Texas Forever

When Vicki and I drove into Texas the first thing we noticed were silky smooth roads. Then we saw Texas flags flying high and wide over every ranch and farm; many restaurants, some businesses and houses displayed the Lone Star flag blessing the wide blue skys; monstrous Texas flew proudfully over every car dealership. Cowboy hats and boots were everywhere. Sometimes we saw spurs attached to those boots. (We avoided the Interstates.)

And, of course, wide enthusiastic smiles, spakling eyes and a robust "howdy" greeted us everywhere. I could give numerous examples of Texas friendliness except that it takes me many minutes to write a sentence on this blasted iPad.

We may live in Virginia but our hearts throb in Texas beat by beat.

Be Careful

Be careful of your thoughts

for your thoughts become your words.

Be careful of your words

for your words become your actions.

Be careful of your actions

for your actions become your habits.

Be careful of your habits 

for your habits become your character.

Be careful of your character

for your character becomes your destiny.

What I Believe

God calls us to confess Christ as Lord and savior:

• That if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.  Romans 10:9-10

Salvation is a free gift of God unearned by good deeds:

• For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith---and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God---not by works, so that no one can boast.  Ephesians 2:8

God's unconditional love allows us to choose our destiny:

• Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Matthew 7: 13-14

The Bible is the inspired word of God guiding our paths:

• Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.  2 Timothy 3:16-17

God expects praise, gratitude and joyful living from us:

• Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.  1Thessalonians 5: 16-18

God desires that we use our gifts to please him and serve others:

• We have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work. Colossians 1: 9-10 

Our choices are crucial in the battle against Satan's evil intentions:

• Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the power of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.   Ephesians 6: 11-12

Love and Loss

This morning I read an essay in Christian Ethics Today by Robert Baird, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University. I have summarized and rewritten his words here:

As we age we lose people that we have loved. We lose friends, neighbors, co-workers, grandparents, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. We lose teachers, mentors, relatives, wives, husbands and sometime we may lose our little girls grownup and our coltish boys turned men.

Grief tears holes in our hearts whenever someone we love dies. Our scars are a testament to the depth of our love. The deeper the love, the more dreadful the scar. 

Scars testify to the richness of life. Scars bear out a life lived deeply. And scars affirm that we can suffer the unkindest cuts of all and continue to live and love.

Grief comes in waves. At first wreckage overwhelms us as we gasp for air. The waves tower above us, pummel us, exhaust us. Down, down we sink as we drown in grief. We cling to beguiling memories that hold us up, stop the sinking. Friends and loved ones swim out to help us endure the engulfing waves. 

After a while, maybe weeks, perhaps months the towering waves that wash over us billow farther apart. Crushing breakers continue flooding over us but in between we can breathe, we can function, we can live.

The undulations recede, but remain and then in a certain season or an anniversary or on a birthday they come rolling back washing over us with sweet memories of cheerful times past. We reach out to pull loves past toward us but as we do these recollections fade as with an ebb tide.

They keep coming, the waves, but we go on. We survive. We love again with a richer, more profound love born by loss, sustained by remembrance of things past, renewed by hope in the eternal.  

When Someone Offends Us

A friend of mine, Chad Thompson, MD, gave me these two ways of responding to offensive words. 

When someone offends us we can:

• Tell others about it.
• The listener begins to think less of my offender (and/or less of me).
• They join me in thinking negatively about my offender.
• I have succeeding in creating division in relationships; making myself more upset by rehashing the details over and over; and knowing and willfully disobeying God's will by reacting according to the flesh rather than to the spirit.

OR when someone offends us we can:

• Go directly to God in prayer.
• God listens and the Holy Spirit gives me a better perspective.
• I feel peace! And the impulse to vent to others is gone.
• I have honored God by valuing unity and harmony over dissension, discord and the temporary pleasure of gossiping. 

Crush Procrastination

Procrastination, doing low-priority tasks before high priority activities, robs us of valuable time:

• We usually do the least important things first because they are easier. 
• We put off the most important things because they are hardier. 
• When we work on the unimportant, we worry about the crucial tasks that aren't getting done. 
• We get tension headaches. Ulcers. High blood pressure.   

