Tag: clamoring

Preserve Your Mind

Jennifred Jones

News! World Events! Politics! Wars! Rumors! Gossip! YouTube! Instagram! AI!

I cannot keep up! Who said you’re supposed to?

It’s information overload. Knowledge of everything at our fingertips. So busy keeping up with the world we have no time to keep up with ourselves and our own families and communities.

I don’t think we’re intended to know and see everything. Why do we have to have an opinion on everything. Why do we need to hear everyone else’s opinion on everything and everyone? Our mind can only handle so much before it goes into stress mode. Don’t feel guilty because you aren’t ‘concerned’ about all the wars, death and sickness in other parts of the world. You are not being cold-hearted or uncaring. You are one person. You have your life and family and community. They are first and maybe only! We let go of much stress if we tend to our own immediate affairs and not jump on everyone else’s bandwagons hollering and waving concern.

There are many causes and needs hoping for support…your support. You cannot help everyone and meet all the needs clamoring for you. You need to say ‘no’ more than ‘yes’. Stay in your own lane and tend to your own – first and foremost.

Be at peace within yourself. Go outside and smell the fresh air. Look at all the spring flowers. Get a coffee with a friend. Sweep your own porch. Tidy up your place. Wash your car. Call a relative.

Let the rest of the world twirl on its own, while you stay in peace with your own.

Voices in the Wilderness

Jennifred Jones

Have you ever had something you thought was important to say, that needed to be said, that no one else was saying, but needed to be heard?

It would help people if they could hear it, it could change the direction of their life, but they were nowhere near you, you didn’t even know who they were, you couldn’t summon them to hear your words, and frankly, they probably wouldn’t even recognize what you had to say was for them.

Just a voice…a voice out in the wilderness -being absorbed only by the mossy bark on the trees and getting soaked up by the fallen leaves and tramped on.

We live in a big wilderness it seems, yet there are many voices calling out to us.

Many of the voices are loud, clamoring, demanding for attention. They hackle, yell, demean, shame, put-down, confuse, conflict, and torment, and cause us to worry and fear. They even try to make us think bad thoughts about and hate other people-including ourselves!

But, if we keep walking, keep listening and get where it is quiet again, and really listen, we can hear a still small voice saying, ‘this is the way, walk in it’. It will be unassuming, patient, kind, gentle, leading, guiding, encouraging, hopeful, filled with wisdom; it might even be a gentle warning, but it will cause us to be at peace and rest– not filled with turmoil when we hear it. It will inspire us to do good and think good about other people.

I have heard all of these voices. I have heard the voice of fear and worry and shame and hate, but I have also heard the voice of kindness, grace, hope and peace. I hear them every day in my walk through the wilderness of life.

I know what each of them feels like and what it does to me when I pay heed.

The choice is mine, which voices I choose to listen to.

Some are so tempting and convincing — to entice me to worry and fret about something I have no control over—which is about everything.

I am choosing to listen to the quiet voice. I choose to listen for the voice that wants to give me hope and cause me to do good and noble things.  I choose that, although it is harder to hear and follow, that is what I choose. Sometimes I get off the path and start listening to the louder voices, but my quest is to listen for the still small voice in the wilderness…the one that will lead me through to the clearing on the other side.

Who knows, maybe someone else that I cannot see is behind me – lost in the wilderness – and cannot hear the still small voice — but will follow my footsteps and make it through.