Making It Happen

Letting Go, Life, Peace 0

Stop trying so hard to make it happen.

Stop doing so much, if doing so much is wearing you out or not achieving the desired results.  Stop thinking so much and so hard about it.  Stop worrying so about it.  Stop trying to force, to manipulate, to coerce, or to make it happen.

Making things happen is controlling.  We can take positive action to help things happen.  We can do our part.  But many of us do much more than our part.  We overstep the boundaries from caring and doing our part into controlling, caretaking, and coercing.

Controlling is self-defeating.  It doesn’t work.  By overextending ourselves to make something happen, we may actually be stopping it from happening.

Do your part in relaxed, peaceful harmony.  Then let it go.  Just let it go.  Force yourself to let it go, if necessary.  “Act as if.”  Put as much energy into letting go as you have into trying to control.  You’ll get much better results.

— Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 206-207

Living Today

Joy, Life, Peace 0

I find myself planning and working for the future, for payoffs and rewards in a month or a year, for which I am willing to pay with happiness now.  Only to find of course that there is always another month, another year to wait.  True, the future must be planned for, and there are surely rewards tomorrow for prudent action today.  But somehow, I am learning, I must discover how to live a life of happiness today.  Not someday when things quiet down and there’s enough in the bank and I’ve gotten beyond these problems — but today.  The idea that we can live temporarily unhappy lives in pursuit of payday/someday, when we will be set for life and ready for happiness, is a sad illusion.

Life is of a piece.  The future is woven of the thread we spin today.  It is silly to imagine that a “temporary” life of tension and stress is preparing us for a future day of relaxation and peace; that a provisional life spent compromising our ideals and deferring our deepest longings will one day give way to a future of fulfillment and deep joy.  It doesn’t work.  “What shall it profit a man,” Jesus asked, “if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”  You can’t live a soul-ebbing life and somehow pull out happiness in the end.

In a culture of achievement we naturally assume a path to happiness:  get on it, do the work, and — enduring a baleful journey of indeterminate years — you will eventually arrive at bliss.  But there is no path to happiness, only a path of happiness.  In other words, happiness is a state, not a destination.

— David Anderson, Breakfast Epiphanies:  Finding wonder in the Everyday, p. 88-89

Something To Look Forward To

Life 0

I’ve been noticing that most mornings I don’t wake up super-happy, and I’m not sure why.  I’ve also been noticing for some time now that when I first wake up, I find myself racing through the coming day in my mind, bracing myself for what’s required of me, but even more so searching to see if there is anything to look forward to.  It’s not really voluntary.  It’s almost as if my heart has a life of its own, and it wakes up before I do and begins to assess the prospects before me.  “I slept but my heart was awake” (Song of Songs 5:2).

By the way, I think this is how our addictions get their claws deeper into us.  Our day-to-day grind isn’t anything close to Eden, and our hurting and desperate hearts look for something to which we can attach all those yearnings.  We’ll settle for a doughnut if that’s all there is to look forward to.  We have to be careful what we give our hearts to.

— John Eldredge, Walking with God, p. 92

Guaranteed

God, Life 0

In Christ, we have an ironclad, unfailing, all-encompassing God-given guarantee that every single circumstance in life will sooner or later turn out well for those committed to Him.

— Robert J. Morgan, The Promise:  How God Works All Things Together for Good, p. xviii

In Charge of No One But Ourselves

Letting Go, Life, Parenting, Peace, Relationships 0

It bears repeating:  We are not in charge of others!  Not their behavior, their thoughts, their dreams, their problems, their successes, or their failures.

Even the children we parent have their own journey to make, and our so-called control over them is, in fact, an illusion.  We can set an example for them, we can suggest a set of behaviors, we can demonstrate a code of ethics, we can even require that they live by certain “house rules” while under our roof, but finally it is they who will decide who they want to be and what they want to do, regardless of our efforts.  And for that we will become grateful in time.

I say:  Let’s celebrate the fact that we are in charge of no one but ourselves.  It relieves us of a heavy burden, and a thankless job, one that never blesses us.  Taking control of every thought we have and every action we take, and being willing to relinquish the past while savoring the present, will assuredly keep us as busy as we need to be.  Doing these things, and only these things is why we are here.  It’s only when we live our own lives and manage our own affairs, freeing others to do the same, that we find the peace we seek and so deserve.

— Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow:  12 Simple Principles, p. 8-9

If Juliet Got Left

Life, Love, Relationships 0

I thought about Juliet some more.

I wondered what she would have done if Romeo had left her, not because he was banished, but because he lost interest?  What if Rosalind had given him the time of day, and he’d changed his mind?  What if, instead of marrying Juliet, he’d just disappeared?

I thought I knew how Juliet would feel.

She wouldn’t go back to her old life, not really.  She wouldn’t ever have moved on, I was sure of that.  Even if she’d lived until she was old and gray, every time she closed her eyes, it would have been Romeo’s face she saw behind her lids.  She would have accepted that, eventually.

— Bella, in New Moon, by Stephenie Meyer, p. 370

The Best Promise

God, Life, Trials 0

Everything that happens to you is for your own good.  If the waves roll against you, it only speeds your ship toward the port.  If lightning and thunder comes, it clears the atmosphere and promotes your soul’s health.  You gain by loss, you grow healthy in sickness, you live by dying, and you are made rich in losses.

Could you ask for a better promise?  It is better that all things should work for my good than all things should be as I would wish to have them.  All things might work for my pleasure and yet might all work my ruin.  If all things do not always please me, they will always benefit me.

This is the best promise of this life.

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, quoted in The Promise, by Robert J. Morgan