Everything starts with a plan. When you decide to get married and you want to throw a great party, you start about a year in advance to make a plan. When you want to start a new business, you make a plan, way before you go to anyone to try and borrow money for it.

So, when you want to go in a new direction in your life, shouldn’t you also start with a plan? The plan has to have elements that excite and propel you forward, a bit of a carrot hanging ahead of you. Without that, the plan will lack the drawing power to get you to work even harder to achieve it. You must be able to see, taste and smell the finish line. Great athletes visualize winning a long time before they reach their goal. They even envision the tough challenges that will occur and how they will overcome them.

I was speaking with a dear friend tonight and she was embracing the thought of a life plan for the different stages a woman goes through. Men do as well,I am sure, but differently and I can only speak as a woman. The children are raised and in their own life stream. Time to decide where I want to go from here.

I have said I am planning a big birthday celebration for a milestone next year. I want to incorporate singing some songs that have meaning to me, and have already begun gathering favorite songs and trying them out in the privacy of my car! I guess next will be the venue and how much I will need to start saving toward that. I am also beginning to let good friends know to save the date so they can come celebrate my life with me.

The food will come later…for some that might come first. It all has to do with our own priorities, and that is the fun of making a plan. It begins to show you what your priorities are, what motivates and drives you and comes easily for you. Also which things take more time and effort but are important as well.

Having people around me with boundless positive energy is my main focus for this year. Finding mentors and people to share deep thoughts with, to spur one another to greater heights within ourselves….that seems to be my main focus. Gathering those people together, as in a wonderful harvest I have been feeding and nurturing and watering for years. It is time to bring in the harvest and have an amazing feast together! Doesn’t that sound like a great plan?

I am so excited about having a new look! My son says I need a new picture, and I am thinking of adding some color to a washed out, mostly black wardrobe. Having bought a bright color to start repainting the living room, this seems to be the direction I go when I am cheering myself up.

Some people go get their hair and nails done but I seem to paint something. That was always the cheapest way for me to totally change my surroundings. As a former faux finisher, I realized how many women also saw that as the best quick fix. There are lessons online, in fact, I may just add a link to the lessons I used to teach locally. That would be kind of fun. I will ask my son how to go about that!

Nowadays, they even let you get tester sizes of paint for a couple dollars at most the big stores. I have painted whole pieces of furniture with those alone,,,it doesn’t get cheaper than that! So if you are feeling under the weather, spiritually or emotionally, think of a color that makes you smile and go buy a sample. If nothing else, paint it on a big poster board and move it around the room in different lights and times of day. You will feel much more confident when you purchase the gallon if you have lived with it for awhile and still love it. Not the time to be safe…try something you believe will give your heart zing! It’s just paint, and it can always be painted over. Try it. I give you permission to think outside the paint can!

I have been very absent and am just turning a corner where I see the sun and all  the colors I have so missed in the last months! I am ready to toss my black wardrobe in favor of turquoise, yellow, orange and red, colors that make me smile when I wear them. I bought a gallon(not even a sample first!) of an apricot toned gold to paint the living of the house I am in, and that is a huge celebratory moment for a woman who always paints her home no matter if it is a rental, a purchase or a lengthy stay at a good friend’s! I just have to have light and color around me….they are vitamins for my soul!

My son just gave me this incredible new page and I love it! It’s kind of gypsy/artist/crazy/movement…..It’s me!!

And I am ready to get back to the art of lifting our spirits with a few bits of wisdom culled from my adventures as a Realtor in the market of life! You can tell by my effusive use of exclamation points that I am back in the game. I was going to remove the last entry, which is kind of haunting and not uplifting, but it occurs to me that there may be another out there who has hit bottom and needs to know that there is light up ahead. I always told people I am the kind of person who deals with depression like I did swimming. When I got in over my head and feared drowning, I would raise my arms so I got to the bottom of the pool as fast as possible, because only then could I bend my knees and push off to get back to the air and light and oxygen!

I’m breathing again, thank you Lord. And it feels good!

