Some of you keep up with me by Facebook and some of you keep up here, not a lot of you are in both places.
I don't want you to miss this one though.
Single Dad Laughing is a good blog. He writes a lot of truth. I don't love or agree with it all, but who agrees with everything, right?
You may have read and remember this post. It's worth going back and read it again.
Dan has written another pretty amazing post.
You shouldn't miss it.
It made me think again about one of my life experiences. Years ago I read the Bible cover to cover. My take away was this Christian thing might not be as complicated as we make it out to be. To me, the Bible said, "love God first, then love people." It was that simple.
I believe still that it is that simple.
We forget. Under the labels, people are just people.
Love people.
Now, go read.
Anything Other than Straight
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Friends & Lovers
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Do you agree with Nietszche's quote: "Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.
The short answer is no.
I think in a way what Nietszche is trying to get at is the obvious, people are complex and not perfect and that when you are friends or love a person, you see and are aware of the whole, yet don't focus on the faults, the imperfections or the weaknesses.
It's wise and true.
To see only a certain slice of a person is to not see them.
To see them and focus on the broken, bad, negative, faulty, etc. is unkind and unwise. Yes, I know the whole thing about keeping someone accountable or iron sharpening iron and so on. There is a very, very fine line between helping and harming.
Always, always check yourself when you are helping in the above ways. Then check yourself again.
Then and only then, say it all if you must.
Later when you think on it and replay it over in your mind and you have a hesitation or an unsettled feeling or even the crystal clear "I probably shouldn't have..." go back and apologize.
But give a real apology. Not a fake one fishing for attention for yourself. Not one that makes the entire thing now about you. Not one out of obligation.
Do it out of genuine humility and with full knowledge that you yourself are far less than perfect also and if another person wanted to sharpen you or hold you accountable there would be more than plenty available for subject matter.
A friend sees the good, brings it out and doubles it.
A lover cherishes it.
Be wise enough and open minded enough to know that love is undefined. To me the command is love one another. There seem to be infinite ways to love. Millions of shades of what is called love.
We are stingy with love.
We are afraid to full on love people.
It's a shame. So much of life is missed out on, lost if you will, because we don't just let ourselves love. We don't say the words. We don't take the actions. We don't risk ourselves. We don't open our souls because we know the hurt.
Our wisdom to protect ourselves is just the other side of the sword that cuts deep.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Maybe There Is Good Bye After All
The measure of a man? Of a life well lived? Of a well lived life?
Pretty much standing room only tonight at Bob's funeral.
As I looked around the crowded room, there were faces I sort of recognized and many that I didn't. There were a few that I did know. A hand full of the class of '89. (Thanks Kelly for helping me find my way in and not leaving me standing in the door.)
What I did see clearly in that room full of faces, was your beautiful soul.
I saw the lives you touched and the love you gave.
We heard it in the music. (Nathan, thanks is not enough.)
And driving home I knew how to say good by. You won't be forgotten, not with a room full of lives touched by yours.
All that love.
You loved all of us with an open hand, kept us and let us go as we needed.
And so in the same way, I let you go, not to be forgotten, but to give us both peace.
Pretty much standing room only tonight at Bob's funeral.
As I looked around the crowded room, there were faces I sort of recognized and many that I didn't. There were a few that I did know. A hand full of the class of '89. (Thanks Kelly for helping me find my way in and not leaving me standing in the door.)
What I did see clearly in that room full of faces, was your beautiful soul.
I saw the lives you touched and the love you gave.
We heard it in the music. (Nathan, thanks is not enough.)
And driving home I knew how to say good by. You won't be forgotten, not with a room full of lives touched by yours.
All that love.
You loved all of us with an open hand, kept us and let us go as we needed.
And so in the same way, I let you go, not to be forgotten, but to give us both peace.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Love Goes Viral
Sometimes good things happen on the Internet. Sometimes very good things.
Something very good is happening over at Single Dad Laughing.
Take a look at these two posts. They are well worth every second you spend reading them.
This: http://www.danoah.com/2011/11/
and this: http://www.danoah.com/2011/11/
Love is not judgement, but grace.
I for one would rather stand in front of God at my judgment and plead my case for having loved too many without bounds.
Something very good is happening over at Single Dad Laughing.
Take a look at these two posts. They are well worth every second you spend reading them.
This: http://www.danoah.com/2011/11/
and this: http://www.danoah.com/2011/11/
Love is not judgement, but grace.
