How to Make the Next Chapter of Our Lives Better

Living in Montana while in high school, there were many school days that were so frigid outdoor temperatures were reported at negative fifty-two degrees! There just was not enough clothing to put on to stay warm. People native to Montana somewhat expect such cold weather.  

But this winter, it seems the news of horrific weather has dropped into Texas of all places. “Snow fell in east Texas, with wind chills reaching minus sixteen degrees Fahrenheit in Dallas. At least parts of all 254 counties in Texas were under either a winter storm watch or a winter storm warning…2.6 million people in Texas were experiencing power blackouts.” [Yuliya Talmazan, NBC News, 2/15/2021]

Not all of us live in such ultra-cold places, however, everyone lives in a state where some kind of extreme weather occurs during the course of a year. If it is not cold, it is heat as in 134 degrees air temperature in Greenland Ranch, CA, more than a century ago (renamed Furnace Creek, rightly so, where the highest recorded ground surface temperature on Earth was recorded at 201 degrees in 1972!). The somewhat “cooler” 128 degrees was recorded in Lake Havasu City, AZ, in 1994. [World Almanac 2021, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.; and National Geographic Concise Atlas of the World, Fourth Edition, 2016].

Our Response Matters

Living a contented life can be challenging if we do not resist complaining all the time. What exactly will frustrate our plans in life is a guessing game. Weather, location, travel, jobs, schools, friends, and sometimes family are all contenders. Annoyances, aggravations, and even anger can cause many of us to want to scream.

For the most part, we cannot effectively influence what other people do, but we can control our response and how we feel. In a world that tends to speed through every twenty-four-hour period rarely stopping for a pause like a Nascar racer trying to break the track record, burnout is usually the result. Many a professional athlete “retires” from his/her sport before reaching the age of 40!

Of course, when we are young (and sometimes reckless or foolish), we wrongly believe (a) we will live forever and (b) no harm will ever slow us down. One of these choices is certainly not ever true and the other choice is, well, perhaps somewhat true if we are fortunate.

Each decade of our lives brings us closer to realizing we are--“oh, my stars” --speeding, just like the racecar driver, to our final performance! We suddenly embrace a great need to accomplish things we never got around to doing. We guess that is where the idea of a “bucket list” first came about in the world (or it could have been the two men who encouraged us in the 2007 movie, The Bucket List).

Sheer Determination

We are not trying to say every woman has missed meeting her goals or is lacking in any sort of professional arena. On the contrary, we undoubtedly notice, rarely do we ever sit down or sit still no matter what season of life we are navigating. It takes a great bit of energy, stamina, and sheer determination to juggle more than one job at a time just to pay the bills, go to night school, or raise a family of four or five by ourselves.

These types of situations may have held us back for the time being, but women are notorious for never giving up! Why else would one of us walk into a college freshman biology class at age twenty-four just to get a degree before age thirty? Or spend an entire day in the college library?

We know that we know that we know it can be done! Most of the heartaches, headaches, and hindrances we already experienced were all part of building a life of endurance and superb character so we could make the next chapter of our lives even better. We have not missed anything. We are right where we are supposed to be today. So, let’s go for it!

Our Plan and Purpose is Waiting

We were created with much love by the one and only true God who created the entire Universe. He knows what we know, and He knows what we do not yet know. This is why He is smiling down on us and is thrilled to see us not giving up because He has a certain plan and purpose for us that we have not achieved.

We can surely talk to Him daily and let Him know how grateful we are that He is our caring and loving heavenly Father and our Guide for life.

“As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night” (Genesis 8:22 NLT).

 

Is Your Momentum Operating in Slow Motion?

Searching for Energy

Now that we’ve (barely) made it through another year, we might hear others say, "I just don't have any more energy to _____." Or, oops! maybe that was us! It really is a struggle sometimes to find that perfect balance of liveliness and peacefulness. 

We want to get up and go do things, but how? Of course, it's so much easier to just pull the covers over our heads or plant ourselves on the couch to watch the 17th episode of Grab All the Fattening Snacks!       

Never is it a good idea to sit back and do nothing. Not when we've worked so hard to finally get our lives on track. The struggling and striving to make things work out is behind us; we've done it! So, now is the time to begin a whole new journey with new adventures. Sure, every "new thing" has its challenges, but the horizon is golden, warm and cozy. A little corny? Maybe. But we can create whatever kind of life we want. We have the ability and now the freedom to do it. Now, we need the energy!

What’s Your Energy App?

The first thing we obviously want and need to create is more energy in our lives. One idea would be to go onto the “App Store” in our phones for literally hundreds of app/energy ideas. But that could get real annoying real fast when our phone “pings” several times a day to remind us what we are not doing! Admittedly, we may simply need to practice some new habits of our own choosing. For today, let's have some fun and see how many Fresh Start ideas we can come up with to keep the Momentum going. Ready? Set. Go.

1. Set the alarm on our smartphones to start playing soft music just as the sun is coming up. This “light” stimulation helps train our bodies to start waking up. The cat or dog will probably love this about the new "us" and help us out!

