Finding Spiritual whitespace and rest

by Sharon O | Jun 25, 2014 | Uncategorized

Bonnie Gray is the author of the blog called: Faith Barista.com
She is a beautiful gifted writer who has been on a journey of the heart and spirit as she faced hidden memories and experiences beginning with her first panic attack.
If you have ever been on a ‘spiritual journey’ you know what it is like
to venture into unknown thoughts, memories and feelings.
It is hard. Difficult. Scary.
Sometimes you have no choice.
I have been in this place too.
It is deeply disturbing and emotionally stretching
to move through the process of healing.
As she says in her book: “I only have whispers, etched in pain.”
Because sometimes a whisper is the only voice we find when doing this kind of deep work.
She opens the book with the concept from Jon Acuff that
somewhere in our lives or at some point in our lives
we stopped valuing rest.
We rush everything wanting the instant microwave finished way.
But it doesn’t work and in most situations we must
learn to slow down to rest… it is crucial to our health and healing.
Without rest we can become weary, sad and non-focused.
Even Jesus took the time away from the crowds to rest.
Bonnie says:
“Take the journey then allow your story and your voice to emerge from deep within.”
With a good therapist and an understanding husband.
Her story unfolded in ways she could never have imagined.

She has written the most moving and challenging book I have read in a long time.
It is vulnerable, real and emotionally deep.
I am reading it slow for it calls for reflection and non rushed time.
I am also keeping a box of kleenex very near as it stirs a hearts emotions.

I can relate to a lot of what she has written.
The lump in my throat and the tears close when reading her words.
When my own journey took place
I had no idea what it would be like or who I would become
when I came out of the fog and the road traveled internally.
My journey of healing took many long painful years.
Bonnie’s story is very similar.
It is not easy to go back where we have hidden parts of ourselves.
It is scary but as Bonnie says in her book,
“Jesus wants us to know there is no place we can find ourselves
where his presence cannot reach us.
He is right here.”
This is a book about a journey.
A journey and a path we do not walk alone.
With good therapy and a willing spirit the process can begin.
Bonnie says: “It’s time to restore our souls.
To care for what is tender, what is broken and what is fragile.”
She tells us that the desolate places are necessary.
Even Jesus went there.
He will meet you in your quiet healing place when you are ready for the journey.
It isn’t always deep and gut wrenching but it is still a place of healing.
There was a crippled man Jesus chose to heal
but before he did that
He asked him a very important question.
The question remains for us too:
Do you want to be well?
It is a decision and a choice we all must ask ourselves at some point in our lives
if we want to see change happen.
In order for us to move forward sometimes we must go back.
Bonnie shares her journey with gentleness, vulnerability and grace.
Through the rest she so needed and through the healing ahead of her
she discovered whitespace.
“Spiritual whitespace brings us to a different peace where we are real.” It is a “soul rest… an empty canvas with no pictures uncluttered.”
“Whitespace is a choice to convey quality and artistic value.”
“It is in the margins, unmarked and untouched.”
“Whitespace keeps the message from getting cluttered and draws
attention to what is really important.”
Healing… restoration… and hope.
This book is a beautiful story of wounds that are healed
and lessons learned differently.
As Bonnie says to all of us:
God uses all of our broken pieces to make something beautiful.  
God is making something beautiful out of you.

I challenge you to move forward and believe “that the other side of brokenness is restoration.”
“Making room for spiritual whitespace takes us on a journey to awaken our hearts to God again.”

We walk this road

by Sharon O | Jun 16, 2014 | Uncategorized

September 20, 2013 my dad passed away.
In the early morning hour of June 16, 2014
my mother passed away.
I believe they are together.
The passing of time shows us how fragile life really is.
We grieve. We remember.
We walk this road of sadness one more time.
For us it has been a lot of loss in a little over a year.
The journey is over.

