Friends are like balloons; once you let them go,
you might not get them back. Sometimes we get so
busy with our own lives and problems that we may
not even notice that we’ve let them fly away.
Sometimes we are so caught up in who’s right and
who’s wrong that we forget what’s right and wrong.
Sometimes we just don’t realize what real
friendship means until it is too late.
Another FWD e-mail … but a must
Old, but a good reminder.
It was a busy morning, about 8:30, when an elderly gentleman in his 80′s arrived to have stitches removed from his thumb. He said he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9:00 am.
I took his vital signs and had him take a seat, knowing it would be over an hour before someone would to able to see him. I saw him looking at his watch and decided, since I was not busy with another patient, I would evaluate his wound. On exam, it was well healed, so I talked to one of the doctors, got the needed supplies to remove his sutures and redress his wound. While taking care of his wound, I asked him if he had another doctor’s appointment this morning, as he was in such a hurry.
The gentleman told me no, that he needed to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife. I inquired as to her health. He told me that she had been there for a while and that she was a victim of Alzheimer’s Disease.
As we talked, I asked if she would be upset if he was a bit late. He replied that she no longer knew who he was, that she had not recognized him in five years now.
I was surprised, and asked him, ‘And you still go every morning, even though she doesn’t know who you are?’ He smiled as he patted my hand and said, ’She doesn’t know me, but I still know who she is.’
I had to hold back tears as he left, I had goose bumps on my arm, and thought, ‘That is the kind of love I want in my life.’ True love is neither physical, nor romantic. True love is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will be, and will not be. With all the jokes and fun that are in e-mails, sometimes there is one that comes along that has an important message. This one I thought could share with you.
The happiest people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the best of everything they have. I hope you share this with someone you care about – I just did.
‘Life isn’t about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.’
Take a look at a basketball game, people can be in two places, on the court or in the stance. Difference being, the people on the court play the game and their actions impact the results of the game, the people in the stance can only watch or talk about the game, their actions has no impact on the results. Being in the game there are risks involved, there’s always a chance of losing or fail, but you can also win. In the stance, there are no risks and you will never fail, but there are no possibilities of winning. Life can be viewed the same way, are you playing the game called your life or are you just watching it? My favorite commercial of all time is a Nike commercial that went like this “I missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. That is why I succeed, my name is Michael Jordan.” You have to fail in order to succeed, if you put yourself in a position where you can not fail, you will never succeed.
I hate FWD emails. I received this one from a long lost friend and enjoed it and decided to pass it on.
T he most useless thing to do…. ……..Worry
>
>The greatest Joy………………….. …….Giving
>
>The greatest loss…………………………..Loss of self-respect
>
>The most satisfying work………… …Helping others
>
>The ugliest personality trait………………….Selfishness
>
>The most endangered species……………….Dedicated leaders
>
>The greatest “shot in the arm”………………Encouragement
>
>The greatest problem to overcome………….Fear
>
>Most effective sleeping pill………….Peace of mind
>
>The most crippling failure disease………Excuses
>
>The most powerful force in life………………….Love
>
>The most dangerous pariah…………………………..A gossiper
>
>The world’s most incredible computer…
> …..The brain!
>The worst thing to be without………………. Hope
>
>The deadliest weapon….The tongue…….
>
>The two most power-filled words…………..”I Can”
>
>The greatest asset…………….Faith
>
>The most worthless emotion……………Self-pity
>
>The most prized possession…………….Integrity
>
>The most beautiful attire………………A SMILE!
>
>The most powerful channel of communication…..
> …………. …Prayer
>The most contagious spirit………… …..Enthusiasm
>
>The most important thing in life……….. ……..GOD
>
man feared his wife wasn’t hearing as well as she used to and he thought she might need a hearing aid. Not quite sure how toapproach her, he called the family Doctor to discuss the problem.
The Doctor told him there is a simple informal test the husband could perform to give the Doctor a better idea about her hearing loss.Here’s what you do,” said the Doctor, “stand about 40 feetaway from her, and in a normal conversational speaking tone see if she hears you if not, go to 30 feet, then 20 feet, and s o on until you get a response.
That evening, the wife is in the kitchen cooking dinner, and he was in the den. He says to himself, “I’m about 40 feet away, Then in a normal tone he asks, ‘Honey, what’s for dinner?”
No response
So the husband moves to closer to the kitchen, about 30 feet from his wife and repeats, “Honey, what’s for dinner?”
Still no response.
Next he moves into the dining room where he is about 20feet from his wife and asks, Honey, what’s for dinner?” Again he gets no response. So he walks up to the kitchen door, about 10 feet away.
Honey, what’s for dinner?” Again there is no response.
So he walks right up behind her. “Honey, what’s for dinner?”
James, for the FIFTH time I’ve said, CHICKEN!”
Moral of the story:
The problem may not be with the other one as we always think, it could very much be within us..!
It is not a simple task to ignore those who are trying to discourage us from pursuing our dreams. Their intentions are generally well-meant and their arguments tend to make “sense”, but the fact remains that it is OUR dream and not theirs, and as such they will always fail to recognize the importance of it.
