Anatomy of a Gift

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” ~ Proverb of origin unknown

Although this wise, old proverb hints at the fact that we shouldn’t judge a gift by its monetary value, a few days ago I couldn’t help but come up with a slightly different interpretation for it.

A week ago, I woke up to a terrible head cold – sore throat, stuffy nose, body aches, and all the necessary garnishes to make me feel utterly miserable. Not being a fan of medications unless absolutely necessary, I decided to treat myself to some of our old family recipes, enriched this time by the suggestion of an herbalist friend. I drank ginger tea throughout the day in addition to several teaspoons of homemade Four Thieves vinegar – for those who don’t know what it is, Four thieves vinegar is non-pasteurized vinegar in which certain herbs known for their anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties have been allowed to steep for six weeks.

True to my beliefs that a well-aligned spirit is meant to live in a healthy body, I also dedicated a little extra time to meditation, visualizing health and vigor even if I felt like death. I focused on illness being the illusion, and good health being my birth right.

Something worked. Although I’ve had good results with all the above mentioned methods I the past, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to fully heal from a nasty cold in twenty-four hours until now. When I first got out of bed the next day, I was slightly surprised that my body was not aching and the chills were gone, but as the day progressed, and all other symptoms began to completely subside by lunch time, I questioned what had happened.

Old lore tells that a cold takes three days to come on, three days to stay, and three days to go; this cold, however, took the express train out of town. What killed it? Was it the vinegar, or the ginger, or, maybe, the meditations? Really, it could be any of those things or none of them at all, but what mattered is that I was no longer sick.

That’s when the proverb of the gift horse flashed through my mind. One of our greatest blessings and curses is our never-ending necessity to question everything. We feel the compelling need to qualify and quantify everything, often looking for flaws that can confirm our doubts.

When we receive a blessing, we can’t just accept it for what it is; we need to find out who did what, why they did it, and how it happened; by doing so, we dilute our gratitude for the blessing received. If we ask for help getting out of a flood, it doesn’t matter if God Himself lowers His hand to pick us up, a neighbor comes with his fishing boat, or a large log happens to float by us at the right moment; what counts is that we are safe and should use our energy to send out vibes of gratitude rather than worrying about the technicalities leading to the gift.

I quickly wiped my own thoughts away, and thanked Spirit for the help, elated to feel healthy and inspired. Once again, believing truly saved the day.

Lessons from a Daffodil

“Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.” ~ Voltaire


Yesterday was a dreary day. With temperatures in the forties and a steady, icy drizzle, one felt more motivated to buy warm chestnuts and candy canes that the Easter eggs and colorful bunnies displayed on the shelves of a nearby drugstore. A month away from Easter, winter is still ruling the land.

Yesterday morning, one of the posters on my blog mentioned seeing her daffodils already in bloom, to which I replied that mine were still hiding out. I was wrong. Upon closer inspection, I indeed saw that my own spring messengers had awakened from their wintry slumber and were poking their heads out in full expectation of spring to come.

Looking at the tender sprouts made me smile – even on a day like yesterday they knew it won’t be long before they can proudly grow and fulfill their potential for yet another season. Just like birds singing before sunrise to welcome the day ahead, the young daffodils follow their own inner guidance – without a conscious mind telling them otherwise, they have no reason to doubt the plan Universe has set in place for them; regardless of temporary hardship they know warmer weather is on the way

If a daffodil can do it, there is no reason why we shouldn’t. We claim to believe in a supreme source of all creation, yet we consistently doubt the plan set in place for us by the same intelligence. We pray for something, and immediately after we doubt our prayers will be answered. All along, we allow our fears to take over our faith – we are afraid of lack, of being harmed, of being robbed, of being abandoned to our fate, of being betrayed by someone – and at the same time we claim to believe. In what DO we believe, if I may ask? And why do we continue to worship if we don’t fully believe in this entity’s supreme power over all there is?

In reality, God does listen, and there is no limit to what He can accomplish on our behalf, if we don’t stand in the way. By doubting the outcome of our prayers we close the doors to blessings already on their way, and we broadcast the wrong vibes to the Universe.

The entire Universe operates following a law or resonance, thus allowing us to duplicate what we feel. Even if words have power because they allow us to paint a mental picture, words without feelings are just empty groups of letters; no matter how pretty they sound, they lack the fuel to propel our petition forward. Words must be backed by faith and feeling to make a difference. If we have absolute faith that something will happen because we have released the request to a higher source of energy, our feelings will be a reflection of positive expectation, and will, therefore, produce more situations that will trigger the same feelings again, over and over. Whoever said that when it rains it pours truly hit the nail on the head – if our response to a situation is infused with feeling, Universe will continue to match what we feel.

We have become arrogant enough in our own self-image that we assume a frail flower is much less important than we are, but indeed, how much we can learn from it!

One Reason to Believe in Yourself

“Forget about all the reasons why something may not work. You only need to find one good reason why it will.” ~ Robert Anthony


As I drove home from my monthly writers’ meeting, last night, I reflected upon the many opportunities I have had this past year to grow and expand my passion for writing.

It was only three years ago, that writing professionally was nothing more than a far-away dream, a distant star I could watch and wish upon but not quite hold. On a very early morning on July 2006, I woke up with a handful of words in my head; as I went about my daily routines they continued to nag at me until I picked up pen and paper and wrote them down. That night, after the kids went to bed, I transferred that first sentence to a notebook.

Those few words spun more, until the story began to take a life of its own. When I finally finished the first draft, about a month later, I was thrilled that I had finally been able to write a full-length novel, but I thought it was going to age inside a drawer. I let a couple of my closest friends read it and they all seem to like the story line, so I gathered more confidence and showed it to a few more people. Finally, one day, someone asked me if I was going to try to get it published. Instantly I began to formulate in my mind all the reasons it wouldn’t go anywhere. My friend looked at me and asked: “Now that you’ve come up with all the reason it couldn’t make it, can you think of a few why it could?”

I thought about it for a moment, and the only thing that came to mind was that it was a unique story which didn’t really fit any specific genre. “There,” my friend said, “it’s something new and refreshing. It could make it just because of that.” I chewed those words around for a couple of days, and with each passing moment I began to feel that there was no harm in trying, so I decided to give it a shot.

Months continued to pass, and rejections kept piling up; many times I felt like giving up, but every time I got really fed up, something or someone would come along and encourage me to keep trying. In time, I signed up with a literary agent and the book – along with another one she had asked me to write to set a platform – sold to a publisher. What attracted the publisher to it was the very same reason I thought of when my friend asked three years before – the story was different than many already on the market and belonged to a category of its own.

What started as a hobby turned into the incarnation of a life-long passion, only because the focus was shifted from what couldn’t work to what probably could. The rest was a wonderful and unexpected journey.

If I had listened to the thousand-and-one reasons my mind had come up with as a shield to protect me from possible failure, I would still be staring at my wishing star from the window of an unfulfilled dream.

So, no matter how arduous your dream is, if you can think it you can reach it. Believe in yourself.