Category Archives: Evil and Suffering

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What I Didn’t Know About The Civil War

I recently finished an extensive college course on the civil war offered by the teaching company.  A few things that I didn’t realize (or forgot from my school days):

the vote to succeed was close in many confederate states at least closer than I thought…in fact, I didn’t even realize there was a vote.

It was ALL about slavery.

2 key players who exhibited high EQ Emotional Quotient): Lincoln–Throughout his life, he showed incredible EQ, and it was exhibited with, at times controversial, full pardons for the confederates.  Longstreet–While many of his confederate General peers remained loyal to the confederate causes and looked down upon him as a turn coat, he went on to join the Northern political party of the time period: Republicans, remained politically active, moves on with his life to assimilate with the United States.

Finally, I am once again struck by origin sin.  An ancient Christian principle that points to all of us having some inherent sin (lit. missing the mark) nature.  This ubiquitous finding is seen over and over again, and it is especially prominent in any conflict–especially the Civil War.

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Robbie Tribute: Words of Wisdom

My friend and partner’s son died 2 weeks ago.  He was 14 with severe cerebal palsy.  At his funeral, it was mentioned that he only spoke 4 words.  “Good” and “I love you.”  Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all only spoke those few words?!

My friend and partner spoke at the grave site and said that he has been angry and questioning God only 2 times in his life: The first when Robbie was born, and the now the second when God took Robbie from him.  WOW! The powerful truth that so often the only way to the mountain tops is through the valleys of life.

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Top 10 Book: Present Perfect by Greg Boyd

As most of you know, I am a crazy reader.  It is rare for me to come across such a powerful book.  I place this one in my top 10 best books that I have every read!  It is short and simple, and as the author states:  “I’ve become absolutely convinced that remaining aware of God’s presence is the single most important task in the life of every follower of Jesus.” (location 143-156)

“…we must first seek to submit to God’s reign in each and every moment.  When we do this, de Caussade proclaims, we transform ordinary moments into sacred moments, and our life becomes a living sacrament.  He and millions of others have discovered that this continual submission is the key to experiencing the fullness of God’s love, joy, and peace.”” (location 169-183)

“All that matters is…to belong totally to God, to please him, making our sole happiness to look on the present moment as though nothing else in the world mattered.”-J.P. de Caussade

“I have found that we can establish ourselves in a sense of the presence of God by continually talking with Him.”-Brother Lawrence

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Resilience in the Face of Trauma

In today’s excerpt – resilience in the face of trauma. One of the most active areas of psychological research is to determine how people cope with trauma, and what characteristics enable some people to move successfully past grief while others remain mired in it:

“Behavioral scientists have accumulated decades of data on both adults and children exposed to trauma. George A. Bonanno of Teachers College at Columbia University has devoted his career as a psychologist to documenting the varieties of resilient experience, focusing on our reactions to the death of a loved one and to what happens in the face of war, terror and disease. In every instance, he has found, most people adapt surprisingly well to whatever the world presents; life returns to a measure of normalcy in a matter of months. …

“Bonanno started researching how we respond emotionally to bereavement and other traumatic events in the early 1990s while at the University of California, San Francisco. In those days, the prevailing wisdom held that the loss of a close friend or relative left indelible emotional scars – and Freudian grief work or a similar tonic was needed to return the mourner to a normal routine. Bonanno and his colleagues approached the task with open minds. Yet, again and again during the experiments, they found no trace of psychic wounds, raising the prospect that psychological resilience prevails, that it was not just a rare occurrence in in- dividuals blessed with propitious genes or gifted parents. This insight also raised the unsettling prospect that latter-day versions of grief work might end up producing more harm than good.

“In one example of his work, Bonanno and his colleague Dacher Keltner analyzed facial expressions of people who had lost loved ones recently. The videos bore no hint of any permanent sorrow that needed extirpation. As expected, the videos revealed sadness but also anger and happiness. Time and again, a grief-stricken person’s expression would change from dejection to laughter and back.