I for one would rather stand in front of God at my judgment and plead my case for having loved too many without bounds.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Be Kind
Abuse is abuse. Period.
Abuse is all up in the news again these days. There are a pack of nasty adults doing the unthinkable to kids.
As Christians we talk a lot about how sin is sin. No sin is greater than the other. There is no sliding scale, even though we like to see it that way. It's our human nature it seems, to be bent on justification. We are forever saying to ourselves, well, sure, I did xyz wrong, but it's not as bad as him because he did abc.
An abuser is a bully and a bully is an abuser. It's all about power, no matter the "issue".
Maybe it's about race. Maybe it's about your social status. Maybe it's about your religion. Maybe it's about your politics. Maybe it's about your disease. Maybe it's because you are challenged or handicapped in some way. Maybe it's about your lover.
Abuse happens to adults and kids. Sometimes it's physical, sometimes it's not. Neglect counts. Words count. With holding love or support counts. Abuse can look like a lot of different things, but you know it when you feel it.
We cannot discount each others experiences. I cannot say to someone, well, your momma didn't beat you with an electric cord so you were never abused by the years of her saying you were stupid. I can't say to a person, oh well, you weren't raped in the locker room, so enduring years of being called names wasn't abuse. So what if your family didn't furniture or food because the money went to drugs or alcohol, that's not abuse because no one hit you and your body bears no physical scar.
Yes, they are different, but they are the same.
I don't want any of my kids to be bullied for any reason. Not because they're short or fat or wear glasses or want a same sex partner or want to practice a non-mainstream religion. I don't want them bullied because their eyes are slanted or their skin is brown or they are deaf. I don't want them abused because they are Autistic or walk with a limp or have birth parents in jail.
Just as each one of us is made of a million and one unique distinctions, that leaves us a million and one "reasons" to judge and bully.
Be kind to each other.
Abuse is all up in the news again these days. There are a pack of nasty adults doing the unthinkable to kids.
As Christians we talk a lot about how sin is sin. No sin is greater than the other. There is no sliding scale, even though we like to see it that way. It's our human nature it seems, to be bent on justification. We are forever saying to ourselves, well, sure, I did xyz wrong, but it's not as bad as him because he did abc.
An abuser is a bully and a bully is an abuser. It's all about power, no matter the "issue".
Maybe it's about race. Maybe it's about your social status. Maybe it's about your religion. Maybe it's about your politics. Maybe it's about your disease. Maybe it's because you are challenged or handicapped in some way. Maybe it's about your lover.
Abuse happens to adults and kids. Sometimes it's physical, sometimes it's not. Neglect counts. Words count. With holding love or support counts. Abuse can look like a lot of different things, but you know it when you feel it.
We cannot discount each others experiences. I cannot say to someone, well, your momma didn't beat you with an electric cord so you were never abused by the years of her saying you were stupid. I can't say to a person, oh well, you weren't raped in the locker room, so enduring years of being called names wasn't abuse. So what if your family didn't furniture or food because the money went to drugs or alcohol, that's not abuse because no one hit you and your body bears no physical scar.
Yes, they are different, but they are the same.
I don't want any of my kids to be bullied for any reason. Not because they're short or fat or wear glasses or want a same sex partner or want to practice a non-mainstream religion. I don't want them bullied because their eyes are slanted or their skin is brown or they are deaf. I don't want them abused because they are Autistic or walk with a limp or have birth parents in jail.
Just as each one of us is made of a million and one unique distinctions, that leaves us a million and one "reasons" to judge and bully.
Be kind to each other.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
2 Quotes 4 The Morning
nice girls don't change the world....lynne hybels
"The best thing I ever did was tiptoe out of isolation and join the circle of women. We need to choose to believe we are all in this together. We need to accept and honor our own lives so we can accept and honor each other's lives. When we do this, when we help one another, cheer one another on, call one another to our truest and highest selves, we become a powerful force for good--for God--in this world." (emphasis mine) pg 86
cold tangerines....shauna niequist
"When I think about how God make us to live, when people talk about true community or true intimacy, I think of them, this lovely, bizarre group of teenage girls who came over unannounced and never left when they were supposed to, who let me into their fears and their secrets, and cared about my fears and my secrets. They loved me with a force that I think only comes with youth, a wide and fierce and expressive force, and I loved them with that same love, because being with them let me live like I was young.
