Faith

What’s Important this Christmas?

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What’s Important? Knowing Jesus. You might be rolling your eyes at this point, I get that. You might want to click escape and erase these sentences from your mind. But they will stick, because Jesus gently calls, consistently calls and guides us whether we like it, want it or think we need it 🙂 He is LOVE, love calls to the dark parts, the holes deep within that we try to fill with so many other things.

What’s important? Who’s important this Christmas? Might be a better question.

I’ve been in survival mode for awhile now, healing really, becoming, reclaiming what I thought was lost and realizing it wasn’t really lost at all. I was in a ‘pause’ mode for a year. A year of solitude and literal silence.

A year ago, last Christmas I was in the grips of a deep, survival struggle. 

I began this 50newbeginnings site in December 2013. Ten years to date, writing each year, adding pages and stories, chapter books in edit form, sharing my life with a world I did not know and may never know. You might be reading this thinking – where is she going with this post? Hang in there with me!

December 2013 I held my breath and began this website journey with a Christmas snap shot of my family’s traditions and moments of sacred community. Last year, the ninth year, I was silent, I was silent for more months than I would like to admit. Not only in writing but also in communicating, strengths and freedoms had become difficult and physically painful. My life stripped down to the daily check off list so I would and could remember what I had accomplished. Hours segmented and ordered with repetition to rebuild the synapses connecting thoughts and motions in my brain that had been changed. I was rebuilding, or maybe just building.

This Christmas 2023 I begin again the journey of sharing and being known through words and thoughts.

Today I choose to share a message of HOPE for all of you reading this today – what ever day it is.
The bottom line?
Don’t give up!

Healing comes in surprise packages and sometimes in ways we do not see nor do we recognize. I’m learning another name for healing is growth. Like a plant when it is pruned and shaped by a Master Gardner, so I too, am shaped each day by my Maker, the God and only creator of the Universe, his son Jesus, guides my path – through the thick and thin of life – through times of change and drastic ‘make-overs’ not unlike the type accomplished at a SPA 🙂 and similar in purpose. A pause, a buffing, moisturizing applied to dry spots, steaming out the impurities of the flesh and renewing with moments of rest whether by message, quiet meditation or listening to music. My soul needed a re-set just as the break provided at said SPA experiences. 

I’m not the person I was a year ago, or even yesterday, that is healthy!

It is as it is supposed to be, growing, and expanding, learning from mistakes. Each day becomes a battle for me even yet, life is not easy, nor should it be. Struggles build us, mold us, teach us what we need to know.

Who we need to know.

Why we need to know.

Jesus is the way the truth and the life, waiting for you, calling you to come. 

Hear His voice calling you to come, receive His love purchased by dying on a cross to take all the guilt and sin in your life upon Himself, to make the way clear to Himself. No barriers, no need to do a better job, no need to try to be perfect in your own strength but become excellent receivers of HIS strength, HIS power, HIS joy – receiving and giving hope in the deepest, darkest pit of separation from the Living God, the one who created you, the one who calls you with the HOPE of eternal life of peace, no suffering, no more crying no more pain. In this world we will have all of those things, but Jesus showed us the way. God becoming human, knowing and experiencing life outside of heaven. Jesus stands in heaven now, beside the Father God, reminding God the Father of the price HE paid, to cover and cleanse our souls so we could

Know WHO is important this Christmas. Jesus.

He came to His own people and His own people rejected Him, but to anyone – anyone – who believes in His name, that He is the Son of the Living God, to this person He will give eternal life.

don’t miss the WHY of Christmas -learning of the one who loves you

don’t miss the WHAT of Christmas-the fact that Jesus is your ticket to eternal living life abundantly

don’t miss the WHO of Christmas – Jesus

In the Bible, different versions use language that describes and tells the story – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, found in the middle of the collection of stories are a great place to start, they told His story – THE Story of Jesus, come to earth for YOU and ME.  The other books point to Jesus’ coming and how God tried for so many centuries to love a people that did not understand Him, Jesus came so we could SEE the Father God’s love for us. 