“Were the guffaws genuine, the researchers wondered? They slowed down the video and looked for contraction of the orbicularis oculi muscles around the eyes – movements known as Duchenne expressions that confirm that laughs are what they seem, not just an artifact of a polite but insincere titter. The mourners, it turns out, exhibited the real thing. The same oscillation between sadness and mirth repeated itself in study after study.

“What does it mean? Bonanno surmises that melancholy helps us with healing after a loss, but unrelenting grief, like clinical depression, is just too much to bear, overwhelming the mourner. So the wiring inside our heads prevents most of us from getting stuck in an inconsolable psychological state. If our emotions get either too hot or cold, a kind of internal sensor – call it a ‘resilience-stat’ – returns us to equilibrium.

“Bonanno expanded his studies beyond bereavement. At Catholic University and later Columbia, he interviewed survivors of sexual abuse, New Yorkers who had gone through the 9/11 attacks and Hong Kong residents who had lived through the SARS epidemic. Wherever he went, the story was the same: ‘Most of the people looked like they were coping just fine.’

“A familiar pattern emerged. In the immediate aftermath of death, disease or disaster, a third to two thirds of those surveyed experienced few, if any, symptoms that would merit classification as trauma: sleeping difficulties, hypervigilance or flashbacks, among other symptoms. Within six months the number that remained with these symptoms often fell to less than 10 percent.”

Author: Gary Stix
Title: “The Neuroscience of True Grit”
Publisher: Scientific American Magazine
Date: March 2011
Pages: 31-32

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C.U.L.P. Initiative Assignment #1: King’s Speech

This year a few of my friends are helping me to explore the Upper Limit Problem(s) in our lives. I hope to share a few thoughts via movies etc. to explore this concept throughout 2011. The 1st “assignment” is watching the movie titled: King’s Speech.

WOW! This is a MUST see movie. It is about relationships, friendship, and a new concept that I am just starting to explore based on The Big Leap by Hendricks.

The Upper Limit Problem is the concept that we all live in our little box of excellence: we have acquired through experience a comfortable space of expertise.

The Upper Limit Problem is the human tendency to put the brakes on our positive “energy”/feelings when we’ve exceeded our unconscious thermostat setting for how good we can feel, how successful we can be, and how much love we can feel.

Questions to explore:

What was the King’s Upper Limit Problem(s)?

How did he overcome them?

What are your Upper Limit Problem(s)?

How can you overcome them?

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C.U.L.P. Initiative: Conspiracy to overcome the Upper Limit Problem

C.U.L.P. New Year’s Initiative

Conspiracy to overcome the Upper Limit Problem (concept from the book titled: The Big Leap)…

Conspiracy is from 2 latin words; and it literally means to breathe together. I think that is cool.

I definitely suffer from The Upper Limit Problem.

The Upper Limit Problem is the concept that we all live in our little box of excellence: we have acquired through experience a comfortable space of expertise.

The Upper Limit Problem is the human tendency to put the brakes on our positive “energy”/feelings when we’ve exceeded our unconscious thermostat setting for how good we can feel, how successful we can be, and how much love we can feel. The items to explore are:

1. What keeps us from going up? Getting beyond our upper limit…For me it is that I am not enough so I am not worthy, not deserving, and not willing to let go of staying in the box (ex. not truly embracing/accepting compliments/good moments that happen to me).

2. What can we do to stay above our upper limit? Or better yet, what can we do to eliminate our upper limit completely? What can we do to increase our tolerance for things going well in our lives in the now? What can we do to celebrate and embrace the space above and beyond our upper limit?

