Finally I See

Most times in life we can complicate things and we don’t need to. This theme of #SpeakLife is simply to think about the words you say before you release them.  When you begin to understand that the words you speak have the power to create and bring life or death (Proverbs 18:21), you then should begin to think about the words you say with a higher level of conviction (a strong opinion or belief), responsibility (good judgement and the ability to act correctly and make decisions on your own), and accountability (a situation in which someone is responsible for things that happen and can give a satisfactory reason for them) – all definitions are from the Cambridge Dictionary.  Yes, sometimes life throws things your way and it’s not always your fault as it can be out of your control, but in the midst of this #SpeakLife journey why not ask this question: WHAT DO YOU SAY? If you was to get a journal; on one side write your daily thoughts and on the other side write...

We expect the sun to shine in summer and we expect the moon to come out at night because that's the way it always tends to happen, until the unexpected happens, an eclipse.  We then become surprise as it messes up our normal routine or way of seeing things; our expectation is forced to change. Such is life when we try to live up to the expectations of others. Because we always feel we must keep it up, so we find ourselves feeling drained, exhausted and finding it hard to run off the little fuel we have left to just be ourselves. Expectations are not always bad at times, it can be good especially when we and others may have high expectations of us but then we can see that they can be unhealthy when it becomes a bar too high to reach, because we then realise either it was never our character and more about what others were trying to project on us. Perhaps like myself you're the sort of person who always is strong for everyone, never seen shedding a tear, so automatica...

The tongue can be seen as a foul member of the human body. One minute it’s saying loving and caring things, then the next minute it could strike like a panther and cut deep. So how do we 'train' our tongue to speak that which is good and not bad? A simple definition of what it means to train is: ‘to develop or form the habits, thoughts, or behaviour of (a child or other person) by discipline and instruction.’ If you ask anyone who trains, or even if you train yourself, you’ll know that it’s not always easy. You start out all fired up and raring to go, it’s fresh, new. Then you go through the awkward middle stage. Sometimes the excitement has worn off and perseverance has to kick in. You have to push harder in order to achieve a good end result. And then the end stage, of course, is where you physically see a breakthrough. But, the cycle continues, and there needs to be consistency, otherwise it is easy to fall back into bad habits.  It’s also a mental act as well...

Most days are pretty mundane. You wake up, get ready, go to work/school/college/uni (etched), return home, and go to bed. Throw in your tender mix of socialising, outings, and various other activities, and we pretty much have the typical ‘human’ life.  However boring - apologies; mundane, human existence can be, we still have to think about how we speak. We always have to be conscious of the talking head between our lips. Can I pose this to you? For us to watch our lips, we also have to check our thoughts? What’s your mind saying? Unfortunately- or maybe thankfully, depending on you as a person, we have to think, filter and retain our thoughts. Our daily thought life is important.  If you are anything like me, thought life is the last thing you really want to think about. Standing as a judge, granting freedom or declaring prison sentences to your thoughts. It’s not always great, especially if you picture it like this, but our thoughts must be looked into. Half of t...

As with the end of every day, month, chapter and season in life, there comes a new one – and now we are celebrating another New Year. As we passed from 2016 to 2017, we look back on the year with either a smile or a frown and look ahead to the New Year with anticipation and ambiguity.   What will the new year bring? Will it be better than last year? When we step into the New Year, we have crossed a landmark; it’s another phase, another level. See it like entering a new house, or starting on a fresh blank page. I love watching ‘Extreme makeover’ and watching these amazing designers and builders transform an old battered house into an amazing home within 7 days. That’s evidence of a change taking place. What do you want to see in this New Year? What do you need to throw out from 2016 that you don’t want resurfacing in 2017? If you don’t like what you see? Change it. If we use the Bible as a reference of new beginnings let’s look at Genesis 1:1. The beginning of life, e...

Writer’s are capable of writing anything, whether they know a topic or not. With a little research, a good draft and continual re-drafts, what they could potentially produce can be quite wonderful. For me, in order to write about something I must first connect with it. There must be a resignation and resolve with it in my heart and mind.  Pondering this, this is very much the same for hope. No matter how much we define hope in terms of a theoretical definition (expectations towards someone/thing, desire, believe, trust – Dictionary.com), it must move from being a simple black and white word on paper, to becoming an absolute assurance in our thoughts and hearts, in order to become a physical manifestation in our lives. We must connect with hope on different levels, internally and externally. Beautiful Faces (BFM) has seen in the whole of 2016 with this theme of hope. We have had sessions that have included definitions, discussions and shared experiences about hope in...