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Jean A. Costa / Posts tagged "trust"
January 4, 2015 In Faith

Trusting in Christ

Affirmation:  I dedicate this year of 2015 to
trusting in Christ.
It’s January 1st, 2015 and that can be a time for
reflection and retrospection.  I know
many people make some sort of New Year’s
resolution.  It can be a very common
topic during the first few days of January; “Have
you set any New Year’s resolutions?”  We all
know how they usually go.  Most people
are lucky if they hold onto those resolutions for more than a day.  You know the usuals: lose weight, stop
smoking, begin exercising, eat healthy, spend more time in prayer and or
mediation, etc. and then life takes over. 
The holidays are finished and most of us head back to work or to our
normal routine and that routine doesn’t
include those good intentions.  There is
however, ways to make permanent changes in our life.  Some changes we choose, those can be a gift
we give ourselves.  Other changes are
thrust upon us, and depending upon how we approach those, they can also be a
gift we give ourselves.  
I’m
very excited about this New Year.  I must
admit coming out of Christmas and looking towards the New Year, I didn’t feel excited. 
I felt anxious but I’ve been consistently
journaling and reading as much inspirational and motivational writings as are available to me and I’ve decided that this is my
year to simply go with the flow, to let go of the struggle and the challenges
that I’ve always created for myself.  My study group, The Seekers, is presently
reading Martha Beck’s Finding Your Own North
Star.  I really had a difficult time
relating to the beginning of the book but midway through it took on new
meaning.  The section we are presently
studying is about The Change Cycle. 
Change, one of those elements that every human being experiences and
experiences all the time.  Sometimes we
are aware of the changes, they are dramatic and potent but most change is
subtle and insidious.  We go through life
not paying much attention to it.  It hasn’t really commanded our attention but it’s always there and how we deal with small changes is a
precursor to how we deal with large changes. 

My Enneagram type, Type 7, is
prone to anticipation.  It’s part two of Martha Beck’s Change Cycle. 
That may sound exciting but the truth is it can be exhausting and it
takes me “out of the moment,” out of
the experience of the present.  I miss
too much by not paying attention to the Now. 
Between Martha and the information about my personality type in the
Enneagram, I decided not to live like that this year.  This year my intention is to allow life to
unfold.  I want to live in the movement
of the spirit.  I can’t tell you what that will look like and I will tell
you I have prayed that I am not called to be a martyr but I’m still going to go with it. 

I owe this year’s intention to one of my dear friends and study group
traveler.  She gifted me with the book, One
Word That Will Change Your Life by Jon Gordon and she has shared with me
over the year the impact of focusing on one word, like taking a mantra.  I know my intention is more than one word but
the word I’ve chosen to focus on is Trust.  It’s been
here now for a few years, floating in and out of my consciousness and my
affirmations.  A while back I developed
the RTR principle: I fully Rest in God’s care,
I Trust in God’s love and I Release myself from any struggle.  It was helpful but it was a little like a
resolution; I didn’t hold onto it for very
long.  I have discovered that when I take
an intention for the year, miraculous things, subtle and not so subtle take
place and without a lot of effort my life takes on new meaning and color. 
This is the third year of taking
an intention, declaring the year a “year
of.”  This
last year you might recall was “The year of connecting to the
Divine.”  It’s been a wild roller coaster
ride with the publishing of my book in February, the death of my mother,
Margaret Grolimund in March and the marriage of my daughter, Ellen, to Adam O’Sullivan in May but through it all there’s been a peace and a sense of being in the presence of
a greater power.  Each morning my journal
had the year’s intention written at the top of the page and even
though I mostly left the thought as I went throughout my day, I still carried
it with me in my inner being.  As with
all affirmations I believe they first enter your consciousness, then our
subconsciousness and then they permeate our cellular being and we are
different, different in ways we might never even imagined but different in ways
that enhance our lives. 

