Posted on by BWThomas

Waiting, waffling, and wondering aren’t how we build a good life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. Tony Robbins

In life, it isn’t just what happens, it’s when it happens. For instance, if you have a million dollars and get an eight percent return, you can’t figure out how that will play out by calculating a million dollars by eight percent per year, because you don’t know when the gains and losses will occur, which affect the actual return. The sequence of returns, when we get the ups and downs, will affect whether a million dollars at eight percent with a forty thousand per year withdrawal will have us broke in less than twenty years, or have ten million after forty years.

We have to live life, take the chances, and see where it goes. How many people, who finally decide to get married, start a business, have kids, or do something else they’ve wanted to do, wish they’d started sooner? There is only so much preparation one can do before we need to get on with the business of life.

Some of us are thinking we’ll wait one more year, but what do we think we will get for waiting? One more year of waiting to get married might mean it’s harder to have children, buy a house, or make decisions to build the best life. One more year waiting to retire might mean taking the long-awaited adventures without our partner, or not being able to take them at all. Life waits for no one; we need to seize our moments.

My husband and I found each other at age twenty-one, but we didn’t get married until we were twenty-seven. How might our lives have progressed if we’d made decisions earlier? House prices more than doubled in the time we were sitting on the fence.

I see how much energy it takes to look after grandchildren. We don’t become more patient and fun as we get older, and what if I’d become a grandma in my fifties instead of my sixties? My four-year-old grandson brings his chocolate milk and says, “Let’s do a cheer.” Then he hugs me and says, “I love you, Grandma.” He then goes to his Grandpa and repeats the process. These are precious moments, and I am blessed to have them in my life.

Sometimes you make the right decision, sometimes you make the decision right. Phil McGraw

Sometimes I think, what if I had waited too long, I would have missed all this. My son says he is surprised by how much we enjoy our grandchildren, and he might be surprised by how much his sister, his wife’s sister, and husbands are enjoying having kids. He’s missing out, and he knows it.

Life is a series of choices; we can’t do everything, but we need to make decisions to give us choices about the important things. Sometimes I think making a decision is the hardest thing. Deciding for one thing, one person, one house, one business, means saying no to all the other potential choices. Too much choice can cripple us, and if we wait too long to make a choice, there are no choices left to make.

I’ve waffled over choices throughout my life; looking back, I wish I’d had the courage to make a decision and stick to it. We won’t get everything right, and maybe that is where I’m making a mistake. Life is good, but looking back, some better choices would have made it even better.

The question isn’t what choices I would change if I could go back; the question is, what choices do I have to make now? Do we sometimes not recognize the choices we had until we look back? The time for action is always now; there is no other time to make a choice. Waiting, waffling, and wondering aren’t how we build a good life. We might need to correct our course, but we can only do so once we are on it.

When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier. Roy E. Disney

Life is a chess match. Every decision that you make has a consequence to it. P.K. Subben

You cannot make progress without making decisions. Jim Rohn

Thank you for reading this post. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

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Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

What if we kept our opinions to ourselves and still worked hard to build a better society?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Choose the positive. You have choices, you are master of your attitude, choose the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success. Bruce lee

What if I gave up my strongest political opinions or at least kept them to myself? What would that do for my relationships? What would we have to talk about if we didn’t talk about what is wrong with… How would I handle it when uncomfortable conversations come up, some people think I am on the wrong side of?

Does it seem like we don’t care if we don’t obsess about what we can’t change? But what if we don’t like the direction things are going in; shouldn’t we stand up and speak out? I don’t know, but I do know arguing about what is wrong in the world, with those we love, doesn’t work. I’m not sure what works. Being on the same side would be easier, but if we don’t see things the same way, we don’t think things mean the same thing, and we aren’t afraid of the same outcomes, how do we handle it?

How do we build a society that is as fair to everyone who is part of it? What does fair look like? It’s fair when everyone has nothing! Is that the kind of fair some want us to move toward? We’ll never have the kind of fair where everyone is rich and powerful, because those who can build something from nothing are a rare breed.

Never let a bad situation bring out the worst in you. Choose to stay positive and be the strong person that God created you to be! Unknown

Is it fair to want to hold onto what we have in Canada when parts of the world have it so much worse?  Should people wanting to tear things down have as much power as those who want to build?

Some people ask if democracy works when diverse groups want different things, and all any group needs to take control is a larger population than the groups they want to control.