If you wonder where I have been for the last three weeks or more, it’s because my negative mind has been winning the battle. It is like slipping into a dark chasm and having to climb out, feeling your way along, your fingers bleeding and sore as you try to grab hold of the rocks for support and proceed to some faint flicker of light up ahead.
The loss of a house to foreclosure has precipitated an entire chain of events I could never have foreseen, nor could anyone who has shared this rocky path with me. Our government’s failure to put their finger in the dike and stop the floodgates from overflowing, sweeping so many homeowners along with the rising tide, has been abysmal and as sure as if they had pointed a gun and pulled the trigger. None of the many stop gap measures they gave lip-service to had the backbone of true allegiance behind them, and were just a distraction to appease those who had no one close in the fray. Like those of us who had no son, no relative in Vietnam, it remained was a war we just read about and we formed our opinions from the stories we were told. If you had a relative in this losing battle, you could always pretend it was their own fault for taking the loan they couldn’t afford in the first place, but if you had an ounce of compassion, you could see that it wasn’t anything like you were being told by the news media.
Unfortunately, it is no where near over, and the down-slide continues throughout the land. The middle class we grew up with is disappearing off the face of our landscape, perhaps for good. The hopelessness that accompanies it is felt as deeply as the loss of a child in a war that should have never been fought, with an enemy whom we still cannot name because we fear it is an inside job. The scars are ugly and they will be evident for a long time to come.
Like a rape by a trusted family member, your common sense mind just keeps telling you that someone should have seen it coming, could somehow have intervened, before your life was changed forever. Your mind has a hard time grasping that it is your own fault and that those who could have prevented it looked the other way as they took care of their own needs, fueled by their own selfish greed.
We have raped the American Dream and most people who feel victimized may never have had money to give a Bernie Madoff, but they can certainly recognize a ponzi scheme after they have been in one.

There are people like me who say that all the time. It has occurred to me that perhaps everyone doesn’t say that. There are people who seem to know how to structure their days, taking care of their needs, doing habitual things that keep body and soul in preservation mode.

Then there are others. People who jump at a ringing phone, eager to see if they have an answer for the caller. Is there a need I can meet, can I make your life easier? Do you need me to drop what I am doing to help you in some way?

Having come to realize that I have just passed through the last eight years of my single life by meeting the needs of a four legged friend, basically one bowl of dog food at a time, I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am one of those people. If we have a day where no one calls, we can’t figure out what to do with ourselves. So when we say ‘Call if you need me’….we absolutely mean it! And we will always answer the call.

Yesterday was the day I had to put my 14 yr old Lab, Jet, to sleep. It was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make. Partly because there would be no one else to share the blame with me, it was up to me alone. He just looked at me with trusting eyes until his very last breath, knowing I would never do anything but my very best for him.

I realized that any other decision was more for me than for him. To keep him going would have required many more pills for the pain. There is no pill for the pain of losing him. Just silence.
To walk into my house after fourteen years and not have him meet meet me with total joy. To sleep, not being occasionally aware of his breathing, licking or sighing, as he slept on the floor beside me or rearranged his beautiful four- legged body for more comfort, those are the silences I am aware of now.

It was a relationship where I realized we were like the pair in “Pretty Woman”….I saved him from the shelter, and he saved me right back forever after.

In the quiet now I realize how often I talked with him, shared my concerns, told him I loved him, where I was going and when I would return. Even when I didn’t keep my word, he never held a grudge, always forgave me, greeted every new day as a true blessing and time to start fresh, as though there was never a bad thing that had ever happened in his life. I believe it is no coincidence that ‘dog’ is God spelled backwards. They really model a good and fruitful life, lived everyday the very best we can, no looking back.

I hope I remember all he taught me with his unconditional and constant love and faith in me. He was a wonderful partner.

I sometimes wonder how my ramblings have any relationship any more to real estate, but I am reminded how many people buy a home to have a fenced in yard for a beloved dog. One of their highest concerns and the first money they spend has to do with providing for one, or finally having room to adopt one. Animals are very much intermingled in our lives. Unfortunately, all the people losing their homes means many more wonderful pets are abandoned in the process of moving backward into apartments. I can only pray that more people will open their homes and hearts to these creatures caught in the crossfire.They certainly will forgive their owners, but how much better if they were rescued before they suffered unduly. We can all help a shelter in some way, as they face unimaginable stress right now.

