Monthly Archives: October 2014

challanges, Gratitude

Wanting to give up

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A very long blog about wanting to quit….

This blog is supposed to be 95% gratitude, 5% life stuff. The last log I put in was all about accountability and not giving up. So guess what the last 2 weeks have been? REASONS to give up. It seems that is normal though. You make a commitment to something to follow through and run the race, finish strong, and accomplish a goal and what happens? Obstacles, barriers and other delightful fun items life throws at us to challenge our resolve. What did I call it? Determination?
i never finish

Whatever…. Today I have no determination. Today I want to ball up and cry and just not do work this hard anymore because it is hard and I hurt and worse yet I might let someone down. Didn’t I talk about this already? There is a good side to that, accountability, and a bad side, self-doubt and believe it or not self-worship. In reality if I am beating myself up over letting someone down, that is more about me than it is about them.

So what is this blog about? Self-absorbed criticism or could it be something else? Could it be a way to ‘talk’ through back to gratitude? I have a great friend who is as close as a sister and she started praying lately for those who persecute her. Worse yet she began thanking God for the experiences.

prayer

There are bible verses about this. Jesus actually said pray for those who persecute you. There is also a country song, ‘I prayed for you’ by Jaron. These two approaches do NOT line up by the way. One is I pray for you to ‘get what is coming to you’ and one is I pray that God shows you the same mercy he has shown me. He also said we should be thankful for everything because God uses everything for our good and his purposes.

Not let’s get to reality here, no one is intentionally persecuting me. That hasn’t happened much sense Jr high/high school. Yes I got bullied, A LOT by the way. However there are most definitely things in my life that are extremely difficult right now. Why does it often feel that things work out really well and positively for some people, where as I have to work extra hard for just the bare minimum. Of course is that the truth or is it more of a focus problem?

The other item, being thankful for the horrible awful things that happen? Seriously? Why would any sane person do that? Isn’t that what we really challenge God with? If you loved me God you wouldn’t let this happen. Life would be full of blessings not pain, people would be kind and no one would get horrible diseases or disorders that ruin everyone’s lives. Why would I be thankful for anything that is terrible?

hidden battles

None of these justifications to not do what Jesus asks us to do are probably the whole truth. Almost everyone who has much of anything, which I know of, works really hard to get there. What I am seeing is their end product, not their beginning. Also in reality horrible awful things in the world are mostly a result of horrible awful choices people make.

This blog, this is part of my new beginning. Am I willing to pray for and even bless the situations of my life that I don’t like or people that I don’t like? Am I really willing and able to count my blessings for a whole year? No, actually make that 2 years right?

My youngest son, who has a real reasons for giving up in his life by the way, has been very tired and frustrated as well lately. Last night as he was getting ready for bed he was telling Scott and I that he might be pretty frustrated today because of several different things. Of course being 18 the things that are frustrating him seem trivial in our adult perspective, but they were significant in his. (this would have to be a whole other blog – perspective) I advised my son ‘Westin when you are standing at work washing dishes or at school and thinking about these things that are not fun, make your mind remember all the great awesome gifts you have been given in life and focus on those instead. When you do that it chases away the frustrations you face, or at least makes them more bearable.”

This morning as I face one of the issues that has been dragging out over the last few weeks and put an enormous amount of stress on my life (another blog – weight you should carry and weight you should loose) I need to take my own advice and remember everything I have listed in the blog.

road blocks or building blocks

1) BE GRATEFUL: What I told Westin and the reason behind starting this blog, counting my blessings that I have had in my 49 years of life. I have next to my computer the 5 steps I am to take to start each and every day, the first is write/share 3 statements of gratitude. To be honest some days I am better at this than others, and lately, of course I have been horrible. All I have focused on are the things that have gone wrong and how for other people all this seems so easy. The truth is, I don’t see in their homes at night when they cry to their spouses, or pray frustrated prayers or go through sleepless nights. All I get to see is the end result or that which they let me see. Truth is most of the time we don’t let people see the struggle in the journey, we share the victory moments not the battles. Or maybe that is all we choose to see – outside of reality TV- still isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t that the epitome of gratefulness, remembering and focusing on the victory, on the blessings, on the beauty? If our focus is on the battle, not the win, do we not set ourselves up to loose, to give up and quit? We run the race to win, to finish to rejoice! We don’t run to fall down and never get up again. So let me then change my focus and remember why I have started the journey and all the blessings that have come my way, into my family and my faith because of it. Practice what I preach and focus on the blessings.