I’m
ready!  I’m
excited about this year’s intention.  I am expecting amazing, miraculous
things.  I know life will still hold all
the challenges life normally holds and maybe a few I can’t even imagine and for which I would never ask but I’ll be good.  I’ll let this new intention seep deep within me and
whatever the world throws at me, I’ll be
breathing deeply and knowing that since I’ve made
a conscious choice, every day to trust in Christ, I’ll look back on this year, just as I did on 2014 and
see the miracles and the blessings in all the hills and the valleys that is the
ride of my life. 
February 3, 2013 In Uncategorized

Embracing Adventure

Affirmation:  I am a bold adventuress.

This is a
very clear example of creating an affirmation to change the way I want to
think.   I want to believe with all my
heart that I am not afraid of most things, especially an “adventure.”  There are all types of adventures some we
choose and some which are chosen for us. 
I don’t care; I want to embrace every one of them.  I want to embrace every aspect of life and I
think most of life is that which happens between our plans and usually that
requires a sense of adventure.  Perhaps
being a daring adventurer requires all those skills I’ve worked on over the
years and have in my “tool box?”

It seems
to me an adventurer or adventuress needs to be flexible. My husband and I were
on our way to a vacation and it required us to fly there.  We were meeting our daughter and future
son-in-law in the Caribbean.  I’ve come
to believe anytime flying is involved, some sort of adventure will present
itself and all the survival skills I’ve been practicing over the years will be
needed to finish the journey.  On this
particular occasion I was right.  It
seemed anything that could delay a flight, delayed our flight from a malfunctioning de-icer to a sick passenger, to mechanical difficulties.  There we sat going nowhere.  After a three hour delay, we took off.  If there were a miracle we would make our next
flight.  There might have been one but we
weren’t aware of it.  We missed the next
flight by 20 minutes. All of the flights the next day were full.  They could send us through Puerto Rico and
then onto our final destination.  We’d
arrive, hopefully, 12 hours after our original time.

The
greatest loss I experienced with cancer was the loss of my intuition.  I always trusted I knew, without reason, what
was going to happen.  I had had many life
experiences when I knew ahead of time how things were going to work out even
when no one else could see it.  When the
word “cancer” was first mentioned to me, it didn’t register.  I had no forewarning.  I couldn’t imagine what they were talking
about.  I didn’t believe them.  The poor physician who first uttered
“breast cancer” to me, I just about attacked him.  What did he know?  That was ridiculous!  I knew he was wrong.  They weren’t wrong and there I was going on
an adventure I hadn’t chosen and of which I’d never even dreamed. 

I’d
always worked hard to be healthy.  I
exercised, I gave up smoking, I only drank alcohol periodically and I really
did try to eat healthily.  After the
cancer treatments were discontinued I began to look at more modalities I could
enlist to stay healthy. I’ve spoken with many people who go searching for those
things that will keep disease at bay.  It
doesn’t have to be cancer.  It can be
heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, high blood pressure.  The list is long.  Sometimes I hear about ailments that only a
tiny portion of the population ever experience and hope that I never have to
deal with something so rare but rare or not, there’s always that tiny,
sometimes not so tiny, voice that is questioning what is going on inside my
body that I have no knowledge of and of which I have no control over.  Oh, I’m trying to control it.  That’s what all those extra measures for
staying healthy are all about, vegan eating, no alcohol, exercise every day,
take my vitamins and have my yearly screenings. 
It’s my attempt to keep illness at bay, to trick myself into believing I
have control over what’s going on but I don’t really, do I?  Certainly, I can do all within my ability but
after that, who really knows?

My
husband handed me a short story about a young man who was so anxious about his
health that he had stopped living.  It
revolved around an older professor and his assistant.  After the professor listened to his young
friend’s concerns, he went to tell him about his great-grandfather.  His great grandfather had had all sorts of
health ailments, including losing an arm in one of the wars but he wasn’t as
concerned with disease and death as he was with living.  He had a zest for life and it couldn’t be
dimmed.  He wasn’t going to go quietly
into the night and if he did, he was going to go with the vast, colorful
memories of a life well lived. 

