Birthdays

Birthdays, everyone has them.  But we didn't all come by them the same.  Yes technically there are different stories of birth and the like, however I am speaking of our individual histories of birthdays, our own personal experience.

What was your tradition or lack thereof?  Everyone has a built in sense of what a birthday should be like, feel like.  It can be changed later in life, gleaning a different perspective from a spouse or friends.

How were birthdays celebrated for you?  

 

Did your family do something when you woke up?  Were you greeted in the morning with a "Happy Birthday!" or was it saved for later in the evening? Did you get the luxury of having it celebrated all week?  Or did everyone forget all together? 

 

We put-out whatever was put-in initially. 

 

The tradition "put" in me was a greeting right when I woke up.  My mother or father, or even my sisters would say "Good Morning birthday girl!"  in a singing sort of way...you know how that goes, drawn out and sweet.  Sometimes there would be a glitter worded sign or a balloon or two in my room when I woke up.  Never the less it was always first thing in the morning an acknowledgement of my special day.

 

There were years that we had birthday parties, surprise parties, or maybe just dinner with a home made cake.  My experience with birthdays is that they were always special.  There is a down side to birthdays as well.  As children, I believe we can be extra sensitive to things that go wrong on our birthday. 

 

My 13th birthday was a real disappointment, not because my family forgot but because everyone who was invited to my birthday party decided not to attend.  It was supposed to be a surprise.  I was with my best friend Lisa at her house. She and I were going to Circus Circus to celebrate my birthday, a casino here in Vegas that had games for all ages,  but we needed to stop by my house for some "reason or another". My immediate family members greeted us with "surprise!".....Surprise?  Just my family?  My mother had to pull me aside and explain that she had invited my classmates and that not a one of them had showed up.  I felt a bit betrayed to say the least, but we made the best of it, my first-best-friend Lisa and I.

 

As we get older, time becomes scarcer and birthdays sometimes end up just being another day.  Some people don't feel comfortable making a fuss all for themselves and yet others demand it, shout it out from the rooftops!

 

This year I tried something different, I decided to take the day off and be alone on my birthday. I enjoy being alone at home, piddling around in my PJ's leisurely enjoying a cup of coffee.  The weather was perfect and the day went by much too fast and my expectations to accomplish all the things I enjoy doing were of course astronomically high as usual. 

 

The reality of birthdays is that they are special, they should be special.  Many lives would be different if you or I were never born.  I believe we underestimate our impact to our little spherical worlds. 

 

Maybe if we were to make a list of people that we know or have known throughout our lives...wow! now that's a task!  That list would be simple and easy if you're 5 years old! But to make a list at the ages of 20, 30, 40, 50 and so on, it would be long!  I dare you to try and write down all the people who have been in your life, family, friend, acquaintance, classmate, co-worker, service worker, stranger whoever it might be...how long would your list be?

 

It would be long...I know it would be!

 

Because most of us don't live on an island to ourselves, no we make an impact on people near and far much more than we will ever know.

 

My point is, your birthday is a day you should treasure, make a fuss over, make plans and make it special, even if you're the one who has to do it.  Because you deserve to be celebrated EACH and EVERY year.

 

Happy Birthday!

 

 

 

 

 

 

to DO or to BE?

Far be it from me to understand people.  Too too many people in this world and too many different types.  

However, similarities true.  I recently saw the movie "Divergent". Interesting how people were grouped into different types, to maintain control and order.

I am a creative type.  I am also sensitive with a bit of wisdom.  That word wisdom has been bestowed upon me, I did not pick it up and attach it to myself.  

Lately I have been thinking about what people do with their free time.  Most people long for it, and greater still, many people have not a clue what to do with it. I refuse to adhere or succumb to either.

Being a creative, my list of things to do is endless.  I fantasize about having nothing but a life of free time, 24/7 which would require a benefactor obviously.  Humorous fantasy to most, I suppose.

I really try to relate to those who are clueless as to what to do with an open Saturday afternoon, or Tuesday evening per se. I wonder if the world no longer had television what would happen to all the minds out there that were laden with the constant search for things to do to fill their free time, things to do to fill their ....life?

Sometimes I envy that position of an honest search for something to do.  Those people usually participate in things that I would never consider, but should.  After all I have my own bucket full of ideas to sort through.

Maybe those people need a list of possibilities or options.  Maybe I could make them one, or sell one haha!

And what about these people who say they have no free time?  I was one of those people, but thankfully no longer.  Time is precious and with the constant noise and duty and obligation and "yes-ing" this and "sure-I-will" that...who ARE we anymore?

Are we not human "beings"? or human "doings"? Or quite possibly a little bit of both if we have the presence of mind to balance ourselves.

I am starting to come to the conclusion that through "being" which is, allowing ourselves to have free time to stop and think and God forbid...just Stare! Yes, I said it...to do nothing, just sit and stare and think.  Maybe you'd fall asleep...well so be it, you probably needed the rest anyway.  

I honestly have come to the place where I think in order to "do", and do well, we must allow ourselves time to "be".  Just be.

What say you?

151 years ago today.