Still waiting

by Sharon O | Jun 16, 2014 | Uncategorized

We are still waiting.
Our mother is still here.
Still fighting for breath… still holding on for some reason.
Today is father’s day.
We lost our dad in September of last year.
Soon the past will be just that.
A memory shared from pictures in a box.
A card found from long ago mail.
Letters written in hand writing never to be seen again.
Treasures mixed with emotion and mixed with memory.
It is not easy to sit in a room when someone is dying.
It is a sacred time.
A time for quiet and peace.
It is also a time for emotion and patience.
The waiting…
Where the soul is waiting for that moment when it should leave.
I do believe the soul goes and the shell is left behind.
Once that loved one is gone
the story is not over
it then becomes a choice of how we remember.
Max Lucado once said:
You change your life by changing your heart.
Saying good-bye is a matter of the heart.
Each day we sit and watch the ending of a life
we wait and we pray and we do a lot of thinking.
Thinking isn’t bad if it leads us to a better ‘mind set’
and or heart condition.
We have sat in this waiting room now four times.
As I have said before it is labor intensive.
It is the hardest part of this life we live.

I am tired

by Sharon O | Jun 9, 2014 | Uncategorized

My mother is dying.
It is a strange thing to think that soon I will be like many others in this ‘stage’ of life.
As my husband calls it, an orphan.
No parent.
Nothing.
Mothers day and Father’s day have been empty for me for a long time because of certain circumstances.
But now it will truly be an empty day.
No hallmark memories to fill the hallow space of heart.
Death is such a strange thing.
She is in a coma and not really responding.
It is a matter of time.
Perhaps a few days or even a few hours.
Eventually minutes when the breathing stops.
The heart gets a message to stop the beating.
Then the shell of the one who once lived will lay empty.
The angels come and escort the ‘one home’ to a heavenly home.
If they are a believer.
Those left behind will pick up the reminders of
when times were different.
When both of them were alive.
She has been leaving for quite some time.
Dementia and parkinson’s are the reason.
Dad passed away in September of last year.
Loss has been the story lately for my husband and I.
Starting with my husbands mom four years ago.
Then his dad, last March.
My dad, then a good friend within a week from each other.
My old special cat, the same week.
Two weeks ago another very special family friend and last week another family friend.
I am tired of saying good bye.

Our thirteenth word

by Sharon O | Jun 3, 2014 | Uncategorized

As we continue to learn the basket of words and how they represent themselves in our lives
I hope you have seen a progression.
Starting out with courage which is incredibly hard, then willingness, trust, tenderness, power, balance, change, rest, healing, compassion, and then play.
The next word from the basket will be beauty.

Dictionary.com describes it as:
loveliness, beautiful quality, grace, charm.
Something beautiful in nature or as in a person, 
outstanding example of it’s kind.
When I talk about beauty I am not referring to the type our media brings to us which is centered around vanity issues.
That is not beauty or in the very least fabricated beauty.
I am talking about beauty as in discovering and exploring 
perhaps for the first time,
the beauty that is within you. 
It is a character quality. 
Matters of the heart kind of beauty.
Maya Angelou once said: 
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but we rarely admit 
the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
The same is said for recovery.
We go through many changes, many ups and downs and moments that bring clarity to us.
The road is hard. 
We often think we will not make it.
We feel we cannot go further or gain any progress.
Then after a season of unbelief… 
the beauty of what is held inside us begins to pour up and out 
and we begin to feel capable, confident and with feeling.
At that point we realize the darkness that had engulfed us and clouded our vision 
also removed our hope and truth. 
Recovery often begins with depression and gray thoughts.
Healing helps us to see the beauty in a rose, a sunset, or a loved ones smile.
As the fog and heaviness lifts our minds clear and the beauty of the world around us rises to the surface bringing to us a new sense of being alive.
To appoint unto them that mourn in zion, 
to give unto them beauty for ashes,
the oil of joy for mourning, 
the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Isaiah 61:3
Our thirteenth word is beauty because it brings freshness, 
truth and hope. 

