As 2013 comes to a close I find myself getting prepared to think about the New Year and my resolutions. Yes, I make them. I have for many years and I write them down and keep track of them. I actually like doing it for many reasons. I like the fact that I can go back and see how much I have grown as a person. I like to see what I have accomplished and I also like to remember the things that I have forgotten and experienced that have become a part of who I am now.
Goal setting, journaling, writing and record keeping are wonderful ways to see how I have grown and changed and become. Life for me is about improving. I want to be better in 2014 then I was in 2013. I want to continue to integrate my physical and spiritual being in all area’s of my life so I can live my truth. This is a process; I expect improvement not perfection. A quote I like says, “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.”
To become stable in all my ways means I have to become single-minded and achieve balance in all area’s of my life. For many years when I have written and worked on my new years resolutions and goals my focus has been on balancing all the area’s of my life. I have become quite efficient and fluctuate with being consistent. It has been perplexing to me as to why if I am striving to achieve balance and acting consistently that some area’s of my life still continue to be unstable. As 2013 draws to a close this is still true so I have been thinking about it quite a bit and I finally have reached a conclusion.
I keep thinking about the word balance. I think about words a lot. I think about the power that lies within them. How they truly can be used for good or evil. How I have used them for good and evil. How they have been used against me for good and evil by others and by my own internal self-talk. Where did these words and definitions originate from? Balance can be defined differently depending on who is giving the definition. Different people and different schools of thought use it in various ways and for different reasons.
I think about the people that decide what is the best definition of a word. Dictionary’s are words that are defined by the frequency of usage and then numbered accordingly. The first definition is considered the most common usage and subsequent definitions are then listed. Frequency of use doesn’t always make it the best definition and it certainly doesn’t have to make it my definition.
Don’t get me wrong. I love dictionaries. I however have preferences of the ones I choose to use because words and word meanings change over time. They also are affected by the belief systems, culture, sex, opinion and money. Words are power and influence and we are influenced by them every day. Somewhere their is a group of people influencing culture using words to minimize, emphasize and drive trends some good and some evil.
My conclusion is this… I GET to DETERMINE the definition I choose to accept as my truth we all do.
The definition of balance I like is this one, “A harmonious or satisfying arrangement or proportion of parts or elements, as in a design.” American Heritage Dictionary
I have spent a great deal of my time balancing and stabilizing and arranging my life with much success but the reason I have had varied success so much is because I have failed to balance my mind and heart. When they are out of balance I am double-minded and my success will be hit and miss they have to be on the same page. “I have to bring together my thinking-conscious left brain with my feeling-sub-conscious right brain so that the two sides are no longer separate but have become a whole compatible unit. When we establish this unity, real power is created.” Feelings Buried Alive Never Die pg. 59
In order to do this honesty is the key. I do things over and over again and have no idea why I do them finally I know. Somewhere inside me words and self talk are making me double-minded and keeping my heart and mind out of balance. I have to be willing to sift through and find my own definitions and truths.
Thoughts are words. Thoughts are things. A great book called “As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen has had a powerful influence on my life. It was written over 100 years ago. It can be downloaded for free asamanthinketh.net he talks about thought. Same concept rewritten in another form in 1991 by Karol K. Truman expresses similar simplified concept in Feelings Buried Alive Never Die. “In order for us to experience in life what we THINK we want, the THINKING and the FEELING have to be in unison. After we align the THINKING and the FEELING so they are the same, we become single-minded. When we are single-minded about what we desire in life, life works for us instead of against us. Because, the FEELING, or heart, always wins. What we FEEL is literally the “prayer of our heart,” and we always receive the prayer of our heart.”
Change is not an easy thing to make I resist it in some area’s and sometimes I don’t even know why. I think I would embrace it but it seems like when my brain has already determined the best course my heart isn’t always in it. Or when my heart decides my brain isn’t on board. This is a struggle that I have been battling for many years. Its a process similar to peeling an onion there our layers to go through and some of them make me cry.
Most of my life I have refused to cry. When I decided to separate from my husband I cried. Those first few months of crying were some of the most painful, exhausting experiences I have ever had. My tears burned my face when they first started to flow. I literally shook all over and felt like I was in a huge battle.
Each experience I have had with tears has been an opportunity for me to recognize that I am suffering internally with grief, sorrow or pain that I have not yet addressed and it’s demanding my attention. It’s a call to action. When I have decided to accept the call of my tears and figure out what is happening internally it has been a time of growth. When I refuse I suffer more.
What an amazing internal gage I have been given to help me sort out the things I feel in this life. I am no longer afraid to cry because it doesn’t burn as much. Becoming honest about my feelings has made my tears more sweet. I have learned after my many tearful experiences the last several years that crying has many levels and can be a very cleansing process.
So last week when I received a letter in the mail from my attorney it became evident that 2013 will end and I will still by law be married and a wife, so I cried yet again. Trying to figure out why I’m still married.
I’m approaching the 7 year mark this February 2014. In February 2007 I asked for a divorce after being confronted by a childhood friend who told me that my husband was having an affair with his sister and had been for almost two years. At the time I was pregnant with my fourth child. My husband denied it and never confessed it until I proved it in 2011. To my shock and dismay I found out it was not just a two year affair but and on again off again one that had started sometime in the late 90’s and existed when I was pregnant with my second daughter in 1999 and that it was not the only woman he had been with but in reality had been cheating since we dated living a complete separate life.
The seven year battle from 2007 to the present and the subsequent years prior I will tell at a later time but for now the point is this. Despite the fact that I have almost died spiritually and physically twice trying to escape my marriage somewhere inside me is it possible that my thoughts and self talk and my brain and heart are still out of balance? Maybe that’s why I’m still married. Maybe I just haven’t quite stopped grieving and crying about it and giving 20 years of my life the closure it needs.
The piece of paper that will come in the mail is just the law saying I’m divorced. Is that piece paper the true definition or just a legal one? In my mind I have divorced my husband but somewhere in my heart I guess I haven’t. I keep waiting for the piece of paper to change my heart the truth really is that the piece of paper won’t be the magic fix.
That’s a hard truth to face but I’m glad I figured it out before the New Year because now something tells me 2014 is going to be one of the best years of my life.