“Sometimes in life, no matter how deeply we intend to make the best decisions possible for ourselves, things happen. Marriages end, jobs turn sour, friends wane. For reasons outside our control or understanding, the situation twists and turns into something other than what we bargained for. Have you been waiting for a situation to revert to what it originally was—or what you hoped it would be when you got in? Are you telling yourself that there’s something wrong with you, when the reality is, the situation has changed into something other than what you thought it was? Things often don’t go as smoothly as we planned. Sometimes, we need to endure and get through the rough spots. But I’m talking about those grindingly difficult moments when life suddenly twists on us. These are the times we need to quit torturing ourselves. Let go of what you thought would happen. If life has twisted on you, don’t turn on yourself. Don’t try to make things be the way they were. Come up to speed. Return to now. Let yours elf accept the new situation at hand.The road isn’t always a straight course. Sometimes, even a path with heart unexpectedly twists and turns. God, help me relax and trust myself enough to deal with reality, not my fantasy of what I hoped it would” via August 28: When Life Twists and Turns Language of Letting Go.
A few years ago I was in Jordan on an excursion through the Middle East. I wanted to go to Pakistan, but when I got to the Pakistani embassy in Jordan, an official ordered me to go to the American embassy, miles away, saying, “You have to get a piece of paper from your government vouching for you. That’s the only way the government of Pakistan wifi even consider your request.”
I went to the American embassy in Jordan and stood in line there all day. Finally, when it was my turn, I told the gentleman why I was there. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “There’s no such thing as an international voucher for people in the United States. That’s what a passport does. It says the American government is vouching for you, declaring you worthy and reliable to travel abroad.”
He began to speak more quietly. “He’s just messing with you,” he said, of the government official at the other agency. “Sometimes they like to play games with people, show them how much power they really have.”
I went back to the Pakistani embassy. When I returned, there was an elderly Muslim man sitting in the waiting room. He wore a turban. His head was bowed. He was reciting the Koran and rubbing his string of prayer beads.
He helped set the tone and reminded me of what I needed to do: calm down, be peaceful, stop resisting, and harmonize with the situation. It didn’t matter if the visa man was wrong and I was right. He had the power. I needed to go to him. I sat quietly waiting for my turn. When I went up to the counter, I deliberately acknowledged his point of view. Then I gently explained that I didn’t get the piece of paper he asked for from the American embassy, because that paper didn’t exist. I explained it was probably the only time in my life I’d be in this area of the world. I pointed to the poster on the wall. ‘The Himalayas are so beautiful there,” I said. “If I don’t go now, I don’t know that I ever will. You have the power to say yes or no. And I have no choice but to go along with whatever you say. It’s in your hands.”
He told me to go sit down. I did. Five minutes later, he called me back to the stand. “Here,” he said, handing me my passport. “Enjoy your visit to Pakistan.”
We have a right to get as mad as we want, but sometimes harmonizing can achieve so much more than yelling in indig nation or even fighting back. Next time you find yourself in a situation where you’re being manipulated, let go of your resistance and practice harmony instead.
God, teach me the power of moving gently, with humility and respect, through the world.
Thanks for letting me share this story from Melody Beattie’s blog with you. It speaks to me where I’m at right now, in fact, I wish I would have seen this story two days ago before I had to deal with dishwasher installers from HomeDepot… :-)
We all do it sometimes and, whether it is conscious or unconscious, it is a sure fire way to crap on the present moment. It is living life based on a future that may or may not ever happen. I call it “If-then” thinking. It sounds like this: “If so and so happens, then I will begin to start living. Then I will be happy.” Maybe you do not realize how big a role if-then thinking can play in your life. Take a moment and name something you’d like to have. For some folks, it’s a promotion. “If I get that promotion, then everything will be okay.” Others might be thinking about finding a partner. “If only I could find the right girl or the right guy, then I would be happy.” Some would like to get out of the wrong situation. “If I leave my boyfriend, then I will feel free. Or, if I divorce my wife, then it’s all good.” And still others think it’s about the money or the car or the house, “If I had a lot of money or a phat crib, then I’d get recognition, then I’d get the sex and then I’d have the power…” Blah, Blah, Blah!
