Category Archives: Uncategorized

Lost In The World Of Disney

Posted in Chidren, family, Love, Parenting, relationships, Uncategorized by

Today’s children live in a world filled with adventure, mental stimulation, topical issues, and personal challenges. The values they learn now, between the ages of 5 and 8, will shape the rest of their lives.

 When I was about six years old, I had an adventure that shaped me for the rest of my life. I went to Disneyland with my cousins one week-end and had a wonderful day full of excitement.

Little did I know that the real excitement wasn’t to begin until that night while we watched the fireworks and I began to get an urge to go to the ice cream parlor, but I didn’t want to miss the show. Then I over heard my cousins talking to my aunt, and I got closer to them to hear what they were talking about. “Mom, we’re going to get an ice cream cone.

“Okay,” my aunt replied, “but stay together I don’t want any of you getting lost.” The second I saw my cousins leaving, I didn’t think twice before running off after them without telling my aunt. As I followed them through the huge crowd of people, I started to lose sight of them. I began to panic as I scanned the crowd for them crazy thoughts ran through my head like, what if I never see my family again?

I gave up trying to find my cousins and tried to get back to my family, but I was completely mixed up. After searching for what seemed like forever, I couldn’t hold back the tears, and I started crying like I had never cried before. “Mommy!” I cried out. But everyone around me was too caught up by the fireworks to pay attention to me.

I tried to stop the scary thoughts that were going through my head and started running as fast as I could… anywhere and everywhere. I was going crazy. I’m only six, and I’ve gotten lost. What have I done? How could I have been so dumb to run off  without telling anyone? I thought.

With my face wet from tears, I kept running, pulling at people’s pants and crying, “Mommy!” I was hoping and wishing, that one of those adults would be one of my parents. Luckily, I tugged at a lady who worked at Disneyland, and she asked me, “Are you lost?” “Yeeesss!” I cried.

She picked me up and carried me through the crowd as she kept asking me where my parents had been standing. As I began to feel safe in the Lady’s arms, I calmed down and thought for a few minutes I remembered we had leaned against a wooden fence. She carried me around the wooden fence, asking random people, “Is this your child?” “No. Sorry,” everyone kept saying. You’re sorry?  Look at me. I’m looking for my mommy. I thought.

Then I began to cry uncontrollably because it hit me that my parents didn’t live together any more and I wondered if they could stop loving each other could they stop loving me too? Did this mean I really wasn’t anybody’s child any more?

Finally, through the crowd of people, I recognized a face. I was so happy. “Daddy!” I shouted as I pointed toward him and the lady carried me to him. When the lady put me down, I ran to my daddy and gave him a huge hug. I couldn’t let go of him. I didn’t want to lose him again. As I cried in my daddy’s arms, my aunt and cousins thanked the nice lady for everything she had done for me.

For the rest of the evening and the entire next day I was more concerned with making sure that my daddy and the rest of his family were within my sight at all times, than I was with seeing the sights at Disneyland. My daddy called my mommy on the phone and they both told me how much they loved me. I asked them even if they didn’t love each other any more did they still love me? They said yes and I never doubted that they loved me again.

I look back on these memories and laugh at myself but to this day, I always make sure to tell someone where I am going before I run off to get ice cream especially at Disneyland.

Love Is All There Is

Posted in Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual by

Love is all there is when you take your last breath you remember the people you love, how much love you inspired, and how much love you gave.

If you only had forty minutes left to tell your love story what would you say?

What would you say so your great-great-grandchildren could someday know their grandparents love story? Would they be reminded how much love matters?  Would they hear the power, strength, and wisdom of love. Would they know that you cut right to the heart of love with every word you spoke? Would they know that the greatest themes in life is love?

Would they know you experienced romantic love? Would they hear about falling in love, remembering a loved one; and finding love unexpectedly after assuming it was no longer in the cards.

Would you speak of enduring and of the redemptive power of love. Would you make their spirit soar in a culture that often feels consumed by all that’s phony or famous. Would your words of love remind them to try to live a life without regrets?

Would you share your beliefs about love and how you celebrated love? Would you tell them about the dignity, power, and grace of love? Would you speak of love and marriage? Would you speak of your love for your children? Your love for your grandchildren? Would you speak of your love of country and God? Would you speak at the age of 85 about the love of your life who passed away a few years ago?