There are four major reasons for pro­crastination:

Laziness 

To defeat laziness, begin. Once moving, you'll tend to keep going. It takes greater energy to start an activi­ty than to sustain it. For example, if you're writing a screen play, put something on paper. Forget about sharpening pencils, arranging paper, reading one more script for inspiration. Write. Writers write.

The Quest for Perfection         

Nobody is perfect. Nothing created by anybody is perfect. Stop fretting about getting everything just right. Learn to do your best and accept the results. Expecting perfection never gets anything accomplished. To continue with the writing analogy, get that first draft done. Forget semicolons, active verbs, dangling participles, mixed metaphors. Just get something down on  paper. You can revise and rewrite later.

Indecisiveness                 

To overcome indecisiveness, use the ready, fire, aim approach. Fire it up there. Then aim it. Make some mistakes. Learn. Adjust. Move on.

Difficult Tasks 

Break down a difficult task into easy steps. Just do a little at a time. You write a screenplay or a book one page at a time. Write one page a day and at the end of a year you will have written 365 pages.

The Presidents' President

The people of Springfield, Illinois little realized what destiny held for Abraham Lincoln.

Most pitied him. Married to a virago who embar­rassed him with her envious, hostile outbursts, he with­stood twenty-two years of her verbal abuse. His ill-fit­ting clothes often had buttons missing and always need­ed pressing. Until the day he left for Washington, he milked his cow, groomed his horse, and cut his own fire­wood. Cash short, he borrowed money from friends for his Presidential inauguration trip.

His past failure bode poorly for future success. Beset by business insolvency twice, he spent 17 years paying off his debt; he suffered a nervous breakdown after the love of his life, Ann Rutledge, died; and lost eight elections-state legislature, speaker of the state legislature, elector, US Congress (twice defeated), land officer, US Senate (twice defeated), and a vice-presiden­tial nomination.

Most of the people opposed Lincoln most of the time. Even his relatives voted against him! When he ran for President, only one cousin on his mother's side, and none on his father's side, cast a ballot for him. Twenty of the twenty-three ministers in his hometown opposed him. Lincoln became President because the three candi­dates in the election split the vote allowing Lincoln to enter office backed by less than a majority of voters.

General McClellan, the commander of the Army of the Potomac, constantly insulted the President that appointed him. Once when Lincoln visited him, McClellan kept him waiting for half an hour. On anoth­er occasion, informed that Lincoln had been waiting for hours to see him, McClellan crept to his bedroom and sent word that he had gone to bed.

Almost every man in the Cabinet considered him­self superior to Lincoln. Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, shocked at Lincoln's country ways, criti­cized him ceaselessly. Edward M. Stanton called Lincoln "a painful imbecile" and "the original gorilla."

How could Lincoln withstand defeat after defeat, criticism heaped upon criticism? How could he rise above his social limitations to become one of the great­est leaders the world has known? Answer-Reading.

Lincoln read the proper books. He filled his mind and soul with wisdom from the ages. Except for God's spirit in his life, there can be no other explanation for Lincoln's strength of character. His father was a ne'er­do-well; his mother died when he was nine; his child­hood was marked by neglect and deprivation.

But Lincoln read. He read the Bible and Aesop's Fables so often that they affected his manner of talking and his method of thinking. He wore out a borrowed copy of the Life of Washington. Perhaps his richest find was Scott's Lessons containing speeches of Cicero, Demosthenes and Shakespeare's characters. He studied the book until he could recite long poems and speeches by heart.

Lincoln devoured books throughout his life. Biographies. Humor. History. Law. During the Civil War, Lincoln spent hours reading. Many times he would read passages from Shakespeare to his Cabinet, person­al secretary, and visiting dignitaries and friends. Yes, more than any other factor, the books Lincoln read molded his character and enabled him to withstand the agony of outrageous fortune.

