Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,166

organs, and we don’t deal with what we need to face, to heal, and to let go of. Making peace with our true selves is the best thing we can do for our bodies and our minds. Until we do that, we will just go from one mess to the other.

“I challenge you today. In the past, you have probably been doing whatever you could to keep yourself safe from the mess. By doing so, you are also probably exhausted mentally and emotionally. Tell me if this sounds like you. You’re easily upset. You’re unmotivated even about things you have enjoyed in the past. You have chronic anxiety or experience panic attacks. Sleeping is a fight to accomplish. You’re short with others because your patience is shot. You have stomach aches a lot. You feel like you could cry or you do cry at the drop of a hat. You have chosen to cope by detaching from life, so you feel disconnected and empty.”

Taylor wondered if the woman had been spy-camming her life. How could she possibly know all of those things had been Taylor’s existence for the better part of a year?

“TD Jakes once said that sensitive people are like 10 gallon people going around trying to get filled by one pint people. We blame our parents for not filling us up. We blame our spouses for not being what we need them to be for us to feel totally loved. Maybe the answer is to start filling ourselves up with all those things we’ve been denying ourselves the right to enjoy. Find the things that bring you joy and do those. Make time for them in your day. I’m not talking about coping things—things to get you through and by. I’m talking joy. Joy things that fill you up to the top and have you running over, so excited about life that you jump up in the morning and fall in bed at night spent by the amazing day you’ve had.

“If you’re a 10 gallon person, believe me, there is nothing wrong with you. Life is just going to need to look a little different. There are going to need to be more margins in your day to sit and dream, to take a breath and enjoy a ray of sunshine, to talk with a good friend about things that really matter. Seek out the things that bring you joy, and carve out time to actually enjoy them. Learn to be your own best friend. Doing that will show you that there is far more to life than just coping. Thank you.”

Greg spent the morning alone, which was good. Everyone else had somewhere else to be, and his homework load was more than grateful for that fact. He wondered about the job, but he hadn’t heard anything, so he wasn’t about to get his hopes up about it. With that thought, he opened his Chemistry book. Time to make sure he didn’t fail.

“Good afternoon,” Taylor said to the room at one o’clock. During lunch, she had sat with the other college students and watched them scroll through their phones and chat about the basketball game the night before. She was suddenly coming to understand the whole 10-gallon person in a world of one-pint people analogy. “We’d like to welcome you back. This afternoon, we have Dr. Mandy Coleman. Dr. Coleman will be speaking today about Energy Medicine. Welcome, Dr. Coleman.”

While the others clapped, Taylor went to the back. She had this part memorized by now. Her only real wish was that she could be in the seats up front, taking notes and asking questions rather than trying to fit learning in around her job.

“Everything is energy,” Dr. Coleman said. “Einstein proved that, but we’re still trying to catch up. Modern medicine is learning more and more about just how right he was. According to Dr. David Feinstein, Ph.D., ‘Conventional medicine, at its foundation, focuses on the biochemistry of cells, tissues, and organs. Energy medicine, at its foundation, focuses on the energy fields of the body that organize and control the growth and repair of cells, tissues, and organs. Changing impaired energy patterns may be the most efficient, least invasive way to improve the vitality of organs, cells, and psyche.’

“In 1903, James Allen penned the book As a Man Thinketh which tells us that a man’s thoughts become his reality or as a man thinks, so he is or experiences life. Sixty years later, Joseph Murphy in The Power