Tag Archives: love

Consecrate Your Relationship

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

A relationship is always far more than we imagine or expect it to be. It is more than an a living arrangement, more than being together in a social arrangement, more than the bright-colored kite tail of romance.

It is the coming together of two persons whose spirits participate with one another, beautifully and painfully, in the inexorable  process of their individual becoming.

Whether it is clearly visible or not, every relationship has a higher power than itself alone, a meaning that goes beyond the conventions of love and romance, and attaches the two people in it to a destiny that has roots in the past, and wings in the future.

This purpose is to shape us individually into the highest and best versions of ourselves and to change, if only some tiny way, the essential character of the reality we have entered here by being born. To know this is to believe that whatever occurs between you such as the petty dramas and traumas, the life shaping tragedies is honing you for your unique participation in the human stream. It is to accept that the person you love has come into your life for a reason that goes beyond the satisfactions of the moment or even your personal future to reach into the web beyond time.

What you do here together, how well and how beautifully you do it, has implications not only for how cozily you sit together in your rocking chairs in your old age, but also for every other living being. We are all participants in the process of creating a species and a world that hums with  peace and is informed by love. This is our highest heritage, and when we sanctify our relationships, the difficulties and insults they contain will be instantly diminished and what will stand in their place is the overwhelming presence of real love.

Sanctifying your relationship means seeing it not as an act of self-indulgence, but as an offering of love that you deliver up with joy to the fulfilment of its higher meaning. This entails not only an attitude of acceptance but also two behaviors: making speech and keeping silence.

It means verbally acknowledging this higher truth to one another: “Thank you for being the instrument for the  discovery of my purpose,” I know we have come together for an important reason.” I love you for being my way to see the holiness of life.”

 At times it also means keeping the silence in your heart, which is a thanksgiving of this higher purpose,or engaging together in a practice of meditation, which is a walking together in spirit, a prayer that your purpose together is revealed.You love is a stitch in the fabric of the All. To see it as such is to place your relationship in the ultimate perspective and to receive from it the ultimate joy.

We all need the paths of our lives to be marked out so that we can be reminded of the quality of our lives and the beauty of our loves. We dignify and consecrate our relationships when we set them apart from the ordinary ritual. Personal rituals provide a reference not only for the value we place upon our relationships, but also for the value we ask be conferred upon them.

Relationship ceremonies say that, this day is not like all other days, this person is not like all the other people; this love is not like all other loves. Not only in our hearts but also in our actions, we intend it to be a union of meaning, with allegiance to a valuable mission. The consecration of your relationship is a creative and deeply private affair.

Set aside for a special time to acknowledge your union, your wedding anniversary perhaps; choose a specific place to honor it; and create your own private ceremony. Light candles, say words, play music. Consecrating your relationship is the sign. repeated and beautiful, that you choose to view your relationship as holy, as no mistake, and that you intend, through it and with your beloved as your witness, always to live it to the highest of its purpose.

A Few Tips For Brides

Posted in Brides, Brides and Grooms, Dreams, family, Getting Organized, Keepsakes, Life, Love, Marriage, Planning A Wedding, relationships, Spiritual, Weddings, Women by

By the time the first note of the bridal march is played, thousands of decisions have been made, for better or for worse. Knowing what to do and what not to do can help you to avoid missteps so you can make the most of your perfect day. There are many details involved in making your wedding a success, and careful attention should be paid to all of them, big and small.  Begin by getting an overview of all tasks ahead of you.

Here are a few reminders of what to do and what not to do while on your jounery to the altar.

What Not to Do?

  1.  Do not try to please others by doing your wedding as they suggest. It’s your wedding. Do it your way.
  2. Do not make major decisions with consulting your fiance’ (e).
  3. Do not discuss the details of your budget with other people. Unless they are helping to finance the event, the details are not their concern.
  4. Do not expect service providers to work for unreasonably low prices. Get the best deals you can, but be willing to pay appropriately for people’s time and efforts.
  5. Do not forget that everything will go perfectly. There are bound to be glitches, but you can deal with them.
  6. Do not make spur-of-the moment decisions about anything. Take time to consider everything carefully.
  7. Do not be rigid with your plans. Try to be flexible when possible.
  8. Do not spend so much on the wedding that you enter your new marriage heavily in debt.
  9. Do not make unreasonable demands of all the people helping you make your plans.
  10. Do not use your wedding as a time to highlight and perpetuate family differences.
  11. Do not allow differences of opinion about wedding details to come between you and your fiance’.
  12. Do not neglect your relationship with your fiance’ as you get caught up in planning the wedding.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           What to Do?

