Moving Forward in When Others Want to Pull You Down

Lots of families have malicious gossipers. If one of these persons disagrees with you, you won't be asked to clarify or support your opinion. Instead the incident will be recounted in an altered version of the conversation where you are made to appear intolerant, accusatory, arrogant or display some other ugly trait.

I recall adults in my childhood who would attack me verbally and otherwise, imagining that they were supporting my parents who were saddled with such an awful child. The truth was that they had believed efforts to malign my character. People ask me why I never told an adult what was happening in my home when I was growing up, and I laugh at the implication that any adult would have believed me. My parents had convinced them that I was not to be trusted.

Today, most people that know my parents understand that they are the way they are and take their comments with a grain of salt. A younger family member is also this way and is better at masking her hostility and deception, and this can cause some difficulty.

If you meet her, it won't take long before this woman displays this trait. At the first sign of sympathy, she will begin to detail the many faults and crimes of her husband. Being human, he has his fair share. She tells all from the perspective of a person who is completely innocent of any contribution to her difficulties. Her mother (by her account) was horrible to her and has never properly apologized for the trauma caused by expecting her daughter to do household chores. She elevates her position as a wife, mother, sister, etc. by giving examples of the many failures around her. Her critical eye doesn't miss much and with time, she can easily give the worst motives to the most genuine comment or action.

I wasn't surprised when I heard she had wagged her tongue about me. She had sought me out for my opinion on a matter I've researched. I provided her with the information I had, reassured her that I thought she was doing her best under the circumstance and suggested that she try one of several options.

I left it at that.

However, that conversation has been retold in this way: She did not ask my opinion. I simply walked up to her and pronounced my judgment, impugning abilities and motives in an accusatory way.

Now, I know that this woman has problems. I know that she has falsely represented her parents, her husband, my parents and anyone else that ever suggested that there might be another approach to her decision making process. I've listened to her embellish the mistakes of others until they appeared criminal. I also know that when she asks me for advice, it is more often a craftily laid trap to give her ammunition. I know these things, and I still care about her and her children. And it still hurts to know that she takes the time to gossip and paint me as a monster.

I do feel a little better to know that no one that knows me believes her. I'm glad they would let me know.

How do you move forward when this happens in your family?

Well, I haven't the time or the energy to bother correcting a misbehaving adult. I've offered her my time and attention whenever she requested it and given many opportunities for her to leave her bad habits behind until I have finally decided to decline opportunities to visit. Thankfully, she lives too far away to visit often. I regret not having a closer relationship with her family, but I can't expend time and emotion trying to work around the drama related to all of that at the expense of my own family. Mostly, I'm just thankful for the miles that separate us. If she were physically closer, it would be more difficult.

I love her. I love her family. I love their children. Moving forward in this instance means not making myself or my family an easy target. Family doesn't always mean friendly. Those that should love and support you often don't. So, I'll be even more guarded. I'll not offer any advice, even when asked. I'll be cool, demure, nod and smile with one eye on the nearest exit when I'm in her presence.

Life's just too short to spend it building bridges others are trying to rip apart.

So whether you are struggling to leave behind the ones that refuse to join you on the journey, or wondering if it's worth it to lay aside the hurts and grievances, I invite you to join me. Set aside the things that humans fight and posture over. We have something better to move towards. Let's move forward!

Sweep Around Your Own Front Door -- Adult Siblings

Relating to siblings as adults is not a simple matter. Some people embrace adulthood. Others avoid it by rehashing their childhoods again and again in an effort to extract apologies from everyone that they think wronged them.

While you can choose your friends, you cannot choose your family. This means you will spend a lifetime being related to people that may or may not ever get over themselves. Add to this the fact that these individuals marry others that have struggles of their own.

This is (overall) not a problem for me. However, as I've aged, tolerating perpetual victims has become more of a challenge. When you've endured loss and come out the other side, you just want to celebrate and be grateful to be alive. Additionally, if you have grown to the point that you make an effort to focus on the blessings in your lives, it's difficult to be around those that like to take inventory of the disappointments.

