Service Blesses Us

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing
because he could only do a little.
Edmund Burke

I was feeling rather reflective today and have chosen the lovely quote above for a comptemplative Sunday afternoon. I have a dear friend that is going through some great personal trials right now. It is difficult to watch her struggling and to see her situation change so much over the last year. My friend is a wonderful, hard working woman. She is working hard, not only at her job, but also to keep her spirits up and she has chosen to take the moral high ground despite the difficulties her situation has placed her in. I will not go into the personal nature of her difficulties here. Suffice it to say that I know she is a good woman and is in her situation because of the mistakes and decisions of others and not because of things that she has done herself. I get very sad when I think of the all the wonderful service her family has done for our family in the past, and that now so much of her family dynamic is changing because of the difficulties they are going through. I have wanted to do something to help my friend out but have been at a loss as to how to really do anything that would be of great benefit to her and her family. I have been a shoulder to cry on and have been a listening ear for her at times, but felt that I needed to do something more substantial. I have been involved in my own financial struggles lately as has most of the country, and I felt that I had no real way to help.

I was soooo wrong. I called my friend one night and offered her some of the fruit that has overloaded my trees this summer. I just could not keep up with the picking and preserving. The fruit was falling from the trees faster than I could get it canned. To me the offer was no big deal. It was simply a matter of me not having the time to can or dry all my fruit before it rotted. But when my friend picked up the bags of nectarines and peaches from my house later that evening, she was so grateful. I told her it was no big deal and then she told me that to her it was a very big deal. I knew things were tight at her house, but I did not know that she had been struggling to even buy groceries. She told me that she was not able to afford to buy fresh fruits and vegetables right now. She and her kids had been living off of a lot of stored canned goods and the deer and elk meat from her son's kills last season.

In looking around her home, I noticed a few things that needed attention. My husband had already offered to cut down a tree that she needed to have removed. I asked her about a broken window and she told me it was on her list but was not a high priority right now because the weather had been so warm so far and that she was trying to save the money to fix it before the snow flies. I had no idea how much that would cost to fix, so I was unsure how to proceed there. She had complained of computer problems in the past and I know how expensive that can be. There, I decided, was a way that I could help. I am a bit of an amateur techno-geek so I offered to do that for her. It took several hours and a call to a friend who was a professional techno-geek, but we finally got her computer up and running the way it should. My friend was so excited. She hugged me and thanked me profusely. I do a little computer maintenance work on the side for pay at times, but that hug and the look on my friend’s face was the best paycheck I ever got. Something that was a matter of a few hours of my time had made a huge difference to her.

We never know how something we regard as a small act can bless the lives of another. I hope that you will have the opportunity sometime to see how your everyday acts can bless the lives of another. It is very gratifying to know that your efforts have made someone else’s burdens a little lighter. May we all be so blessed to have that million dollar smile of a paycheck.

The Gift

by Kay Reynolds - January 2004

I had a gift so precious and I kept it to myself.

I hoarded it, and shared it not, and put it on a shelf.

Then one day I noticed that the gift that once was fair,

Was withered and was nearly lost for lack of loving care.

I took it down and nurtured it and then chastised myself,

That I would keep it better now and with my friends would share.

To my surprise, the gift began to grow, so that I had not room,

Upon my shelf or in my house to contain it's growing bloom.

The gift took on a radiance and I did too I found,

And my friend, struck by its beauty, did soon come around.

She asked to take a portion of my gift to grace her home,

So lovingly I divided it and gave the fledgling mound.

The moral of this story is that gifts that are brought to bear,

Are only valuable to us when we chose to share.

Managing Stress

If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension.
George burns (1896 - 1996)

Stress cannot always be avoided. It is inevitable that in our daily hustle and bustle lives, we will find something that stresses us. Maybe it's something trivial that is the proverbial straw for your camel's back or maybe it is truly a problem that needs to be solved. Either way - learning to manage it is the difference between being healthy in your life or having a stroke at the age of 49.