  1. Leave enough time to handle all the unexpected details.
  2. Start at the beginning by getting a game plan.
  3. Don’t forget one of the most important things to do, “seek out pre marriage counseling” with a professional that you and your fiance’ trust and rremember that the marriage is the most important thing, not the wedding.
  4. The wedding party is an important feature of the wedding begin to think about who should be part of this select group.
  5. Take advantage of a professional wedding planner if possible. It will take some of the burden off your shoulders, and will leave you time to deal with other details that only you can handle.
  6. Ask professionals who will be helping you how much time they will need to get everything done properly.
  7. Select a date for your wedding that is not already notable for something else.
  8. Choose attendants and other member of the wedding party with care. They will part of your memories of your special day, and will be a part of the photos that you will cherish.
  9. Try to choose outfits that your attendants really can wear latter.
  10. Get details in writing.There is nothing worse than thinking you are getting a particular product or service in one way, and finding out that you are incorrect. Keep receipts for everything you pay in connection to the wedding.
  11. Select some method of keeping all your details organized there are many free wedding web sites that are designed to help you and your wedding party stay organized. Weddingwire.com is an excellent. Many brides still use index cards, and some find a loose leaf notebook system helpful.
  12. List all wedding tasks to be done and assign a due date for each. This will be helpful when meeting with suppliers of goods and services. 
  13. Find out deadlines by which you will have to have particular decisions made and abide by them. Remember they are intended to help you.
  14. Get a master calendar where all activities, plans, and deadlines will be recorded.
  15. Begin to think about what type of service you would like, wha traditions you would like to honor, and what religious elements you would like to include.
  16. Have a back up plan if your wedding is planned for outdoors.
  17. As you begin to think  of whom you will invite, keep a list of extras  that out-of-town guest will need, such as a ride to the rehearsal dinner.
  18. Enlist help ahead of time to help accommodate special needs of guests.
  19. Be ready to bear the cost of extras that you ask your attendants to have, such as professionally applied make-up or perfect manicure.
  20. Check well ahead of the wedding for marriage license requirements.
  21. What to wear?  You can ease the process of dressing everyone appropriately for the ceremony by knowing what your wedding vision is before you even start.
  22. Plan to show your appreciation to members of the wedding party with a gift to help commemorate the occasion.
  23.  Remember you are blending your families,so make sure you remain respectful of your fiance’s suggestions he knows them better than you do.
  24. Send thank-you notes promptly so you do not feel overwhelmed by the task.
  25. Take time to enjoy the journey to the altar. Relax and savor the process.
  26. Begin to develop a budget for your wedding expenses.
  27. Include in the budget honorarium for the minster, musicians, and others who help the ceremony but who are not attendants.
  28. Decide up front who will pay for what.There are traditional guidelines about this, though in recent years they have become more casual they are still an important facet of planning a wedding. 
  29. Consider setting up a wedding gift registry, it helps to take the guess-work out for those who are buying you and your fiance’ gifts.
  30. Remember to tie up the loose ends and finishing with finesse because you are creating a day you will cherish for a lifetime.

What Married Couples Can learn From Divorced Couples?

Posted in Divorce, Life, Love, Marriage, Psychology, relationships by

Would it surprise you that some of the best lessons about how to strengthen a marriage can come from those who have suffered through divorce?

I want to share with you five things couples have learned the hard way that you can do today to help strengthen the bonds between you and your spouse.

Terri Orbuch is a psychologist and research professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute of Social Research, she recently identified some of the top common regrets of divorced couples.

“Divorced individuals who step back and say, ‘ This is what I’ve done wrong and this is what I will change,’ have something powerful to teach others”, She recently told the Wall Street Journal.

