I readily admit I don't read the things that get forwarded to me via email. There's just too many cute kitty kat pictures and schmaltzy thoughts rolling around the internet for me to read them all. And I have a few people who send me oh, about 50 every week (please stop!). So I hit delete. Occasionally I read a couple of them from my mom, but that is mostly because she asks me if I liked it and I feel too guilty to lie or admit that I delete them. So I think God must use creative ways to communicate encouraging thoughts to me.
This week at work I was helping an older woman eat her dinner. She was very slow in chewing her food. Very slow. So instead of getting her to talk as she ate I let her eat and had to occupy my thoughts elsewhere. A note on her tray caught my eye. It was the story told below. It struck me as true and I thought about it especially in relation to the last couple of years of our life. Then this morning I opened one of those various forwarded emails from my mom. It had the same story. I am getting the message....
There was a man who had four sons.
He wanted his sons to learn not to judge things too quickly.
So he sent them each on a quest, in turn,
to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away.
The first son went in the winter,
the second in the spring,
the third in summer and
the youngest son in the fall.
When they had all gone and come back,
he called them together to describe
what they had seen.
The first son said that the tree was ugly,
bent, and twisted. The second son said
no it was covered with green buds and
full of promise.
The third son disagreed; he said it was laden with blossoms
that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful,
it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen.
The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and
drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.
The man then explained to his sons
that they were all right, because they
had each seen, but only one season
in the tree's life.
He told them that you cannot judge a tree or a person
by only one season, and that the essence of who they are
and the pleasure, joy and love that come from that life
can only be measured at the end, when all the seasons are up.
If you give up when it's winter, you will miss
the promise of your spring, the beauty
of your summer, fulfillment of your fall.
Don't let the pain of one season destroy the joy of
all the rest. Don't judge life by one difficult season.
Persevere through the difficult patches and better
times are sure to come some time.
31 March 2010
27 March 2010
I love...
...early mornings when it is quiet except for the birds and the sun is coming up. It bathes everything in this golden light that makes me realize afresh that God's mercies really are new every morning.
...turning up the music so loud that the neighbors cringe. It's my favorite way to do housework!
...seeing my kids happy and hearing them laugh! There is a hilarious tv show called "The Middle" with Patricia Heaton as the mom. I identify way too much with this family! The mom said once, "A mother is only as happy as her least happy child" - true too often for me. One of my kids being heartbroken has a way of making my heart break a little too.
...pockets of time with husband. I'm not really sure how we can understand each other better than anyone else on the planet and still not quite understand each other, but we do, and I love spending time with him.
....long walks.
...when my patients look at me and say, "Thank you. You made my day better." Anytime that happens it makes up for the rest of it.
...my girlfriends. I am unbelievably blessed with good friends who are loyal, fun and loving.
...a movie that pulls me in, tells a good story, inspires me, makes me laugh, makes me cry. It's all good.
...the sun and the water.
... ... ... ...I love those dots.... ..... ......
...turning up the music so loud that the neighbors cringe. It's my favorite way to do housework!
...seeing my kids happy and hearing them laugh! There is a hilarious tv show called "The Middle" with Patricia Heaton as the mom. I identify way too much with this family! The mom said once, "A mother is only as happy as her least happy child" - true too often for me. One of my kids being heartbroken has a way of making my heart break a little too.
...pockets of time with husband. I'm not really sure how we can understand each other better than anyone else on the planet and still not quite understand each other, but we do, and I love spending time with him.
....long walks.
...when my patients look at me and say, "Thank you. You made my day better." Anytime that happens it makes up for the rest of it.
...my girlfriends. I am unbelievably blessed with good friends who are loyal, fun and loving.
...a movie that pulls me in, tells a good story, inspires me, makes me laugh, makes me cry. It's all good.
...the sun and the water.
... ... ... ...I love those dots.... ..... ......
26 March 2010
Can I Really Say This?
Maybe it is a Southern thing, or a church thing, or just trying to be a decent human being, but I edit so much of what I actually think and only let a little out in words. Now, don't knock yourself out of the chair laughing cause you just KNOW that I can definitely let it loose sometimes, especially if you are close to me at all.
But overall, and especially at work, I try to be mature, to answer in an appropriately calm, upbeat manner, to say the right thing. I try to spin things in their most positive aspect. I try to use words like "challenging" instead of "damn hard" or "awful." And as prone as I am to be direct with people, I really try not to upset the apple cart on purpose.
Although it doesn't come naturally I have learned how to hold it together while everyone is watching and only lose it privately. Most of the time anyway. We have a sign in our home office that says "Keep Calm & Carry On." It was from King George (I think) during WWII in England and they posted this sign all over to help people keep some normalcy during those tumultuous times. It's been my motto the last 18 months. Keep calm, keep moving forward, keep putting one foot in front of the other. Carry on. This mantra has helped me not succumb to self-pity and hopelessness, at least not for long.
The down side is that this motto also encourages me to numb my emotions (though I'm pretty sure I come by it naturally). I've learned that I diminish unpleasant emotions rather than processing them.
This truth became very clear when I was on the massage table at our chiropractors office. Our daughter had been in a serious car accident a few months before and was recovering from multiple fractures in her pelvis and back. She had gone through a lot, was still going through it and would be for a long time (still is, actually, and I'm processing that too). Since I work in a hospital I deal with seriously ill and injured people every day. I knew that for all she was going through it could've been much worse. I knew that if the force of the car that hit them had been a little greater she would have been paralyzed instead of recovering. I reasoned that I was grateful she was alive. Just keep calm and carry on.