3. What does it feel like when we break through the top of our upper limit box?

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#2 Emotionally Intelligent Moment of 2010

EQ Moment #2:
Miners Survive on Team EQ

Imagine facing what appears to be certain death for 17 days, in the dark and 90° heat, cooped up with 33 of your coworkers. The Chilean miners endured this hellish situation prior to their first contact from above ground. The secret to their success? Team EQ. There’s no better example of a work team rising—literally—from the darkest depths and triumphing over disaster. The group survived their ordeal because each individual was willing to put his own needs aside—and keep his emotions in check—for the good of the group. For the first 17 days, each man’s daily diet consisted of a small piece of tuna, a few scraps of rotting leftovers, a small sip of ultra-pasteurized milk (every two days), and a drink of oil-tainted water siphoned from the ground and machine radiators.

From the very beginning, these men formed a productive team and took bold steps to manage themselves, their emotions, and their situation. The group chose a leader, assigned sub teams to tasks such as searching for an escape, and established a majority rule voting system. Five of the 33 miners, employees of a different subcontractor, had formed their own separate camp until persuaded to integrate with the other men for the good of the group. The men consciously chose organization and balance for their life underground by keeping a schedule for sleeping, using truck and helmet lights sparingly as rewards to keep their spirits up, and honking vehicle horns every hour in the faint hope that someone might hear them. They told stories and even played practical jokes to lighten the mood and provide moments of emotional release.

Team EQ doesn’t require heroic acts from everyone involved. Instead, each team member contributing to the small things makes a difference, and improves the team’s response to the emotional challenges that inevitably surface in the face of crisis. Whether they knew it or not, each miner’s contribution ensured that the intense emotions of fear, panic, shock, and despair didn’t derail the group’s survival efforts.

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Lessons From Mom

I am not enough. This sentence echoes through the minds of most men (and many women) in our society. It is a burden we carry often from our dads (and sometimes our moms). We walk around doing all that we can to look good and feel like we are enough when in reality, we hear only a voice telling us that we are not enough.

My mom died this last summer, and a few months before she died, I was reminded once again of being enough. She was the voice that echoed to me that I was enough. I shared with her my newest adventure into becoming certified in professional coaching. She did what she did best with her kids. She looked straight into my eyes through into my soul, lightly wrapped her hand around my wrist, and said, “You will be great at that.”

I am reminded today, a day in which she would have turned 82, that she gave me the gift of being enough. She believed in me when I didn’t. This was her gift, and it is her legacy.

My youngest son is 8. He recently has gotten into learning how to throw a Frisbee. After every throw, he yells out, “Is that a good one?” The dutiful, worry wart, dad that I am thinks maybe he lacks self-esteem. As we are walking into the house after a Frisbee toss time, he looks at me and says, “Dad, do you think I am getting better?” Worried about his self-esteem, I ask him what he thinks. He immediately with a big smile says, “I think I am getting really great at throwing the Frisbee!” He is enough! And his Grandma’s legacy of being enough carries on in him and in all of us who she touched.

Are you enough? You are more enough than you could ever imagine. God said that you are His beloved. Can you feel His warm embrace? Can you hear His whisper in your ear, “You are my beloved. I adore you.” Even though my mom gave me the gift, I continue to live with the wound of feeling that I am not enough. It has only been recently that I have begun to embrace my enoughness. Don’t settle for the dial tone of not enough. Listen to the gentle voice that KNOWS that you are enough and so much more.

Mom is finally in a place where “I am not enough” doesn’t even exist. I am so grateful today, her birthday, for her gift. I am enough, Mom. I will always be enough. I am beloved, embraced, and delighted in. Thanks Mom. I miss you.

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Nerves: Anxiety and Fear

My college advisor was an expert on studying stress hormones. He always taught us that stress response/fear response is a healthy adaptive response when you are being chased down by a tiger, but when you get bad news from your boss, your stress response/fear response fires off but your body just sits there firing off all that stress while you sit at your desk.

I see stress, anxiety, and fear EVERY day at work. Most of my patients deny that they are stressed when most of their symptoms are from stress.

This excerpt about fear and anxiety is VERY telling and interesting.

