Faith

     Faith is my only choice. I must have faith that everything will work out. That is the only thing that I have left to hang on to. I have let go of everything else. I have let go of the idea that anyone else is the answer to my prayers. I have let go of thinking that people will take responsibility for their lives and do the right thing. I have let go of all false expectations. By doing this, I have found peace.
     I have faith in myself and faith in God. I don't expect God to instantly fix all of my mistakes (although I am still open to that as an option) but I do have faith that I will be gently guided as to how to fix them myself. I have faith that I can change the things in my life that are no longer working, and I have faith that I will be shown how. Each day I wake up and say "thank you" because I have been given the gift of another day in which I can work on improving my life. I have faith that I am smart enough to finally learn the lessons that I have repeated way too many times. I have faith that all of those lessons happened for a reason and that there will be a positive outcome. I have reached another one of those points in my life where faith is all I have. Instead of giving up, it is now that I must increase my faith not lose it. 

Be The Spark

     I am starting with 98 cents in my checking account, several overdue bills, a sense of humor and a ton of faith.
     It sounds insane, but I am happier than I have ever been in my life. I think it is because I have finally reached the point of believing in myself. I have repeated the lessons in my life so many times, I am grateful that this time I am handling it differently. Lost is the illusion that someone will come in to fix it, or bail me out. I have decided to be happy and find joy in whatever I do because I have never encountered a problem where wallowing in self pity was the solution! I no longer want to be the person that people feel sorry for. I want to have a spark about me that shows the world that I am strong, completely capable and fully living my life.
     My path has given me the gift of observation. For awhile now, I have been observing how other people need to take responsibility for their lives and how their actions affect others. I could easily see it happening all around me, but remained blind to the lack of responsibility I was taking in my own life and how that affected those closest to me. I just didn't see it. Since the Universe works endlessly at self correction, events in my life finally snapped me awake. What I awoke to wasn't pretty. Rather than obsess over what I had done, what others had done, or the seeming injustice of it all, I decided to drop the drama and work with the Universe towards self correction.
     I know that I have to be the spark in my life. By being that spark, I will affect those around me in a positive way. Instead of criticizing or blaming others for their actions, I choose to only be responsible for my own. Each person has their own lessons to learn and their own life path to follow, I can only work on me. By being true to myself and honoring my life's purpose, I am working with the Universe instead of against it.
     I am the spark in my life and I hope that it spreads and affects others in a positive way. I can't wait to see what happens...

Darkness is just a reminder...

     It appears that I have allowed my life to spiral into a big mess. I thought after the last time, I would keep a clear vision of my life and which direction I was headed. Somewhere in the day to day survival of it all, I fell asleep.
     Last weekend I woke up to see the total shit bath that I had been sitting in for the last year. I became angry, tried to blame others, but mostly I was really pissed off at myself. In my need to control the uncontrollable, I started cleaning my house. As I cleaned the caked on layer of lint from underneath the dryer, I began repeating a mantra in my head. "I am cleaning up my house and my life." It felt good and I kept going until all of the neglected areas of my house sparkled.
     Later in the day, I carved out time to work on my art because it was the only sane thing I could manage to do. I wanted to make a mosaic. I thought if I could take some tiny pieces and make something pretty I would feel better. If I could do that through art, then maybe there was some shred of hope that I could do that with the fragments of my life and make something out of it.
     As I worked, I realized that everything had shattered again, but it had to in order for me to wake up. I began thinking of how grateful I am for my life. I created "Darkness is just a reminder to shine brighter" to help me remember I can't avoid the dark times in life. They just keep coming until you turn on the light. Life tests everyone and you can either be swallowed up by it or you can see it for what it really is - just an opportunity to change what isn't working in your life.
     This time, I am going to handle it differently. My usual pattern is to throw a pity party, invite all my friends and get one of them to feel sorry for me enough to help me out of my self-created mess. I can't do that this time. First off, I know that I must do something differently to get different results, and secondly, I have hosted this pity party so many times that my friends have all stopped attending.
     This time I am going to embrace it, recognize it for what it is, and come through it shining. I want to,  actually I must, do it all on my own. I want to see what I'm made of. Plus, it would be unfair of me to even ask anyone to help clean up my mess. Having been through this before, I also know that my well meaning friends would just tell me what to do, what they think is right for me. This time I need to find out what is right for me. I need to clean up my own mess.   Once again I have been given the opportunity to shine brighter and take responsibility for my choices and actions, knowing that I can take all of the fragments of my shattered life and piece it back together.
Find this and other mosaics at: http://www.etsy.com/shop/raecrowstudio