{"id":6521,"date":"2013-09-07T10:31:47","date_gmt":"2013-09-07T14:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/?p=6521"},"modified":"2013-09-07T10:39:37","modified_gmt":"2013-09-07T14:39:37","slug":"gold-stars-and-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/?p=6521","title":{"rendered":"Gold stars and God"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am a recovering self-helpie. I read thousands of books trying to be better and become more enlightened. It was full-time work to become a \u201cguru\u201d and I took it seriously. Feeling broken led me to always find God. \u00a0And in a way, wanting to become better and get fixed was a tradition I was taught in church at a very early age. It\u2019s totally cool to want to be a better human being, to grow and evolve and learn from \u201cmistakes\u201d or experiences to change. But it felt heavy. I wanted some sort of a reward. A gold star for all the work I was putting in in becoming \u201cspiritual,\u201d yet no star seemed to be occurring. The more I tried to be helped, the more I felt like I was in need of being fixed. Round and round I went on my own little ferris wheel. \u00a0Then something happened. The ferris wheel stopped and I landed on rock bottom hard.<\/p>\n

I hated God.\u00a0 I hated that I wasn\u2019t getting any rewards for bettering myself. I spent so many hours reading all the books to become a \u201cbetter me.\u201d \u00a0And for what? More misery? Screw this! What am I doing all this work for? (As I placed my hand on my forehead in dramatic fashion)<\/p>\n

The bottom was hard, but \u00a0also oddly freeing.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have to be happy, or get better, it already sucked.\u00a0 When I would usually hear the normal question \u201cHow are you?\u201d I would just snuff it off, or try and find a spiritual way of saying \u201cI\u2019m at rock bottom.\u201d But now, on rock bottom, I would simply say \u201cI am not that great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Life became easier. There was nothing to attain except getting out of bed and being honest, and it seemed to feel better.\u00a0 Day by day, I found that there was nothing to become. I didn\u2019t have to be better, I just had to show up to the play called life. Is it this simple? God became funny. God became my playmate. I didn\u2019t need to do anything to get a reward. It\u2019s just a fun game that I get to play and view any which way I choose.<\/p>\n

Life is hard. Life is easy. Life is what it is. Play anyway. Doing things to be better and get rewards is not fun. It feels hard. It feels like I was never going anywhere, and always playing hide and seek with my own darn self.\u00a0 Life is messy. I mess up. I fall down. The world doesn\u2019t end, and laughter is always free. I had my laughter at rock bottom. I had the ability to find the humor even when life truly sucked. Then I saw\u2026.<\/p>\n

God only wants us to play for the purest reason. Because it feels good. We don\u2019t have to be the best sharer in the sandbox or build the best sandcastle. We simply just need to show up and be ourselves. We are the gold stars.<\/p>\n

Play on, my friends. Be the gold star you are so desperately trying to \u201cget\u201d- I triple dog dare you.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Jenny(Renowned speaker and author Jenny Ward has been seen across the country bringing play, work\/life balance and parent workshops to Visa, You Tube, Merrill Lynch, Girl Scouts, YMCA, Stanford and numerous other corporations and non profits.\u00a0Her individual clients have enjoyed working with Jenny on single parenting, play, stress eradication and play based parenting for over 8 years. Jenny\u2019s work can be seen on DOVE, San Francisco Times, Today\u2019s MAMA, Nick for Kids, and numerous other publications.)<\/i><\/p>\n

(If you would like to contribute an article you have authored to the Guest Column, please submit it to our Managing Editor, Lisa McCormack, for possible publication in this space. Not all submissions can be published, due to the number of submissions and sometimes because of other content considerations, but all are encouraged. Send submissions to\u00a0Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com<\/span><\/a><\/span>. Please label the topic: \u201cGuest Column.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am a recovering self-helpie. I read thousands of books trying to be better and become more enlightened. It was full-time work to become a \u201cguru\u201d and I took it seriously. Feeling broken led me to always find God. \u00a0And in a way, wanting to become better and get fixed was a tradition I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[1379,1378,165,52],"class_list":["post-6521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-column","tag-gold-stars-and-god","tag-jenny-ward","tag-spirituality","tag-the-global-conversation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6521"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6524,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6521\/revisions\/6524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}