JoAnna Lynn Oblander's Blog, page 80

Inspiration…

Share this:

The Power of Example

The first five years of a child’s life are the years in which our example and the influence of their surroundings is the most powerful. Our efforts to teach them, train them and inspire them at such a young age is never easy…but those efforts are never wasted! Kudos to all parents who are endeavoring to raise children who are loving, ardent learners and of great moral character!

 

Share this:

The Worth of Wisdom

“And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches.”  Proverbs 24: 4

My Near Death Experience taught me that there is nothing more valuable than obtaining wisdom based on unchanging, eternal truth. I witnessed that God and Heaven operates according to those truths. Heaven on earth will not be found where moral relativism is exercised – it will only be found where lives are centered around the truth that God has revealed in the scriptures and that He will reveal in the hearts of those who are seekers of truth.

 

Share this:

Do You Take Time?

I have found that in order for my spiritual health to remain strong and vibrant, I must create quiet time each day for myself. During those moments, I read my scriptures, exercise, meditate, pray, and allow some quiet moments for God to speak to me. Sometimes my quiet time is found while I am driving alone. Sometimes my quiet time is found doing dishes. The task I am involved in is not as important as the atmosphere. Vibrant spiritual health is essential to our physical, emotional and mental health. Do you take (make) time for your spiritual health? If so, what things do you find helpful?

Share this:

I Love What Each New Sunrise Promises!

I love that each new sunrise brings the promise of a fresh start! Old, counter-productive habits can be left behind and new habits & thought patterns based on eternal principles can have birth given to them! The new day holds open opportunities to be filled with joy, love, and of learning new and wondrous things! I love each new day and the potential it brings with it!

Share this:

I Am Thankful For My Body!

I am thankful for a mind that is able to think and learn and help run the rest of my body!

 

I am thankful for arms that can reach up high, carry things, and give hugs. I am thankful for legs that can climb, run, hike, and support me!

 

I am thankful for a mouth that can eat, taste, talk, serve as another air passage when my nose is congested, and that can give kisses to my husband and family!

I am thankful for a nose that can smell roses, breathe and give Eskimo kisses!

 

 

I am thankful for ears that can hear the beautiful sounds of music, a warm gentle breeze, the ocean waves, and the voices of my loved ones!

 

 

 

 

 

I am thankful for hands that can write, and type and tie, and do all kinds of tasks. Most of all, I am thankful for hands that can hold and be held!

I am thankful for feet that can dance, walk, and run and that consistently get me where I need to go!

I am thankful for an autonomic system that can without my deliberate prompting: regulate my temperature, break down the food that I eat into usable energy, control my PH, heal me, and about a million other functions every day of my life.

I am thankful for a heart that beats and that can feel love!

I am thankful for the miracle that my body and the body of every other creation is. One of the greatest blessings that God has given me is my body!

Share this:

The Blessing of Being Vulnerable

 

Be sure to keep yourself vulnerable…

Make sure you expose yourself emotionally….

Place yourself in situations in which you can make sure that you can be hurt.

Do people tell you these things often? You have probably never had those things said to you because we live in a world of minimizing hurt, damage, and exposure.

I believe that our ability to expose our hearts is an important component of being emotionally and spiritually healthy. Let me tell you why.

First, let’s do a test of opposites. I will list a word and you fill in the blank with the opposite:

Black     __________
Dark      __________
Day        __________
Love      __________

What did you fill in for the opposite of Love? Did you use the word hate? Hate is not the right answer…the right answer is apathy.

There was a time in my life when I would have said that hate was the opposite of love too. But that was before I personally witnessed my two adopted children protect themselves at the cost of everything I believe to be most important.

My youngest two children were adopted from Russia when they were 4 and 9 years old. They were not orphans – they had been removed from their birth family due to neglect and abandonment. As you might imagine, they have experienced some difficulties in their lives.

They, of course, are not the only ones who have ever been through difficult life circumstances. However, their choices and behaviors strongly reflect what they experienced in those years prior to our adoption of them.

Our adopted children spent more time in our home with our love and influence than they spent in their birth country of Russia. However, I can assure you that the influence of those initial years has heavily outweighed the influence we have been able to have. As family and friends have watched our family struggle to help our adoptive children the frequent suggestion has been that we just need to give them more love.

I was once blessed with the experience of re-visiting heaven. I saw there the preparations that were being made for each of us to come to earth. I also saw that even there where our perfect Father in Heaven reigns and where His perfect love infuses everything present there – that God and His perfect plan for this earth was rejected by a large number of his spirit children. So even where perfect love dwells – love was not enough.

My adopted children have found that guarding themselves against hurt, rejection and vulnerability is the easiest way to make sure they never are hurt, rejected or vulnerable again. What that means is that they shut out family, loving relationships, and even passions and interests they might have.