“The average high schooler today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s:
“When you think about it, it’s one of the great ironies of our time: we now inhabit a modernized, industrialized, high-tech world that presents us with fewer and fewer legitimate threats to our survival, yet we appear to find more and more things to be anxious about with each passing year. Unlike our pelt-wearing prehistoric ancestors, our survival is almost never jeopardized in daily life. When was the last time you felt in danger of being attacked by a lion, for example, or of starving to death? Between our sustenance-packed superstores, our state-of-the-art hospitals, our quadruplecrash-tested cars, our historically low crime rates, and our squadrons of consumer-protection watchdogs, Americans are safer and more secure today than at any other point in human history.
“But just try telling that to our brains, because they seem to believe that precisely the opposite is true. At the turn of the millennium, as the nation stood atop an unprecedented summit of peace and prosperity, anxiety surged past depression as the most prominent mental health issue in the United States. America now ranks as the most anxious nation on the planet, with more than 18 percent of adults suffering from a full-blown anxiety disorder in any given year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. (On the other hand, in Mexico – a place where one assumes there’s plenty to fret about – only 6.6 percent of adults have ever met the criteria for significant anxiety issues.) Stress related ailments cost the United States an estimated $300 billion per year in medical bills and lost productivity, and our usage of sedative drugs has shot off the charts: between 1997 and 2004, Americans more than doubled their yearly spending on antianxiety medications like Xanax and Valium, from $900 million to $2.1 billion. And as the psychologist and anxiety specialist Robert Leahy has pointed out, the seeds of modern worry get planted early. ‘The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s,’ he writes. Security and modernity haven’t brought us calm; they’ve somehow put us out of touch with how to handle our fears.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this. After all, fear is truly our most essential emotion, a finely tuned protective gift from Mother Nature. Think of fear as the body’s onboard security system: when it detects a threat – say, a snarling, hungry tiger – it instantly sends the body into a state of high alert, and before we even comprehend what’s going on, we’ve already leapt to the safety of a fortified Range Rover. In this context, fear is our best friend; it makes all of the major decisions for us, keeps the personage as freed from tiger claws as possible, and then dissipates once the threat has subsided. …
“What makes a person capable of keeping cool and doing their duty in terrifying situations like [these]? …
“Fortunately – and not a moment too soon – a flood of cuttingedge research from psychologists, neuroscientists, and scholars from all disciplines is now coming together to show us what fear and stress really are, how they work in our brains, and why so much of what we thought we knew about dealing with them was dead wrong. Picking a painstaking trail through the labyrinth of the brain, a neuroscientist from the bayou traces our mind’s fear center to two tiny clusters of neurons, uncovering the subconscious roots of fear. Using a simple thought experiment, a Harvard psychologist discerns why our efforts to control our minds backfire, and why a directive like ‘just relax’ can actually make you more anxious. Employing one minor verbal suggestion, a group of Stanford researchers find they can make young test takers’ scores plummet in a spiral of worry – or hoist them right back up. Across the nation, intrepid scientists are discovering why athletes choke under pressure, how the human mind transforms in an emergency, why unflappable experts make good decisions under stress, and how fear can warp our ability to think.”

Author: Taylor Clark
Title: Nerve

Publisher: Little, Brown
Date: Copyright 2011 by Taylor Clark
Pages: 10-12, 15

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Give Thanks!

My youngest son listed what he was thankful for: Mom and Dad, his dogs, brother, sister, all living things, and me.  Not me but himself.  I have never seen some list themselves on a thankful list.  Cute and thought provoking.  We might all be happier if we could be thankful that God created us, that we are special, that we matter.  It points to my son feeling satisfied about who he is; he feels good about himself.

I am thankfully challenged.  My project for the 25 days leading up to Christmas is to call a friend every day and share with him one item each day that I am thankful.

Maybe we would all be better off being thankful for ourselves and each other…

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“Constructive” Criticism

Does “constructive” criticism work?  Answer: NO!  Dale Carnegie’s #1 rule: Don’t Criticize, Condemn, or Complain is founded on the reality that we DO NOT respond to criticism.