2) PRAY FOR THOSE WHO PURSECUTE YOU: Well then, how in the world to do this one? Well I start by asking the Lord to help me do it and to help me do it with a right heart and mind. Not something I can do on my own, it just is not. This is a Jesus prayer, and I am NOT very Jesus sometimes. That being said (another blog – a heart like his -) I have seen this in action, in my life and in the lives of people I love. This is a lot about forgiveness and faith. When we truly pray for those who are the source of our struggle, or at least those we see as the source of our struggle, so many things happen. We see them differently, they change from being a problem and a hang up to being a place of forgiveness and personal healing. Even if they never change we do and the power they had over us fades away.

3) IN EVERYTHING GIVE THANKS. Being thankful even in the horrible things brings us to a place of where we can see eternity and God at work behind the scenes in miraculous ways. I have seen this in my life in crazy powerful ways! I know in reality what it means when God uses EVERYTHING for our good and his glory. My faith has grown in these moments like it never ever could have in times of blessing. It is the struggle and the battle that makes the victory! It is the race that wins the crown! We don’t grow without pain, we don’t win without a fight we don’t know miracles unless what we go through is bigger and more awful than anything we have seen before! It is the storm that makes the blessings real! I never seem to really learn a lesson unless the process has cost me something. Without fail the cost was something that needed to be removed to be blessed anyway.

4) THE END RESULT: So here I am at the end of the long blog about wanting to quit and I don’t want to quit. Instead I want to run! I am moving now from this page and writing out this blog/prayer and going instead to meet with my God and count my blessings, pray for the people and thank him for the battle and all that he is teaching me in it. This is the point of blogging for Teresa M Cleveland. An online journal about a journey/race that is meant to be won.

Teresa M Cleveland
Traveler.
Up hill battles

challanges, Dreams, Goals

Accountablity

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quitting

My husband told me once some years ago, this is not a direct quote, that I quit everything I start. It was not a wholly true statement, neither was it wholly un-true. The thing is; what he said has stuck. What we say to one another sticks doesn’t it? He was right, I did not finish college, I had my reasons but they were not really the best reasons. I had started a career that was a horrible fit and I quit. I had several different jobs and lots of un-done projects. Still have lots of un-done projects by the way. That should be on my goals list as well, just not this one. This not a statement that should be true about me any more, I don’t want it to be.

Sometimes quitting is a good thing. Quitting smoking, quitting drinking, quitting a job that is totally wrong to pursue one that is totally right. Those are not quitting times though, those are starting times. Starting the new things that are better, healthier, give you strength, set you on the right path. So though my husband was right, he was also wrong. Sometimes I quit the wrong to start the right.

There have also been some things that I committed to completely that I followed through with convention and confidence even in the face of criticism and opposition. Those things, quitting was never an option, and barely even a consideration. Determination, conviction and commitment were key to the follow through.

commitment

So to start a journey and then complete it I personally have to have a conviction. Not a sense that I am right or should do this but a soul level purpose to what I am doing. When I have that, the commitment is a result of the conviction, but it is determination that pulls me through the obstacles. Each of these I have come to realize are birthed in Hope for me.

Hope is a product of faith. “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Heb.11:1 This is probably one of my favorite verses in my whole life. Hope dreams of another side to something and faith believes it is there.

Faith means I commit to this journey blog with conviction. Trusting it is something that I am doing with purpose. I will complete it with a determination borne of the hope that something GOD will come of it. It doesn’t have to be anything more than a deepening of my relationship with Jesus. That is actually enough.
hope9-593x348

I should end this one right here but I have to get to the accountability part. You see one of the things I have learned about myself over the years is I must have accountability to follow through and grow. When I share with someone things I need to do or want to do and then I am far more likely to actually do them than if I do not do this. We are all that way, still there is a big part of me that does not want to disappoint people or let them down. It is easier to let myself down than someone else.

All kinds of psychology behind this we can all analyse in depth I am sure, but for today, how about we just acknowledge it. Lets put it to use working for us (me) instead of working against us (me). (My English teachers would NOT be proud of the switch from first to 3rd person.) I want to put to use the fact that if I commit to somethings in this blog and then give progress updates, I might actually accomplish somethings I have truly been wanting to do for a long time now.

