2024. This year has seen a sea of change for me both professionally and personally. And I ask new questions now, and some of the answers have taken time and others have not been answered. Patience is easier when you finally have seen God work things out enough times that you have faith that God works things out to the next steps and in the end. I actually find joy in asking questions now. It is as if I am discovering myself for the first time.  

Professionally,  Acting was always a bit of a reluctant call. Love the art but am afraid of the unknown and of my own judgement. Acting is such a personal art and it is collaborative. That collaboration with people who were unfamiliar was a challenge for me. Before I would take almost any job in the field and now after hitting a milestone professionally and moving away from  LA, I can no longer do that. I am more discerning and honest with myself. What lies ahead depends on how I answer the questions I am asking myself and God. 

Personally both in friendship and romance--I reflect a lot more when I feel disrespected or in low priority.  Oftentimes, silence has the answers that words can not provide. The decisions take time but they do come. In new relationships--I take my time and discern and when I choose to respond--I have been gifted the grace to do so chartiably. Being honest with yourself is not easy. Eventually. operating on fear becomes a non productive habit. 

The fruit of all of this has mainly pleasant aspects now. The pleasant is peace, patience, joy and humility and the unpleasant is unexplained loneliness at times. The process to get here involved struggle, detachment, feeling stuck, fighting myself and anger. Growth is never easy but it is worth it. The miracle that comes is when the doors finally open and the past doors finally close. It is at once unexpected and a great relief.  Place holders are removed and you finally feel yourself moving forward. 

The one gift that I have been graced with is intuition and trusting that that comes when it comes. Listening to it is always the way forward.  As the Advent season progresses, I find my calendar full with good choices. FOMO only applies to the stock market. :-) But with every new struggle..I will find that answer. The struggle is a new opportunity for growth.  

This season of Advent is teaching me that some old traditions are good and some no longer feed the season. It teaches me that Jesus is not the same or stagnant even in celebrating his birth year in and year out.  He is always waiting and welcoming us to New Beginnings.

Merry Christmas

It has been a while since I have been inspired to write. 2023 was a very challenging year for me..filled with lots of unique experiences...different choices than I normally make and much painful growth. A lot of the time I closed my heart sometimes without intention and sometimes with. But that has led me to writing this day.I have never chosen to write about the birthday that changed the world  and doing it on  Christ's actual birthday.

A lot of peace permeates me now as I write this. There is a lot of  misinformation surrounding the celebration of December 25th as the actual day of Christ's birth. If you want to know more about that here is a link--https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/why-december-25

This holy day has become a holiday with the symbols of gifts, which the wise men were bearing, Christmas trees ( tree of life, evergreen tree symbolizing eternal life believing in Jesus) writing cards (which seems to be just a recent custom replacing letters) and Santa Claus ( Saint  Nicholas who had legendary habit of secret gift-giving gave rise to the traditional model of Santa Claus ("Saint Nick") through Sinterklaas.)

This day marks the day The word of God became flesh. This year for me had me pause more than other years to think and feel what that means. Too much emotion, anticipation and expectation flooded past Christmases with family, friends and significant others. This year those elements were certainly there but I was also more peaceful. This year three attempts to schop down a Christmas tree met with odd interruptions that prevented it from happening. A tradition I had for 20 plus years. From that flowed the decision to skip sending Chrstmas cards this year...something I had done since I was 25.  I chose to spend it in LA with new experiences and with new acquaintances. And even that came with signs making it easy for me to choose. 

Life has its challenges and crosses and I thank God for the days filled with grace. Hope is the antidote to most of our ills..for it brings joy. Hope in this life and hope in the afterlife and resurrection. All is possible and the hurdles we must jump to get there makes us not only stronger but more appreciative of the blessing.

These next twelve days I promise to open my heart again and bring love and joy to people and creatures that cross my path. I opened my heart to my cat Emma..almost gave her up. Bringing the medical records and hearing her reactions and fate as well as discussing what really is required to have her live a normal cat life. I guess a life on meds for her is not all bad when faced with the alternative.

If you are joyful and blessed this Christmas I am happy for you and give thanks. If you are somewhere in between or worse than that...My heart breaks for you and my hope is that you find the joy in what Jesus birthday really means and the blessings that will flow from there.

