A moment of patience in a moment of anger saves a thousand moments of regret.
Photo credit -
rawforbeauty.com on facebook.
rawforbeauty.com on facebook.
Showing posts with label best life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label best life. Show all posts
Friday, August 11, 2017
Friday, December 16, 2016
Pets that wait
For months, our dog Missy would go to a specific spot and sit next to the highway and wait for the people who dropped her off to return for her. It broke my heart... even after having been abused, even with her scars to prove it, she still waited on them to come back.
She has a loving home now and it took her more than 6 months to allow me to pet her anywhere other than under her chin, and only for a stroke or two.
It took a second dog Bob, being left behind near our home, who did not look abused, but was abandoned also, to help her open up. Bob also waited by the road and no one came back for him either. But Bob was very open and wanted to be loved and petted. His openness showed Missy that we were loving and not abusive. Loving a living thing can help cure a multitude of ills they might have lived through. Be kind - it matters.
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Peace is within
Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.
Mahatma Gandhi – 1869-1948, Indian Independence Leader
Thursday, January 17, 2013
How do you cope? Are you carrots, eggs, or coffee?
Shared from Facebook, Author Unknown, If you are the author or owner of this text or picture, please let me know. I will gladly give credit where credit is due. I just really liked and wanted to share. :)
Grandmother Says... Carrots, Eggs, or Coffee; "Which are you?"
A young woman went to her grandmother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved a new one arose.
Her grandmother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water. In the first, she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs and the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil without saying a word.
In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her granddaughter, she asked, "Tell me what do you see?"
"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied.
She brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they got soft.She then asked her to take an egg and break it.
After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg.
Finally, she asked her to sip the coffee. The granddaughter smiled, as she tasted its rich aroma. The granddaughter then asked. "What's the point,grandmother?"
Her grandmother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity--boiling water--but each reacted differently.
The carrot went in strong, hard and unrelenting. However after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But, after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened.
The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water they had changed the water.
"Which are you?" she asked her granddaughter.
"When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?"
Think of this: Which am I?
Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity, do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?
Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff?
Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and a hardened heart?
Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you.
When the hours are the darkest and trials are their greatest do you elevate to another level?
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Have you ever used coconut oil?
Ever used Coconut Oil? I have. Just started within the past couple of months. It is awesome. Really, it is.
Frying bacon? use this oil! Even in the microwave. It makes the most delicious bacon in the world! After using it awhile, I tried a canola olive oil blend and YUK! ALL I TASTED was the oil, not the bacon. Never again! I now always use coconut oil to fry bacon.
Scrambling eggs? use this oil! In place of butter, it is great.
Making toast? use this oil! Try it in place of butter. Oh, my, but it is good.
Along with tasting great, there are many other uses as well.
I have put it on my arms and it is the BEST moisturizer. My skin is really dry and it just soaks right in AND I can tell the difference several days later.
Some people say it improves memory and brain function. While I myself have no scientific evidence of this, I do feel that I remember things more easily and do not stumble over my words so much.
But, hey, don't take my word for it! Try it yourself!
And right now, if you purchase $25 or more from Amazon, you get free shipping. That is a deal, considering how high shipping has gotten and the weight to ship oil.
Have a try for yourself. Then come back and leave me a comment letting me know how it worked for you!
If you have used coconut oil, please leave a comment to let us know how it works for you! And all the ways you have found to use it!
Frying bacon? use this oil! Even in the microwave. It makes the most delicious bacon in the world! After using it awhile, I tried a canola olive oil blend and YUK! ALL I TASTED was the oil, not the bacon. Never again! I now always use coconut oil to fry bacon.
Scrambling eggs? use this oil! In place of butter, it is great.
Making toast? use this oil! Try it in place of butter. Oh, my, but it is good.
Along with tasting great, there are many other uses as well.
I have put it on my arms and it is the BEST moisturizer. My skin is really dry and it just soaks right in AND I can tell the difference several days later.
Some people say it improves memory and brain function. While I myself have no scientific evidence of this, I do feel that I remember things more easily and do not stumble over my words so much.
But, hey, don't take my word for it! Try it yourself!
And right now, if you purchase $25 or more from Amazon, you get free shipping. That is a deal, considering how high shipping has gotten and the weight to ship oil.
Have a try for yourself. Then come back and leave me a comment letting me know how it worked for you!
If you have used coconut oil, please leave a comment to let us know how it works for you! And all the ways you have found to use it!
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
On growing older
A good read for all of my friends
________________________________
This is a story of an aging couple
Told by their son who was
President of NBC NEWS.*
This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed. Here goes...
My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car.
He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.
In those days, he told me when he was in his 90s, to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it.
At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: Oh, bull shit! she said. He hit a horse.
Well, my father said, there was that, too.
So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.
My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines , would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.
My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. No one in the family drives, my mother would explain, and that was that.
But, sometimes, my father would say, But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one. It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.
But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.
It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.
Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother.
So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery? I remember him saying more than once.
For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.
Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage.
(Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)
He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustine's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home.
If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."
After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored."
If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?"
"I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.
"No left turns," he said.