Balance
is another skill I’ve worked on over the years. 
In yoga you normally have one or two balance poses you practice in every
session.  There is a balance between
living recklessly and living so small that you might as well already be
dead.  That’s where being an adventurer
or adventuress comes in.  It’s deciding
to embrace the experience whatever it is or whenever it presents itself.  

As we
boarded the second plane to Puerto Rico a petite blonde women came and sat in
the window seat next to me.  I don’t
remember how the conversant started, probably with just a nod and a hello, like
so many casual meetings.  We exchanged a few
niceties about where we were going and why. 
I on vacation with my family, she returning to one of her two homes, one
in Majorca and one in Antigua.   She
lived on a ship.  It was being restored
in English Harbor, Antigua.  It was a
classic and she invited me to come see it. 
The name?  The Adventuress. 

We took
one day from the delights of the resort and headed out to see some of the
island.  We finally reached English
Harbor.  I guess I wasn’t really thinking
about how to find her ship, I thought I’d just ask.  There were hundreds of ships in the
harbor.  After a while and a few
questions a delightful young man offered us a ride in his Zodiac.  He thought the ship at the very end of the
other side of the harbor might be the one we were looking for.  Off we went. 
Yes, it was her ship, The Adventuress. 
No, she was nowhere to be found but with the mention of her name, we
were invited aboard for a short tour.  It
was stunning and certainly something far removed from my realm of
experience.  I’ve not been on a lot of
sailing ships.  In fact the person who
gave us the tour was the “sail master.”  I didn’t even know there was such a title. 

I kept
thinking about my intention to be grateful for all things at all times.  If we hadn’t missed our flight, I never would
have met the owner of The Adventuress. 
Once again I was faced with the belief that if I’d just relax, trust and
rest in God’s infinite care, I’d be so much happier, so much calmer.  Perhaps I’d even begin to trust my instinct
again.  Perhaps I’d be able to see the
adventure thrust on me with the onset of breast cancer.  Maybe if I could embrace that aspect of the
diagnosis, the one that lets me see all of life as an adventure, maybe then I
could finally fully claim the intention I’ve had for so very long, “I am a
bold adventuress.”  I’m not afraid
to fully live life and with that, perhaps, like the old man in the story, I’ll
go to my death with the vast colorful memories of a well lived life. 
November 27, 2012 In Uncategorized

