Turning the Page

Blessed are the Peacemakers … with Themselves

They were always wrestling with comparisonitis, but that changed when they accepted themselves and became a peacemaker to their parts.  
It seemed they were always striving. I was wanting this and wanting that. They couldn’t make peace with the fact they weren’t meant to be superman or wonder woman.
They wanted to be someone else. They wanted something else, and the world’s economy pandered to this lust and obsession.
I think the most dangerous disease in this world is called Comparisionitis. If it doesn’t kill you, it will undoubtedly suck the life out of you.
It’s contagious and affects everyone I know. Yet, we continue to compare ourselves to others.
We look at others and make judgments on a thousand different aspects. You will have made some judgments about me.
I have made peace with myself that I am not someone else and don’t want to be someone else. I want to be fully me.
Is there still work to do? Of course. This Comparisionitis disease is ancient and old.
Are you comfortable with you?
 
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The Soliloquy of Words you Meditate on Day and Night

Words tumble through our thinking to be a soliloquy, but you can change what you meditate on Day and Night when you change the song.
You probably won’t hear this word spoken today, this week, or even this month.
Soliloquy.
But you will hear a soliloquy today, and you will also speak a soliloquy today. Your soliloquy is an expression of what is happening in your inner world.
To me, the word sounds musical. Something to be sung. It also sounds sad. A sad song?
Of course, it’s one of those fancy words that no one ever says, but it has a special appeal or allurement.
 
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Sitting with Sadness

They were sitting with sadness, and life was fading away, but once they recognized its presence, they could accept it and learn from the shadow.  
Do you like shadows?
When I’m working out in the sun’s heat, a shadow provides a respite. A place away from the intensity of light beating on my skin.
But I’ve also noticed, at times, a shadow seemingly hanging over me. I can’t seem to escape it. I try to run from it, avoid it, and pretend it isn’t there, but I know it’s there.
It feels as if it might engulf me and swamp me into itself.
It’s there, and I don’t want to look at it.
But it’s a shadow, and what’s a shadow? It’s where some object has blocked out the light. It could be a tree, building, cloud, a person, or even a planet.
The light loses its intensity and is filtered, blocked, and hindered.
In that shadow lies a feeling I know. Sadness.
Other words link arms in the shadow. Grief, loss, loneliness, despair, depression, abandonment. It can be a pretty dark place in that shadow.
Sadness is the whisper of loss, the song of the ‘less than.’
 
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The ABT Framework for Listening Well

We all have a story, and it’s full of ‘and’s, but this is a story to learn from. So, therefore, we notice the ABT framework in ourselves and others.
There is a pattern to our lives; once you see it, you will see it everywhere. It’s in every great story, including your own.
I came across it a few years ago while listening to a podcast about why Donald Trump won his first presidential election. He told a better story. An ABT story. Make America Great.
And, But, Therefore.
Every great story has an ABT.
From a Fairytale to a Thriller.
Cinderella had no dress AND shoes AND coach to go to the ball, BUT her Fairy Godmother waves a magic wand and provides for her. THEREFORE, she has the shoes, the dress, and the coach.
Jason Bourne has a bomb ticking AND has only 30 seconds before it explodes and kills thousands of people, BUT because he has had years of training, he knows what to do. So, THEREFORE, he calls his grandmother for advice.
You will be able to see this sequence in your own life story.
In the simple. ‘I am hungry, but I have food in the pantry; therefore, I will go and have something to eat.’
In the complex stories such as ‘I fell in love, and things were going ok, but then I found out she was a chronic gambler. Therefore I am going to get some help and try and sort this mess out.
Can you see ABT in your life?
 
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I’m so Confused. I Need to Listen to the Whisper

Life can be noisy, full of distraction, and leave you confused, but with the invite to listen, we can hear the whisper of ‘this is the way you should go.’
I have a lot of noise in my life. Not so much coming through my ears, but more so distractions.
It would be overwhelming if I had a list that recorded EVERYTHING I needed to do or felt I should do. The mental noise would be deafening.
Everything from remembering someone’s birthday, calling a friend, tidying my desk, etc., etc., etc.
Are you like that too?
Too much noise can make you want to stop and do nothing. It’s overwhelming to the heart.
Do you find that too?
Donald Miller has a little motto.
If you confuse, you’ll lose.Noise is the enemy, and creating a clear messageis the best way to grow your business. Donald Miller
He is talking about a business having a clear message about what they do.
Perhaps we could adapt this quote to something more personal.
If you’re confused, you’ll feel lost.Noise is an enemy.Having a clear directionis the best way to grow.
 
