How to Enlarge Your Circle of Friends

  A little boy about ten years old was standing before a shoe store on the roadway, barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold. A lady approached the boy and said, “My little fellow, why are you looking so earnestly in that window?” “I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes,” was the boy’s reply.

The lady took him by the hand and went into the store and asked the clerk to get half a dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her. She took the little fellow to the back part of the store and, removing her gloves, knelt, washed his little feet, and dried them with a towel.

By this time, the clerk had returned with the socks. Placing a pair upon the boy’s feet, she purchased him a pair of shoes. She tied up the remaining pairs of socks and gave them to him. She patted him on the head and said, “No doubt, my little fellow, you feel more comfortable now?”

As she turned to go, the astonished lad caught her by the hand, and looking up in her face, with tears in his eyes, answered the question with these words: “Are you God’s wife?” (Author unknown. A story told in mirthandmotivation.com).

One Foot in Front of the Other

So many times, we tend to ignore what is right before us. Especially now when we have just gone through a devastating change in our lives, our problems seem insurmountable and we see nothing else in our path. Each day is difficult. Each hour is excruciating. Each minute is painful.  

These types of feelings are natural and expected especially when our circumstances are brand new to us and it hasn’t been long at all since we became single-again women (divorced, widowed, single mom). At this point, don’t let anyone tell you not to feel the sorrow and distress. There is a certain period where we all go through the stages of grief.

Eventually at some point, we will turn a corner and begin to feel better with each passing day as we put one foot in front of the other. This is when our eyes open a little wider and we can lift our heads. We might even surprise ourselves simply by smiling—at ourselves and others too.

Now is the opportunity to figure out what to do with our lives. How to live differently because, obviously, we are different. Unfortunately, many women try and continue to make everything remain exactly as it was hoping their old life will just reappear in a better light. This is usually an unbelievably bad idea that holds us back from growing and spreading our wings!           

Be a Friend. Gain a Friend.

“Life is 10% what happens and 90% of how you react to it.” (Charles Swindoll, pastor, and author).

Just like the “wise” woman in the (likely fictional) story above, we might try and not dwell on ourselves so much that we forget what is happening in the lives of other people. Of course, the story does not indicate if the woman was single or not, but it seems to us that she was at the very least, generous, kind, and unselfish.    

One of the changes we may have already experienced as a single-again woman is that our circle of “friends” seems to have evolved into several new relationships. We find ourselves gravitating towards other women going through the same scenario. That’s a great sign!

Why? Because we are learning how to spread our wings and have become interested in finding out how others have successfully changed their lives for the better. We are “hanging out” with those who can provide insight, intuition, and intelligence about something we know little about.

Arms Wide Open

The greatest insight we can acquire is to recognize that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us above and beyond what we can imagine. He is unlike any earthly father we have ever known.

God knows us inside and out and cares deeply what we have experienced and what happened to us before and after the change in our marital status. He is waiting for each of us to turn to Him with all our sorrows, grief, heartache, and pain. His arms are wide open! Call out to Him. Run to Him now!                 

“The seeds of good deeds become a tree of life; a wise person wins friends” (Proverbs 11:30 NLT).

 

9 Ways to Make All Wrongs Right

Hate is never the answer to hate. History has proven this truth over and over. Yet there are those who still allow extreme, out-of-control emotions to fill themselves with hostility leading to violent attacks and aggression toward others. And, yes, sadly, loss of someone's life is almost always a part of it.     

“On a day like today, there are many directions we can go in our prayer...We can be in sorrow, in anger even...including anger at God for letting something like this happen." Instead, El Paso Rev Mike Lewis urged them [funeral attendees] to "have faith and to love one another, especially those who are hard to love.” (www.latimes.com)

Making Good Decisions Better

Let's be clear, though, and not get the wrong idea. In no way does God ever cause the hatred that can destroy others. Only pure evil lashing out with arms of fire can cause such violence.

“Scripture shows that God did not create evil and does not promote it; rather, it describes God’s actions in combating it. God limits the impact of evil, warns us of the dangers of evil, acts to stop the spread of evil, gives us an escape from evil, and will eventually defeat evil forever." [gotquestions.org] 

Something many people do not understand is the free will God willingly gives each one of us. He gave us that gift of free will because he loves us and wants us to make good decisions that will benefit our lives and those we love and that he cares about (which is everyone he has created). Never would God want us to use free will as part of a plan to kill others! 

