Nature and Healing

“The choice to accept myself as I am: human, imperfect…To be useful, to be used up, to survive and to thrive so I can use every moment to make the world a better place. And finally, to stop running from the past.” Edith Eger ~ Survivor of Auschwitz

Jelly Roll never made it out of ninth grade. He has been in prison 40 times. He spent his 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th birthdays incarcerated. He was addicted to cigarettes, cocaine, other drugs, and alcohol. Then fatherhood, both his own becoming a father and drawing closer to the Father, his life became a living message that is transforming thousands more.

In “Save Me”, he bellows, “Somebody save me. Me from myself. I spent so long living in hell…Something inside me is broken. I hold onto anything that sets me free…Life has shattered all my hopes and my dreams.”

Those words bring home both the root and the cure of all our addictions that keep us from living in and from our original beauty ~ that dream that God blew into our mother’s womb as he knit us there.

We’re born beautiful, with a divine call and purpose for being on this earth. All the seeds for the gifts and skills we will need to fulfill that purpose are there, too.

Then…life happens. Parents want us to be this. Teachers tell us to be that. Guidance counselors direct us to the growing edge of where the money is. Churches teach us what is “godly” and what is “worldly” ~ forgetting that God counts carpenters as sacred as missionaries.

With all the expectations heaped on us from a very tender age, is it any wonder that we forget how to dream with God? How to count a dream as a way of planning as we ponder it until the plan hatches into reality? Is it any wonder that we lose connection with our original beauty?

When we lose that connection a chasm is created and we gravitate toward substitutes…obsessively working, accumulating “stuff”, abusing substances, food, unhealthy relationships, and/or control (my personal favorite). AKA: addictions.

Yet, none of these satisfy. Oh, they work for a time…dull the pain of lost dreams…until they don’t. At any moment we choose, we can wake up, turn around and see that the Hound of Heaven has never stopped tracking, pursuing, and wooing us back home. The Home of Me as God designed.

I have taken somewhat of a sabbatical since retiring from my work in war-torn Sudan and South Sudan. This time has provided a sacred space for me to go deeper into my own healing and to reconnect with my original beauty.

Each time I returned from Sudan, I led retreats around the world. The one thing God has impressed upon me is the need to pick up these retreats and help others to reconnect with their original beauty.

Only this time, I will lead them in nature at my home in the woods with the help of Chief, Rusty the True, and Lily (two Paso Fino horses and one highly sensitive English Lab). These Original Beauty retreats will be rustic and mostly outdoors (think Outward Bound but without the rock climbing and repelling😊

Our first retreat will be held in October, 2023. To keep our time as intimate as possible there will only be SIX PARTICIPANTS per retreat, so it’s best to sign up quickly. To sign up or receive more information, please complete this form and select “free initial consultation” and I will contact you directly and immediately.

Remember: Dreams are just unrealized plans in the making. When held closely, tenaciously, and patiently, those dreams become our new reality.

Lily, the one who watches over two highly sensitive Paso Finos, two Pekins, one Muscovy, one rogue Red Bone, two parakeets, and two humans full of foibles.