With the internet, we have ideas flowing; some ideas are terrifying, others merely disturbing. What will happen as these ideas get considered by the general public?

Keeping my opinions to myself is hard, but do I need to comment on everything?

Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. Plato

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart. Johann Wolfgang

No one else can choose your attitude for you. Your perspective and choice of attitude gives you the power to be in control. Irene Dunlap

Thank you for reading this post. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives, or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Can we get happier as we age? Is silence the answer?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Silence is a true friend who never betrays. Confucius

Do we need silence and boredom to turn our right brain on? I’ve been doing a boring job, removing wallpaper, and as terrible as it sounds, there is an upside. It’s meditative removing it. I’ve listened to podcasts, but also worked in silence.

If silence is one of the things we need to activate our right brain, which is linked to happiness. Then, turning the TV and our screens off and walking or working in silence will boost our happiness.

I grew up in silence, surrounded by the sounds of nature, and I think when we have time to think, we have a richer inner life than when every moment is full.

I like more silence than my husband, who grew up in cities. He tends to like background noise, which I don’t appreciate. If the TV is on, I want to hear what is being said, or I want it off. I don’t want to sleep with the TV on. I don’t mind watching something in bed, but I want to go to sleep in silence.

Learning to live with people is an art. As we jostle for what we feel we need, we compromise on some things and have to live with others that will never be our way.

Journaling is a practice that leads to greater happiness and peace of mind. Walking in nature is another practice that boosts my mood.

In the silence of the heart, God speaks. Mother Teresa

Aging well is something we should all aspire to. Since aging isn’t an option, we may as well try to enjoy the journey and be as well and as happy as we can manage.

Nothing sounds less appealing than being a long-lived curmudgeon scowling their way through life. I’ve had a couple of miserable days, and sometimes I think, what if that was my life every day? There is no point railing against the things we can’t change, but what about not bothering to do anything about the things we can?

When we don’t eat right, we don’t feel good, not feeling good makes us miserable, and not exercising can increase the pain we feel. Eating well and exercising are the antidotes to building a better life. We might rail against the injustice in the world, which we mostly can’t fix, but if we acknowledge what we can control and what we can’t, is this the beginning of wisdom?

Self-interest sometimes sounds like a bad thing, but improving things for ourselves often improves things for others. If we are strong and healthy and have good relationships, it is good for everyone. We hear about the sandwich generation, parents looking after kids, and their aging parents. Many aging parents who take care of themselves are not a burden, and lighten the burden of child care.

Being able to take care of ourselves to the end, or close to the end, with a cheerful smile and words of encouragement for everyone we meet makes us a blessing to ourselves and others. What if being happier, healthier, and active as we age is possible? A good life is something to aspire to, and might be more in our control than we think.

If more silence makes us happier, maybe Mom’s words are more appropriate than ever: “Turn the idiot box off.”

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders. Lao Tzu

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom. Francis Bacon

Let silence take you to the core of life. Rumi

Thank you for reading this post. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives, or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Can we get happier as we age? Is silence the answer?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Silence is a true friend who never betrays. Confucius

Do we need silence and boredom to turn our right brain on? I’ve been doing a boring job, removing wallpaper, and as terrible as it sounds, there is an upside. It’s meditative removing it. I’ve listened to podcasts, but also done it in silence.

If silence is one of the things we need to activate our right brain, which is linked to happiness. Then, turning the TV off and walking or working in silence will boost my happiness.

I grew up in silence, surrounded by the sounds of nature, and I think when we have time to think, we have a richer inner life than when every moment is full.

I like more silence than my husband, who grew up in cities. He tends to like background noise, which I don’t appreciate. If the TV is on, I want to hear what is being said, or I want it off. I don’t want to sleep with the TV on. I don’t mind watching something in bed, but I want to go to sleep in silence.

Learning to live with people is an art. As we jostle for what we feel we need, we compromise on some things and have to live with other things that will never be our way.

Journaling is a practice that leads to greater happiness and peace of mind. Walking in nature is another practice that boosts my mood.

In the silence of the heart, God speaks. Mother Teresa

Aging well is something we should all aspire to, since aging isn’t an option. We may as well try to enjoy the journey, and be as well and as happy as we can manage.

Nothing sounds less appealing than being a long-lived curmudgeon scowling their way through life. I’ve had a couple of miserable days, and sometimes I think, what if that was my life every day? There is no point railing against the things we can’t change, but what about not bothering to do anything about the things we can?

