Busy Day!

What a day! Didn't even have time to do my arm/neck exercise more than twice today. My neck is getting better so I can claim that the exercise Alison gave me works. Try it if you have neck problems. Instructions are found in the comments section a few blogs back where I mentioned having a sore neck... Go hunting! She explained it perfectly. I'm not sure I can do it as well.

I just took a half hour or so and caught up on Alison's blogs (http://senoritainvierno.blogspot.com/). Gads, she has more experiences in a week than I have in a month!

Youth has its rewards -- lots of adventures. But alas, it also feels terribly unsafe and insecure. And if I had lost my mother at age 25 instead of age 47, as Alison did, I can't even imagine what I would have felt or done. Can the world ever feel "right" again after something like that?

Yes, I suppose it can, and will, but not in the short term. Looking back from years hence, it will all make some kind of spiritual sense (I pray), but from where she stands at this time, it seems as though the rug has been pulled out from under her and sent her sprawling...

I wouldn't want to be 27 again. I have learned to live with the uncertainties of life now -- I just give it to God and let him handle the details -- but when I was 27 I was still under the bizarre impression that it was all up to me to make my life go the way it "should".

I totally empathize with Ali's sense of not wanting to live a life of quiet desperation; I was and am the same way. It has only been recently that I have achieved the kind of job I always wanted, and I'm 56! I wasn't sure it would ever happen -- but there was no way I was going to just roll over and give up the quest for it, because communicating (writing or speaking) is what gives my life meaning. I'm passionate about communicating the deeper (and some of the sillier) things of life. (On the other hand, I'm hopeless and unmotivated when it comes to small talk -- the day-to-day nodding approval and strokes that we give to others in our orbit is not native to me, although I have learned to do it so people don't think I'm a desolate loner.)

Ali is learning that another's dreams for her (home ownership, etc.) are not as fulfilling as her own dreams for herself. That's a great lesson to learn at a young age. I waited almost too long to go after my own dreams because my parents told me they were so unlikely to happen.


I didn't have any Biblical training back then and wasn't aware that if you are passionate about something that isn't harmful to yourself or others, and sincerely ask God for help in attaining it, He will open the way. He doesn't want any child of his living a life of quiet desperation. Life is meant to be lived with a passion for something that you can share with others.

Taking a job simply to make ends meet is necessary at strategic times in life, but only for a season, and for gosh sakes even then make it something you enjoy (which will probably translate to providing a service of some sort to other living things)! God doesn't want us to "settle." He wants us to shine! When we do take jobs as a necessity to stay afloat financially, we need to put a deadline on them and we need to spend a few hours every day (before or after work hours) working on our REAL goal: taking steps to segue from the "necessary" service to the "sublime service."

I didn't do that until just last year. As was my habit, for 35 years I spent 105% of my available energy serving on the necessary jobs to the best of my ability. I wanted to do a good job, and to impress. I can live for a week on a compliment and there isn't an employer in my past that didn't give me a glowing letter of recommendation as a result -- a glowing assertion that I could and would provide the same exemplary service to a future employer in the same or in a similar service sector. (Compliments and kudos certain to continue to remind me I was great at THAT and could make a living at THAT, but what about my REAL goal? Satan works in countless ways to get us to doubt ourselves so that we won't risk reflecting God's light -- enthusiasm and joy -- too brightly.)

But the downside of energetic dedication to others' goals is that I didn't hold enough energy in reserve to pursue my real objective (to write) after the work day ended! Even worse, I let my parents' poor prognosis about the likelihood of succeeding over-ride the prognoses of the many teachers, writers and actors who assured me that I had what it took to make it as an artist! I had passion. I was a bulldog. I never stopped writing! 267 journals of several hundred pages each over 40 years attest to this fact but all too few article submitted for publication. The old tapes, spawn of Satan, kept running in my brain, reinforcing doubt: "Why bother? You're no James Michener!")

And it's true! I am no James Michener. But James Michener was no Kris Smith, either! And there is no other Alison Winter on this planet who can offer what Senorita Invierno has to offer.

In her pain and struggle -- and ultimate success -- is a story that others need to hear.

If the creatives ever give up, the world as we know it will not be worth living. We're the people most madly in love with what could be. What is, is not enough. It can always be better.

God wants us all creating something special. And we all can! Put that in your pipe and smoke Satan right out of your life!

We are all here to be a blessing.