Here is a love story about Bob and his wife Dot as told by Bob at the age of 85.

“My wife and I were   honeymooners in San Fransisco and we saw a sign that said ” Successful Marriage.”

 I never will forget it: It had six points to always say to your wife or husband. The first one was: You Look Great.  The second one was: Can I help? The third one was: Let’s Eat Out. The fourth one was: I Was Wrong. And the fifth one was: I Am Sorry. But last and most important one was: I Love You. That was it. There were six statements, and it said if you follow them, you’ll have a successful marriage. So we followed it, and we did have a successful marriage.

“It lasted fifty-three years, two months, and five days. It’s been rough, but every morning when Bob wakes up she is included in his prayers, and he talks to her every night when he goes to bed. She was something. One thing: He said, if they ever let him go through those pearly gates, he’s going to walk all over God’s heaven until he finds that girl. And the first thing he’s going to do is ask her if she would marry him, and do it all over again.”

Love survives discrimination, illness, poverty, distance and even death. In the courage of people’s passion we are reminded of the strength and resilience of the human spirit through the power of love. We bear witness to real love, in its many varied forms, enriching our understanding of that most magical feelings of love. What’s your love language? What would you tell your great great-grandchildren about love?

Dad’s

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God took the strength of a mountain, the majesty of a tree, the warmth of a summer sun, and the calm of a quiet sea.

Then he took the generous soul of nature, the comforting arm of night, the wisdom of ages and the power of the eagle’s flight.

He added joy of a morning in spring, the faith of a mustard seed, the patience of eternity and the depth of a family need. Then God combined these qualities, when there was nothing more to add he knew his masterpiece was complete, And so, He called it…Dad

When the Kids Go To Bed's avatarWhen the Kids Go to Bed

I love, love, love my dad! Not just because he’s my dad, but for his personality. My dad is a jokester. He’s funny, loving, playful, and caring. I remember when I would little everyone would call him “Uncle Al The Kiddies’ Pal.” He would always have us laughing and wouldn’t think twice about getting on the ground and getting attacked by myself, my brother, and all of our cousins. Never would he lose his temper with us, even when I busted his nose doing a cartwheel.

Favorite Childhood Daddy Memories:

1. Fishing at Brickyard Pond; just the two of us.

2. Letting me shift the gearshift selector from the passenger seat while he pumped the clutch.

3. The tickle-monster arriving by The Who’s “Magic Bus” – I’m going take that bus to you…

4. Playing Huey Lewis and the News “The Heart of Rock and Roll” every time we crossed the…

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When Friendship Grows

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Emily Dickinson spoke for friends everywhere when she observed, “My friends are my estate.” Dickinson understood that friends are among our most treasured possessions. But unlike a bank account or a stock certificate, the value of a true friendship is not denominated in dollars and cents; it is, in fact, beyond measure it is priceless. Our friendship started when we first talked to each other I knew we would always be friends and our friendship has kept on growing and you know that I’ll be here for you to the end. Thank you listening to me when I  have a problem and helping dry the tears from my face.

You take away my sorrow and put happiness in its place. We can’t forget the fun we’ve had laughing ’till our faces turned blue while talking of things only that we found funny. People must have thought we where insane. Oh! if they only knew.

I guess this is my way of saying thanks for catching me when I fall. Thanks once again for being such a good friend  and being there with me though it all. There comes a point in your life when you realize who really matters, who never did, and who always will.

A friend is someone who can see the truth and pain in you even when you are fooling everyone else. If your alone I’ll be your shadow. IF you want to cry, I’ll be your shoulder. If you want a hug, I’ll be your pillow. IF you need to be happy I’ll be your smile…But anytime you need a friend. I’ll just be me.

It’s the times we’re so crazy that people think we are high it;s the times we laugh so hard , we can’t help but cry. It’s all the inside jokes and remembering when’s those are all the reasons that we’re best friends!

When you are with a close friend it seems as if  you never have to explain yourself. Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe it. A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when yo have forgotten the words. Friendship isn’t about whom you have known the longest…it’s about who came, and never left your side.

The words that escape a friend’s mouth are “I’ll be there when you say you need me” but the words that are unheard from a true friends heart are I’ll be there…whether you say you need me or not.

What is a friend? A thesaurus offers many synonyms: ally, alter ego, chum, companion, coworker, colleague, helper, pal, and partner, to name a few. Like the people who create them, each friendship is unique. Enduring friendship, while difficult to cubbyhole, is easy to recognize. We know it when we see it.

