Thursday, February 15, 2007
Dang...this water is freezing!!
Okay. Deep breath. Inhale...exhale. I'm coming back, guys. Just give me some time to get used to it. This is like stepping into a cold pool for the first time in the Spring. My pasty white legs have yet to see the sun and I'm feeling a little self-concious. You'll see me again soon. Just be sure to bring your sunglasses.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Like, Merry Christmas and stuff
Sadly, my beloved has gone home for Christmas. Well, its actually a happy thing that he's gone home, but I'm selfish and would rather have him here. The opportunity to sit around in our pajamas watching old Christmas movies and doing other "couply" things has been retracted and I have been left to spend the Holiday working extra hours at the mall (since I'll have a week off from my "real" job), eating dry turkey with my parents, and restraining Bridget from repeatedly knocking all the ornaments off the Christmas tree.
I know that entire paragraph sounded like a scroogy complaint, but in truth, I feel fairly content about "my" Christmas this year. The past couple of weeks have been CRAZY at work, but it's all been a good crazy. We've distributed extra food to hundreds of families, and about 300 children who may have had nothing at all from Santa this year are now getting pretty decent gifts. I've felt like Santa myself as I've personally delivered big boxes of toys to my clients. It won't come as a surprise to you that I've had my moments of cynicism throughout all of this. I've encountered people who are ungrateful and probably even undeserving of what they've received, and I've had to shake off the "Bah-Humbug" spirit as it has bitten at my heels. But, overall, I've seen a lot of joy and humbleness...and THAT has humbled ME. I keep reminding myself that despite the sometimes nasty attitudes of adults, there are children who are benefiting from our hard work. And THAT is all that really matters.
And you know what else makes me feel better?
I visit this site every now and then and imagine my sweetie there...and how could that not be a happy thing? Besides, I never tire of seeing a pervy Singaporian Santa Claus riding a Christmas train. Apparently Christmas in the Tropics has him even more excited than the kiddos. And, my much-loved readers, check out "Create Your Own Tropical Flower" for a fat slice of happy! I'll warn you...this little virtual craft is scarily addictive and will turn your brain to mush in no time flat. Not only is it fun to look at other flowers that have already been created by people all over the world...it's SO much fun to make your own. I made about 10 in one sitting (brain-mushy afterward, indeed). I wish you could see one I made, appropriately named Pollyanna, just for you guys, but the site won't allow me to post the link. I guess you'll just have to scroll through all the 2,252 flowers that are already on the tree. Let me know how that turns out.
I doubt I'll get another chance to write before Christmas, so have a merry one! I'm off to officially start my vacation with a long nap!
I know that entire paragraph sounded like a scroogy complaint, but in truth, I feel fairly content about "my" Christmas this year. The past couple of weeks have been CRAZY at work, but it's all been a good crazy. We've distributed extra food to hundreds of families, and about 300 children who may have had nothing at all from Santa this year are now getting pretty decent gifts. I've felt like Santa myself as I've personally delivered big boxes of toys to my clients. It won't come as a surprise to you that I've had my moments of cynicism throughout all of this. I've encountered people who are ungrateful and probably even undeserving of what they've received, and I've had to shake off the "Bah-Humbug" spirit as it has bitten at my heels. But, overall, I've seen a lot of joy and humbleness...and THAT has humbled ME. I keep reminding myself that despite the sometimes nasty attitudes of adults, there are children who are benefiting from our hard work. And THAT is all that really matters.
And you know what else makes me feel better?
I visit this site every now and then and imagine my sweetie there...and how could that not be a happy thing? Besides, I never tire of seeing a pervy Singaporian Santa Claus riding a Christmas train. Apparently Christmas in the Tropics has him even more excited than the kiddos. And, my much-loved readers, check out "Create Your Own Tropical Flower" for a fat slice of happy! I'll warn you...this little virtual craft is scarily addictive and will turn your brain to mush in no time flat. Not only is it fun to look at other flowers that have already been created by people all over the world...it's SO much fun to make your own. I made about 10 in one sitting (brain-mushy afterward, indeed). I wish you could see one I made, appropriately named Pollyanna, just for you guys, but the site won't allow me to post the link. I guess you'll just have to scroll through all the 2,252 flowers that are already on the tree. Let me know how that turns out.
I doubt I'll get another chance to write before Christmas, so have a merry one! I'm off to officially start my vacation with a long nap!
