Tina to many friends, Gloria, and God:
This is partly in response to HEAVEN! Dec. 31, 1999, New Year's Vision — which you can access from Gloria. I highly recommend this prompting for shifting your own resolutions to something softer and more attainable.
I realize how much I have feared lack of companionship, lack of health, lack of shelter and heat, lack of family ties, lack of time for recreation and exercise, lack of income.
These fears are losing their power. Now I find myself with the fear that I am left without direction and purpose. Where do I go from here?
I will open my mind and heart to relax into the reality of abundance. I will allow increased awareness of God's presence by looking for new opportunities to let go of rules and standards.
Now, to my question: I want to work with children, and, ironically, children seem to bring out my greatest tendencies toward setting boundaries and limits.
Dear God, please feed my imagination with creative impulses for new options. I am so marinated in the teachings and beliefs that adults are supposed to control children and mold them into responsible people. At the root of it is fear of my responsibility to keep them safe. They seem so prone to chaos.
I so easily focus on vulnerability. I recognize that vulnerability could just as easily be the mental portal to seeing Your caring and attention. Each time my mind jumps to, "Oh, My God!", in a fear, I could just as easily think: "Thank God that You are watching over everyone and everything in this situation. Thank God that I am not in charge here. Dear God, please open my mind and heart joy and love in this situation, as I remember Your presence and caring."
Dear God, please help me. I feel like life may squash me just for writing my intentions. They fly in the face of everything I have been taught.
God to Tina:
I bless you, My sweet child.
Be vulnerable, dear Tina. Be vulnerable to Me and My messages. Go by them. It's time for you to toss off your fears. Don't give them your attention any more.
Ask for all the good you want, Tina. It will not topple over because you ask for it. It will come because you ask for it. Ego would tell you that you put yourself in danger by asking. Ego wants to keep its place in you. You are the ego's lifeline, and it wants to rule you any way it can.
Oh, My children's self-worth. It is in such disrepair.
Are you My child or not? Do you deserve what your Heavenly Father yearns to give you or not?
Will you do the suggestions I gave to Lauren?
As for working with children, set boundaries. Let the children have freedom within the boundaries. Don't over-boundarize. And do not apologize for structuring things so that all can enjoy.
Listen to this: giving total freedom to young children is a form of control. It is not love. Do you see it?
Children are not happy to be running things. They don't know how. Anymore than you would know how to run the universe without Me.
Set things up for the children with love. Structure things for the children with love. Games are a wonderful structure. Fun is a wonderful structure. Fun is honest. Bedlam is not fun; it is a cruel structure.
If you are a teacher, you teach. You teach joy. You do that by enjoying. Enjoy these morsels of children. Think fun if that is easier for you than creative. Fun is creative. Make everything fun. Have many laughs. There is great order in laughter. Unison of laughter.
There is nothing you have to prove. There is no outcome there has to be beyond joy and love. Learning is great joy for children. Help them have joy in learning; don't MAKE them learn something. Make it irresistible to them. Don't interfere with their natural wanting to learn.
The new Tina will laugh with children and make much joy.
Young children do not want to think much. Nor do I want you to, dear Tina.
Let the children move. Don't explain things to them. Show them.
And in your life, do not explain, figure out, import, export, sort. Move. Move through life. Be close to it. Analyzing keeps you distant from your life. Now is time to enter into life.
Consider life as a door you open. Open it. You cannot possibly know all of what is on the other side of the door. Open the door, walk in, and find out, Tina.