I went for a walk yesterday, and like most walks, I had a destination in mind, I was, what I have jokingly said returning to the science of the crime.
It was one year ago, that I ran my first live race and broke actually shattered my leg. I was 20 feet from the end of the race when my ankle dislocated and shattered my fibula. In the days and weeks that followed, I asked the question of what did I do wrong? Was I too heavy to be running? Did I not train enough? Maybe the biggest question became was how am I going to keep my weight in check and how do I deal with my stress.
I have had a lot of people say to me since then so you are done with running right? You are done with races right? And honestly I never know how to answer them. I wish I could just go for a run. The truth is that I can barely walk a half mile without my leg starting to hurt. I know that it takes time to recover and I know from the break that I had it is going to be a long road.
I would probably have to be honest and say if I weighed 75 pounds less, my leg might not hurt at the half miles mark, maybe the pain would hold off till 3/4 of a mile or maybe even a mile.
Running wasn’t just a way to stay in shape, or keep my weight in check. But it was a way to clear my head, work through stress in my life and maybe most importantly it was where I wrote my stories.
You are like wait, what is she talking about? She has this blog, she writes her thoughts all the time. Nope, when I ran, I got story ideas and would work them out in my head. I can use music to change my mood and release my emotions. But running allowed time for me to think about other things and escape.
This blog was created because people asked if I would share some pieces that I wrote during the pandemic and was processing multiple changes in my life. This blog is a way to remind me that we need to be the best possible person we can be. This year I have focused a lot on how do we interact with others because there is so much negative that I feel like we need to keep fighting for positive outcomes.
The break changed a lot of things for me. I am still working through a lot of the changes and learning how to adjust to my new life post break. But I will tell you that I have not written off running, but I am sure if I can get back to it it will be very different then before.
There is a song from Monty Pythons “Life of Brian“ – “Always look on the Bright Side of Life.” If you look and read through the lyrics for the song it comes down to this; no matter what is going on look for the bright side of life. Mercy, sometimes it is so hard to do.
Your job creates stress, family only hears what they want to, your friend flakes out on you. It’s hard, it’s even harder to find the bright side. Some might call it being Pollyanna, others might say that the glass is half full.
They say if you do something for 14 days it will become habit; if you do that same thing for 28 days it becomes muscle memory. Just like an athlete trains every day and puts in the time to get better and better. We need to do this we our thoughts. We need to practice looking for the bright side of thing’s, figuring out that our jar is half full rather than half empty.
Once we start looking at our own life’s through a different lens, we start seeing people differently and we start interacting with each other differently.
The positive outcome that we are hoping for maybe hard to see but if we keep looking and trying to see the good, the positive it becomes easier and easier we build our muscle memory.
But not only are we changing how we view the things around us, we change how others see us. No longer are people seeing your bumps and bruises but rather they are seeing you swinging for the stars.
Like many of the things that I have talked about here, this is not easy, I am not going to lie. It is way easier to sit down and let things just happen, but like all things that take work, the outcome is so much better than you could ever imagine.
So the next time you want to give up on something because it’s not going they way you want it to. Take a step back and readjust the way you are looking at it and see if you can find the bright side.
Seems like an odd question doesn’t it? I mean when you were little your parents might have had that door frame to measure your height each year or maybe every six months. But as we get older the height stops being measured by your parents and the only time it seems to get checked is at the doctors office.
But there are other ways in which we grow. We grow our brains by reading and learning new things. We grow our bodies by eating right and exercise. We can even grow our muscles by lifting weights. We improve our cooking skills by making recipes over and over to the point that you maybe no longer need the recipe.
In my job we have a saying that all mistakes are fixable, it is hard at first. You panic because we are taught that mistakes are bad, but really how else do we learn. We learn and grow by reviewing the mistakes that we make. Because eventually, hopefully we learn and grow.
