Caretaking

Caretaking

Caretaking, when it is a symptom of codependency, is being so concerned about taking care of others that we neglect to take responsible care of ourselves. It's also feeling responsible for somebody else's happiness and for their negative feelings as well.

It is good to be kind to others, but when we do things for them that they should, could and need to be doing for themselves, we are not being helpful or loving. We are encouraging overdependence.

The bottom line is motive. The codependent caretaker may look like he is doing something for someone else but he's really doing it for himself—to be liked, to have others think he is wonderful, to feel needed and wanted, or trying to earn love. But love cannot be earned. It's a gift. If it has to be earned, it's conditional and isn't love—it's need.

One of the kindest things we can do for ourselves is to take responsible care of ourselves and be responsible for our own happiness. And one of the kindest things we can do for others is to allow them to do the same. This is a part of what I believe Paul meant when he said, "Every man shall bear his own burden or carry his own load."

Unexpected Strangers

Unexpected Strangers

Imagine you were an expert mechanic working on your car and along comes a stranger and tells you what you should do to fix it. What would you think and how would you feel? At the very least I'd question the stranger's reliability.

Unfortunately, it is true that we can't trust everybody and we need to be on our guard against deceptive and dishonest people. At the same time we never know who the stranger is that has crossed our path. He/she may be an angel unawares. Or he/she may be a person in need of a helping hand, an encouraging word, or just "a cup of cold water."

Dear God ...

please give me ...
eyes to see ...
ears to hear ...
and a heart ...
to sense ...
so that ...
I will know ...
when you have sent ...
a 'stranger' ...
to me ...
in my hour of need ...
or ...
if you have brought ...
into my life ...
a person ...
in need ...
of a helping hand ...
or a touch from you ...

Thank you for hearing and answering my prayerz.

Dark Night of the Soul

Dark Night of the Soul

Some Times are called "the dark night of the soul." Most of us go through such periods. Sometimes it's just life's circumstances that get us down such as having an accident, getting sick, being betrayed by a friend, or experiencing the loss of a loved one or a job, or because of an unresolved relational conflict. And sometimes we have no idea why we feel so down.

Whatever the reason, the difficulties we are experiencing may be God's wake-up call for us to put something right in our life, to help us grow, or to motivate us to get into a recovery or counseling program to overcome a depression that has lasted too long or to help us overcome an addiction—or even motivate us to change the direction of our life.

If you are going through "a dark night of the soul" be assured that God wants to use this time to help you grow and become a better and wiser person or to change some direction in your life. For me personally, I don't think I have ever made a major change in my life or work without it having been preceded by a "dark night of the soul" period. I mean, who wants to change anything when everything is going great ? Not me ! The "dark night" times leave me open to change and to God's direction.

However, no matter what we are going through, if our lives are committed to God, of one thing we can be certain, "The eternal God is our refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms."

Dear God ...
in any dark night ...
of my soul ...
and anguish ...
of heart ...
please help me ...
to learn ...
what you are seeking ...
to teach me ...
to hear ...
what you are saying ...
to me ...
and/or to know ...
what you want me to do ...
And give me the good sense ...
and courage to follow your bidding ...

Thank you for hearing and answering my prayerz.

The Right Word

The Right Word

Mark Twain said, "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."

When English poet Keats was writing a poem he asked his friend Leigh Hunt what he thought of the line, "A beautiful thing is an unending joy."

"Good, but not quite perfect," said Hunt.

"How about this?" said Keats, "A thing of beauty is an unending joy."

Finally Keats put it this way, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

"That," said his friend, "will live as long as the English language is spoken.'

May God help us to always speak the right word ? It doesn't have to be eloquent but it needs to be straightforward, genuine, and spoken in truth from the heart ! God put it just right: "Speak the truth in love."

Dear God ...
please help me
to say the right thing
at the right time
and always speak the truth in love
and keep my mouth shut
when I need to. Always.
Even when I'm ticked off.

Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer ...

Mindset Matters

Mindset Matters

There's an old parable that explains how three men were working hard cutting stone from large blocks of granite. When asked what they were doing, the first man said, "I'm making bricks." The Second man said, "I'm cutting stones for the foundation of a large building," while the third man said, "I'm building a cathedral."