When we don’t eat right, we don’t feel good. Not feeling good makes us miserable, and not exercising can increase the pain we feel. Is eating well and exercising the antidote to help build a better life? We might rail against the injustice in the world, which we mostly can’t fix, but if we acknowledge what we can’t control, and what we can, is this the beginning of wisdom?

Self-interest sometimes sounds like a bad thing, but improving things for ourselves often improves things for others. If we are strong and healthy and have good relationships, it is good for everyone. We hear about the sandwich generation, parents looking after kids, and their aging parents. Many aging parents who take care of themselves are not a burden, and lighten the burden of child care.

Being able to take care of ourselves to the end, or close to the end, with a cheerful smile and words of encouragement for everyone we meet makes us a blessing to ourselves and others. What if being happier as we age, staying healthy and active, is possible? A good life as we age is something to aspire to, and might be more in our control than we think.

If more silence makes us happier, maybe Mom’s words are more appropriate than ever: “Turn the idiot box off.”

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders. Lao Tzu

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom. Francis Bacon

Let silence take you to the core of life. Rumi

Thank you for reading this post. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, or see archives or categories of posts, click the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Our choices build our future; in the fullness of time, we’ll see where they lead.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Just as love is a verb, so is faith. Nannie Helen Burroughs

I listened to comments about the most dangerous cities in Canada, and I started thinking about when, how, and why they became this way. What could we have done to keep them from becoming this way, and what can we do now?

Drugs have played havoc in our society, and we probably won’t get this genie back into the bottle. I’m wondering if becoming a more secular society and drug abuse are correlated. I can almost hear a collective sigh as I write this. I’ve loved living in a secular society, but I see cracks, and I think we are going too far; indeed, I’ve gone too far.

Too much minding my own business, sweeping my own doorstep, and leaving society to itself has left us with no one picking up the collective pieces. If finding religion is the antidote to some of society’s ills, it at least means fixing things is possible.

Overcoming substance abuse by finding a higher power has long been the power of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I’m thinking collectively, maybe we need to get back to relying on a higher power to power our lives and our families.

What if the power to inoculate our children and grandchildren from substance abuse lies in our choices to give our families religious scaffolding to build on? Life is built one step at a time, and we might not realize the impact of some of our choices. A private faith might buoy us up, but do nothing for our children and grandchildren.

Stand straight, walk proud, have a little faith. Garth Brooks

Secularists will argue that secular societies can exhibit high social stability, and that the decline of religion does not mean society must break down, but if we look at where we are, it is hard to believe there is not a direct correlation.

The choices each of us makes will impact our families, and I’ve been thinking about decisions I’ve made that I wish were different. If we don’t all have decisions we wish were different, I’d be surprised. But if taking our kids to church helps them build a better life, we might be missing out on building resilience that will help them build a good life.

One of the mistakes I’ve made is not thinking about where certain choices take us and thinking about what if we all make the same choices. The problem might be the tipping point of too much secularism. Too much religion and the wrong kind of religion turned a lot of people off religion. Finding a good balance is what we need to do, but it seems we rarely stay in balance; we tip into extremes, and extremes have dire consequences on our society.

If we want a different outcome, do we have to make different choices?

My faith didn’t remove the pain, but it got me through the pain. Trusting God didn’t diminish or vanquish the anguish, but it enabled me to endure it. Robert Rogers

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness. Henry David Thoreau

The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith. Billy Graham

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more, and have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives, or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

How is deferred maintenance playing out in our lives?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Excellence is allergic to deferred maintenance. Dave Kline

A stitch in time saves nine. Anyone who knits knows it’s true. We get warnings, but often don’t heed them, and then something worse happens. Over the winter, I’ve been getting something or getting over something, so I got out of my morning exercise routine.

On Saturday, it was beautiful, and my husband and I went outside to do yard work. In the evening, sitting and watching TV, I got a horrendous cramp in my left leg, and it took a bit of stretching and kneading to get rid of it. I kept saying to myself over the winter, I need to get back to exercising. Doing a lot, after doing almost nothing, isn’t good for us.

We need to heed the warnings, the still small voice that says I should call or visit. How many people have heeded the voice to run over to a friend or relative to find them in distress? Now that everyone has a cell phone, it won’t happen as often, but not everyone who needs help will call. We tell ourselves they will, but we also know it isn’t easy to ask for help, and sometimes we only see their feeble attempt after the fact.