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Love and the Dark
Have you heard about "DARK" restaurants? I first heard about them a few weeks ago on "60 Minutes" and I was completely fascinated by the concept. This slowly-growing trend in fine dining started in Europe, but it's making its way around.
More or less, it works like this: When you visit one of these restaurants, you are shown menus in a lobby area. You make your decisions and place your order before you ever go to your table. Once your order is placed, you are instructed to make a line with your party...holding onto the hand or shoulders of the person in front of you. (I suppose you could even do it locomotion style, with hands on the hips.) Your host or hostess leads the line into the PITCH BLACK dining room. You are seated safely, of course, but your entire experience once entering the dining room is in total darkness. No candles on the tables. No moonlight peeking through the curtains. No light coming from under the door of the kitchen. TOTAL darkness.
The coolest part about it? Most of these restaurants hire servers that are seeing-impaired, which, for obvious reasons, makes perfect sense. I can almost always get excited about something that provides opportunity and dignity to people who are disadvantaged or disabled.
The story I watched was very amusing because it had been filmed in "night vision". All of the patrons struggled through their meal, dropping food all over their laps, losing their spoons inside soup bowls, and pouring wine with extreme caution so as to not spill the entire bottle. Nobody was sure of what they were eating; or even HOW to eat what they were eating. And all of this while the blind servers zipped around with ease. It looked like great fun.
This one is in Canada somewhere.
After the meal, everyone at the restaurant talked about what a sensory experience it had been. Everything smelled better and tasted better. Because nobody could see them, anyway, lots of people used their hands to eat and raved about how good it felt to touch the food they were eating...that it changed everything. And it made sense to me. Normally when we eat, we don't take the time to enjoy our food. Yes, we can taste it and smell it and touch it if we want to...but we can also SEE it. And we get distracted by the SEEING.
For those of us who are lucky enough to properly working senses...we don't always think that much about them. We can see and hear and touch and taste and smell...and those incredible powers go unnoticed and unappreciated because we're so used to having them. We take them for granted. What's so interesting to me is how we can rely too much on ONE sense, inadvertently allowing the other senses to weaken in their time of underuse. The reverse is even more interesting. In the absence of one sense, the others often grow stronger to compensate for the loss.
Strangely enough, all of this made me think about love. Or, to be clearer: it made me think about being IN love; experiencing love that is great and pure and noble. SENSES are comparable to EMOTIONS, and the exchange works the same way. One emotion can fortify as others fade...and vice versa.
I've been in many "relationships" that had nothing to do with love. Not REAL love, anyway...although I didn't always realize it at the time. In the absence of love, there were plenty of other things to take its place. Fear. Hesitation. Disappointment. Mistrust. Artificiality. Uncertainty. (Just to name a few.) I was always so busy feeling these other things, I didn't have time to notice that love was missing. I couldn't have understood it in my state of preoccupation.
What I know now is that when LOVE, as it is meant to be, is present...all that other "stuff" disappears. There's no room for it in a healthy relationship because love is just THAT big. It covers everything...every little nook and cranny and hollow space...and its dominion pushes anything that contradicts it out of the picture.
I'm sure the rest of you already knew this. I never did. Not really. It's as if I've finally learned how to see. Or, maybe...I've finally LOST my sight.(?) I think I lost track of my illustration somewhere along the way as I've been writing! Either way...you get the point. And what's more important...I get the point, and I'm blessed for the change in vision. Meal time will never be the same.
More or less, it works like this: When you visit one of these restaurants, you are shown menus in a lobby area. You make your decisions and place your order before you ever go to your table. Once your order is placed, you are instructed to make a line with your party...holding onto the hand or shoulders of the person in front of you. (I suppose you could even do it locomotion style, with hands on the hips.) Your host or hostess leads the line into the PITCH BLACK dining room. You are seated safely, of course, but your entire experience once entering the dining room is in total darkness. No candles on the tables. No moonlight peeking through the curtains. No light coming from under the door of the kitchen. TOTAL darkness.
The coolest part about it? Most of these restaurants hire servers that are seeing-impaired, which, for obvious reasons, makes perfect sense. I can almost always get excited about something that provides opportunity and dignity to people who are disadvantaged or disabled.
