“If you are working on something that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.” – Steve Jobs, Entrepreneur (1955 – 2011)
Cutting The Grass
This is my neighbor.
He has no idea I took this photo from my window.
When my husband was deployed, one of the worries we had was about the grass.
Who would maintain the yard?
I could go out there and cut the grass myself, but with everything I had on my plate with the two girls, I wasn’t feeling it.
We could try and find a lawn service, but that still meant me having to make sure it got done and that they did a good job.
I wanted as little additional worry as possible while my husband was deployed.
This is where Steve comes in.
I sent him a text and told him about the deployment. I wasn’t sure if he would say yes, but I asked.
“Could you help cut our grass? He will cut it today before he deploys tomorrow, but it would be great if you could cut it and help me maintain it while he is gone. We can pay you.”
He responded right away that it wasn’t a problem at all and that he would not accept payment. He wanted to help.
I let my husband know, and we both breathed a sigh of relief.
When your husband is deployed, whatever worry you can take off your plate means the world.
Knowing the grass would be taken care of was enormous stress off my shoulders.
About an hour later, daddy was playing with his girls.
He was trying to soak up as much time as possible with them before deploying the next day.
He told them he could play for a bit, but he also had to go outside and cut the grass soon.
Then we heard it.
A mower.
My husband said, “Aliette, Steve is cutting the grass! Maybe he misunderstood that we didn’t need him to help us until next week when I’m already gone.”
I went outside. “Steve, we didn’t need you to start until next week, and he was going to do it today before he leaves tomorrow.”
Steve responded, “I know. But I’m not the one about to leave my family for deployment. He can spend time with his family, and I got it.”
My face swelled with tears.
Tears of worry, gratitude, anxiety, relief all rolled into one.
It all came pouring out on Steve, who probably thought I was a bit overly emotional about grass.
But it wasn’t about the grass.
It was about the gift of time he gave us.
A neighbor stepped up to help when we needed it.
As I came back inside, I thought of Mr. Rogers.
It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor.
So let’s make the most of this beautiful day,
Since we’re together, we might as well say,
Won’t you be my neighbor?
Reading
“I read so many books, but I forgot most of them. But then what’s the point of reading? ”
This was the question a pupil once asked his Master.
The Master didn’t answer at that moment. After a few days, however, while he and the young pupil were sitting by a river, he said he was thirsty and asked the boy to get some water from him using an old filthy sieve that was there on the ground.
The pupil moved, because he knew it was a request without any logic.
However, he couldn’t contradict his own Master and, when he got the filter, he began to do this absurd task. Every time he was drowning the sieve in the river to pull some water to take to his Master, he couldn’t even take a step towards him because there wasn’t even a drop left in the sieve.
He tried and tried dozens of times but, as he tried to run faster from the shore to his Master, the water kept going through all the holes in the sieve and got lost along the way.
Exhausted, he sat next to the Master and said: “I can’t fetch water with that filter. Forgive me Master, it is impossible and I failed in my task.”
“No – the old man replied smiling – you have not failed. Look at the filter it’s like new now. Water, filtering through its holes cleaned it.”
“When you read books – the old Master continued – you are like the sieve and they are like the water of the river.”
“It doesn’t matter if you can’t hold in your memory all the water they make you flow, because books will anyway, with their ideas, emotions, feelings, knowledge, truth that you will find between the pages, clean your mind and spirit, and you they will make you a better, renewed person. That’s the point of reading.”
Have a good read everyone.
Being Alive IS The Special Occasion
A shared story
Two Saturday nights a month, I work in Cullman County at a dirt racing track. Tonight as I arrived at the track, I noticed I was the only person there. Tonight’s race had been postponed, and I wouldn’t be playing my role on the mic as the “Voice of River Valley Speedway.” It appeared that I had made a burnt run.
On my way home, I stopped by an old house that I’d passed many times before. Fallen walls, a rotting porch, and broken windows told me that the house had been lifeless for at least fifty years. I had to have a picture. I just had to.
I walked next door to a brick house, much younger– and knocked on the door. I introduced myself, and asked permission to photograph the old house next door.
“I’ll do you one better. Would you like a history lesson?” I nodded yes, and not quite knowing what to expect I followed the woman inside.
I was introduced to her parents, an elderly couple perhaps in their nineties. I shook hands and was told to sit down in a recliner near the television showing the baseball game I had unintentionally interrupted. Mr. Pate muted the game, while his wife continued on with putting her puzzle together.
“That house was built by my grandfather in 1901 or so. Over 100 years old.” For the better part of the next hour, this couple shared stories of growing up in log cabins, hard country life, and coming to know Christ. I was shown pictures of rural Cullman County from the late 1800’s, and the last will and testament of the last man ever hanged in Cullman– for a crime he didn’t commit. I listened attentively as they poured years of history into someone they’d never met before.
