July, 2010

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

The Gift of Trying

“And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will complete it.”
(Philippians 1:6)

It is so easy to feel discouraged. When you work as hard as you can and don’t get the results you want, it is so easy to feel that you will never succeed. My husband, who is a very wise man, will listen to me lament that I have failed and will say, “You haven’t failed. You just haven’t succeeded yet.” Those are reassuring words. Of course, when he says them, I think, “He’s just saying that because he loves me.” Then, I realize that he’s right. As long as a person is trying they haven’t failed. They only fail if they give up before they reach their goal.

My goal is to build an audience for this blog. The above quote from Philippians helps me to remember that sharing God’s word is a good work and that, with God’s help, I can be successful. I also think of these words from Genesis:
God is with you in all that you do.
(Genesis 21:22)
Whether it is sharing His word in a blog or doing any other good work I believe that God is with us, helping us even when we can’t see His hands. Just like He carries us even at the times that we can’t see His footprints in the sand.

beach pattern

The strength to keep trying when we haven’t seen success yet is a sacred gift. I hope that you will have countless sacred gifts.

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Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

The Gift of Becoming

What did you want to be when you grew up? Fireman, policeman, Indian chief? Ballerina, astronaut, painter?  There were so many choices, limited only by our imaginations. Of course, these desires weren’t cast in stone.  They usually changed year to year, even week to week or day to day.  There probably was one idea that had the most appeal, though, something that we really, really, really wanted to be. I wonder how many of us ever became that person.  My guess is not many.

I remember in sixth grade being filled with the exciting thought of growing up to be an archaeologist.  Of course, I didn’t and, truth be told, I wouldn’t have liked the heat and dust of the real world of an archaeological dig.  That is the joy of childhood.  We see the wonder and not the work.

Fortunately, our dreams don’t end in childhood. They don’t end when we grow up and face “the real world.”  There is a commercial on television. In it several older people tell what they want to be when they grow up.  One says, “I want to be a teacher.”  Another says, “I want to fall in love again.”  Inside of us there is always the potential to become.  We are older and wiser.  We understand the realities of making a living and making a life. We see both the work and the wonder, but we are still able to imagine becoming something more.

The able to grow, to change, to become is a sacred gift. May you have many sacred gifts.


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Sunday, July 25th, 2010

The Gift of Revelation

I realized this morning that I have been so focused on trying to heal that, except for praying for other people, all of my prayer focus has been on asking the Lord to restore my health.  My physical therapist twice said to me that maybe something good would come of my ordeal.  When he said that, I didn’t see how any good could come of this experience that I call my “lick of Hell.” Today I decided to start praying that some good will come from my pain and that the Lord will reveal it to me.

That prayer made me think about the ways that God reveals himself to us. M. Scott Peck, M.D., author of the best-selling book The Road Less Traveled, said,  “I’ve had all kinds of experiences with God in terms of revelation through a still, small voice or dreams or coincidences.”  I think of that still, small voice as words that the Lord speaks directly into our hearts.  I am praying that God will speak into my heart and show me how this difficult experience can be a gift for me to use to help others.

We each see and hear God’s voice in our own way. How has God revealed himself to you? What gifts do you have that He has revealed to you?

The revelation of God to His people is a sacred gift.  May you be blessed with countless sacred gifts.


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Saturday, July 24th, 2010

The Gift of Healing

O LORD my God, I called to you for help and you healed me.
(Psalm 30:2)

As I work through twelve exercise sessions a day the thought of healing is always on my mind.  I work toward healing and I pray for it.  Given my nature, I am impatient for it.  The thought of waiting months, maybe longer, is discouraging. Unfortunately, work and prayer are all I can do to try to achieve full healing.  I don’t know that I ever will, but I am going to try as hard as I can.

As I try to heal I fight another demon, the demon of negative thoughts.  These thoughts are of the “Woe is me!” and “What if I never am made right?” variety. Sometimes it is very difficult to not have “diseased thoughts.” Zacharty Bercovitz, (1895 -1984), was an American doctor who wrote, “Some patients I see are actually draining into their bodies the diseased thoughts of their minds.”

I think the battle for healing is fought in the mind as much as in the body and the soul.  That’s why I pray not only that all people who are injured or sick will be healed, but that they will each have a sense of peace.