When we pursue our dreams, something unavoidable happens; it affects everyone around us. You might think this is a positive aspect of our work, but it almost always has a negative impact for one very specific reason; if we succeed in achieving our dream it proves that they can to. Let’s face it, the world is FULL of people with failed or abandoned dreams and they don’t want to know that they’ve walked away from something that could’ve changed their lives. But more to the core, they don’t want you to succeed when they themselves have failed. You’d think, if they loved us or cared about us, the opposite would be true; that they would want to see us succeed even more than ever, but that isn’t the way the human psyche works. Instead, when we’ve failed, we want to “protect” the ones we love from experiencing the same heart break and disappointment that we have had to deal with. And so, the very people who aught to be encouraging us to continue in our pursuit of joy, fulfillment and a sense of contentment, are the very ones who try to keep us from it.
The tools most often employed against us are: shame for being so self-centered, guilt for not being satisfied, chastisement for not being “realistic”, and fear about where failure would leave us. And believe me, these are powerful, powerful tools designed to elicit a whole range of emotions that will threaten to undermine our resolve, and cause us to question our actions and intention.
· Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
· I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
G. K. Chesterton
· A leader must have the courage to act against an expert’s advice.
James Callaghan
When we recognize that these tools are meant to manipulate us by those who are either threatened by our pursuit of happiness, or those who wish to spare us the pain and heartbreak of failure, the tools no longer hold any power over us. Choosing to ignore those who discourage us is not fool-hearty, it is absolutely imperative! Those who are unwilling to step out on their own despite the warnings and advice against doing so, will never achieve anything more than regret, discontentment, and much resentment.
You are tired.
You are weary.
Weary of being slapped by the waves of broken dreams.
weary of being stepped on and run over in the endless marathon to the top.
Weary of trusting in someone only to have that trust returned in an envelope with no return address.
Weary of staring in to the future and seeing only futility.
What steals our childhood zeal?…
It is this weariness that makes the words of the carpenter so compelling.
Listen to them. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”
Come to me… The invitation is to come to him . Why him?
He offers the invitation as a penniless rabbi in an oppressed nation.
He has no connections with the authorities in Rome. He hasn’t writtena best-seller or earned a diploma.
Yet, he dares to look in to the leathery faces of farmers and tired faces of houswives and offer rest. He looks into the disillusioned eyes of a bartender and makes his paradoxical promise:
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentel and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
The people come. They come out of the cul-de-sacs and office complexes of their existance and he gave them, not religion, not doctrine, not systems, but rest.
As a result, they called him Lord.
As a result, they called him Savior.
Not so much because of what he said, but because of what he did.
What he did on the cross during six hours, one Friday.
I am sitting at the Hair Cutting place yesterday afternoon waiting for my hair cut. Eventually I spy a display of expensive shampoos from a company called Redken. As my eyes pass over the display I notice that one of them is named “Retaliate” Now I don’t know about you, but I am worried about my shampoo needing to retaliate against my hair or my head. Is it possible that the executives at this company do not know what the word retaliate means? Generally in my circles, it means to take revenge for a perceived wrong. What has my hair done that it deserves to be retaliated against? Why would anyone believe it would be a good idea to have a hair arms race?
No doubt this company paid some firm a princely sum to come up with this name. Maybe the follow up product cold be called “escalate” or “revenge” the shampoo. Come to think of it, I am pretty mad at my hair today. I wish I had bought some of that shampoo!
Many times we look at others and wish we were more like them. We say stuff like, “I wish I was as small as Maryjo” or “I wish I was as muscular as Arnold” or “I wish I was as good a homemaker as Jenny-Mae”, or “I wish I had Tom’s job”. I know sometimes I wish I was more outgoing, someone who made friends more easily. We are all guilty of this, and I was thinking today that we really ought to be satisfied with just who we are.
It is such a wonderful thing that we were all created as unique human beings. What a boring world it would be if we all were alike! Just think of the different personalities within your own family, how exciting it makes your family life. I know sometimes the different personalities make for way too much excitement than we would like, but our uniqueness is something that we should all be proud of. I am not saying that we cannot aspire to be a certain size, or to be a better person, but I truly believe that we have to be contented with who we are first, so that we can make the necessary changes and be at peace.
No one else can be you. No one else has gone through the exact things that you have gone through in life. Our experiences are all different, and we each have our own distinct stories to tell that could help others. Do not ever think that someone else is better than you – their experiences have just been different, but you both have stories to tell. Each one of us has a purpose here on earth, and being unique is a big part of fulfilling that purpose. Let us give thanks that we are all unique and wonderfully made. There is no one else like you, and there is no one else like me. Isn’t this awesome?
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven” – Ecclesiastes 3:1
I have become a firm believer in seasons. By that I mean that I fully believe that there is indeed a time for everything. Many of us have dreams, plans, and other desires for ourselves and for our family. These dreams may have just entered our hearts, or they may have been in our hearts for two years, or twenty years. It doesn’t matter. They are our dreams, they are our plans, they are our desires and we would like to see them come to pass.
The problem is that there will always be obstacles and difficulties on the way to realizing our heart’s desires. We cannot get away from them as they are so much a part of life. We must have determination and patience, and we must believe that when the time is right, when our season has come, our desires will be fulfilled. Many times, we try to do things when the timing isn’t right, we lack patience and are unwilling to wait. Most times chaos is the result of our impatience. I have learned that nothing causes more chaos in my life than doing things out of timing, or out of season. We have to believe in our dreams, we have to work hard to achieve them, but we must also exercise some patience and know that things will work out in due season.
You may be going through some difficult times right now and are tempted to give up. Please don’t give up and have faith – for in due time, when your season has come, you will achieve the desires of your heart.
