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30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself | CREATE YOUR GREAT LIFE
Author Salon
There’s an exciting new project called Author Salon at www.AuthorSalon.com. It is a wonderful opportunity for writers and I am honored to be a part of it. I encourage all my writer friends to polish up their manuscripts and go through the process. It takes some time, but it is a wonderful opportunity to get your story in front of actual agents and editors and will give you some great connections along the way.
Author Salon attracts promising writers, transforms them into great writers, and provides them with the visibility and promotion necessary to get them published by major players in the business. To that end, Author Salon creates and maintains a rigorous work-to-publish writer conference environ as well as a professional social network for beginners, veteran writers, and published authors of fiction and nonfiction, as well as agents and editors in the commercial publishing business actively searching for projects and new voices in a variety of genres.
I’ll see you there!
Author Salon
Welcome Home
Every year during the holidays, there is the usual procession of activities, and depending on your religious affiliation or lack thereof, it most likely includes some kind of party (or lots of them), sparkling decorations, family gatherings and let’s not forget the food. Recently, I heard that the average holiday feast is somewhere near five thousand calories. Per person. One meal.
Yikes.
I usually don’t think about the food part too much. Sure, I enjoy all the goodies, but my mom always tackles the big family meals and I do the decorating and smoothing ruffled feathers. That might not sound like a big job, but I come from a long line of strong personalities and when you get us all together, at least one person is going to get their shorts in a bunch. Couple that with a rather painful family history and you can see how things might get tense. That’s where I come in. Calming frazzled nerves and running interference, trying to keep everyone focused on the good stuff. My sister says I can put a shine on well, anything. I won’t repeat what she actually said, but I chose to take it as a compliment.
This year things were different. I did the cooking, my siblings were not in attendance and my parents were so exhausted from moving that I wasn’t entirely sure they’d show up. Like every year, somewhere between saying grace and pass the turkey, we each said what we were thankful for and the general consensus was family. Only most of the family was absent. My step-dad got choked up and said he was grateful that all of us were alive since he knew many people who’d lost family members this year. In the intervening silence, however, one thing was clear. People were missed. Their absence was profoundly felt. Before the day was over I got phone calls from my siblings and they each said the same thing.
It’s just not the same.
When I was growing up, my great grandparents were the center of our world. Every holiday and sometimes just for the heck of it, the whole clan, and anyone else who cared to tag along, gathered at their farm. Amidst all the chaos and the abundance of food, while there were sure to be disagreements, I don’t remember one that didn’t end in laughter or one person leaving mad. When you think about it, that’s quite a feat, but we all knew the reason why. My great grandma had a magic potion she put on everything and no matter what you looked like, felt like, thought or did, she wrapped you up in love. The kind of love that heals any wound because it was wholly unconditional. To the rest of the world you might be a hopeless cause, but to her you were a treasure. She brought out the best in everyone and she was the magnet that pulled us together.
When my great grandparents died, one by one, the family went their separate ways. Distance and disagreements scattered us to the winds and the holidays were never the same. Sometimes I think we were lucky. There are people who will never experience that kind of love at all. At other times, I wonder if it’s harder to have known it and lost it, because the ache never goes away. But maybe it wasn’t meant to.
Maybe it was meant to call us home.
All of us, myself included, need one thing above all others. To be loved. To be accepted. To belong. We can either be the tie that binds or the light that shines, welcoming each other home. In a world where appearances are everything and nothing is what it seems, we all need a refuge where no one is disqualified and our faults are irrelevant because the only thing that matters is we belong there and we’re loved.
The most precious gift I ever received was the secret to a full, happy life and today, I’m going to share it with you. In order to have it you must be it and it starts with unconditional love. It’s painful at times and not always convenient, but the more you give it, the more you receive it and it only gets stronger with time. I’ve seen it do impossible things and nothing can take its place. Love heals. Love lifts. Love shines.