Why? Because he writes: “ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don’t criticize themselves for anything, no matter how wrong it may be.”   He goes on to say that “criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself.  Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.”

In fact, the father of behavioral psychology, B.F. Skinner, “proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behavior will learn much more rapidly and retain what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behavior.  Later studies showed that the same applies to humans.  By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment.”

So when will we “get this”? Constructive criticism DOES NOT WORK.  We must turn to the positive.  Wouldn’t it be exciting to try it!  What if the next round of evaluations at the office were filled with all things positive?  How might the climate change?

“Consider the annual performance planning process…a process dreaded by leader and subordinate alike!…What is possible when we focus on unleashing potential by giving direction, position, and conditions to individuals rather than assessing potential as under-performance or failure to perform?…focusing on what we want rather than what we don’t want activates the inherent strengths, gifts, and creativity of each person…”-Janet Harvey, MA, MCC

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Visualization, The Power of the Mind, and Metaphor

“Your brain has a difficult time distinguishing between what you see with your eyes and what you visualize in your mind.  In fact, MRI scans of people’s brains taken while they are watching the sun set are virtually indistinguishable from scans taken when the same people visualize a sunset in their mind.  The same brain regions are active in both scenarios.”-Travis Bradberry & Jean greaves, Emotional Intelligence 2.0

I have pointed out in the past the power of the placebo (see Hippocrates Shadow by Newman), and here again, it is clear that we do not tap into the power of our minds to transform our lives.  The use of visualizations has been shown to be very powerful during prayer (see Seeing Is Believing by Greg Boyd), and the use of metaphor and other visualization exercises can be a powerful way to change one’s perspective.

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Evil and Suffering, Blessing or Disaster?

“There is an old story about a wise man living on one of Chinas vast frontiers. One day, for no apparent reason, a young mans horse ran away and was taken by nomads across the border. Everyone tried to offer consolation for the mans bad fortune, but his father, a wise man, said “What makes you so sure this is not a blessing?”

Months later, his horse returned, bringing with her a magnificent stallion. This time everyone was full of congratulations for the son’s good fortune. But now his father said, “What makes you so sure this isn’t a disaster?”

Their household was made richer by this fine horse the son loved to ride. But one day he fell off the horse and broke his hip. Once again, everyone offered their consolation for his bad luck, but his father said, “What makes you so sure this is not a blessing?”

A year later nomads invaded across the border, and every able bodied man was required to take his bow and go into battle. The Chinese families living on the border lost 9 out of 10 men. Only because the son was lame did father and son survive and take care of each other.

What appeared like a blessing and success has been a terrible thing.  What has appeared to be a terrible event has often turned out to be a rich blessing.”-Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, location 1378

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The Village Elder by Rob Bell

Rob does an amazing job of pointing out what adventures can await us as we grow…..older…

He did not mention one of my favorite examples: Saint Patrick.  Patrick STARTED his ministry at age 40, and he ended his ministry 40 years later after founding an estimated 800 churches! WOW! Old guys rule!

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Are Things Getting Worse-Politically etc?

This book excerpt was very eye opening to someone who hears a lot from friends and colleagues that everything is unraveling, that the political climate, the financial climate is in dire straights…  The past was better and brighter than the future looks….  Well, reading history opens our eyes to how crazy, horrible, and frightening the past events were…

In today’s excerpt – the deadlocked presidential election of 1876, during the nation’s centennial, pitted New York Democrat Samuel Tilden against Ohio Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. At stake was enough autonomy for Southern states to disenfranchise blacks – and massive voting fraud in states like South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana gave Tilden the electoral edge. President Grant armed Washington against rumored attacks, and the crisis was not resolved until March of 1877 in a deal that gave Hayes the presidency in trade for the tacit authority these Southern states sought:
“As the new year of 1877 dawned, the nation appeared hopelessly deadlocked.
Officially Tilden had 184 electoral votes and Hayes 165, leaving 20 votes up for
grab. Hayes needed them all; Tilden required only a single vote to be president. The framers of the Constitution had not considered such a situation, simply stating that the electoral votes should be ‘directed to the President of the Senate,’ typically the vice president of the United States, who ‘shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates and the votes shall then be counted.’ But who decided which votes to open and read if there were two [different sets of votes] – or, as with Florida, three sets? …