The story I watched was very amusing because it had been filmed in "night vision". All of the patrons struggled through their meal, dropping food all over their laps, losing their spoons inside soup bowls, and pouring wine with extreme caution so as to not spill the entire bottle. Nobody was sure of what they were eating; or even HOW to eat what they were eating. And all of this while the blind servers zipped around with ease. It looked like great fun.
This one is in Canada somewhere.
After the meal, everyone at the restaurant talked about what a sensory experience it had been. Everything smelled better and tasted better. Because nobody could see them, anyway, lots of people used their hands to eat and raved about how good it felt to touch the food they were eating...that it changed everything. And it made sense to me. Normally when we eat, we don't take the time to enjoy our food. Yes, we can taste it and smell it and touch it if we want to...but we can also SEE it. And we get distracted by the SEEING.
For those of us who are lucky enough to properly working senses...we don't always think that much about them. We can see and hear and touch and taste and smell...and those incredible powers go unnoticed and unappreciated because we're so used to having them. We take them for granted. What's so interesting to me is how we can rely too much on ONE sense, inadvertently allowing the other senses to weaken in their time of underuse. The reverse is even more interesting. In the absence of one sense, the others often grow stronger to compensate for the loss.
Strangely enough, all of this made me think about love. Or, to be clearer: it made me think about being IN love; experiencing love that is great and pure and noble. SENSES are comparable to EMOTIONS, and the exchange works the same way. One emotion can fortify as others fade...and vice versa.
I've been in many "relationships" that had nothing to do with love. Not REAL love, anyway...although I didn't always realize it at the time. In the absence of love, there were plenty of other things to take its place. Fear. Hesitation. Disappointment. Mistrust. Artificiality. Uncertainty. (Just to name a few.) I was always so busy feeling these other things, I didn't have time to notice that love was missing. I couldn't have understood it in my state of preoccupation.
What I know now is that when LOVE, as it is meant to be, is present...all that other "stuff" disappears. There's no room for it in a healthy relationship because love is just THAT big. It covers everything...every little nook and cranny and hollow space...and its dominion pushes anything that contradicts it out of the picture.
I'm sure the rest of you already knew this. I never did. Not really. It's as if I've finally learned how to see. Or, maybe...I've finally LOST my sight.(?) I think I lost track of my illustration somewhere along the way as I've been writing! Either way...you get the point. And what's more important...I get the point, and I'm blessed for the change in vision. Meal time will never be the same.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
I guess if I have time to look at T-Shirts, I have time to blog, right?
I know, I know. You're wondering where the hell I've been. Well, I've been swamped at work, that's where I've been! My blogging hobby would greatly benefit from having access to a computer at home...and all that time I spend sleeping in the wee hours of the morning could be spent writing, instead. No such luck. My computer is archaic, at best, and can no longer serve me the way a good computer should. So, for the time being, you must suffer the inconvenience of my infrequency. I offer you my deepest regrets.
On another note...you'll recall my recent story about the "Interpretive Dance Joke" at work, right? Well, I was visiting my favorite source of T-Shirt wear the other day when I found this.
Because I knew they'd get a kick out of it, I passed the link around to my coworkers. After what I'm sure turned out to be a great deal of tweaking and somewhat illegal graphic manipulation, my friend (and co-worker), wandered into my office and posted this sign:
Please do not call 1-800-Dance4U at this time. I'm all booked up for the Holiday season. Feel free to try after the new year begins.
On another note...you'll recall my recent story about the "Interpretive Dance Joke" at work, right? Well, I was visiting my favorite source of T-Shirt wear the other day when I found this.
Because I knew they'd get a kick out of it, I passed the link around to my coworkers. After what I'm sure turned out to be a great deal of tweaking and somewhat illegal graphic manipulation, my friend (and co-worker), wandered into my office and posted this sign:
Please do not call 1-800-Dance4U at this time. I'm all booked up for the Holiday season. Feel free to try after the new year begins.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Make-Believe, "Snake-Bereave"
There’s a playground right behind my office that belongs to the preschool program that shares our property. As I stood by the microwave this morning, sleepily waiting for my coffee to heat up, I found myself staring out the window at the dew-damp playground equipment. It’s your typical playground. Some toddler-sized swings, a few slides, and a miniature playhouse on stilts. Off to the side of the yard there’s a small wooden wall with some very tall flowers painted on its front. The circular section of both flowers are cut out so that the kiddos can put their faces through; you know...so that it appears as if this flower’s face is really the kid’s face. Not exactly genius design. As I stared at this, I thought to myself…
“That is like...SO lame. Why would someone put that on a playground? There’s nothing fun about putting your face through a wooden flower. Kids are so stupid. They get a kick out of doing such stupid things. ‘Whoo-Hoo! Look at me, everybody! I’m a flower! My face is in a flower! Hahahaha...I’m so awesome and life is so great and it’s so much fun pretending to be a flower! Yay!’”
