I found this on the web, and am not sure who the author is - but I thank that person for the message. However you define your God or the connection to spirit, this poem clearly describes our responsibility for healing our fears, bumps or bruises and challenges. We may feel angry for the trials and tribulation that occur in our lives, and all of us have them. It is often hard to understand why some things happen to good people or why certain patterns keep repeating themselves in our lives. Whether or not you agree with the thoughts of this poem, I.M. Heart asks you to live your life connecting to your feelings to heal the fear and to grow in love for yourself and others. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the Serenity
to Accept the things I cannot change
the Courage to change the things I can
and the Wisdom to know the difference. Read the rest of this entry »

To me, watching others - especially people we love - is a fascinating experience. I had such an experience last week. A relative of mine had surgery on Wednesday. Surgery is surgery, but this was a non-invasive procedure requiring an overnight hospital stay and a 4- day recovery period. The person having this surgery put it off for months, enduring tremendous pain despite the option to ease the situation. Read the rest of this entry »

As a child of about 10, I remember listening to the noisy mocking bird in the middle of the night as I lay in my bed on the second floor of my parent’s house on the farm. All was still except for that bird, the crickets and other night sounds of a warm summer night. It was a night to ponder and I remember thinking about all the parts of my life - my family, my friends, life on the farm, my school, my church, the community, and the 4-H Club. It felt like there should somehow be more in this thing called living. I wondered, “Is this all there is?” Read the rest of this entry »

Miss Molly moved into her new house a week ago last Friday. It has been a very busy, eventful and fun experience for her. There have been lots of new places to investigate and of course she had been my number one helper. With the opening of every new door, she has had a whole new world to explore - and several times has been closed in a closet or in a cabinet. Of course her scratching has alerted me to her incarceration. She has come out with an undisturbed air and looked for the next adventure. Read the rest of this entry »

This experience with moving has been a test in trusting the flow of a situation. By flow, I mean that situations unfold in certain ways and sometimes what you expect to happen does not work in the way anticipated. You can make plans, schedules and set goals for completing a task, but how events actually unfold may be very different than expected. Did you ever have a day when all the things you planned didn’t work out as you thought they would? Tomorrow or the next day, everything fell into place. Did you ever plan the order of your work only to discover that you have to change that plan? When things don’t work as you think they should it feels like you are trying to paddle upstream against the current and no matter how hard you try - it doesn’t get any easier. That is the time to drift downstream with the current, and paddle the other direction when it is easier. Read the rest of this entry »

We humans are funny! Sometimes we can’t see “the forest for the trees” We become so accustomed to seeing a place or situation through our window of “how something works or how it is” that we can’t see a new possibility. Read the rest of this entry »

Change can feel strange - even when it’s a change you want and welcome! On July 1st I closed on a new home. It is in a city where I want to live, in a nice neighborhood, and close to my job and friends. The house is a perfect size for me. It has a yard that is not so big, but gives me plenty of dirt to dig in and plant. And yet, after the closing as I went back to the house I was numb, excited, grateful and scared. It was the weirdest combination of feelings I’ve felt for some time. I had wanted this change for many years. I should have been jumping up and down with pure joy - right? Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve worked for the last three weekends distributing a survey at some summertime festivals. At one there were 50,000 people and the others had about 1,000. It was fun to be a crowd watcher. Every shape, size, color, and attitude passed in front of me. I wondered about their lives as they meandered through the booths, attended events and listened to the concerts. As I observed the body language and interacted with this sea of humanity it occurred to me that we are all more alike than different. I played the “wonder” game as the crowd passed by. The wonder game goes like this: wonder how happy that person is, wonder if they feel good about themselves, wonder if they have friends and family to support them, etc. etc. Read the rest of this entry »

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” Maya Angelou

This quote by Maya Angelou has many meanings and applications. For I.M. Heart, the application is personal. All of us have a unique and individual history filled with both pain and pleasure. We cannot unlive it because those experiences are in the past. We cannot change them now. However, we can face the residual bumps and bruises with courage, so that we do not relive them over and over again in the future. Read the rest of this entry »