In my family's dynamic, I am often left trying to perform a balancing act. My parents are racist and malicious gossips. They offer opinions and directions to adults as though they are given to a toddler. They regularly disrespect others and disrupt gatherings with their bickering. My job is to honor them, not to approve of them.

Younger siblings have found that it is easier to love parents from afar and have moved their families to other states and counties. However, some siblings went to the effort of packing up and taking their angst to their new addresses. This means that if they ever visit my parents, they come with unresolved histories and the expectation that their absence has somehow humbled these people. These are the same parents that have spent a lifetime defending their indefensible actions.

Add to this the fact that there seems to be some expectation placed upon older siblings to act as a go-between. I regularly disappoint others in this area. I don't carry tales or take sides. It also doesn't help that I choose to treat adults as adults. I'm have sympathy for childhood struggles. I agree that children should be loved, provided for and protected. I am not, however, the righter of all wrongs. I will not be beating up my parents emotionally or otherwise to make someone else feel better.

It's regrettable that families have financial struggles. However, I refuse to use my resources to help family members whose children enjoy luxuries denied to my own because we live within our means (or try to). We don't take expensive trips. It's each family's prerogative to spend their days and resources traveling to various activities. It's my prerogative to not empty my pantry in order to support another's lifestyle choices.

The fact that I'm not taking sides, not attacking my parents, and not shelling out hard earned money to fend of self-made crisis means that I am often not very popular among some siblings. Apparently, they have looked at me, my time and my resources as items owed them from a substitute parent. It's easier to take out their frustrations on me. . . . And I'll admit that I'm not very cooperative.

The road goes both directions. I've traveled for gatherings, made calls, opened my home, etc. The doors are still open at my house, but I no longer beg and plead for others to take the time. I finally got smart and realized that if I wore myself out to get them to spend time with me, I hadn't won a very good prize when all I got for the trouble was an afternoon of listening to complaints or witnessing disrespectful behavior towards old people.

Relationships shouldn't be the equivalent of picking at an infected wound. We need to learn how to apply some salve and let things heal. There might be a scar, but that's life. Why throw away our future and all of our todays playing the victim? My only conclusion is that it just hasn't gotten painful enough for some people. They haven't reached the bottom; it hasn't gotten bad enough for them to turn around and start living.

The message here is:
For parents -- If you want to have a relationship with adult children, respect them as adults and use your manners.
For siblings -- Get over yourself. You aren't the only person with a painful childhood. Did someone molest, abuse, neglect, hurt your feelings? Here's a news flash, the children you grew up with all experienced the same things, but they aren't waiting on you to fix their screw ups and they aren't blaming their problems on you. If you're mad at mom & dad, don't expect big sis or brother to be mad too. It's time to grow up.
For SIL's --
A. Your husband isn't a mess because he had siblings that didn't know how to parent him. If he's lied to you about other things, he's probably lying about his childhood. He isn't a pitiful victim, but he will play that card as long as you let him.
B. Just because we aren't willing to help you emasculate your husband doesn't mean we think he's right. We aren't the enemy.
C. We would love to be your friend, but we aren't going to take sides against our brother just to make you feel better. Quit trying to drag us into and blame us for your marital problems.
D. We have a shared history. Please stop being jealous when we laugh or talk together. Don't punish us because your spouse neglects you and the children. An hour with us only proves that he COULD spend time with you if he WOULD. It's not our fault that he doesn't, and he will only avoid us if you make it an issue. We aren't the reason that he doesn't do what he should. We aren't blaming you, please stop blaming us.
For Older Siblings -- Life's too short to waste it chasing around younger brothers and sisters trying to maintain a relationship when they refuse to grow up and take responsibility for their own lives. Reach out, but direct your focus to your own immediate family ties and friendships. Invest yourself in that which gives the greatest return.

