Be Still Moments Archives - Selah Reflections

February 2019 – Recommended Resources

Growing up listening to talk radio was something that I really something I dreaded. Listening to the talk show hosts drone on and one just drove me nuts.

It’s been a surprise for me to discover, that as an adult, I really enjoy them and keep my eyes and ears open for new recommendations. There are times I find myself amazed at the change in my tastes and interests between then and now.

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Marta Goertzen

Marta Goertzen is an entrepreneur, writer and nature photographer. She daily explores the trails and beaches of the South Central Oregon Coast with her buddy Bailey. You can follow along on their adventures on Instagram. She is also the author of several books including her newest, “Confident Hope: A Daily Quiet Time Journal”. Start your own daily gratitude practice with our, “7 Days of Gratitude Challenge – A Gratitude Journal Starter Kit”.

selahreflections.com

The Gratitude Series: The Beauty of Nature (What are you grateful for today?)

In November, at least here in the U.S., we emphasize the idea of expressing gratitude and being grateful. On Thanksgiving Day, we often go around the table and answer the question, “What are you grateful for?”.

Today, I wanted to share with you something I am grateful for.

I’m Grateful For the Beauty of Nature

I am incredibly grateful for the beauty of God’s creation and the opportunity I have of exploring and capturing each season in photos.

Being outside is one of my favorite things to do. Whether it is walking through the woods, along a beach, or around a lake, being outside is healing and calming for me.

When I am stressed, a walk outside helps me to relax.
When I am tired, breathing deeply of fresh air refreshes me.
When I feel hurried and out of sorts, being outside helps me slow down and feel more centered again.
When life feels overwhelming and out of control, a long walk on the beach, listening to the crashing waves, calms me down.

Spending time outside, exploring with my eyes, and my camera gives me the chance to slow down, to see the beauty and the creativity of God’s handiwork.

As I slow down, textures, layers, colors, and small details of His creativity start to jump out of me, elements of my surroundings that I would never notice when in a hurry.

“God creates the beauty.
My camera and I are witness.”
~Mark Denman

My Fall Photography Field Trip

Each fall, I like to take a photography field trip and dive deep into the reds, golds, oranges, and bright greens that the season brings.

On these trips, it is not uncommon to suddenly feel overwhelmed with the majesty and grandeur of it all.

This year my field trip took a couple of days as I went up into the hills and to the beautiful Loon Lake Recreation Area. The road leading up to the main park glows with colorful towering trees, rushing streams, and small waterfalls, all begging to be noticed as you drive by.

My destination was the Loon Lake campground, but on the first day, the drive was so beautiful I spent most of the morning stopping and jumping out to take “just a few more pictures” as I kept telling Bailey. By the time I got to the lake, the sun was up high, and the light became harsh.

The next day I invited my niece and nephew slumber buddies (movie nights are fun with nieces and nephews :)!) to join me on another adventure.

My goal was to get up to the lake early and capture the scene in the softer morning light. Totally. Worth. It. We had a blast.

When you have a chance to experience a trip like this, the majesty and grandeur of what you get to see is awe-inspiring. With all the greens, golds, and oranges, it can be a little overwhelming to know what to look at and photograph.

To think that we have the opportunity to serve a God who created seasons, lakes, oceans, sand, rocks, leaves, mountains, beaches, fish that jump, frogs that croak, birds that sing, trees that burst into color, and yes even the spider and the web it wove that you just walked into.

When I start thinking about all of that, I have to pause and spend some time looking around with my head and my heart. It’s a time to be wowed and to give thanks for such an incredible gift of beauty and creativity that He spoke into existence.

When we spend time outdoors, without a word spoken, we see and hear a story being told and poetry in motion from chirruping birds, rustling leaves, scampering squirrels, and streams running over rocks.

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
~Henry David Thoreau

(The dock was pushed off from the beach and did not have easy access, you had to walk through some water and step on a few logs and rocks to get there. As you can see, that fact did not seem to stop Bailey who LOVES to explore the docks – click here to see him in action once he got onto the dock!! He was having some fun.)

While my camera and I do our best to capture and share what we see, it in no way can truly convey what it is like to experience it in person. The wind whispering through the trees, the stillness of no people, the soft sound of a fish jumping out in the water, or the crunch of leaves under your feet.

Make a point of getting outside today, even for just a few minutes, and see the beauty of creation around you. Take time to look with your more than just your eyes and give thanks to our Creative Creator for such an amazing gift.

What are you grateful for today?

The Choosing Gratitude: A Daily Quiet Time Journal, is a 31-day journey filled with simple activities to develop your faith, cultivate gratitude, and nurture your creativity, including:

Reading and writing out the verse of the day
Keeping a daily gratitude list
Tracking prayer requests
Journaling thoughts and prayers
Creating with simple designs for coloring and space for lettering, doodles, and more

Choose one activity, or choose them all, but keep it simple…and develop a meaningful routine that you look forward to each day.

