How to Save a Life

One is ever mindful of the fact that the world is changing, that American society is suffering from a nervous condition called "recession". The news has reminded us continuously for the last 4 years, and the busy advertisers of Fortune 500 companies entice us with their products so highly priced (sometimes so cheaply made). America has become a black hole of financial waste and ruin. We are consumed in a pool of greed and materialism. One who takes the issues of a greener earth to heart may well be let down from their endeavors because the green society kick may not make it that far.
The World is just moving much too fast. We can't even catch up with ourselves. We witnessed Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a Japanese tsunami in 2006, a strand of huge earthquakes in 2010, a major oil spill in 2010, another Japanese tsunami that led to the destruction or damage of a nuclear plant, and most recently a group of tornados ripping up the middle, south, and eastern coast of America. Mother earth is trying to tell us something but do we listen. No. How much more can she take, how much more destruction does she need to go through before finally she destroys it all. How can we save the life and spirit of something that has been so good and beautiful to us. She's crying, she's depressed, and she's dying mother earth is. Does anyone know how to save her life?

Kitty

The Most Beautiful Beauty

So lately I’ve been listening to a lot of music by a Christian group called Ashmont Hill. The lyrics of their music are just so thought provoking. I love music that gets my juices flowing in my head. So tonight one of their songs got me thinking about beauty and what it is to me. Of course being me it’s not one simple thing. It is very complex even though it’s the simplest gift we are given. My answer is love. Love is the single most beautiful thing in the world because of it's uniqueness in its purest form. Jesus died on the cross because he loves us. He didn’t even know if it would be worth it, but He did it out of love. So we could live. That’s true and amazing love. People get love mixed up with sexual feelings and lustful feelings because those feelings make the body feel good, but when you truly love someone and they love you that person makes your spirit feel good. Don’t get me wrong, sexual feelings or lustful feelings toward a person doesn’t mean that you can’t love them, it simply means you have an earthly bond more so than a heavenly one. Love is complex in two ways. First that it is not hate. It is much easier in today’s world to hate someone than love them, hate has only one face, and one purpose which is to destroy. Love serves a multitude of purposes to promote joy, peace, happiness, solidarity, and harmony among human kind. Love is secondly complex in that it is freely given to us, and we rarely use it. God gives us love in return He only wants love. An equal exchange, thus it is free. Hate on the other hand isn’t free. Our spirits pay for hate that we intake. When you hate something or someone, it damages your spirit. It hurts you and affects you in way you never thought it could. Hate is devastating to ones spiritual well-being. It feeds off of your spirit and darkens it. Love to the contrary opens up your spirit to more love, to peace, and joy, and happiness and light. It is amazing to me how complex love is aesthetically and how simple it actually is. How simple to realize. How beautiful to understand that God gives a part of himself through love, and many of us want nothing to do with it. Love is the most beautiful thing yet we as a society have darkened it in the media, making it seem as though it has hurt people. Love is never blinding, love is never painful, love is always positive. Whatever you heartbroken people are feeling is not love. If you’re ever really IN love you won’t be at it’s mercy. If you are merely AROUND love, the projection of it will comfort and enthrall you. If you are OUT of love, just realize how you are never really out of love because the most beautiful aspect about love (and why I think it’s the most beautiful kind of beauty)is that GOD IS LOVE. Never ever forget that God encompasses the most beautiful gift He could ever give.

Find Peace and Be Blessed,
Kitty

After the Storm

It is common to get what we want and stray away from the things that led us there. It is also common to forget or not recognize what has pulled you out of the storm in the first place. Just because this is a human phenomenon does not make it right. The Bible says that we should continuously praise God. Sadly I haven't taken heed of my own words. I was struggling recently and I kind of still am. I've come up with two theories on why my struggle hasn't been resolved.

1. When people hurt it forces them to turn to God. Therefore God keeps you in struggle so that you want stray away from Him.

2. The devil is continuously attacking you bringing you into despair because it's what he does best.

If you live your life believing in the latter you are going to continuously question God's love for you. Believe that the devil is attacking you but also that the Lord has your back in these attacks, because truly the battle is not yours it really is the Lord's. God wants us to be happy, people who believe in a God of unhappiness are believing in the wrong being. Just because we struggle doesn't mean that we cannot be happy.The true test in the struggle is finding joy and peace through God, in the midst of the struggle. Don't believe that God has it out for you. Believe that God is looking out for you.

