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Once a woman woke up in the morning only to realize that she had only three strands of hair left on her head. “ Well”, she said, “ I think I’ll braid my hair today.” She braided her hair and she had a wonderful day.
When she got up the next day and looked in the mirror she noticed she had just two strands of hair on her head. She said, “ I think I ll part my hair down the middle today”. She parted her hair in the middle and she had a great day.
The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and noticed that she had only one hair on her head. “Well,” she said, “Today I’m going to wear my hair in a pony tail.” So she did, and she had a fun day.
The next day she woke up and noticed that there wasn’t a single hair on her head. “Yippie!” she exclaimed. “I don’t have to fix my hair today!”
Attitude is everything. Be kind, Everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle. Live simply, Love generously, Care deeply, Speak kindly.
A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing who was still groggy from surgery. Her husband, David, held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news. That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications forced Diana, then only 24 weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Cesarean to deliver the couples new daughter, Dana Lu Blessing.
At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nine ounces, they knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs. "I don't think she's going to make it," he said compassionately.
"There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one."
Numb, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the likely problems Dana could face as a survivor. "She might never walk or talk, and possibly be blind. She certainly would be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to retardation.
"No! No!" was all Diana could say. She, David, and their five year old son, Dustin, dreamed of the day they'd have a daughter to become a family of four.
Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away but, as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Dana's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially 'raw'. The lightest kiss or caress intensified her discomfort so they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby against their chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Dana struggled alone in the tangle of tubes and wires, was pray that God would stay close. There was never a moment when Dana suddenly grew stronger.
But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there.
At last, when Dana turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. Two months later, though doctors continued their grim premonitions, Dana went home from the hospital.
Five years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty youngster with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life, she showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. She's everything a little girl can be and more but, that's far from the ending.
One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996, near her home in Irving, Texas, Dana was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ball park where her brother, Dustin's, baseball team was practicing. As always, chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults nearby, Dana suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, the child asked, "Do you smell that?" Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells like rain." Dana closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?" Once again her mother replied. "Yes, I think we're about to get wet. It smells like rain."
Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, No, it smells like Him when you lay your head on His chest." Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Dana happily hopped down to play with the other youngsters. Before the rains came her daughter's words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family knew all along--During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when she was too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Dana on His chest and it His loving scent that she remembers so well.
Many years ago there were a group of brilliant young men at the University of Wisconsin. The group of men seemed to have an amazing creative literary talent and were extraordinary in their ability to put their literary skills to its best use. These promising young men met regularly to read and critique each other’s literary works.
These men were merciless while they criticized one another. They dissected the most minute of the expressions and offered tough and even mean criticism to each others work. Their meeting sessions became arenas of literary criticism and the members of this exclusive club called themselves the “Stranglers.”
Not to be excluded to the opportunity to level up there literary skills, the women of literary interest in the university started a club of their own, one comparable to Stranglers.
The members called themselves the “ Wranglers.” Each member of the club too presented their literary pieces in front of each another. But the feedback from the members were much more softer, more positive and more encouraging. Every effort from a member, even the most feeble one, was encouraged by all.
After twenty years, a university alumnus was doing a study of his classmates’ career when he noticed a huge difference in the literary accomplishments of the Stranglers and the Wranglers.
Among all the brilliant young men in the strangler, none had made any significant literary achievement. But the Wranglers had several successful writers and some renowned national literary talents.
The talent and the education between the two groups were almost the same. There was not much difference. The Stranglers strangled each other while the Wranglers gave each other a lift. The stranglers created atmosphere of contention and self doubt while the Wranglers brought out the best in each other.
I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an eight-year-old again.
I want to go to McDonald's and think that it's a four-star restaurant.
I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make a sidewalk with rocks.
I want to think M&Ms are better than money because you can eat them.
I want to run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer's day.
I want to return to a time when life was simple, when all you knew were colors, multiplication tables and nursery rhymes, but that didn't bother you because you didn't know what you didn't know and you didn't care.