1. Boost your spouse’s mood: Encouraging and affirming your spouse in very simple ways can go a very long way. One study found that when a husband reported his wife didn’t express love and affection (not necessarily sex) the couple was as likely to divorce.

2. Talk more about money: Money is a magnifier of problems but it’s also a common source of significant tension. Don’t keep secrets and establish a family budget and stick to it.

3. Get over the past: Couples who can’t forgive past hurts grow bitter and resentful. Again, talk it our. Write a letter. Talk with a friend.

4. Blame the relationship: Studies suggest that 65% of divorces blame the ex-spouse for the demise of their marriage. When discussing relationship problems. Dr. Orbuch suggests saying, “we,”or “I,” for example, you might say. “We are both so tired lately,” not “You are so crabby.”

5. Reveal more about yourself: Dr. Orbuch recommends: Every day, for 10 minutes, the couple should talk alone about something other than work, the family and children, the household, the relationship. No problems. No scheduling. No logistics.

Do you resonate with these findings? What might you add as #6 on this list? leave your comments in the comment box… Thanks

If I Be Like Her Then Who Will Be Me?

Posted in Life, Love, Psychology, relationships by

Worry gives small problems big shadows. Corrie Ten Boom said, “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows; it empties today of its strength.” Most anxiety stems, not from what we need, but from what we want. Who wants to live with yesterday’s rubble? Who wants to hoard the trash of the past? You don’t! Do you? Or do you?

I’m not talking about the trash in your house, but in your heart, not the junk of paper’s and boxes but remnants of anger and hurt. Do you rat-pack your pain? Amass offense? Record slights?

A tour of your heart might be telling you a pile of rejections: Accumulated insults, no one can blame you,
there are innocent takers, promise breakers, and wound makers. They’re everywhere and you’ve had your share.

All of us know what a morbidly delicious temptation it can be to beat yourself up about almost anything that goes wrong in your relationship or, for that matter, in life in general.

If you have a fight or if you’re to chicken to pick a fight, if you waste money or are a miser, if you’re a neatness fanatic or a slob what ever your habits, predilections, attitudes, or expectations, you find yourself blaming yourself for whatever goes awry in your relationship.

The reality is that no matter what your style, no matter what you do precipitously or fail to do in time or in the right way, you’re doing the best you can. Beating yourself up, blaming yourself, focusing endlessly on your faults the way you might have been, or should have been, done it, or not done it, never improves the situation.

Look at yourself with compassion and start enjoying your curious little idiosyncrasies. Acknowledge that it’s just fine to be you. Let it be all right that you’re different from everybody else. Like the old Yiddish adage says, “If I be like him, then who will be me?”

Being easy on yourself means that you accept yourself as your are, that you forgive yourself for your mistakes and go on, lovingly acknowledging your foibles, your idiosyncratic style. Only by being gentle with yourself can you also be good-natured and forgiving with the person you love.

 Give yourself a break; decide that you’re just fine exactly as you are. My two-year old grandson knows he is perfect just the way he is and every time he greets me he says, Hi, I’m me! I say, you are you! He says, I am me!  Can you say Hi, I am me and mean it like he does?

At First Glance

Posted in friendships, Life, Love, Romace, Uncategorized by

 Jennifer never dreamed that she could fall in love with any other man but Joe until Jennifer went to New York and walked into The Plaza Hotel and there was a handsome young man standing in the lobby, their eyes met they couldn’t stop staring at each.

Before she knew it they were talking, he invited her to dinner. She said, I’m engaged he said, don’t engaged women eat? She said, “yes.” He said, dinner at eight.

They danced the night away until half past two, then they returned to the Plaza Hotel and sat outside by the pool and talked until sunrise. There was one embarrassing moment when Jennifer’s father came outside in his pajamas looking for her, and said.”Oh, you’re with him the man your going to marry. Okay then and he turned walked away. 

Jennifer blushed and apologized for her fathers out burst and James said, I agree with your dad I have just met the girl I’m going to marry. It seemed as if war-time had speeded everything up. A few months after Jennifer and James celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary James passed away unexpectedly. 

