Life's a series of lessons, learned as we live, not known beforehand.  They're sometimes scoldings, sometimes they are trophies, awards, and accolades for "jobs well done".  Mostly life lessons are an uncertainty, a way to evolve through the knowledge, discipline, experience, and time, which will all help to form the final form which makes up you.  Life is a way to become more than you started out being, and if you're fortunate, you take your lessons and make the later versions of "you" new a...
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Life is like a sea, sometimes we are on top of the waves, feeling like surfers tackling our problems and making headway with a big grin for all the success we feel. Other times, the waves are complacent little bobs of nothingness,which although still slight swellings responsible for some motion, which barely take us anywhere and we end up feeling stagnant, like we're stuck. Then every now and then, we get those tsunamis, sometimes even in clusters of multiples, which not only scare us, but ta...

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When we are young, we look at our lives ahead as endless, infinite expanses of unfulfilled promise.  We see days stretched out before us as limitless miles left in our tanks, nothing to restrict us, nor to restrain our momentum.  We don't consider ramifications, complications, situations, nor implications.  We only take one day after another like we've all the time in the world!

Somewhere along the way, hopefully later rather than sooner, we begin to see small foretellings of the possibilities...
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Call me special, call me unique, call me one-of-a-kind, but I will not live my life according to the paperdoll cut-out images copied by anyone else!  I want my own life, my own pathway, I don't want to shadow anyone else . . . I want a life that is authentically mine, not a carbon copy, nor a duplicate, nor a contrivance, but rather, reality . . . my own sweet, messy, sometimes stressful, but always real, and a bit bumpy, less-travelled road!

I've had some successes and some failures in my lif...
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Feed your soul with what you require for this life, starving it of anything you truly need for its preservation can lead to its slow demise.  The soul, just like the physical body, requires certain essential nutrients.  Those for most are:  love, companionship, joy, laughter, spirituality, close relationships born of confidence, and peace of mind.   Some may find they can exist easily without any or all of those, but rarely with a contented soul.  The being which dwells within, your spirit, s...
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Whimsy, the art of finding joy in doing the silly things you love to do!  I categorize whimsy as the random desire to frolic, twirl, doodle, lolligag, linger, twiddle, and even dally!

Whimsy is the non-deliberate pursuit of nothingness, of pleasing oneself by partaking of happy-go-lucky random silliness.  I recommend that each one of you partake of random acts of whimsy each and every day, as that is the only way to alleviate the burdens of this world's big weights upon your shoulders.  Whimsy...
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Have you ever stopped to realize why all the adages you've heard your whole lifetime exist?  Because they're true!  Somehow, the good and smart people before you, involved in similar circumstances, decided to forewarn you.  So they made up some clever and precise adages, which people toss around and some actually pay heed.

My favorite is: no good deed goes unpunished.  That is so true.  When you do something for someone else, no matter what it is, if you have any expectation attached, you wil...
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You know, no other organ retains a sense of your emotion like your heart!  It is not just functional, providing the life-giving beats which drive the oxygenated blood through your body, in rhythmic fashion to keep you alive.  It does this without even one action on your part, it is part of a "subliminal" system, an unconscious system which keeps your body going.  The heart also monitors your emotions though, as it most assuredly senses the changes of love's breezes blowing over it's bows.  Th...
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Right now in my life, I'm like an unfinished masterpiece.  I was reminded today when looking at the infant niece of a friend, who is ill and facing heart surgery, that life's brevity is enough inspiration to constantly let yourself be shaped and formed!  I whine too much.  I moan and complain over such silly things.  I know nothing of pain, nor enduring it, in comparison to that of a tiny little 2-month old baby fighting for hers!

When God gives you challenges, it should automatically make you...
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Dreams are what drive us to compose our lives, they make our lives rich with color, beauty, and motivate us forward like our own inherent propellers.  Reality, though, now that's a concept! 

I'm insistent in pointing out that the counter-balance to fantasy is reality.  Seems like that should be common sense, but many people live their entire lives wasting possibilities because they refuse to see the beauty and joy within reality.  It's filled with imperfection, so reality isn't going to be "p...
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I'll be frank here, dreaming is always in competition with my more practical side, the realistic side which screams, "Don't you open up your heart to those foolish dreams, you're just asking for trouble!"  I've admittedly been broken down, busted apart and found myself wondering why I ever dared to dream when they pan out and fall to pieces.  I've always gotten back up, stepped back into my "fantasy", and hoped all over again.  The true nature of a positive thinker is optimism, but also the v...
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I wish I knew then what I know now.  I didn't, and so, I made mistakes, I lived my life with a flawed sense of reality, sometimes quite selfishly focusing on all the wrong things, the things which don't really matter when it comes right down to it.  But you know, I suppose that is what separates me from sainthood, I didn't know, I wasn't perfect, and all I could do was the best I knew to do when I knew to do it!  Lighten up . . . we are imperfect creatures, designed with flaws, made in flesh ...

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As long as we have evil revealed through infertile thoughts, words and deeds of men, we will need to find our comfort and our rest in God's abundant, verdant pastures. - Cheryl Ries, September 9, 2010


We are fast approaching an another anniversary of September 11th, a most notorious day for realizing in modern terms the extent of man's hatred, based on a centuries-old tradition of religious intolerance.  We've seen it played out all too often throughout the history of civilization, as long as ...
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When I was young, there was only one reality for me.  I was only interested in being a wife and a mother.  Looking back, all the things I did, all the activities I practiced, my play, my favorite times, my significance, all was vested in that journey.  Lo and behold, the two things of significance I have not done in my lifetime are those very things which I spent my childhood playtime and chore time in preparation.  I knew how to cook, bake, clean house, sew and I observed with admiring eyes,...
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Welcome . . . I'm using this first post to introduce myself, my name is Cheryl Ries, and although I've written blog posts for a company blog I co-founded, this is my initial entry into self-promotion!  What do you think so far?  Ah, you say it's too soon to tell.  I can only qualify my attributes, my abilities, by explaining my desire to fulfill a lifelong passion for writing.  It's either you who become my noble guinea pigs, or I make my beginner's mistakes in a more serious arena such as a ...

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