"Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Writing Well"
If you are sitting next to someone who irritates you, follow these instructions:
1. Quietly and calmly open up your laptop case.
2. Remove your laptop.
3. Start up.
4. Make sure the guy who is annoying you, can see the screen.
5. Close your eyes, tilt your head up to the sky & move your lips as if praying.
6. Then hit this link.
Every Sunday I provide videos and valuable links to the Truth or Tradition teachings. We’ve been following the Truth or Tradition teachings for many years now and they have truly blessed our family. We have found peace and happiness through our beliefs and we walk confidently for God. My hope, by passing on this information to you, is that what you find here, or on the Truth or Tradition website, will guide you to a better, more blessed and abundant life.
If you would like to read my views on religion and how we got started with the ministry, you can read this.
Let’s get started:
When I was a child, Mom and Dad made me and my siblings sit down after Christmas and write thank-you notes to all the people from whom we received presents (and don’t think for a minute that we would have done so had they not forced us to). Mom and Dad also made sure we said “Please” and “Thank you.” Years later, when I became a parent, I found myself doing the same thing for my children. Thankfulness does not come naturally. It needs to be trained in us. Our sinful nature, selfish and ungrateful, must be ruled by our will. If we are going to live godly lives, we have to first know what is right, and then make up our minds to do it. This is very true of making thankfulness a habit.
In order to be thankful in our day-to-day lives, it helps to assess why we are so often unthankful. First, life is difficult and unpredictable because we live in this fallen world, in which the Devil has made it his personal aim to make people’s lives miserable. We too often have unrealistic expectations of how things are going to be, expecting things to go “right.” When they do not, we become exasperated and unthankful.
Second, the world (especially advertising agencies) works very hard to create unthankfulness and dissatisfaction. What? Absolutely! No one who is satisfied with what they have replaces it, so advertising agencies work hard for their clients, convincing people that what they have is not good enough. This is not difficult to do in today’s world, when almost everything we use is being improved, remodeled, or updated at least once a year, and everything we wear is outdated before we know it. We learn about “better” products and naturally want them (and may even think we deserve them). No wonder we wrestle with being unthankful for what we have.
Ah, to live in the “good old days,” when your great, great, great grandfather (or grandmother) wore the same kind of clothes you did, traveled around town by the same method (on foot with a staff for stabilization and protection), and cooked on the same kind of stove (a campfire). Then you could be thankful for what you have. Sound good? Only one problem—it’s a myth. Ancient people were no more thankful than modern ones. Life was difficult back then too, and people griped about it. That is why there are verses in the Old Testament telling people to give thanks to God. In fact, some 3,000 years ago people griped about life and talked about the “good old days.”
Ecclesiastes 7:10a
Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these…”Let’s face it, the only “good old days” were in the Garden of Eden, and since then life has been difficult, with plenty to be unthankful about. That is why we have to make up our minds to obey God and be thankful. Did I say, “obey God”? You bet I did, because God commands us to be thankful. Hey, that sounds like my parents—and it should. Good parents “stand in” for God until a child learns to obey the Word without parental enforcement. Scripture says, “…a child left to himself disgraces his mother” (Prov. 29:15b).
1 Thessalonians 5:18
give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.The Greek verb that is translated “give thanks” in the above verse, eucharisteo, is in the imperative mood, which means it is a command. God does not “wish” that we would give thanks, He tells us to do so. We have the free will to disobey His command, of course, but not without consequences. Unthankfulness produces a host of physical and mental consequences. Furthermore, it makes us hard to live with. Few people enjoy spending much time with an unthankful, sourpuss person. Lastly, there will be consequences for unthankfulness at the Judgment, in terms of the rewards for obedience that we will miss out on.
If life is so difficult, how can God command us to be thankful? The answer to that question is twofold. First, because although there is a lot in life we can be unthankful about if we so choose, there is also a lot for which we can be thankful. Second, because we can be thankful if we want to be. Many a parent has confronted an unthankful, sullen child, and said, “Go to your room and don’t come out until you change your attitude.” That is good parenting, because children, and the rest of us, need to learn that bad attitudes and unthankfulness are a choice. I am not speaking of the immediate emotional reaction to a tragedy, but if we have a continual negative and unthankful attitude about life, that is a choice. [1]
The fact is, we can be thankful if we want to be. God commands us to take our thoughts captive to Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:5
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.God has designed our thinking process to be subject to our will, but this is not such a popular subject today. We live in the generation of, “If it feels good, do it.” Slogans, songs, and countless “role models” encourage us to run our lives by our feelings. Thus we become unthankful because we are quite sure that we “deserve a break today” and did not get one. We wanted to “have it our way,” but that never materialized. But even without unrealistic expectations, the trials of life may produce feelings of unthankfulness—and the key to both obedience and a more blessed life is that we choose not to dwell on them. We can take our unthankful thoughts captive and say to ourselves: “I refuse to think like this. I am going to find something to be thankful for in this situation.” In fact, God commands us to think about “good” things.
