Debbie Downer Days

Do you ever wake up a different person? You went to bed all happy and woke up all sad? Who is the person with my body laying in bed all Debbie Down in the Dumps  . .  not wanting to get out and start the day with a zip in her step and a song in her heart? Did the bluebird of happiness fly off in the night to meet up with a nightingale and leave you chirpless?

Here’s a few things you can do . . . 

Call a friend that will tell you that you deserve to be a Little Debbie today because of this and that and get validation for your feelings of lowliness. Once you’ve gotten it out to a sympathetic ear and hear that it’s okay to be you no matter who you are, then call a friend that makes you giggle.

Now you can laugh at yourself with someone and begin to feel pretty good. Life is funny, your friend is funny, you’re funny and the situation you find yourself in will pass.

While you’re talking with this kooky friend you can simultaneously open up a can or a bottle of Coca-cola, pour it over some crunchy ice, and let the fizz give you that cleaning out feeling as it goes down your throat like Draino through a clogged sink, taking with it your woes, freeing up what is making you sluggish. Who cares if it’s eight o’clock in the morning!

Now it’s time to show Debbie who’s boss. Pick out something colorful from your closet. If you don’t have anything but black on black then pick a wildflower from the side of the street as you go to work or take the kids to school and pin it to your shirt. Be real wild and put it in your hair . . .  without the bugs, of course. Decide you’re going to treat yourself to that People Magazine during your lunchtime. Go ahead! Who cares what the person behind you in line is thinking. Buy it and eat something that you normally wouldn’t eat, just for fun, and sit under a tree and have yourself a picnic. Tell Debbie Downer that you’re glad she can understand your woes but that she can take the rest of the day/afternoon/month off. You’ll call her if you need her.

In the meantime the sun is starting to come out . . .  today . . .  not tomorrow . . .  and you can be proud of yourself that you conquered your depression.

One day at a time, darling. Second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour. Life is full of itsy bitsy successes that pile up on each other to make one, big Yes!!

Hang in there. Breathe.

© Nancy 7.15.2010

A Butterfly Kiss From God

Sometimes you just need someone to tell you that everything is going to be okay.

Maybe you were two years old and got a “boo-boo” on your knee from falling down in the driveway.

Maybe your mom kissed it to “make it feel better” and your dad picked you up and told you that you were okay.

It doesn’t change

when you get older.

But if your mom or your dad aren’t around to kiss your hurts to make them better or pick you up, hug you, and tell you everything’s going to be okay . . . 

then what do you do?

Look around.

Maybe you’ll get a butterfly kiss from God  
  like I did yesterday.

I had heard something that was disconcerting and went out into my yard to water the flowers and be peaceful.

And a beautiful, orange and black butterfly landed on my shirt over my heart.

I looked down, then looked up, and said, “Thank You!”

Butterfly kisses from God

make everything better.


© Nancy 7.10.2010

THINK ABOUT IT ...

I went into a store the other day to look at the selection of books on the shelves. What to read . . . what to read.

Actually, I went in to take something back and the person at the register said that I could not be reimbursed but that I would be given store credit. So I walked over to the books and began scanning the titles. Since this store had items regarding the healing arts it contained stones, CD’s for meditation and massage, teas, and such. I just wanted something that I considered ‘normal’. I went to the book section and found all kinds of normal and out-of-this-world literature.

The book that caught my eye was a beautifully bound small one with a powder blue colored jacket, gilded paper edges, a gold ribbon for a bookmark, and the beginning words of a Bible verse on the cover: As A Man Thinketh by James Allen. This verse has to be one of my favorites and it comes from Proverbs 23:7. The first part of the verse reads “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." 

So I picked it up, it felt good in my hands, and I wondered if I had read it back in the 70's when I was reading not only the Bible for the first time but also inspirational books by Dale Carnegie, Zig Ziglar, Napolean Hill, Norman Vincent Peale, etc. I decided that if I had read this book that it would still be a good thing to have, that I really liked the look of it anyway and that I would buy it with my store credit.

I love the smell of new books. It is a smell of pages yet to be turned, words yet to be read, adventures yet to be experienced if only in one’s mind. This “Keepsake Edition”, in its original publication in 1903, did not have a brief biography of James Allen nor his final book entitled Eight Pillars of Prosperity. But it did have words that are powerful and thoughtful. Words which are now repackaged in 2010 and sold in bookstores under different titles and by different authors. There is no new thing or rather thought, may I say, under the sun. There are definitely new things . . .  ipods, Kindles, electronics of every kind. But new thoughts?

I don’t think so.

I have been reading a book about Indians and their plight. The book is written by a man who married an Indian woman and in the story, he incorporates Indian beliefs and sayings. He wrote that this particular tribe calls God ‘the Creator Who Creates By Thinking What will Be’. I would like to add some words to the end of this phrase and say ‘the Creator Who Creates By Thinking What Will Be And Speaks It Into Existence’.

Just look at chapter one in Genesis. 

So I thought to buy this book and said, “Thank you” to the person behind the cash register. Carrying this little blue-bound book in a bag to my car, I began to be excited about opening its golden-edged pages to read what James Allen thought to write about.

Here are some of his thoughts:

“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”

“As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them.”

“As a being of Power, Intelligence, and Love, and the lord of his own thoughts, man holds the key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerative agency by which he may make himself what he wills.”

“The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors; . . . ” “Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.” (Does this sound like a popular book title to you or a new earth law?)

“The outer world of circumstance shapes itself to the inner world of thought . . . ”

“Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results: . . ”

“The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colors which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever moving thoughts.”

There are no new thoughts under the sun. Just new book titles and new authors and a new generation who will read the new books and think they are reading new thoughts.

I don’t think so.

What do you think?

© Nancy 7.5.2010