Dad said to me, “When are you coming out?” Two family weddings were planned for that August, so that was my answer. He died before Father’s Day, and then I understood what he’d been trying to tell me.

When we set up help for Mom, we had a schedule for who would stay with her set up a few months in advance.  She said, “Don’t worry about more than that.” I knew what she meant, and she didn’t need help past what we had set up.

How often have we looked at something and known we have a situation to deal with, before it gets worse? How often do we deal with it in time, and how often does it get worse before we are forced to deal with what we already knew was there to be dealt with?

Never put off till tomorrow, what you can do the day after tomorrow. Mark Twain

Listening to Realtors talk about deferred maintenance, the maintenance needed that never got done. At the time of sale, it all needs to be looked after. A home inspector might give a list pages and pages long of things not fixed. Are there people who are always on top of everything? When something needs doing, they do it. An inspector would find nothing in their house that needs fixing.

What areas of our lives do we have deferred maintenance? What nags at us? Are there improvements we could make that would give us a better life? Would a few exercises in the morning and a walk a day keep us limber and strong? If we handle the little things better, would it add up to big improvements in our lives? In the garden of life, are we planting seeds we want, or are we harvesting whatever the wind blows our way?

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. Kurt Vonnegut

If your body is a temple, you can pile up too much deferred maintenance. If your body is a temple, mine was a real fixer-upper. Chuck Palahniuk

Systems do not maintain themselves; even our lack of intervention is an act of maintenance. Every structure in every society is upheld by the active and passive assistance of other human beings. Sonya Renee Taylor

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more, and have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

How do we get a meaningful death?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

A good death does honour to a whole life. Petrarch

All my life, one of my parent’s favorite sayings was, “We have to endure to the end.” Does this mean different things to different people? With modern medicine, do we live longer but not always better in the final days? People are being offered the chance to die with dignity, but if they take the offer, does this mean they did not endure to the end?

How do we feel if someone is offered the chance to die with dignity, and takes the offer, but we don’t think it should have been offered, or taken up on? We have life-extending medical intervention, and now we have MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying).

Going through Hospice care at home with Mom and being there for her last breath, we all appreciated her death was not a long, drawn-out affair; she probably most of all. Did the medication she was given for pain hasten that final breath? I think it probably did, and I was the one who administered the final dose.

Offering someone a good death isn’t something I will rail against, but are we offering it to people who could still have a good life? This is where it gets tricky. If the end is truly nigh, and only suffering lies ahead, is shortening that suffering a bad thing?

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well-used life brings happy death. Leonardo da Vinci

Making the decision of the day and the hour we will take our last breath seems like a hard decision, but would it be if all we saw ahead for ourselves was endless hours, days, weeks, and maybe even months of nothing but never-ending pain?

Once we get on the medical conveyor belt, we might be extending life, but is it a quality of life we want? What might have ended in a peaceful, earlier death becomes an extended life of excruciating pain. Now, to end the pain, we need medical intervention because we interfered in what would have been a quicker, natural death.

I don’t know what the answers are, and I know there is a lot of criticism of MAID. We used to have Hemlock Societies, which was a right-to-die organization. Now we have the right to die, but choosing to die is a controversial subject. Who gets to have input on the choice being made?

I think, if things were to get bad enough for me, I would want the choice, but Mom and Dad’s words of endurance to the end would also be ringing in my ears. If someone I loved was making the choice, would I be able to support their choice wholeheartedly?

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. A.A. Milne

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die. Thomas Campbell

Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. Steve Jobs

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more, and have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives, or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Spring is here. Is it time to clear the clutter?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Clutter is nothing more than postponed decisions… Barbara Hemphill

Is it time for spring cleaning, clearing the clutter out of our lives and out of our minds? I look at little houses that used to house families of six to eight children, and now we have massive houses, often with few or no children. How did we get to need so much space? I watched a realtor on YouTube who downsized from 5400 square feet to 2900 square feet and said it wasn’t enough room. I’m pretty sure her children are grown up, so I’m questioning what she is doing with all that space.

I remember going to my aunt and uncle’s house, in her closet, she had a few clothes hung up with lots of space in between. Her closet held the clothes she wore, not ones she hoped would fit one day, or might come back in style.

I’ve been clearing out bookshelves, and I lost count of how many bags of books have gone to Value Village. My son left books here when he got married, and when he went through them, I had five more bags of books for Value Village. How many authors have made a good living selling books to people who never read them?