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Step Out of The Boat and Find a Stone

There is a comfort zone in the familiar, but there is a calling to step out of the boat and find a little something to stand on.
There’s always a call to step out of the boat.
The other day I was cleaning some items off a pinboard and came across a printout of my first receipt of money for a book I had sold on Gumroad. It happened back in 2015, and I remember that moment well. The amazement that someone would buy my book.
The paper is something tangible. I can feel that paper between my fingers, like my feet, can feel a stepping stone buried slightly under the surface of a pond I might walk on.
I’ve had many other moments of provision for me as I have taken this faith journey. Sometimes it’s a financial gift or donation, but mostly it has been the provision of work in people’s gardens. It’s always a risk to write. To put my ideas out into the world. It still is, but a compelling YES drove me to write a few words each week and to share my stepping out of the boat.
 
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To Achieve the ‘YES’ one has to say the ‘No’

People say you need boundaries, but what do you want to protect? When you know your ‘YES,’ you will be able to express your ‘NO.’
This website is founded on the word ‘Yes,’ but in order for the Yes to be realized ‘No’ has been said multiple times.
I have recently been watching the Tour de France. That incredible bike race through the French countryside where we see riders struggling up mountainsides and then racing down the other side at breakneck sp eds. Alongside the route are spectators. They cheer the rider on, particularly on those tough uphill climbs.
What we don’t see are the millions of moments that the rider has had to say ‘No’ over the years because they had a greater ‘Yes’ burning in their soul. It was the ‘No’ to certain foods, parties, late nights, and generally living what we would consider a normal life. Instead, a greater YES got them out of bed early in the morning to ride hours and hours by themself with no applause or accolades.
What is the YES you have burning within you?
 
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Are you Trying to Control the Uncontrollable?

We are faced with struggles, so we try to control the uncontrollable, but this brings even more stress. Better to stay in the zone of what we can control – ourselves
It was out of my control. The decision on how they would treat me was beyond my control.
Have you ever been in that situation?
You are at the mercy of other people’s judgment of you.
We see it all the time in the legal system. The defendant awaits the decision of the judge. Everyone in the courtroom has an opinion, but none of those opinions matter because the judge sitting in their seat of power has the final say. Guilty or innocent.
But we are all judges to some degree. We all make judgments about various people. We are presented evidence, and we weigh it against our own experience and values. We pronounce a verdict.
It’s a verdict that we will hold on to until we are presented with more evidence. Then we have to retry the defendant and of course, because we have already made a judgment changing our opinion involves an acknowledgment that we had got it wrong.
‘Know me before you judge me’ is a line from a Mental Health promotion we had here in New Zealand many years ago, but how many of us are genuinely willing to get in the ditch of another life and know the story that shaped the soul.
Who or what are you trying to control?
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What’s Your Ambient Stress Level?

It surrounds us all the time. Ambient stress. We probably aren’t even aware of it, but we can do something about it when we recognize it. 
I have one of my favorite and most cherished items on the wall above my desk. It is a barometer that measures the pressure of the environment around me. To be more precise, it measures air pressure.
I cherish it because it was originally my father’s. So on this old beauty is a little plaque that has these words.
Presented to MR B PEARMAN from Glenbrook Sunday School Pupils & Teachers. 1949
It also has a thermometer to measure the temperature.
I remember my Dad often looking at the barometer to see what was happening in the weather world around him. The little needle would move as the weather, and air pressure changed.
A little move to the right would mean the weather would get drier and less likely to rain. A move to the left would indicate possible rain and storms. All very important to know when you want to decide on whether to shear the sheep or not or cut the hay crop or not.
There is pressure bearing down on us all the time. Air pressure, but we have become so used to it, and the pressure changes are so subtle that we hardly notice it all. With the barometer, first invented in 1643, we know something about the ambient pressure pushing against us.
 
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Jesus of the Scars

Every one of us needs someone to help us with our stress load, but the best person is someone who has been there, done that, got the scars to prove it —Jesus of the scars.
Take the stress away. Essentially that’s what many of you and I pray for. We want the pressure that is upon us to leave. We want the miracle to happen, so we no longer have to be under the weight of it all, and sometimes it does.
Stress relief that’s what we want.
An incomplete biography
I like to read biographies—the stories of people and how they lived their lives. Most likely, they are the stories of the well-known. The sportswomen and men, entertainers, politicians, and adventurers, but what about those who are more like us.
Like one of us.
If God had a name, the human name would be Jesus.
For a microdot of time, a mere 30-plus years, he walked the dust-filled existence of being fully human. In the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we have Spirit-led observations of his human life. Four biographies, but they are incomplete in the sense that you don’t hear every story and every challenge. You have the highlight reel with some lowlights too.
I would like to know more, and there is more.
The last verse of John’s biography of Jesus says this.
Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written. John 21:25
 
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