Living My Soul & Heart Desired Life

'Apple Blossom' - captured by Jeroen Rutten of a fallen apple tree in our forest garden.

Soul & Heart desired life as my spiritual friend, co-collaborator of our Forest Ministry, Nita, called it in our recent conversation. We have yearning, longing, desires to live life that is loving to ourselves. The soul and heart desired life is a life where it is full of freedom, joy, contentment, gratitude, ease, effortless and peace. It is not saying that there are no challenges in the soul & heart desired life. THERE IS. However, we are able to navigate the challenges with the guidance and providence of our Beloved, for us, God, in us.

Today, I want to write about what is my soul & heart desired life - for many years - is to live in the Nature, country side with a tiny 'forest', that is to say, with trees, wild life, wild herbs, flowers... already present. And my dream came true! Did I pursue this dream?  Not really.  I only day dream about the deep long yearning for a life in the quiet country side with a garden. So is my husband, Jeroen. I never knew he had the same dream too before he even met me. It is only in recent conversation after we reflected on our process so far, only to discover that we have the same deep soul heart desire. We can even forget our dream when we get caught up in our busyness. Yet this long yearning keeps calling us and awakens us. It is our deep yearning of our heart and soul. Only when we are ready to embrace our long yearning dream, we will be led to it. During the whole process of my contemplation, sabbatical retreats and training with Nita since 2015, my soul and heart desire dream surfaced again. And Yes! My and our dream is realised!

My Herbs of Our Sanctuary Forest Garden

Wild Strawberry Leaves, Yarrow, Artemisia, Dandelion

I have always enjoyed drinking herb tea since I was introduced years ago by my friend, Sebastian Liew. I even learnt aromatherapy from him in a course once. Never had I ever had the chance to move further in exploring it. Until I moved to Netherlands where I first began my balcony garden, growing my naturally organic herbs, vegetables for tea and food. The yearning grew and grew to have a garden of my own, brewing inside.  I also love to make food from scratch. Homemade and self made. The joy of making homemade food with fresh and pure ingredients from own homegrown garden.

Stinging Nettle, Dandelion, Daisy

We are blessed already with wild Dandelion, Daisy and Stinging Nettle in our Forest. Yarrow, Artemisia, Wild Strawberry leaves that I harvested today are the herbs I grew from my balcony garden. They are flourishing abundantly this year after we moved to our Sanctuary Forest Garden in Spring. I normally like to harvest fresh for my tea. Now it is growing abundantly, I can harvest, dry them for consumption in the later seasons.

These are dried Stinging Nettle, Dandelion and Daisy, harvested from last week.

Drying Yarrow in this way for the first time.

* If you find that you are still not living your soul and heart desired life, we invite you to let us accompany you to discern what your soul and heart desired life is - in personally guided retreat, contemplation retreat, Sabbatical retreat with Nita or Elizabeth. We are also delighted to announce that we are offering Advance Training. A training where we "train" like the way the Forest teaches... Naturally, organically and Being True to Our Divine Nature. Get in touch with us or visit our Forest Ministry.