Look. There is no way to live in the present moment, to appreciate life and to be a successful person, while you are stuck in If-then thinking. There will always be an underlying sense that something is wrong or missing, which is preventing you from being content. Actually the only thing preventing you from being content is the thought that you are not. I define contentment as looking at life without wishing it was different. It is a highly advanced state of mind that does not come naturally, but which is available to us all if we work for it. For effect, I will quote a rather coarse friend of mine who once stated, “If-then thinking shits in the face of contentment.”
At the mention of watching a chick flick, many husbands will make excuses as to why the couple should watch something else. They simply do not want to watch the mushy, romantic films. Many husbands wonder how their wives are so captivated by the emotional drama found in chick flicks.
Women watch chick flicks for the hero. Just like how they loved fairy tales as little girls and dreamed of their very own prince. Wives may gush about how wonderful the fictional hero is from their favorite movie, but they do not actually want that guy. They want you, their husband. They want you to be their personal hero, the prince who sweeps them off their feet.
Be her rescuer and protectorAccording to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, one of a person’s greatest needs is the feeling of safety and security. To be your wife’s hero, she wants you to be that person who makes her feel safe. This role of rescuer/protector is easier than what the action movies make it out to be. Simply be there. If she falls down, help her back up. If there is an insect or rodent, put it outside or kill it. Be there when she is scared and be there to wipe away her tears.
Romance your wifeLove your wife and remind each other why you fell in love in the first place. Let your wife know that she is lovely; her feminine heart needs to hear that. Here are 10 Ways to Romance Your Wife.
Set the example as the spiritual leader in your houseBe the spiritual leader in your household for your wife and your kids. Take the family to church and pray together. As you and your wife grow closer to God, you will also grow closer to one another.
Support herEveryone faces battles of some form in life. Be there to support your wife when she faces her battles. You cannot always fight them for her, but you can stand by her. Sometimes she may need her own personal hero to stand up for her.
Listen to her, but don’t try to fix the problemAs a husband, you will hear all about your wife’s problems and annoyances. She shares these things with you to have someone listen. You don’t need to fix her problems unless she asks you to. Just listen.
Spend time togetherWomen get jealous of other women whose husbands spend a lot of time with them. The material things long hours in the office can buy are nice, but ultimately your time is more valuable to your wife. It is also important to spend time together as a family when you have children. Spending time together is essential to maintaining a healthy marriage and family.
Pay attention to detailWomen are more detail oriented than men. Try to pay attention to little details. Notice new haircuts, compliment new clothes, and learn facial expressions. Dates are also very important. Remember important occasions such as anniversaries and holidays. Plan ahead for them in order to make reservations or find the perfect gift.
Give her a breakOnce you and your wife have children, the dynamics change some. Your wife will occasionally just need a break and a chance to escape from everything. Volunteer to watch the kids while she has a girls’ night or takes a nap. Or arrange a sitter so the two of you have a chance to get away together for a date night.
Commit to your wifeIt is not just enough in a marriage to love your wife. You need to commit to her to demonstrate that love. The most important thing is to be there; do not be an absent husband. When things get hard in life or your marriage, do not run. Work through things together. Overcoming obstacles together will strengthen your marriage.
Appreciate herLet your wife know how thankful you are for her. Take note of all the little things that she does and thank her for doing them. Let her know how important she is to you.
This independence day, I declare independence from…
Trying to manage the unmanageable…
Anger and resentment related to the first item…
Substances that stimulate or depress…
Anything that’s keeping me from being a more authentic me…
I’ll give myself 30 days and I’ve entered these issues into Habitforge to help keep me on track. July is going to be a hell of a month — you may want to wait until August to talk to me…
Washington, D.C., was in a panic as 70,000 Confederate troops were just sixty miles away near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The furious battle had lasted three days. As General Lee found his ammunition running low, he ordered General Pickett to make a direct attack. After an hour of murderous fire and bloody hand-to-hand combat, the Confederates were pushed back and the Battle of Gettysburg ended JULY 3, 1863, with over 50,000 casualties. President Abraham Lincoln confided to a general wounded in the battle: “When everyone seemed panic-stricken…I went to my room…and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed.” Days later, July 15, 1863, President Lincoln proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving, Praise and Prayer: “It is meet and right to recognize and confess the presence of the Almighty Father and the power of His hand equally in these triumphs and in these sorrows…I invite the people of the United States to…render the homage due to the Divine Majesty for the wonderful things He has done in the nation’s behalf and invoke the influence of His Holy Spirit to subdue the anger which has produced and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion.”
