2012, looking ahead

I enjoy reading Kim Falconer's blog and her horoscopes since they incorporate the Law of Attraction into astrology. I was interested in two of her posts,  set intentions for the solstice and New Moon, both which included horoscopes for the new year.

Both horoscopes (I'm a Cancer, by the way) mentioned partnership and relationships. Her tip was to start with a relationship with myself. I admit that never thought of that. When I read the horoscope I first thought of my husband and my son, who are my immediate relationships. Then that branched out to my extended family, my in-laws, and the my co-workers. But treating myself well, loving myself, that is an important relationship. Unless I love myself I cannot truly love someone else.

So for this first part of 2012, in regards to relationships, I am going to look at myself. There are some things health wise I need to be doing. I also want to take better care of myself and treat myself to some self-care. These can be simple things, such as time to relax in a bubble bath or spend an afternoon reading. One thing I realized over 2011 is that taking that time to do something YOU want to do is not selfish. It's a very needed period of respite.

I'm not necessarily going to have a "to-do" list, as I don't believe that I need to work that hard. What I need to do is be more open, be more allowing. I have been closed off for a long time and I need to open myself up to the relationships that I already have and welcome more.

Affirmations toward that end:

I am open and welcoming to new friendships and new people in my life.
I am a worthwhile, loveable, successful person because God created me in His perfect image.
You're beautiful -- you are sacred, you are treasured, you are His.

For the next month, I am going to work on loving myself. Every day I am going to take time to do something just for me. I am going to spend money on myself. And the first thing, the most important thing, I will not judge myself or make any negative comment about myself

For my immediate family I am going to start reading the Love Dare again. I stopped last year when it got too difficult to do the assignments - both emotionally and practically. But now we're all under the same roof and I want to have a wonderful relationship with my husband and son.

What are some of your thoughts for the new year? Are you going to follow tips from a horoscope or just follow what you feel led to do on your own?

Positive Thinking and Attitude for LOA success

In a lot of my research and reading about The Law of Attraction it seems that many people immediately latch on to things like what can I get? How much money can I receive? What material goods can I latch onto? Can I win the lottery? Can I win a contest? Can I hit it big in Vegas?

But I never really thought of any of those things. And it seems that now as I'm starting to live the wonderful, beautiful, abundant and creative life that I want the less material things I desire.I believe this is because I studied positive thinking before law of attraction.

I didn't start out to do this on purpose. Reading The Love Dare and drastically changed me. I didn't do it, consciously, from a desire to win my husband back. I wanted to do it because I wanted to obey God. I believe I was told to read the book and I did not. So that was my first step to obedience. And even without my husband at home during that time, I learned a lot about myself and my attitude. I did not like the person I was. So my first step was to confess to God and admit to myself that I was not the kind and generous person I believed myself to be. I accepted my responsibility in how my life had turned out and in doing so found a way to healing. I had to forgive myself and accept, in faith, that I am a person of value. Knowing that God loves me, God is with me and that he loves me unconditionally was a strong part of that process. Knowing that even today is still a big part of me, even after discovering information about the law of attraction. Having material things and wealth just doesn't matter - not without love.

1 Corinthians 13

¹ If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.  ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
 ⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
 ¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

(From Biblegateway.com)

Everything else is going to go away. But love will remain. No one is going to remember how much material things you had. But they will remember your kindness, your graciousness. They will remember what you did with your money. Were you a good steward of all you had been given?

But I would not even have this love, this feeling of peace, without starting my journey with The Love Dare and the positive thinking books I read. I knew that by healing my mind I could begin to heal my life. You cannot manifest change if it feels bad. And if you're coming from a place of greed or hate then you are going to continue manifesting those feelings.

That is why I believe many facets of the law of attraction have come easily. That is why my marriage has been able to heal. It's because all of this has been built on a foundation of positive change, positive love, and most important, faith. I had faith in God that He was there, he is here now, that he loved me and cared for me. Without that foundation I would not be who I am today.

I could have gone another path. I could have chosen to hate. I could have chosen to continue to be a victim. I could have sat at home crying and yelling and cursing my husband and the situation. I could have laid all the blame on him. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted to be a different person. I wanted to learn about myself. I didn't need to know why. I still don't. I just knew there were things to learn. And God is still teaching me those things today.

There are material things I want, things I desire. But more than riches, more than things, more than anything in the world, I want to live a wonderful, happy, abundant and creative life. And I want to live that life with people who are important to me. Thankfully, God has shown me how to do that by using the law of attraction and other universal laws that are in place. And I have been blessed.

Backstory - Journey Begins

I've shared how I started out with discovering self forgiveness through the book The Love Dare. I also was reading my Bible. Psalms is where everyone needs to go when their world turns upside down. I was
praying constantly, journaling, looking for full time work. But little by little that despair began to dissipate.