“Let everyone sweep in front of his own door,
and the whole world will be clean.”
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When it comes to siblings, that's good advice!

Loving a Bitter, Angry Person

It's amazing how much progress you can sometimes make without realizing it. What I am writing here is just a point along the way. I've not yet arrived, but looking back, I've certainly traveled a LONG way!

Love is such an enriching part of marriage. It colors everything. Love is the oil that makes the rough places smooth, that soothes the hurt and makes the bumps and bruises of this life a little easier to take. Just as God loves us, He asks us to love each other. When we do as He has commanded, when we follow the Creator's instructions, this institution He has designed works wonderfully!

I'm a romantic at heart. I can see the romance in painting a room together, a cup of coffee without having to ask, and someone offering to do something for me 'just because.' Grand gestures make me suspicious of the motives behind them. I guess that this is because it's just easier to throw money at something hoping to make yourself look better than it is to consistently extend kindnesses.

Then again, I've also seen people that would extend kindnesses as a way of getting a free pass for bad behavior. The neighbor lady that 'just wants to help' may offer to clean your kitchen and organize your cupboards only as a way of keeping you captive long enough to collect juicy tidbits for gossip. If you are upset with her later for telling tales, she will feign hurt that you didn't think better of her after all she's done for you.

Yes, I'm a romantic, but I'm also a realist.

I know what it is to love and love well. I've had glimpses of what it is to be loved well. I am the wife of a man that cares much about how he provides for his family, and I can tell you that I love him with all my heart. I've cared for him through sickness and health. I've borne him children, learned to cook his favorite foods and read his various moods. This is the man I've grown old with. I love his work worn hands and the years of toil they represent. I love the feel of his arms around me and his breath against my neck. I long for times of solitude with him when he only sees me, and I don't have to compete with the cares of the day.

Every day I rise with the hope of his embrace.

I do not expect it, however.

As we have aged, my husband has grown angry and bitter. Mostly, he is a fearful man. Most of those fears are unnamed ones. He doesn't give them voice. Instead, as difficulties or challenges arise in his work day or at home, he just glowers and growls. He doesn't like people much . . . and I'm a people.

We don't talk because it makes him angry to have a conversation. This means that he lives mostly inside of his own head. He is an observer without context. He sees things around him and assumes that he knows how they got that way, what led to the circumstance. He determines whether this is good or acceptable and then he becomes angry. Most of the time, we blindly try to please him by guesswork. Since it makes him angry to explain things, we aren't really sure what he wants. Sometimes, we get things JUST RIGHT! That's a time for celebration.

More often, though, I miss the elusive mark. I keep trying and have become quite skilled at this 'pin-the-tail-on-his-wants' game (or is it Marco Polo?). The difficulty is that after a lifetime of convincing himself that he MUST be afraid and that he MUST be angry, these emotions have become a sort of security blanket. As awful as it must be for him to feel this way, it is familiar; it is comfortable.

The sad part of it all is that I've had to let go of my notions of what it is to be a wife and to be loved. That feminine and soft side of me has faded away and a hard, practical woman has taken her place. The woman that would lavish so many daily extras, affection and good things on this man if he would just let her, was stifled and squelched long ago.

I wake each day. I don't get my hug. I move on. Life awaits.

There are more good reasons to stay in this marriage than there are reasons to leave. In fact, you might even say that I've already been 'put away.' However, I've retained my address and my children have grown up in an intact home. They don't have to juggle holidays or figure out where to go for special occasions. There's one single address.

The truth is that as love is defined in Scriptures, I've accepted that my husband does not love me . . . and I'm not much liked or wanted in my own home, either.

How do you get up every day and face that? How do you manage to put one foot in front of another when your heart is broken, caring for someone that despises you and scowls at the sight of you?

Well, it isn't easy. It is doable however. A lot of it has to do with knowing who you are and who your spouse is.

