Tag: backwards

My Stack

Jennifred Jones

There is a stack of post-it notes by my laptop. It has been there for years…not the same papers in the pile, but the stack is still there.

Every day new thoughts emerge to share with my readers. Who knows where to start? So I jot them down …most of the time…so they aren’t forgotten and soon there are so many!

Today I begin again: (This came to me while I was making applesauce)

Read You Own Book!  (This is today’s post)

Your book is you. There are many chapters to your book. Which one are you on now? Which chapters have passed? Which chapters are you still living or trying to live in?

Books are written successively. One chapter leads to the next. We don’t write backwards. We write always moving forward because life moves forward. It is not to become stagnant.

Do not put your book – your life – back on some dusty old shelf not to be seen or read by anyone. Keep it open – the pages turning- writing new and better chapters of your explorations and points of interest. Make sure your book is as interesting as possible so you will want to keep writing. Others will see what you’ve written and want to read it, and you will want to remember how and what you did.

Keep working on your book. Keep working on you. Everyday our life is published somewhere.

Autonomy

Jennifred Jones

Why are you using such big words? What’s it mean anyway?

Breaking the word down backwards it says, ‘my auto”, and if it’s your car you can drive it wherever you want. But the Greek meaning is self-legislation, self-governance. This means you are to be in charge of your life, your actions, your decisions. Basically, you tell yourself what to do. (You drive your life where you want it to go.) You tell yourself what is best for you and do it. You don’t need other people telling you what they think you should say, do, think, where to go to school, who to marry, what to like, dislike, who to vote for etc, etc, etc.

Autonomy is a self-regulating freedom. As with any freedom and freedom to make your own decisions, we have guidelines in communities, cities, states, countries of what is allowed or not allowed, and our freedom must abide within those guidelines. But autonomy is a wonderful thing. Many countries in the world and over the centuries had no such freedoms. They were always told what to do and when.

But we have the freedom, ability, to decide if we want a better life we can go after it. We want a better relationship with our friends and family, no one can stop us. We want to give up a bad habit or two, we are able to direct our lives that way. There is no law preventing you from doing any good thing you want to do. We don’t tell other people what to do and conversely, we don’t let others tell us what to do.

We get to decide what’s good and beneficial for us and ours and move in that direction. We do not need permission from higher anybody to do the right thing.

Now what do I really want to do – to see happen in my life for good? How could I make it happen? The reins are in my hands.

Let’s get the ball rolling!

The Need to Be Needed!

Jennifred Jones

Some may think it’s selfish to feel needed.

I believe it’s part of our drive for purpose. We want to know something we did mattered in someone else’s life…that we were noticed. (I also realize it can become backwards and cause people problems, dependencies etc. etc. etc.)

But! What I’m getting at is this need to make something of value to someone else. It’s like a gift that no one else could or did make and they are happy to receive it. They like it and they like you for giving it to them. That makes us happy. That’s how it’s supposed to be.

People need what we can provide for them in a good honest way!

I want to raise this idea up a notch. In our relation to God, it’s different. He made us, but he doesn’t need us. He wants us. He doesn’t need anything of ours. It’s all his anyway. But we’re his kids and like any earthly father, he wants us. That’s a big difference between the need and the want. The want comes from choice. The need comes from a necessity.

We not only need to be needed, but we want to be wanted.

God wants us. Let’s want him back.