God coming into this world as one of us  means we can overcome as well albeit with falls along the way. Salvation history would not be continuing if we did not have a purpose in it. You have a purpose in it...in what seems immediate and apparent and what is not apparent.

Merry Christmas!

Forgiveness

 

Rarely is this voice heard or if heard respected. Forgiveness is a gift to yourself, to the injuring party and to the world. In this Easter Season there have been many moments I found joy, lightness and openness and many times I have felt loss, aloneness and pain. That is the process leading to forgiveness. Sometimes there are patterns that repeat itself in relationships and you have to stop the pattern. And sometimes stopping that pattern requires saying true things that change the other's perspective and the way they choose to move forward or not. When this pattern for you finally ends, you may feel relief.  

But a choice follows.

You can choose to blame yourself, the other person or God or life circumstances, your parents or all or part or a myriad of other options or you can just choose to forgive everyone you blamed.

There is a freedom in forgiving yourself, the other person and your false concept of God (or whomever else you blamed). It lifts the cloud and makes you light. It allows you to face the music and let others handle things their own way. It allows you to let go and move on. What follows is that you open to new experiences,  new people, and to God in a different way. You open to whatever comes or does not come your way. It frees you to see that sometimes you don't see and so you forgive that too,

Forgiveness takes many forms. The past is one..the present is another and the future requires another. Sometimes you will fail in the moment but the goal remains the same. Don't forget to forgive yourself too.

For me and God..I think I took the signs as an answer. Perhaps the answer was to open up and keep walking through problems over and over again because I kept seeing signs and progress. I have to believe the purpose is growth now. Many beautiful gifts come from a failed relationship. But I have to be honest and say..in hindsight I would have stopped walking through the problems a long long time ago. On the other hand, I learned to the very end something very valuable had I not walked through the problems until I could no more. In any case God uses every choice the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly for His grand purpose. And I am grateful I don't get to know or judge.

If it took this experience to learn the beauty, the power and the healing effect of forgiveness then it was well worth it.  It's a muscle I will have to use over and over for myself and others. I hope to give God the reins fully one day..it seems to work for a lot of people but that process for me now still requires  discernement, pondering and the free will choice to continue down this path of faith.

One day I will look back and say this major shift led to this wonderful new path and the timing was right and it never would have been if this other thing did not happen or end when it did or the way it did. 

Forgiveness is what drew me back to faith. The famous passage while Jesus was hanging on the cross, "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do."  That touched me in a way nothing else did when I came to know the purpose of life. Give that voice/whisper a chance.  Forgiveness is one of the more beautiful gifts God has taught us about and it works.

Where the Heart is

Funny to be publishing this on St.Patrick's day. But it is certainly a celebration of the heart for the Irish and those adopted Irish who celebrate His feast day.

This month has certainly been joyous for my heart. Sometimes we are led to a path out of challenge, or an intense desire or a logical next step. The beauty is that eventually if that path poses challenges against where your heart really is…where your heart is will eventually win.

Of course this applies to romance but that is not the focus of this blog. I will add a few lines about romance though as here to I learned a lot about while in LA. I learned tat where you heart really is is eventually revealed. You just have to give it time.

Thats why when it is not love but need, desire or attachment or any combination thereof it is always best to let it go. Where-ever your heart really is will win out anyway and it will be clear. You give yourself and the other person a gift, and you grow and move on to the possibility of real love happening. And if your heart is free and open it will happen.

So where is my heart? It's in the bay and with my home. I fought that as long as I could, wanting to give the acting in LA a real chance. I did for as long as I could. It's not easy turning your back on a door when it is just opening up but I just could not "live or love" there any longer. With time how LA fits into my life will become apparent.

The blessings that happened while I was in LA are so vast that I can't count them all. I met some very kind and gentle souls, I have an amazing agent in LA now, I participated in a bunch of short films and had a lead role for the first time. I put my reel together and made good contacts. I had amazing and heart breaking experiences there and I would not trade them.  My experiences in LA has caused a unique growth. However, for now I have gone where my heart is, and I feel much contentment and peace.

In our journey in this life God's will becomes apparent in the doors He opens and closes repeatedly. In that moment to moment journey we embrace the ups and the downs knowing that with time His will will become apparent and where the heart is.

The Challenges are a Blessing in Disguise

I read in someone's profile recently some wise words..behold the wonderment of life but know that there also challenges and that we can get thru them.