One of my bucket list goals is to run 6 – 5K’s in one year and 4 – 10K’s and then a half marathon by the summer after I turn 50. I have a bigger goal in mind for a bit down the line (summer after 55) but I am not fully pre-pared to share that one yet. Bottom line is I have about 20 months to build up to this half marathon. race lines

First step in this commitment to myself is I have to get into shape, I am after all counting up to 50, I would like these to be healthy and quality years. So I joined a gym 5 months ago, hired a trainer 2 months ago, and have worked out 10 times. Not a roaring start. But I am not quitting!

I am taking it to the next level. I am meeting this week with a clinic that helps put you on a healthy track, working with you and your body to develop good food habits, along with an exercise program to help you get fit. I will post a link here in the future for anyone who would be interested. I am also telling you my tattered journey so that each week as I journal I also post progress reports. I should include a before picture too shouldn’t I? I will do that when I meet with the clinic.

I want to do this with conviction, commitment, determination and actually follow through. I don’t want this blog and this life I have been blessed with be one of the things in my pile of un-done projects. The lives God gives us should never be in a pile of un-done projects. I would like to honor him by ‘running this race to win’ – not the marathon by the way 🙂 – but the commitment to a goal, the conviction that he has a purpose and the determination to follow through with what he has given me to do. Even if it is something as simple as this. I don’t want quitting to be part of my life, beginning yes, but not quitting. After all isn’t the whole point of this blog to learn how to finish the race? I am going to finish the race!

Teresa – a traveler – finish line

A journey Begins, challanges, Dreams, Goals, Gratitude

A journey begun

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Almost a month ago I celebrated my 49th birthday.  Believe it or not I am really excited about this.  Some how or another it seems really wonderful to be looking forward to turning 50.  50 Years is a big deal.  To be alive for half a century, to have seen things change, for good and bad.  To change myself, for good and bad.  To have had the privileged and opportunity to live at all.  This seems like something I should celebrate, not dread.

Celebrate the fact that I am almost half a century old and still feel pretty young, most days anyway.  To look back over my life and know that I have been blessed in more ways than I can count.  To look forward into my life and know I have both much to learn yet and many things yet before me to get to do.  This year is the right time to both reflect and to start.  So that is what I am doing with this blog.

This blog will be for several things – reflections in gratitude and a vision of new goals, dreams and challenges.  I am going to share with you 52 things I am deeply grateful for that I have had bless my life.  Some will be obvious, some maybe silly and some probably hard, because all of life’s blessings are not pretty but that does not make them any less of a gift or reason to be thankful.  Each will be real moments of gratitude for me that my heart longs to share.

I am also going to write about several life goals laid out before me for this year and even the years that follow.  Those that the Lord  allows for me to do and be a part of.  This part will be sharing both the things that are going great on those goals, the success, and the epic failures and down right laziness that is a part of my life.  The reason being all are teachable moments that I know God uses to build and grow the life he has called me to live.

So this will truly be an on line public journal.  I will try to be honest and write from my heart and be as real as I possibly can be.  I don’t want to say just what I think needs to be heard or wants to be heard. Rather I want this to be a conversation I have with my God that if you choose to read and respond to great, if not then really I have the only audience I truly need; Adoni.

The title of this blog, it is a reflection of my life.  Not in a bad way, more the shabby chic kind of way.   All of us have lives that are journeys and most of those are at least some what tattered aren’t they?  But those rusty warn out spots those are the great life stories, the blessings in disguse, the mistakes that tought the best lessons.  And the heart in our gratitude.  I don’t think we can have any idea at all what being thankful really is unless there was loss and trouble and tatters leading up to it.  It is the pain that helps us understand the blessings.  We don’t even know we are blessed until we realize either what we could loose or what we have lost.  Then we also can see what we have been given and what we have yet to acomplish.  And to know there is a journey still up ahead, we are not done, we are not finished we are still walking a path to a really great wonderful life.

So that is my gratitude for the beginning of this journey.  I am so thankful the Lord gave me life; the good, the bad, the lazy, the stupid, the mistakes, the wins, the funny, the sad, the people, the places, the beauty, the old, the new, the seasons, the love, the loss, the dreams, the nightmares, and the adventure of a tattered journey.

Thank you Lord for life, thank you that you make it full!

Teresa – a traveler-cropped-cropped-compass-on-an-old-map-4461-1920x12001.jpg