“Congress struggled to find a solution, remaining in continuous session into March. In January, each house appointed a committee to investigate the election. The House committee, dominated by Democrats, discovered that
corruption in the three questionable states meant that all three should go to
Tilden; the Senate committee, dominated by Republicans, concluded that fraud
and voter suppression in the three states meant that all should go to Hayes. This was not helpful. The House judiciary Committee then suggested the appointment of a joint special commission, which, after some very careful negotiation, led to a commission of five House members, five senators, and five Supreme Court justices. Originally the five justices were to be drawn from a hat, but Tilden killed that plan with the bon mot, ‘I may lose the Presidency, but I will not raffle for it.’ While Tilden and many other political leaders doubted the constitutionality of the commission, a consensus emerged that there were so many recipes for disaster that some resolution was required as quickly as possible, no matter how tenuous the legality of the process. Hayes and Tilden reluctantly accepted the commission in order to avoid a civil war. When one of Tilden’s advisers suggested publicly opposing the commission, Tilden shot back, ‘What is left but war?’

“Tilden’s fears found validation in the increasing calls for violence circulating
through the country. It was a time of rumors, disturbing and bizarre – and occasionally true – as well as loud demands for violence. Reportedly, President Grant was planning a coup, while Confederate general Joseph Shelby supposedly announced in St. Louis that he would lead an army on Washington to put Tilden in the White House. Hearing this latter story, Confederate hero Colonel John S. Mosby, the ‘Gray Ghost,’ went to the White House and offered Grant his services to help ensure Hayes’s inauguration. …

“Troubled by the professed willingness of his fellow Americans to take up arms
so soon after their devastating Civil War, President Grant prepared to defend the capital. Grant could call on only 25,000 unpaid troops, most of them in the
West, and had to tread lightly. He could not afford to alienate the Democrats,
but they gave every indication of deliberately weakening the ability of the federal government to protect its democratic institutions. Grant adroitly maneuvered his available units to send a message of resolve while not appearing aggressive, ordering artillery companies placed on all the entrances to Washington, D.C., the streets of which, as the New York Herald reported, ‘presented a martial appearance.’ Grant ordered the man-of-war Wyoming to anchor in the Potomac River by the Navy Yard, where its guns could cover both the Anacostia Bridge from Maryland and the Long Bridge from Virginia. Meanwhile, a company of Marines took up position on the Chain Bridge. General Sherman told the press, ‘We must protect the public property, . . . particularly the arsenals.’ There was no way Sherman was going to let white Southerners get their hands on federal arms without a fight, and his clever placement of a few units helped to forestall possible coups in Columbia and New Orleans.” …

“Members of Congress began bringing pistols to the Capitol, and in Colum-
bus, Ohio, a bullet was shot through a window of the Hayes home while the
family was at dinner.”

Author: Michael A. Bellesiles
Title: 1877
Publisher: The New Press
Date: Copyright 2010 by Michael A. Bellesiles
Pages: 38-41
Tags: Presidency, Elections

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Anti-Appreciative Inquiry

I have mentioned the concept of Appreciative Inquiry, the power of appreciation, and the effectiveness of positive psychology  in prior posts with plenty of supporting scientific and empiric evidence to support their efficacy.  But the sad truth is that our world is convinced that these things either don’t work or they are too hard to impliment.  These concepts are so foreign to us that they can be very hard to break old habits.

