The holiday has passed with more of a whimper than a great deal of joy.My husband and are watching family members go down to these economic troubles.Actually if I’m honest, it began when this family member had a terrible accident that robbed him of any ability to work even a part time job at the age of 32.
How does a person help when you yourself on the edge?You give, and give, and give again…but mostly you listen and hug and pray.And if I’m honest it is happening all around us here in Michigan.Silently, lives are slipping away into poverty and it’s happening to all age groups.My own church is talking about helping with mortgage payments, but how long can we and others help as many as really needs help?
The winter began here with a bang! We got nine inches of snow in less that 12 hours and are hovering around freezing so the snow is still here. I took some pictures of the interesting first snow fall of the winter of 2008/2009.
Here in West Michigan we usually don't get this kind of snowfall until late December or early January so this is really something. The ground's not frozen, but with constant temperatures holding in the low 30s it is definitely here to stay for a while.
Even the birds were finding it hard to find food in our feeders!
The side yard snows collapsed the strawberry garden's cage.
The grill was hard to uncover to cook dinner, and of course all of us felt like curling up in a little ball...
but then we would all have ended up like this snow covered small bush I'm afraid!
We finally had to break out the warmth with our new warming toy, an oil space heater! Isn't winter lovely?
This may seem like a totally odd question to ask in this day of lost jobs and little money - you probably would answer, "I don't have time! I'm too busy trying to make ends meet!" But I've begun to understand that taking care of the family means that I have to take care for myself as well. I have had to consider what might have happened if I wasn't here and realize that taking care of my family means I have to take care of myself.
I went to the doctor's office and had to wait to get in to see the doctor - nothing unusual there. The waiting rooms always seem to have really old magazines and I sighed as I picked up one to thumb through probably the 40th time. The well worn magazine was way too familiar, that is until I stumbled on and article in the "Healthy You," section. The topic was rest, and I thought who has time to rest these days! Yawning is a major part of our daily lives, right? Well, as I read on in the rather short article one quote really struck me and forced me to focus on how important it is to take time daily to step back and let your mind and body get those moments of rest that are so needed.
"Rest is remembering to exhale and recognizing that taking care of everyone includes me too." In the article author Kathleen Parish pointed out that we need to take time time every hour, day week, month, and year to be able to refresh our minds and bodies. It doesn't have to be an hour in length, sometimes only a few minutes can be that refreshing release that makes the rest of the day possible. Two minutes of turning away from that computer, or a few minutes curled up in bed with your eyes closed and really relaxing can send you back to the world ready to take on your world.
Stress kills. It holds a person captive and can be a painful way to exist...yes, I said exist because you're not living if you're jumping from one stressful situation to another without a break to digest what's happened.
Look out a window, take a walk around the office or better yet outside for those 15 minutes of break time every day. How about lunching in your car with the radio on a station that sooths your soul??! Any little time of quiet can be refreshing. I need to take more time, it can make for a more productive work day for me and a more peaceful one as well because I don't feel quite so boxed. It can be these energizing mini-vacations that give you that peaceful center to the everyday turmoil that is life today in these United States.
The little item that bothered the political pundits back when JFK was running for president is beginning to surface with the election of Barack Obama. What exactly do I mean? Simply this, a priest in South Carolina has told all in his congregation who voted for Mr. Obama that they should refrain from Holy Communion because, "the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil." He stated that, "in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote." This is an attempt to control the vote along the lines of what the church feels they have the right to do. It hearkens back to the Middle Ages and the way the church used threats of eternal damnation to control both the nobility and the peasants.
This kind of use of power makes me sick, but it is not exclusively the problem for the church, these days. What happened to voting your own conscience freely? This is an act where the parish priest seems to be using threats to get people to give up a basic right - the right to vote according their own principles and instead end up as a puppet for other's interpretation of faith.
Check out the article for yourself at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081114/ap_on_re_us/obama_catholics;_ylt=AgR52po3fKDvgZ9WukhNz5Ss0NUE.