Does having certain books on our shelves make us feel smarter? I did read that one of the big things to influence children toward success is growing up in a home with books. If just owning books can have an effect, then maybe my collection is justified. With all the books I’ve gotten rid of (and some bookshelves too), I still have some double-lined rows of books on the bookshelf, which means I still have too many books.

What if I could only keep one hundred books? Which ones would make the cut? How many clothes do we need, how many coats? Is less more, or do many of us think more is more? Do our closets look like Value Village instead of a closet where we can quickly find what we want to wear?

Anything unfinished, unused, unresolved or disorganized, is clutter. Clear your clutter to create space for new energy and creativity. Unknown

How many glasses do we need, how many sets of dishes, and coffee cups? Even in rooms we’ve decluttered, I’m wondering if a minimalist would remove one half again. When my husband pulls out an old iron we haven’t used in twenty years, I have to admit we are hoarders. Why did we find a place to store an old item when we replaced it with a new one?

One of the things I’ve realized is not to worry about throwing out something I can replace in twenty minutes for twenty dollars. When the kids were growing up, they complained we didn’t keep enough snacks in the house. I said, “The store is my pantry.” It was my way of controlling how many snacks we consumed. What if I’d said the library is my bookshelf?

Managing our stuff, the kids’ stuff, and business stuff can be overwhelming. We can ignore it for a while, but stuff has to be dealt with at some point, or we can leave it for someone else to deal with upon our death. Is clutter taking peace, joy, and calm from our lives? When we clear the physical clutter from our lives, do we make way for inspiration and good, orderly direction to enter?

Clutter is not just the stuff on your floor – it’s anything that stands between you and the life you want to be living. Peter Walsh

When there is clutter, there is no room for calm and content. Be ruthless. Clear out the chaos and make space in life for things that really matter. The Organized Life

Clutter doesn’t just occupy the house in which you live, it occupies your mind. Avina Cleste

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more, and have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives, or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Family and relationships are worth the trouble!

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Building and repairing relationships are long-term investments. Stephen Covey

Our granddaughter walks confidently, holding onto her grandpa’s little finger, but falls to her knees when he loosens his grip. She doesn’t need the support, but she hasn’t realized she can walk on her own yet.

It might seem like it takes forever to take those first few steps alone, and with our grandson, it happened while I was away visiting Mom. When I returned home, he walked down the hall to meet me with a proud look on his face.

Life goes by quickly, but at the same time, sometimes progress seems slow. Time hasn’t flown by as quickly these last few years as they’ve been punctuated with milestones.

We are never ready for the phone call that tells us we’ve seen someone for the last time, but it comes, and life goes on. Our life gets bigger until, at a certain point, it starts to get smaller. Sometimes we make it smaller before it needs to be. If we don’t make an effort to see people when they are alive, how great is the loss when they die?

I’m watching a show, and the father of the main character shows up after they haven’t seen each other for fifteen years. His Mother died, and because of a rift, instead of keeping a relationship with his father who he still had it was like he lost them both. His children didn’t even know they had a grandfather. Of course, they patch things up, but fifteen years have gone by that they’ll never get back. The main character didn’t tell his father when his own wife died four years ago. The father finds out when he finally goes to look for his son in the last place he knew him to be. He left the state after his wife died without informing his father.

It’s fiction, but how many families are fractured like this? Sometimes there’s drama before someone dies, and sometimes the drama escalates with their death. How sad for children not to know grandparents they are lucky enough to have. I deprived my children of knowing my parents as well as they could have by moving across the country. It is one thing to not visit grandparents often because of time and distance, but time and distance are not the obstacles; broken relationships are.

No relationship is all sunshine, but two people can share one umbrella and survive the storm together. Unknown

I’ve spoken to other people whose parents live far away, and how they kept a good relationship with them, and I’ve spoken to people who live in the same city as their parents, and hardly see them. We make our choices, and then those choices seem to take on a life of their own. We might not be able to pinpoint when a wrong turn was taken, but other times we know exactly when the rift occurred.

Life is what we make it, and so are relationships. Parents and siblings aren’t perfect, and nor are children, grandchildren, wives, or husbands. My nephew says, “We love them cause their kin.” I can’t think of a better way to put it. People struggle with the decisions they’ve made and the demons in their lives, and do we make it worse if we can’t accept them for who they are? I’m not saying we need to enable bad behavior, but can’t we love the individual even if we hate the behavior?