All you knew was to be happy, because you were blissfully unaware of all the things that should make you worried or upset.
I want to think the world is fair. That everyone is honest and good.
I want to believe that anything is possible. I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again.
I want to live simply again. I don't want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive when there are more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness and loss of loved ones.
I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, mankind and making angels in the snow.
I want to play with my pets and my days of imagination to last forever
So here are my checkbook and my car keys, my credit card bills and my 401(k) statements. I am officially resigning from adulthood.
And if you want to discuss this further, you'll have to catch me first because,"Tag! You're it!"
The man to whom I’m going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn’t believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn’t make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn’t swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man.
“I’m truly sorry to distress you,” he told his wife, “but I’m not going with you to church this Christmas Eve.” He said he’d feel like a hypocrite. That he’d much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so he stayed and they went to the midnight service.
Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper.
Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound…Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud…At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They’d been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.
Well, he couldn’t let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it.
Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them…He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms…Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn.
And then, he realized that they were afraid of him.
To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me…That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him.
“If only I could be a bird,” he thought to himself, “and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safe, warm…to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear and understand.”
At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells – Adeste Fidelis – listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas.
Mother Nature has a way of teaching us valuable lessons…if we’d only observe! As a life coach, I often hear how frustrated clients, friends, and colleagues are about their life experiences.
I have one client in particular whose calls often (unconsciously, I’m sure), disguised as a friendly chat to see how I am. Less than half-way into the conversation, I discover her real intent. It usually has something to do with her job or kids or her husband that she is having a problem with and she wants to hash it out. I can tell because she’s much more passionate about talking about them than asking me how my life is going! That’s okay… I listen, I learn, and give my take on the situation. There are things I want to vent about some days, too. However, what she doesn’t realize is that she is frustrated about the same things over and over again. It’s almost as if she gets pleasure out of being frustrated. It’s a negative “pay off” for her. And here comes the part where Mother Nature comes in!
It occurred to me while watching a PBS presentation that nature can be a real teacher for all of us. This particular show was about how cultured pearls were made. It showed how Mr. Mikimoto came to be known for his ingenious idea. He observed nature and realized a fortune from her.
Fred our cat had to go to the vet recently because of an ingrown toenail. Fred was not happy about that.
We had to put him in the cat carrier to get to the vet. Fred is a very large cat, 19 pounds, and a pretty old fella too. I’m not exactly sure how old because he was rescued from the subway platform and came to us 16 years ago. So he’s at least 17.
Fred is an indoor cat. We live in an apartment on the second floor–there’s really no place for him to go. He used to be interested in the birds outside the window. They don’t even distract him from a nap anymore.
He’s very good at two things. Eating and sleeping. Also purring. He likes me to brush him every morning when my oatmeal is cooking. He purrs as he stretches out on the kitchen floor.
Not long ago we noticed him limping on his front paw. We figured it was arthritis. He’s old. Then we inspected his paw. The ingrown toenail. We tried to extract it. Nothing doing. (He did not take to the tweezers lightly.)
“Okay, Fred,” we told him. “Time to go to the vet.” Time for a professional.
He howled at being put into the carrier. He meowed and hissed at us. He wasn’t very civil to the vet either.
But the job was done, and he came back home, happy to get back on the bed, curled up in the duvet, his favorite spot. All recollections of his horrible trip seem to have been forgotten.
We humans do not forget our unplanned journeys. They remain with us. We’re not always happy after a doctor visit. We await results from tests. We worry. We are not cats.
As we put Fred into his carrier we said to him, “This will be good for you, Fred.” It was. It is. That was how I could see it from the human point of view. The way God might see the things that I dread.
So in my prayers I ask God, “Keep me thinking like a person. Compassionate. With a big perspective, a view of the larger picture. Not like a scared cat.” Amen.
Thank you Guideposts
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