Choosing Perspective

choose

Image by miki** via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #225 – If you can’t choose a better perspective on your own, it might be time to choose it via a medical route.

Feeling trapped?  Overextended?  Used and neglected by others?  It might be true.  But why do we get in these impossible places?

In the Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle, towards the end of the story we find ourselves in a room with Charles and It.  Charles is trapped by It.  He has disconnected from his own thoughts and has given himself over to the control of “It.”

Charles’ sister, Meg, comes in and reminds him about Love and that changed the perspective of everything.  It reminded Charles about why he wanted to choose for himself, to have his own thoughts, to love and receive love.  And then, with that, Charles was reconnected with himself again, whole and sharing space with Love.

The changing perspective turned what seemed an impossible bondage into freedom.

When we feel disconnected from our personal journey, impossibly overextended and trapped, remembering our freedom to choose, freedom because of Love can make all the difference.  The perspective shifts.  The impossible becomes possible.  Magic.

Sometimes, choosing is thwarted by brain disease.  When we can’t extricate ourselves, when guilt plagues us, when we feel like things are about us that really aren’t, when the emotion jarring us is inappropriate to the context – we need to use that as a cue to choose to get “free” via medical help.

Questions:  When have you felt trapped?  When you did feel trapped, how did you find your freedom?  Please tell me your story.

Remember Love to Feel Bigger Than Your Self

A Mothers Love. The Hand of a Child.

Image by Steve Rhode via Flickr

Self-Care Tip #175 – Remember Love.

Yesterday was my son’s birthday and today we partied over him.

How old are you?

He looks at his fingers and sees how many come up before he answers,

Four.  I’m four!

Right now, he feels really big.  He blows his lid if anyone says otherwise.  And because he’s never been above the bottom twentieth percentile on the growth curve, and because he’s four years old and the youngest of three, and because he’s so small, when he says, “I’m big!” looking serious over, yet under you with his bottle cap eyes, it’s really hard to keep straight.  But more often I do …until he loudly says,

I love you the whole day, Mommy!  The whole day!  You are my friend!

Then it’s over for me.  I can’t stay off of him.  He’s just too beautiful.  His open forwardness humbles me and I remember that it’s Love that makes us great.  It’s Love that brings us to our knees.  It’s Love, more than this stack of years, inches and knowledge that makes my son bigger than me when I forget Love.  He doesn’t.  He’s just too small to.  Four years of Love is big.

Questions:  What has helped you remember Love lately?  What has made you feel bigger than your own self?  Please tell me your story.