Carmen Monica Oprea

Sometimes you experience times of frustrations in your life. You believe you’re on track, trusting God and yourself, yet things don’t work out. You have false starts and stops. The door refuses to swing wide open. You may wonder if God has abandoned you, or doesn’t care. You may not understand where you’re going, or what your direction is. Then one day everything is revealed: the reason you didn’t get what you wanted was because God had something much better planned for you.

Imagine that you decide to make some changes in your living situation. You have lived in the city, and now you want to live in the country, on a lake. You find a small, lake house that isn’t the home of your dreams, but after selling your city house, you will be able to have money to remodel the new house. You wait for your city house to sell and it doesn’t sell. You have times of patience and impatience. Some days you trust God and others you can’t figure out why God makes you wait so long and doesn’t let you move on with your plan.

One day, a neighbor comes to visit you, and he tells you that he is selling his house because he is moving. His house is your dream home. The neighbor offers you the first option on purchasing his home. Two months later, you sell your city house and the small lake home. A short time later you move into the home of your dreams.

Sometimes, all it takes is patience to wait for the right things to come to you at the right time. You must trust that what is meant to be yours will belong to you if you are patient enough to accept that God has a plan for you and your life and he will always give you what you seek at the right moment.

Love,

Carmen Monica

The time has flown. It has actually been an insanely busy couple of months. I had a lot of things to do in my house, I had a rewrite to do on a book, I decided to weed some things out in my house and get rid of some furniture, and with one thing and another, I haven’t stopped for the past weeks. I have another rewrite to do. I do many, many rewrites before a book finally gets published. It takes a couple of years from when I write a book until it gets into your hands.

Aside from writing, and responding to family matters, I try setting time aside for what makes me happy. Yesterday, I went to the theatre, watched Disney’s Little Mermaid, and wondered why people stopped believing in fairy tales? It is true that if I look around, the sights are not very encouraging, but I tell myself that if I cease to believe in the power of love, all will be lost. When people love each other, distance becomes just a word. We like a lot a people we meet during our lifetime, but we don’t love them all. We don’t have to spend every second together to feel we belong to something greater than one. Distance is a way of proving that what we feel is real, testing our resilience to the outside temptations.

My new book, Unveiled Secrets, is a testimony of one woman’s tenacity in finding her husband and another one’s determination to distance herself from the man who stole her heart and reinvent herself while she gets in touch with her heritage. Look for it in a couple of months!

So, it’s back to the grind for me now, time to get back to work. I’ll be hunkering down with the keyboard for the next several weeks!!!

Lots of love,

Carmen Monica

Tell yourself that you are lovable.

Even when people haven’t been there for you, or when people haven’t shown love to you in ways that made sense, or just because relationships have been unsuccessful doesn’t mean that you’re unlovable.

You’ve had lessons to learn and sometimes, those experiences have hurt. It takes time to release the pain and open your heart to love. You are afraid that you will be hurt again. But it is important to take a chance and assume that everything will work out in the end, just as it has been intended since the beginning. You must believe that things meant to happen will happen anyway, that people will come and go from your life, that you will always remember the way they had treated you, the way they had made you feel when you were around them. Just because we can’t see them doesn’t mean they had forgotten about us, that they love us any less than they had loved us when they were around. If there were love then, it will always be love in their thoughts and hearts. Nobody can take love away. Love stays with us, grows with us, becomes part of us. It is in every cell, in every breath we take and in every step we make. Lovable people have a glow no one can destroy just because they are pushed aside. Lovable people find other peoples to love, and help, and lift when they need to be lifted. Lovable people will always remain lovely because they had been born with an aura of mystery that no one can ever understand, and they will always want to be touched by it.

Keep in mind that you are lovable and that you are loved. You must go back through the layers of fear and hurt until you discover the exuberant and delightful child that was, and still is, in you.

Love,

Carmen Monica

By holding on to the past through guilt, longing, denial, and resentment, I discovered that I wasted time that could have been used to transform today and tomorrow. I used to feel guilty about things that had happened, things I had done or other people had done to me. Although I had made amends for most everything, the guilt ran deep. Everything became my fault, and I could never let it go. I was in denial about many things and held on to anger for weeks. Sometimes, I tried to forget my past, but I couldn’t stop and sort it. My past was like a fog that surrounded me, and I couldn’t shake it off. I think I was scared to let it go, afraid of today, afraid of tomorrow.

I’ve been recovering for weeks, and I’m learning I can’t forget the past. I need to heal from it. I need to feel and let go of any feelings I still have, especially anger. I had to start with stopping to blame myself for aching events that took place, and trust that everything had happened on schedule, and truly all is good. I’ve learned to stop regretting and to start being grateful. I’ve learned to see my past compassionately, trusting that God was in control, even then.

I’m still healing from some of the worst things that could happen to anyone. I’ve made peace with myself about these issues, and I’m able to see how those things helped form my character and developed finer points in my personality. We can’t control our past, but we can transform it by allowing ourselves to heal from it and by accepting it with love for ourselves and others.

Love,

Carmen Monica

Loosen up and enjoy life!

You don’t have to be somber and serious, reflective and critical, so bound up within yourselves and the constraints others or yourselves placed around you.

Life is not a funeral service. Have fun with life. Participate in it. Experiment. Take a risk. Be spontaneous. Do not always be concerned about doing the appropriate thing, or about doing it right. Do not always be worried about what others will think or say. What they think and say are their issues, not yours. Do not be afraid of making a mistake. Do not be so fearful and proper. Do not inhibit yourself so much.