Epicurus wrote, “Of all the things that wisdom provides to make life happy, by far the greatest is friendship.” Over two thousand years have passed since the Greek sage offered this observation, but little has changed. Friendships are still among the most sublime of human pleasures.

A true friend is the gift of God, and he only who made hearts can unite them. Friendship is one mind in two bodies. A friend is a poem. Friends are relatives you   make for yourself. A true friend will not always agree with you but will always be true to your best interests. Your best friend is the person who in wishing you well wishes it for your sake.

The word friendship is also a noun and it has many meanings here are a few : The  state of being friends; friendly relation, or attachment, to a person, or between persons; affection arising from mutual esteem and good will, friendliness; amity; good will; kindly aid; help; assistance, aptness to unite; conformity; affinity; harmony. Friendship is a noun and it can begin with a glance and continue to grow with gratitude. Remember wherever your are it’s your friends who make your world.

Protect Your Soul

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The journey of the soul is not all joy nor is it always consummated in the light. In life we make choices at every moment of what our soul’s destination shall be.

Just as in a dance one may move in any direction, forward, side to side, around and around or seem to be beautifully floating in the air. In life we are constantly through every infinitesimal increment of our behavior choose a direction the path our souls will take. If a man kills his wife and uses the legal system’s loopholes to escape conviction he has not only gotten away with murder he has lost his soul. He may be set free to return to the usual circumstances of his life but he will never be free.

 He will be a soulless man whose very existence is the embodiment of untruth. No matter how many people he may falsely convince himself in the light of the truth he is still condemned and will try insanely to convince himself of his own innocence, then surely his soul shall be lifted by the darkness around him.

There is no neutral moment or action in our experiences. Everything we do, every action we enact, every nuance of movement, each word we utter either creates the further illumination of our souls or moves us into a dark unconsciousness. Our souls can be utterly compromised and the potential for loss of soul to one degree or another can become an affliction of a society that as a collective has lost its sense of morals and ethics, of a culture that values everything else above the spiritual. Do we live in such a spiritually impoverished culture and in such a time that loss of soul to one degree or another is a constant teasing?

We seem to be invited at every corner to hedge on the truth, indulge ourselves, act as if our words and actions have no ultimate consequence, make an absolute of the material world, and treat the spiritual as it were an unsubstantial, angelic fantasy. In such a world a man can lose his own soul and have the world culture support him, and in such a world conversely the light of a single great soul that lives in integrity can truly illumine the world.

Let Go And Surrender

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Letting go is an emotional and spiritual surrender. It means willingly jumping out of the lifeboat of your preconceptions of reality and taking your chances out in the open sea of anything-can-happen.

It means that even as your definition of reality is dissolving before your very eyes, you willingly relinquish it, instinctively comprehending that the state of surrender itself will be a creative condition. It’s hard to let go, to live in a formless, destinationless place. All our lives we’re taught to hold on, to be the masters of our fate, the captains of our souls. Letting go isn’t comfortable; it can feel like anything from laziness to utter loss of control. It’s not aggressive and self-assured. It’s not the American way.

But letting go is, in truth, is a most elegant kind of daring. It is vulnerability of the highest order, an emptying out of self, of all the clutter, chatter, ideas, attitudes, schemes, and plans that, ordinarily, we all contain. In this emptiness, there is room for so much; in this vacancy, anything can happen: breathtaking transformations, changes of directions, miracles that will purely astound you, love that comes out of a spiritual conversion. But only if you are willing to truly let go of it all: as the tree dropping her bright leaves for winter, the trapeze artist, suspended in midair between two bars, the diver free-falling from the high dive, have all unequivocally, wholeheartedly let go.

Letting go is being alive to the power of anything is possible. It is living in surrender, trust, and the belief that emptiness is at once the perfect completion and the perfect beginning. So let go. And remember that if you hang on to even a shred or try to make a deal with Gods meaning of letting go you might not experience all the wonderful things that are ment happen to you.

The Sweet Knowings Of Love

Posted in Brides, family, generational changes, Life, Love, Parenting, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

The journey of love is a journey of many sweet knowings. It is the sweet bliss, in first love, of discovering all your love’s little secrets, her favorite flower and fragrance, the color that sets off her eyes so; his plaid flannel shirts, the way he laces up his boots, his shaving brush, and that one wild hair in his eyebrow; the scent of her skin, the feel of her hair, the drawer she keeps her lingerie in.