For God so loved the world that he gave is only son, Jesus, that whoever believes in Him will not die to an eternal place of separation from God, but that they would have eternal life WITH God – beginning NOW with the step of belief.  (John 3:16 in The Bible)

What’s Important THIS Christmas? Knowing that Jesus is waiting just for you, completely seeing and hearing your cries for something more in this life here on earth and offering so much more beyond what we see and hear. Believe. Receive His love. Read His story in the Bible.

The Best Thing

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November 3, 2022 – Positive Thots =

I Just Don’t Remember quite right…

This is a good thing and a bad thing.

There are things that happen, or things that are said that it is a wonderful new skill to actually not remember!!!

Not be responsible to be the ‘brain of the household’ knowing where all items are located at all times, for all purposes.

Not the ‘housewife’ just a wife that lives in a house. – there IS a difference folks!

Not to be the encyclopedia of answers or know all the conversations that happen within the space of an evening – IF the TV is running non-stop in the background.

AND

Not being able to cook, carry on two conversations, make sure the cat is fed and has water, while the TV is playing my favorite movie – well folks my brain has a dickens of a time switching from one thing to another quickly, well actually switching at all from one thing to another – no go friend :(. So…no go on doing more than one thing at a time! Multi-tasking? Huh? Nope? Ain’t happening! 🙂

Then… that still, tiny, worry voice crops up from the bottom of my heart and says, “Stacey, will you ever be able to be ‘you’ again?” Answer: NO

TRUTH: No one person is the same from day to day.

I have just gone from my zany self to a very simple, one track minded person, and even then the one track gets easily de-railed. “Choo Choo, I think I can” story = comes to mind and off I go on another train of mind – literally (good grief:).

I smile at myself. And giggle. Then silence, my mind goes blank and nothing brings back what was supposed to come next – even if I rest – it is just gone, lost, and now I think that is probably a good thing?

In all this… I find the grace that is needed, from the source that is perfect and full of everything I need. The source of all things, the creator, the redeemer and my friend = Jesus. (Bible)

It’s a good place to be right now… Healing from a head trauma 🙂
Stacey

Long Journey Home

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Long Journey Home
By Stacey Britton | Blog July 28, 2021 | posted November 21, 2021


Bring to me every concern, every failure, every hope, every dream -everything.
Remember, I am your creator and comfort. I am your’s, child. I am your source, without me you are nothing? Even if you don’t acknowledge me I am your source. -Father

I’ve taken many trips of mental thought about how God works in my life. The foundation has always come back to the fact that I am not God, even though I would really like to control things, my life, suffering and so forth. Then I listen to those thoughts and laugh. “As if” I could run the world, create the Universe and imagine the Tucan bird. My view is so small and God is so big.

Even though my base belief is that God exists, I find myself doubting His existence when pain enters my life. I try to take care of my pain instead of letting it go, trusting God, and believing that I am deeply loved, completely forgiven, totally accepted and absolutely complete in God because of Jesus Christ. (The Search for Significance by Robert S McGee)

I know these things, but when I am hurting I don’t always believe or feel these wonderful truths.

I come to the point where I have to

CHOOSE

to believe what I know to be true – in the midst of the messes of life.

Joy comes eventually, trust is reborn, hope emerges and brings life and direction.

SOMETIMES, I just get STUCK, frozen like a deer in headlights. Other times I walk in fear, stand fast during the storm and learn to trust even though I don’t feel like I can even trust my own thoughts.

MAYBE I am the only one that struggles so, when loss, pain, loneliness, isolation and illness enters my life, but then maybe more that I suppose can relate to this raw telling of an inner walk of faith. Maybe.

One thing I do know. No matter how awful life lessons are and how much I do not understand or handle them in the moment…

God loves me, this I know and I am HOME.


Image

To Send or Not to Send

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By Stacey Britton | 05July2020 |Blog: To Send or not to Send

To Send or Not to Send

I remember it vividly! It was Christmas holiday from school for me. A nice break to regroup and work on my writing. I’ve been writing since early high school so in reality since the late 1970’s. Writing but not publishing. Writing but not sharing. Writing in secret a downloading of my life.