During his debates with Douglas Lincoln said,

      "I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.

      "I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have."

    Rather than founding his self-worth on the opinions of others, Lincoln lived by an internal light, an internal light implanted by enduring character traits formulated by reading.

Oops!

Oops! I goofed-up. For the past two years I have been writing two blog posts every week. Last week I missed a post.

The reason for writing two posts each week comes from a belief that consistency increases readership. 

Every writer wants readers. But do I write to get readers? No, actually. 

I write for the enjoyment of putting words together, to express feelings, to encapsulate vague ideas into precise, clear thought, to have fun with humor. 

I write because I don't know what I am thinking until I read what I write.

I write for the joy of writing. And I write to encourage myself.

And that dear reader is where you come in. I write to bring encouragement, optimism and hope to us all. 

All of us benefit from encouragement and that is where consistency enters. I want to bring to you--to us--an unwavering, shimmering, sparkle of hope for our spirits that you--that we--can count on receiving each week.

Praying with Faith

Prayer is unlike putting a nickel in a gum machine, twisting a handle, and then waiting for the gum to pop out. Asking God for a yellow bicycle is similar to mailing a list of Christmas wishes to the North Pole.

God is not Santa Claus and treating God as if he were cheats us out of the treasured relationship we can have with him.

Prayer is not a numbers game. Notre Dame's foot­ball victory over Southern Methodist University has nothing to do with who has the most people praying for success. Notre Dame wins because their players are big­ger, stronger, and faster. (Winning coaches pray like God decides victories and they recruit like he doesn't.)

Faith has nothing to do with answered prayer. Faith is the conviction of things unseen. Faith is the assurance that a loving, personal God exists and because of that certainty we strive to live a life that will be pleasing to him.

Can we receive what we ask in prayer? Yes. But a relationship with God comes first. Prayer allows us to develop a special bond with God that enables us to live the life he desires for us.

As we gradually, progressively develop a deep, abid­ing commitment to God we feel His presence in all that we do. When we begin to pray as he wants us to pray, ­when we become aligned with his will he begins to answer our prayers.

Does Your Friend Have Borderline Personality Disorder?

• Here are some questions to ask if you think that a relative or friend has borderline personality disorder:

Identity disturbance—Do you have a sense of where you are going in life?

•Disordered mood—Do you have a lot of mood changes in a day or week?

•Emptiness—Do you feel empty inside as if nothing is there?

•Suicide—Have you ever thought of suicide or attempted suicide?

•Paranoia—Do you feel strangers look at you, criticize or talk about you?

•Fear abandonment—When you start a relationship do you feel you will be dumped?

•Impulsivity—Has reckless behavior caused problems with  money, sex, alcohol, eating or resulted in legal problem?

•Rage—Do you lose control when you get mad?

•Relationship problems—Do you have trouble getting along with others?

Thoughts Generate Feelings

Our emotional health depends on our attitude. 

We can choose: To accept or refuse love; grow from or surrender to challenges; enjoy or complain about our work; modify our habits or let our habits mod­ify us; cultivate tranquility or be overwhelmed by stress; seize opportunities or cower in a corner; enjoy being alive or dread waking up. 

Proper attitudes create a life worth living and make time worthwhile. Our response to life's difficulties determines our happiness and health. 

Within us resides the gift to accept responsibility for our own bliss. We can shape adversity into an advantage. We can turn tragedy into hope. We can live the life we choose.

The power to change gives us the opportunity for a blessed and balanced life. 

The blind poet, Milton, wrote, The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 

Thoughts of two famous people underscore Milton's point: 

Napoleon who had power, riches, and glory said, I have never known six happy days in my life. 

Helen Keller, rendered blind and deaf from childhood meningitis, declared, I have found life so beautiful. 

Events and acquisitions fail to give us joy. Our thoughts can. 

Mind-body research, psychoneuroimmunology, proves that negative thoughts produce stress hormones. Optimistic thoughts cause the release of endorphins and other beneficial brain chemicals causing good feelings. 

What we think determines how we feel.