There is a TV theme song from the 80,s and it starts with “ You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life.” There are hard lessons that we have learn to grow as a person and be the best human being that we can be. Sometimes those lessons that we learn hurt, someone says something to you and it changes how you feel about them, or maybe that person that you thought didn’t care turns out to be the person that you rely on.
As people, we learn, we grow by experience. Sometimes you grow because of the circumstances that surround you. They might be painful or maybe it’s the exact opposite maybe it was a great moment that helped you grow. One of the hardest things, we all face, is hearing that something we did or said hurt someone else. Whatever you said or did broke that other person down a little bit or maybe a lot. It is then that you have to make a choice. DoI learn and grow from the experience and the feedback provided to me or do I close down and ignore what happened. You make a choice to grow and change something about yourself or continue down the same path and say it wasn’t me it was them.
When we take on the attitude of it’s not me it’s them, we stop growing, we stop become stagnant and we risk repeating the actions or comments that hurt.
So, friends, do you want to choose growth or staying stagnant? It’s your choice to make and it’s hard. Growth can be painful for those few minutes but ultimately it will bring you more joy and happiness in the long term.
We said Goodbye to my mom yesterday and some of these memories we’re shared at her celebration of life. I decided today would be a good day to share with you what was written in full
Memories of Mom
I went looking for quotes that best described my mom and I found these three from Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore
“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard” -Winnie the Pooh
“After all, one can’t complain. I have my friends.”- Eeyore
“Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.” – Winnie the Pooh
When I sat down to write this, I really had no idea what I was going to say about my mom. I mean I could tell you that her favorite color was red, her favorite flower was the red rose, she loved cardinals, we found out later in her life that she really liked cows too. Desserts needed to be ooey gooey to be good; on the flip side bread had to have as many grains as possible in it for her to like it. She loved old time gospel music, Danny O’Donnell and Lawrence Welk. In fact, for a while that was a Saturday night trifecta. She hated sports, but loved Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. Family was everything to her. Now you know the basics about her.
But let me tell you about the person you really didn’t know. My mom was the oldest of two children but considered herself the middle child of three. She was raised with her cousin Wayne and brother Jim. She was born in the Sauk Centere and grew up in Eagle Bend and graduated from Eagle Bend high school. Went to teachers training in Staples and finished her education degree at St. Cloud State University. When she was in the fourth grade she was playing with her friends and she fell off of a wood pile and broke her leg. Her teacher would come to the house and go over homework with her until she could return to school. What will amaze you about this story is that she kept in contact with that teacher until that teacher passed away.
That is who she was, she kept in touch with her friends. If she understood Facebook, she would have loved it.
I once asked her if she always wanted to be a teacher and she replied “what else would I have been.” She loved teaching kids but really loved when something finally clicked for a kid, she was teaching whether it was math or spelling or later on the basics at Montessori.
My mom volunteered here at Immanuel, she was the Sunday school supervisor for many years, in the early years, we would come early, walk across to the parish house, , because that is where the Sunday school was held for many years. To turn on the heat and make sure that there was coffee for the Sunday school teachers. In the 70’s and early 80’s we attended the Mother/ daughter brunch every year and every year she would win for having the most pictures of her kids in her purse… Mind you it was 1979 and she still had Gordy’s baby picture in there from 1964. In the early 80’s through the mid 80’s every holy week she would go into production of lamb shaped cakes for the Sadder dinner that the church held. Frosting and jelly beans had to be just right to look like fur and eyes and noses. She started the library, was active in many of the women’s circles, and in later years, the quilting group.
My mom made sure that we had the chance to experience as many things as we wanted to. Sandy and I were active in Campfire and she was Sandy’s Campfire leader. Cookouts, overnights, day camp, overnight camp and candy sales… at times in the fall of the year our dinning room floor look like we had a serious sugar addiction! When her grandchildren came along that thought process continued with trips to the science museum, both the MN zoo and the Como zoo, and children’s theatre productions. When my mom learned that Josh really didn’t like hugs, she made sure she asked for one every time she saw him.
