Powerful Notes

Today I read the second half of a novel that greatly inspired me. About a mother who loses her entire family in Hitler's occupation of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) during the reign of Stalin. It was horribly depressing, and I cried through the whole thing. It was, however, not about tragedy. It was about the nature of love and forgiveness and moving on in the face of the impossible. It made me take a very hard look at myself, things that I've done and ways I've reacted to the things done to me. This author gets more into the mind of women than any I have ever read. Immediately after finishing (literally, I read the last pages in the car on the way) the story I went to Institute, where we talked about the nature of God and ourselves as His children. Needless to say, I had a LOT come to mind. I don't want to turn this into an essay, or elaborate in detail because I feel the true significance would be lost or twisted. But I thought I'd post the notes I took during this institute class, because it's something I want to share. Something very powerful.

'Steel in the blood.' 'The -insert chosen nationality or occupation-in me.' 'Her -insert chosen strong relative-'s relation.' So many sayings that boil down to the same thing. The God in us.


The part that continues to want to live, to create, to endure. The part that CONTINUES.



God is love. Love is all that endures. Love is all that creates. Love is a force in every dimension. Physical, emotional, spiritual. It is everywhere, in everything.

Every action is caused by or fueled with love. It is the origination of everything.

I have seen depravation, horror, death, hate. Lives ruined by every type of sin imaginable. I have not seen nor heard any thing to negate the evidence of God's love and power in all beings, in everything around me.

People are choosing to deny love, to deny and defy God. They deny themselves. They choose to separate themselves from the forgiveness and joy that comes automatically with love. I can not deny myself-my Savior-my love-my God. I am a child of God. God is love. I am love.

We have only to see and feel our own reactions to hate, anger and pain to realize we are made of love. It hurts us and we protect ourselves however we can.

I am sure that God is real and of His love for me through a thousand tiny little things that he shows me each and every day. For the guidance that I recieve, the spirit that I feel, the questions I am asked and what they make me think. I can feel His love in the hug of the two year old girl I nanny, and see it in the eyes of my friend who thinks she is beyond redemption and yet holds onto hope. I see Him in change for the better, in flowers among the thorns, in nature that continues to heal and rebuild-no matter how many times it is destroyed.

The tree of life in the vision is the love of God and the seeds are grown inside of you! You taste it only when it is grown and bearing fruit. When you have become and are able to issue to others the true love of God.

A Venture to Remember

A Venture to Remember

Tonight I went walking in memory lane,
Picking flowers from tree's most reminiscent to me.
First blown in with the scent of fresh fallen rain,
Came visions of growing, which taught my closed eyes to see
Lost dreams and lost passions that time has proved vain,
Which had sprung up behind me in the cracks of the lee
Whose shelter I crawled from, and yet I left fain
To explore the forgotten held in my memory.
For then I saw blossoms of laughter and game
And among glowing branches I danced joyous, happy
To remember their shining moments of flame.
My dancing brought me to the shores of a great black sea
Into which I careened with no thought of pain
Until crashing down on my heart and mind came the key
To rememb'ring why I'd no love of the lane
And why stayed so many years in the safe little lee
Hidden, forgetting, with no venture to diegn
Tempt me from imagined invulnerability.
Yet then I was trapped neath the waves of my bane
And suffered full punishment for the things I let be
That could have been succored with a righteous aim
If only I had listened when called upon to see.
A hand reached to grab me from waves that would maim
And laid me upon sweet smelling florets so softly
That I wept from the sudden absence of pain.
I looked up for the savior passionately
And tears stung my eyes for the unforseen gain
Of a friend I'd forgotten lived here in memory.
His smile angelic, he called out my name
And told me he had always been and always would be
The force I could lean on to keep my soul sane
To keep me from wallowing in my own misery.
He took up my hand and together we came,
Through long meadows of flowers each more precious to me
Home by the trial of my memory lane.