All three men were equally capable and doing the same work, so which man's work do you think would have been the most fulfilling? What mattered was each man's thinking about the purpose of the work he was doing. It wasn't his aptitude that made the difference—it was his attitude—his mindset !

One's attitude will determine the direction and purpose of one's life. The purpose of one man might be to make lots of money, while the purpose of another might be to help build the lives of the people he is serving. One woman may see housework as a burdensome chore while another does it joyfully because she is doing it for the ones she loves. It's their mindset that makes the difference.

If we want to end our life with a sense of fulfillment, it will be our mindset now that will determine how we end.

The Whale—Gratitude

"If you read this front page story in the San Francisco Chronicle, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, and a line tugging in her mouth.

"A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallon Islands (outside the San Francisco Golden Gate bridge) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her.

"They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around as if she was thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The man who cut the rope out of her mouth said her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same."

May we, who have been set free, like the divers who set the whale free, do everything we can to help others be freed from the chains of sin.

Dear God
thank you
that you are
the only one
who can set me free
from the chains of sin
Please use me
to help
bring others
to you
so that
they, too,
can be freed
from the chains
of sin.

Thank you for hearing and answering my prayerz ...

What I See Is Who I Am

Ken Crockett, in his book, I Once Was Blind, But Now I Squint, shares the experience of Pastor Ed Manning who told "about a situation when a woman approached him to ask a question. As she drew closer to him, he tipped his head back to look through the bottom lenses of his bifocals to focus on her more clearly. 'There you go again!' the woman exploded. 'You stick your nose up in the air every time I talk to you! Who do you think you are? I'm sick of your arrogant attitude!'

"Manning was taken aback by her outburst of anger. 'You don't understand,' he explained. 'I'm not sticking my nose up in the air at you. I just can't see you when you get near me. I'm tilting my head back so I can see you through the bottom half of my bifocals.'"

Sound familiar ?

Blaise Pascal said, "We view things not only from different sides but with different eyes." Or to put it another way, "We see things not the way they are, but the way we are."

For instance, if I have unresolved anger, I will see things through angry, critical eyes. If have unresolved fears, I will view things through fearful eyes. If I have a negative attitude, I will look at things through negative eyes. If I am insecure, I will see things through insecure eyes. If I am a jealous person, I will view things through jealous eyes. If I am a cheat, I will see things through cheating eyes, and so on.

Whatever I see—the way I see it will always be twisted to match my distorted perception of reality and in so doing I will rationalize my every thought and justify my every action. A very unhealthy and self-defeating way to live.

what I see is who I am. It is equally true, if I am a loving person, I will see things through loving eyes.

Choices

Michael Josephson of Character Counts shared how, "two young men in Florida removed a stop sign and brought it back to their fraternity house as a trophy. A fatal accident occurred at the sign-less intersection and the men were convicted of manslaughter.

"In Tennessee, a couple of teenagers were in a high-rise building and one took a dare by the other and slid down a trash chute in the hall—right into an automatic trash compactor. He died and his friend was traumatized, possibly for life.

"What makes these stories all the more tragic is that we're not talking about bad kids; we're talking about fundamentally decent kids who made really bad choices."

Good people can make bad choices just as bad people can make good choices. The fact is we are all the sum total of all of our past choices. Our past was shaped by the choices we made in the past. Our future will be shaped by the choices we make today.

Let us be certain not to make our choices by default, but by very careful and prayerful planning, for the choices we make will make us—for time and eternity.

Imprisoned by "Shoulds"

Do you always do what you truly want to do, or do you give in to other's wants because you are afraid to say no?

Are you swayed by what others think because you fear you won't be liked if you don't do what they want or think you should do?

A part of growth and maturity is recognizing our legitimate needs, taking responsibility for getting them met in healthy ways, and by being our own person in that we are being true to ourselves and not allowing ourselves to be controlled by what others want, think, or expect. The healthy, mature person makes decisions on the basis of what he/ she knows is right for him/ her. While we don't give in to others' demands, it doesn't mean that we never give in to their wishes. It means that we do what we choose to do, not because somebody else says we should, but because we want and freely choose to do so. Living by others' "shoulds" will imprison us!

