Posts tagged Patience
Your Courage Is the Answer
Dec 14th
To just about every question that clings right now – to every doubt – courage is the answer.
How can it be that we can know such definitive an answer – especially to such a broadly-positioned question? It’s actually very easy. Courage leads us to places where we find what we’re looking for.
Anger
In anger, courage looks for, and finds, patience for peace. It has the wisdom to know there’s more to this anger than meets the eye. It finds the primary emotion and wrangles successfully with its truth, installing it into the reaches of the accepted consciousness.
Striving (Greed)
In striving, courage contends for the moment holding out for results. It goes and keeps going, but in wisdom it hopes also to know the restraint of self-control. Striving is only good to a point. Beyond noble purposes striving takes us beyond the sublime into a place where we are no longer home with ourselves. Courage finds us accepting we cannot have everything we see.
Worry
In concern extending to worry, it is courage that quells the heart in reconciling faith. It somehow knows that hope lives over the horizon, on a plateau just beyond sight, that which is ever eternal. The answer to this conundrum is the answer to all conundrums – the courage to wait and see.
Decision Making
In deliberating, courage is known to speculate among the options. It reserves judgment until all is known. It steps back and canvasses the field, wanting to acknowledge all the candidates.
Envy
In jealousy, courage provides the way. It goes outside the realm of comparison and seeks refuge only in itself with God. It separates the likely winner of winners from the also-rans and goes the way hardly anyone else does. It therefore skirts the allure to envy by being set apart, morally, for God. It leaves the scene of the battle.
Humour
In gentle-paced and non-ridiculing humour, it is courage that has won the day, delivering joy to the purveyor of truth. It laughs the laugh of a victor, happy with their work and the faith to follow good guidance. Sense is vindicated and that brings joy.
Sloth
In temptation to laziness, courage forms into diligence, and that to act. It decides using the will from the mind to just go and do. Courage always has the answer where there’s work concerned. It will take command over the weakish heart and prove wise via the plain agency of its faith to undertake.
Danger
In the presence of real and present danger, courage fortifies the spirit to contend or diminish – adjudicating with wisdom the best track. Courage is not fight or flight; it’s both at the same time. It runs with flight when it discerns the fight is a folly, yet it fights a creditable fight when the causes of wisdom as they’re personally applicable are challenged.
Courage is the answer.
? 2010 S. J. Wickham.
Making Gratitude Work for You
Dec 1st
It only takes minutes of watching the local news to realize that I should be extremely grateful. It was only days ago in a local Canadian City that a young couple, out on a date, were hit by a car while waiting for a bus. Both people were killed, leaving behind three young girls. It’s these moments in life that make me pause and realize how grateful I should be – I grew up with both parents in my life and my children still have them to enjoy as part of their lives. It’s at those moments that my heart goes out to those children who will suddenly face the reality of losing something they were so grateful for, as they are faced with a sudden tragedy.
News like this occurs every day, all over the world. But, aside for feeling strong emotions of pain, empathy and sadness, we should also be reminded of why we should be grateful for the lives we are living. Life is short. It’s important to notice they things in your life that make you smile. It’s very easy to take things for granted like food, water, shelter, friends and family. Sadly, it seems we are only grateful for these things when we are struck by disasters.
It’s easy to be grateful when you get a raise, buy a new car or win on a scratch ticket, but we often forget that those aren’t the most important things in our lives. What about the people around us? I have a friend that says everyday she is grateful for her coworkers. Why? Because they have patience and she doesn’t, so they are able to calm her down and get her back on track when things get too hectic.
For me, I am always grateful of my family. I recognize that my wife and son survived a car accident they shouldn’t have. So each day, I wake up happy to see them again. I’m also grateful that I have a daughter who cares and makes pillows for people in need of comfort. And that when her teacher passed away from cancer, she was told of the impact she had made with her presents. I am also grateful that each day I can wake up, go to work and make a difference in someone’s life that needs it.
It’s not only these gifts that I cherish. I am grateful that I have the gift of laughter, and that each day I try my hardest to enjoy the things I have, always keeping a positive outlook on the situations I am faced with.
People are grateful for different things, for different reasons. Appreciation, gratitude and love are positive and uplifting expressions. So it stands to reason that the more you avail yourself to these things the more optimistic and confident you will be. Start small by being thankful for one thing each day – even if it’s the simplicity of coming home to an adventuring two year old that erases all of your stress at the end of a long work day.
It’s a simple practice we should all participate in – gratitude. On that note, I’ll leave you with a great quote from Oprah Winfrey: “Be thankful for what you have and you will end up having more. But if you concentrate on what you don’t have, you’ll never, ever have enough.”