When you stop making them responsible for what you feel today, you access your power to really live.
Your parents OWE you nothing today. They gave you the most amazing gift of birth and life. They don’t OWE you respect, apologies, or money. When you can own this you free yourself and are no longer dependent on them for your happiness. Instead of living at the mercy of your past and simply being a reaction to your parents’ actions, you cut the umbilical cord and become free to create a life you choose.
Each moment you hold onto resentment, anger, blame, about the past, you are killing your present. What happened is done and nothing you do, or say now will change what happened. It is done.
Often we refuse to let go, and hold onto the anger at our parents because we feel dignified in doing so. They didn’t give us what we wanted. They weren’t there for us in the way we needed. They abused us, beat us, abandoned us, manipulated us, molested us, or were mean to us.
Yes, you are right. They were not right or justified in what they did.
However: “Do you want to be right or free?”
“Is being right making you happy? Is holding onto being right changing them?”
Each moment you hold onto the resentment, you keep yourself stuck in a prison of victimhood. You are not responsible for what happened to you as a child. It happened. You were young back then.
But now, today, you are responsible for what you choose to do.
via thedailylove.com. You can follow the ‘via’ link if you’d like to read the rest of the article…
Editor’s note: I wrote this post 15 years ago for father’s day and I thought it was perfect. He passed away a couple of days ago and in rereading, I realized there were a few important things that I had left out — namely, the last three points I added at the end of the post…
The original German version of the Schiller quote…
…and every day I am reminded that ‘I am my father’s son’. As I get older, I am more and more aware of the positive impact he has had on my life…
Recently, I attended Mass with my parents and there he was again — reading the Epistle at Church [photo above]. It gave me pause to think about his influence on my life. Here are just a few of the many of the things he taught me:
A Lohenry’s place is at the front of the room.
I don’t mean this in a vain way. In a world where most people would rather die or have a root canal than speak in public (Seinfeld reference), my dad modeled public speaking as a way of life for me. My earliest public memories of him are like this — reading at church, leading the worship team, etc. Because of his example, I became a consultant, a teacher and a public speaker who thrives on being in the front of the room. I am my father’s son…
It’s ok to have a big vocabulary — words have meaning and it’s good to know what those meanings are and be able to use them effectively.
I remember sitting around the dinner table and my father would bring up a ‘word of the day’ — some new word that had interested him recently. Sometimes, it would be a joke with a fractured pun with a punchline like ‘people who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones’. He passed on a love of language and wordplay that has become my passion and my craft. In my academic career, I studied German, French, Russian, Croatian, Norwegian and Italian and my mastery of English vocabulary is well-known — I can only trace this love of language and communication to his influence. I am my father’s son…
Technology is fun and awesomely powerful.
When I was in college, I was a German major and my father was a systems analyst working with mainframe computers in the ‘glass house’. Every time I wanted to understand more about his passion, he’d sit down and start drawing diagrams to explain computers at the machine level and it would go nowhere. Later still, I used one of my electives to take a FORTRAN programming class back in the day of punch cards and mainframes because I wanted to better understand his world. I gave him the final project for that class on Father’s Day 31 years ago and told him ‘I don’t ever want to have anything to do with computers ever again’. Well, it would seem that he had the last laugh on that one! These days, among other things I am a website developer and I just launched his new site yesterday. The business blogging that I do is the perfect marriage of communication and technology — again, I am my father’s son…
Adoption is a loving option.
My father met and married my mom and me when I was around three years old and he adopted me at the age of five. There was nothing in his life that prepared him for this situation but he stepped up to the challenge. I still remember going before the judge and having him ask if I wanted this man to be my father. I don’t know if it would’ve made much difference if I said no but I do know that saying yes has made all the difference in my life. Not only did my yes open the door to a lifelong relationship with a man who always did his best to be a dad but later in life when I fell in love with a beautiful single-parent much like my mom I did not think twice about whether I could adopt her son. We have formed a family of eight people who would not exist without his example. I am my father’s son…
Here are the three things I left out of the original post…
Readers are leaders.
In the early days, my dad read to me much more often than did my mother. My favorites? If I Ran the Circus by Dr. Seuss and T. S. Eliott’s ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ and in particular Macavity: the Mystery Cat.
Later on, when he had his first traumatic brain injury, I read those books back to him in the intensive care unit to test his faculties.