It was the end of the boating seasons 2005 when I took the picture at the right. You can see that the wind was blowing quite hard and the tiny bird on the left of the picture was having a difficult time flying against the wind to get back to it's nest in the reeds. We had planned one one last trip on Utah Lake before winterizing our vessel for the year. It was just not to be. We launched the boat, took it out of the harbor for a brief 5 minutes and decided it was just too rough to be enjoyable. Rather than be upset over the fact that we could not take the trip to the harbor on the opposite shore and pic-nic at the dock there, we decided to tie up to the dock in our home harbor and enjoy the fried chicken and jello salad we had brought. We ate and watched the seagulls fly in to look for crumbs from our feast. We let our daughter practice her knots and docking the boat in rough waters. We took a walk on the shoreline and played in the waves as they crashed against the rocks of the levy. My daughter even coaxed a few ducks to eat graham crackers from her hand. It was a wonderful family day. Had we chosen to stress over something we could not control, the outcome of that day would have been very different.

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?" Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g. The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on." "As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden." "So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can."

So, my friends, why not take a while to just simply RELAX. Put down anything that may be a burden to you right now. If, after you have rested from your stress, you find yourself needing to pick it up again - go ahead. But you may find that resting from your stress gives you new perspective and the thing that seemed so important yesterday is not so important today.

Although I realize that many of the following ways to deal with stress may sound cliche' - they are also wise. Read through the following and try to incorporate some in your life.

* Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.
* Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.
* Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
* Drive carefully. It's not only cars that can be recalled by their maker.
* If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.
* If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it
* It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
* Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, for then you won't have a leg to stand on.
* Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
* Since it's the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.
* Sometimes it's the second mouse that gets the cheese.
* When everything is coming your way, you may be in the wrong lane.
* Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live, so happy birthday.
* You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.
* Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once while other mistakes are much too costly to make twice.
* We could learn a lot from crayons. . . . Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull.
Some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.
*A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour and make everyone else laugh.

Let Freedon Ring!

Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose.
C. Wright Mills

This week we celebrate the birth of this great nation. I hope that each of you have taken the opportunity to reflect upon the great freedoms that we enjoy as citizens of the United States. We have opportunities here that we take for granted, that people in other nations can only dream about. We can own property, send our children to school, read- watch - or listen to anything we desire without fear of reprisal. We can wear anything we want, say anything we want and speak to anyone we want. All men and women here have a vote in government regardless of race, religion or social standing.

As a woman, I am very thankful that I was born a citizen of this country. The suffrage of my gender to cruel hands in many nations is overwhelming to think about. When my daughter was 14, we had a talk regarding the freedoms that she and I enjoy here. She had her eyes opened one night as we watched a television documentary about the life of women in Afghanistan under the reign of the Taliban. There was one scene in the program where a group of women were gathered in the street wearing their black berkas. All of a sudden, a man came by and started beating one of the women with a large stick as the others scattered. It was revealed through an interpreter that the awful crime the woman had committed to deserve this beating was that she had worn nail polish. My sweet innocent daughter was so angry to think that a woman could be treated this way, but she was even angrier that this treatment was accepted by that society. As she put it - just because society accepts it - does not make it right.

We live in a society that has great freedom - but with that freedom comes responsibility. We must safeguard our freedoms through active participation in our government. Our voice matters. Our vote does count. If we lay back and let others make decisions for us without regard to what those decisions are, then we are being not only incredibly ignorant - but ungrateful as well. It is our right and our responsibility to write or call our congressmen, to protest that which we find unjust, to attend our city council meetings on occasion and to monitor those that we have charged to govern us. It is our right and responsibility to elect righteous men and women to governing positions and to use our votes to throw them out of office if they fail represent the values that we hold dear. It is our responsibility to judge our judges and protest those decisions that we find to be unjust. It is our responsibility to do everything that is legal, moral and ethical to safeguard the rights that we have been blessed with and to vanquish any foe that threatens these rights to destroy. It is our responsibility to hold the torch of liberty high and to be a beacon of hope for the oppressed peoples of the world so that they - seeing our good example - may wish to fight for these rights in their own countries. It is our responsibility to be the best Americans we can be. May we all be proud of our freedoms and resolve to be more active in our role as good citizens of this - the most wonderful country on Earth.