Philippians 4:8
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.Just as we are commanded to be thankful, we are commanded how to direct our thinking to that end. The word translated “think” in the above verse is in the imperative mood, and therefore is a command. As with being thankful, thinking about excellent and praiseworthy things is not a suggestion, it is a command. Good parents know that it is unhealthy and hurtful for their children to think about ungodly things, and so they do things such as keep their small children from seeing “R” rated movies, place parental controls on the Internet, and monitor the video games they play.
With similar parental love, our heavenly Father directs us as to what we should think about and be exposed to, and we would all have a more positive attitude about life if we treated our grown-up selves like we treat our children. Why is it suddenly okay to watch sex on the screen or play graphically violent video games just because we are old enough to do so? We dare not be naive about the consequences of ungodly thoughts. There is an ever-growing body of evidence that links watching violence on television or playing violent video games with violent behavior, and we can be assured that violent behavior does not arise out of a thankful heart.
Someone once said, “Your thoughts are the seeds of your words and deeds.” How true. If we spend a significant amount of time watching violence or sex on television or in movies (or for that matter, the cutting, sarcastic talk that is the standard fare of most sit-coms), it should not amaze us that we have a hard time being peaceful and thankful. If we constantly sow violent thought-seeds, eventually we will reap tension, anxiety, and anti-social thoughts. If we sow hours of sexually oriented thought-seeds, we will reap sexual dissatisfaction (which may show up as sexual fantasies), and not be thankful for who we are and what we have.
Scripture says, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows” (Gal. 6:7). That is a simple formula with a simple message. If we are going to be thankful from our hearts, we have to sow thankful thoughts, and not just once a day when we get off work. If we are going to be godly and be thankful in life, we have to be careful about the thought-seeds that we sow. We must also be aware that reaping requires consistent sowing. Just because we guard our thoughts today does not mean we will be thankful tomorrow. We need to sow godly thought-seeds over the long haul to consistently reap thankful, godly thoughts.
You can read the rest of the article here.
If you have any questions, or would like to learn more about God’s wonderful message, please visit the Truth or Tradition website. You can also keep track of the ministry through their Facebook page, their YouTube Channel, or follow them on Twitter.
Thanks for reading.
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More from Write From Karen
This is what I do whenever I’m trying to get the boys to let me into their rooms. 😀
You can find out more about the author of this animation,Simon Tofield, at his website.
Have a GREAT Saturday, everyone!
Written Thursday night
At this moment, I’m sitting in an empty, deserted office at my husband’s company. It’s 8:18 p.m. and I brought my laptop with me so I could work on another story for the NaNoWriMo challenge.
I came with Kevin because he asked me to. I came because I love him. And I could see he needed me. I’m not any help to him as far as his work, everything he does is alien to me, but I’m helping him by simply BEING here. It’s what married people do for one another.
He’s been extremely stressed, depressed and generally sad these past several weeks … and here’s why:
I’ve mentioned that Kevin’s company is shutting down. And they’re shutting down not because they were failing, but because they were succeeding.
In order to continue operations, they needed a loan, which at any other time, wouldn’t have been a problem obtaining. But the (stupid, asinine, irresponsible, debt-happy … I could go on) government felt it was necessary to smooth over the banks bad financial decisions and bailed them out by giving them an insane amount of money. But this spooked the banks so bad that they held on to that money and wouldn’t loan it out to people who needed it, like my husband’s company. So the bailout plan? Not only failed, it caused quite a few companies to close down – good, solid companies that didn’t deserve this to happen to them.
How’s that hope and change working out for ya? Because guess what? It didn’t work at all for us.