Now, I know that some people are plain hard to get along with and we all have folks who can drive us up a wall. I’ve had a few holidays that I wanted to pull my hair out, but the truth is, even I have my faults. There, I said it. I don’t know one person who benefits from criticism. Not one. But I do know lots of lonely people who criticized their way to being all alone. The question you have to ask yourself is do I want to be welcome or do I want to be right? I find that admitting I’m wrong ahead of time saves me the trouble later and when all else fails – grin and nod. Trust me. It works every time.
The holiday season is all about peace on earth and the greatest gift we can give one another is a peaceful place to call home. It might take some effort, but most of all it requires us to lay down our defenses and to accept one another just as they are. There are people who need you and whether you admit it or not, you need them too. It’s called a family and there are all kinds of them out there. No matter whether you were born into it, adopted into it, drafted into it or fell into it, family is where your heart goes whenever you’re alone.
For more than two thousand years we’ve celebrated the greatest love this world has ever known. Today, more than ever, may you find the courage to be that love.
This time of year I like to think of each decoration and every twinkling light as tribute to the love that changed the world. That even if it’s just for a while, the entire planet becomes a beacon of hope and when God looks down he smiles. Instead of allowing our differences to separate us, we have used them now to decorate us, in a brilliant display of lights and pageantry that shouts the only thing he ever wanted to hear.
We love you and we remember. Welcome home.
Great Expectations
Every year during the holiday season shoppers around the world hunt for the perfect gift. Like everyone else out there, I too spend a great deal of time trying to come up with something spectacular for each person on my list and I’ll be the first to say that sometimes it works and others, well, not so much. The year I made glittery ornaments out of baby food jars will certainly go down in infamy. Lopsided and much too heavy, they dropped like colorful grenades from the branches. My mom still has one and I cringe with embarrassment every year when I see it. What was I thinking? Not to be outdone, last year she gave me an ornamental container that looked suspiciously like a funeral urn. My brother in law was sitting next to me and his eyes got big when I opened it.
“Wow” he said, “Who is that for?”
Awkward.
Anyway, this year as I was pondering my gift giving history, I tried to remember the most meaningful gifts. I went back over the years in my mind and it occurred to me that the things I remembered most were not the gifts, but the moments. In fact, the gifts were the least important things of all. I remembered the year my parents came through the worst blizzard in 50 years to spend Christmas with us and the porch swing I sat on every day when I was ill for five long years. I remembered holiday parties and holiday meals, and sneaking up to my parents house while they were at work, decorating their whole house and putting up the tree, just so they would come home and feel loved. I remembered my daughters in velvet dresses and elaborately curled hair, beaming with anticipation and the year I gifted my brother with blue, orange and green bell bottom golf pants as a gag gift when he was in college. I remembered all the poems I had written for each member of my family and I also remembered some dark times, when life was hard and the holidays seemed like in insult in the face of so much need. At the end of my ruminating, I came to the same conclusion I always do and I’m going to share my all time favorite gift with you.
Great expectations.
Once upon a time in my life, when no one in the world believed in me, someone I didn’t even know saw something special and their great expectations changed everything. Not to be confused with unrealistic expectations, great expectations is looking at a person and seeing their possibilities rather than their inadequacies and giving people the grace to find their own way with no strings attached. Great expectations are what can take a miserable day and turn it into a miraculous year. I know, I’ve not only seen it, I’ve lived it. Great expectations says that no matter how bad things might look right now, I choose to be happy where I am on the way to where I’m going. Great expectations celebrates the gift of each day by living in each day, rather than dwelling on what might have been or the past. Great expectations are what will keep you going each day when everything in the world tells you things are hopeless.
Great expectations are the promises of God to every human being.
When we stop believing in something better, we stop reaching for something better and that’s when we get stuck. Belief will carry you where logic will not.