I am a loved child of the Most High, created for His use and purpose. I am a help meet to a man that has believed too many lies about himself to know the truth about me. That's okay. Life is short. I can love him in this life, and he can come to understand truth in the next. It's not my job to enlighten him.

Are there times when I want the meanness to stop? Would it be a relief to wake each day and finally see a friendly face? Yes! So, I keep some animals around. That way, something is available for a cuddle or offers me a friendly greeting. They even seem to soften my husband a bit. I take my kindnesses when they are offered and give thanks for them. I hurt. I admit that. But life is about more than how much I've been hurt.

Life is about living and living it well. Life is about realizing that you have a purpose even if those closest to you don't believe it's true. It's about knowing you deserve to be loved, even when you are not. To do the noble thing is not to do the convenient or the easy thing. To love when it's free and easy is nothing more than the most base among us would do. That kind of love is only self-serving.

But when we love in spite of the unloveliness . . . That is a thing of beauty. It's the flower that blooms in the snow, the sparrow that sings in the storm.

My husband is angry. He does not love me.

I love him. I love him. I love him. By God's grace, I love him. And God loves me!

Mining For Gold

As we worked a boy told me how there were things he would never do the way his parents did. I listened to his noble goals and remembered feeling the same way for much of my youth.

We continued working while he talked, and I considered my response.

I held up two of the tools we were using. I told him, 'We learn so many things from our parents. It's easy to see the flaws and mistakes. For instance, you might say that your parents used one of these tools and things didn't go so well for them, so you have determined to never use that tool. Instead you will use this one. However, what seldom occurs to any of us is that neither tool is a good choice. When we choose our actions by avoiding someone's failure, we forget that there are uncountable ways to do something wrong. Often we just end up choosing another version of wrong.'

His eyes grew wide with alarm. How could any of us do better if we are only choosing between uncountable versions of the wrong way to do things?

I let that sink in for a while and then continued.

'I believe that God gives us parents not so that we can critique their mistakes. That would take us a lifetime. Instead, life is like attending a school where the subjects aren't named. Our first instructors are our parents and our opportunity is to learn from them the things they did correctly. We sift out the bits of grit and sand in search of the gold which is the things they got right. Then we build upon that and do better than they did.'

I thought about my own bitter parents. My childhood memories are punctuated with images of a mother given to emotional rages and a withdrawn, critical father. They were so often locked in their own power struggles that we children were left unprotected and insecure. Then I returned to our conversation.

'My parents did some things very well. My mother was a very compassionate woman. She would take us children with her as she drove people to church who were blind and had no family to care for them. She would take meals to others, wash their feet and cut their hair. My father had such a head for figures, he never needed a calculator. He loved the precision of mathematics, music and art. He delighted in the orderliness of creation and how a well tended seed would germinate, grow and yield an increase. Mother loved to sing. Father loved to learn. They did these things well.'

The boy considered my words. 'Do you mean that I could do things BETTER than my dad? HOW?' He seemed afraid to hope.

'Because,' I told him, 'God made you the son of a man that did some things with excellence. You have the opportunity to see those things lived out in real life. You can learn how do do them by learning from his example. Then, you will be able easily do as well as he did. With effort, you will become even more skilled at things it took him a lifetime to master. But these things only come to those that are willing to embrace the good, not just on reject the bad.'

'If you want to take a course in mechanics, you don't go to the gymnasium to find an instructor. Some of us have parents that have no idea how to train children, how to love a spouse, how to be patient, how to express love . . . That doesn't mean they weren't good at SOMEthing. You just have to find out what that something was and learn from it. There are always more things a parent is NOT good at than things a parent IS good at doing.

'Running around declaring how we will never do whatever the way our parents did is a trap. We end up avoiding a particular mistake while creating a new version of the same error. Mine for the gold and let God fill in the gaps. Trust the design of the Creator. He knows what He's doing -- even if He uses some of the most curious people to get it done.'