It didn't go away overnight. No, there were still crying jags, there were still 3am phone calls to my mom. But as I started to think about how to rebuild my life there were times I knew something was happening. It all started with forgiving myself. Then I reached out to those I had hurt. I apologized where appropriate. I prayed for a lot of things.  Some things I probably shouldn't have prayed for, but when you are moving up and down the emotional scale from despair to anger you pray for some things out of anger. But I know that God knew my heart. And he continued to speak to me during this time.

This was also a time of turmoil for our teenage son. Every time I would see my ex husband or speak to him on the phone I would start crying. I was also dumping frustration, fear and anger on my son. So he told me in April that he was going to spend the summer with my family instead of staying with me. I can't say I blamed him. He needed the break from me and his dad. He left in April to stay with my family an hour and a half away.

During this time my ex and I were talking. The talks were sometimes good, sometimes bad. Even if not a fight, just spending time together was difficult. We had made plans to see certain movies together and it felt just wrong to see them apart. We had always done things as a family. And, yes, there was still a physical aspect to our relationship. But it hurt too much each time we saw each other. I know it hurt me a lot. It felt as though my heart were breaking every time we saw each other, every time I visited his apartment, every time we would do something and then go our separate ways. But every time I did that I believe I did get a little stronger. I was experiencing what LOA teachers call contrast. I was learning what I didn't want and it helped me clarify what I did want.

I did have to stop reading The Love Dare. It got to the point where it hurt too much to continue and I wasn't able to do all the exercises. But I did continue making amends where appropriate and I wanted to think more positively. I wanted to put my energy into something for me, something to help me continue to grow and change. I wanted to be a better person, not because I thought it would help me win back my husband, but because I knew I didn't want to be the woman I'd been for so many years.

I was feeling differently than I'd felt in the past. I had always said that if my husband left me, if we divorced, that I didn't believe I could make it. It would hurt too much. Well, it did hurt. But I was surviving. Not only surviving, but making it through. And if I could survive the loss of a 20 year marriage, what was there to be afraid of? So I continued my learning and growing, reading After the Locusts and Why You Do the Things You Do, sent to me by a friend who'd also gone through a divorce some years back.

Then I decided to finally read Think and Grow Rich. I'd had a copy of the ebook for a while as well as a hard copy of various essays written by Napoleon Hill and his partner, W. Clement Stone. It was also during this time that LOA entered my life, although I had no idea there was a name for it. Some call it the Universe or a Higher Power. But I knew it was God answering my prayers. I believe that this is how God works in my life, in all our lives. He works through the Law of Attraction.

Forgiving Myself

Some of you reading this may wonder why was I taking all the blame. He had the affair. He left. Biblically I was innocent. But I didn't feel innocent. I knew I had disobeyed. For months God had been trying to open my eyes and I was refusing to see what was in front of me. That is what I needed forgiveness for. I needed forgiveness for disobeying God. I needed forgiveness for my actions toward my family, toward my son, and yes, toward my husband. I could not control the choices he made,  his reactions to what I said and did. All I could control was myself. It took some time for me to learn that, but God was patient and gentle with me as he rebuilt my self-esteem. 

I had to forgive myself. I was not going to heal any other way. I was full of regret, full of anger. I kept asking myself why? Why had I not seen evidence of an affair before? Why had I been so selfish, especially that Valentine's Saturday? Why had I not listened to God and bought that book? So that was where I started. I bought a copy of The Love Dare. It didn't matter to me that my husband was no longer living in the house.
I was going to be obedient.

I bought the book, began to read it, and my new life began.

First, it convicted me to my selfishness. I saw myself acting as a child, always wanting my dreams to come true, my desires to be fulfilled. It didn't matter if anyone else got anything as long as I got what I wanted. I was 39 years old. Why was I acting like that? And I realized that I had shut people out of my life. My entire immediate family had done that for many years. The house was messy. We were hoarding cats. We were disorganized. But we had actually begun to turn our lives around, I had thought.

The fall of 2010, when I believe I was starting to wake up, we'd been making some changes. We'd made a difficult decision to give up most of our cats. We knew that there had to be a choice made - us or them. We
could no longer continue caring for ourselves and our pets. We prayed over them and took them to the animal shelter. It was one of the hardest things we'd done. But it was a step towards taking our lives back. As much as we loved them, we could not keep living that way.

We'd started to clean up the house and organize better. It was still crowded, still cluttered. It was a small rental and didn't have a very good layout. But we made it work. So change was happening in a small
way. I had no idea that the world would blow up. But as the small changes grew, it seemed bigger changes were needed to get things truly moving.

