Choosing Not to Blame

Forgiveness, Gratitude, Growth, Healing, Letting Go, Marriage, Relationships 0

Our intimate partners are by and large our most important persons. Because we share responsibility for our lives with them, because they are magnets for our disappointments, it is all but written into our marriage contracts that we will blame them when things go wrong.

But what happens when we make a point of doing the opposite? What happens when we let go of our proclivity to blame and resent our lovers for our own disappointments? Every time we forgive and thank each other we teach each other critical, and generalizable, life lessons: There is no master plan. There is no life that we were supposed to lead. There is no good future in wishing for a different past. The assumption that things should always go our way, and that someone or something is to blame if they don’t, only leads us away from the path to our better selves.

— Mark O’Connell, PhD, The Marriage Benefit, p. 164-165

Focus on Abundance

Gratitude, Healing, Joy 0

When we focus on abundance, our life feels abundant; when we focus on lack, our life feels lacking. It is purely a matter of focus.

It is true that we can’t be in denial about the pain in our life. That is damaging to our physical and emotional health. And just as importantly,

We can’t be in denial about the abundance in our life!

— Susan Jeffers, PhD, Gratitude: A Way of Life, by Louise L. Hay and Friends, p. 132-133

Seeing the Inner Light

Core Value, Healing, Parenting, Relationships 0

True healers take into account any type of darkness, but their real task is to see the Light in their clients so as to help them remember and consciously reconnect to their own inner Light. In this way, both healer and client are healed together. Parenting is the same. The ultimate gift of a parent to a child is to care for the inner Light of children until they can care for it themselves. True friends are those who believe in you through thick and thin. They still see the Light in you even when your moods and behavior are dark and low. Mentors, managers, leaders, visionaries, peacemakers, and everyone who truly serves . . . they all see the Light.

— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 29

The Place We’d Rather Live

Compassion, Forgiveness, Healing 0

In the aftermath of catastrophic wounds, an obsessive, demonizing hatred may be mobilized to help us survive. And yet here, too, understanding eventually becomes the desirable thing, if for no other reason than we don’t want to keep feeling like victims and living in hate. It rarely hurts us to be more generous. In many cases, even if the grievousness of the wrong is never acknowledged or atoned for, we may want to feel our way back to a caring place. It’s the place we’d rather live.

— Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self, p. 175-176

God Can Redeem Anything.

God, Guidance, Healing, Marriage 0

Our experience has taught us that God can redeem anything, so we never give up on anyone….

What we wanted to do with this book was offer hope for marriages through a paradigm shift. It comes from taking a different perspective — getting your eyes off yourself and putting them on the Lord.

We have a passionate desire to see marriages changed, made whole, and restored. Our prayer is that more and more marriages will epitomize God’s plan, not society’s. Although the world seems to hold virtually no hope for marriages and families being restored, we want to spread the word that “by his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope” (Ephesians 3:20, NLT). It is possible for a marriage to be made brand-new!

If you can trust God to show you the bigger picture of your marriage, he will do it. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” In other words, he will direct you and make it clear where you are to go.

— Cheryl & Jeff Scruggs, I Do Again, p. 178, 183

Working Out for Good

Forgiveness, Gratitude, Growth, Healing, Joy, Letting Go, Life, Peace, Truth 0

Noticing and counting the beautiful reasons unexpected things happen for us ends the mystery. If you miss the real reasons, the benevolent reasons that coincide with kind nature, then count on depression to let you know that you missed them. Anger, frustration, and aggressive reasons can always be imagined — and what for? People who aren’t interested in seeing why everything is good get to be right. But that apparent rightness comes with disgruntlement, and often depression and separation. Depression can feel serious. So “counting the genuine ways that this unexpected event happened for me, rather than to me” isn’t a game. It’s an exercise in observing the nature of life. It’s a way of putting yourself back into reality, into the kindness of the nature of things.

— Byron Katie, I Need Your Love — Is That True?, p. 187

Suffering No Proof of Love

Compassion, Healing, Love 0

It’s amazing how many people believe that suffering is a proof of love. If I don’t suffer when you suffer, they think, it means that I don’t love you. How can that possibly be true? Love is serene; it’s fearless. If you’re busy projecting what someone’s pain must feel like, how can you be fully present with her? How can you hold her hand and love her with all your heart aas she moves through her experience of pain? Why would she want you to be in pain, too? Wouldn’t she rather have you present and available?…

You don’t have to feel bad to act kindly. On the contrary: the less you suffer, the kinder you naturally become. And if compassion means wanting others to be free of suffering, how can you want for others what you won’t give to yourself?

— Byron Katie, A Thousand Names for Joy, p. 73, 74