Happy # 118: Find your hopeful, childlike, fearless self.

Where were you when you were 10? More importantly, who were you? What were you doing? What were you thinking? How did you think about your life?

My guess is, with hope in your future.

Recently, a friend who has known me since childhood said he could see the sorrow behind my positive posts on Facebook. He could see me striving to see the good, find the good, and be grateful for everything in my life regardless of what was really going on in my heart. He was right. 

He can see this because he's known me since I was six years old and he knows the adverse background I come from. He saw it. Fully... He knows what I've come through and how hard I've worked to overcome my beginnings and make something different for my life.

I've been reflecting on his words and the power being positive has to create change. 

I've also been giving thought to the words of another friend. This friend said, ten years ago, he was impressed by my ability to take life as it comes to me, gracefully. "Hard won, I'm sure," he said. 

Hard won, indeed. I hadn't thought about myself that way then, but his words made an impact and I've reflected on them several times in the last decade.

These two sentiments have captured my attention with regard to what being positive really means and how being positive works to shape a life. Because it has certainly shaped mine.

What does being positive mean, exactly?

Anyone who reads this blog or follows me on Facebook knows I am working on a Masters of Architecture. It is, by in large, the most difficult thing I've ever done. It is HARD. Every day. And it has been a challenge to find the positive stream of thinking in this difficultly.

But it is the positive stream of thinking that illuminates the opportunity that lies in difficulty. 

Giving thought to the words of my friends, I began reflecting on myself as a ten year old. 

It was 1971. Easily our twentieth-something move, we lived in another small town, and our home was a trailer. All my clothes came from thrift stores. Christmases and birthdays, I just wanted something brand new, that nobody else had ever worn. Never happened. 

One day at school I learned a girl's mother had made the top she was wearing. So, I decided to make myself something new.

I borrowed the pattern from the girl, found fabric in the trailer we lived in, followed the pictures in the pattern to cut out the fabric, sat down at my mother's old sewing machine, and following the pictures in the pattern, taught myself to sew. Ten years old. No fear.

I wasn't afraid to try. I wasn't afraid to start. I wasn't afraid of that sewing machine, and it didn't matter to me that I didn't know how. I wasn't afraid of the machine, or the process.

I had childlike belief in God and a God-given belief in myself. There is no doubt in my mind that my faith in Him emboldened me.

I think back on that little girl living in poverty--moved every three months, sexually abused, uneducated parents, crazy (and married over a dozen times) mother, and raised on welfare in a dysfunctional family--who taught herself to sew.

I've examined her thinking and her willingness to try. A ten year old with a hopeful attitude, regardless of the difficulty she lived in.

Here's what I've decided being positive really means: it means finding a way to think and live and feel that is life enhancing rather than life depleting. It is open and life expanding, rather than closed off or in the act of withdrawing.

Rooted with the seeds of hope, being positive is being open to better things happening and thinking along those lines.

It doesn't mean life doesn't have difficulty or challenge. It simply means there is a course of thought, a consciously chosen neurological pathway that is believing and hopeful. There is a presence of gratitude and personal faith that whispers whatever we hope for is possible. And there is a mental choice that says, try. No fear. Then try again, if need be.

Taking life as it comes, gracefully, grows out of a patient, grateful heart. Finding the positive in life comes from a hopeful mind and learning to look forward. It comes from establishing patterns of belief with our thinking.

And finding the opportunity that lies in the middle of difficulty happens when a positive mind and grateful heart is open to the illumination and courage that inevitably follows hope.

So Happy #118 is: Find your hopeful, childlike, fearless self.

Because he, or she, is the key to the strength you need to make your life what you want it to be.

No fear. Or feel the fear and do it anyway.

Either way, love and wishes for fearlessness to you,

Kathleen

Happy 117: Trust help will come.

A week ago today I woke in the middle of the night to chaos. There was banging around at my back door. Someone was yelling, making loud and strange noises. I came out of my bedroom to find Keaton coming up the stairs, his cell phone in his had. He held it out to me, telling me he had called 911.

I felt alarmed and confused. Keaton shared with me that someone had been trying to get in our back door. With 911 on the line, I went cautiously down the stairs.

By the time I reached the kitchen the noise at the back door had stopped. But I could still hear the person whaling loudly in my back yard. It was very dark outside and difficult to see, but I spotted movement in the back corner by the garage. Someone, dressed in dark clothing, was moving around, yelling and waving his arms everywhere.

He moved from the corner of the yard to the front of the garage where my car was parked, still yelling. I had hung up with 911 and was waiting for the police to arrive, but I didn't dare leave my kitchen window. I didn't want to lose track of the man's location in the darkness.

He was making loud and desperate noises, batting at the air like he was trying to get into a door that didn't exist. I stood there in the kitchen, frozen, my heart pounding with fear.

Suddenly it became clear to me that he was in trouble. He needed help. I watched him, stuck there at the garage, helpless, trying to find his way. Desperate. Confused. Unable to make progress.

In that moment, I saw the whole of humanity there in one young man. Lost. Stuck. Tormented. And the fear gave way as compassion filled my heart, pushing everything else out.

The police arrived a few minutes later and kindly escorted him from my yard. Two policemen took care of him and another two came to my door, asking to come inside.

The young man was drunk, not quite twenty, and barefoot. In the snow...

The policeman stayed for a long time, talking with me about preparations I should make for the future in the event I should actually need to protect myself from an intruder. And I listened.

But I couldn't help but reflect on the young man, the situation he had been in, and what I had seen.

I am grateful he landed in my back yard where he was able to get the help he needed. I'm grateful for the moments of human aloneness and desperation I observed. They were a good reminder of how stuck we all are, how dependent on each other we are, and how blessed we are by our loving Heavenly Father and Savior to have the help we need when we need it. By whatever means.

The supplication to come unto Christ has been close to my heart lately. I shared my testimony in church this morning about the grace of God, His mercy and kindness, and how blessed I feel to have my Savior, Jesus Christ, to turn to when I am stuck. Which is all the time, really. One way or another... 

Happy #117 is Trust help will come. Come unto Christ. We're all stuck in the corner of the yard or at the garage door. Or somewhere. For one reason or another.

Coming to Christ is simply seeking Him. Turning to Him, looking to Him, praying to Him. Our souls unite with heaven when we are in pain. Even if we're crying out and batting in the darkness, unaware of what our souls are pleading for.

God knows. And He will see us through.

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. And I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28