Anyway, I’m not spilling any secrets by telling you this, it’s all quite public. Since Kevin is the CFO of the company, he has to stick around to the bitter end. Gradually, over the past several weeks, they’ve been forced to let some people go. It’s been emotionally draining for Kevin because he liked these people and he enjoyed working with them and he felt bad for them, as if he somehow failed them in some way, though this series of unfortunate events had nothing to do with him and everything to do with our idiot government.
Anyway, he has had a mountain of paperwork to wade through and various hoops he’s had to jump through and a sea of lawyers to deal with and it’s all just building up inside him. He wants to do a good job, and he will, but there’s a lot riding on his shoulders and the man is only human.
I was pretty freaked out by all of this at first. When he told me what was going on, I was scared. We were losing our primary source of income. And though I can, and likely will, get a job, and I’m certain he’ll get another job later on down the road, it’s still … disconcerting to say the least. Our world has been shaken – along with millions of other people.
But now? Now I’m ready for it to be over with. I can see the toll it’s taking on Kevin and it kills me to see him like this. He’s losing sleep and work is never far from his mind. I often catch him staring off into space thinking about what needs to be done, what he has done, if it was done right … and on and on.
The poor man.
I’m ready to move on to the next chapter of our lives. And I know he’s ready. He’s ready to take some much deserved time off. He needs some time he can just sit back and think about … nothing, preferably. But I know that won’t happen because he’s just the kind of man who likes to stay busy.
Now, I’m sitting here, in this empty office, an office that someone used to occupy, I might add, and look around at all the empty cubicles and all the art on the wall that will soon be sold and it’s just a shell of its former glory. I remember walking in here and seeing all sorts of personal objects on desks – pictures of families, plants, jackets slung over chairs, bags of candy sitting next to computer monitors and now? Now all I see are empty business card holders and desk calendars dating back to June 2009 – the moment that time stood still for the individual that used to occupy this office.
And then there are the boxes. There are boxes everywhere.
It’s all so sad. So, so sad.
Kevin’s office is next to the office I’m currently using. And I can hear him in there, at 8:30 at night, making business calls to the SEC, trying to straighten out misunderstandings and confusing legal verbiage. I hear a completely different version of the man I married; I hear his intelligence, his determination and his weariness.
I can’t wait for this to be over for him.
ADDED at 7:30 Friday morning: I won’t pretend to know what’s going on, I’m simply not smart enough to grasp all of the filings and reports that Kevin has to do, but a mistake was made on one of the filings and Kevin had had to send it back. The company working on it is open 24 hours a day, so they would have the corrected version for him to approve at 2:00 in the morning.
2:00 A.M.
He finished up his work and we came home. And at two o’clock in the morning, he had to get up, check his email for the file (which arrived at 2:30) and approve it. Only the company got it wrong again and he had to send it back again. This went back and forth a few more times and finally, it was ready at 3:30 this morning.
Again, I don’t understand the urgency, something about it having to be filed by a certain time today, but my point is – the man is being worked to death right now. And he’s so tired. His eyes were red-rimmed and glassy this morning.
He has another busy day ahead of him today and then he has a gig at The New Key Largo tonight (bad timing!!). Things like this are always piling up for Kevin. It’s like the devil takes great pride in trying to knock him around.
But Kevin doesn’t allow it to happen. He just grits his teeth and pounds his way through the muck.
Dear God, let all of this be over soon.
Please.
UPDATED: Just read that the unemployment rate is now up to 10.2%. And yet, we’re told the economy is getting better.
We are just ONE story out of MILLIONS.
Is it 2012 yet?
Here are the boys’ school pictures:
Our boys are kind, smart and handsome – we make good people, Kevin. 🙂
I’m VERY pleased with the pictures this year. They have good smiles and the colors look great.
(Lifetouch goofed up and gave me two CD’s with Dude’s pictures on them, so I had to scan Jazz’s picture – hence the reason it looks grainy. *sad face*)
This was the last year that Dude will have his picture taken at school. Next year (next summer, actually), he’ll have his senior pictures taken.
THAT should be fun! 😀
I’m actually looking forward to the experience. I didn’t have my senior picture taken so once again, I’m living THROUGH my sons. *grin*
Actually, I don’t know why I didn’t have my senior pictures taken. I was working at the time and I could have easily paid for them myself … I guess I wasn’t willing to part with my hard-earned money just to have pictures of ME.
How boring.
I’ll have to start shopping around for a photographer in January. I hear they get booked up fast during the summer months.