Choices, Challenges, and Changes

How about our own choices and decisions since we became single-again women? It's understandable our own emotions were running high while dealing with all the challenges required to get to a better place in our lives. The shift in marital status alone may have caused a change of living arrangements, school (for both us and/or our children), new friends or a new job, and certainly finances. All stress-caused emotions. It certainly wasn’t easy looking in the mirror each morning at someone we didn’t even recognize. We've all been there in one way or another. We changed. We are still changing. Hopefully for the better.

However, it’s possible we are still not in a good place. Our lives are crawling very slowly, and they are not quite where we want them to be. We haven’t moved out of the anxiety phase and may even be heading towards depression. How many times have we pulled the covers over our heads in the morning? Pretended to exist solely on potato chips, cookies, and ice cream just because we couldn’t find the energy to cook a decent meal? It happens and is quite common but tolerated only to a certain degree. Eventually either we move or some outside force will move us. What we don’t want is watching our lives get buried in the mundane.  

Rather than ignoring all these unhealthy symptoms, it’s time to gain some momentum. We know we cannot change others around us (we’ve tried!), nor can they change us. We are the only ones who can do the changing and isn’t that a good thought? We finally get to create our lives exactly the way we want them. Something that may have held us back so far is thinking we need to re-create our old lives and we just don’t know where to begin. Frankly, that is the number one major stumbling block because our old life is gone. It's like trying to fix something without any workable parts. Our new life is here right now! And that is exciting because we are not going to re-create anything—we are going to start fresh.    

Get ready to have some fun! Here are nine ideas or suggestions that will set our feet in motion. Try one or all of them:

Choices – 

Adopt that new pet we’ve always wanted

Join a club (i.e., health, art, book) and make new friends

Pick a non-profit organization and volunteer

Challenges – 

Turn a hobby into a new business

Take a class in computer graphics, French, or cooking

Write a book (memoir, children’s, etc)

Changes – 

Move to a new neighborhood or state

Get a new hairdo, including color

Adopt a new nutrition plan and get healthier

It’s Simple: Love God and Love Others

Are we the one who can help lessen the impact of evil? Sounds difficult, but God obviously gave us the freedom of choice and gifts/talents to use. If we can find just one little way to show love to a neighbor or a stranger in need, it’s a start. We can decide to do our part. Will we?

“God has provided the one and only means to make all wrongs right.” Part of that plan is to accept Him as Lord and Savior and then help another to do the same before it's too late. “One day, God’s plan to defeat and destroy evil [sin] will be fully complete.” [gotquestions.org]

"The world's sin is unbelief in me" (John 16:9 NLT).

 

How is that Working for You?

Ever find yourself daydreaming and playing around on the internet rather than getting busy with the project right in front of you that needs completing today? It happens! We’ve all been there. And it is so easy these days to just wander off on some tangent! It seems the world has made “irrelevant searching” its business to distract us.

We can get very busy rearranging the closet and lose track of time when all we did in the first place was go there to find a handbag to match our outfit. The bookshelf in our office calls out to us to dust and organize the books as we are trying to get a report done. Getting up from our desk chair to stretch our legs leads us to the mailbox and we get involved in replying to a silly request of some sort. It’s maddening!

Thinking About How Life Works

We can try implementing a few new tools to help create better and effective habits. If we give it a chance, it’s a way to get the most important things done in our day without stressing. And wouldn’t that be refreshing? Whether we work from home (while some of us are also taking care of our children), or we work outside the home, we all need to develop a better routine that works for us.

As single-again women (and this includes divorced, widowed, and single moms), all the hours in the day belong to us versus sharing the load with a marriage partner. So, we must decide how to use our time the best way possible. And, yes, it can be done! The clue is realizing and accepting that arranging our day may be quite different than we have ever experienced. 

In the past, we have tried changing things and it hasn’t worked, so we gave up. Who can relate? Any hands raised? Sure, but, we were simply missing the last scrap of the 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle! The “picture” of our lives is different now and our methods of finding our way through our own labyrinth could benefit from a new “map.”

Five Tips to Begin a Change

Request. Nothing works better for starting our day than spending Quiet Time with God and requesting His help for the day’s moments. He knows our needs.

Scone anyone?