They uncovered something good in me that had started to get crusted over by grown-up life and dress pants and mortgage payments. They taught me more than I ever taught them, and they gave me more than I ever gave them, and the best things they gave to me were ten gorgeous examples and all the permission in the world to love with that wide-open love, unmeasured and uncalculated, like a puppy in a box with all of her puppy-friends, right up close to them, feeling warm and safe." emphasis mine pg 35
Words to how I often feel about relationships and how if we're really following the command to love one another and we're getting it right, it's a breath taking dance to behold and to be a part of.
"The best thing I ever did was tiptoe out of isolation and join the circle of women. We need to choose to believe we are all in this together. We need to accept and honor our own lives so we can accept and honor each other's lives. When we do this, when we help one another, cheer one another on, call one another to our truest and highest selves, we become a powerful force for good--for God--in this world." (emphasis mine) pg 86
cold tangerines....shauna niequist
"When I think about how God make us to live, when people talk about true community or true intimacy, I think of them, this lovely, bizarre group of teenage girls who came over unannounced and never left when they were supposed to, who let me into their fears and their secrets, and cared about my fears and my secrets. They loved me with a force that I think only comes with youth, a wide and fierce and expressive force, and I loved them with that same love, because being with them let me live like I was young.
They uncovered something good in me that had started to get crusted over by grown-up life and dress pants and mortgage payments. They taught me more than I ever taught them, and they gave me more than I ever gave them, and the best things they gave to me were ten gorgeous examples and all the permission in the world to love with that wide-open love, unmeasured and uncalculated, like a puppy in a box with all of her puppy-friends, right up close to them, feeling warm and safe." emphasis mine pg 35
Words to how I often feel about relationships and how if we're really following the command to love one another and we're getting it right, it's a breath taking dance to behold and to be a part of.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Scars Are Like Tattoos With A Better Story
And this is where you earn your chops or as The Mr. says, where we get our street cred as foster parents. This is the part that they gloss over in the endless hours of training.
There is no pretty answer. There is no right.
Today the mail person came to my door. Never a good sign. I had to sign for a summons.
Again. Not a good sign.
It's a hearing to make official in court the change of placement for Little One. We will go to court in early October, probably never get the opportunity to say a single word, and hear the judge order him to be moved from our home to his uncle's home. It will be almost exactly 2 years. 2 years and 9 days.
In those 2 years we have taken a little person who was a barely surviving little lump of baby to a thriving all-boy 2 year old toddler complete with attitude, sense of humor and definite likes and dislikes.
In less than a month I will try to explain this and have it make sense, not only to myself, but to every person connected to us, why this little person will move on to another home.
I want to pitch my own tantrum right now, but in between crying and throwing up, I don't have the time. I have to get him ready to go.
And in a way, this isn't a bad solution. We've known it's been a possibility for a very long time. He will be with his siblings and his extended family. He will be able to maintain a relationship with his parents. This isn't a fail.
But it doesn't make it easy.
I will sort through the toys and books and clothes and movies to separate his from ours. Again.
I will take more pictures and movies and fill up his book and mine. I will hope and pray that we will remain more than a fuzzy hopeful feeling in his life. I will hope his "new" family will allow him to keep his photo book from his years with us. I will hope that they'll allow him some sort of contact with us, but I know what reality is.
I will take a family, short one member, to Disney this fall and we will all be enjoying it, but remembering the one who is most obsessed with Mouse. We will wonder what the look on his face would have been upon seeing Mouse up close and personal. We'll have our Halloween wondering what he's dressing up as and our Christmas buying a few less gifts.
We will not be bitter.
We will take more kids in.
Our hearts will break again.
And again.
And again.
But dear friends, if my heart doesn't tear from this than I'm doing it all wrong. If I don't love this child, or any child placed with me as if it were my own and mine forever, I'm doing all of us a disservice.
I will get to the other end of this journey and wonder how I've managed to walk so much of the path without my bestie. I never thought the silence would be this long and the ups and downs have been so much more than I've shared and there have been so many moments that I thought, oh no, I cannot do this alone. I cannot walk this path and yet I have.
No, that's not a God thing. This is an earthly thing I'm whining about. God has been there more than you could imagine as we've taken this journey with this Little One.
Besides, I prayed, just last night about this particular situation. I prayed for Little One to have his situation resolved soon according to His will for him, not my own wants and by noon today, I sat on my sofa, summons in hand.
Be careful what you pray for. You might indeed receive it.
I did not cry in front of Little One's therapy person as I read the summons.