Yesterday was a terrible, no-good day.
I took Jazz in to get his braces.
I warned him. I told him he would be uncomfortable, that there would probably be pain. I’ve been through this with Dude, I knew what to expect.
I braced myself.
I picked Jazz up from school at 11:00 yesterday. Everything ran smoothly. I gave him a note, he took it to the attendance office, he got a pass and at 11:00, he left class.
I was sitting outside the school doors when he called me.
“Mom. Where are you?”
“I’m sitting out here waiting for you.”
“I don’t see you.”
“There’s a Pepsi truck in my way, I couldn’t pull all the way up.”
“Well, do I just leave? I feel weird just leaving. What if they think I’m trying to skip or something?”
“You got a pass, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then come on out.”
“I feel weird. Can you walk up here and get me?”
So, I did. Even though he’s growing up, it warms my heart that he still needs me on some level. 🙂
We arrived at the orthodontist and they were waiting for him. There was only one other patient/parent in there, so we had the place to ourselves. They took Jazz back to get the process started (he had his iPod with him, I was hoping that would help distract him and make time go by faster for him – yes to both), and I got to sit down and do the really fun stuff.
Work out the payment contract.
Yay.
After signing my left arm and part of my right leg away, we got our bill settled and I left. Jazz was scheduled to be in the chair for 90 minutes, so I thought I would take advantage of that time to write on my laptop in the car in the parking lot. It was a beautiful day, not too hold, not too cold, it would be quiet, an ideal situation, really.
I have an outlet in my car. (How cool is that?!) Only, you have to have the car battery turned all the way on, as in, the warning lights on the dashboard and lights on sort of on when I thought all it would take was just a click of the key when just the radio comes on.
No. I would either have to run my battery down, or leave the car running and that let’s face it – that’s a stupid alternative.
So, I went home.
Again, I planned on doing a little writing in the hour that I had left before he was scheduled to be done, but I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think about was Jazz, in that chair, having metal railroad tracks put into his mouth.
I was on my way back to the office, when Jazz called. He sounded garbled and really miserable and I nearly started crying.
There’s a part of me that wonders if we made the right decision with him. Jazz’s teeth are … borderline, really. They are crooked. They are crowded. Some are even twisted around, and he has a few that nearly overlap one another, but honestly? They don’t LOOK that bad.
And you know, so what if he has crooked teeth, right?
But here’s the thing. What if it bugs him later on in life? What if he becomes self-conscious about them and then uses the old, “you paid for Dude’s teeth – why didn’t you pay for mine? Do you LOVE Dude more than me?”
Perhaps I’m exaggerating, but I think about these things. I just don’t want to regret NOT doing something when we COULD.
No one really knows this, aside from Kevin, but this decision has PLAGUED me ever since we gave the green light.
Did we do the right thing?
I got to the office in time to hear the proper brushing, don’t eat certain foods, what to do if a bracket comes loose or a wire pokes him speech.
Again, I’ve been through all of this with Dude, so I sort of tuned the assistant out and concentrated on Jazz. In fact, the dentist (who’s really hot, I might add), came over to shake Jazz’s hand and I barely looked at the man – I only had eyes for my son.
He was clearly miserable. And close to tears. And oh my gosh, I’m crying as I type this. I feel like such a BAD MOTHER. Here I am, torturing this poor boy and … for what?! A pretty smile? A confident demeanor?
Dear God, I hope it’s worth it.
He didn’t go back to school after his appointment, obviously. He had thought he would want to, (he’s such an optimist), but I vetoed the idea because I knew what it would be like for him.
Dude had his braces put on during the summer, so we didn’t have the whole school issue to deal with. And then when he did go to school, he had gotten used to his braces by that point and it wasn’t a big deal.
But this is different. Jazz DOES have school to worry about and UGH, I’m second guessing myself.
He couldn’t eat his dinner last night, even though Kevin cooked up some chicken and rice. He ate some rice and some noodles, but very little chicken.
The poor boy can’t chew, it hurts too bad.
I loaded him up on Extra-Strength Tylenol (that stuff works great for him) and he said he actually got some sleep last night. He looked better this morning, but his mouth still looks swollen.
I made him some pancakes and he was able to eat nearly two of them before giving up. He tried to put in some wax before school (they give you wax when you get braces in case it rubs against your gums and makes them sore), but it kept slipping off and he got very frustrated with that.