I dug deeper this week as it was one of my more challenging weeks with quite a few curve balls thrown my way.  In baseball, when you anticipate a curve ball then you can prepare but when you don't then you swing badly….but thats the beauty you reflect and you practice.:-)

And so I practiced self reflection, I had to to make sense of the pain. The event and circumstances is one thing but it's what is triggered in me that I looked at more deeply. What did I do well, how do I feel about what I did not do well? What was the unexpected result or blessing that came out of it? How can I be more gracious in my  actions/decisions when I make them and in my responses when I am caught by surprise and most importantly..how can I be gracious no matter what the result is?

It is easy to blame others..it is quiet another to embrace where they are at and where you at and what  you and they have done and then in dignity and with courage respond in kindness and decisively when it becomes clear how you want to respond. 

Reactions to an event that causes you harm are usually only necessary in an emergency or life threatening situation..but even then there is the grace of God giving you a choice on how to respond. And if you have time to think and to collect your emotions..take it.  Weigh it out. Their needs, your needs..what is fair..call on friends who give you wise input and then turn to the Lord if the still quiet voice has not spoken yet…decide and then act.

The result is many times not as bad as you initially think..you learn about the other person..you learn about yourself.  The result in the end probably led you to a desired outcome or to a more authentic place. The ones where you are in each others lives for a reason are blessed. The other's that are in each other's lives for a season are blessed and the one's designed to accompany you for the journey are blessed.

All are blessings and we have to be thankful..we each help or helped each other grow.

Our Lord and Savior is the model of how to handle challenges. The pain was real and the result seemed horrible. However, his human nature grew in love for us as his divine nature and calling lead him down a unique and loving path.  He received the greatest glory and worship in the end. And the result for us too is an undeserved and huge blessing…perhaps our biggest blessing of all. A self-sacrificial love that if we accept and walk in HIS path will lead us to a joy filled life, the greatest aid to face our challenges and an army here on earth and in heaven ready to assist you on this journey and get you safely to an even better place with an even greater promise in the end.:-)

As we start the month of February, I think of January and embrace the changes in me and my life and I give thanks to God and those who touched me this month in kind and not so kind ways.:-) 

I look forward to the Superbowl, to Lent, to the day of love and friendship and embrace this glorious journey where we are invited to grow…painful yes..but it is the most loving thing we can do for others and ourselves. Thank you Lord for gifting us with this life full of blessings and wonder, full of love and full of challenges…all for your glory and our sanctification.

Reflect and be grateful when challenges come for they are a blessing in disguise.

Sometimes We Need the Desert

I was struggling this month for a theme. Sometimes the events don't directly inspire a theme and then it just comes.

This month has many events I have written about in the past like Epiphany, MLK day and of course the Walk for Life in SF and DC.

But as decisions and transitions always do for me, I self reflect. At first I do what comes naturally for me as an extrovert, I embrace the people in my path and around me. It energizes me and invigorates me and I feel a zest and purpose. It is also my way of processing. Once I gain experience in a certain realm, I generally make decisions instinctually. My instincts are rarely wrong.

I think hope and positivity sometimes gets me into trouble. I always am creative at finding solutions and finding ways to grow but we all have our limits. Humbly, I have found my own. Does it mean I can never outgrow them? No. But it does mean I must respect them and honor them. Love indeed is powerful and can conquer all but I again think that in my zeal to want Love, I try to make it happen.

I try to find the ingredients and the timing and the head tries to make things work and here in is the rub. The head tries to make it work when in essence it is God that has either gifted Love or has not. Still blessings abound as we learn and grow.

Humbly, I now have fairly unbendable standards as I patiently wait for God to guide and gift. Yes fun times and connecting with people on deep levels and serving and learning are all so valuable.

But I find I also desperately need those moments, longer moments when I go into the desert as Jesus did to be with God. The answers there in that silence speak louder than any words can.

I think many social movements that change society start in those desert moments. I think the depth of an epiphanic event deepens in those desert moments. 

Jesus gave us the model.  Festive , as some despairingly called Him a glutton and a drunkard, who also was with the masses to help and heal but then would retire into the desert.

God bless you on your journey toward connecting, communing and having joy. But when you need to as well, you might find like me that sometimes we need the desert.