The Solution of Gratitude
Rather than being in a state of non-peace concerning any family members, say a prayer of gratitude for their presence in your life and all that they have come to teach you.
— Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, The Invisible Force, p. 130
Renewed Vision
One of the most poisonous of all Satan’s whispers is simply, “Things will never change.” That lie kills expectation, trapping our heart forever in the present. To keep desire alive and flourishing, we must renew our vision for what lies ahead. Things will not always be like this. Jesus has promised to “make all things new.” Eye has not seen, ear has not heard all that God has in store for his lovers, which does not mean “we have no clue so don’t even try to imagine,” but rather, you cannot outdream God. Desire is kept alive by imagination, the antidote to resignation. We will need imagination, which is to say, we will need hope.
Brent Curtis and John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance, p. 156
The Irrationality of Defining Others
If someone defines you, even in subtle ways, they are pretending to know the unknowable. There is a quality of fantasy to their words and sometimes to their actions. Even so, they are usually unaware of the fact that they are playing “let’s pretend.” They fool themselves and sometimes others into thinking that what they are saying is true or that what they are doing is right.
When people “make up” your reality — as if they were you — they are trying to control you, even when they don’t realize it.
When people attempt to control you they begin by pretending. When they define you they are acting in a senseless way. They are pretending. . . .
We know that they are pretending because in actual fact, no one can tell what you want, believe, should do, or why you have done what you have done. No one can know your inner reality, your intentions, your motives, what you think, believe, feel, like, dislike, what you know, how you do what you do, or who you are. If someone does pretend to know your inner reality: “You’re trying to start a fight,” they have it backwards. People can only know themselves. It doesn’t work the other way around.
Since only you can define yourself, your self-definition is yours. It isn’t necessary to prove it or explain it. It is, after all, your own. Self-definition is inherent in being a person.
Despite the evidence, it is difficult for many people to realize that the person who defines them is not being rational. They feel inclined to defend themselves as if the person defining them were rational. But by trying to defend themselves against someone’s definitions, they are acknowledging those definitions as valid, that they make sense, when they are, in fact, complete nonsense….
Millions of people try to defend themselves from abuse and describe the altercations as arguments. Are they? I think not. I see them more as a struggle to retain one’s own reality when someone else has stepped into it.
— Patricia Evans, Controlling People, p. 58-59
[Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 3, 2014]
Whose Business?
The next time you’re feeling stress or discomfort, ask yourself whose business you’re in mentally, and you may burst out laughing! That question can bring you back to yourself. And you may come to see that you’ve never really been present, that you’ve been mentally living in other people’s business all your life. Just to notice that you’re in someone else’s business can bring you back to your own wonderful self.
— Byron Katie, Loving What Is, p. 3
The Best Remedy
The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, quoted by Kit Bakke, in Miss Alcott’s E-mail, p. 206
Not Someone You Want to Be Like
Have you ever met a person who had hatred, bitterness, and unforgiveness who didn’t feel justified?
— Michelle Borquez, Connie Wetzell, Rosalind Spinks-Seay, and Carla Sue Nelson, Live, Laugh, Love Again, p. 118
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Breaking the Judgment Habit
When I embrace the practice of unconditional love — seldom an easy exercise, I might add — I am able to see how similar I am to those around me, and my habit of judgment lessens. Please note the word “habit.” Judgment does become a habit, and so can unconditional love, though it is more difficult to perfect. A tool that has worked for me (when I remember to use it) is to express a statement of unconditional love out loud every time a judgmental thought crosses my mind. Try it next time you find yourself gripped by judgment. As soon as you catch it, state your unconditional love. It works….
It’s easy to tell ourselves that we are not judging, we are merely observing. But most often this is just a lie. Our minds are quick to judge, and just as with any other thought, that which we focus on becomes magnified. When it’s the failings of others or missed opportunities or cynicism or mean-spiritedness that we choose to focus on, these are the attitudes that are magnified, thus injuring all the people on our path and on their paths too.