Then the massage therapist said, "You know, it's ok to feel the depth of the grief of what she IS going through, of what ALMOST happened. This was a serious thing, this accident. This is your child. You don't need to minimize it." And with that, whoosh, the tears flowed.
It can be exhausting at times. Sometimes I wish I could say anything that pops in my head. My friend Todd says the funniest things, and I've gasped occasionally at his honesty. "How does he do that? How is he so unafraid to say what he really thinks?" I don't have the answer, but I'm hoping this blog is a step in the right direction in unleashing some of that fearlessness in my life. I don't want to be numb. I want to experience all the emotions of life and be able to process them in a healthy way. I'm not there yet, but at least now I see it more clearly.
But overall, and especially at work, I try to be mature, to answer in an appropriately calm, upbeat manner, to say the right thing. I try to spin things in their most positive aspect. I try to use words like "challenging" instead of "damn hard" or "awful." And as prone as I am to be direct with people, I really try not to upset the apple cart on purpose.
Although it doesn't come naturally I have learned how to hold it together while everyone is watching and only lose it privately. Most of the time anyway. We have a sign in our home office that says "Keep Calm & Carry On." It was from King George (I think) during WWII in England and they posted this sign all over to help people keep some normalcy during those tumultuous times. It's been my motto the last 18 months. Keep calm, keep moving forward, keep putting one foot in front of the other. Carry on. This mantra has helped me not succumb to self-pity and hopelessness, at least not for long.
The down side is that this motto also encourages me to numb my emotions (though I'm pretty sure I come by it naturally). I've learned that I diminish unpleasant emotions rather than processing them.
This truth became very clear when I was on the massage table at our chiropractors office. Our daughter had been in a serious car accident a few months before and was recovering from multiple fractures in her pelvis and back. She had gone through a lot, was still going through it and would be for a long time (still is, actually, and I'm processing that too). Since I work in a hospital I deal with seriously ill and injured people every day. I knew that for all she was going through it could've been much worse. I knew that if the force of the car that hit them had been a little greater she would have been paralyzed instead of recovering. I reasoned that I was grateful she was alive. Just keep calm and carry on.
Then the massage therapist said, "You know, it's ok to feel the depth of the grief of what she IS going through, of what ALMOST happened. This was a serious thing, this accident. This is your child. You don't need to minimize it." And with that, whoosh, the tears flowed.
It can be exhausting at times. Sometimes I wish I could say anything that pops in my head. My friend Todd says the funniest things, and I've gasped occasionally at his honesty. "How does he do that? How is he so unafraid to say what he really thinks?" I don't have the answer, but I'm hoping this blog is a step in the right direction in unleashing some of that fearlessness in my life. I don't want to be numb. I want to experience all the emotions of life and be able to process them in a healthy way. I'm not there yet, but at least now I see it more clearly.
Fear
I originally began this post and four others on February 26th. It is now March 26th. Between working full-time, mothering 3 kids still at home, savoring pockets of time with bestfriendwhoismyhusband, cleaning, making plans for Respiratory Therapy School and fear I haven't written a word.
Fear. Yep, that's the last word, and the primary reason I haven't written. For many years I considered myself a writer. Even got paid for it. Blogged a little. But a few years ago other commitments pressed in and we entered a seriously strange season in life where I couldn't even explain it to myself much less put it in words. So I withdrew from the world of words and waited until the season passed. And now fear has been holding me hostage from getting my thoughts to the page.
I feel a little like a corked up bottle who, if the thoughts began to flow freely, might not stop for a long time. And I'm pretty sure some of those thoughts will be ugly, weird, cynical. Some might be a little funny. Some sad. I am a little unsure of what will spill out---and who will read it, and what they will think of me knowing how dark and twisty inside I am sometimes. And yet I have that nagging feeling that if I don't do this all those thoughts will roll around inside me and I will let the fear of what others think of me continue to have power. So here I stand on the ledge and by the time I push "publish" I will have jumped.
A note about the blog name and lack of identity. These days I work in the healthcare field Much of my day I am not allowed to discuss because of patient privacy laws. However, I set this blog up with an anonymous name so that I could, occasionally, talk about the things I see and experience. For someone like me who processes things out loud it has been the hardest thing to not talk. I might change some details to protect patient identities, but the stories here will be true.
Here goes to leaving fear behind....
Fear. Yep, that's the last word, and the primary reason I haven't written. For many years I considered myself a writer. Even got paid for it. Blogged a little. But a few years ago other commitments pressed in and we entered a seriously strange season in life where I couldn't even explain it to myself much less put it in words. So I withdrew from the world of words and waited until the season passed. And now fear has been holding me hostage from getting my thoughts to the page.
I feel a little like a corked up bottle who, if the thoughts began to flow freely, might not stop for a long time. And I'm pretty sure some of those thoughts will be ugly, weird, cynical. Some might be a little funny. Some sad. I am a little unsure of what will spill out---and who will read it, and what they will think of me knowing how dark and twisty inside I am sometimes. And yet I have that nagging feeling that if I don't do this all those thoughts will roll around inside me and I will let the fear of what others think of me continue to have power. So here I stand on the ledge and by the time I push "publish" I will have jumped.
A note about the blog name and lack of identity. These days I work in the healthcare field Much of my day I am not allowed to discuss because of patient privacy laws. However, I set this blog up with an anonymous name so that I could, occasionally, talk about the things I see and experience. For someone like me who processes things out loud it has been the hardest thing to not talk. I might change some details to protect patient identities, but the stories here will be true.
Here goes to leaving fear behind....
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