Do we have a place in our heart for the prodigal child, the prodigal parent, or the prodigal sibling? Can we hate the sin, but love the sinner? We all fall short of what we saw for ourselves, or at least I think we do. When we look back over our lives, we think of what could have been better, where we faltered and came short. Maybe we were lucky enough not to have an addiction, or strong enough to overcome one, maybe our missteps weren’t big enough to be public. Do we need to be grateful if we’ve lived a life free from the angst others face, but instead of looking down on them, say, “There but for the grace of God go I?”

We might not be able to help someone, and watching them struggle is hard, but doesn’t keeping a relationship, instead of cutting them off, seem like the thing to do? Would reaching out to someone make their day better?

Behind great relationships are hard fought battles. No matter what, if you’re in a relationship you will rub up against each other’s unresolved pain and wounds. It’s inevitable. But one of the main differences between growth and healing versus patterns and merry-go-round dynamics is the ability to repair after the rupture. Unknown

A relationship is like a house. When a light bulb burns out you do not go and buy a new house, you fix the light bulb. Unknown

It is possible for a difficult or broken relationship to be restored to a place of health and emotion again, demonstrate love, and forgive. Unknown

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thanks to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Bitterness and resentment poison our souls

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Never let hard lessons harden your heart, the hard lessons of life are meant to make you better, not bitter. Roy T. Bennett

How and why do we become bitter, and do we notice it, or is it only others who notice? Is it optimism, gratitude, or some other attitude that helps us get through life without becoming bitter? Do we lose faith in ourselves, society, or did unmet expectations turn life sour?

Did we want something out of life that we didn’t get? Instead of kissing the frog and getting a prince or princess, did we turn our prince or princess into a frog by expecting them to be someone they could never be? Did we think love was enough? Love is a verb, and a hard-working verb at that. I’ve seen a few marriages that seemed to enjoy a love that never got old, and I’ve heard the secret is to keep falling in love with the same person time after time.

How much of our lives do we live for ourselves, and how much do we live for other people? Are we putting on a façade for others and feeling like a fake to ourselves? Have we learned to love ourselves, warts and all? Do we dare to disagree? Do we dare stand up for what we think is right? Can we admit we are wrong if we find out we’ve been on the wrong side of something we’ve championed?

Last evening, my husband and I were discussing the destruction of bathrooms in schools by students. My take on it is a lack of discipline has come home to roost. It’s not Johnny’s fault because… has not built a good society. Unruly children growing up into unruly adults is a theme as old as time.

Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Saint Augustine

We need to learn to manage three things to live a good life: money, health, and relationships. How we do with those three determines much of our lives. We might think if only someone else would do better, act better, or be better at any number of things, then we’d be better off, and it might even be true, but we have no power over other people.

Do we build a good society when we decide to be a good member? When my Grandmother and Grandfather homesteaded in Northern Saskatchewan in the 1930’s, there were no schools for the children. Mom tells me her mother walked miles to neighboring homesteads, trying to convince other homesteaders to join her in getting a school in the area, but not everyone cared about a school. If they didn’t have children, they didn’t want the expense of supporting a school. Eventually, schools got built, but many children in their formative years didn’t have access to schools, and they had to build lives without that advantage, and they did.

Circumstances work for us and against us, but often it is our choices working for or against us. How are we managing the life we have? Are there better choices we could be making?

Life can change; spouses die, businesses close, jobs end, but if life is still going on, we have to adapt. We might think life can never be good again. Who are we without… We are who we’ve always been; we aren’t our marriage, our business, or our job. As long as we are breathing, there are choices to make. What can we do to make our health, relationships, and attitude better? How do we know a choice we don’t want to make because we are afraid of change, won’t open up a new way of life we will enjoy more? It takes courage to go forward, but what other choice do we have? If we regret the things we don’t do, then when faced with a choice, even if brought on by circumstances beyond our control, shouldn’t we make the best choice open to us and move on?

Bitterness and resentment only hurt one person, and it’s not the person we’re resenting – it’s us. Alana Stewart

Resentment is nasty. What makes it so ugly is that it has a tendency to turn you an otherwise kind and reasonable person, into someone who is so angry at their own life situation that it is nearly impossible to recover. Bitterness and resentment make it hard even for the people who love you to be around you. Martha Bodyfelt

Resentment is often a woman’s inner signal that she has been ignoring an important God-given responsibility – that of making choices. Brenda Waggoner

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Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.