As I stood up to say goodbye, my new friends tried to discourage me from leaving. “Preacher, don’t go. Why don’t you stay over for dinner?”
As inviting as it sounded, the disappearing sunlight told me that I needed to take my pictures and schedule a rain check. We shook hands again, and I was on my way towards the older house, with two mutts following me with curiosity.
As I took a few shots, suddenly I was in the house. I stopped taking pictures as the thoughts of children ran across the porch, playing tag as they ran barefoot. I saw a woman in the corner, sewing clothes to wear to church. A man was outside chopping wood for the stove, and I could see the mules tied to a plow near the dirt road where my car would be parked 100 years later. It was a different world: slower, simpler, and with more integrity. No technology, no electricity, and no water demanded a slower life at this house.
My odometer showed that I went fifty miles tonight– but I traveled much, much farther.
On my way to the racetrack I was anticipating a night of speed, but instead I understood the importance of slowing down.
Sometimes in life we’re too fast. We’ve gone too far and haven’t appreciated the journey. Turn the phone off for a bit. Unplug the television for a while. Log off the net for a few hours.
Let’s all slow down just a bit. Enjoy the ride we’re on.
Pretty soon it’ll just be a memory….
Don’t Cause Permanent Harm Over A Temporary State Of Mind
“My feelings of being in the wrong body started when I was a toddler. I hated girl toys and I only wanted to play with boys, I had short hair and dressed myself like a boy. I didn’t understand other girls my age so I felt out of place.
When someone would mistake me for a boy I would feel so good, much to the chagrin of my older sister who would quickly correct them and exclaim, “that’s my SISTER.” At 4 I worked up the courage to ask my mom, “Does God make mistakes, because I think I was supposed to be born a boy?” My mother replied, “No God doesn’t ever make mistakes, he made you exactly the way you’re supposed to be, a beautiful little girl.”
And that was that. I didn’t have any more delusions because my mom cleared it up for me right then and there. Don’t get me wrong I still didn’t like my body and dreaded growing breasts one day, but I didn’t have to question if there was something wrong with me. I was allowed time to grow up, and once I hit puberty I not only felt like I was in the right body, but I became a girly girl!
If I was born in our society today I know I would have been “affirmed” by my teachers and started on a cascade of interventions that would have left me infertile, mutilated and without the husband and two beautiful children that I have today.
Our kids don’t need to be socially or medically transitioned. They need to be left alone, and they need time to grow up.” ~ Brittany Traynor
Thrive With Compassion
Good call Mary, good call! To my readers, I wish this for you. More awareness, more intelligence, more competence. For you and yours.
Marriage
I stood in my bedroom doing my makeup when I heard my parents across the hall in the bathroom. My father was groaning in immense pain and luckily my mother was there to help him. I was a self-absorbed twenty-something at the time—bouncing back and forth between two men like a rubber ball. But this moment between my parents struck me.
My father moaned. “It’s okay, Chris,” my mother said to him. “I’m here.”
That was the start of my father’s painful side effects from his prostate cancer years prior—something that would only get worse with time.
As I leaned toward the mirror, slipping mascara onto my lashes, I heard more grumbling from my father. I froze. I was stuck in their moment with no place to go. I heard a clank in the bathroom. A mess was made out of my father’s control. My mother would be the one to clean it up. “I’m so sorry,” my dad said.
“It’s okay, Chris,” my mom said. “I’m here.”
After I was done with my makeup, I sat on my bed with the door cracked open. While I was nervous about my dad’s health, tears fell onto my jeans because I finally realized something — THIS is marriage.
Marriage isn’t found at the big wedding, the trendy date nights, or even hours spent together on the couch watching Netflix. Marriage is found in the darkness — with one spouse helping the other during a time that would be humiliating to share with anyone else.
As young girls and boys, we watch movies and read stories about happy endings, blissful beginnings, and comedic in-betweens. But true romance is found when two people need each other, are vulnerable with one another, and can wholeheartedly depend on one another during the darkest times in life.
I sat on my bed, and at that moment, I decided to stop bouncing. I wanted my future to look like my parents’—imperfect but beautiful. My parents’ marriage and my marriage have been full of dips and peaks, but witnessing the true love in their moment will forever keep reminding me that marriage is found in the toughest spots in life — even the bathroom.
Credit: Angela Anagnost-Repke, Writer
Stop Calling Psych Drugs Meds
Changing Your Mind
This is not wholly true. Sometimes an original datum can remain uninspected, even in a bright person, such that they cannot receive or operate on new, correct data. There is a technique to handle these false datums by helping the individual expose them to view, thus relinquishing their hold on his thinking.
At other times a datum can be given to a person when he is in a state of fear, grief or apathy such that the datum has the power of a hypnotic suggestion.