I know. My inner dialogue was unnecessarily critical. But like I said, I was waiting on my morning coffee. Of course, I did a LOT of stupid pretending as a child. (I still do, for that matter.) Here are just a few things I “pretended” when I was a youngin:
For some reason, I convinced myself that there was a massive underground “Cat City” in the woods behind our house. The secret entrance was through a mossy knot on the front of a certain oak tree I was fond of. I pretended that I was the only human that knew about the Cat City, and that I was an honorary citizen. They’d lead me through the access tunnel and we’d spend the evenings at little cat clubs…wearing fancy party clothes…dancing to jazz music…all played live by little cat musicians.
I dabbled in a variety of professions as a child. I was a teacher. A chef. A circus acrobat. A trainer of wild animals. A soccer mom. A librarian (I was a crazy one, huh?). A medieval warrior. A bus driver. Shirley Temple. A rockstar. A tiger. A bride. A policewoman battling terrorists in extreme situations. A makeup artist. A model. Queen of the Underworld.
When I had nobody else to play with, I’d drag out a board game and several of my favorite stuffed animals. I’d sit them around the game and the 4 of us would play the game…turn by turn. This brought defeat for me every time because it was ALWAYS Sampson the Seal Pup that won. That Sampson was one smart seal pup.
I would use every single spare sheet, blanket, towel, table cloth, and other large cuts of fabric in the house to construct complex fortresses to hide in. I would drape and tie them over every piece of furniture and fixture that stood still. My architecture was impressive. I’d have tunnels and rooms and secret chambers that stretched from one wall of the living room to the other. They were a high-tech hideout that I lived in during nuclear meltdowns and alien invasions…built in the unknown depths of the Brazilian rainforest. I’d usually do this when nobody was paying much attention, and then I’d get berated because my family would walk in and see that it was impossible for them to maneuver around my cloth castle. Usually, my brothers would end up kicking the walls in or throwing pillows through the ceilings, and I’d be left with nothing but a pile of wrinkled bedsheets; exposed and vunerable to the alien infested wilderness around me.
More frequently than anything else, I’d pretend that I belonged to a family different from my own. This wasn’t because I didn’t like my family. My parents were wonderful to me, and my brothers weren’t COMPLETELY horrible. It was just that I thought that life with another family would be so much more glamorous than with my own. I had a perverse fantasy that I was really the love child of Tom Selleck and Shelley Long (have I shared this before???). They had been caught in a torrid love affair, and had had no choice but to give me up when I was born. I would watch Magnum P.I. and Cheers and wonder if they ever thought about me…the daughter they would never know. I would daydream about the trips we would have taken together, the horses we should’ve raised in the back yard, and fabulous birthday parties (with inflatable jump castles, face painting, and hot air balloon rides) I was missing out on every year, thanks to them.
Nowadays I mostly pretend the same types of things that all other adults do. I pretend…almost daily…that I’m in some type of mood other than the mood I’m REALLY in. (Complacent instead of concerned. Interested instead of irritated. Alert instead of sleepy and distracted.) Right now, I’m pretending that, instead of my office, I’m in a luxurious hotel suite in Aspen. My window view is of a breathtaking, snow-covered mountainside and not the dented bumper of my coworker’s car. There’s a steamy cup of latte and a plate of fresh apple danish and cinnamon rolls on the corner of my desk, none of which could possibly make me fat.
What are YOU pretending today?
“That is like...SO lame. Why would someone put that on a playground? There’s nothing fun about putting your face through a wooden flower. Kids are so stupid. They get a kick out of doing such stupid things. ‘Whoo-Hoo! Look at me, everybody! I’m a flower! My face is in a flower! Hahahaha...I’m so awesome and life is so great and it’s so much fun pretending to be a flower! Yay!’”