I am hung up on sayings lately, perhaps some kind of comic relief, but I was thinking as I tossed and turned in the wee hours before dawn…..how dearly we hang on until we know it is time to leave. We will try all manner of fixes and excuses, new plans for old problems, just hoping against hope things will turn around and go back the way they were.

It is only the realization that we actually may go down with the ship that makes us realize we would rather take a chance on icy waters or sharks than to actually be gone and have no hope of another day. I am reading a Dave Ramsey book where he keeps repeating at the end of every chapter “Change is very hard and we change only when the pain of same is greater than the pain of change”. Every time I read it I thought he was overdoing it, but after three weeks of reading a chapter a day, that phrase makes a lot of sense to me.
Clearly I must be ready for the pain of change, if I am beginning to understand the weight of that message.

I also know that I am not willing to go down with the ship!

I believe many of us are in limbo right now, what I call waiting for the other shoe to drop. I am a firm believer in being proactive, but sometimes things are a bit hazy as to which way to go on that path toward yourself. There are always others sharing your path, persons ( in my case right now, a 14 yr old lab named Jet) who are affected by your choices. We are told to do what is right for us, but for a caretaker personality, that is often the most difficult choice to make, even if we can decide what it is.

I know God made us the way we are for a reason, and for those of us who are caretakers, it is usually not a problem to go with the flow. There are times, however, when we really do have to step aside from all the relationships that count on us, and make sure that we are being true to the person we are and staying on the path we are supposed to be on.

That’s when everything feels lined up and in harmony, even if it isn’t easy. We know that we know that we know, as it were. Something deep inside is in alignment. When the car is running right, it can take you where you need to go, even if you aren’t totally sure of the destination just yet. At least you are ready to start packing for the trip!

I am reminded lately of the way God connects me to His family. I want to say we are not blood relatives, but in the truest meaning of that phrase…we are! We are connected by the Blood of Christ.

This past week He has sent out a 911 to everyone in my Christian journey book. He let them know I was in crisis, and he put it on their hearts to call me. Now, some of these people I have not talked to in five years! He had them show up in a parking space next to me at Walmart, in a part of town neither of us even lived in!
They have tracked me down online, finding this blog or an old real estate number that is still my cell. Amazing, really. And all to remind me of how we met and how God used me in their lives at that time and place.

The Holy Spirit moves in a way so powerful as to nudge people who are tuned in to make a call that has everlasting consequences. It can take the form of an email of encouragement, a prayer, a thank you never before spoken, forgiveness never before granted, but there could be life-changing results on the other side of it. Is He Tweeting you today?

There, I have said it. I have tried carefully in these blogs over two years to ‘hint’ at my faith, so as not to offend anyone who might be reading, but it is what it is, and I have to admit it.

First, I believe God is good, always has our best interests at heart and will bring us through any circumstances that we ask Him too. Perhaps not to our perceived desired result, but to our best end.
He will never abandon us, and He is the protector of the unmarried, the widow, the fatherless. That is as true today as it ever was, and He has laid that on my heart as well and it never leaves me any more than it ever leaves Him. I believe He gave each of us different pieces of the human puzzle to care about, and our walk through this life just strengthens and confirms that part of His heart which He entrusted to us.

When I forget that I am in His plan, that He made me this way, that is when I am lost, and most in confusion and despair. And that is when He takes me aside, much as a husband in a good marriage takes his wife on vacation, to reflect, restore and renew the commitment we have to each other. Sometimes it seems like I cannot afford to get away because the crisis is looming, but that is exactly when He will choose to go.

It is during these times at a crossroads, where new decisions are eminent and unrelentingly demanding an answer, where God takes me on a Scrooge-like revisit of my life. It may start out as a scary, fearful time, but if I can be still and wait for Him, He always shows up at the appointed time. I never know exactly when that is, but He is never late, and He never stands me up! As we remember the moments and miracles together, my life falls back into place, and I am back on track: The track He has laid lovingly beneath me and ahead of me, reminding me that the destination is sure, and all the stops along the journey contain the joys we share together. How blessed am I, and how deeply loved.