Down That Street

"Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle." ~ Christian D. Larson

Read the story...

Clearly Clothes

"Leap and the net will appear." ~ Zen saying

A couple of months ago I wrote a post titled, As If. The post was about how my grandmother had always given me the advice to "act as if" something were already as it should be, even if in fact, it were not.

In other words, if I felt shy, then she would tell me, I needed to change my thought pattern about who I was and act as if I was the opposite of shy: confident! 

My grandmother reminded me that I didn't have to necessarily start by first believing that I was no longer shy, only that I needed to "act as if" I weren't. Eventually, she encouraged me, confidence would become my default thought pattern and my shyness would be gone forever. 

And she was right, at least 99% right - and the 1% being the rare times when I find myself really liking a guy and then my shyness tries to creep back in and make me run for the hills - 99% of the time I am self-assured, even if I am walking into a room full of strangers, and that's because after years of "acting as if" I am confident, now, I actually am quite confident.

So, it was shortly after that post that I was shopping in Target and I happened to pass by the baby section, specifically the baby clothes section. And as I was walking by I saw a cute baby girl's outfit with what looked like a really cheap sales price on it. I thought to myself, if I'm going to practice what I preach (or rather, what my grandmother preached!) then I should buy this baby girl's outfit to "act as if" something I want is already coming to me, because, after all, I told myself, you do plan on having a baby girl. I picked the cute little outfit off the rack and headed with the rest of the items in my cart to the check-out counter.

But just before I got to the check-out counter I thought more about the baby's clothes I had just placed in my cart, and reminded myself, but you plan on having a baby boy, too! I stopped moving my cart forward and did a u-turn back to the baby clothes section, specifically to the baby boy clothes and picked a similar outfit on sale for my little guy. I wanted him to know that I knew he was coming to me just as assuredly as I knew his sister was. I was going to plunk down "acting as if" dollars for both my little girl and my little boy.

However, when I was at the cashiers buying everything, the baby clothes rang up at more than twice the price I thought the tags had read! It had been a little bit easier for me to convince myself to buy the two baby outfits in my "act as if" moment because they were so inexpensive. Now, when I found out they were much more than I had thought, I felt a dilemma: one part of me was saying, you can't afford to spend money on these clothes because you're on a budget and they aren't necessary, the other part of me was saying, you can't afford not to spend money on these clothes if you expect the "Universe" to understand clearly that your intention is for your babies to come to you!

So, really even though it was a huge splurge to buy the baby clothes in the first place, in the end I splurged even more and paid the higher amount because at that point, at any point, I know "acting as if" is worth the price!

I went on, during two different occasions, to buy two more "act as if" items. First, while traveling during September with my mom, I just had to buy some adorable little girl's booties that I couldn't resist (even though once again the price told me I should!) because they seemed to be an exact replica of my own "booties." And second, when I was in New Zealand - in a little shop that only sold items made from New Zealanders - I came across a pair of  knitted baby booties that I felt I had to purchase in another "act as if" gesture because they seemed perfect for my baby boy.

I keep my babies' clothes items in a place that I see every day, so that I am reminded that they will be worn by my dreams manifest - my children. However, for some reason I hadn't thought, before now, that it might be something I should make a blog post about. But, upon further reflection, I thought telling (and showing!) of everything that I am doing to help make my dreams become my reality is exactly the point of Dreaming Miracles, and really, I can't believe I didn't share this "act as if" experience sooner.

Family History

"The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win." ~ Roger Bannister

Last week a guy I went to high school with messaged me on Facebook to say that he would be visiting his father (who he told me was 93!) where I live (and he grew up) and asked would I like to get together sometime during his stay? 

Now, this is a guy that I knew was in my high school class - because I went to a small high school! - but I can't say that I ever spoke a word to him during our four years of high school together. 

It wasn't that I was a snob - though I will readily admit he was a geek! - but probably due more to the fact that I was shy back then and didn't talk much to anybody outside my "circle." 

But, as you know if you've followed this blog, a couple of years ago I had my 30th high school reunion (remember I was the girl who wanted to gain an extra ten pounds before I went to it!) and at that reunion this guy, P., came to it, and during the later hours, when the number of class members gathering shrunk (read: lightweights!), the smaller group got to hang out and have more quality time together. And this guy, P., was one of the remaining few. 