Learn to listen to your heart. Your heart knows what you want and need. Learn to say no to others' demands when you know that to say no is the right thing for you to do. Allowing ourselves to be controlled by others' demands and "shoulds" also makes us angry inside.

Remember, without the freedom to say "no" our "yeses" are meaningless.

We can learn to listen to our heart "deep down inside us" and trust it. I was taught that I could never trust my feelings (heart). Wrong. I have since learned that I can always trust my feelings. What I can't always trust is my interpretation of them. However, with practice I'm getting much better at it, and believe I am a much wiser, healthier, and more mature person as a result.

Living, Loving and Learning

A popular song from back in the '60s or '70s by Burt Bacharach was: "What the world needs now is love, sweet love / It's the only thing that there's just too little of / What the world needs now is love, sweet love / No not just for some but for everyone."

Only those embittered and disillusioned by failure in love would disagree with those words. We were created for loving relationship, without which we limp along in the shadows of life eking out a lonely existence. And even while living with others such people may live together alone apart—and die a little every day.

It may not be most desirable, but we can live without romantic relationships, but we cannot live healthily nor can we get our love needs met without being in at least one—and hopefully—several healthy relationships.

Furthermore, we can only love and be loved to the degree that we are known. As long as I hide behind a false mask, no matter how attractive and likable that mask may be, I will never feel loved, because my mask is not me. That's the person I'm pretending to be.

Moreover, as Sydney Jourard wrote some years ago in his book, The Transparent Self, "Every maladjusted person is someone who has not made himself known to another human being and in consequence he does not know himself. Nor can he be himself. More than that, he struggles actively to avoid becoming known by another human being. He works ceaselessly at it day and night. And it is work!"

So to be healthy physically, emotionally and spiritually—and to find loving relationships—we need to come out of hiding and be real.

So how do we do this ?

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us."

I have asked hundreds of people how many feel that they would like more love in their life. In response, most hands are raised. But when I ask how they can get more love, almost all answer, "By giving love."

Sounds reasonable and works wonderfully well as long as we feel loved. The fact remains, however, that we cannot give what we haven't got. In other words I can only give love to the degree that I have been and feel loved.

In my experience I don't think there are many principles I find so simple and yet so profound in its effect—and so difficult for people to grasp—than teaching how to grow in love so that they will feel loved and have more love to give.

Here's the principle: We love God because he first loved us. We love people exactly the same way—by someone first loving us!

Love is a lesson to be learned. We don't come into the world knowing how to love—only with the capacity to learn love. If we grow up and live with love, we will learn how to love and become loving. If we don't, we won't. That is, if we don't grow up in a loving home atmosphere, we won't learn to feel loved or how to love. We become what we grow up with.

If we grew up with less than adequate love, we need to get it now. So how do we do this? We can only feel loved to the degree that we are known. In other words, to fully love we need to be fully known for who we truly are. That's the scary thing that makes it so difficult for people to grasp.

I fear that if you know who I truly am with all of my fears, faults, and failures, you won't like me, let alone love me. However, if I am with safe, loving people the exact opposite is true. The easiest people in the world to love are people who are real—who are honest—people who are not hiding behind a false mask pretending to be something or someone they are not.

In other words, I learn love by being with safe people; that is, non-judgmental, non-advice-giving, and non-trying-to-fix-me people. If you are a safe, trustworthy person, as I allow you to see my fears, failures and faults and you don't judge me, tell me what I should or shouldn't feel, be or do, but accept and love me as I truly am, little by little I learn to love and accept myself in exactly the same way. That reprogramming of the mind doesn't happen overnight. It takes time, patience, and persistence. Try as I might there is no other way to grow in love. There is no simple, quick-fix solution.

The Power of a Creed

Creeds are principles by which to live. If we want to live worthwhile and purposeful lives, it pays to choose and believe in a worthwhile and purposeful creed. Many have been written by others. A well thought-out one was written by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. It is as follows:

"I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

"I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.


"I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

"I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living, but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

"I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business, or personal affairs.

"I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.

"I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond; that character—not wealth or power or position—is of supreme worth.

"I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

"I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God … and that the individual's highest fulfillment, greatest happiness, and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.

"I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might."

We would all do well to read this creed often and practice it all year long.