Most likely I will not cry in front of you. Nor will I entertain much small talk or God cliches about this situation. I don't want platitudes. I don't want to hear what a great thing it was he had those 2 years with us. I don't want to hear much of anything.
I don't want to hear how I signed up for this heart ache and took my family along for the ride.
Sincerely, if I'm alive, really alive, and living the way God has called me to live (notice I said me, not you) than big parts of this will sting. Life is hard and bittersweet if you're really living it.
I don't want a life that's all cotton candy and rainbows. It's great to have good times and easy times, but I don't grow much in them and I don't serve many people in them. I'm not bone tired and soul weary at the end of those days. To have some is to have some refreshment, but to live a whole life of easy and happy, seems to me that I'm living on the surface and ignoring so much.
There is so much more to say and yet, it's all words, meaningless words.
I could rattle away and try to explain, but the thing is, I still have a homework deadline to meet. There is still football practice and youth group and a hubby on the other side of the country to deal with.
Life does not stand still just because we receive a blow.
There is no pretty answer. There is no right.
Today the mail person came to my door. Never a good sign. I had to sign for a summons.
Again. Not a good sign.
It's a hearing to make official in court the change of placement for Little One. We will go to court in early October, probably never get the opportunity to say a single word, and hear the judge order him to be moved from our home to his uncle's home. It will be almost exactly 2 years. 2 years and 9 days.
In those 2 years we have taken a little person who was a barely surviving little lump of baby to a thriving all-boy 2 year old toddler complete with attitude, sense of humor and definite likes and dislikes.
In less than a month I will try to explain this and have it make sense, not only to myself, but to every person connected to us, why this little person will move on to another home.
I want to pitch my own tantrum right now, but in between crying and throwing up, I don't have the time. I have to get him ready to go.
And in a way, this isn't a bad solution. We've known it's been a possibility for a very long time. He will be with his siblings and his extended family. He will be able to maintain a relationship with his parents. This isn't a fail.
But it doesn't make it easy.
I will sort through the toys and books and clothes and movies to separate his from ours. Again.
I will take more pictures and movies and fill up his book and mine. I will hope and pray that we will remain more than a fuzzy hopeful feeling in his life. I will hope his "new" family will allow him to keep his photo book from his years with us. I will hope that they'll allow him some sort of contact with us, but I know what reality is.
I will take a family, short one member, to Disney this fall and we will all be enjoying it, but remembering the one who is most obsessed with Mouse. We will wonder what the look on his face would have been upon seeing Mouse up close and personal. We'll have our Halloween wondering what he's dressing up as and our Christmas buying a few less gifts.
We will not be bitter.
We will take more kids in.
Our hearts will break again.
And again.
And again.
But dear friends, if my heart doesn't tear from this than I'm doing it all wrong. If I don't love this child, or any child placed with me as if it were my own and mine forever, I'm doing all of us a disservice.
I will get to the other end of this journey and wonder how I've managed to walk so much of the path without my bestie. I never thought the silence would be this long and the ups and downs have been so much more than I've shared and there have been so many moments that I thought, oh no, I cannot do this alone. I cannot walk this path and yet I have.
No, that's not a God thing. This is an earthly thing I'm whining about. God has been there more than you could imagine as we've taken this journey with this Little One.
Besides, I prayed, just last night about this particular situation. I prayed for Little One to have his situation resolved soon according to His will for him, not my own wants and by noon today, I sat on my sofa, summons in hand.
Be careful what you pray for. You might indeed receive it.
I did not cry in front of Little One's therapy person as I read the summons.
Most likely I will not cry in front of you. Nor will I entertain much small talk or God cliches about this situation. I don't want platitudes. I don't want to hear what a great thing it was he had those 2 years with us. I don't want to hear much of anything.
I don't want to hear how I signed up for this heart ache and took my family along for the ride.
Sincerely, if I'm alive, really alive, and living the way God has called me to live (notice I said me, not you) than big parts of this will sting. Life is hard and bittersweet if you're really living it.
I don't want a life that's all cotton candy and rainbows. It's great to have good times and easy times, but I don't grow much in them and I don't serve many people in them. I'm not bone tired and soul weary at the end of those days. To have some is to have some refreshment, but to live a whole life of easy and happy, seems to me that I'm living on the surface and ignoring so much.
There is so much more to say and yet, it's all words, meaningless words.
I could rattle away and try to explain, but the thing is, I still have a homework deadline to meet. There is still football practice and youth group and a hubby on the other side of the country to deal with.
Life does not stand still just because we receive a blow.
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