So, at the reunion I probably had a short conversation with him - enough to know that, even though he was still a geek, he was a way more interesting one than thirty years before! And so he later "friended" me on Facebook and we became "acquaintances;" we ended up having some common interest and points of view, enough that we felt a comrade of sorts with one another. 

But he lives with his wife and two daughter's - probably a thirteen hour's drive away - and came to visit his father for the week, sans the family, thus the inquiry of my availability. 

Anyway, long story short, on Sunday night we did get together at a local pub for drinks, then dinner, and had a nice time. Like I said, I knew virtually nothing about him so it was easy to talk as I could ask him a lot of questions in which to gain more knowledge of him and his life experiences.

And it was after inquiring about his immediate family, the family he grew up in, that I found out he had four older sisters and an older brother, the closest in age to him being six years. And all of them, he said, had relocated to the state of his familial mother. I asked about each of them, as somebody might ask me of my six siblings, and he told me a quick bio of each. But it was the bio of one of his sisters that struck me as being very interesting, and one more answer to the bigger signs which I have been seeking. 

When he explained this sister's life he said that she had started out as a high school science teacher, then went into some medical tech speciality and another thing, and another thing, until finally she went to medical school and now - after what he called her 30-something years of schooling - she was a practicing M.D. He went on to say that she had married late in life (I didn't ask what that age was) and that she had ended up having, through IVF, triplets at age 49, that he said, gave her six kids in total (yes, all after she had married later in life!)! I asked were the triplets her own biological children? Yes, he said, and I didn't feel like I knew P. enough to pry more on the subject (though everything in me was screaming out, tell me everything you can about her!). 

So, I guess the moral of this blog post is that, once again I was minding my own business when, out of the blue, someone tells me another successful, happy story of an older woman getting married later in life AND getting pregnant with her own eggs - and this one just a year younger than me at age 49!!! 

I had earlier (to begin my New Year!) told God, thanks for all the signs you have been sending me, but I need something bigger, and I think with this story I got something a little bigger. Yes, she was still younger than me, but still close enough where I feel I can almost reach out and touch my dream of miracles...

2014

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." ~ Harold Whitman

Happy New Year!!!

Well, I have to say, my expectations for 2013 were really high and of they weren't met.

I definitely feel like my intuition failed me, but I'm only learning what having (and using!) my intuition is all about so I guess I should cut myself at least a small break on that. I do feel like sometimes my hopes' voice is louder than my inner-knowledges' voice and that can lead me astray. But I do want to continue to listen to what I think my inner-voice is telling me. I do want to try to keep working on my intuition - learning and practicing it - as if I were studying a foreign language - which, of course, to me it is.

I go into this new year, 2014, with the same hope and faith I have gone into each of the years I have been writing this blog. And actually, in a lot of ways, despite the passing of the years, I feel more hopeful and faith-filled than I ever have. I still have no idea how in the world any of what I dream of, what I desire, has any way of coming to fruition. If I was still thinking of it in human terms I would probably just lie in a darkened room curled up in a ball, but thankfully, more than I ever have in my life, I think of most everything in God's terms, and that is why my hope remains high, how my faith still fills me up and keeps me strong in my beliefs, because those terms, God's terms, are the terms upon which I can't even fathom how to fathom; those are the terms where any thing, every thing, is possible.

And I did start my 2014 with a really needed-to-hear story that the person telling the story had absolutely no idea I needed to hear! 

My niece was giving a New Year's Day brunch and I asked one of her mother's friend's (actually a family friend) what she did for her New Years Eve. And this friend said that she drove about an hour's drive away to meet a girl from her high school days. I asked which girl in her (and my sister's) class did she visit (though they were seniors when I was a freshman I knew almost all of their friends). She told me the girl's name and I had no idea who she was - which I thought was strange because we went to a small Catholic school and I thought I would surely know the girl. Anyway, our friend continued by giving me a quick synopsis of this girl's life saying, "She married later in life and had a baby at forty-five…" and then most everything else she said quickly about this girl went in one ear and out the other, because all I could focus on was, yay, another purely random story about someone finding love and having a biological child of their own so much later than the "norm."

I think it's stories like that, that come at me when I'm least expecting them, that keep me just focused on still being "in the game." Granted this woman was much younger than me when she had her baby - five years younger! - but as long as nature is working with me - and I feel that it is doing the best it possibly can - I just stay focused on the positives and the possibilities and leave the other stuff to the non-dreamers of miraculous endings and beginnings!

Have a happy, joyous, and miraculous 2014!