Jazz is a lot like me, he has zero patience for stuff like that.
I again gave him some Tylenol before we left and he worked on trying to put in some wax on our way to school.
He was finally successful, thank goodness.
And yes, he went to school today.
I nearly kept him home. I thought it over, weighed the pros and cons and I thought it actually might be better for Jazz to go to school and be distracted as opposed to staying home and thinking about how much it hurt all day long.
Again, I hope I made the right decision.
I gave him soft foods in his lunch, but I don’t expect him to eat much.
I do worry about what his friends will say, but he warned them and quite frankly? A LOT of kids have braces nowadays and it’s simply not that big of a deal, not like it was when I was his age.
I just told him to shrug them off and say, “Hey man, you might as well get over it. I’m going to have them for quite a while.”
He was very subdued and quiet last night. It really bothered Kevin – and we talked, again, on whether we made the right decision with him or not.
It’s honestly borderline, folks. We probably could have gotten away with not doing anything with him? But then again … ?
I’m torn. I’m sick. I HATE THIS PART OF PARENTING! Wondering if you did the right thing. Second guessing your decisions. Putting your child through so much discomfort.
Thankfully, the kids are out of school tomorrow. So, he’ll have three whole days to recoup and adjust before heading back to school on Monday. He just has to get through today.
And today will probably be the worst day. The soreness will have settled in on top of the tightness. But as the days go by, that will lessen and pretty soon, they won’t bother him and he’ll have gotten used to them.
Believe it or not, this is NOTHING compared to what we went through with Dude. His teeth were unquestionably bad. He actually had to go through two phases – phase one was stretching his upper palete and phase two was straightening. He wore his braces for a total of four years overall – one year in third grade, and then three years from 8th to 11th.
And yes, I went through this same guilt trip with him, too. Even more so, quite frankly. But now that it’s all over and the braces have come off? Dude is CONFIDENT. I’ve never seen this side of him – ever. He holds his head up higher. He just seems so …. sure of himself now.
Yes, part of it is because he’s older, but I honestly think part of it is because he knows he looks good and he likes what he sees in the mirror every morning.
I want to give that same confidence to Jazz. I know I can’t MAKE the boy have confidence, but if I can provide him the tools, like say, straightening his teeth, to help him reach that confidence level, then I believe it’s my job, as his mother, to see that it happens.
I’ve had to be so strong for him, when all I really want to do is rock him like a little baby and comfort him (which, I sort of did. I’ve hugged and kissed him more in the past 24 hours than I have in probably the last 24 months – mainly because he’s allowed me to), but he feeds off my reaction, so if I’m strong, he’ll be strong. If he sees me break down and cry, then he will cry.
Jazz has always been that. He sometimes needs that emotional crutch in order to handle things. I learned that a long time ago.
So, yeah, it’s been a tough 24 hours. But his mouth will heal, he’ll get used to the new hardware and life will go on – this is what I have my eye on, that point in time.
He doesn’t have to go back for 12 weeks. They said that the type of wire they used will do the job for that long – so that’s a plus. They also had to cap two of his upper molars because of his overbite and that should also speed up his treatment by about a month, they said. So hopefully, Jazz will not have to wear them more than 24 months, if it all works out like it’s supposed to.
Thank God I only have two children, I don’t think my heart could take going through this a third time.
UPDATED: I was relieved to see that Jazz was back to his old self after I picked him up from school; I’m glad we sent him. It served to distract him enough that he was able to get through the day. He was peppy and had a lot of things to tell me about his day.
The Tylenol worked great and he wasn’t that uncomfortable. His friends were just sort of “Meh” on the whole braces thing (which I knew they would be, so many kids have braces nowadays), he was able to put a bigger chunk of wax in his mouth to help with the soreness and all is right with the world once again.
I still have doubts (what mom doesn’t, I suppose), but it was nice to see he was rebounding from the experience. He now has three days to relax and recoup and should be back to a semi-comfortable place by Monday.
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NaNoWriMo Update: I actually ended up not writing at all yesterday. Guess what, the burn out has already started.
See? Told you. I’m nothing if not predictable.
However, I feel energized after my day off, and I plan on writing stories six and seven today. Again, I’m trying to stay ahead of the game so that I CAN take a day off.
You can keep track of my overall word count in the sidebar. So far? I’m ahead of the game – let’s see if I can’t keep it that way.
Thanks for reading.
Write From Karen 