You were created fully human. You were given emotions, desires, hopes, dreams, and feelings. There is an alive, excited, fun-loving child in you somewhere! Let it come out! Let it have some fun not for just a few hours on a Saturday night. Bring it with us, let it help us enjoy this gift of being alive, being fully human, and being who we are!

There are so many rules, so much shame you’ve lived with. It isn’t necessary. Don’t worry! You will learn your lessons when necessary. You will begin enjoying and experience your whole self and trust yourselves.

Have some fun! Loosen a bit. Break a few rules.

Much love,

Carmen Monica

This is what we must do. We don’t have to do two things at once, but one thing done in peace. We should do one task at a time. We should experience one feeling at a time. We should live one day at a time. We must face one problem at a time. We should take one step at a time. We should feel one pleasure at a time.

To do one thing at a time, we must relax. We must let go of urgency and begin something new with calm. We should take one thing at a time and see how everything will work out.

We should remember that we are free to be who we are, to listen to and to trust . We are free to listen to the gentle, loving words whispered to and through each of us. Just remember that life happens one day at a time.

Love,

Carmen Monica

Many of us are faced with the issues of whether we can trust another person again and if we can trust our judgment. Sometimes the slip-ups we have can cost us our sanity, and we can’t afford to make similar mistakes. Many of us have trusted people who deceived, abused and manipulated us because we trusted them. Perhaps, we have found these people charming, kind, even decent. But there was always a small voice saying “No, something is wrong.” Or maybe we have been comfortable trusting that person, and we were shocked when we found our instincts were wrong.

These issues may reverberate through our lives for years, shaking our trust in others. But what is worst is that our trust in ourselves has been shattered. How was it possible to feel so right and be such a total mistake? Then, you wonder how can you ever trust your selection process again when it showed itself to be so faulty?

Maybe we will never have the answers. But it is important to make “mistakes” to learn critical lessons that we wouldn’t have learned another way. We can’t let our past to interfere with our ability to trust ourselves. We can’t afford to live in distress. If we are taking wrong decisions in business or in love, we may never learn how to choose what’s right for us.

The most important thing we can do is to improve. To learn from our errors. Slowly, in increments, our relationships improve. Our business choices improve. Our decisions about how to handle certain situations with friends improve. We benefit from our mistakes. We benefit from our past. And even if we made mistakes, we had to make them in order to learn along the way.

Love,

Carmen Monica

I learned that we can be loving, trusting people, and still not allow ourselves to be used or abused. We don’t have to let people do whatever they want to us. Not all their requests are legitimate because not all requests require a yes.

Life tests us, people seek out our weak spots. But if we have a weak spot in one area, we find ourselves repeatedly tested in that particular area by our family, friends, or co-workers. All these tests are trying to teach us something. When we learn that lesson, we’ll find that we are capable of setting boundaries. We own the power to say yes or no. There are moments when we may be angry with certain people, people who pushed our tolerance over the edge. And that is perfectly fine because soon enough we can let go of the anger and exchange it for gratitude.

Those people have been present to help us learn about what we don’t want, what we won’t tolerate, and how to own the power. We should thank them for what we have learned.

You should ask yourself how much are you willing to tolerate, how far should you let others go, how much anger and intuition should you discount? Where are your limits? Do you even have any? Because if you don’t have limits, you’re in big trouble.

There are times when you shouldn’t trust others, but instead, trust yourselves and set boundaries with those around you. You should forego your naïve assumption that the other person is right.

Love,

Carmen Monica

I learned that there is a gift in every relationship coming our way. Sometimes, this gift is in the form of a behavior we’re learning to acquire, something like detachment, self-esteem, or becoming confident enough to set a boundary. Some of our relationships trigger healing from issues of the past or issues we face today. There are times when we find ourselves learning the most valuable lessons from the people we least expect to teach us. Relationships teach us about loving ourselves or someone else. Or maybe we learn to let others love us.

Sometimes, we aren’t certain about the lesson we’re learning if we are still in the middle of the process. But the learning and the gift are there, and we don’t have to control the process. We will understand when it’s time, and we can also trust that the gift is exactly what we need.

It is important to trust that you are a gift in other people’s lives and each person in our lives is a gift to us.

Love,

Carmen Monica

How many of us have worked hard to make our relationships work? Sometimes they didn’t have a chance because the other person was absent. To compensate for the other person’s absence, we decided to work harder. In fact, we realized that we did the work. This situation will mask the reality for a while, but we usually get tired. Then, when we stop doing all the work, we notice there is no relationship, or we are so tired that we stop caring.

If we do all the work in a relationship, it is not loving, giving, or caring. It is called self-defeating because it forms the impression of a bond when in fact there may be none. It allows the other person to be irresponsible for his or her share. And because it doesn’t meet our needs, we feel victimized.

In our relationships, we all have temporary periods when one side participates more than the other. This is normal. But if it is a permanent way of engaging in a relationship, it will leave us feeling tired, worn out, needy, and angry. We can learn to contribute a reasonable amount, to let the relationship find its way to light.

Ask yourself if you do all the calling, the initiating, the giving. Are you the one talking about feelings and thirsting for intimacy? Are you doing all the waiting, the hoping, the work?

You can let go. If the relationship is meant to be, it will be, and it will become what it is intended to be. You can’t help the process by trying to control it. You do not help yourself, the other person, or the relationship by trying to force it or by doing all the work.

Let it be. Wait and see. Stop worrying about making it happen. See what happens and try to understand if it is what you want. Start the day by saying that you will stop doing all the work in your relationships. That you will give yourself and the other person the gift of participating. That you will accept the level your relationships reach when you do your part and let the other person choose what his or her share will be. Today, you will trust your relations to reach their own level. You will not do all the work, but only your share.

Love,

Carmen Monica