God said to follow our impulses

 

In a recent personal Godwriting™, God said very clearly: "Follow your impulses."This really was a new idea for me, for, when I think of something, my tendency has been to  feel shy or to think: "Naw, that's not a good idea anyway."

The morning I started writing this blog entry, a couple of weeks ago, I had come across a brand-new deck of cards in a box I was finally unpacking. I had saved this deck of cards for several years! I was saving it for the motor home trip when there could be a long dark rainy night, and we might want to play poker. It's quite an innocuous deck of cards, wouldn't you say, with a picture of a bluebird.

When I saw the deck of cards, I had the impulse to play a game of solitaire, and I was going to follow this impulse through.

I opened the deck which was wrapped in cellophane, took out the joker and other cards that happened to read: Discard this card. Actually, there were quite a few jokers and discard cards.

Then I rolled up my sleeves, shuffled the cards, many of which were sticking together, separated them and shuffled a few more times.

Here I was ready to play solitaire which I haven't played in twenty or thirty years or more!

I started to deal out the cards and then realized I didn't remember how to play solitaire!

This reminds me a little of A.A. Milne, the author of one of my favorite books, Winnie the Pooh. When Milne was a little boy, he got all excited about the idea of writing a book. He went out in the back yard to write it. He had had paper and pencil, sat down in a good place, and then realized he didn't know how to write!

I looked up solitaire on Google. And I started to deal out the cards for a game of Solitaire.

Do you see what's wrong with this deck?

This deck had doubles of many cards. That was the end of Solitaire.

I do have another example of when an impulse I pursued paid off handsomely.

I had seen Laura's beautiful artwork. The walls in her house are covered with her gorgeous art. I had the impulse to ask Laura how she felt about loaning out some of her art. That was the sort of idea that I would typically have thought was too forward. But I did ask Laura, and she was happy to loan them to me. For more of Laura's art, see the previous blog.

And now, speaking of art and the cards, here's an artistic photo of the bluebird on the cards -- this happened by chance!