The typical Inquiry remains the dreaded yearly or quarterly employee evaluation.  This is the place where the boss critiques the employee.  We have all been ‘evaluated’, and we have all been found wanting.  Even if you receive a glowing evaluation, it takes only one ‘but’ to ruin it.  “You continue to do an amazing job, BUT you could improve in this or that…”  We are convinced that this negative feedback is essential and productive.  BUT if you are at all like me, I only hear the negative, and it burns into my heart.  I go sleepless for days stewing over my critique.  In fact, the negative causes me often to be counterproductive, frustrated, sad, depressed, discouraged, etc.
 
now in a parallel universe:
 
Your boss calls you into a room and gives you a list of sincere appreciation.  A list of blessings. A list of all the great things that you do.    Would your productivity go up? Would you work harder? Would you sleep well that night? Would you wake up excited to go to work the following day? Would you appreciate and encourage my co-workers and boss more? Would we all be more likely to smile, laugh, encourage, and bless those around us???

Now What?

What if we started to sincerely appreciate those around us? What if we took the time each day to choose someone to bless with words of affirmation? Can we all try this? I did.  WOW!  It almost brought the person to tears…it is THAT powerful.  If we all got into a rhythm of daily blessing those around us with words of encouragement, what might happen?? Please share with us your experience in trying this…

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Intimate, Eternal Marriage

I just heard of yet another divorce at work that unraveled by infidelity.  Marriage is tough, but the studies support that if you are in trouble, the worst thing to do is divorce.  Those couples who divorce are individually statistically doomed for loneliness, depression, anxiety, etc.  The marriages on the rocks that decide to make a run at staying together often do, and these married couples when asked 5 years down the line if they are happy usually say yes.  And they are very happy that they stuck it out.

What does an intimate, eternal, beautiful marriage look like?  How is it done?

A friend of mine’s wife wrote him a special praise message on her breast cancer blog, and it is a beautiful example of love for a lifetime and beyond.

“This entry is dedicated to my wonderful husband… In the words of my mom this past week ” Te ganaste la loteria con este hombre!” translation– ” You have won the lottery with this man” Not only did he sleep in the hospital with me both nights, waking up every hr and a half when the nurses came in to check on me, he came up with my medication schedule ( which I still don’t understand) , makes sure I’m taking them as directed, brought a little picnic table in our master bedroom so we can still eat as a family since I was bedridden for several days, he wakes the kids and gets them breakfast and ready for school everyday, drives them to school, missed his mens bible study because our daughter wanted to walk to school on “Walk to school day”, works from home because I asked him to, answers the phone for me, still works his insane hrs, helps get the kids ready for bed, took our daughter to the drs for a strange bump behind her ear, only to find out she had a fever, has been taking care of our daughter and her medication schedule for the last 3 1/2 days because I can’t risk getting whatever she has, slept in her room to get her whatever she needed throughout 2 nights and coached our son’s 3 flag football games today! Oh, and he had to bathe me twice because I couldn’t lift my arms! The guy is exhausted! I gave him 2 Tylenol pm’s, sent him to sleep alone in the office and pray he gets a full night’s sleep! He has been my knight in shining armor and I love him to death! God has blessed me with this amazing man!”

YES!

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Appreciative Inquiry

I am re-reading Dale Carnegie’s great book in which he points out that rule #1 in dealing with people is–never condemn, complain, or criticize.  Why? Because humans, no matter who they are or what they have done, believe that they are good and with equal confidence are convinced that whatever the issue is it isn’t their fault.

I also just finished Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. He points out that it is not our responsibility to change anybody (and as Carnegie has pointed out, you can’t so stop trying!).  We can, however, try and see them as God does (as a beloved son or daughter) and love them as God does (unconditionally).  By putting away our ‘judgmentalism and pride and loathing of other people’ and instead treat everybody ‘as though they were [your] best friend’, they will change for the better.

When organizations discover that they are having a problem, they get a team together to look at the problems and try to find a solution better known as problem solving.  About 10 years ago, a team of expert problem solvers were hired by a large corporation to come in to ‘fix’ their problems in hopes of increasing their production rates.  They found that after their problem solving their production rates actually went down instead of up.  Puzzled, they tried a different method.  Instead of looking at the problem and filling everyone with negative thoughts about each other and the organization, they looked at the positive.  They looked at all the things that worked well, and they focused on making them work even better.  The production rate soared.  This method is known as Appreciative Inquiry.