Imagine what your life would be life if you made sure, at all costs, that you were not vulnerable. There would be no truly loving relationships – only manipulative ones. You couldn’t have any goals because you might fail in reaching those goals. Excitement and passion would be taboo because those emotions would make you too open to failure or disappointment.

I am not suggesting that we deliberately set ourselves up to be hurt but I understand now how wonderful and amazing it is to be vulnerable!

By being vulnerable I can love (even when I might get hurt), I can get excited about goals and future events that I want to happen in my life and I can embrace the talents and passions that I have – even when it might mean I will experience failure and disappointment. I can imagine and what I imagine can become a reality – all because I am willing to expose myself to whatever outcome may result.

Everything that I hold dear is a result of my willingness to allow myself to be accessible, susceptible and vulnerable – my marriage, my family, my friends and everything that I am passionate about!

So while I would never suggest that we intentionally seek hurt and pain – I hope you will join me in recognizing what a gift having an open heart and being vulnerable is!

 

 

Share this:

Merry Christmas

During this holiday season, I always think about the good things that occur as we feel more inclined to reach out to friends, family, strangers and those in need. I love Christmas – but more importantly I love what Christmas represents. Our Savior’s birth and his death are pivotal events in the history and potential of mankind. I believe that few of us can truly comprehend the profound influence and blessings our Savior’s gifts to us.

In the most difficult of times, we are so richly blessed!

Seeing the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes in the nativity on my living room table reminds me of so many things:

The potential of each and every newborn baby
The incredible and perfect love of our Father in Heaven who knew only too well, at the birth of our Savior, what lay ahead for his infant son.
The ability of our Father in Heaven to communicate to his children and the resulting visits of the shepherds and wise men to the baby Jesus.
The mission that each of us is born accomplish and the responsibility that we each have to carry out those missions.
How interconnected we are as a human family and how important it is to love and support each other.
The importance of family and how our families were planned well in advance of our births.
The Joy that is meant to be ours as sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father.

I sometimes struggle with the blatant efforts of commercial establishments to make the Christmas Holiday less of a spiritual experience and more of a see-how-much-we-can-get-consumers-to-spend experience.

However, I know that the true celebration of Christmas depends on us and not some box store that is brimming with consumer goods. I am grateful for the Christmas spirit that resides in my heart and in my own personal celebrations and I am grateful for the true Christmas spirit that I see demonstrated so often by my fellow men (and not just at Christmas time).

I am thankful for you and for the goodness you contribute to the world!

Merry Christmas!

Share this:

How Can God Let Bad Things Happen?

[image error]I recently had a conversation with a friend who is agnostic. Life has been very difficult for her the last few years. She has an aging mother to care for, a demanding job, and her life always seems to demand more than she can deliver.

As someone who has always “just” known that God exists, it is hard for me to relate to the difficult time that some have in recognizing God’s hand in this globe we inhabit. I know that the destructive acts of man and the gut-wrenching experiences that life sometimes hands out are some of the main reasons that cause some to question God’s existence. I have heard many express how they cannot understand how God could let those things happen if He is truly the loving God that so many of us describe and/or believe in.

I would wonder how a loving God could allow such things too if it weren’t for the fact that I understand that this life is, in a very real way, a school and to remove our ability to make decisions (even bad ones) would negate much of our ability to learn. One of the principal reasons for this “earth school” is to teach us faith, hope and love.

If God were to match each sinister act with an immediate punishment and every good act with an immediate blessing – it would not be long before mankind would figure out how the consequence “thing” worked.  That might sound wonderful but it would completely eliminate our ability to effectively develop faith, hope and love.

In fact, if all consequences were immediate, it would only be a short amount of time before our ability to learn, as God’s plan is designed, would be completely compromised. No longer would we learn or strive to be better because of love, hope, a desire to build faith, or other selfless reasons. Instead, ours would be a world in which we were doing all the right things but for all the wrong reasons.

It would be like reaching the summit of Mount Everest without climbing. That experience void of preparation, challenges, and overcoming those challenges would be no more gratifying than brushing your teeth. No learning process or growth would have been involved.

This life is about personal growth, developing faith, becoming better and making the world around us a better place to be. As we strive to align our wills with God’s will – doing so for the right reasons and not because we have to or because we are being selfishly motivated is what will make our experiences gratifying.

Have you had an experience that developed your faith, taught you about hope or helped you to be more loving? Please share it with me at joannaoblander@mail.com

Share this:

Centering God Around Your Life

[image error]November is always a time of reflecting on the great blessings in my life. Every time I check my Facebook page I see friends posting about the things in their life that they are thankful for. The Thanksgiving Holiday Season is great for helping each of us pause and reflect on the many things we each have to be thankful for!

There was once a time in my life when I was overseeing a household of 6 children, handling the bookkeeping of two businesses, helping my husband run those same two businesses, taking care of a responsible job in my church, and coping with 24/7 migraine headaches.