It is later the being together and love becomes the sound of the key as he locks up the house, the sound of the rain in the shower each morning as she is singing and shampoos her hair. It is how she rolls over at night in bed, how he sleeps like a saint, with his hands folded over his chest; it is what he can fix; what she can mend. And it is the changing, this way and that way.

Sometimes there are unkind words spoken the anger and love in the mist; making love, holding hands. And the children, wanting, not being sure about wanting them; being scared, and so overjoyed and seeing them sleeping and carried at night in his arms; how he is so tender, how she is so easy, so strong with them.

It is watching the years go by they come and go and come and go and then they just seem to Go and Go. Autumn and spring and winter and summer. So slowly and endlessly beautifully folding, unfolding so quickly go. And how we have done every year, so many things and so few. Each day, and the meals and the work and the talk.

Each day a small town with a map and the trip they have taken in it. And the walks and the light and the changing of the light and how they have traveled. And how they have given the gifts. At Christmas, birthdays, wedding  anniversaries and just because. They want to remember all the words they have written on cards. The things they have said and the things they have whispered to each other. I love you, good night and I adore you. You are my one and only.

And how time has passed He has grown old and he has white in his hair and the fine thin lines of his life and sun are remaking his eyes. He notices that her eyes softer now but still blue and even after so many years and the fading he still loves her. He still loves the scent of her perfume after all these years. 

She still loves how he after all these years he still sleeps with his hands folded over his chest and the scent of his after shave lotion. They love remembering now and not forgetting why they love each other. He said for them it’s been like a long love song that tells the story of how they have melted, woven themselves, befriended, ensouled one another.

 Now that they are here at the end of their lives that they know one another so well, like the bird knows the air like the snowdrift knows the snow; and how he said long a go, until we know each other like the seasons; and now it is spring; and now it is summer now it is autumn now it is winter; and we know we know, that love is endless and we will know each other in eternity too.

A Test of Love by St. Augustine…

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 “A Test of Love” is a sermon once preached by St. Augustine where he proposed a kind of self test to see if we truly love God.

 Lets suppose God proposed to you a deal and said, “I will give you anything you want” and you can own the world.

Nothing will be impossible for you, nothing will be sin and nothing forbidden. You will never die, never have pain, never have anything you do not want and always have anything you want.

 Except for just one thing you will never see my face. Augustine closed with this question: Did a chill rise in your hearts when you heard the words you will never see my face? That chill is the most precious thing in you; that is the pure love of God.” What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? I wonder…

Love Letters Speak Of Secret Wishes

Posted in Dreams, generational changes, Keepsakes, Letters, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

A love letter is a declaration that speaks of secret wishes, shared joy, or lasting A love letter is the most intimate correspondence a person can receive.

 With in its lines promises given, and fond memories recalled. Within its lines secret desires are made known through divine inspiration.

Written in elegant scrip on scented stationary or scrawled haphazardly on a scrap of paper, mailed from across the seas, hidden in a bouquet of roses, or tucked between the pages of an album, a love letter is to be cherished always. Love letters are precious reminders of heart-felt sentiments. They may bring encouragement and reassurance to the pining heart. It’s a reminder that says, “We’ll be together soon.” Or they may be simple reminders that say “I’m thinking about you. You make me smile.”

Whatever their purpose, love letters are received with joy and anticipation. Then saved in special places. Maybe in a dresser drawer, under mattress, ribbon-tied in a hope chest, or secreted away n a quiet corner. They are kept to be lovingly revisited for many years to comes. Over time, letters may become worn and tear-stained, but the meaning of their words remain as true as the day they were written.

Every day, thousands of people visit web sites seeking advice and suggestions about love and romance. Today I read that  hand written ” love letters” are still holding their place in the hearts of lovers. Men and women are happy to receive a love letter by Email. However receiving a love letter through the postal service still ranks number one, in the hearts of women everywhere. 

Grandpa’s Fishing Buddies

Posted in family, grandkids, Grandparenting, Keepsakes, Mentoring, relationships, Uncategorized by

The perfect gift is not always a material one. Our grandchildren do not need nor do they want what we can buy them; they need and want us. The best gift you can give them is you. Your faith, wisdom, stories, morals, life lessons, and philosophy,not to mention your time and presence.