 Jennifer and Joe met in kindergarten and instantly became best friends. Their first official date was their prom. After graduation Joe joined the army and purposed to Jennifer she said, “yes”. Two weeks before the wedding  Jennifer met James.

Even though Joe had hurt feelings he was happy for Jennifer and they remained friends. Jennifer and Joe supported each other through their time of sorrow when they lost their spouses and as a result fell in love with each other again. They had a quite family wedding that included children and grandchildren from their previous marriages.

Joe surprised Jennifer by buying her childhood home and restoring it back to the way it was when they were children and Jennifer found the tree where they had carved their names and declared their friendship and had it moved to the back yard of their home.

Two defining moments changed every thing for Jennifer and Joe the first one was when Jennifer and James eyes met and when James died and Joe came back into Jennifer’s life. When Jennifer and Joe were asked if they had any regrets they immediately said, “No.”

Happy Endings Like The Kiss At The End Of A Fairy Tale

Posted in Dreams, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Uncategorized, Working Women by

We all want happy endings like the kiss at the end of the fairy tale, we’re all waiting for it. 

 Rick and Liz are a couple who have experienced a fairy tale ending. When they first met their eyes were filled with only each other and they hung on every word said totally captivated by the sound each others her voices.

On their first date he was too nervous to eat, but Liz helped  him to loosen up a bit by asking ,”So how was your day?” He kind of looked at her, a bit surprised, and said, “What do you mean?” She said, ‘I mean how was your day?”

To Liz, that was a more caring way to find out about a person’s life rather than just up and asking them what they do for a living. So Rick shared with her about a problem he’d had at work that day. Then he said, “you’re a business owner, what would you have done? She said, “Hmm. I would have handled it completely differently.” And then she gave him her opinion. He started laughing and said, “Uh, why don’t you tell me how you really feel?” She said, “If you want a different answer, ask a different girl.”

Rick said, Oh I apologize if I sounded condescending your answer has given me a lot to think about and maybe in the further you and I can explore other business options that I haven’t considered. Liz smiled and said she would like that. During their first date Liz noticed that Rick took her seriously, and she liked that.

On the way home they talked about current music, books, movies, obscure artists. They shook hands at the end of the night, which was totally typical for Liz. The next weekend Rick and Liz went out on their second date she wore a summer halter dress with funny green butterflies in her hair thinking if she was dressed like a carefree woman it would help to loosen up her type A control-freak personality.

When they got into Ricks bright red Mazda Miata ( which Liz liked even more than she liked Rick) she leaned forward and to tell Rick what route to take to the restaurant. Rick remained quiet while she gave him her instructions, and then he said two words to her that shifted the whole dynamic. Those two words were: “Nice Perfume.” Liz didn’t know exactly what happened in that moment, but it was certainly chemical. There was no other way to explain it. She turned around and looked out the window and thought, Oh my, I love him. 

They went to a romantic bistro down by the sea-shore, and sat in the outdoor garden. Liz looked across the table at him, and she was thinking, How did this happen, could I already be in love with him? All of her senses were firing. She knew that something was going on here and she had recognized something familiar in Rick.

Liz said, “What’s the story with you, what’s the issue? There’s something a little broken in you, she could feel it. She figured it takes one shattered spirit to know another, and in the middle of dinner he opened up to her about his complicated family relationships, old wounds that were magnified by the fact that he worked with his father and uncle in the family business. He told her that he wanted to leave and make his own success, but he felt a tremendous obligation to carry on what his grandfather had started, and he was pretty resentful of it all. Liz listened and then said, why don’t you come work for me? Rick smiled.

They talked until 4:00 a.am. about everything and nothing. At nine the next morning Liz’s door bell rang, she opened it and there were two dozen red roses. After that they started competing for who could out            romance the other, and it was intoxicating and explosive and yet at the end of each date they always shook hands. Rick and Liz were finally ready to embrace love with a grateful, open heart and had chosen the right person to throw their arms around for the rest of their lives.

 Many couples forge into marriage with a mindset of “What’s in it for me?” What am I going to get out of this?” They consciously or unconsciously seek to get instead of give. Rick and Liz learned a more loving and humble approach would be to ask. “What can I bring to this marriage?” and “What can I learn from my spouse?” Have you ever thought about the purpose marriage? 