The boy smiled. 'I think you've got a lot of gold,' he said.

I smiled back and thought, I could have had more if I had known these things at his age.

Help Meet to a Husbandman

There is a lot of information in various circles of believers regarding how God organized the family structure. Much has been written using the words authority, headship, patriarchal, etc. My own life experience has proven that there are far more sick variations that twisted minds have devised than there are genuine, loving homes and marriages that seek to honor the Creator.

When God created man He placed him in the garden and told him to tend it. In this environment, Adam learned what it meant to be keeper of his domain. It was in this context that woman was created, given to him as a wife. Man was called her head.

Later, God describes the relationship as that of Christ to the church -- her Savior and Redeemer.

I heard a very wise man once say that anyone can tear down and destroy, but it takes a real man to build. If you examine the word husband, it is a derivative of the word husbandman. Just as a husbandman tends the plants, land and animals in his domain, creating an environment where they can flourish and bear fruit -- a husband tends to those in his domain, that they may flourish and become . . . more. More of what they could or should be given the things they need to GROW.

Do husbands have power? Do they have authority? Are they in charge?

Of course. They have the same power, authority and influence as the work worn farmer returning from the fields. His domain bears witness to his influence, the wisdom of his decisions and the power of his labor. In the examples of Scripture -- those heads which God favors -- they are those which are husbandmen. The story of the good steward tells of how God measures stewardship -- by the return. Go to the calloused-handed farmer and tell him about the glories of his headship over his land and he will laugh wryly at your pictures of absolute dictatorship. He knows what it takes to be a successful husbandman. And that is what it takes to be a husband that God honors.

Why is this important? Because the efforts that wives make to honor a man within his own home are offerings of grace, nothing less. He is her savior, her husbandman. She is his help meet, a daughter of the Most High. Those that fear God would do well to remember that our conduct reflects our true belief.

I've seen beautiful, vivacious, talented and gifted women ground beneath the heel of arrogant, selfish, demeaning attempts at manhood. A few decades of that treatment and they begin to wane in many ways -- especially the physical. If this kind of man were a dairyman, he would leave his stock to feed and milk themselves and then berate them for looking poorly. Anyone with sense would see the foolish dairyman for what he is, but we chide and berate wives that have endured the same treatment for the sake of Christ.

Instead, I suggest that we look to the example of a true help meet -- Abigail. Her husbandman was a churlish man. He did not look well to the ways of his domain. Those charged to his care had their very lives endangered by his careless habits. Abigail did not gloss over the truth of his actions. She accepted them for what they were and stood in the gap when lives were at stake. She saw that all they had been given was a charge from the Almighty, and she dared not squander that which had been placed within her hands to protect and tend. So, when Nabal would have let others die for the sake of his belligerence, his help meet, Abigail, took action that turned the tide. She did not add to the sin of his actions.

A true help meet, helps a man tend that which has been entrusted to him. She doesn't increase his error. She mitigates it so that eternal purposes are honored. She is not his judge. She is his helper. She tends and cares for his domain that there might be an increase in things physical, mental, emotional and physical.

Sometimes, the task of a help meet is to quietly believe the truth even when her husband has believed a lie. Some husbands will want wives that act as their conscience, their mother, their taskmasters, their managers, etc. There are far more men that would much prefer to leave off the responsibilities of husbandship. They chase after selfish means and motives to the hurt of those left in their charge. They shift about for someone to carry their load and take the blame.

We wives aren't to be at odds with them. Leave God to be the righteous judge. Rather we are to walk in the light of truth, not in religious customs, and trust that God will make provision as we honor Him and His design for the family. There may well be men that will never step into the role God has ordained, but our challenge as wives is to live in such a way that our husband COULD step into that role if he WOULD. Let's not be a stumbling block by adding to their excuses for rebellion.