I am most impressed with the many grandmothers whom I know who do special things and make special gifts for their grandchildren. Made by their own hands, these gifts of love are attached to forever memories.

My friend Jane hand-made matching outfits with matching hats for her grandchildren and their grandpa to wear when they went fishing together. They out grew the out fits years ago but when they go fishing with their grandpa they make sure that they all wear the hats that went to their matching out fits. They enjoy talking about the all the times they went fishing with their grandpa and are in awe of their grandmothers sewing skills.

Their fishing hats have become a physical reminder of the love and care she feels for them. Recently for their grandpa’s birthday they made a scrapbook for each family member. They included their memories and lots of photos of them fishing with him. Each photo told a story. What a treasure for them to have! They surprised their grandparents with a throw pillow made of the same print that their childhood fishing out fits were made of. Their grandparents were just thrilled in fact they seemed more impressed with the throw pillow that the scrapbook.

Many invisible gifts were given to Jane’s grandchildren while they were fishing with their grandpa. He introduced them nature, lakes, ponds, the ocean, sea creatures. He shared with them stories about fishing with his father and brother and all the antics that took place between them as he was growing up. He was able to enjoy sharing his past with his grandchildren and they got to learn things about him that if they hadn’t spent the time fishing with him they might not of ever learned about him. Those moments were the invisible gifts from one generation to the next.

Grandparents are in the perfect position to give gifts that unlock life. These gifts may be invisible to others, but they are always visible to their grandchildren. What a perfect opportunity to breathe life upon a grandchild. The invisible gift. I’ll take it. Wrap up lots of them for me and make that to go! The joy will be priceless.

Teachable Moments

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Ever since I read about “Teachable Moments” I’ve believed they’re the easiest and most enjoyable way to teach a child anything. And grandparents, have more teachable moments with their grandchildren, than even their parents do, because they have the time and the desire to pass on snippets of information.

Grandparents like to take advantage of every opportunity to explain something to your grandchildren it might be an idea, how something works, why something is important, how we do things, and answer to a question, pointing out something interesting a new word, a new sensation, a new feeling.

A teachable moment arises out of an ordinary everyday activity or situation where you feel that there’s an opportunity to explain something. Unsurprisingly children love those moments. The setting is informal, it doesn’t feel like teaching, and best of all its piecemeal, which is how children learn anyway. It’s appealing to a chid because a teachable moment has it own logic. Here are some teachable moments that I’ve experienced with my children when they were growing up or even more recently with my grandchildren.

  • You’re “Gardening” together and you see a worm. You can talk about how worms aerate the soil and turn it over (as worm casts), and how a worm  has no eyes because it’s always in the dark.
  • You’re crossing a street with traffic lights. Hers’s a good opportunity to talk about the light sequence and how RED means STOP and Green means Go. Extend this to talking about how you should look left, then right, then left again, then cross.
  • It’s bath time, and as your grandchild gets into the bath the water rises, then when she stands up, the level drops. You explain why and you could mention Archimedes and “Eureka”. You explain how some things float and some things sink.
  • You use a word that might be difficult for a toddler or young child to understand, for instance, words such as recognize, reflection (in the mirror), camouflage and immediately explain what it means and give examples of how to use it.
  • Use every opportunity to explain a concept this is hard, but this is soft; a cat meows but a dog barks; birds fly and so do airplanes.

You are an expert as a grandparent, because of your experiences, the life you’ve led, and your range of interests and hobbies, you can stimulate your grandchild in a way that a parent can’t. Your grandchildren will learn very easily from you, and I’m sure that. like me, you will get huge satisfaction from the hours you spend playing and learning together.

You have a caring interest in him or her, which they can sense because it makes them feel special, the perfect setting for new games and skills. You have the time to play until your grandchildren get bored. You take obvious delight in their tiniest achievement and make them feel confident. Nothing is too much trouble for you so games can extend his concentration and foster his curiosity.

You are endlessly patient and show him how to try, try, try again until he succeeds, and then praise them. You love him them enough to let them fail on their way to their success’. Remember to let your children and grandchildren fail instead of trying to rescue them from failure all the time.