The number one reason people get married is love,” They want to spend the rest of their life with the person” and the second reason is “To have kids.” Rick and Liz wanted to do both. Rick learned from Liz a better way to operate a business and Liz learned to let go of the need to be controlling they both leaned a better way to love. What’s the purpose of your marriage?

 

Matchmaker- Matchmaker

Posted in Brides, Dreams, family, Letters, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Women by

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch. Matchmaker, Matchmaker, look through your book, and make me a perfect match. Matchmaker, Matchmaker, I’ll bring the veil, you bring the groom, slender and pale.

Bring me a ring for I’m longing to be the envy of all I see. For Papa make him a scholar. For mama, make him rich as a king. For me, well, I wouldn’t holler if he were as handsome as anything.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a  match, find me a find, catch me a catch. Night after night in the dark, I’m alone so find me a match of my own. I promise you’ll be happy, and even if you’re not, there’s more to life than that…Don’t ask me what?

This matchmaker story is true and is about a man named  Paul and a woman named Karen he lived in New York and she lived in San Francisco, Ca.They met while Paul was attending a family reunion in San Francisco and he asked his cousin Hedy and her fiance’ Jack if they would call some friends who might be willing to go out on a date with him. They went to work, calling various women fortunately, Karen called them back. Hedy’s nick has been  Matchmaker, Matchmaker ever since her  collage years because she matched up more than fifteen couples which she never lets anyone forget about. Hello Dolly has nothing on her that is for sure.

Karen was sitting at the restaurant with Paul’s cousins, and she thought, he’s pretty good-looking. They started talking and Karen noticed Paul was one of the happiest people she had ever come across. And when he would talk about things that he had done and things that you wanted to do, it sounded incredibly appealing, like it would just be a fun life with him.

By the end of the evening  Karen handed him her business card, and He said, he would keep in touch. He called her from his family reunion and asked her if she would allow him to take her to dinner, and then would she take him to the airport? They continued their conversation on the pay phone rather enthusiastically for two hours and Paul’s cousins wondered why Paul wasn’t paying any attention to them or anyone else in  the rest of the family.

They had a great dinner, and then Karen took him to the airport. She saw him off, no peck on the cheek, nothing like that. While Paul was getting on the airplane he was thinking, this could be interesting. He spent the whole time on the plane writing a letter to her and when the plane landed instead of going to pick up his luggage he found a mail box and sent the letter. And come to find out that she had been up all night writing a letter to him and mailed it first thing in the morning. Matchmaker, Matchmaker make me a perfect match!

Karen was really resisting having any feelings of liking him, because she lived in San Francisco and he lived in New York, which was extremely far away. She had never been there. And she had a nice career going, She owned her own home in San Francisco. She had a whole life in California, so why even get into any kind of entanglement with a man who lived so far away? It just seemed crazy. But then, obviously, She really like him.

They wrote each other a lot. They built up a lot of intimacy with all that communicating. It’s was like an essay every single day about a new topic. They wrote about everything. Paul said, a lot happened in those letters and he couldn’t help but be somewhat flirtation, just because it was kind of fun and innocent enough. Karen said, he was plenty flirtatious, but never made a pass at her.

Soon they were spending  hundreds of dollars a month on phone bills, flying back and forth, so they decided to cut to the chase about things. The catalyst for them was when Karen’s mom died in a car accident suddenly and it forced Paul to figure out whether he should be apart of this kind of …sadness. He hadn’t met her family and they were still in a new relationship. Paul thought it over and decided he wanted to be with Karen.

Karen asked her dad if he was up to meeting Paul and he said, yes.  He made a welcoming sign for Paul and made Paul feel welcomed and comfortable.  Karens dad was warm and kind to Paul even though he had just lost his wife and was very, very, very sad. Paul always admired Karens dad for his strength and making that sign for him. It was a tough time, but it built strength between them.

A few months later Karen was at work, and her colleague, said, “Oh, we forgot to tell you: we have to go across campus to see the new dean at the chapel.” So they were kind of jogging across campus, because they were late, and as they walked into the sanctuary she noticed some violin music. It wasn’t until she was pretty far into the church that she realized that it was Paul, and that he was playing the Winter Movement from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. There was an older couple sitting in the front pews, just in rapt attention, listening to him.