Comfort. Incorporate into your day a comfortable starting point. For some of us it’s a fresh cup of coffee. Or it could be a chocolate chip scone to go with our cup of tea. Soft, quiet music (especially classical) activates our brains to be creative. Really, it’s proven. Whatever puts us into a great mood, use it!

Design. Have a plan (that you wrote out the night before) for what you want to accomplish that day. That’s one main plan or at the most, two projects. Don’t try to reinvent the world all at once. Even God took six days to create the world!

  

Break. And then God rested on the seventh day! Once a week get in the habit of leaving the house to do something fun and enjoyable. It will refresh your mind and body; adding something physical to it, like hiking, biking, walking, etc., is an additional boost.

Repeat. End the day by repeating a prayer. It’s the time to thank God for a productive day and for giving us the strength and energy to find that missing puzzle piece!

Your Own Truth

Only you know your own life circumstances. So, we encourage you to experiment and add what works perfectly for you. The idea is to enjoy what time, talent and resources God has given you to make each day count! We can do this!

“I will answer them before they even call to me. While they are still talking about their needs, I will go ahead and answer their prayers!” Isaiah 65:24 NLT.

  

Are Your Hopes and Dreams Different Now?

Gray Hare (hair)

It’s certainly not surprising to hear nearly eighty percent of women dye their hair something other than their natural color (Clairol 2008 study as reported at Emerita.com, a women’s wellness site). And, of course, women in Hollywood tend to lead the trends. Can we even remember what actress Diane Keaton (74) looked like before her beautiful gray locks? Or actress Jamie Lee Curtis (61) who sported an “icy white” shade at the 2019 Golden Globes? Country singer Emmylou Harris (72) has looked great in white for more than eight years. Singer and actress Rita Moreno is ninety years old and still looks better in light gray!

As we age, our health, and our looks start turning towards a more natural way of life. It becomes apparent to us that maybe, just maybe, we can avoid much of what we thought was necessary for our younger years such as the latest lipstick color (but still a great way to uplift our spirits!), foundation formula, and hair color. It just doesn’t seem as important as it once was.

This is not to say we shouldn’t keep ourselves looking our very best. Not only watching our diet and participating in exercise but once we choose to turn a shade of gray, we may need to find other colors to wear in our make-up and clothing. Gray, silver, and white tend to “wash out” skin color. A brighter, color-coded clothes closet with various “happy” hues can help solve this problem. Try it out on the next shopping trip and bring some new colors into the dressing room—a fun experiment!

Wise Beyond Our Years

Someone once said (it’s been attributed to many people), “The older I get, the wiser my parents get!” It’s a funny quote that pops up every now and then but points out the truth of our circumstances. As single-again women, we have been through more than we thought we could ever handle. Maybe one reason for our natural locks turning a beautiful silver, but also a reason we are much stronger today than ever!

The joy of being on our own are the changes that cause us to become an entirely new person. We are older, yes. We are wiser, yes. And unless we have re-married, we no longer must worry about taking care of another person right now. We can concentrate on how to become a whole and a better person. A woman who welcomes the chance to improve her perspective or attitude about life.

Graying Our Words

The progress we are looking for involves learning how to form plans for our own happiness while at the same time being careful not to follow just any unproven recipe or a supposed solution someone may offer to us. As stated earlier, we are now wiser than we’ve ever been and so we must use our good sense and take everything “with a grain of different.”

It may help to meet with a life coach or counselor to figure out the best direction to go before jumping into things. Experience teaches us that our lives are quite different now and so might our paths, hopes, and dreams. It’s an exciting journey to find out what we can do. Whatever didn’t work in the past, may not work in our present. So, let’s be open to new and wonderful ways of thinking, concepts, and passions. Wow! We are on our way!

A Good Book to Read

We may never have realized that God Himself points us down the correct path for our best life. And it will certainly be different for each one of us. In Psalm 139 of the Bible, it says He knows everything about us. Because God created us perfectly, He knows when we travel, stand up, sit down, rest, what we are going to say, and even our thoughts.

From the time we are born until our hair turns white, God has us in His hands ready to make sure we are blessed when we follow Him in all we do. He is our Guide and Helper and every single moment of our lives is recorded in His divine book! Imagine that: The Book of __ (enter your name) ___.

            

“I will be your God throughout your lifetime—until your hair is white with age. I made you, and I will care for you. I will carry you along and save you” (Isaiah 46:4 NLT).