Take a moment and think about a time that you failed and turned that failure into a success. Would you have conquered it if your parents, teachers, mentors, or grandparents had rescued you out of it? I remember when my son was learning to ride a bike I can’t tell you how many times he fell down and we just ignored him and he got right back up on that bike and finally mastered riding it. Later in life when he learned to drive a motorcycle there was no room for failing.  He had to do it right the first time and he did.

I remember when I started playing baseball at first I couldn’t hit the ball and my teams mates were not happy about that. But I can tell you no one told the couch to rescue me or even how to handle it. All my mom said, was you’ll figure it out just pay more attention to the way you are holding the bat. I kept trying and then one day I hit a home run. It’s good thing too because girls didn’t play baseball back then. Enjoy all those teachable moments and let the kids learn to turn their failures into success’.

Everybody Has A Story To Tell

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When we’ve been connected for a long time to someone, we think we know each other. We do, of course, know a whole array of things about one another, but it’s really only when we tell our stories.

Those touching vignettes that embody our struggles, sweet moments, disappointments, or wild hopes and dreams, that our most real, most vulnerable selves are revealed. Indeed, if we don’t tell each other our stories, we’re all one-dimensional, blank screens on which we project our assumptions about one another.

Everybody has a story, and because we all do, when we hear each other’s stories, we feel suddenly connected. Story is the great river that runs though the human landscape, and our stories are the little creeks that flow through us all to join the river at its source. When you tell your story, however you open yourself to the level of fragility that, as human beings, we all share; for no matter how different our stories, at the bottom of them all is the well of pain from which we have each dipped a drought.

Tell him or her your story, tell them the most exciting moment, the greatest regret of your adult life, the most painful event in your childhood and you will discover, in-depth, a self you never knew. That’s because between the sentences of our stories the gist of things slips out, not merely the facts, but the feelings that have shaped us, the point, in anyone’s journey, from which there was no return.

For example, although you may be aware of your husband’s  fascination with architecture, you may not understand why he never pursued it, until you hear the story about the night their father got so angry at him for staying up late drawing that he broke all his drafting pencils, threw them in the trash, and raved, “Since you’re waiting time like that, you’re never going to get a cent to go to college.” or, you may know about your wife’s interest in the big dipper but not know where it came from, until she tells you the story about how when she was a little girl and she heard her parents downstairs arguing at night, she would lie in bed looking up at the Big Dipper until it seemed like the stars beamed their white light right into her room so she could finally go to sleep.

When you tell your personal tale, spinning and spinning, telling, retelling, the tight thread with which you have wrapped up your pain will gradually start loosening. and when you listen to her or his story, he or she will become, in the process of your listening, a fully formed human being. So tell each other your stories. They’re more than entertainment for the dinner table or a long ride in the car. They are your true selves, spelled out and spoken, brought forth in time and in your own language, a loving gift you give to each other.

Rediscover Harmony And Belonging

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Belonging is the spiritual beauty of any intimate relationship. It is elegant coexistence, peaceful compatibility, a similarity of frequency. It’s knowing that you share the same view of the world, that what you want out of life runs along parallel lines. It’s looking at your beloved and being able to say to yourself, “We stand for the same things, don’t we? We may encounter some rough spots, but at heart we both share the same values and we always find our way back to harmony.” In relationship, belonging and harmony is a gift of the spirit. It is a mystic similarity of essence that allows you to operate both separately and together from the comfortable wellspring of knowing that between you there is a sacred resonance. In a sense, it’s the very reason you chose each other in the first place. If there weren’t a certain degree of belonging and harmony between you, you wouldn’t have thrown you lot in together and established a relationship.

When there’s belonging and harmony, you can feel it; it will add grace to all your undertakings, the rearing of your children, the way you conduct the actions of your daily life, the way you handle conflict, and what you perceive to be the underlying deep direction of your life.

Unfortunately to many demands can undermine the pleasant ground of any union’s harmoniousness and we can lose sight of our belonging feelings. Schedules, children, unexpected little assaults from others can make all us feel at times as if there’s no harmony or belonging between us.

Conversely, harmony is nurtured and restored by being lovingly remembered. So if the harmony is out of balance in your relationship, ask yourselves the following questions:
After all the fuss and fray, when the kids are in bed, when the disagreement is over, is the stream of our life together most of the time good? In general, can I give thanks for his or her presence in my life? Do I still know that I still belong to her or him?

In what ways are we at the core a complement, a mirror, a balance for one another? What things still give us pleasure together? What is the higher purpose of our relationship and what is our common undertaking?