Karen didn’t know what was going on: Why was Paul doing this performance in the church? And then Karen kind of got an inkling when Paul finished he went over to her and asked her if she would marry him. She said, yes. It was incredibly romantic and incredibly surprising.

One of things that Karen said to Paul during their vows at the wedding was that she looked forward to seeing his happy face every morning and she still does. Paul still thinks Karen is all he imaged she would be except more of it. She is smart. She is generous and most of all she is just lots of fun to be around. They are very grateful to Hedy and Jack for matching them up.

Stella’s Honeymoon On Hamburgers, Milkshakes And Love

Posted in Brides, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, traditions, Women by

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.

After Stella graduated from high school, she couldn’t afford college, so she went to nurse’s training school at the general hospital in her home town.

One day one of her patient’s son told her he was really crazy about her friend Betty, who was working on the ward with her, and asked if she could get him a date.

She said, “I’ll try. Betty said, Okay, but that she would not go out on a single date. “So he asked two guys, and I Stella asked another girl, and they went on a triple date. On the day of the date Stella had spent all afternoon at the beach sun bathing, she was red as a beet, her hair was a mess, and she really didn’t want to go.

At the last-minute Stella managed to pull herself together anyway and as she was walking down the stairs she saw the three guys sitting there, and she said to her friend, “Look at the hick; I’ll bet I get stuck with him.” And she did. She knew that he didn’t have any money. They wanted to stop for a hamburger, french fries and a milkshake, and he just frankly told her. “I can’t afford it.” Somehow or other that seemed honest to her. She said, ” Let’s just sit in the car and talk.” And talk they did. They talked themselves right into love and marriage. The next day she called him, they decided they wanted to see each other again and made plans to have lunch together.

When Dave went to the hospital to pick her up and unfortunately Stella wasn’t there. Dave waited for her longer that day than he had waited for anybody in his life. He wasn’t mad, he was disgusted  and wrote Stella off. After all no one did that to him, so he went back to work. 

Three days later Stella called him and explained to him that she had to attend a nurses luncheon and had left a note for Betty to give to him and Betty forgot to. Dave accepted her apology. Dave and Stella had the next Thursday off. He suggested that they go to Turkey Run State Park, which is about sixty miles from Indianapolis. That day turned out to be one of the most idyllic days of their lives.

Friday he took Stella out to the farm to meet his parents and on Saturday they spent the day with Stella’s parents. That was when her mother said to Dave, “I hope you’re not thinking about marrying my daughter, because you’ll marry her over my dead body!’  

He told her, “If I can find us a minister, we’re getting married tomorrow and no you wouldn’t die and she didn’t die!  He went out and found the same minister that had married his parents twenty-five years earlier. He pulled the minister right out of the revival meeting. His mother was an avid gardener, and had what seemed like thousands of gladiolas in full bloom.  His mother cut practically al of those glads, and the house was absolutely gorgeous with flowers everywhere they looked.

So they were married with their parents, grandparents, two best friends, his brother as his best man, and her four sisters and that was the wedding party. After the wedding ceremony Dave had twenty dollars in his pocket and borrowed forty dollars from his dad for the honeymoon, but in the rush and excitement of the wedding, he forgot to get it. They where half way to Lake Shafer on their honeymoon when they discovered that he only had a twenty in his wallet. 

So they honeymoon on twenty dollars. They found a motel for three dollars a night. They discovered a beautiful garden overlooking Lake Shafer and if they ate at the soda fountain they could order a hamburger, french fries and milkshake for seventy-five cents. So their honeymoon was for three-days and nights and they spent Dave’s twenty dollars. When they returned home Dave gave his father in law the forty dollars back.

Stella and Dave have had fifty-seven years of marriage, and never once regretted their short courtship and honeymoon on hamburgers, milkshakes and love. Stella worked as a nurse for twenty years and Dave became a doctor and they had four children but every Saturday night was hamburger, french fire and milkshake night.

Stella and Dave’s love story carries us from the excitement and anticipation of courtship to the deep connection of lifelong commitment, their story just goes to show that love is found in the most unexpected of places and in the shortest amount of time. And if you’re wondering yes this is a true story love story.