And, for the record ladies, we ARE emotional creatures. If we did not need men to work to create an environment where we could flourish, God would not have ordained it so. Rather than beat each other up for feeling frustrated, upset, bewildered and even angry with the challenges we face following an imperfect husband, it's high time we encouraged each other along the way. It's time we took our emotions to God and acknowledged them rather than trying to pretend they don't exist by sedating ourselves with inappropriate relationships, food, careless spending, bitterness, etc.

Will we find that God's resources can meet our need? Will we trust that the supply will be there when it is most required? Or will we follow the temptation to surrender to the despair? Will we declare victory during the raging storm? Or will we sink into silent hopelessness? We may not choose the circumstance, but I do believe God is waiting to give us hope in those circumstances.

Go to God and tell Him the truth about what you are feeling and LISTEN to His response. Admit your part in it and work on yourself. Another cigarette, another drink, another piece of chocolate -- none of these help to do anything but to distract you from the real issue. You feel used, neglected, unloved. Tell Him and remember His words. You may not have a husbandman, but that isn't because God wouldn't love to give you one. . . . and He has made provision for those that are left as widows -- even widows within their own marriage.

I know even as I write these words that there are some 'suffering saints' that have made a career of religious martyrdom, criticizing their men and holding them up to ridicule. If you are one of those, you won't likely recognize this about yourself. All the more reason to pray with humility. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God. Those things that we so casually condemn in others, He will not bear lightly in our own lives. If we could see it in others as an error, the obvious question is why we did not deal with it in our own.

So, if you are hurt or hurting, be sure that you are not increasing the damage done by the one to whom you've pledged yourself. Sometimes we have to honor the dishonorable so that he can see some things for himself. A husbandman learns what works best with his domain by seeing the results of his effort. Let him learn and allow the chafing of the process to do a good work in you also.

Do not believe the lie that you are less. Even if your man has believed this lie, you needn't trust it. Expect more from yourself and from him. Live each day as though THIS will be the day your efforts bear fruit in your home. . . one day you will be right.

Remember that monarchies were first devised by unbelieving and rebellious men. Pray for your husband if he determines to be the lord of his castle rather than God's husbandman. Pray that God will become his Lord and that his heart will be returned to that which pleases God and bears fruit in the home. Show him the daily ministry of undeserving grace.

With God's strength and aid, may our husbands all be true husbandmen. May they look back over the result of their labors, praising God for the increase.

Unexpectedly Blessed!

Well! After the last few posts, you may be thinking that life is just all rough, tough stuff. There's plenty of that for sure.

However, you should also know that just as it gets very dark, when you think your heart can't take another hurt, He knows just how to send you reminders that He knows, He hears and He cares. Look for them or you'll miss them.

Bitterness can rob you of them also. Bitterness has a way of warping your perspective and robbing you of gratitude so that you become so wrapped up in your own swirl of emotional turmoil, you can't enjoy the blessings that are waiting for you.

One of the things I like to do is to follow my heart when it comes to giving. It's the part of me that sees something and thinks it might be of use to someone, or recalls how much an item might have meant to me once. If I have a little to spare, I like to get those things and look for opportunities to share . . . because you KNOW others are out there struggling too!

I had done this very thing last week, before I knew the heartache this week would bring. I had spied some items and sent them on their way before I had a chance to procrastinate. All week I waited to hear the package had arrived. It did and with it came the welcome report that it had proved as useful as I'd hoped. Sure enough, my heart-friend (one of those 2-way relationships that is spread over too many miles and too few opportunities to talk/converse/communicate) let me know that the items were somehow just the very things she would have selected for herself.

How could I know?

I couldn't have! That's the beauty of it. God knew. He knew that she would be delighted, and He allowed me to have the means to send her that blessing. The same Lord that knew her heart knows mine. Just as He sent her that which delights her heart, He will delight to do the same for me in His time, in His way by His means.

Yes, my heart is still grieving. Yet, in this dark time, there is hope. God can still use me. ME -- a cracked, chipped, worn, old vessel -- the one that others can so easily misjudge and revile -- HE comes to break bread at MY table and I am humbled. I am honored.