We grew up in an era that we played outside and played with the neighbor kids, with games of Kick the can, touch football, capture the flag and so many other games, but my mom had a unique way to call us home for dinner or it was getting to late. We had an old bell on the front of our house, you know the kind that like you would find on a ranch to call the ranch hands in, yep, we had one and when that bell rang, we all knew it was time to go home.
One summer night it was really hot, and I woke up to a lot of noise outside my bedroom window. I got up to realize that my parents’ friends had “broken in” the backyard to go swimming. Funny never worried about our friends breaking in to go swimming but theirs? Yep. My mom didn’t swim, in fact she had a fear of the water after falling through a frozen pond when she was young and never learning how to swim but she made sure that we knew how to swim and she would get in the pool a couple times a summer with us. My mom also never learned to ride a bike, but my dad had a tandem bike for them, but if you looked closely on family bike rides, her feet were on the pedals but that was about it. But she was making sure she participated in those family bike rides.
She loved going to plays and musicals, there was a time in her life that I don’t think she missed a performance out at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre. We saw all of the “Church Basement Ladies” series and I remember her taking me and our neighbor kid to see “A Christmas Story” and she was walking out and said to the neighbor kid’s mom “well that was not what I was expecting”.
Her family was everything to her. Whether it was your birthday acknowledged by a card or that special gift that she would search hours for and delivered by UPS – Yep, she was the original Amazon. She made sure that she was at all the graduations and wedding of her nieces and nephews and later her great nieces. If there was a birthday party or anniversary party happening for one of her cousins, she would try her hardest to be there.
When her brother Jim lived just outside of Boston, she took all three of us kids in 1976 and we celebrated the centennial of our country by learning about our country and by having a great time seeing the sights of Massachusetts. I am not exactly sure how many days we were there, but we packed a lot of site seeing into those days. One of my favorite memories of that trip is all six of kids packed into the back seat of my uncle’s car and singing camp songs as we went from one spot to the next. The best part is she was the one encouraging going what else do you all know. Now imagine 6 kids singing Father Abraham with all the gestures in the back seat of a car.
At different points in time, we all traveled with her and dad to Florida for Race Week. We would go to Disney World where she would ride some rides with us. But mostly just hang out. On one trip she made sure that I got to an alligator farm. I was in heaven. Magnificent creatures of all sizes, I got to hold a baby alligator and I remember the people we were traveling with thought I was crazy. But she understood, after all it was her that gave me my first stuffed alligator and later encouraged a research project on them.
In the later years my mom and dad took to the road in their 1940 or 1946 Cadillac to places like Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Alaska, Canada. She loved to travel in these cars and loved seeing the United States this way. They traveled around 60,000 miles in these cars and about 40,000 miles in modern cars.
Mom took a couple of trips without my dad too, on one trip, she and I went to Hawaii and explored Oahu. Her favorite spot was the market place that we would go to at night, she loved it because it had fun little unique stores that market had to offer, she also liked to go “pearl diving”. My mom also went with her longtime friend Joy Nelson, on a cruise to the Panama Canal, this was the chance of a lifetime and we all told her to go. This was not the first time she and Joy and traveled together, prior to getting married mom traveled with Joy out to Holden Village for two weeks.
My mom hated sports but, on the trips, to race week she would go one day during the week with my dad and watch the race with him. In fact, she had countless stories of sitting at raceway park in Shakopee and watching Dad and his friends race early in their relationship and marriage. And would continue that tradition watching her son, Gordy, pit crew for his friends and later her grandson Josh drive at raceway.
