Against Despair
by Tiffany Nicole Fletcher
Still yourself a moment and feel the
music of your brave heart beating. Strong
organ, with so much work to do,
is supporting you, again. Pick a wonder:
do you have toes to tap, eyes to witness night
surrender to daylight, ears to hear
your child’s laughter? A home? How many
days have you survived until now? How
many days have opened to welcome you?
In July, my aunt Hilde left her body. After suffering from a brief illness, she left us to be with the Lord forever. During her life, she carried a beautiful joy for many things: music and singing, delicious food, travel, writing and reading, fashion, and for her service as a nurse, service she fulfilled for nearly 50 years. She lived with a true “zest for life,” as my mother calls it; she loved celebrations and gatherings, and had so many amazing experiences during her lifetime.
I was sitting in the park thinking about her, as I looked upon the horizon, where the sun was setting in a gorgeous array of colors. I thought about how our souls are given this bodily vessel and how to have that experience is a blessing. We tend to lose our awareness that it is a gift to dwell in a body, even if that body has aches and pains or things we might wish to change.
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I’m so excited to share a new resource with you! Now available for digital download is Healing Journaling: Writing in the Presence of God.
Journaling has been a practice of mine since I was a child. My mother still gifts me the most beautiful journals for my birthday, and I wonder if she prays over them before giving them to me, because I always end up experiencing beautiful revelations through the journaling I do in them.
Healing journaling is meeting yourself and God on the page through your most intimate reflections. Journaling can be a form of prayer, a true spiritual practice, when approached with intention. It can help you:
Develop your relationship with God
Understand yourself better
Foster your personal development and growth
Discover your wounds so that they can be healed
Find and develop your personal voice
…and so much more!
This 26-page resources guides you through five healing journaling practices, with tips for how to incorporate them into your life. You’ll gain encouragement and practical tips for starting or developing this practice, which will help you strengthen your connection with God and with your own heart.
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Dear beloved one,
I am writing with a note to you, daughter or son of a mother.
If the mother experience you’ve had in this life has been a perfect one, this letter is not for you.
This letter is for those with a mother wound. A mother loss, mother pain. Mother scars.
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My friends tell me that I ask great questions. It’s no wonder that I became someone who asks questions as a healing practice.
The truth is I’m just endlessly curious. I love learning about people, about life, and especially about spiritual things. That’s probably why I read so much.
Recently, it occurred to me that I could intentionally use curiosity as an approach to problems and challenges.
So much of life is mystery, isn’t it? How do you face the mystery of life? The issues, questions, challenges? I don’t know about you, but the mysterious makes me curious, and curiosity is at least a much more interesting approach to the mystery of life than fear.
Curiosity used in this way might look like:
Poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote,
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