I will rejoice. I will praise Him, because HE is the reason to hope.
All that man can do is all that man can do.

I am HIS. I am blessed. The darkness yields to His light!

Demanding While Undeserving

It's easier to demand what you don't have

than it is to accept you are undeserving
of the blessings lavished upon you.

There are many things I don't have that I would like to demand.
I want to demand things on behalf of my children.
I don't have enough room to list the assorted demands
I'd like to place upon my spouse. *blush*

Hey, I'm even smart enough to know that I shouldn't make selfish demands. While others might demand leisure, ease and prosperity, I would go for things I see as needs -- items which are good by anyone's measure. I might even demand we all give peace a chance.

The thing is, while I'm making those demands and seeing them go unmet, I'm robbing myself of something precious. I'm like the little child that walks past all of the toys in my room and proclaims I haven't anything to play with, or the growing boy that stares at a kitchen full of food and states that there isn't anything to eat, or the teenaged girl with a closet full of clothes that declares she hasn't anything to wear.

As a young woman, I would hear all of the things that I should have without asking or demanding and I would become angry. Focused on these unmet needs/rights/necessities/etc. I would demand them from the people/places/things that had already neglected these things. Predictably, I would be disappointed. While I was busy demanding and running off to fix things with my own talents/abilities/strength, I had forgotten to do an inventory of the things I already had.

I was so busy jousting at windmills that weren't interested in my crusade that I was not willing to admit I had been blessed, and greatly so. In fact, I had received an abundance that I could not have secured on my own behalf or known to ask for if given the opportunity. There were those who crossed my path that I could have blessed with my abundance. But I took the coward's way.

It is easier to make angry demands, to fearfully clutch at that which is just beyond our grasp. We are afraid that if we don't do this, we won't get the biggest slice, the choice selection, the best place in line. To be content is to run the risk that we will be overlooked . . . by whom? It is so much more difficult to hold ourselves accountable for our blessings -- to realize that Someone hasn't overlooked what is most important and that someone else would be grateful to share them.

Am I lonely? Someone out there needs a friend. Find them.
Am I bored? I have talents that need to be put to use.
Are my days empty? Someone is overwhelmed and needs a hand.
Has my world come crashing down? Give the person next to you a hand.
They're hurting too and in need of a little hope.
Am I weak? It's time to discover a different kind of strength.
If I'm weeping, I should share the tissues.

The difference between demands and gratitude can make ALL the difference.
Rather than picking through the rubble of our lives and trying to make sense of it all, it's time to check on our neighbor and help them get to higher ground. Just as we received what we needed today, we will receive what we need tomorrow from the same wise One that took care of us yesterday. Wherever we are, in the midst of pain or grief, we have still been blessed. Grieve, mourn and do an inventory.

A wise person once told me not to let the holidays just happen to me. I was to be alone that year. The lonely holidays would be a reminder of all that had gone terribly wrong leading up to that point. There wasn't money to make a special meal, send cards or buy the trappings that accompany the celebration. Days stretched before me in which I could easily have drowned in despair as I reflected on it all. Instead, I found a place to volunteer to serve meals. All day, I offered smiles and helped people find seats. I offered them the things that I knew I needed.

Then, one woman changed my perspective. She was there with her three small children all under the age of 5 or so. I helped her juggle plates and little hands and got them all settled. She looked at me and told me how that her husband had left her alone with the children and she had just been diagnosed with cancer. All day, I had been thinking that these people were more fortunate than me. At that point, I grew up a little and realized that I wasn't the only person struggling, that my difficulties weren't even the worst in the world. I realized that I didn't have a patent on suffering. Bad things happen. People hurt. We can ease one another's burden with what little we have: time, a smile, a touch, a look, a word.

Hold your blessings with an open hand. You can see them better that way -- and you can more easily share them.