The first send: I shared my writing with one person. One story. One push of the button ‘send’. A living trust of part of who I am FINALLY shared with someone I trusted.

“Have you published this story? This story NEEDS to be published!” It was 2012. Over 30 years of pouring my life unto the page, pages and pages, pens galore. It took another several postings to my friend, story after story, send after send. Bringing me the confidence to finally think the impossible, possible.

Maybe, just maybe I could write my stories and post them on a website.

Then one December night in 2013, Christmas Eve our family had celebrated in our normal way and the guys were playing the new games, laughing, joking around and so forth. I took the opportunity to find a quiet spot in my upstairs bedroom. I took the time to FINALLY step forward. My heart was frantically beating, I was afraid, my secret life of writing would now become public. Should I take this step, should send my life out among others to be seen, read and become vulnerable with the reality of my life story? Shame tugged at my mind, doubts yelled in my head, unworthy, you’ll be exposed. Don’t do it!

I stepped forward, set up the website, loaded a story and ‘Publish’ was pushed. The Christmas story of that evening soon became my highest read story of all for several years. But it was the story behind the story that I am sharing now.

I remember how I felt then and wonder why it took so long to share my life with others. Reader, be brave, each of us have a story all our own. No one else knows the inside of our minds and hearts. Share your ideas, push that ‘send or publish’ button, search for them with a boldness that carries a hope of the future.

Just Send.

I’m reminded of another ‘send’ story. Jesus was sent to us, it was his choice to leave heaven and tell us His story here on earth so we in turn could have a relationship with Him. He sends us to share the loving story of His longing to have a relationship with all of us, to reunite God our create to our story.


Come

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By Stacey Britton |April 29, 2020 Journal Entry | Blog Trying not to Hurt
Trying NOT to Hurt

I’m trying not to hurt, but sometimes everything connects in the perfect storm of emotion and I am sapped of life. Usually it does not last long, once I figure out what cut open the formerly healed place in my heart.

This time?

I had several points of dagger entry and I was overwhelmed, I shut down my emotions unless I was alone where I could cry out to God for help, or just to ask Him to help me walk through whatever caused such damage.

Other times, like this time, I’m still angry – because I see the patterns, over and over again AND I am still silent. My voice does not shout out what I see, silence has become a habit.

Recently I did speak up, twice, and because my strong voice is basically never heard, when I finally spoke it sounded like a shout. My trickling waterfall became a raging storm of water, it did not seem to be my voice at all. What they did not know?

The raging storm of water is my inner voice.

I’m still learning how to speak, to keep my own wants and wishes out of the equation and literally lean into Father for the very words I do speak out loud, my very breath and thought, pulling all of those gifts, to speak, to hear, to listen, to be in sync with my Heavenly Father that the double edged sword that He has me speak goes in cleanly and brings healing.

This is not the healing that I thought I was praying for…

To listen deeply to another soul, while you are listening to Abba and asking Abba how to respond – this is a walk of healing, side beside someone. To allow Abba to fill you with a love not your own and obediently give as Abba asks, this too is a healing. Healing the poverty, loving the lowly, caring for those you may never know.

But God Knows.
God Sees.
God Hears.
God Heals.

I am to pray for the give of healing, what I walk I would never have called a healing gift. But it is the deep inner healing of loving another with no expectation of return.

Jesus died on the cross to save our souls, He loves us and gave up everything. He healed us of the broken relationship between us and our creator.

Healing sight, hearing, diseases, this is what I thought Abba meant, that I was to grow strong faith to perform these miracles. But instead He took me on a journey to see what He sees, to acknowledge that relationship with God and others IS the great healing. I am not to judge how He wants me to follow Him,

I am to follow.
Come and Follow Me, He said so long ago – and still today He says Come.

The Path

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The Path

The stone walkway was uneven and the sharp edges of the uncut rocks scraped the bottom of her naked feet.

This was the path?

This was the direction?

As she continued the way of obedience she pondered why she was led down a path of suffering before a new assignment?

Just give up and give in…

Learn to give in to joy! Stop analyzing every step, trust the Shepherd and follow his lead.

Receive!

She stumbled at these words, they cut her heart, just as the rough rock sliced her feet.

