Category Archives: Spirituality

I recently pitched my Page -A-Day calendar.  This particular one was supposed to encourage busy women to live balanced lives.    Instead it seemed to dose  out   reminders about how unhappy I  (or busy women) should be with my (their) choices.  Daily it  carried  admonishments about what I  was (women were)  doing wrong and how the way I (we) lived was depressing and overwhelming.  (Even a female four-star general didn’t escape the invalidation of the calendar writer.   The general was criticized for not having enough militant feminism in the way she acknowledged her family during a speech about her career).   It’s the third calendar that I’ve trashed  this year.   As someone in the message business with an intense job,  I want daily messages that fill my soul and inspire me.   Tomorrow,  a  page-a-day calendar  decorated with flowers is scheduled to arrive.     Flowers are  silent but beautiful reminders that spring is here. It was a lovely spring  day today.   Jean Claude and Roxie spent time outside while I sat  in my big wicker chair trying to gain back spiritual sanity –   lost because I let the shoulds get to me over  my daughter’s decision to  go to her business destination a day early.    My mind went wild with  “I should be doing so and so or I should be doing this…and of course I should remember that if people have plans that don’t include me they don’t want me (a horrible selfish should).”  ” The Shoulds” should be listed as diseases  for the agony and misunderstanding they cause. 

Gradually I found  peace again by  remembering to let  those I love be who they are,  just as a  great power does that for us all on a daily, hourly basis.  So now I am celebrating the peace of this  particular day and the miracle it  holds for me and hundreds of millions of people.  

Just stopped writing for a moment…thinking.. “I should check on Jean Claude, he’s still outside.”  Roxie came in a while ago.”  Sure enough Jean Claude is outside resting comfortably under the big beautiful tree that is in MY  backyard.

There is a white chair in the front room in my house upstairs  I cover when Roxie and Jean Claude come to stay.    Roxie’s has found under the purple cover to be one of favorite hiding places – but only if I’m in the room watching television or reading.  A small act of defiance Ifeel.   But I notice that Jean Claude seems to find rather unique hiding places , under the bathtub or  under the corner of my bed. 

There was a time when Jean Claude would go outside and I would give chase only to find him nowhere in sight.  Once he in the back yard under my neighbor’s car – that neighbor has a dog.  These days I’m happy to let him out  in the back yard.  I no longer look for him.  He comes back when he’s ready.

Life is a lot like that.   It’s when we just let go and leave things alone and find peace with our decisions that miracles begin to happen.