2. Ban the snooze button—it’s our worse enemy! It jerks us in and out of sleep and that will make us more tired than ever, using up valuable energy.

3. Program the coffee pot earlier to start spreading a delicious fragrance our way. It works every time!

4. Get our noggin' going first thing with brain food like berries, avocado, or coconut believe it or not. (No! this is not a recipe. Only eat them altogether if you aren't fully awake and don't know what is happening). Smile!

5. Guzzle some water! No, right now! It gets our organs moving on speed control.

6. Ready? It's time to put on that "Play It Cool" dance music by Monsta X to get the stiff muscles moving (okay, any dance music will work). Anyone can do three minutes of moving, right!

Invigorating Lunch

7. A green/spinach salad with nuts and seeds plus some avocado will supply us with all the protein we need for lunch and will keep us awake for the afternoon-long haul (p.s. no need for a carnivorous-type lunch that will clog our arteries) Smile!

8. Guzzle some water! Did we say that already? Good. This is a repeat.

9. Have a nice dinner with a friend. Talk a lot, it uses up the carbs!

10. Late-night eats only in bite-size pieces or suffer the bloat!

11. Don't hate this one just yet. . . it works! No screens on of any kind one hour before bed. Read. Use an adult coloring book. Do relaxation techniques.

12. Set bedtime and wake-up hours the same every single day. Eight-nine hours, no more, no less. This is the key!

13. Multiple choices: (a) stay up all night texting, so the morning music goes in one ear and out the other (b) keep guzzling water after 8pm and stumble to the potty five times (c) enjoy the amazing amount of energy our bodies are now used to getting.

Are You In?

We've heard the phrase, “Let go and let God.” But that's not what He said. True, the easy thing to do would be to convince ourselves to let God do all the work and give us all the energy we need. Simple, right?  

The right answer is God has a perfect plan and we have a part in that wonderful plan. Listen to these wise words:

“With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground. And don’t hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort” (1 Corinthians 15:58 The Message).

Sure, some days will be way harder than others. It's okay to take a break, but challenging work has its own rewards. So, let’s be strong. We can do this!

“Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame...Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder” (Romans 12:11-12 The Message).

That's Not Who You Are Anymore

Lost bottle in the ocean

It's hard to say what we were thinking about in second grade. Our memory may not be that sharp any longer. But Laura Terry may not soon forget her second-grade science experiment.  

In 2017, Terry and her classmates were studying ocean currents and thought they could test it out by placing messages in bottles, sealing them, and sending them out to sea from their town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Terry never expected anything to happen to her bottle except that it would sink. Nearly two years later, her bottle was found on Doohoma Beach in western Ireland! [Ann Smajstria, Cox Media Group]. 

A grandmother in Ireland walking on the beach found Terry's bottle with a note inside and subsequently wrote to the girl at her school. Out of 70 bottles sent out, five have been found including one in Portugal and three in France. Wow! What an amazing science lesson.

That’s Not Who You Are

In today's culture though, we are nearly buried in electronic message sites like the top five Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and SnapChat to name but a few! Of course, good ole email and texts are still available. A message in a bottle, though, is so much more romantic, wouldn't you say? (Who can forget Kevin Costner, Robin Wright, and Paul Newman in the Message in a Bottle movie?). 

But today's blog is not about the internet. Whew! We are sliding back down out of the clouds and trying to figure out our role as a single-again woman and how we can go about changing our communication methods. Because what worked in our past may not work in our new world anymore.

We've come through one of the worst experiences of our lives. The good news is we've made it to the other side and are still intact. Congratulations! So now what do we do? In some cases, especially if we have young children, we may unavoidably have to face our former spouse and possibly former in-laws every now and then. 

Of course, when that happens, we can rage, scream, and freak out but hopefully, that's not who we are now. Yes, it's been a whirlwind of decisions, decisions, and more decisions heaped on our shoulders. It could make anyone feel like a witch from the movies. So, one more time, let's say it out loud, that's not who we are anymore.

Five Messages to Start Your Plan

Did someone say Relax?

If you are serious about becoming a better communicator, then grab a notebook and take down some ideas (no, you are not going to send it out to sea):

--Breathe. Make it a goal several times each day to deeply inhale/exhale. Amazing how good this feels.

--Relax. Of course, this goes along with breathing. Shoulders down!

--Plan. If you know the upcoming situation, practice what you will say.

--Listen. Ask questions and find out what the other person really wants (hint: address only one subject at a time, not your entire past).

--Speak with confidence. If you have never tried it, think of joining the Toastmasters organization. Nearly every city in the country has a club. 

These are only but a few, so go ahead and research it and then keep adding to your list above. You've got this! 

Never Stop Learning

Have you ever said Someone needs to write a book about this? Well, Someone did. He is God Himself and He knows exactly how you feel past, present, and even your future. Really. The Bible is His book written just for you. Most Bibles today have a section in the back called Index or Concordance. You can look up any number of topics such as “Speech,” “Confidence,” “Change,” and “Listening.” Careful though, you may not be able to put it down!           

"All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right" (2 Timothy 3:16 NLT).

What Gift Would You Give Yourself?