Marta Goertzen

selahreflections.com

3 Lessons My Garden is Teaching Me

With the help of my family, I was able to find and move into a new home last fall. To say it has been an experience is an understatement! I knew fairly quickly that I wanted a garden of my own. So, in late spring, I did it! I built and planted a small garden.

I’ve been surprised by just how much I’ve enjoyed the process of planning, planting, maintaining, and harvesting. I’ve also been surprised by how much I’ve learned along the way.

What Gardening Is Teaching Me

My garden dreams were (are) huge, but this year, I purposefully planned for small. You see, it doesn’t take long for my ideas to grow and far exceed my skill level and more often than not, the availability in my schedule to invest the time and effort required to bring the dream to life.

So here are a few ways in which gardening is teaching me some valuable lessons.

Lesson #1: Planning works

And, it doesn’t need to be difficult or complicated.

I’ve never had trouble making a plan. It’s the follow-through that I struggle with the most.

What my garden plan has shown me is that I have a tendency of making plans too big and complicated. These are plans I have no chance of succeeding with and eventually stop even trying. The plans I drew up for my veggie and flower garden were simple, stayed within a budget, and had built in flexibility.

Now that I understand this better about myself, it has helped me:

Enjoy my garden more
Dream about the possibilities for expanding my garden in the future
Easily maintain (and more importantly keep alive) my garden
Create plans for other areas of my life that I can follow through on

Lesson #2: Patience has its rewards

Patience is NOT one of my virtues.

There is an excellent reason I like to plant radishes in a garden. They grow fast. When a radish is planted, there is a lot of quick action :). They also taste so much better fresh. Since they grow and mature so quickly, it helps me practice patience as I wait for the rest of the garden to catch up.

Seeing those leaves pop up and the red of the radish start to push its way out of the ground shows that every stage of the garden takes time. If I exercise patience, the radish will continue to grow bigger and offer a more abundant harvest. The radish reminds me that with patience the garden will grow and create a harvest worth waiting for.

Lesson #3: It’s okay to go small

We are often told to dream big dreams and to play big or go home. And while there is a time and place for this way of thinking, it does not always apply to every situation.

By purposefully planning a small garden, I am not feeling overwhelmed, and I’m being able to handle the maintenance and care it needs. Keeping it manageable has contributed to my enjoyment of the garden.

There is stillness to be found in going small and enjoying the process.

Garden Dreams

In a previous post, I talked about cleaning out my email inbox and reducing the number of voices and opinions I listen to on a subject. Gardening has been no different.

After spending a little too much time on Pinterest looking for garden tips and ideas, I was in information overload with no clear direction. I reduced the overwhelming amount of information by picking a select group of people to listen to. That step helped me to cut through the noise and create a plan of what materials I needed and what to plant.

Here are the three resources I chose to pay attention too:

Wellness Mama and Square Foot Gardening
Lara Casey’s Gardening 101 blog post series. I also recommend following here on Instagram as she shares about her garden
Erin Benzakein of Floret Flowers has a drool-worthy Instagram feed, website, and gorgeous book called “Cut Flower Garden

While I love my veggie garden and will take what I am learning this year to grow and expand it next year, my garden dreams include a cut flower garden. The beauty of a flower fascinates me.

Visit a gorgeous flower garden in full bloom and notice how you feel. The beauty of each flower, the variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, and the amazing fragrance all combine into an experience. And that experience invites you to slow down, be in the moment, and find stillness.

And that invitation, my friend, I think is at the heart of my garden dreams.

What has gardening taught you?

Marta Goertzen

selahreflections.com

Take Time for Outdoor Adventures

When we learn to pick and choose what we say yes to and no to, in alignment with our priorities, life doesn’t necessarily get simpler. In fact, in some ways, it gets harder. To carefully pick your yeses and no’s you will have to turn down invitations from friends and great opportunities to keep what is important front and center.

As I learn to choose my yes’s and no’s, I’ve been able to say yes more to my priority of spending time outdoors. Being in nature is my way of destressing, slowing down, and breathing deeply.

I’m blessed where I am to be able to get to the Oregon Dunes, lakes with miles of trails, and to the beach all within 10-20 minutes. And on the days where the weather isn’t pouring down rain, and I have the energy to go, it’s the perfect time to grab Bailey, jump in the car and head out on an adventure.

Having adventures gets in one’s blood, and Wanderlust can strike at unexpected times. There is a longing to see or do something new like taking a trip, a desire to explore a road you drive by all the time but have never been on before, or taking a hike to a favorite, little-known spot.

Other times it is taking an extra long walk, exploring different parts of a trail or wilderness area, or as on this day, a different part of the Oregon Dunes.

This month I had an extra “partner-in-crime” my Mom’s lil’ guy, Oliver. A 12lb Chihuahua Beagle who at times has waaaaaay more energy than my 65 lb Border Collie mix. So taking him on adventures adds a new spin and careful consideration that he 1) doesn’t get lost and 2) can walk as far as we want to walk.