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

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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.

The Notion Of Love As Service

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Most of the time we think of love in terms of what love can do for us, imagining that when we “fall in love,” all our dreams will come true.

We want so badly to have our own feelings recognized, our own needs met, our own insecurities handled, and our own desires fulfilled that the notion of love as service is almost inconceivable to us. We can get so caught up (or bogged down) in the notion of love as a what will I get out of the experience that the idea of serving another is extremely distasteful.  At a deeper level, we’re afraid that by serving we might lose the sense of our selves we’ve worked so hard to attain.  But in its purest state, love is service,  a wholehearted offering so satisfying that it doesn’t feel like service at all, but rather self-fulfilment of the highest order.

Most of us still need practice for this particular outreach of love. We’re not sure how to serve or what our true service might be, and we haven’t  practiced serving  to such a degree that it feels second nature, graceful, or effortless to us.  The truth is that we’re all already serving in one form or another. If you’re a parent, you’re serving your children.  If you’ve cared for an invalid neighbor or an aging parent, you have also served in love. If you’ve bandaged the wing of a wounded bird, given a homeless person a dollar, saved a stranger from drowning, given up your set on the bus, then you too have served in love. These are the seedings of service , the places where our hearts have started to open, but should you choose to have your service grow into a huge and sheltering tree, you will be given many opportunities to mature your gift  of true service.

Begin by asking yourself the following questions: What does it mean to serve? What would my true service be? How can I develop my service so it can truly become a gift of love?  Service in love is temporarily sitting aside your own needs, wants, and priorities and allowing the needs, want and priorities and allowing the needs of another human being to become radiant, so vivid, and so pertinent that, for a moment, your own are dissolved. This gracious moment is love, and the more we live in the practice of service, the more we create this love. For when we serve one another, we also serve the great cause of Love with grace.

I’ll Always Choose You

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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!

When We Accept What Is

Posted in Dreams, family, Family Values, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual by

We usually mosey into relationships seeing their obvious possibilities, imagining specified outcomes, cocooning them with our own expectations.

But what actually occurs is often shockingly different from what we expected.

 The person you wanted to marry has a phobia about commitment. The woman you knew would make a great mother decides to go off to law school.

The suitor with the bottomless trust fund decides to give away all his money and live in a cave. Surprising revisions can happen on even at the simplest levels: “When I fell in love with him, he was wearing a black cashmere sweater and a pair of black dress pants; but after I married him, all he would wear was sweatshirts, his favorite sports hats and jeans.”

Expectations come in two forms: general and specific. General expectations have to do with our dreams and plans for a specific relationship that it will lead to marriage, that it will bring you children, that it will make you “happy.” Specific expectations have to do with what we think we can count on day-to-day – he’ll take out the trash, she’ll handle the kids in a way I approve of. On one level, these expectations are all quite reasonable;  it’s appropriate to have long-range plans and goals, and it’s legitimate to expect specific kinds of participation from your partner.

But when your relationship becomes a litany of failed expectations— what you hoped for but didn’t get—– its time to look at what’s happening from an entirely different perspective. Perhaps, instead of needing to “communicate better” or “negotiate your differences” on an emotional level, you’re being asked, on a spiritual level, to learn to accept what is.

Accepting — finding a way to be comfortable with things as they are—- is actually a very developed spiritual state. It means that you’re relinquished the preconceptions of your ego and surrendered to what’s been given to you. Maybe he’s not the provider you hoped for, but his spiritual strength is a constant inspiration; perhaps she’s not the housekeeper you wanted, but the way she nurtures your children is absolutely beautiful.

Acceptance allows your spirit to grow. When you’re able to recognize the little  miracles and great lessons that replace your expectations, you suddenly discover that what you hoped for— was pitifully puny compared to what was actually held in store for you. And in a way far more complex and elegant than you could have imagined, your life is following a sacred design. 

 So if you want a life that is larger than life and a relationship that is finer than even your wildest hopes, peel back your expectations and start to accept the good in what is.  (This only applies to mentally stable people.)

