How Can You Keep Up with Your Hopes and Dreams?

It is certainly not surprising to hear nearly seventy-five percent of American women dye their hair something other than their natural color as compared to just seven percent in 1950 (Clairol 2008 study as reported at Emerita.com, a women’s wellness site). Of course, women in Hollywood tend to lead the trends. We usually expect to see women such as Helen Mirren (age 75) and Blythe Danner (77) display their beautiful locks in their natural state. But even younger ones choose to sport a change like Kate Winslet (46) and Lady Gaga (34). And at 89 years young, Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno is still gorgeous! 

Let’s face it --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 does not seem as important as it once was.

This is not to say we should not keep ourselves looking our absolute 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!

Finding Joy Every Step of the Way

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 living 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. If we want to become an all-around better person, we can choose to concentrate on keeping up with our hopes and dreams that were put on a shelf a long time ago! We then start seeing a woman who welcomes the chance to improve her perspective or attitude about life.

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. 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. Of course, He does because God created us perfectly (He does not make mistakes), 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 way past when 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, Helper, and the Author of every single moment of our lives as recorded in His divine book! Imagine that: 

The Book of ___ (enter your name) ___by The Creator of the Universe.

“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).

 

Do You Feel Out of Control?

Never stop learning

When we are children, our brains are like sponges! We soak up all the information we can get as fast as we can. In fact, it is known that ninety percent of our brain growth occurs by the age of five! Wow! [www.firstthingsfirst.org]

Therefore, it is so important to teach our young children and expose them to as much educational material and experiences as we can. It’s exceedingly difficult to spend a lot of time and attention on our kids when we are single-again parents. We all know this but if what we are teaching is presented in a fun and enjoyable way, our child will absorb and retain the lesson almost immediately for life. And so, we read bedtime stories, we play games with them, we apply numbers and the alphabet into their daily lives, we listen to them and so much more.

Prejudice by Instruction

The lessons we teach our children/grandchildren also include how to handle emotions that will carry them throughout their lives. It’s what we grow up with and in many cases, what kind of people we become. Feelings like happiness and joyfulness, kindness, warmth, friendliness, gratitude, patience, and, of course, love and on and on are created by our circumstances and relationships with others.

Unfortunately, these same situations can and do create unwanted feelings such as intenseness, judgements, prejudice, misunderstandings, not “seeing” the other person, and violence to name but a few. It’s a known fact that “young children learn about prejudice by instruction, and older children by experience.” [www.sciencedaily.com]

They go on to say, “Research has shown that between ages 3 and 6, children learn about and begin to apply stereotypes and can recognize overt discrimination…But between 6 and 10 years old, they become aware of other people's stereotypes, able to perceive subtle discrimination by age 10. We need to help create situations and environments that foster positive experiences among children from all backgrounds."

Is Change Possible?

Learn how to love!

What we have seen in our nation over the last two weeks is certainly appalling. No one wants to see or experience such horror again. The subject is deeper than we can cover or explain here, and we certainly are not the experts. Let us just say that if we want to see change—if we want our children to learn better--we must realize and accept there have been rights and wrongs on both sides of the protest line and begin there. We only need to read the history books to know discrimination, prejudice, and hatred have been in existence since time began. BUT, so have kindness, goodness, joy, and love! May we not allow this nightmare to continue. ALL people deserve a chance. We can do better! We can learn better!

Who Has the Last Word?

It seems as long as we can remember, when situations in our lives get out of control and we know nothing else to do, we turn around and blame the God of the Universe for everything that’s wrong in the world. It’s pretty common, but it’s about as incorrect as we can get.

There are two truths to consider: first, the God of the Universe is also the God of Creation. Nothing exists without Him. After He breathed life into the world, (heavens, earth, light (day), darkness (night), water, sky, land, seas, vegetation, stars, sea and land animals, and human beings) He had a wonderful plan.

Because God loved people, He created a real place for them called the Garden of Eden. It was His perfect and wonderful environment filled with all good things. This is how God wanted the world to exist forever…the perfect gift…with no room for anger or violent struggles.

The second truth for us to know is that human beings (mainly Adam and Eve) quite frankly, messed everything up. They disobeyed God and sinned against Him. The Garden of Eden was no longer the perfect place. They had children, Cain and Abel, who also sinned. And on and on and on…

Humans were out of control. God was not. We cannot blame our problems and actions on Him. Why? Because He is the God of Love. That’s all He wants for us. Love. He’s our perfect example. We have misplaced the blame.

Let’s turn around and try harder. It will be worth it.

“So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11 NLT).

“Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13 NLT).

[We challenge you to read all 13 verses of 1 Corinthians 13].