I know. My inner dialogue was unnecessarily critical. But like I said, I was waiting on my morning coffee. Of course, I did a LOT of stupid pretending as a child. (I still do, for that matter.) Here are just a few things I “pretended” when I was a youngin:
For some reason, I convinced myself that there was a massive underground “Cat City” in the woods behind our house. The secret entrance was through a mossy knot on the front of a certain oak tree I was fond of. I pretended that I was the only human that knew about the Cat City, and that I was an honorary citizen. They’d lead me through the access tunnel and we’d spend the evenings at little cat clubs…wearing fancy party clothes…dancing to jazz music…all played live by little cat musicians.
I dabbled in a variety of professions as a child. I was a teacher. A chef. A circus acrobat. A trainer of wild animals. A soccer mom. A librarian (I was a crazy one, huh?). A medieval warrior. A bus driver. Shirley Temple. A rockstar. A tiger. A bride. A policewoman battling terrorists in extreme situations. A makeup artist. A model. Queen of the Underworld.
When I had nobody else to play with, I’d drag out a board game and several of my favorite stuffed animals. I’d sit them around the game and the 4 of us would play the game…turn by turn. This brought defeat for me every time because it was ALWAYS Sampson the Seal Pup that won. That Sampson was one smart seal pup.
I would use every single spare sheet, blanket, towel, table cloth, and other large cuts of fabric in the house to construct complex fortresses to hide in. I would drape and tie them over every piece of furniture and fixture that stood still. My architecture was impressive. I’d have tunnels and rooms and secret chambers that stretched from one wall of the living room to the other. They were a high-tech hideout that I lived in during nuclear meltdowns and alien invasions…built in the unknown depths of the Brazilian rainforest. I’d usually do this when nobody was paying much attention, and then I’d get berated because my family would walk in and see that it was impossible for them to maneuver around my cloth castle. Usually, my brothers would end up kicking the walls in or throwing pillows through the ceilings, and I’d be left with nothing but a pile of wrinkled bedsheets; exposed and vunerable to the alien infested wilderness around me.
More frequently than anything else, I’d pretend that I belonged to a family different from my own. This wasn’t because I didn’t like my family. My parents were wonderful to me, and my brothers weren’t COMPLETELY horrible. It was just that I thought that life with another family would be so much more glamorous than with my own. I had a perverse fantasy that I was really the love child of Tom Selleck and Shelley Long (have I shared this before???). They had been caught in a torrid love affair, and had had no choice but to give me up when I was born. I would watch Magnum P.I. and Cheers and wonder if they ever thought about me…the daughter they would never know. I would daydream about the trips we would have taken together, the horses we should’ve raised in the back yard, and fabulous birthday parties (with inflatable jump castles, face painting, and hot air balloon rides) I was missing out on every year, thanks to them.
Nowadays I mostly pretend the same types of things that all other adults do. I pretend…almost daily…that I’m in some type of mood other than the mood I’m REALLY in. (Complacent instead of concerned. Interested instead of irritated. Alert instead of sleepy and distracted.) Right now, I’m pretending that, instead of my office, I’m in a luxurious hotel suite in Aspen. My window view is of a breathtaking, snow-covered mountainside and not the dented bumper of my coworker’s car. There’s a steamy cup of latte and a plate of fresh apple danish and cinnamon rolls on the corner of my desk, none of which could possibly make me fat.
What are YOU pretending today?
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Comtemplating thankfulness after Thanksgiving = Sending a Belated Birthday card (belatedly)
At the start of last week, I had an enormous amount of negative energy in my body. An enormous amount. I felt choked by it. I could've written several entries in which I ranted and bitched about all the crap that was clogging the pipes of my happiness, but I chose not to. I was practicing some some self-restraint in the spirit of Thanksgiving. I chose to focus on the positive and not let every little worry and frustration (and my growing contempt and disgust in the human race) overtake me. As I thought about it I realized the truth as it is, that I have an immense amount of things to be thankful for right now. God has blessed me more than I deserve to be blessed. I have a job I love (for the most part). I have many comforts and luxuries that others don't. I'm in love. I have great friends. I've had lots of good hair days lately. But, listing the things I'm thankful for would have been the MOST unoriginal thing I could have done. Seeing as Thanksgiving is over now, I could have just skipped this subject altogether, but I really did want to write about it. So...I'm gonna give it a shot.
Instead of thankfulness, I'm going to talk about forgiveness. Why forgiveness? Because I've reached the conclusion that thankfulness isn't possible without forgiveness. I'll do my best to explain...
