Testimony

Testimony

(for my daughters)

I want to tell you that the world
is still beautiful.
I tell you that despite
children raped on city streets,
shot down in school rooms,
despite the slow poisons seeping
from old and hidden sins
into our air, soil, water,
despite the thinning film
that encloses our aching world.
Despite my own terror and despair.
 
I want you to know that spring
is no small thing, that
the tender grasses curling
like a baby's fine hairs around
your fingers are a recurring
miracle. I want to tell you
that the river rocks shine
like God, that the crisp
voices of the orange and gold
October leaves are laughing at death,
 
I want to remind you to look
beneath the grass, to note
the fragile hieroglyphs
of ant, snail, beetle. I want
you to understand that you
are no more and no less necessary
than the brown recluse, the ruby-
throated hummingbird, the humpback
whale, the profligate mimosa.
I want to say, like Neruda,
that I am waiting for
"a great and common tenderness",
that I still believe
we are capable of attention,
that anyone who notices the world
must want to save it.

~ Rebecca Baggett ~


(Women's Uncommon Prayers)

Learn How Men and Women React Differently to a Break Up and What You Can Do to Heal.

Men have more difficulty handling their emotions than women.  Simply because men have been trained to be more independent so they have developed fewer skills at handling their emotions.  They become emotionally overwhelmed more easily and demonstrate it by shutting off emotionally and withdrawing, going into denial or becoming workaholics.  All of this is a bid to cut themselves off from those overwhelming feelings of hurt and pain. 

In the process, those feelings lie dormant and are actually never healed.  When we don’t heal those feelings, we don’t allow ourselves to fall in love again and we miss out on one of the most rewarding, healing and satisfying experiences in our lives that of falling in love again.

The secret that women use in handling their feelings is that women are able to think and feel at the same time.  As a result, women will express their emotions more.  They are better able to verbalize what they are feeling.  By verbalizing their feelings, they are able to come to a healing resolution more quickly than men.

Men, on the other hand, are either in thinking mode or feeling mode.  When men are in pain from a break up, they go right into feeling mode and become overwhelmed with those feelings resulting in shut down, paralysis, withdraw or angry bitterness.  Men cannot make good decisions for themselves or anyone else under those conditions.

Whether you are a woman or a man, it’s important to acknowledge that you are going through a crisis and be more compassionate and gentle with yourself.  Remove any blame you may be putting on yourself for anything you may have done to contribute to the break up or for trusting or having been vulnerable to your ex.  It’s important to be able to trust and experience vulnerability.  Its part of being in a relationship and it allows us to experience closeness with another. 

For more information on handling your thoughts and feelings, join Dr. Jim's Facebook Page at DrJamesWalton.com.  Click the link to listen to a free sample of Dr. Jim’s Healing A Broken Heart.

You Can Move On From The Hurt of A Break Up…. Here’s How

When we experience a relationship break up, it can be extraordinarily painful, especially if we were the one who was left.  We may be tempted to blame the one who left us for all of our heartache and pain.  We say that they “made” us feel pain by leaving us.  Then, we emotionally beat ourselves up even more.

In reality, we are the only ones who control our thoughts, feelings and emotions.  Whenever we give our power away by allowing others to determine how we feel about ourselves, we increase the pain of our heartache.  When you stop judging yourself, or second guessing what you should have done, your feelings of rejection and self-recrimination will soften.  You can view your ex as having said no to the relationship, but not to you as a person.

All relationships have a beginning, middle and end.  With every hello, there is an implied good bye.  Most relationships are meant to end.  Holding onto them beyond their life span can be very destructive to our own lives and cause us to miss other opportunities that would be more rewarding and possibly more satisfying than the relationship that just ended. 

Don’t follow, spy on, or call the other person.  This only keeps you attached in a very unhealthy way and makes it much more difficult to let go of your hurt and angry feelings.  Resist the urge to try and make your ex understand your hurt feelings or try to get them to see your point of view.  This will only lead to more frustration and feelings of betrayal.  Of course, do not harm yourself in a bid to get them to come back.  Doing so never gets them to come back. 

It helps to throw yourself into an activity or project that you love doing.  While you are doing that activity you love you are processing your painful feelings and this can contribute greatly to the healing of those feelings. 

Keep in mind that relationships are more about personal and emotional growth; happiness is only a byproduct of the experience.   Our conscious minds seek having a good time through a relationship; our unconscious mind is seeking to grow through a relationship.

We ourselves are responsible for our own happiness.  It is our thoughts, and how we choose to interpret them, that affect our feelings about our world and ourselves.  What we think affects how we feel. 

Focusing on negative thoughts or obsessively blaming your ex will keep you mentally and emotionally trapped in the relationship. 

This kind of behavior will only increase the odds of you repeating the same situation with another individual.  Realize that you willingly participated in that relationship with all of its deceptions and mistruths.  Now, you’re participating in the pain of the break up.  You can’t bring your ex back, but you can change the relationship you are now having with the pain.

There are no victims in a consensual relationship, only volunteers.  Blaming yourself or your ex is useless in healing from the pain of a breakup.  There were choices made by both of you that led to the resulting breakup.  You also both made decisions that you thought were best at the time.  

Those choices are now in the past.  Nothing can change that.  However, you may have learned some lessons from your experience and now is the time to look back over those lessons and learn from the mistakes that were made.  Realizing that you have learned something will give meaning to the experience you are going through.  Release yourself and your ex from any blame, and then give yourself permission to move on.

For more free information on handling your thoughts and feelings, log onto www.DrJamesWalton.com  For self-help downloads, log onto www.TheDrWaltonSeries.com

Fear: Wandering in A Desert of The Soul… Here Is a Road Map Out!

Consider the passage in the Bible depicting the liberation of the Jewish slaves from captivity in ancient Egypt in Exodus 12: 35-36. The Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert. Forty years represented a lifetime in the scriptures.  After they had left Egypt and found themselves in the desert, they expressed, “Would that we had died…as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread! But you [Moses] had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!” [Exodus 16:3]

How do we deal with fear? The Roman Senator Cicero stated, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The Book of Numbers contains a fascinating treatment of this spiritual dilemma.

Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food! In punishment the Lord sent among the people seraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died. … Make a seraph and mount it on a pole, and if anyone who has been bitten looks at it, he will recover.” [Numbers 21:5-8]

This ancient text contains within it the answer for overcoming fear.  The story of the seraph serpents was probably not an actual situation that occurred in history, but rather a parable with a metaphor of wisdom for dealing with the unknown and fear.  The people were instructed to look upon the staff with the serpent.  The serpent was the thing that they most feared in the moment.  By looking upon that which they most feared, they were healed of their affliction.  We will all be stricken with fear on life’s journey. It is only when we confront (look upon) what we most fear, that we are healed.

By facing our fears, we are healed from the poison they inject into our lives.  To face our fears, in our world, means to refrain from going into denial.  We accept the situation as it is.  We are then called to take some form of action.  Taking action, any action, no matter how small, will help to absorb some of the anxiety surrounding our fears. 

Pray (meditate) everyday.  Write down three things you are grateful for everyday.  Take one action that directly addresses that fear everyday.

This means facing our personal fears, and by doing so, we are healed and brought out from wandering in that desert of our fears.

For more information on Dr. Jim, log onto www.DrJamesWalton.com