Finding Christmas Gifts

Oh, yes! It's here! Only 22 days until Christmas! Every single year we reach this point on the calendar and ask ourselves, Where in the world did this year go? It's both strangely melancholy and wonderfully exciting for most people. Sure, you may not be the one that is watching those Hallmark Christmas movies on TV because they are sugary sweet, but something about this time of year probably makes you smile if you try and admit it.

Could it be that this is your first year as a single-again woman whether divorced, widowed, or a single mom? If it is, we truly know and understand those feelings of dread. We've been there and no one is saying you should ignore all of that! We are simply here to encourage you to move through this mess and get to the other side in one piece, with peace. Are you in?

Getting Somewhere
Since we are talking about the giving season, how would you answer this question: What gift would you give yourself right now if you could? Is some of your reluctance this month to budge from the couch tied to not knowing what to do with your new life? Now we are getting somewhere! 

Many women when they get married find themselves giving up a goal or dream or wish for a certain kind of life. In fact, it's nearly expected that she sets aside her purpose to become a housewife (or a domestic engineer as some circles describe the role). Yes, it happens, even in this modern century. Now don't start clenching your teeth in indignation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a "family manager" as we prefer to say; it is hard work, indeed. That admirable position is perfectly okay IF that was your personal dream. Only you can address that subject. We just want to know where do we go from here?  

If we are like many girls graduating high school, someone may have asked us at one point, What do you want to be when you grow up? And the majority of us had some kind of an answer. Some go to college to major in a subject that matches their specific goal. Or maybe to a trade school or an on-the-job training program. But what happens when we marry and never pursue that path in our life? 

Capturing Dreams
Now comes the good news! We are on our own now and can actually recapture those long-ago dreams and make them come true. We hear you, but it is NOT too late! Don't let that be an excuse that holds you back. This is our second chance!   

Getting Ready for Christmas

After decorating the house and wrapping all those Christmas presents for everyone we know, the best gift we can give ourselves is dusting off our life's purpose and plan. It hasn't disappeared--it's just dormant. It has always been there in the back of our minds. 

Start imagining how to reactivate that gift(s) to become the real you. It may need an adjustment or "tweaking" after all these years of "cobwebs," but that's the fun part! Begin creating a life around those abilities and talents. You may even have more than one (and we can assure you they are somehow tied to each other to equal one fantastic life!).

Just Imagine
No one ever got anywhere by themselves. We need each other and we need the best Gift Giver of all--God Himself--Who has always been generous to us. He wants us to become the beautiful, accomplished, and joyful woman He created as we discover His purpose and plan for us. Then we will reach the best life we could ever imagine. 

"Do not neglect the spiritual gift you received...Give your complete attention to these matters. Throw yourself into your tasks so that everyone will see your progress" (1 Timothy 4:14, 15 NLT).
      

Promises That Won’t Let You Down

 

Have you ever seen just half of the length of a rainbow arc? You know the kind: it is not very long, but is exceptionally wide with beautiful colors. Scientists tell us the human eye can see seven of these colors, although at times, we may only perceive five. Our eyes can play tricks on us!  

The rainbow reaches high into the sky to meet the clouds after a rain. But this particular, wide rainbow is swallowed up by them and we can not see the entire arc as it was made. It’s as if the Creator wants us to stop and concentrate just on the beginning of such magnificence! Isn’t He amazing?

Should we take a clue, then, and focus our lives on a colorful, new beginning and not worry about the end--our future? It might be much better if we do. We’ve been given so much in our favor to start over. Yes, it may not feel that way right now and it may be very difficult to imagine we will be better off once we get started in the right direction. But, it’s all about choices to live our fullest and best life. It is possible! If we pay attention and listen carefully, God will tell us His plan for our future.   

  

The Promise Maker

We certainly are not strangers to promises made in our lives. We’ve heard our friends, neighbors, family, and especially our former spouses make promises to us. Sometimes, these words are kept in the best way and with the best intentions. That’s a very good feeling.

There are, of course, the times when we haven’t been able to trust a person. They come up with all sorts of excuses time after time why they couldn’t come through for us. Sure, everyone has moments when life gets in the way, and that’s understandable. It’s the repetition that’s hard to take.

We can be absolutely assured of having all promises kept, when we know the faithful God who is the Maker of Promises. He is serious here:

Five Love Notes

• “But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted!” John 15:7 NLT.
• “The Lord will work out his plans for my life--for your faithful love, O Lord, endures forever . . . “ Psalm 138:8 NLT.
• “God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God” Matthew 5:8 NLT.
• “And don’t be concerned about what to eat and what to drink. . .Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and he will give you everything you need” Luke 12:29a, 31 NLT.
• “For he will order his angels to protect you wherever you go. They will hold you up with their hands so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone” Psalm 91:11-12 NLT.

This is only a tiny sampling. There are about 7,000 promises in the Bible. There’s a challenge for us! But remember, there is no “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow. Only His sufficient gift of grace at the beginning. And that’s more than enough for anyone.

“I have placed my rainbow in the clouds. It is the sign of my covenant with you and with all the earth” Genesis 9:13 NLT.