Days of Healing; February 19

Oct 25, 2008

To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will to live.

Albert Schweitzer

Not even the meanest circumstances can make us jealous, self-pitying, or greedy unless we allow them to. While we can’t control all our experiences, we can control our responses. Unless we refuse the responsibility, we are in charge of our own reactions.

Concider, for example:

On the same street we can meet a man with no legs who is happily, serenely going about his business, and another man who is cursing fate because his shoes are tight. We can meet a peaceful, contented old woman who has known nothing but poverty, and a well-educated, beautifully dressed young woman who is depressed because she can’t afford a new car. We can meet the drunken alcoholic slumped in a doorway and his recovering brother laughing with a group of friends after an AA meeting.

We, all of us, can learn to live above our circumstances if we’re willing to alter our attitudes.

I am the master of my own reactions. Today, I choose to enjoy the roses in spite of the thorns.

Oct 24, 2008

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong
-Ecclesiastes

Overwhelming firepower doesn’t win most battles — especially battles of the inner kind — but patience and persistance do.

We adult children have many battles to fight. Battles with negative thinking, male or female dependency, fear of abondonment, shame, and guilt. We often feel weak, unsure, and powerless against such terrifying and constant forces.

When we think we can’t put up a fight one more day, we need to remember that we learned these attitudes one day at a time, event by event, thought by thought. And that’s the only way we can beat them — one blow at a time.

Patience and persistence must be our secret weapons. Homely and undramatic as they are, these two inner soliders will advance the struggle far more than an exhuasting frontal assault that may rage momentarily and then die out.

I am confident that patience and persistence will win out in the long run. And I am grateful for that insight.