Peacefulness in healing is a sacred gift. May you be blessed with countless sacred gifts.


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Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

The Gift of Nothing

“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.”

Camille Pissarro (1830 – 1903)

As we rush through our busy lives it is so easy to be focused on doing.  In fact, we have to be focused.  Otherwise we wouldn’t accomplish all the things that we need to accomplish.  We are a society that stresses accomplishment.  Many of us use to-do lists, either written or mental, to keep ourselves on track. The to-do list is so commonplace that once I heard a four-year-old boy say, “My to-do list is four-pages long.” That was a cute statement, but also a sad one.  Too often “doing” takes all our time and energy and there is no place in our day for simply “being.”

If we don’t stop and simply “be,” we can’t see the “beautiful things in humble places.”  Instead we see “nothing.” Since my accident I have had the rare opportunity to just “be,” because my ability to “do” is very limited.  While simply being, I have enjoyed these beautiful things:

two yellow butterflies that frequently fly by my window

a dragonfly on the bush outside our front door

a hummingbird

the rich color of a raspberry pie

the warm envelope of water in the shower

the tall pride of giant sunflowers in a blue vase

the softness of chocolate melting on my tongue

Each of these things had a beauty that I would have briefly noticed, but not savored, if I had been busy doing.  If you have time today to simply “be,” I hope you see many beautiful things.  Being able to see beyond “nothing” is one of life’s sacred gifts.


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Sunday, July 18th, 2010

The Gift of Doors

How many doors have you opened in your life?  Thousands?  Hundreds of thousands?

For some reason I have been thinking about doors.  Opening doors. Choosing the right doors.  Closing doors. Having doors closed on me. Wishing a door to something I want would magically open in front of me.

When I first started thinking about doors, I thought of physical doors.  Those doors can keep us safe or shut us out.  They can lead us to work, play, prayer.  They can be heavy or so light a child can open them.

Doors

Then, I realized that the most important doors are psychological, not physical. They are the doors to our hopes and dreams.  When they close, we can feel alone, sad, angry, confused, frustrated. We know what we want, what we need. Then, despite our best efforts, the door is slammed in our face.

That’s when I think of this saying,

“When God closes a door, He opens  a window.”

It is hard, though, to accept the closing of a door in our lives. We can spend so long looking at the closed door and trying to open it that we don’t see the light coming through the window.  We long for what we can’t have and try to hold on to what is gone.  When we do this, we can’t see the good things that are waiting for us.


Instead we should rest on the Lord and pray to understand what He is showing us through the window.  Pray for the patience to wait for another door to open. When this door does open, you will understand that the doors behind you had to close so that you could walk through this new door.


A few months ago I saw this quote on a poster.


“Just when the caterpillar thought the end of

the world had come, he became a butterfly.”


I hope that, when doors close for each of us, we find something even more wonderful through the doors that open. Open doors and the patience to wait for them are sacred gifts.


May your blessings be many, your worries few.

I wish you countless sacred gifts.

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Friday, July 9th, 2010

The Gift of Footprints

Footprints in the Sand

One night a man had a dream.
He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the LORD.

Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand: one belonging to him, and the other to the LORD.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times of his life.

This really bothered him and he questioned the LORD about it. “LORD, You said that once I decided to follow you, You would walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times of my life, there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why when I needed You most You would leave me.”

The LORD replied, “My son, My precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.

I have always loved this poem.  After my accident one of my daughters sent me a plaque with this poem.  It was a comfort to be reminded that God leads us through the waters of our lives.

Sometimes the sea is calm. Sometimes the waves pound, threatening to drown us. Throughout it all the Lord is helping us. When the sea is calm, He walks beside us.  When the storms rage and we have no more strength to fight, He carries us.


footprints-in-the-sand

God’s footprints in the sands of our lives are a sacred gift.

May your blessings be many, your worries few. I wish you countless sacred gifts.

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Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

We do not see things as they are.

We see things as we are.