When we came along there were dance recitals for Sandy and I, ice skating lessons, gymnastics, swimming lessons, football practices, basketball practice and games, softball and baseball practice and games. If you think that the term soccer mom was invented in the late 90’s you are wrong. They were just moms with station wagons prior too that. My mom would drive 2 hours to watch Sandy play rugby when she was in college. She would stand on the sidelines and watch the match; even though she understood nothing about the game. Sandy was playing and that was all that mattered to her. She would stand on the sidelines in the rain of Gordy’s football games during his sophomore season and never missed a Friday night his junior and senior year. She watched every basketball game Sandy played in high school. She attended every hot swimming meet I had.
Later in life it became a joke between her and I that it was time for the Vikings game or a Twins game and she would protest but watch the game with me. When she worked for Montessori one year, she had a Minnesota Viking player by the name of Darren Nelson’s child in her classroom. She made mention to him that I was a Vikings fan away at college but that he was my favorite player and that she would like to surprise me for my birthday with his autograph. Darren told her I will do you one better, and when he returned the next day, he had the whole team’s autographs on official Vikings stationary for me. Yes, I still I have that. A few years later a guy by the name of Cris Carter and his kids showed up in her classroom. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Carter on accident as I showed up at her work to drop off something for her and he was there picking up his kids and I might have developed a slight stutter trying to talk to him. Later that week I ended up with a signed Cris Carter jersey. She hated sports but she understood our love for them and cheered us on whenever she could.
My mom never missed a band or a choir concert. Mom would bring us every week to music lessons in Hopkins until we were able to drive ourselves. She would haul us to early morning choir rehearsal or pick us up after school from late practice. They would travel to Sioux Falls at least once during the year for the vespers concert and for my final senior band concert. When I joined the Hopkins WestWind community band, I know she never missed a concert in fact her last concert she watched on YouTube and told me when I got out to the house afterwards that it needed more real Christmas music, but she liked the Hanukkah piece.
Saturdays were her day. She would either have breakfast with her Montessori teacher friends or lunch with me or someone else and then go shopping. She didn’t always buy stuff, but I liked to call them intel missions. She would look and see if she could find the perfect gift for someone. She loved stores like the General Store or craft shows to find that unique gift for someone. My mom also had a thing for Dishes, back in the day if we went into Dayton’s we knew were going to the dishes area to look around and maybe come home with a bowl or a platter for the upcoming holiday. This was also in the era that the grocery store’s would “give away” dishes if you bought so much in groceries. All three of us had our own first set of dishes by the age of 10 by the age of 16 I think I had 3 sets of everyday dishes along with “some China pieces to start me out”.
My mom loved to celebrate the holidays and her table was always open for whoever needed a place to celebrate the holidays whether it friends of ours from school or family friends with no family in the area, all were welcome at her table. I think Christmas was her favorite holiday; As kids, we would go as a family to the tree farm and wander through the trees until we found the perfect tree for us. One of the musts for the tree is that it had to be taller than mom. Once we were grown, they went to an artificial tree but it was still the best tree every year. My mom was creative and loved to make crafts as I said once before there was not a legg’s egg in the 70’s that was safe from her crafting.
She was also an original foodie. Before the food network, door dash and even her beloved food magazine’s. She was always looking for new recipes to try and would love buying church cookbooks, because as she said “they always have the best recipes.” My mom canned from the early 60’s to the mid 80’s when she finally decided that not everything needed to be canned. But she would can tomatoes, cucumbers, fruit, make jelly, if it grew in the ground or on a tree, she could can it. She loved food magazines and looking at recipes. As kids we, didn’t realize it, but later in life we all learned to thank dad that we were not subjected to liver or lutefisk. But if it was an odd food, you can bet my mom loved it. One night recently she was looking at a food magazine and I was making lasagna for dinner and I asked her if she wanted lasagna for dinner and she said no this and pointed to an everything bagel sandwich and I said I would gladly make that for you if you would eat it and if I had everything to make it so how about lasagna and again, she said no this. We compromised she had soup.