Today, you might be facing the holidays with gleeful anticipation or perhaps they’ve become something less exciting, like a long overdue root canal. Maybe your family situation is not what you hoped or maybe your finances are looking pretty grim. Maybe you lost someone close to you or maybe you’re sick. Maybe you have things you’re ashamed of. Maybe life has handed you more than your share of disappointment or maybe you’re all alone. Whatever the case may be, I believe there is a miracle waiting for you and now is the time to believe.
In the song The Little Drummer Boy, also known as the Carol of the Drum, which is one of my favorites by the way, a little shepherd boy came to see the newborn King. Having nothing of value to give to the King he gave the only thing he had left. It was a song and it came from his heart.
Great expectations.
The only thing any of us have of value is what’s in our heart. This year instead of worrying about what things cost, why not think about how best to express what’s in your heart? A little imagination goes a long way and a little love goes around the world. Take the best that’s in you and offer it up for someone else and let the King worry about the rest.
The next holiday miracle might just be the one you get.
The Masquerade
There’s a woman I know who drives me nuts. Due to circumstances beyond my control I am forced to deal with her all the time and no matter how often I tell her to go away or how angry I get, she keeps coming around. She’s hyper critical and has an uncanny knack for bringing out the worst in me. Even though she always says she’s sorry after she pushes me too far, sooner or later, I know she’ll do it again.
I want to like her. Really I do. She has so many qualities I admire. She’s creative and generous (when she wants to be) and has a great sense of humor. She’s smart and passionate and there are times when I think maybe we can be friends. But every time I let my guard down and start to get close to her, she turns on me and starts criticizing me again. Some of the things she says are so hurtful they would make a statue weep, yet she acts like its no big deal.
I know why she says the things she does, which is why I haven’t strangled her (yet). When you’re forced to be around someone for long periods of time, eventually you learn what makes them tick. Her life story is rife with tragedy, but to be honest, the worst of it she did to herself. Pretty much everyone she ever counted on hurt her or let her down. Whenever she gets close to success or getting what she wants in life, she inevitably does something to sabotage it because subconsciously she thinks she deserves nothing better. She displays her scars like badges of honor to keep people at a distance and most people think she’s pretty tough.
After watching her for years, I finally figured out what drives her, so I decided, in my usual (those of you who know me can attest to this) know-it-all, “I can fix this” kind of way. Thinking I was so clever, I started inundating her with reasons why she should be proud of herself. “Look what you’ve accomplished.” I said. “Look at how far you’ve come.” She nods with that far away look in her eye.
It’s not enough.” .
“Enough for what?” I say.
“To make up for the bad stuff.”
“What bad stuff?
“You don’t want to know.” she sighs.
“But you’re so talented,” I argued. You have so much to offer. You can do anything you set your mind to.”
“So can you.” she said.
Ouch.
“If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will.” I said.
She laughed, “That explains a lot.”
Exasperated, I confronted her with one day. “You’re afraid,” I said. “Afraid to let people see behind the mask. You think if people really knew you, they wouldn’t love you anymore.”
“Ah,” she said. “There’s the rub.” And the woman in the mirror smiled at me. “Do you?”
In the Corner of My Garden
In the corner of my garden a lonely child sits
Her hair is always messy and her clothing never fits
Her face is filthy dirty, her eyes are swollen red,
She has bruises on her body and scars upon her head
She watches from a distance as others run and play
She marvels at their laughter, but always stays away
Her voice is hoarse from crying so she sobs without a sound
She never leaves her corner for fear of who’s around
I watch her almost daily, struggle with her grief
I long to hold her closely and give her some relief
Each time I try to touch her, she looks with mortal fear
Shrinking from my outstretched hand she never lets me near
Softly I speak to her, trying to make her see
I only want to help her, but in the end she flees
Something about her manner, draws me to her still
I’m always looking for her in the corner that she fills
Someday I hope to win her by my never ending care
For now I’ll just keep trying, letting her know that I am there
I cannot think of leaving, or letting her just be
She holds my heart completely
For once that child was me.
In The Corner of My Garden – R. Walsh