Answered Prayer

Affirmation: 
I believe in answered prayer.
Faith, what does that look like to you?  My husband says it’s “trust on
steroids.”  It has also been said the
opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty. 
I am not certain.  I have listened
to others talk about their faith and their relationship with God or for Christians
like myself, with Jesus.  I have heard
the stories of the “born again.”  Many
times I am filled with envy and always I am filled with quite a few questions.  My faith journey has been slow and steady,
climbing up, slipping down, ever hopeful that I don’t slip below my last
starting place.
I have not found it easy to be faith
filled.  I have to work at it every
day.  I appreciate being told, “It’s the
work of a lifetime.”  I hope, too, that
my lifetime is long enough to get me to a place where I can fully trust in
God’s love and care for me and for my loved ones.
I love to read and hear the sermons about
God’s bountiful love and care for us, His or Her children.  There are many preachers who see God as this
entity that only wants what’s best for us. 
And, they lead me to believe that His/Her best is also my best.  There is where the difficulty lies. I keep
wondering where martyrs fit in this picture of divine love and care.  On February 22, 2011 a group of four
Americans were captured and killed off the coast of Somali.  They were
sailing around the world since December 2004, on the yacht of Jean and Scott
Adams.  The Quest was their home, this couple from California.  The
two other Americans on board were Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle of Seattle,
Washington.  When I first heard about Jean and Scott, they had been
captured by pirates and were being held hostage.  They were then
surrounded by the US navy and other helping vessels but, before they could be
rescued, they were shot dead.
I
was truly inspired by their adventurous spirit when I first heard the story of
their mission.  I know there must be many
people who have the same spirit and I just haven’t heard about all of
them.  But, Jean and Scott were in their 70s and they were sailing to
remote parts of the world to share the word of God.  Yes, I know a lot of
people are missionaries and I am usually in awe of anyone who lives a life so
far out of most people’s comfort zone.  They were not what I consider
young and here they were so far from their support systems.  What would
they have done if they got sick, or injured, or needed a dentist or as a friend
commented to me, “If Jean needed a massage, or a facial?” 
Obviously, their mindset was very different than most people.
But,
if they died doing God’s work, as have so many martyrs, why should I believe
that Jesus will take care of me?  Oh,
yes, I would like to believe that.  We
don’t get everything we ask for, sometimes it seems like someone isn’t’ even
out there.  Thankfully, sometimes we get
something even better than we could have imagined.  I can recall several specific times in my
life when I was praying in general for one thing and something so much better
came along.  It can take my breath
away.  When my oldest daughter, Melissa,
was a single parent we, her father and I, prayed daily for her well-being.  We didn’t know exactly what that would look
like but we knew we didn’t want her and her children to endure undue
hardship.  We were there for them in
every way we could be but we wanted her to be able to care for herself and her
children.  We wanted her to be
independent and self-sufficient in every way possible.  Our prayers were answered beyond our wildest
expectations when she met Larry.  Not
only did she find someone amazing to share her life with but along with him
came two wonderful new grandsons.
One
day I was overcome with worry about my mom. 
I was at a loss about how to help her and she was not capable of helping
herself.  I was so overwhelmed with the
responsibility that I simply turned it over to God.  I prayed, “Lord, I do not know what to
do.  Please send help.”  Then, I waited.  It wasn’t long before the phone rang and
right after that my family arrived, called and accompanied me to my mom’s
home.  A new “on call” physician arrived
and before I knew it, mom was feeling better. 
I hadn’t even had time to stop and thank God for His/Her response.  As I reflected later, I began to see the
blessings that had been sent and then I had to choose.  Was it just the universe stepping into
support us?  Would it have happened even
if I didn’t say a prayer?  Maybe, but I
did pray and it gave me great comfort to believe the help we received was
answered prayer.  I want to believe in
answered prayer.  I know I will never
understand it but I believe with every fiber of my being that prayer makes a
difference.  If I can tap into the belief
that my prayers are always answered, in a way that only benefits me, think of
the peace that can be mine.  It has been
promised, you know, Mathew 7:7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you
will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
I believe God never leaves me, if I ask
Him/Her to be with me.  It is I who comes
and goes.  I believe that through my
faith, I will be able to deal with whatever life throws at me.  And, that whatever that is, through faith, it
will be miraculously transformed into something good, maybe something great,
something beyond my wildest imagination. I need to believe.  I have chosen to believe.  I have chosen the theology and doctrine that
I grew up with.  It’s not perfect but it
enables me to live life with less fear and anxiety than I could without
it.  I believe it because I want to
believe.  That’s what most of my affirmations revolve around, what I want
to believe.   Yes, a loving caring God.  I know this question
has been asked and examined many times around topics even more horrendous than
what Jean and Scott endured.  Topics like:  war, famine, child abuse,
cancer and other life threatening or debilitating diseases.  Perhaps, it’s
not what happens to us, no matter how difficult; perhaps it’s how we perceive
what happens to us?  Perhaps if we practice trusting God, we can go to our
death with dignity and grace regardless of the circumstances, knowing that this
life is temporary and because of our faith, because of my faith in Jesus
Christ, I will share in the glory of heaven.  My faith and trust in Him,
will secure me life everlasting, with Him and all the Saints and Angels. 
That’s why I believe and why I am still working on it.