Friday, January 2, 2015

Choose Your Focus










I've never been one for New Year's resolutions.  I tend to make them throughout the year as the need presents itself.  Often I think it has to do with the day itself and why I really just try to forget it.

My father died on New Year's Day.  I was 10.  It was my first exposure to death and one I think shaped my life. He was the first of my nuclear family to pass and now 48 years later I have buried them all.

I know this is not a post most want to read, however it is one I need to write for I believe that sadness has shaped me more than joy and I need to make a change.  It is normal that what you experience and live will be your default. But I also now know that you have the power to change that and that power only comes from grace.  It is that grace I want to live.

So in this next year I am focusing on silence.  Silence that I may listen.  That doesn't mean not speaking or conversing.  It means choosing the words you speak and choosing the words you hear. We are shaped internally by what we take in.  The heart knows what the heart sees and hears.  So this year, more than any other, my heart will take in the good and deposit away the bad.  Notice I didn't say ignore the bad.  We can't do that.  But we can choose to let it enter our heart.

This last week has been fairly quiet. The grandchildren are enjoying time with their families they don't usually have and I have not wanted to interfere in that.  But there has been wedding planning in the background and next weekend is the engagement party.  The planning for that is done, I just need to make my list of all that needs to be picked up on the day.

Inventory in Drawstrings will be added over the next few days.  If you missed the sale there were good bargains. I'm coming across new fabrics all the time so check in often!





7 comments:

  1. Wanda, my father, too, died when I was much too young. It was Easter week 1982 and I was 20 years old and a sophomore in college. Yes, it, too, shaped my life. I've written about it before. I don't think there is any way an event like that could not change you. And I, too, live by grace, and pray daily for the grace to get through each day as God would have me live. Silence is a good word/way/prayer.

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  2. I wonder if it's a common thread that loss and sadness has shaped so many of our lives? I too have walked a similar path as you and Barbara, a path that still pulls at me today. All is Grace and is what I try to remember. Silence filled my last week and I made up my mind to bring more of it into my world, it was soothing.
    Happy New Year to you. Enjoy all the wedding excitement!

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  3. Silence is a good thing. I lost a classmate I loved when I was 10 and it was also very influential in my life; thank God I eventually was in a church that prays for the departed and had a service for this beloved friend ... very healing. .... I know it's very difficult. Lots of love to you. and (((HUGS)))

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  4. I talk a lot. A lot. I have tried, many a New Year, to work on silence. This is a good reminder. I'm going to email you eventually, we are too close geographically not to introduce properly. Happy New Year

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  5. What a lovely post. Silence is something I crave and need to make more space for in 2015.

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  6. Silence is something I should practice as well. I'd like to silence my worries and listen and speak positive stuff!!

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