Tiny drops of blood marked her path. Anyone could clearly follow, her path of surrender.

As darkness gave way to the light of day she remembered the age old sacred words of comfort.

Weeping may last for the night,
But joy comes in the morning! (Psalm)

She smiled.

Table Within Series | The Adventure Outward | The Path | 17Aug2017

Stacey

A Sanctuary

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A place of refuge is my Lord.
In silence I go out to greet Him.
I long to be known and to be fully known.
My inner desire is for Jesus.

Jesus the Master of my soul,
Each day is new before Him.
Oh how sweet is His presence and
His daily LOVE,
Moment by moment with Him.

Stace
JE4.16.17

Homeward

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I.could.hardly.WAIT.to.leave…

Now, I can hardly wait to get home!

PERFECT!

It only took a few days to fill my ‘tank’.

Beautiful ocean scenes,

Walking on the beach,

Sleeping in a rustic room…

 

Only a few simple things really, but combined with purposely dwelling in a place of silence, writing and ‘leaving my cares behind’ has amazingly rejuvenated my personhood – mind, body, soul and spirit. Aligning them anew in the correct placement under my creator and best friend.❤️?

The significance of three days is not lost on me.

I remember how long FRIDAY to SUNDAY took to change the entire world.

Just.three.days!

Complete death, complete surrender, complete resurrection to new life.

Jesus did this for ALL! (and for ONE)

Resting in the knowledge that His death was personal – for all of us…

It was relational restoration for all of us…

So we can enter His REST, not working to earn our salvation, not striving to please and impress!

Only…

REST

Stace❤️??

JE7.20.17

The Next Step

stepping stones“Mom, I need help.”
My emotions froze when I heard his voice.
“Mom, I don’t know where I am, I need help.”
I quickly went into survival mode, teacher mode.
“Look around you, what do you see?”
My voice was calm, soothing, I was in savior mode.
“I don’t know, I see…”

What do you do when you know your son is lost, literally and figuratively?

Lost in the sense of not knowing where he is so you can find him and lost in the matter of not knowing what step to take next in life.

Then I thought of my own place in life, how the last six years have been that same struggle, feeling lost.

My son and I eventually connected and I was reminded of the story of the good shepherd that left the 99 sheep safe at home to go out and find the lost sheep. For that is exactly what I had done that night, left everyone at home, late at night, in the dark, to find my son. It was the conversation early that morning that sealed the trust and faith between the two of us – both on a journey going in the same direction, yet miles apart. For so long it had seemed we would never connect again, but the moment of finding him on the side of the road, in the dark, scared, and totally lost until I found him sealed in us a moment of trust.

A great place to take the next step.

Reflections on a Walk

One moment kept repeating in her mind. A quick picture, then a short movie clip. One moment in time, she didn’t know which moment, where or when just that at some point this moment, this one moment most definitely would occur. Her mind wandered to the details in each step, how the main character walked, the audience, who the character spoke to and the resulting tidal wave of emotion that occurred as a result of the beginning step. One step, one moment. What did it all mean?
She kept seeing a tree, very old, with one exposed large white root growing outward away from the other roots. This root was large, was vibrating with life, pulsing and almost moving. One moment in time, a flash, what did it mean? She knew who is was for, who the tree represented, the timing, but the meaning of the root escaped her. She pondered the step, she pondered the tree, were they connected somehow?
She felt the burning of her skin, the ache in her muscles and bones, she felt the pain of dehydration and cracked, swollen lips, she knew where she was, knew what she was suffering. Yet, in her home, her skin was fine, she was fully hydrated and experienced no pain of her own. Her suffering was of sorrow and mourning for those who were suffering. Again she asked the question, are these pictures and experiences connected?
Miraculous? A gifting and calling? OR just the day to day relationship between God her Father and his dearly beloved daughter? Trusting her with things He was concerned about and wanting to bring about for His Kingdom work. Why me? She often asked, the still small voice would once again resound in her heart and mind: I chose you because you listen. It is not because of who you are but because of who I am in you. You are mine. I love you.

May 27, 2016 Reflections on a Walk