Monday, November 30, 2009

Give Your Best To Relationships

A boy and a girl were playing together. The boy had a collection of marbles. The girl had some sweets with her.

The boy told the girl that he will give her all his marbles in exchange for her sweets. The girl agreed. The boy kept the biggest and the most beautiful marble aside and gave the rest to the girl. The girl gave him all her sweets as she had promised.

That night, the girl slept peacefully. But the boy couldn’t sleep as he kept wondering if the girl had hidden some sweets from him the way he had hidden his best marble.

Moral of the story:
If you don’t give your hundred percent in a relationship, you’ll always keep doubting if the other person has given his/her hundred percent..

This is applicable for any relationship like love, employer-employee relationship etc., Give your hundred percent to everything you do and sleep peacefully.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Help for a missionary

My daily read from the bible today was acts 27. And can I tell you that it was words to hear for a person in the mission field! This chapter outlines the hell Paul and other prisoners went through on their way to italy. Nothing went right, the threat of death hung over everyone from both nature and their captors. And when everything seemed to hit rock bottom, Paul gave words of encouragement saying, "we're gonna make it! But the ship is doomed."
But the ship is doomed? What!? I mean really, all most high omnipotent one? We're out here working proclaiming and teaching and working and sweating and the very ship keeping us afloat is guaranteed doomed? It just means so much from this year and three months: your work is ok and you will deal with it all and come out on the end, but remember that it's the journey and the end result, not the ship- not security and wealth or peace or family or all those things you cling to. It's as if god says,"I'm gonna strip you bare, you'll go without food for 14 days, the centurions are gonna threaten you with death regularly, and you're gonna want to die rather than continue...but this is all part of my plan. And I won't let you die, because you are mine, you hear me? I've got you, so STOP TRYING TO CLING TO THE COMFORT OF YOUR OLD LIFE!!" and then I think god would add some cute admonishment like "genius" or "brilliance" to us.
But as I write this, I have lost the furniture in my house to the battle of Caribbean mold, sleeping on a matress on the floor, I've now witnessed five cars go down to repair or regulations, I have no idea how to crank out the massive volume of work on my to do list, and my personal life swings back and forth from solid to precarious. I can't help but feel like these guys in Acts 27, but I read it and hear Paul say, "it's gonna look up, we're gonna make it...but the ship is doomed. Get over the ship, ladies and gentlemen."


-- Note to self: my ship is the preconcieved notion that even though I'm in America, things will work like they always do. But they don't. It takes two weeks and a lot of work to get a second day mail package, and people just don't read the fancy email newsletters and websites you create. Deal with it, that's your ship, and it's gonna sink...find a new way to get where you're going, and recommit to listening to Gods voice in scripture direct your path.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

I think this speaks enough on it's own

1. When I say I love you, I mean that I feel a deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection, desire to offer attentive care and protection toward a you. I am filled with a feeling of intense desire and attraction towards you. I feel a sense of underlying oneness with you that fills my heart with joy.

2. I give my love to you freely, as an expression of my own passion, and I do so without any expectation of your feelings toward me.

3. When I say “I love you” it doesn’t mean that I feel ownership over you, or that I have expectations for your behavior, or rigid ideas of our future together.

4. I love you for what you are now, not for what I hope you will someday become. I have no plans to change you. I do, however, support your own desire to grow.

5. I respect your right to you having your own feelings, and to your need to learn your own lessons in life. If I can help, I will wait to be asked, and otherwise will allow you to go through the experiences that you need and choose.

6. I will do my best to be in touch with my own feelings and desires, and communicate them to you without any expectation that you will act on them.

7. I am happy with or without you. My bliss is my responsibility alone.

8. I leave you free to be yourself: to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations, behave in ways that you decide are to your liking. I have no right to judge or change your behavior.

9. I desire that you be happy. If your time spent with me is not joyful, then you are welcome to go on your way with my love and support still with you.

10. I recognize that we are two separate whole people, who have chosen to walk side-by-side through life for a time. I rejoice in the ecstasy of the present-moments we share together.


-- Note to self: remember to act with love, not desire or need. There's a fine line.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Doors and windows

It has been said that god never closes one door without opening another. It has also been said that you draw to you those things which resonate within your soul. It has also been said that God does not bring you to something you cannot overcome. Or what kills you makes you stronger.
I think all that is amazing advice - when you're not in the midst of the mud that describes it all. It's so easy or people on the outside of our situations to say, "keep it up, suck it up, whatever" but while in the midst of it, you are giving everything you've got just to keep breathing!
Sometimes we need a break. Sometimes we need to fight. In my experience, all of those "open doors" seem to happen when I'm just too selfish to acknowledge what's really going on around me. Those moments in which I disconnect for defensive purposes are always the times when I get knocked around and there's been a lot of both lately.
So what's my advice to the closed door? What's the best thing to do for a situation that god has led you to but wil not break you?
Jump out the dang window man.
Seriously! Break convention. Quit thinking in the box, get new energy by trying the thing you don't expect to work. Maybe god closed the door and brought you to the tough spot to make you jump out the window?


-- Note to self: to get something I've never experienced before, I mist do something I've never tried. Hold my hand, I'm jumping out the window...