Spring Journaling Sojourn-Grace-Embodying Joy: A Heart Journal, Chapter 16

Today's episode is dedicated, again, to my sister. My Bachelorette Party and Wedding would not have been complete without her presence. Before my Ray o' Son, she was the first sunshine in my world. 

Happy Spring! We are finally awake after a long Winter's nap! What a Winter! Thankful to be brushing the snowflakes off and looking toward full blooms ahead! How about you? 

Are you ready to shed, release some hibernation hues today?

I have just the thing for you! This is one episode that will surely brighten up your day!

We hope you will enjoy these last chapters of the memoir before kicking off Season 7 this Summer! We already have some special guests in the works whose journaling stories will surely lift your spirits!

*Today's prompt is at 9:49.

Today, enjoy the audio release of my memoir, Embodying Joy: A Heart Journal, Chapter 16, with somatic meditative journaling: stretching, taking some cleansing relaxing breaths, reflecting on God's subtle and sometimes blaring reminder, to lovingly listen. Settle into the page with our soothing meditative music, "Balance of Self," to set the margins for your pen, discovery, and appreciation.

Chapter 16 is titled, "Pedicures and Precious Reunions," (2017) and details the power of resting in grace and joy thanks to the power of forgiveness. In a previous episode I shared a bit about my sister's Cancer story. Reuniting with her the night before my wedding was a reunion that turned heads at the nail salon!

Today's Sacred Word is from Matthew 18:21-22

An adventurous chapter in my journey restoring hope in forgiveness again.

The Spring Sojourn series will lead up to the re-release of my memoir, complete with a revised title, new cover, and three new stories. Coming October 2026! 

*Catch up on recent season 6 episodes and chapters 1-15 in previous podcast seasons!

*Chapter 13 we had some audio issues but thankfully these are resolved! Microphone issue is fixed!

Ready to Journal Up toward the best in you? Journaling together can help!

See all of our journaling ministry's offerings at: https://journalupwithbeccarae.com/ 

Join us here weekly for guided stories of the power of journaling and prompts to lead your pen, resolve, and imagination.

My goal in 2026 is to get a journal in the hands of 100 women over the age of forty who want to feel better by journaling every single day. Have you committed to my challenge?

Works referenced in today's episode:

Embodying Joy: A Heart Journal-A Memoir for Body, Mind, & Spirit Health (Amazon 2023).https://www.amazon.com/Embodying-Joy-Journal-Memoir-Spirit-ebook/dp/B0BRVTBD4B/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0

New Intro to start Season 6

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Welcome back to the Journal at Podcast. I'm your host, Becca Ray. Thank you for joining us this beautiful spring day. I hope that you've had an invigorating start to your season. Today we continue with our sojourn series. We are stepping into our spring sojourn series, where I will continue to share the insights and journaling prompts from my 2023 release, Embodying Joy, a Heart Journal, a memoir with Journal Space for Body, Mind, and Spirit Health. I wrote this book to share my experiences with journaling and how journaling essentially saved my life since the age of eight. I continue to believe that we can meet our source, who I call God, within the margins, and that through using the art of somatic meditative journaling, we can enter a state of prayer journaling where we are combining stretching, breath work, releasing what source or God is sharing with us on the page, and really freeing ourselves up to receive the best path for our lives. This past winter has not been my favorite path. And it was more like walking through a blizzard to get to spring than a gentle snowshoe that I may have truly enjoyed many winters back in the Colorado Rockies. I was only able to snowshoe a few times this winter in the capital region of New York State. But the times that I did have were absolutely magical. And every time that we face seasons that are unexpected and bring unexpected challenges, it's more important that we turn inward and meet our source of strength within. Today's chapter, chapter 16, Pedicures in a Precious Reunion 2017. My fiance insisted that he wanted to be by my side dancing in Denver the night of his bachelor party event, a concert at Red Rocks. The next day would be my lady's bachelorette. All he wanted was a concert, and all I wanted was a pedicure. I was a good sport, slept very little that evening. And even in the pouring rain, I saw him set free. This was his music, these were his men, yet he insisted I dance by his side. So I was there. We woke up the next morning to a heap of chaotic movement in the suite of folks we shared a hotel room with. And everyone had some place to be the very next day. And particularly me. It was my day now. And we needed to get a move on. I went to find my keys. I knew right where I had tossed them when we came in the early that morning, needing a good rest from all the dancing, all the prior nights fun. I knew right where I had put my keys. Except now they were gone. We looked everywhere around where I thought I had set my keys. We retraced our steps, and everyone thought I had probably come in too tired and had some temporary amnesia. Everyone looked together for my keys, frantic, upset, stressed. This was my special day. I needed to get back from the Denver area to the mountains, two hours away. We had a special afternoon and evening planned. The bridal party and some female family members were having a pedicure party. And then we would go out for sushi if they were into that kind of meal. It had been booked for days. Where in the heck were my keys? Was this a joke? A pre-wedding hoax? A sign of things to come? Was this really happening? After searching for a few hours, we grew hungry and desperately needed to eat. I wasn't leaving until my keys were found. I became bridezilla. And it wasn't even the big day. A couple of hours later, one of our friends received a phone call. Blank has your keys in her pocket, and she's already back in Vail. What? So you mean I have to wait two hours and someone has to come all the way back to Denver to deliver them? Honestly, you've got to be fill in the blank. Kidding me. I'm getting married tomorrow, folks. This is my day. After arriving late to the nail studio, Frazzle tired and barely on schedule for the evening's events. I settled into the pedicure chair. Thank goodness I made it just before our dinner plans. Now it was time to relax. The girls had been there, nails and pedicures already in progress, just missing the bride. Only one person had not arrived yet, and I wondered where she could be. Where was my sister? The last time we had seen one another had been for lunch at a fancy spa in Skine Atlas before I moved to Colorado, before she faced cancer. It had been four very long years. I grew anxious as I didn't know how she would receive me after all of this. After my feet had been cleansed, massaged, and gently soaked, I heard the bells on the door ring. Even if the paint had been drying on my toes, I would have flown up from that chair. My sister had arrived, and she had gorgeous, curly, shoulder-length hair. She had lost all her hair due to chemo three years before. And yet, three years later, she stood there coming all this way from New York. It was her. She was really and truly alive, thriving and beautiful standing there. The entire nail parlor stared at us as we hugged and bawled and shook. There she was, as if nothing had happened in all that time. She'd come all this way for my special day. And I knew that in there, each of us is worthy of forgiveness. Yet sometimes the hardest realignment we have to do is within ourselves. I was worthy of forgiveness, and all melted away as rows of clients looked our way. Journal prompt 17. I recall a 2019 article in Psychology Today that discussed forgiveness in a helpful light. Dr. Anthony C. Lopez, PhD, explained, quote, neither retaliation nor forgiveness is an unalloyed good. Both involve significant risks and benefits, and both are to some degree necessary to enforce the norms and values that we care about, to repair valued relationships and to build meaningful new ones. End quote. I assumed my relationship with her was not of value because of my inability to be there for her. I hadn't realized that we could put even this behind us and forge a new relationship, not one based on the past, the bond we were raised under as a family, but as humans navigating our own shared worth to one another as adults. Take a moment and place your feet firmly on the ground, sit up tall, breathe in. Start to lift your hands over your head, stretch up through the sky, almost as if pushing the ceiling out of its hold all the way up into the clouds. Your fingers are extended and tight, your shoulders are tight, your hands all the way to your shoulder sockets are super tight. Reach, reach, reach. Shake out your arms, wiggle your fingers and put your hands back on your resting legs. I was thinking onto the top of your knees, palms up. Breathe in. Breathe out. Today's sacred word. Matthew 18, 21 to 22. Jesus tells Peter to forgive not seven times, but seventy-seven times. Teaching limitless forgiveness. When is the time you had to melt into the love standing before you, alive, well, and thriving, here in the present, not living in the battlefields of the past? Give yourself more grace. Open your arms and melt away. Think of a time you were given grace and allowed to melt into a situation held in forgiveness and love. Write about that. Or dream of how you will create this in your own life. Breathe in. Today's sacred prompt. When is the time you had to take a backseat to your assumptions? When is the time you had to melt into the love standing before you, alive, well, and thriving, here in the present, not living in the battlefields of the past? Write about that or dream of how you will create this in your own life. Be present, be you, write you right now. Just a conversation with you and your best of a meeting with who I call God. Now reflect. Circle one word on the page that really speaks to the heart of forgiveness and what that means to you. Circle that word lovingly and perhaps meld it into a mantra for your day. Look back at it this evening in another session of perhaps gratitude journaling. And thank the universe. Thank God for what was revealed throughout your day as you thought about that word revealed on the page. I am so thankful for my sister's life and the lessons that being in relationship with her as a sibling have taught me over the years. Value each breath and each moment of the people that are in your life. We will continue the spring sojourn, which will lead into our summer series where I will be interviewing guests and sharing more gems and the positive effects on our lives. This summer I am offering two different journaling courses. One is a sacred text, which is the sacred romance, and then the secular text is the alchemist. If you're interested in those, you can pop over to my website, journal up with BeccaRay.com. Enrollment will open the first week in May. Thank you again for joining us and have a beautiful week. Happy spring. I'll see you next time. Until then, I'll be resting in the margins.