My Spiritual Journey Through North Carolina

Use this journal to record spiritual locations and your experiences recharging and refreshing. We all can use some time to ourselves, whether bathing in the woods or sunning in the desert! This journal includes sections to journal as you travel. I hope you find spiritual places that touch your soul!

Do you ever feel hopeless or in despair? Have you ever questioned your calling? Do you ever feel like giving up and throwing in the towel? Do you wonder how you’re going to make it through? Allow this book to witness to you and all generations about how I have prevailed through much adversity and am yet lifting the Name of Jesus. My prayer is that this book encourages you as we walk together through my Spiritual Journey. The Most High God was behind me, beside me, before me but in many instances, He was carrying me. There were many days that I didn’t know how I would make it but I am honored and thankful that He has brought me through over and over again. Even after many missteps, the Lord has picked me up, restored me, forgiven me, saved me and filled me with the Gift of the Holy Spirit. He is the immutable God—He changes not. If He did it for me, He can and will do it for you. “Coming up on the Rough Side of the Mountain” But thank God “My soul has been anchored in the Lord!” It is my prayer and heart’s desire that you are blessed and draw spiritual strength through “My Spiritual Journey!” Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. (1Pe 5:7)

"In ways that I could not yet imagine, being at war would challenge my beliefs, confirming some and forcing me to rethink others, and being a veteran would forever affect and enrich my relationships with other people. On that March night in 1968 I did not yet understand that if I lived through my year in Vietnam a coming home process would follow, one that would continue a lifelong spiritual journey ..."--Back cover.

Use this journal to record spiritual locations and your experiences recharging and refreshing. We all can use some time to ourselves, whether bathing in the woods or sunning in the desert! This journal includes sections to journal as you travel. I hope you find spiritual places that touch your soul!

Her journey of recovery from bipolar disorder and her insights are described in this book, an autobiography of Carol Noyes. When Carol went through mid-life crisis in the spring of 2006 her world was turned upside-down. Carol was able to wean herself off drugs, after over four years on psychiatric medications. She found natural alternatives that effectively helped her to recover and to lead a productive life. Carol believes that the current medical paradigm is inadequate and often unable to help individuals to heal and to bounce back. Carol nearly died from a combination of the swine flu and lithium poisoning. Her descent to the bottom of the metaphorical well provided the impetus for her to research non-drug therapies. These therapies, along with faith, hope, and courage, brought Carol back to a peaceful life. Carol recounts her life and investigates the factors that precipitated imbalance. She writes about her extraordinary experiences during expanded states of consciousness. She also delves into the world of symbols and mythologies, describing how they became poignant for her. Carol calls her experience a time of spiritual awakening; a time of developing self-esteem, learning to love herself, and finding her true purpose. She hopes that her insights will help others going through spiritual crisis. Those interested in humanistic psychology, personal growth, and spirituality may find this book fascinating.

One of the things I learned on this thousand-mile walk is I am only vulnerable when I hide and, I hide when I feel threatened, not up to the challenge, or I am ashamed about something. Also, I realized as humans, most of us are always host to at least one if not all three conditions that invest heavily in our sense of guilt, shame and fear. These conditions exist greatly because of the ill will that we have projected and invested in the image of our own creation, not understanding the power we put into such an investment, nor do many of us have the spiritual understanding of the spoken and unspoken word, and its internal and external power over our thought processes as well as our behavior. On the other hand, I believe with positivism one can disinvest in all ones negativity. One cannot do harm to ones neighbor without doing harm to ones own character, self-esteem, emotional and mental stability; ones own sense of self is diminished. Let us step out of fear and free the heart; free the heart and step into the power of ones eternal-self and you are, once again, walking in humanity, in spirit, reflecting the loving image of Spirit, not the confusion we have placed upon such a concept.

In Where the Colors Blend, Stephen Copeland’s self-discovery and God-discovery is told over a period of six years in the context of an annual retreat to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Roanoke, Virginia, where an obscure, forty-year-old church softball tournament takes place each summer to raise funds for mission work in Paraguay. In stepping into these stories, and sharing them with the reader, Stephen simultaneously journeys deeper within himself, discovering the divine in the process and taking readers deep into the throes of doubt, deconstruction, and depression. But it’s there, in the darkness, that an authentic hope finds him. Throughout the narrative, readers experience with Stephen a number of paradigm shifts in the areas of: Spirituality: from exhausting oneself trying to get close to God to simply abiding: awakening to who we already are at the core of our beings as children of God. Psychology: from suppressing emotions, pains, and insecurities to curiously and non-judgmentally exploring them. Relationships: from trying to change others or silently judging them to accepting others as they are and learning from those who are most different than ourselves: abandoning ignorance and arrogance. Art, writing, and work: from being taunted by internal demands and a relentless pursuit of perfection to simply enjoying the gift of the process. Stephen's present-tense narrative, mysteriously unfolding all the way, is free-thinking and free-flowing, swinging from humor to complex theology, from someone else’s story to sudden introspectiveness and application, creating a unique experience for readers as it challenges them to adopt their own lifestyle of introspection and contemplation.

Mickarl D. Thomas Sr. chronicles the challenges he’s overcome in A Prophets Journey through Midnight. As an asthmatic child, he lost two brothers before being born and was left to wonder why he was spared. While he grew up with loving parents and siblings, his father was illiterate. More challenges would loom—none worse than the death of his son, Mikey, at age seventeen. The words, “Mikey was killed,” reverberate in his soul every day. When he received the news, he fell on his knees before throwing an exercise machine at the bedroom window. Then he tried to jump. His harrowing journey also involved a divorce, a battle with prostate cancer, and contending with the death of his parents. In this book, he shares the pain of going through so many ordeals and also looks back at the obstacles he overcame during forty-five years in pastoral ministry. Throughout, he shares his belief that no matter what takes place in life, God is in charge. As Psalm 22:8 declares, “For the kingdom is the Lord’s, and He rules over the nations.”