So my marriage ended and I was betrayed. I was feeling sorry for myself. And I allowed myself to hurt. Those who have been studying the Law of Attraction for a while would call this despair on the emotional guidance scale. I was at the bottom of that scale. All I could do was work my way up to feeling better.

So I started taking melatonin to help me sleep. I participated at church events and attended a Divorce Care group. I did a second job working from home.

And I read The Love Dare. I started doing the exercises. My eyes opened and it was like God had slapped me upside the head. I apologized to my son. I called my grandmother just to chat. In the past I'd tried to avoid her because I didn't want MY time to be wasted in talking about idle chitchat. I swear she cried when she hung up the phone because all I did was let her talk about herself. Nothing about me, what I was going
through. Just her. And it felt good.

I called my mother-in-law. We had a very honest conversation. I had believed for over 20 years that she hadn't liked me, that I wasn't good enough for her son. We had both been living under a lie for so long. That's the trouble with rumors. You let them grow and soon there is no truth left. 

God was working on me and I was coming to understand myself. I had to take responsibility for my actions. Yes, my husband had hurt me. Yes, I had every right, biblically, to a divorce. I had the right to be angry and upset. But I realized God doesn't see levels of sin. I had sinned, I had disobeyed, and I had to deal with the consequences to MY behavior. But God didn't deal with me in a cruel or unkind way. As I read The
Love Dare I realized that it could apply to relationships of all kinds. I applied it to a relationship with my son. I applied it to my parents. I applied it to my grandparents. I applied it to my brothers. I applied it as much as possible to my ex husband. And over time I applied it to myself.

God sent me many little things along this path to show me that he loved me and that he cared for me, despite my disobedience. I didn't feel worthy of forgiveness. Here are some things he shared:

From Nora Roberts' novel Ever After - (heroine is looking at a lovely necklace in Ireland).
"How much is it?" she asked. "Ten pounds," was the answer. "Oh, it's so lovely. It must be worth so much more," she said. "It is, but then so are you."

I will never leave you nor forsake you. Hebrews 13:5



I will restore to you the years the locust has eaten. Joel 2:25

There were more. I felt loved and comforted, especially at 3:00 am when I couldn't call my mother and wake her yet again. But God was always there. We talked about a lot of things and I never had to worry about waking him up. I let out all my anger, my hurt, my frustration, my desires, all my lost dreams, all the things I missed so much. I gave my ex husband up to him many times. I was finally understanding that I could only control myself, my thoughts and actions. And I understood, finally, that God loved me unconditionally. 

Remember that these verses and thoughts apply to you as well. You are worthy. You are loved. No matter what you've done, you are worthy of forgiveness. As a creation of God, as his child, you are worthy. You don't have to do anything to earn forgiveness. You just need to ask for it.

The leader of the women's group at church played this song for us one night and it touched me in a way no other song has done in a long time. It still means a lot to me. As it played, I sat and cried. I knew without a doubt it was God telling me that he was there and that he loved me.

Backstory

Seven months ago my world turned upside down. My husband of almost 21 years left me Valentine's Day weekend, 2011. I spend the weekend crying. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I didn't see him until Monday night. By Thursday, he'd filed for divorce and we'd signed the papers by the following Monday.

I didn't know which way was up. I felt as though I'd been blindsided. I knew we were having trouble. I'd known since the fall of 2010. I had been ignoring things, not pushing too hard, keeping my worries to myself. I finally suggested we go to counseling. We didn't have a lot of money but our pastor recomended a counselor. We set up an appointment and she was willing to see us and we could pay her later. I thought we were starting to make some progress, but it was clear that something was going to break. After about four counseling visits my husband made the decision to leave.

Two days after we signed the papers I discovered he'd been having an affair. He denied it, even after I found records of phone calls and spoken to a friend of his that he had told me he'd been spending time with. I don't know how long it had been going on. His version is that it lasted three months and was over. I heard that it had been going on almost a year from someone else. I don't know. All I know is that I was hurt all over again. Even though the divorce was going through and papers were signed, I felt betrayed all over again.

I had felt strongly that God had been speaking to me for some time. He'd been trying to wake me up, doing his best to tell me that I needed to do some changing. But I was disobedient. I was downright rude to God. We had watched the movie Fireproof a few months before and God was telling me to buy the book, The Love Dare. I refused. I came up with excuses. We didn't have enough money. Why should I buy it? Why shouldn't he? But I felt I needed to do something, so I looked up online to see if anyone else was following the book and to see what the excercises were. After seeing some of them - greet your spouse every day. Ask your spouse how you can help him / her. Tell your spouse you love them. Buy your spouse something. Again the excuses came. He's the one doing x, y and z. Why should I change? I had become selfish, demanding, and a very ugly person. And I didn't even see it. By the time I did, it was too late.