Back then, life had many grueling days but it also had its blessings. The thing that I remember most about those years in my life is my mindset. I so desperately wanted to be a good person and to take care of my husband and children and I so often neglected myself in the process.

24 hours in a day were never enough for me. My family dubbed me with the well-deserved nickname of Jo Mario. My nickname referred to my driving (I had sooo many errands!) but it also referred to my never-set-still way of handling life.

I still remember the day. I was zipping around town running my never-ending list of errands and a voice (from heaven) screamed at me, “YOU ARE RUNNING ON ADRENALINE!!!” I remember the fear I felt as the message was delivered but I also remember my thoughts. My thoughts replied to the voice – How else am I going to get everything done? Yet, I knew I had been given an important warning.

Well, within a year or so my adrenaline reserves had been exhausted, my health was in shambles and severe depression had me suicidal.

Had I listened to my heavenly warning, my health, depression and life would have been in much better shape. However, back then, although I knew that I was being forewarned and I technically knew that my warning was coming from God – I didn’t fully understand what God could do for me if I listened to Him and allowed him to guide my life.

In my book, A Glimpse of Heaven, the first chapter opens with my visit to heaven and my meeting with God. That visit came as a result of my decision to end my life the next day. My visit to heaven taught me more about life (in the brief time that I was there) than over 50 years of life has taught me.

I believe that I was allowed to visit heaven not only to save my life – but to help others both save and find purpose in their own lives.

While in heaven, I was allowed to see myself and the relationships I had been a part of. I was able to see the incredible difference that centering my existence on the truths that God taught and exemplified made. I saw that centering my actions and intent around God did not make me less or a clone or diminish me in any way. Instead, centering my actions and intent around God provided me with the tools to reach my full potential and enabled me to maximize the passions, talents, and gifts that made me uniquely me. In other words, handing over the “clay” of my life to that perfect sculptor we refer to as God enabled all the assistance and tools necessary for me to become to be a masterpiece instead of the primitive sculpture I would become if left to my own devices.

Throughout the rest of my life I will be a masterpiece in the making because I have opted to center God around my life. Every aspect and area of my life is made better, easier and more abundant because my Creator is a part of it. That does not mean that my life does not have challenges or that it is easy. Virtually every day is filled with learning experiences that stretch me beyond my comfort zone. However, as I allow myself to be stretched, I continuously witness better results and deeper joy than I have ever experienced before.

I no longer run on adrenaline (and my health has improved as a result!), I no longer rely solely on my own wisdom and I listen when I am given heavenly promptings. Also, I make my spiritual, emotional and physical well-being a priority. I make time to feast daily from the scriptures and inspirational materials, I work on my relationships and my emotional health, and I exercise and eat healthy foods.

It’s like the story of the rocks in the jar:

One day an expert in time management was speaking to a group of business students and, to drive home a point, used an illustration those students will never forget. As he stood in front of the group of high powered overachievers he said, “Okay, time for a quiz.” Then he pulled out a one gallon, wide mouthed Mason jar and set it on the table in front of him.

Then he produced about a dozen fist sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the jar. When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, “Is this jar full?”

Everyone in the class said, “Yes.”

Then he said, “Really?” He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. Then he dumped some gravel in and shook the jar causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the space between the big rocks. Then he asked the group once more, “Is the jar full?”

By this time the class was on to him. “Probably not,” one of them answered.

“Good!” he replied. He reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in the jar and it went into all of the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked the question, “Is this jar full?”

“No!” the class shouted.

Once again he said, “Good.” Then he grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in until the jar was filled to the brim. Then he looked at the class and asked, “What is the point of this illustration?”

One eager beaver raised his hand and said, “The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard you can always fit some more things in it!”

“No,” the speaker replied, “that’s not the point.  The truth this illustration teaches us is:

‘If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all.”

If you are interested in fulfilling the purpose that you and your life are uniquely meant to fill – remember to center God around your life and to make Him your biggest “rock”.

I have found using the following recipe daily to be especially effective in creating a life full of purpose and abundance: (These are my big rocks!)

•    1 session of scripture study

•    At least 3 personal prayers

•    A healthy dose of humility and teachability

•    20 minutes of exercise

•    Consistent efforts to show love to family and friends

•    Taking at least 20 minutes to turn off noise of the world to listen and meditate (I often do this while I am driving.)

•    Eating healthy meals

•    Feeding my mind positive, educational literature and inspirational music

•    Looking for and recognizing the abundance of blessings in my life

•    Taking time to serve others

•    Turning to my Heavenly Father for guidance and answers

•    1 Giant helping of exercising Faith

I would love to hear your inspirational stories of how our Heavenly Father has helped you in your life! Please send them to me at joanna.oblander@mail.com

Share this: