Stay In Your Lane

         Being a people-pleaser and someone who loves to encourage people, I recently found myself plagued with a reoccurring malady: overwhelming requests and not enough time. Add to that my penchant for needing to process life at a slower pace and think things through, I found myself in a race I couldn’t win.

          As I was thinking about this a word picture came to mind.

          I was down at the local high school track running in my lane, others in front of me, beside me, behind me. We were all running through life each looking ahead to the purpose we had inside of us.

         Then I pictured myself changing lanes. Doing something that was not me. When I found myself trying to run in someone else’s lane, I created chaos on the track. We were tripping and running into each other in a ball of tangled humanity. I instantly lost my focus.

      It became increasingly clear that every time I listened to someone’s voice telling me I should be doing this or that, I risked losing my place. We can be good people in a messed up world but if we try to be everything to everybody all the time, we lose the most important point in life -- knowing what we were created for.

       Staying in my particular lane meant writing. I love to write, create things, encourage people. When I stepped outside my box because of fear, guilt, or jealousy, trying to do things that people thought I should be doing, I was knocking everyone else out of theirs.  When I tried to be like them, I was stealing their purpose and trying to make it mine. Suddenly the word picture became clear in my mind.

        I began to feel less pressure to perform and stay where God had placed me. I no longer feel like I have to be anything more than what I am. And I’ve learned to enjoy running at my pace, doing my work.

        There are days we need to stop running, get off the track, smell the roses, take a long walk or check out our surroundings; let the wind lift our hair, take in a deep, full breath, and see other places and other people, before we get back on the track.

 

       Some of us run a little slower, enjoying the views that others might miss. For others their calling may require them to be “eyes straight ahead.” That’s okay too. But for me, I want to notice when the wind is blowing through the fields bending the wheat, when the leaves on the trees are bursting with color, when someone falls by the wayside and needs a hand.

                  When I stay in my lane,  I encourage others to do the same . . . to stay in the place they were born for. We don’t have to be everything to everyone. Just be ourselves and while we’re at it, become really good at what we do. Then we will achieve what we were born to do. Life can be a lot simpler. Just stay in your lane. I can’t think of a greater place to be, can you?

By : Patricia Strefling

Join the conversation on facebook. 

www.facebook.com/patricia.strefling.author

You can find her online. www.patriciastrefling.com

Book 3- Cover Contest

My graphics guru, Leah, came up with several book cover choices for Lace’s Legacy, the third book in the Lacy series.  Lacy’s Lane (available at Amazon now), Lacy’s Life (coming soon) and finally Lacy’s Legacy (currently writing).

I loved both of these covers and couldn’t choose, so wanted my readers to have a chance to choose the cover they like the best. The one with the most votes goes to press! 

Thank you! You’ll make my decision easy since they are both gorgeous! Thank you Leah Banicki for your lovely work!

Please feel free to vote for your favorite by commenting on this blog post or voting on my facebook page. www.facebook.com/patricia.strefling.author 

Note:

These are just the examples. The finished product I'm told will be better quality. (Graphics guru wanted that added.)

I hope you have enjoyed Lacy's Lane, book 2, Lacy's Life should be available in a few months, currently writing book three.

You can find Lacy's Lane on amazon.  

Lacy's Life is Coming Soon!

Story Listening

As a writer I have learned a lot about story reading and story telling. But there is one aspect that I have also learned but didn’t realize until I decided to write about it! Story listening. 

Yesterday I had the privilege of sitting with my neighbor and listening to her recent struggle about saying yes or no to one of the many obligations that came her way.

It was time for the annual tea at her church. She had done  it for two years running, but this year was particularly busy and she wasn’t excited, didn’t feel she even had the time to shop or set it up. She is a busy woman, so who would blame her if she didn’t say yes this year.

My day was changed, because of our conversation. It put me in the mindset of looking at my life. How was I living it? Was I giving it my all or just putzing around looking for ways to please myself?  Before she came that morning I had been mostly thinking about what I wanted to do that day, things I wanted to accomplish.

           

Our conversation helped me see the value of looking for ways to help others. And what the reward had been to her, even though initially she had tried to avoid the annual tea.

My friend  had a very tight schedule for the day of the tea so prayed and asked God, that if He wanted her to sponsor a table at the tea to show her. She prayed and sensed the answer was yes. Her second prayer was to ask God to do it inexpensively, so she went shopping.

She did her best to buy something beautiful and yet save as much money as possible. She found  a beautiful white table cloth that was on sale for $7.99 (its original price much higher). When she got to the front there was a “special” going on and she paid eighty cents for it! That was sign number one.  

           

On the day of the tea she he set up her table and it was lovely. The group of ladies were a blessing and she finished, and packed up her things.  Because she had such a tight schedule, immediately after the tea, she rushed to pick up her friend for Bingo and they slid in late.  She won about $40. That was sign number two.

And the best news was when a couple of days later, the husband of one of the ladies that sat at her table came up and talked to her. He told her that his wife feared coming alone, and did so, only because she could bring a couple of extra ladies. He told my friend how much his wife loved the tea and sitting at  her table. That was sign number three, which my friend said, was the best one of all.

Whew…by the time she got through telling me all the details, I was ready to jump up and set up my own tea-table!

As time passes, I’m beginning to realize I learn so much more when I sit with someone one-on-one.

Everyone has a story. Find someone today and be open to listen.

https://www.facebook.com/patricia.strefling.author

Kindle Fire HD Giveaway- Patricia Strefling

Click to Enter

Please include full name, email and mailing address.  

Trouble with the click to enter? 

Just email your name address and email to patskindlead@icloud.com.

You will be able to send extra entries- you will be emailed a list of all ways you can earn extra entries. No purchase necessary.

The contest ends at midnight December 9th, 2012.

For questions go to https://www.facebook.com/patricia.strefling.author

Falling Star

There are some things that need to be written down. Moments of clarity in the midst of hurt and pain in this world. There are moments when it seems that understanding death, divorce, broken lives, deep hurts from words or deeds that have affected our life forever, will never be understood.

I was having some of those moments, when late at night a friend called to talk about a recent hurt she was experiencing. She was sludging through the muddy mess, trying to understand what had happened. We talked at length about why -- and if God was there why didn’t he answer the prayer of her heart? Why did it seem he had thrown her under the bus? We knew it wasn’t true. But right then it seemed so true.
Both of us were hurting. For very different reasons. She, suffering from a most recent devastating break-up of a relationship she thought was sent from God. An answer to a life-long prayer. And now it was over. What had happened? And why?

There were moments of silence. 

There were no answers.

Struggling with my own emotions that night, I wasn’t much help to her, except to know that the depth of pain sometimes is deeper than our understanding. We discussed all the why’s and what-for’s. But came up silent at the end. There was no magic answer for either of us.
One thing did become clear as we talked out what we couldn’t fix in our lives: that those who have experienced deep pain are the only ones others want to talk to when they are hurt. And how could we ever understand another living soul if we ourselves had never been devastated by life’s storms?

How could we earn the right to say to someone, “I know what you are going through?”

The conversation slowly came to a sense of understanding that we can’t always know why. She, for her deepest feeling of rejection AGAIN, me for a lifelong trial with the same issue; a lifelong feeling of rejection that had taken up residence in my life.

These emotions can’t be “thrown up in the air” hoping they will magically disappear in thin air. They have to be dealt with. At the time neither of us wanted to quote Bible verses. We knew them. For the moment, we needed to grieve.

And so we grieved for the loss of a relationship she had long prayed for and thought had finally arrived, me for a lifelong sense of rejection that never goes away, no matter how much I want it to.  We had both prayed for years about these struggles and we were mired in them again.

All the time we were talking, I was sitting in a rocking chair facing a big picture window looking out on the back yard behind our house on a cool early November evening. It was nearing midnight and this was my view from the window:  huge full moon high in the midnight blue sky, long white streaks leaving jet lines crisscrossed across the moon’s path. Stars so explicitly bright they seemed hardly able to contain their brightness as they formed the ancient constellations.

The trees had lost all their leaves so the vein-like branches created a beautiful view in front of the moon. The ground was white from the light of the moon. And then realization struck: the fact that God, though his majestic creation, was standing right there looking through the window at me.  Displaying the works of his hands before my eyes without saying a word.As my friend and I talked out our frustrations it became very clear that God was there. Just looking, waiting, hoping that I would see his presence.

My friend was talking and suddenly I interrupted her . . . “You are not going to believe this!” I was breathless.

Across the sky, for the first time that I can remember I saw a falling star. A quick arc-like slide and then it disappeared.
She was excited as I told her what I saw. Our conversation became quieter. A sense of amazement began to fill us.
All that we had said, commiserated about, hurts we didn’t want to face, became suddenly less powerful. I could hear it in her voice. 




One small star, a momentary second of brightness and then it was gone. We realized it was like our lives. Seen for a millisecond and gone.

Could we stay too long in our hurt places and miss what shining moment we might have?

We talked a bit more, but the conversation had gone full circle. We needed to be heard, and we were. The small interruption lasted a nanosecond, but it had soaked into our souls somehow.

I had to wonder if that star fell just for my friend and I . One November night in the middle of deep hurt.

~ Patricia Strefling

https://www.facebook.com/patricia.strefling.author

Journaling in England

A familiar sight. Sheep on the green hillsides. This one is from the window at Near Sawrey B&B right next door to Beatrix Potter’s Hilltop Farm. You can understand why she wanted to keep the area the way she found it.  A large portion of the area is under the Trust Foundation she established to protect the land. And yet today we are recipients of the beautiful sights and sounds we viewed, thanks to her.

The land has many paths that run alongside the curving roads allowing people to walk through the areas that look today like they may have looked in Beatrix Potter’s day. While Debbie and I walked this one (heading to Far Sawrey) we found this little scene upon a fence post! We passed it the first time, but thankfully spotted it on our way back.

This photo was taken inside Near Sawrey B&B where we stayed. The windows from the big house right next door to Beatrix’s farm was beautifully decorated inside. This is the view from the window!

We met two very nice people at Beatrix’s Farm who offered us a ride to Hawkshead, suggesting we visit the quaint town. The two-mile jaunt down winding roads led us to a very scenic area. Way above on a high hill overlooking the town where Mr. Heelis (Beatrix’s husband) kept his office, and where William Wordsworth went to school, we found an ancient church. This was the view from inside looking out.

This picture shows where we stayed in Stow-on-the-Wold in the Cotswald area. Sheep were brought for buying and selling. There were many “hallways” leading out from the town center so sheep could be divided and taken away as they were sold.

Behind our B&B in Stow-on-the-Wold was a huge old church, St. Edwards. As I walked around to the back of the church I saw a beautiful old door with two trees growing on either side. I could only think C.S. Lewis may have liked this scene!

Humbled by One Simple Deed

Do you ever feel compelled when something visible grabs you? When you know it’s not you making the plan. It’s an overpowering feeling of knowing you must do this thing?

I pulled up at a Wendy’s drive-through in my hometown today and while waiting saw a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk outside the door. He was neat, had a large backpack sitting next to him. He was almost invisible until I looked again.

Suddenly I knew what I had to do. No thought. Just a knowing. I ordered my food and an extra meal. My heart was beating fast. By now I was on the other side of the building and prayed that when I pulled back around I’d find him still there.

My heart felt joy when I saw him. I pulled up, not knowing what to say, handed him the food and said, “God bless you.”

He took the bag and standing next to my window, thanked me more than once. I was compelled to say something like, “Jesus, it’s Jesus.”

Then looking me in the eye he said, “Give me 30 seconds?”

I said okay, thinking a pitch for money was coming.

Instead he bowed his head, took my hand and prayed for me. It went something like this, “Jesus I thank you for this lady, praying over her, her health, her safety, and her faith. Amen.”

I, who thought I was helping him, found out that a man that I did not know was so grateful for being seen, given food, for whatever reason, took the time to pray for me.

I asked his name and told him mine.

What came to mind was this:

“Do not forget to entertain strangers, 

for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”

 Hebrews 13:2 NIV

I met a man named James, today, who I sense I will see again in heaven. And  I met him by one simple act of obedience in that compelling moment when God allowed me to choose.  To bring him food or ignore him.

Truth: When you feel compelled, throw away fear, and do it.



https://www.facebook.com/patricia.strefling.author
--Patricia Strefling  copyright© 2012