(The Talmud)

While we physically see with our eyes, it is our brains that tell us what we are seeing.  The act of seeing involves the physical, the mental and the emotional. That is why two people can see the same person or thing or event in totally different ways.  I remember going into a restaurant to celebrate our anniversary. Our four-year-old daughter and almost nine-month-old daughter and my parents were with us.  As we ate dinner a woman at a nearby table kept turning to glare at us.  The children were being quiet and well-behaved, but, obviously, in her eyes, they were being “bad.”  I found myself feeling worse as time went by. Every time the woman turned and glared at us I felt my heart sink a little more.  As we were leaving the restaurant two women were sitting on a bench by the door. They stopped us and said that they had just had dinner in the restaurant.  One of them said, “We couldn’t help noticing your children.  They were so beautiful and well-behaved.”  Same situation, different eyes.

I read a story several years ago that showed me again that “We see things as we are.”  In the story an elderly woman was sitting in a wheelchair in front of an elevator door in a nursing home. Someone was talking about the room that was waiting for her upstairs. She answered, “I love my room.”  The other person said, “But you’ve never seen the room.”  She responded, “I have already decided that I love it.” She chose, sight-unseen, to love her new “home.”  I’m sure it wasn’t a home where she ever wanted to live.  The story reminded me of my mother-in-law. When she was in an assisted-living facility she always said, “Everyone is doing the very best that they can.”  She chose to see her caregivers through the eyes of loving acceptance. Because she was a gentle, kind, loving person she saw other people in the same way.

Seeing through the eyes of love is a sacred gift. I wish you countless sacred gifts.


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Monday, July 5th, 2010

The Gift of Freedom

“These are the times that try men’s souls.

The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

On Christmas Day 1776 George Washington read these words from Thomas Paine’s American Crisis to his troops.  The men were hungry, cold, dispirited. Many of them had their feet wrapped in rags because they had no shoes.  It looked like their fight for independence might very well be lost.  Waiting across the Delaware River in Trenton, NJ, was an army of British and Hessian troops.  Early on the morning of December 26 the Continental soldiers rowed across the ice-clogged river.  It was only 20 degrees.  They launched a surprise attack which ended in the first American victory of the war. As Thomas Paine wrote, these soldiers did indeed win “the love and thanks of man and woman.”

The The men and women who have fought and continue to fight to preserve our freedom deserve our thanks and our love and our prayers.  The question, “What price freedom?” has been going through my mind.  For too many of our soldiers the price is injury and death.  As has been quoted through the years, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This quote is a modern version of words spoken by Edmund Burke, the 18th-century British statesman.  Sadly, freedom is always paid for by the men and women who refuse to let evil triumph no matter the personal cost.


1100_unknown_sailor


May

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Thursday, July 1st, 2010

The Gift of Communication

Instant.  Instant rice.  Instant pudding. Instant messaging.

We are the society of NOW.  We are able to instantly communicate.  There was a time when the telegraph was the fastest way to communicate. Even then it involved  three other people – the person to key your message in Morse code, the person to receive the message in Morse code and write it down, the person to deliver a written message to the recipient’s door. It was the fastest way to communicate, but it definitely wasn’t instant.

The telephone greatly improved our ability to communicate.  We could hear the other person’s voice and they could hear our words.  The next big communication change came with the introduction of the fax machine into the workaday business world in the late 1980’s. We could send words and graphics. The speed of transmitting the written word has grown rapidly since then. We have achieved instant communication via e-mail, texting and social networking sites.  The other person can receive our words NOW.  We can send photos and graphics, video and audio in literally seconds.  What a wonderful change.

I have always felt sorry for the immigrants who came to America that could not read or write. Unless someone came from their hometown after they came here they never knew what happened to their loved ones back home. The family and friends who stayed behind had no way to know what happened to them after they sailed for America. Now we have the ability to know what someone is doing right this minute.  One thing has never changed, though.  Our ability to communicate with the Lord.  We speak to Him through prayer. How do we receive an answer? We wait.  We wait until we hear a divine message in our hearts.

“God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer.”  (Mother Teresa)

turbulent sky

We wait until we see His hand in changes that happen in our lives. Our communication with the Lord is “then,”not “now.”  We pray and, then, we wait for the answer.  Communication with the Lord requires trust and patience, in some instances over long periods of time. Waiting for the Lord’s answer is even harder in our society of instant answers and NOW communication. Having the patience to wait peacefully for the Lord to answer us is a sacred gift.


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