I read this one day last week. "God is more interested in making us what we ought to be than in giving us what we want to have." I began to disect this the instant I read it. I thought about "wants" as they relate to thankfulness. Should we only be thankful when we recieve the things we want? Or should we be thankful for everything in our lives; the good stuff, the bad stuff, the stuff we hoped for, AND the stuff we never expected?
A friend of mine taught me a couple of years ago (during a very dark time)to be thankful PARTICULARLY for the bad stuff. I thought she was crazy at first. I immediately told her that there was no way I could thank God for the things that were making me miserable at the time. (There were a lot of them.) And, even if I offered thanks, I would be doing so insincerely...and God would know the difference, anyway. She insisted that I should do it; that I should repeatedly send up praise for every little thing that made me sad and angry and worrisome. Because I trusted my friend and because I was desperate to feel God at the time...I took her advice...and it took it fully. I audibly said "Thank You" to God probably 50-75 times a day. I said it after EVERY negative thought and every unpleasant spark of emotion. And I hated it.
Nothing changed at first, and the continuous task of expressing gratitude in my time of despair took a toll on my already fragile emotional state, and also on my patience. But, much to my surprise, it didn't take long to understand the advice she gave. Before long, I found that all the little ugly things didn't bother me so much...and I was soon able to focus more on the things that WEREN'T ugly. And then something else happened. I realized that I had been blaming myself for all the ugly things that I felt so burdened by. I had convinced myself that they were all, in one way or another, either directly or abstractly, the factor of my failure. But somewhere in my forced, concentrated thankfulness, I forgave myself. I wasn't even concious of it at the time...but it came to me in shallow waves of relief. As the miracle continued, I found myself more thankful...for life and for breath and for love and for opportunity...than I ever had been before. And my focus shifted to the beautiful and away from the ugly.
Since then, I've thought a lot about forgiveness, and I've learned how to forgive not only myself, but others. I know we think that all of us already know how to forgive, but it's an ability that we aren't born with. It's completely unnatural. It's a hard thing to learn; such a painful process...like riding a bike without training wheels. I had bruised legs...and a bruised ego...for months. The more I've forgiven...and the BIGGER I've forgiven...the more thankful I've become. This is partly the power of positive thinking, but mostly it's power that allows beauty to come into my life. I forgive...I let go...and great things follow. I don't even have to look for them. It's as if greatness automatically fills the space that my unforgiveness was once occupying...just like a commonplace act of nature.
If forgiveness can work such miracles in my tiny little life, then what other powers does it possess?
I just read a book called "Left to Tell". It was written by a woman who survived the Rwandan Holocaust by hiding in a bathroom for 3 months. Her entire family, with the exception of one brother, was brutally murdered during the genocide. She tells of the horrible things that happened in Africa during that time. Things that no human being should ever have to witness and endure. But what she talks about more is how she learned to forgive the people that put an entire country through Hell. She even forgave the individuals that slaughtered those she loved most. She instead chose to be thankful for survival and for her faith. This woman has gone on to achieve amazing things, and has spread messages of hope and healing to millions of people around the world. She would never have accomplished anything without forgiveness.
I think of Elie Weisel, one of the best known survivors of the Holocaust during World War II. He has spent years talking about forgiveness. I cry every time I hear him speak and every time I read his works. I cry not only at the emotion I hear in his voice and for the memories he wakes up to every day of his life, but for the way he has embraced life since that horrible time. He has credited much of his success to the power of forgiveness...and he,too, has changed many lives with his wisdom.
I could name dozens of other examples of extreme forgiveness, and all of them would tell a different story of lives changed. I believe that every single one of them would mention thankfulness as a key factor...a prominent outcome.
Being thankful really does transform us. It pushes us towards success, inner peace, and healthy relationships. It gives us hope and acceptance. When you think about it, it enables us to be "what we ought to be" (referring to the afore mentioned quote), doesn't it? Aren't those characteristics things that we "ought" to display? Wouldn't most people WANT those things?
We can look at all of this mathematically. Please keep in mind I have NEVER been good at math.
Pain + Thankfulness = Forgiveness
Forgiveness X more Thankfulness = Great things/things we WANT
So, if God really does care more about making us better people more than he cares about giving us our desires, he's actually killing two birds with one stone. Or something like that.
Instead of thankfulness, I'm going to talk about forgiveness. Why forgiveness? Because I've reached the conclusion that thankfulness isn't possible without forgiveness. I'll do my best to explain...
