The Trainer Wheels of Religion

As a mother of 3 beautiful children, I have had the honour and joy over the past few years of watching all three of them learn to ride a bike. Each child's experience has been unique, however, what I learned from our last child's experience was the most significant of all.

Trainer wheels are a disadvantage. 

Yup, that's what I just said. From my experience, trainer wheels were a waste of time and in fact they hindered our girls from learning to balance on their own. The bridge between riding with trainer wheels and learning to ride without them is basically the same as learning to ride a bike from scratch,




You see, we bought our third child a balance bike. Genius inventions. They are genius because they allow a child to learn balance without having to focus on pedaling. It took our son 10 minutes to learn to ride a pedal bike after riding his balance bike. It took our daughters a few weeks to get the hang of riding without trainer wheels and they were far more freaked out as well.

Now you may be asking me, what does this have to do with religion? Well, basically everything. You see, religion is just like the trainer wheels of a bike.

Religion takes away our ability to find balance from within, and dictates to us what is right and wrong. Religion allows us to live 'uprightly' with external supports rather than living balanced from within.

Religion will never replace a relationship with Love Himself - Jesus Christ. He is my inner guide to living balanced. In my opinion, living religiously hinders our ability to hear God and walk with Him personally. When Jesus walked the earth, he frequently offended the religious people, and in my experience with Jesus, He has frequently offended the religious mindset in me and challenged my views of right and wrong by speaking directly to my heart.

Although I grew up in a beautiful Christian home with loving parents, I still grew up using the trainer wheels of religion. Judging what is right and wrong based on what I was told. On my journey of walking out my faith in relationship with Jesus, I have had to unlearn relying on what religion dictates to me, and relearn the art of staying connected with Christ in my heart.

My prayer is that we will all awaken to freedom in Jesus and throw off the trainer wheels. Yes, we may fall and graze our knees. Yes we may lean too far to the left or right, but that is how we were designed to learn. The pure joy of riding balanced with the wind in our hair is the same joy we can experience riding freely with Christ at the center.

Go on. Trust yourself. Trust the Christ in You. Trust this walk of faith.
I believe in You.
Love Raneeta

The Power of Harmony

The past few years have been a wonderful journey of health and wellness for our family as we discovered the power of essential oils and natural health. It has been a fascinating journey that has opened our eyes and minds to so much more about health and wholeness. 

Along the journey of striving for good health, we discovered the most powerful protection for our family was not nutrition, essential oils or even prayer, it was actually a HOME filled with love, peace and harmony. 

Now don't get me wrong, I am ALL FOR nutrition, essential oils and prayer, in fact, I wholeheartedly embrace these things, however my journey has taught me that love, peace and harmony are the key that override it all (I was gonna say 'the key that trumps it all' but maybe that is not fitting during the US elections. lol). Psalm 133 puts it this way, "How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity (harmony)! It is like precious oil poured on the head."

I would love to be able to say that we have perfect harmony in our home, but that would be a lie. There have been many times when peace and harmony are not present in our home and fear, strife and anger have been present. In these times, I have learned about the power and protection of harmony.

Harmony is beautiful. Harmony is when everything is united in love. Harmony is a sweet sound. It is peaceful. It is blissful. When you hear a sound that is out of harmony, it creates discord. It is unpleasant. It causes us to not feel at ease. It actually causes dis-ease to your ears and being. 

That was a big clue for me right there! Dis-ease!

We were created for harmony. Our body is designed for harmony. Love, joy and peace flow freely from harmonious relationships. When there is harmony, the bible describes it like precious oil being poured on the head (Psalm 133 as mentioned above), and you know what, that oil flows down to the rest of the body.

When my husband and I are in harmony, our home is filled with love and peace. It is just incredible. The children are happy and healthy, things go smoothly and even our pets benefit from our harmony. However, when we are out of harmony because we get offended or annoyed by one another, the atmosphere of our home changes quite obviously. There is more conflict among our children, things go wrong and I have even noticed that we become more susceptible to sickness.

I have tested out this revelation time and time again, and this has only further revealed the truth about harmony. As a couple, we have learnt the power of unity and harmony. We have learnt that nothing can penetrate that bond of love. We have learnt that if the enemy cannot put a wedge in between us, he has no way of getting in at all. This is the power of harmony that has led to breakthrough after breakthrough in our home with our health, our relationships, the atmosphere of our home and our business.

It is now obvious to me why the bible says to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit (Eph 4:3) because it is SO POWERFUL! I encourage you to test this out for yourself. Place HARMONY and UNITY as the top priority for your home today and step back and watch your family blossom. Sure, it might not happen over night, but as you continue in harmony, you will see blessing after blessing flood your home, your health and your family. 

Written with much love
Raneeta

From Trying to Growing

Combining my studies to be a naturopath and my love for creation, I often receive lots of life lessons through plants. Today on this glorious spring day I decided to take a break from the paperwork to let the chickens out for a roam, collect some eggs and check up on some of my favourite trees in our backyard.

After hugging some chickens and admiring some of our trees, I was overcome with beauty and awe about how each tree produces such amazing fruit for us. My avocado tree for example was a gift from my dad 6 years ago when we first built our house. This is its 3^rd year of fruit and we have had about 100 avocados this year! Yummo! And as I stand and admire this superfood tree, I reflect on how simply this tree blesses me. 

It does not TRY to produce fruit. It just does.

That’s when it hit me. Just like plants, my role in life is to take what I am given and allow myself to grow the fruit that I have been preordained to grow.  

A tree is planted, and it accepts where and when it is planted. A tree is exposed to the climate and receives the rain that falls, the sun that shines, the storms that pass and the temperatures that envelop it, and the tree converts these factors into growth. It is in the everyday, mundane factors of life that we can grow without striving or effort, but just by being thankful and present.

 My avocado tree does not look across the lawn at my mandarin tree and wish it could produce sweet and juicy fruit instead of thick and creamy fruit. So we too must learn to embrace the fruit that we are called to produce in life, and let the fruit of others bless the world as they have been created to be. 

Each fruit has a different purpose and function. Each are unique. Each are needed. Let us learn to honour the fruit on another’s life as well as loving and honouring the fruit in our own lives.

Let us quit ‘trying’ to be anything or produce anything and let us just BE present in gratitude, allowing everything in life to grow us and produce the fruit we were created to produce. 

Peace and Harmony to you and your homes,

Raneeta Curtis