Thoughts for the day

by Sharon O | May 28, 2014 | Uncategorized

Fifteen years ago

by Sharon O | May 25, 2014 | Uncategorized

Today is our first grand child’s birthday.
Faith Elizabeth was born eight weeks early.
It was an emergency situation, her mom was in crisis and the baby had to be born immediately.
The doctor told us she might be 3 pounds, and then he headed to the surgery room.
A while later after we had been waiting and praying he came through the doors again and said, “baby is fine but she is 2 pounds 11 oz and will be in Nicu until she is able to go home.”
I immediately cried.

Her first bed was a monitoring station in Neonatal Intensive care nursery where they monitor vitals and oxygen and warmth.
She never got jaundice which was amazing considering how tiny she was in Nicu.
She had Iv’s in her head for just a few days and then after an unsuccessful tube feeding she decided to start eating.
She never had to have oxygen as her lungs were strong and even though she was on monitor’s she never had a breathing problem.
Within a week she was released from one level of Nicu to the other not so critical Nicu.

She was like a little bird. So tiny and so fragile.
Yet also so very alert and precious.

On May 24, 15 years ago we became grandparents for the first time.
We have watched her grow into and become a beautiful, amazing young lady.
Ready for the world and ready for dreams and hopes and aspirations of life outside of highschool.
I often ask her, “what do you want to be when you grow up and become an adult?”
                                     
I am choosing to not show her ‘face’ as she is sensitive with her privacy and so am I.
Faith Elizabeth … we love you.
We pray for you… and we will always … always be here for you no matter what or where life takes you.
You have blessed us beyond our wildest imaginations.
You are beautiful. Smart. Funny. Kind and caring. Oh and very social.
You love God and your grandma.  :o)
You are very close to your mom and your family.
We are SO blessed to have you be our first born grand child.

The twelfth word

by Sharon O | May 20, 2014 | Uncategorized

In the series on the basket of words we have been learning about many ‘new’ words and discovering the role they play in a recovery process for someone.
We began with the word courage, then willingness, trust, tenderness, power, balance, change, rest, healing, compassion and play.
Now our twelfth word will be humor.

I know it seems to be a very strange word when dealing with ‘recovery’ and intense life experiences or memories.
When someone is in the recovery process as time moves on for them healing takes away so many hard and difficult feelings.
When those ‘intense feelings leave’ new ones are replaced within the person who is healing.
As they feel safe they begin to realize the real person tucked away inside the one who was hiding.
When I was in therapy and I learned to breathe and relax,
something changed deep inside my spirit.
People began to tell me I was becoming more funny.
It was natural but was also very hidden.
Dictionary.com said:
it is the expressing or perceiving the amusing or comical.
One quote I found said: purely intellectual manifestation of cleverness and quickness
of apprehension in discovering analogies between things,
with sharp observations or remarks.
Basically the quality of being funny.
Another quote by Constance Rourke said it this way:
(which is a bit easier to understand)
An emotional man may possess no humor, but a humorous man
usually has deep pockets of emotion, sometimes tucked away or forgotten.
(I don’t know this lady nor do I know the other person I quoted just liked what they had to say on the subject)
For the person in the process of healing humor can help
in many ways and on many levels.
It has been discovered through research that when we laugh we actually change our chemistry on the cellular level.
It also has been discovered that if cancer patients learn to laugh they sometimes can transform or reduce their ‘cancer cells’ allowing them to heal faster and stronger.
Stress is lightened and we are more healthy when we laugh.
In our growing up years we didn’t laugh very often as there was very little to laugh about.
Therapy opened up that door for me and as I walked into the room
‘of humor’ I realized it was freeing.
To look at life in a not so serious way and see it differently is both challenging and good.
Humor is healing to the soul and also ministers to those around us.
On many occasions I have had people say to me,
“Oh I miss your humor. you always make us laugh.”
Even though it still doesn’t feel natural to me,
I think that it is a very wonderful compliment.
So I challenge you today.
Find a funny movie, a book or a delightful walk and discover humor.
You won’t be sorry, I promise.

I will praise Him…

by Sharon O | May 18, 2014 | Uncategorized

The Lord is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation;
This is my God, and I will praise Him;
My father’s God, and I will extol  him.
Exodus 15:1-3

For the new ‘Sunday community’.