It has been thought that allowing and encouraging people to air their grievances about other people in the organization and list their complaints about others and the organization is the path to improvement.  This has been shown time and time again to have the opposite effects. It produces negativity, discourages others from working harder to make things better (why bother if you are only going to hear the negative from a select few?!), and it creates a work environment that is defeatist, negative, counter productive, and filled with cattiness and  pettiness.  So next time your organization decides to send out questionnaires to critique, or wants to create a work group to problem solve, I would hope we all can consider Appreciative Inquiry and the wisdom of Carnegie, Miller, and Christ.

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World War 2

I occasionally do focused study time on certain topics that capture my interest.  These brief studies usually last as long a a book or 2 or a lecture series.  My recent study has been World War 2-a very unikely topic for me to be interested in.  What have I learned?

Human nature is inherently corrupt, and as my friend recently said: “The Bible teaches 3 basic truths-Good is good; evil is evil; and God will redeem evil into good.”  I am re-reading Dale Carnegie’s great book in which he points out that rule #1 in dealing with people is–never condemn, complain, or criticize.  Why? Because humans, no matter who they are or what they have done, believe that they are good and confident that whatever the issue-it isn’t their fault.  I am also reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller who also points out in his funny way that we all think that we are so cool that the truth is that we are all fallen, flawed humans.  My study of WW 2 points out these truths in vivid details.

  • The character of the man matters.  “What I think of the GIs more than a half century after their victory was best said by Sgt. Mike Ranney of the 101st: ‘In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I’m treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, ‘Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?’  “‘No,’ I answered, ‘but I served in a company of heroes.'”-Stephen Ambrose  American Soldiers were all heroes. They came as liberators.  They are not without their own set of ‘issues’, but in general, this war was known as ‘the good war’ for a reason.  Interestingly when Ambrose interviewed the veterans, they over and over again told him that they did not fight so valiantly for God and country but for their buddies.  Relationships matter. Character matters.
  • Another example of character and incredible leadership principles: Eisenhower.  Eisenhower was instrumental in winning the conflict. He was a unique leader who lead by consensus, optimism, thoughtful reflection, decisiveness, and a charismatic smile.
  • In the lecture series that I listened to, it was pointed out that a black American soldier wrote a letter to the editor of The Yank (the most widely read American war newspaper) pointing out a story of inequality that may have gone on deaf ears if it were not for the war efforts.  A group of black American soldiers had to eat in the back of a restaurant while a group of German POW ate in the restaurant.  It was a story that crystallized the horrible practice of segregation and inequality.
  • The shear magnitude of the conflict was awe inspiring.  The Americans flew close to a 1,000 planes without radar in the middle of the night with less than 100 yards wing to wing to launch gliders and paratroopers behind Normandy enemy lines before D-Day.  The Russians attacked the Germans with over a million man army.  The casualties were astounding.  The Russians lost close to 20 million soldiers and civilians (10% of the entire population).  Trench foot and frost bite took out a surprising number of GI’s…..
  • Finally, I was drawn to this quote because it points out that our worries and troubles are fleeting, and they rarely every come to fruition.  And when/if they do, they are nothing compared to jumping out of a plane in the middle of the night behind enemy lines into the heart of Nazi Germany.

“Len, you’re in as much trouble now as you’re ever going to be.  If you get out of this, nobody can ever do anything to you that you ever have to worry about.”-Private Len Griffing of the 501st just prior to jumping behind enemy lines in the early morning hours before D-Day invasion

Books:

The Victors: Eisenhower And His Boys The Men Of World War II by Stephen Ambrose

The Rising Tide, The Steel Wave, and No Less Than Victory by Jeff Shaara

World War II: A Military and Social History Lecture Series by Professor Thomas Childers