Find Your Way Through the Storm
Kitty

Down and Out

When I was growing up I was always taught to go to God when I hurt. Lately I feel like all I'm doing is going to Him to complain about everything that's going so wrong in my life. I'm having financial issues, and it's not like I wanna be rich (though that would be wonderful)I just wanna be secure. I want to be able to pay my bills off and be able to get the things that I need and some of the things I want. It's only human nature to want more than what you have...I feel like all that I'm doing is sitting around waiting for the next thing to go wrong.
Last night I talked to my best friend and I was just talking about how things always, ALWAYS get so much worse before they get any better...I started remembering how God takes you through levels of bad to show you how strong you are. God has taken me through so much within the last month I just feel faint at every step but He has also been my strength and my courage and my joy through this last month and a half and I just can't imagine getting through everything without Him. Without my faith.
Hope in times of struggle is all that we could ever hold on to...in the middle of hope is the idea of love. When you are hopeful you believe that you are loved by a Higher being so much that He will never give you more than you can bear...and maybe sometimes it may seem that you are given too much to bear but you aren't really...YOU are still BREATHING.
In hindsight of all my trials and struggles I look back and welcome them because they have made me such a strong person, you live through it to fight another battle and become EVEN stronger. I can only think of the strength I am receiving as I struggle to get to the top of this Mountain. I can only think of the power given to me by God as I whirl in this storm to get to my calm. I can only think of the miracles I am about to receive...my eyes are on the prize...NOT the struggle.
As black sisters and brothers we are all too often confronted with crisis (ie murders, theft, fires, financial problems, family arguments,everything)We also learned through a strong institution of faith and belief that the Lord works in a very mysterious way. Even if you don't go to church or don't have a community religious go to place, someone you know, is praying for you...Maybe you yourself know to pray. God is very present in our lives. He is always there even in times when we don't have an urgent need for him. He is there protecting us. Making us stronger...keeping us safe, keeping us blessed. He is our Father which art in Heaven, yet his love and joy and spirits walk the earth to protect us every second of the day and night. His Love is all we ever need
So, even when you're feeling down and out...feeling like the universe is against you...nobody can help...nobody can understand...you don't really understand yourself. Just realize that God knows you can...because He is the strength behind your will and the power behind your faith. God KNOWS YOU BEST...just keep the faith and You will prevail.

Find Peace and Be Blessed.
Kitty

My Own Aesthetic

I have come to realize that I don't think the way that everyone else I know does. I think that when I finally realized I was different it was because of the way my mind worked. I'm a strange being, I can sit in the sun and literally feel like God is touching me. I can wake up with a smile on my face and believe truly that God has instilled Joy on my heart for the day. I can see the leaves turn orange and yellow and pink and brown during autumns months and have such peace within my spirit. Nature makes me feel grounded. It makes me feel so close to God. There are times when I want to cry and all I have to do is step outside and I'm reminded of what God is giving to me. This is my own Aesthetic, and maybe it doesn't sound too different from somebody like Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson but when I think of how much the natural beauty of things has impacted my life and changed me from sad to JOYOUS, I realize how nature, created by God, is where my spirit goes to escape. It makes me high. It is my anecdote and at the same time it's my drug. It is a beautiful feeling, and emotion to feel so connected to God. It happens more so in the Autumn than any other season. I love this season it is just such a spiritually grounding season for me. I feel beautiful, I know I glow, and I have such peace. Get like me and let the cool air, take you somewhere you rarely see.

Find Peace and Be Blessed
Kitty

True Beauty

People need to understand that loving yourself comes before loving anyone else. If you can't love yourself, you don't know what love is. currently someone that I'm very close to is going through something that has caused me to call into question whether or not this person loves their own self. It's okay to let compliments boost your self esteem, but it's not okay to allow yourself to depend on compliments to boost you up. One thing that should never be downplayed is the fact that you can look in the mirror and see yourself and smile and be pleased with yourself with no one around. Feel beautiful when you're alone and when you don't have make up on, and when your hair is a mess. True beauty, comes from within...it truly does. You can be beautiful physically and have the nastiest personality and be so ugly...you can be physically limited to some peoples eye and have a beautiful spirit and that beauty radiates from within. DO NOT depend on a person to boost your ego, nor looks to be what makes you feel beautiful. A large chunk of people prefer beautiful spirits over beautiful faces. Step out of that traditional way of looking at beauty and focus on what truly is beautiful about you. God created something beautiful about you, you were created in His likeness, thus you are beautiful, and once you see that beauty for yourself you'll start to see your Joy and find your PEACE.

Let Go and Let God

I've seen so many seemingly ill fated events unravel in my life. I've seen so much that I just thought I wouldn't recover from. It's crazy how blessed my family has been, it's amazing how God's grace has pulled us through time and time again. Some people don't believe that God favors. I truly do believe it...my family has been in so many situations where we could have easily lost our minds and just as easily given up. We have come dependent on His love. He's an amazing peace giver in rough times and I wouldn't say it if I weren't a witness to it. I understand why many people cry their hearts out in hard times, I still do, yet if you understand that God never gives you more than you can bear, your tears become less abundant. I'm so much stronger from the many things that I've encountered in my life, so much wiser. I will never say that I've made it on my own, because I know that without Grace from God I'd be just another lowly person on the streets, wishing I had something to pull me through. I'm a witness, my entire family is testimony to the fact that when you let go, and let God, Everything, EVERYTHING will be alright.
I won't dwell on the negative, but I'll faithfully stand on the Peace that God has given me every morning when I wake. I will stretch that peace into the night when I fall asleep. I will take the joy that He gives to me in the new day, and happily share it with people throughout my day.
I guess what I'm trying to get at now, is that when you feel like you're blessed from head to toe and all your surrounding air is blessed as well, WHEN YOU'RE FAVORED, and you KNOW it, share that blessing with someone else. Make someone else's day and let them Know that they need only to call upon His name and He will answer.

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. Chronicles 2 7:14