Relaxing is a dingdangdong lot harder to do than it should be. I mean really relaxing - your mind, your brain, your heart, your body, your psyche, your judgements, your demons. By definition, to relax is to make less tense, rigid, or firm; to diminish the force of; to bring relief from the effects of tension, anxiety, etc.; to release oneself from inhibition, worry, tension, etc. When was the last time you relaxed? I can't remember the last time I relaxed. Watching Dancing with the Stars does not count.
Everyone needs a person other than their spouse. That one person. The one who knows the look in your eyes is different when no one else does. The one who understands - even when they don't; who agrees with you - even when they don't; who hugs you - when they really want to hit you; who catches you when you fall. The one who thinks beyond you and ahead of you when you just can't do it. Do you watch Grey's Anatomy? Yeah, that. What Meredith and Christina are talking about when they say "you're my person." Everyone needs one of those. Do you have one? I don't think I have one, or I wouldn't feel as alone as I do so much of the time.
Vegetables are good for your body, but so many people's bodies, for one reason or another, cannot tolerate so many different vegetables. Why is that? Why do things that are good for us sometimes hurt? And things that we need to stay away from seem so impossible to resist? Life this side of heaven makes so little sense much of the time, and I've about had enough of it. I often feel like a leaf blowing in the wind that could just as easily end up crushed in the sewer as pressed in a book somewhere by someone who saw it as beautiful and worth keeping forever.
Each day is a new beginning - even when it feels like you're living out the movie Groundhog Day and nothing will ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever change. Like in that classic film (classic in our house, at least), subtle changes we make - small, seemingly imperceptible differences - can change the course of everything. At least this is what I am hoping.
All dogs do go to heaven. I believe that with all my heart - and do you know why? Because God has prepared a place for each of us in his kingdom, and I believe that for each of us that place will be our own utopia. And my eternal life will not be my own utopia without all of the dogs I have lost (and will lose) over my lifetime. My husband will be surrounded by Diet Coke and Twizzlers.
Life is not like a box of chocolates at all. I'm sorry, Forrest - yer mama was wrong. Chocolates are rich and savory. Boxes of chocolate are special - not everyday or ordinary. You don't put "box of chocolates" on your grocery list. You receive them, most of the time, as a gift that was meant as some sort of gesture of love or admiration. This is a cynical view, for sure; but I've been worked over, so NO, life is not like a box of chocolates.
Every day I wonder about, search for, and beg God to reveal what it was that he stashed within me that makes me worthy or capable of raising the precious people he put in my care. If I don't find it - and soon - it's going to be too late to tap into it to make this all turn out okay.
Doing things for others should be a selfless act. Every. Time. Did Jesus do things for others during his 33 years on earth and then go into the garden and cry to his father through prayer when no one did anything for him in return? The Bible never tells us of any such thing. He cried to his father about other things, but did he ever break down and just lose it out of sheer exhaustion? He was human, after all. He felt human pain, human emotions, human disappointment, human joy, human betrayal. Do you think he ever cried to his father that he was ready to join him NOW, and can we please just forget all of the rest of this sacrificial stuff I'm supposed to do to teach these people? Can't someone else teach them? I guess this is a conversation best filed away for when I see him face-to-face.
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