Brave Enough To Be Bliss

Chapter 10 — Beginning to Communicate

“When the chaos of life erupts, choose to get still, slow down, and double down on the things you can control: Your thoughts and your actions. Virtues, values, and character. Do right, love deeply, give recklessly, exercise, read, be with people, pray, eat well, rest, and breathe.” John Delony My healing journey has been full of ups and downs and lots of in-betweens. And sometimes the in-betweens were even harder than the downs. I was used to highs and lows, mainly a pretty constant low, but this middle stuff felt odd. So, as I recall, during one of these times I felt, meh… Ginger talked to me about something called a Rule of Life. She explained living by a rule of life has been a Christian practice for centuries and in general it provides a framework to provide balance through intentionally considering all aspects of life including emotional, social, physical, spiritual, etc. If you want more information, you can do an internet search and there are many resources. To begin thinking about it, she asked me to consider when I feel healthiest, what are the things I’m doing ? When I don’t feel healthy and in balance, what am I not doing? The list below came from what she wrote on the whiteboard as I talked about each area. As I think back, while John might not have referred to it as his Rule of Life, he practiced it so much better than I ever did. He knew the things that helped him be at his best. When I had a feeling he wasn’t at his best, I would ask if he had been sleeping well, eating healthy, or exercising, and the question was enough to remind him. Pretty much all I did was work in those early years we worked together, so no wonder I lived in a pretty constant low. I just texted someone about being here at the lake writing and I said I was going to be so glad to get back around people. While I love writing, being secluded has shown me that I don’t like being completely cut off from people I love for this length of time. A few days, a week or two, that’s great…but months of very limited interaction has been extremely difficult. So, this experience has definitely verified my rule of life is accurate. I had everything else on the list, but without the people and being able to give and receive love, something huge was missing from my life. Of course, I could call and even Facetime but going weeks at a time without any physical touch at all is tough.

Rule of Life Sun/water Exercise Connect with family/friends Learning (audiobook, podcasts, etc.) Being challenged/writing Quiet time

And that was a perfect segway into the Love Languages. I had moved this around to various chapters and thought about leaving it out, but that sentence just made it a perfect fit right here.

I really think for any relationship the Love Languages quiz and discussion can be very helpful. Back in 2018, Ginger sent me this reminder. You can select the link, then go to quizzes at the top and there are additional quizzes there now also.

On Friday, November 30, 2018, 9:12:21 AM CST, Ginger Rothhaas wrote: Just realized I never sent this to you after our last meeting!! Take this quiz and have Kylee do it too - then discuss! :) https://www.5lovelanguages.com/

From: Ginger Bliss To: Ginger Rothhaas Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 9:00 PM Oh, I did remember to do the love languages...we had the same 5 and just had two in a different order.

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