Today's blog is going to be taken from the Library of Congress
Appendix number 19, Volume 12
of the United States at Large

By The President of The United States of America:

A Proclamation

For a Day of National Humiliation

Fasting and Prayer

Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and Just Government of the Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation:

And whereas, it is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:

And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of the civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People?  We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven.  We have been preserved these many years, in peace and prosperity.  We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.  But we have forgotten God.  We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.  Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!  It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer.  And I do hereby request all the People to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.

All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and restoration of our now divided and suffering country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington this thirtieth day of March, 

in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, 

and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

-Abraham Lincoln

By the President:

WILLIAM H. STEWARD, Secretary of State


( I did type this out and I'm not a great editor so please point out any mis-strikes...thanks!)

Mondays

Mondays,

They have such a bad reputation, but do they need to?  It's funny that we view the start of a New Year as a good thing and yet the start of a new work week is....blahhhh it's Monday :(

I have really been changing my mind on some things lately and this morning before I left for work, I heard myself say out loud, "It's Monday and it's going to be a fantastic Monday, in fact today is going to go by so fast!"  Yes, I am a total dreamer and nerd at heart.  But maybe it's time to also consider the words "Dreamer" and "Nerd" positive words, why not?

Your mind is the one thing you have control over, I realize for some that may not be the case and there are varying circumstances for sure.  However, for the majority of us on planet earth, we are not harnessing the choice we do have with our mind. 

I choose to identify Monday as a good thing, a new week with new possibilities, and I do understand change takes time.  Change is like a baby, it needs constant care, attention and nurturing.  Much like the investment of rearing a human being, it takes work. 

Actually I could use a plethora of examples for Changing your mindset.  There are big changes...which require large investments of time and attention.  These would be things that have been identified in your mind since you can remember.  We start to see these items as part of our identity, such as "well I've always been shy", or "I've always been this way, I have a short temper" etc etc.  But it doesn't have to be that way.

Maybe most of us are just plain lazy or have a lack of belief that change can actually happen.  Permanent change is the hardest to believe for, especially permanent identity change. 

But it's there, your mind, and the capacity for so much more than what "is" or what "has been" or what "has been Foreverrrrrr".  Doesn't matter how long or how deep that identity or habit or characteristic about you has been there....it doesn't have to be. 

Everyday you wake up, the choice is there and your mind is there as well, waiting for you to unleash it's potential.  We are an incredible creation of God, we should stop minimizing our capabilities.
:)

Ruby's Birthday 2014

Good Morning World.

It's a Sunday Morning, and as usual I don't have much time to write.  
I am leaving for church in a few minutes. 

I will have to get used to this sort of Blogging, public blogging.  Usually, I write on "750words.com."  That website is private, for my own viewing and therefore I am used to writing without restraint.  I would suggest that website to anyone who has a surplus of thoughts they need to relieve their minds from.  

I believe there is an actual tie between the brain, emotions and the act of writing.  I read once that the act of using a pen or pencil and writing in long hand, aka cursive is even better.  

It's sad to me to finally have lived long enough to see things go by the wayside, such as cursive.  It makes me wonder what my grandmother saw go by the wayside.  

Today is her birthday, she would have been 97.  She died before her birthday in 2006.  I remember the last time I was with her, she was an in-patient at a rehab center here in Las Vegas.  Rehab centers are never a good place to stay, they are a step down from hospitals..a pretty big step down.  

It was Super bowl Sunday evening and I was at her bedside.  She was incoherent for the most part, and her breathing was labored.  A small and I mean small TV, like 7 inch screen was mounted with a long arm on the wall next to her bed.  I held her hand and prayed and sang while watching football.  She labored her breath in her bed, "asleep".  

I wasn't actually present when she died, but she was the first person whom I was close to that had passed away in my life.  Her role in our family was huge.  She was a pioneer, not in the literal sense but in creating new paths for our family.  

She was a first generation Christian and had influenced much of my family for Christianity.  She was also an oil artist, so creative.  She was doing things in her era that most women didn't do.  She finished high school early, finished college.  She even went on a trip to Europe with a group of artists, leaving her husband and teenage children at home.  It was the early '60's at that time.  She's even in the "who's who" of artists.  She also has a painting hanging in the Australian U.S. embassy.  

What a woman!  The thing I remember the most about my Granny, Ruby Jewel Newsom was her prayers.  That woman could pray, she also had the gift of healing.  She would pray for a person who was sick and they would be healed.  She prayed for my sisters warts on her feet and they were healed.  We would joke about Granny getting "revved-up" or "revving her engine" when she prayed..because as soon as one of us would state a request in front of her ...she immediately started to pray in the spirit.  It was hilarious and we all loved it.  Ever since then we all refer to it as the "Granny Revv".  Funny now that I look at that typed out...she was a Reverend.  I remember seeing an identification card that said "Reverend Ruby Newsom".  She was an ordained minister as well.

If I could be half the things she was, or have half the faith or will that she had.  I am part of her legacy and I am so so very wealthy because of it.  I have so much gratitude for this.  We never choose to whom we are born to, but like my Granny she chose to pave a new path for her descendants, regardless of where she came from, regardless of the lack she was dealt in her life and I'm so so very thankful she had the heart and courage to do so.