"What?" I asked.
"No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic.
As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."
"What?" I said again.
"No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights."
"You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support."No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works." But then she added: "Except when your father loses count."
I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.
"Loses count?" I asked.
"Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again."
I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.
"No," he said "If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week."
My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90.
She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.
They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)
He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.
One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.
A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer."
"You're probably right," I said.
"Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated.
"Because you're 102 years old," I said..
"Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day.
That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.
He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet."
An hour or so later, he spoke his last words:
"I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have."
A short time later, he died.
I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.
I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life, Or because he quit taking left turns.
Life is too short to wake up with regrets.
So love the people who treat you right.
Forget about the one's who don't.
Believe everything happens for a reason.
If you get a chance, take it; if it changes your life, let it.
Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it.
ENJOY LIFE NOW - IT HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE
________________________________
This is a story of an aging couple
Told by their son who was
President of NBC NEWS.*
This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed. Here goes...
My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car.
He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.
In those days, he told me when he was in his 90s, to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it.
At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: Oh, bull shit! she said. He hit a horse.
Well, my father said, there was that, too.
So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.
My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines , would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.
My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. No one in the family drives, my mother would explain, and that was that.
But, sometimes, my father would say, But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one. It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.
But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.
It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.
Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother.
So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery? I remember him saying more than once.
For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.
Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage.
(Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)
He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustine's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home.
If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."
After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored."
If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?"
"I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.
"No left turns," he said.
"What?" I asked.
"No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic.
As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."
"What?" I said again.
"No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights."
"You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support."No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works." But then she added: "Except when your father loses count."
I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.
"Loses count?" I asked.
"Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again."
I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.
"No," he said "If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week."
My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90.
She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.
They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)
He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.
One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.
A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer."
"You're probably right," I said.
"Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated.
"Because you're 102 years old," I said..
"Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day.
That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.
He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet."
An hour or so later, he spoke his last words:
"I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have."
A short time later, he died.
I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.
I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life, Or because he quit taking left turns.
Life is too short to wake up with regrets.
So love the people who treat you right.
Forget about the one's who don't.
Believe everything happens for a reason.
If you get a chance, take it; if it changes your life, let it.
Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it.
ENJOY LIFE NOW - IT HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Friday, October 29, 2010
Burnt Biscuits
Burned Biscuits - "author unknown"
When I was a kid, my Mom liked to make breakfast food for dinner
every now and then. And I remember one night in particular when she had
made breakfast after a long, hard day at work. On that evening so long
ago, my Mom placed a plate of eggs, sausage and extremely burned
biscuits in front of my dad. I remember waiting to see if anyone
noticed! Yet all my dad did was reach for his biscuit, smile at my Mom
and ask me how my day was at school. I don't remember what I told him
that night, but I do remember watching him smear butter and jelly on
that biscuit and eat every bite!
When I got up from the table that evening, I remember hearing my
Mom apologize to my dad for burning the biscuits. And I'll never forget
what he said: "Honey, I love burned biscuits."
Later that night, I went to kiss Daddy good night and I asked
him if he really liked his biscuits burned. He wrapped me in his arms
and said, "Your Momma put in a hard day at work today and she's real
tired. And besides - a little burned biscuit never hurt anyone!"
Life is full of imperfect things and imperfect people. I'm not
the best at hardly anything, and I sometimes forget birthdays and
anniversaries just like everyone else. But what I've learned over the
years is that learning to accept each other's fault - and choosing to
celebrate each other's differences - is one of the most important keys
to creating a healthy, growing, and lasting relationship.
And that's my prayer for you today. That you will learn to take
the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of your life and lay them at the
feet of God. Because in the end, He's the only One who will be able to
give you a relationship where a burnt biscuit isn't a deal-breaker!
We could extend this to any relationship. In fact, understanding
is the basis of any relationship, be it a husband-wife or parent-child
or friendship!
So Please pass me a biscuit, and yes, the burned one will do
just fine. And PLEASE pass this along to someone who has enriched your
life.
Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting
some kind of battle.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Amy Grant - Better Than A Hallelujah (Slideshow With Lyrics)
"I've loved this song since I first heard it. The honesty and vulnerability of the lyric reminds me that to pray means to come as I am, imperfections and all, because ultimately, God seeks communion with us, the real us... and that's freeing." ~~Amy Grant
I've loved it since I first heard it as well. As much as I love to praise God, it's nice to think our cries can be praise to Him as well. Thank you Amy for a beautiful song.
I've loved it since I first heard it as well. As much as I love to praise God, it's nice to think our cries can be praise to Him as well. Thank you Amy for a beautiful song.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
FREE Bridal e-book for Practical Wedding Tips and Advice on Marriage
Free Bridal e-book for Practical Wedding Tips and Advice on Marriage « Christian Women Today
From organizing the details to looking your best on the big day to learning how to start your marriage on the right foot, get practical tips for your wedding and sound advice for your marriage.
CLICK HERE
From organizing the details to looking your best on the big day to learning how to start your marriage on the right foot, get practical tips for your wedding and sound advice for your marriage.
CLICK HERE
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