My father was a reflective person - and my mother was a doer. I think I have inherited these traits from both... (Or perhaps we all become more reflective as we get older and look back on the things we have done.) In any event, I have been pondering the idea of listening to the patterns of our lives. This term - the patterns of our lives - rings true to me, as I see myself drawn to certain things like traveling (my need to see and do new things) and creating (mostly fabric "art"). I have been drawn to these pleasures again and again. There are other patterns I am not as pleased about: my difficulty in sharing my faith story, my natural tendency to criticize.
So I am reflecting on the idea of life patterns as I read: "We have to begin to face what our own life patterns might be saying to us. When we are afraid, what message lurks under the fear: a horror of failure, a rejection of weakness, panic at the thought of public embarrassment, a sense of valuelessness that comes with loss of approval? When we find ourselves in the same struggles over and over again, what does that pattern say: That I always begin a thing with great enthusiasm only to abandon it before it is finished? That I am always reluctant to change, no matter how good the changes might be for me? ...
"Until I learn to listen - to the Scriptures, to those around me, to my own underlying life messages... I will really have nothing to say about life myself. To live without listening is ... to drift in my own backwater."
(Wisdom Distilled From the Daily, p. 21)
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