Of course the reverse is likewise true. If we choose to see the good in others, which is abundantly there, we will help to increase it in them, in ourselves, and in our communities as well, widening the circle of good with every glimpse. The choice to see the good is always available to us. It’s a mindset we can practice to the benefit of all….
As long as we sit in judgment of someone, we cannot experience peace. With each judgment we make, we hurt all our relationships.
— Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 55-58
Mourning to Dancing
If God is found in our hard times, then all of life, no matter how apparently insignificant or difficult, can open us to God’s work among us. To be grateful does not mean repressing our remembered hurts. But as we come to God with our hurts — honestly, not superficially — something life changing can begin slowly to happen. We discover how God is the One who invites us to healing. We realize that any dance of celebration must weave both the sorrows and the blessings into a joyful step….
The mystery of the dance is that its movements are discovered in the mourning. To heal is to let the Holy Spirit call me to dance, to believe again, even amid my pain, that God will orchestrate and guide my life.
We tend, however, to divide our past into good things to remember with gratitude and painful things to accept or forget. This way of thinking, which at first glance seems quite natural, prevents us from allowing our whole past to be the source from which we live our future. It locks us into a self-involved focus on our gain or comfort. It becomes a way to categorize, and in a way, control. Such an outlook becomes another attempt to avoid facing our suffering. Once we accept this division, we develop a mentality in which we hope to collect more good memories than bad memories, more things to be glad about than things to be resentful about, more things to celebrate than to complain about.
Gratitude in its deepest sense means to live life as a gift to be received thankfully. And true gratitude embraces all of life: the good and the bad, the joyful and the painful, the holy and the not-so-holy. We do this because we become aware of God’s life, God’s presence in the middle of all that happens….
If mourning and dancing are part of the same movement of grace, we can be grateful for every moment we have lived. We can claim our unique journey as God’s way to mold our hearts to greater conformity to Christ. The cross, the primary symbol of our faith, invites us to see grace where there is pain; to see resurrection where there is death. The call to be grateful is a call to trust that every moment can be claimed as the way of the cross that leads to new life….
I am gradually learning that the call to gratitude asks us to say, “Everything is grace.” As long as we remain resentful about things we wish had not happened, about relationships that we wish had turned out differently, mistakes we wish we had not made, part of our heart remains isolated, unable to bear fruit in the new life ahead of us. It is a way we hold part of ourselves apart from God.
Henri Nouwen, Turn My Mourning Into Dancing:Â Finding Hope in Hard Times, p. 16-19
Good Things Coming
Do not worry about how the good that has been planned for you will come.
It will come.
Do not worry, obsess, think you have to control it, go out hunting for it, or tangle your mind trying to figure out how and when it will find you.
It will find you.
Surrender to your Higher Power each day. Trust your Higher Power. Then, stay peaceful. Trust and listen to yourself. That is how the good you want will come to you.
Your healing. Your joy. Your relationships. Your solutions. That job. That desired change. That opportunity. It will come to you — naturally, with ease, and in a host of ways.
That answer will come. The direction will come. The money. The idea. The energy. The creativity. The path will open itself to you. Trust that, for it has already been planned.
It is futile, a waste and drain of energy, to worry about how it will come. It is already there. You have it already. It is in place. You just cannot see it!
You will be brought to it, or it will be brought to you.
— Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 368
Why Write?
We also write to know that we are not “the only ones” thinking and feeling what we do. We discover and interpret the world, and perhaps live life more richly and rarely — because of the writing.
I write and share stories to experience life more than once. In the writing and telling of my stories, others read, listen and respond to me and my words.
Most of all, I write because of the joy it creates. Writing creates connections and magic and certain kinds of permanent bliss. I can write myself in and out of moods and experiences, and create new places to live in my mind. It’s kind of like pole vaulting with a pen.
— Sark, Juicy Pens and Thirsty Paper, p. 27