I read this one day last week. "God is more interested in making us what we ought to be than in giving us what we want to have." I began to disect this the instant I read it. I thought about "wants" as they relate to thankfulness. Should we only be thankful when we recieve the things we want? Or should we be thankful for everything in our lives; the good stuff, the bad stuff, the stuff we hoped for, AND the stuff we never expected?
A friend of mine taught me a couple of years ago (during a very dark time)to be thankful PARTICULARLY for the bad stuff. I thought she was crazy at first. I immediately told her that there was no way I could thank God for the things that were making me miserable at the time. (There were a lot of them.) And, even if I offered thanks, I would be doing so insincerely...and God would know the difference, anyway. She insisted that I should do it; that I should repeatedly send up praise for every little thing that made me sad and angry and worrisome. Because I trusted my friend and because I was desperate to feel God at the time...I took her advice...and it took it fully. I audibly said "Thank You" to God probably 50-75 times a day. I said it after EVERY negative thought and every unpleasant spark of emotion. And I hated it.
Nothing changed at first, and the continuous task of expressing gratitude in my time of despair took a toll on my already fragile emotional state, and also on my patience. But, much to my surprise, it didn't take long to understand the advice she gave. Before long, I found that all the little ugly things didn't bother me so much...and I was soon able to focus more on the things that WEREN'T ugly. And then something else happened. I realized that I had been blaming myself for all the ugly things that I felt so burdened by. I had convinced myself that they were all, in one way or another, either directly or abstractly, the factor of my failure. But somewhere in my forced, concentrated thankfulness, I forgave myself. I wasn't even concious of it at the time...but it came to me in shallow waves of relief. As the miracle continued, I found myself more thankful...for life and for breath and for love and for opportunity...than I ever had been before. And my focus shifted to the beautiful and away from the ugly.
Since then, I've thought a lot about forgiveness, and I've learned how to forgive not only myself, but others. I know we think that all of us already know how to forgive, but it's an ability that we aren't born with. It's completely unnatural. It's a hard thing to learn; such a painful process...like riding a bike without training wheels. I had bruised legs...and a bruised ego...for months. The more I've forgiven...and the BIGGER I've forgiven...the more thankful I've become. This is partly the power of positive thinking, but mostly it's power that allows beauty to come into my life. I forgive...I let go...and great things follow. I don't even have to look for them. It's as if greatness automatically fills the space that my unforgiveness was once occupying...just like a commonplace act of nature.
If forgiveness can work such miracles in my tiny little life, then what other powers does it possess?
I just read a book called "Left to Tell". It was written by a woman who survived the Rwandan Holocaust by hiding in a bathroom for 3 months. Her entire family, with the exception of one brother, was brutally murdered during the genocide. She tells of the horrible things that happened in Africa during that time. Things that no human being should ever have to witness and endure. But what she talks about more is how she learned to forgive the people that put an entire country through Hell. She even forgave the individuals that slaughtered those she loved most. She instead chose to be thankful for survival and for her faith. This woman has gone on to achieve amazing things, and has spread messages of hope and healing to millions of people around the world. She would never have accomplished anything without forgiveness.
I think of Elie Weisel, one of the best known survivors of the Holocaust during World War II. He has spent years talking about forgiveness. I cry every time I hear him speak and every time I read his works. I cry not only at the emotion I hear in his voice and for the memories he wakes up to every day of his life, but for the way he has embraced life since that horrible time. He has credited much of his success to the power of forgiveness...and he,too, has changed many lives with his wisdom.
I could name dozens of other examples of extreme forgiveness, and all of them would tell a different story of lives changed. I believe that every single one of them would mention thankfulness as a key factor...a prominent outcome.
Being thankful really does transform us. It pushes us towards success, inner peace, and healthy relationships. It gives us hope and acceptance. When you think about it, it enables us to be "what we ought to be" (referring to the afore mentioned quote), doesn't it? Aren't those characteristics things that we "ought" to display? Wouldn't most people WANT those things?
We can look at all of this mathematically. Please keep in mind I have NEVER been good at math.
Pain + Thankfulness = Forgiveness
Forgiveness X more Thankfulness = Great things/things we WANT
So, if God really does care more about making us better people more than he cares about giving us our desires, he's actually killing two birds with one stone. Or something like that.
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