I like to call it “Taking Oliver Off-roading” as this is not something in his routine, so taking him out onto the dunes was an adventure for him as well.

Finding Outdoor Adventures

Outdoor adventures do not have to be complicated or in faraway places. They can be in your local area, and in my case only about 15-minutes away. The dunes in this area are not extensive, but there are lakes, creatures of all sorts, brush, trees, and flowers in the spring and summer.

All of it beautiful in its own unique and special way.

Make Sure to Look Around While On An Adventure

As you take time for adventures, don’t forget to look up, down, and all around. It’s so easy to keep your head down watching where you place your feet, which of course is important, but when we don’t take the time to look around, we miss out on so much.

On the drive home from this adventure, I would have missed a magical sight if I had not taken the time to look up and then take the time to stop and view the bridge as it was starting to break through the low hanging fog.

It was one of those adventures you look back on with fondness and can’t wait to go out and try it again. Well at least until you find the tick your dog brought back home! That discovery resulted in a thorough head-to-toe examination of both dogs to their great delight.

When is the last time you took time for an outdoor adventure?

Adventure is Calling Coffee and Tea Mug — A fun mug to remind you to get outside and explore on your next adventure. From our family’s Amazon store 🙂 Click on the mug for more info.

Marta Goertzen

selahreflections.com

Creating a Practice of Finding Stillness

Recently I watched a video training course on productivity for creatives. About halfway through the course, it struck me; the instructor was teaching about developing a practice of creativity. Understanding this got me thinking of what other areas of life where this idea might apply. The first thing to come to mind was practicing finding stillness.

When we make the decision to develop a new habit or skill, it isn’t a “one-and-done” event. It takes a commitment to practice on a regular basis to incorporate it into our life.

Developing A Practice of Finding Stillness

Strangely enough, I can’t just decide to lose 10 lbs and have them gone by morning. (but it would be nice to try sometime don’t ya think?!). It’s a decision, and commitment, that I would need to make each day to make better choices in how I eat, and exercise.

Creating a habit of finding stillness is the same way. It takes practice and daily decisions to take the time to find these moments.

Building a new habit is not always easy. The saying “It takes 21 days to make a new habit” is not always true. Some habits can take months or even years to become part of your life. While others we can learn quickly and may only take a week or two.

When it comes to developing a habit of finding stillness, it takes practice, practice, and more practice. Some days that practice will go well, and others it won’t, or we get busy and.

What does it mean to find stillness?

Finding stillness isn’t necessarily about stopping all motion altogether. It often is more about finding that stillness in our hearts and minds. Often it is experiencing a peace beyond our understanding even when life is swirling crazily around us.

Finding stillness may be:

About slowing down to notice a beautiful flower on the side of the road
About a quiet morning walk as the sun rises
Sitting in a quiet spot with a hot cup of tea or coffee
Driving around town and soaking in the beauty of a gorgeous rainbow.
Watching in awe as the waves crash up onto the beach
Time spent in the Word and prayer
Going for a nice long run
Creating art
Even chopping wood!

Each day our practice of finding stillness will look different. I have yet to have to days in a row where that moment was the same, which is great!

First, it reminds me that this is something I need to practice every day, which I need to be alert, aware, and be on the lookout for these small moments each day.

Second, it reminds me that these moments are precious and if I rush around too fast, I will miss them.

A Practice of Finding Stillness Can Impact Your Life

In the past few months, I’ve realized that my practice of finding stillness has stalled a bit and I can tell as it has begun to show up in many different areas of my life.

One of the biggest areas impacted is my creativity. I’m seeing a correlation between seeking stillness, seeking beauty, and exercising my creative side. Now that my practice of finding stillness has not been as consistent as it should, my creative side has suffered as well.

The tricky thing about developing a skill, a habit, or practice is that if you stop working on them, you lose momentum and have to start over, sometimes from the beginning again.

When I get busy, my mind reverts to Go! Go! Go! Do not stop. Keep moving. Too much to do! When I listen to this part of my mind, the ability to find stillness seems to fade into the background, and it can be days or even weeks before I realize what I am missing. It’s then I need restart the practice of finding stillness.

One way I have found to help me develop my practice is to capture some of these moments with my camera and share them on Instagram with the hashtag #bestillmoments. It’s a tool I use that can help me keep my eyes and heart open, looking or moments to enjoy and share.

Do you have a practice of finding stillness in your life?

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Marta Goertzen

selahreflections.com

Liked this post? You might also like:

I’m Grateful For the Beauty of Nature

My Fall Photography Field Trip

What are you grateful for today?

Liked this post? You might also like:

What Gardening Is Teaching Me

Garden Dreams

What has gardening taught you?

Liked this post? You might also like:

Finding Outdoor Adventures

Make Sure to Look Around While On An Adventure

When is the last time you took time for an outdoor adventure?

Liked this post? You might also like:

Developing A Practice of Finding Stillness

What does it mean to find stillness?

A Practice of Finding Stillness Can Impact Your Life

Do you have a practice of finding stillness in your life?

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