My parents read a lot of political thrillers like Exodus by Leon Uris. I would pick up the books when they finished them and I read way over my head but I learned an awful lot about the world from them. I am my father’s son…
Music is life.
I spent a great deal of time when I was younger sitting around the hi-fi with my dad. I don’t know where he picked up his love of music, but he was the one who passed it on to me. His favorite genre was jazz and ironically, modern jazz might be my least favorite but every now and again, I will listen to a little Dave Brubeck Time Out when I want to feel close to him again…
I still remember riding around in the car with him while he was listening to FM Jazz and tapping to the beat with his wedding ring on the roof of the car. I couldn’t wait until I got a ring and my arm was long enough to tap on the roof. I am my father’s son…
Sometimes you have to laugh.
It makes me sad to hear about the fall of Bill Cosby because when I was young, my dad really loved his sense of humor along with Bob Newhart and Vaughn Meader. We spent hours around the Hi-Fi listening to Bill Cosby’s classic take on Noah and the Ark and once in awhile, there was an appropriate time to say “Voompa, voompa, voompa” and laugh hysterically…
Vaughn Meader you say? He was a comedian who made a great living spoofing the Kennedy family. Unfortunately, his career came to an abrupt end on November 22, 1963.
Hanging with him gave me a great appreciation for good humor which I still have today. I am my father’s son…
Finally, real men cry.
That’s all, real men cry and it gives me great pleasure to know that he’s crying as he reads this just as I am crying while I write it…
I could go on and I will at some point I’m sure, but as I reread this before clicking the publish button, I’m reminded of the song ‘Leader of the Band’ — perhaps one of the world’s greatest musical testimonies to fatherhood…
The leader of the band is tired And his eyes are growing old But his blood runs through My instrument And his song is in my soul — My life has been a poor attempt To imitate the man I’m just a living legacy To the leader of the band.
I may not play guitar like Dan Fogelberg, but my ‘instrument’ is my words — spoken and written — combined with my computer skills. ‘I’m just a living legacy’ and I AM my father’s son…
The story has it that when Michelangelo was commissioned to do the sculpture of King David he looked at hundreds of blocks of marble before he decided on the “right” one. To most of us all those blocks shown to him would have looked more or less the same but for Michelangelo it needed to be a certain piece of marble – nothing else would do. Why was that? It was because he knew exactly what he wanted his David to look like. He could see the end result in front of his eyes.
When asked how he was going to create such a fine figure as King David out of such an enormous chunk of marble his answer was: “That’s easy. All I have to do is chip away everything that is not David.” Isn’t that incredible? And so easy…
But why am I telling you this story? Do you know what your David (end result) looks like? Do you know where you are going with the actions you take every day?
Did you know that about 90 % of us do not have a clear goal; do not have a clear vision of what we want?
But if we don’t have a very clear picture of what we aim at how can we reach it? How can we chip away at the rock to create our David if we don’t know what David is supposed to look like? That doesn’t make sense, does it?
Let me take a minute to illustrate a point. Because I use Google well, I was able to find a story to illustrate a point I’m trying to make for a meeting this afternoon. If I curate the content and post it to my blog, it lives on as part of MY site. Who knows how many times Google will bring people to my site to hear this story?
The beautiful view from my deck in rural northeast Wisconsin is a great reminder of the power I have to publish and promote; from anywhere to the ends of the internet!
I’ve worked hard to develop a simple blogging workflow that can empower even the most basic computer user. I don’t care if you’re Mac, Windows, Linux, or even Smartphone or iPad — my practical, tactical approach to social media can help you publish and promote your passion whatever it might be. But “Wah!”, you might say, “I don’t want to learn anything new!” Can you send an email? Can you save a bookmark? Then I can teach you how you can leverage social media to help establish your thought leadership position…
We’re now in an unparalleled time in history where everyone has the power to publish — the question is, will you take advantage of it? I post here every day, day after day, the best of the insight God has given me into leveraging these new media tools. If it makes sense to you, use it, great! If not you know the drill — comment, call or contact me and I’ll be happy to net it out for you!
Pound for pound, this may be the most effective advertising a church can buy. Because of the demographics, it beats the snot out of the Yellow Pages and other traditional forms of marketing. You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’d like to dig a little deeper…
Now.
Bright, shiny objects! 
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