Escaping Memories…

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 There is no escaping the memories of our life even if we want to or at least no escaping them for long, even the times when we don’t want to remember. In one sense the past is dead and gone, never to be repeated, over and done with, but in another sense, it is of course not done with at all or at least not done with us.

 Every person we have ever known, every place we have ever seen, everything that has ever happened to us somewhere whether, we like it or not the memories are there waiting for us.

 Sometimes it doesn’t take much to bring them back to the surface in bits and pieces. The words in a song that was popular years ago. A book we read as a child. A stretch of road we use to travel. An old photograph, an old letter, an old hallmark card. And don’t forget the good, bad, and ugly ones that come rushing back like an uninvited guest who just won’t leave.

There is no telling what trivial thing may do it, and then suddenly there it all is something that happened to us once. And it is not just as a picture on the wall to stand back and gaze at but as a reality, we are so much a part of still. Sometimes we feel a memory with the feelings something close to the original intensity and freshness of it. 

 Remember what it felt like to fall in love for the first time? It doesn’t matter how many years ago it was the memories come rushing back and our senses come alive again. We smell the smells, hear the sounds of laughter, we feel the love and feel the tears that ran down our checks when we remember how that love ended so many years ago. Times too beautiful to forget and too terrible to remember. 

 Memories come at us helter-skelter and unbidden, sometimes so thick and fast that they are more than we can handle in their poignant, sometimes so sparsely that we all but cry out to remember more.  Sometimes a dream seems to say more than that, to speak of a different kind of memory and to speak of remembering in a different kind of way. The kind of memories I have been naming are memories that come and go more or less on their own and apart from any choice of our own. Things remind us, and the power is in the things’, not our power. On the other hand we can gain power over our memories and how they affect us.

 We are all such escape artists you and I we don’t like to get too serious about things, especially about ourselves. When we are with other people, we are apt to talk about almost anything under the sun except for our own lives, except for what is going on in our own skins. We pass the time of day with endless chat, chat, chat, (emailing, texting, and, messaging).

We hold people at bay, keep our distance from them even when we know it’s not what we want. And it’s the same thing when we are alone. Let’s say it’s late evening and everybody else has gone away or gone to bed. The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where you have come from and where you are going to, for sifting through the things you have done and the things you have left undone for a clue to who you are for better or worse. 

We turn on the television and check our emails or read a book.  We find some chore to do that could easily wait for the next day. We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. We cling to the surface out of fear of what lies beneath the surface. You may be thinking, ” Nobody know the trouble I’ve seen,” and of course nobody knows the trouble you’ve had. Nobody knows the hurt, the sadness, the bad mistakes, the crippling losses but you.

Don’t forget the happiness you’ve seen too. The precious times, the precious people, the moments in your life when you were better than you knew how to be. Nobody knows that either, but you do.  We are to remember it. And then, if your dream was really a true dream, you will find it,  beyond any feelings of joy or regret that one by one the memories give rise to, a profound and undergirding peace, a sense that is some unfathomable way all is well.

 You have survived and maybe that is at the heart of your remembering after twenty years, forty years, sixty years or eighty, you have made it to this year, this day. Each of us must speak for ourselves, you may have seen so much sorrow and enough pain to turn your heart to stone. Who hasn’t?  Many people can tell you that they have chosen the wrong road, or the right road for the wrong reason.

You may have loved the people in your life too much for either their good or yours. You might have loved with the devices and desires of your own heart, as the old prayer goes, yet often when your heart called out to be brave, to be kind, to be honest, to be loving, to be generous, you may have not followed this prayer and lost at love.

To remember your life is to remember countless times when you might have given up, gone under, when humanly speaking you might have gotten lost beyond the power to find you but you didn’t. You haven’t given up and with all the memories you have and the tales you could tell, you are a survivor and are here. And what does that tell us, about surviving? It tells us that weak as we are, a strength beyond our strength has pulled us through at least this far, at least to this day.

Foolish as we are, a wisdom beyond our wisdom has flickered up just often enough to shed its light and show us the right path through the forest, at least to path that leads forward, that is bearable. Faint of heart as you can be, a love beyond your own power has kept your heart alive. Is there away to escape memories? I wonder…