If you have a hard time finding answers to these questions, take a good look at what’s compromising the harmony and feeling of belonging in your relationship. Is it something you can change? Is it circumstantial, your husband has been on the road for a month or is it an emotional issue that needs to be dealt with? What is the one thing you could do or say that would be a first step toward restoring harmony and the feelings of belonging?

Harmony and creating the feelings of belonging is the spiritual balance in any good relationship. So give thanks for the harmony you have, develop the harmony that’s missing, and nurture the harmony that ensures the feeling of belonging to your love.

To Console Is To Comfort

Posted in Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual by

To console is to comfort with your words, with your hands, with your heart, and with your prayers.  To console is to mourn with one another and thereby divide the power of the loss. In consoling you make yourself and the person you care about less alone.

You listen from the innermost place in her or his soul, respond from the most generous part of yourself to the neediest part of him or her. More, perhaps, than we would like to acknowledge, life is infused with tragedy. Everybody is given burdens of heart that are almost too much to bear; we all have sorrows and heartaches that bring into landscapes of pain that at times seem untraversable.

 There are times when we feel that what we are experiencing will utterly devour or destroy us. To be aware of this is to know how immense the need for consolation is. Faced with midst, we can do nothing but attempt to extend the healing gift even if we feel totally unequipped to offer it.

For no matter how inadequate our unpracticed gestures may seem, they will surely reach into the place that is aching for solace. Consolation is a spiritual undertaking. It begins with the state of grace that gives us wisdom and is one of our highest callings to abide there a while with one another.

We all need to be willing to act as physicians of the spirit for one another during the painful times. For it is when we are assaulted by the visitation of life’s sorrows that we most need to feel the presence of love. It’s when we are broken-hearted that we need to be ministered to, when we are in grief that is when we need to be taken into the presence of God’s grace and love.

I’ll Always Choose You

Posted in Brides, Dreams, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

I’ll always choose you! When you choose to love one person in a special, committed way, you are unchoosing or giving up your option to choose all others, for a time at least, in that same particular way.

The feeling of “being in love”  is the raving experience that makes us willing, even daredevilishly eager, to make these sacrifices. It’s a joy to choose one above all others, a delight to feel graced and blessed by their uniquely delicious and heartwarming presence.

But this choosing, grand as it is and willing as we are to make it, it is also symbolic of the many choices, little renunciations, and revisions of priority that, for love, we shall come to make as we walk the path of relationship. There’s a great deal we do (or discontinue doing) precisely and only because we love.

 When Jane fell in love with Brand she postponed graduate school to take care of Brands two little girls, whose mother died of cancer. Jane did this with no regrets and a lot of love. Later in life when the girls left home to go to college Jane went back and finished her postponed educational goals.

Jane’s brother Dan moved out of the house he’d built for himself to live in the town where Jen, his new love, lived. She was a tenured professor and couldn’t move to the town where Dan lived. The corporation that Dan works for transferred him to an office in the town that Jen lived in.

Dan excepted the job transfer and proposed to Jen. Hooray! Jen said yes. One year later they had a little girl. Dan has no regrets because he made those compromises out of love. Oh, he still owns the house that he built and hopes that when they retire they will live in it but if not he is willing to compromise because he loves Jen more than the house he built.

Such revisions are only the tip of the iceberg. Each day, in love, you will be faced with decisions and choices, invited to make compromises that represent a willingness to meet the one you love halfway on the playing field of love. Thus, you may find yourself adapting to uncomfortable  schedules or meticulous (or sloppy) housekeeping habits (the proverbial toothpaste folded up wrong or far too perfectly), taking vacations you never imagined ( but ended up loving anyway), preparing food you never even liked. or entering into financial arrangements that stretch your equanimity to the limit.

A compromise for love needs to be just that: a conscious revision of your own preferences. As such, it becomes a creative, imaginative act, and surprisingly beautiful frame. But, above all it shows you the depth of your love. For when we smooth off the corners of our own dogmatic priorities, we reach toward one another. In so doing, we see that love, the deep recognition of the soul of the one we love.

 In the spiritual journey of love it is our soul who choose us for each other. We meet through the eyes of the pulse. we do not choose, but each is chosen for this love, This path, this new green road, this first kiss, the single beating heart, the compromises made for love. This us!