Towards the end of her life, my mom didn’t have a lot to say most days but she was still interested in everything that was going on in our lives. She would ask about work and on a really good day she would ask about the dogs and the cat. She would always look at the newest pictures of “my girls”. She and I had a routine that last year. I would walk in and say “hi sunshine” and I would wait for a hi back if no hi I always got a small wave. When I would leave, the routine was to tell her to “behave and be good” and she would say “why that’s no fun.” And then I would tell her I loved her and she would say “love you too.”
What makes you smile? It is a lot like the song from the Sound of Music “A few of my favorite things.” But this is a little simpler. What makes you smile? Your child, your pet, your favorite song? I think it is easy to say that all those things can bring a quick smile to your face. Seeing a friend, watching a video of a panda, doing something that you love can also make you smile. Some people are natural smilers, most are not.
If you ask a child what makes them smile you get a pretty simple answer. You get answers like unicorns, batman, Darth Vader, trucks, my point is the things that make them smile are the generally the things that they play with or see on TV.
As we grow up, those things bring a quick smile to our face but no longer hold the same power that a unicorn or snoopy did when we were six. That is not to say I am not going to smile when I see a butterfly or alligator or a squirrel having to do a pull up to get food. Music will always make me smile, even cry.
If we listen to Sister Maria in the “Sound of Music” the things that we think of that our suppose to make us smile are suppose to make us feel better, unfortunately, I fear that only works when you are 6 or in a Rogers and Hammerstein production. I wish life was like a movie or musical that within 2 hours everything worked out just right, you found your true love, and you never had to worry about anything ever again.
But what is it about that struggle, whether it is to smile, or set your worry aside that is so hard for us to do? Why do we want to hang on to our hurt, our anger, our pain? Is it easier? Is it safer? For some it is all they have ever known so it is a way of life, for others they have gotten so trapped in their pain they no longer know how to let it go. For some it is safer. It is amour that they have put on to protect themselves from the world.
Unicorns, butterflies, pandas, or whatever you name that makes you smile cannot always get past that pain. It will for a second or minute or maybe even a day. But at the end of the 24 hours if you truly haven’t laid down what hurts, what causes pain, why you wear your amour, the next time you see something that used to make you smile, it will take a little longer to smile, it will last a little less time, and eventually you will no longer find yourself smiling at those things that used to bring you brief moments of happiness, let alone finding happiness in the simple things in life.
Give yourself forgiveness, allow yourself to heal, let down your amour and let someone in. It is so hard to do. How do I forgive myself for what I have done? How do I forget the pain that I feel? How do I let down that amour and let someone in without getting hurt again? There are no easy answers, but there is light at the end of tunnel. That light comes in so many different forms, focus on the light.
For some the light might be music or a particular song, for others that light is a friend, and for some that light will be God. Here is the amazing thing about God. You can have a relationship with God wherever you are in life. God, like a song or a friend will meet you where you are at, angry? That is Ok, God can handle it, hurt? God understands, lost? God will show you where you need to be. Unsure of God’s presence? Look for what makes you smile, look for that rainbow, look for that butterfly, look for that friend that seems to text at the right time. I am not saying that God will fix everything. You must want to fix it; you have to want to smile again. Whatever you chose, know that it will be hard and most days you will want to give up and pick up your hurt, pain, amour and hang on to them and that’s ok but remember what the smile felt like.
When we are born our parents cannot wait to hold our hand. Some just say it’s to make sure that we have all ten fingers. Holding our hand is one of the things that bonds us to our parents.
As we grow older we no longer want to hold our parents hands. But then we start dating and we start back to holding hands. It’s romantic but again it bond’s us to each other.
And maybe someday you make a promise to hold hands with someone for the rest of your lives. Again it is sweet and it is romantic but again it shows how much we love someone.
If you are lucky as you leave this world someone is holding your hand. We have all read the stories over the past two years of doctors, nurses and other health care providers holding hands of patients because their family could not.
Holding hands is something that you probably don’t think, you reach over and the hand of the person you love is just there. Did you reach out, out of habit, or because you need comfort, or maybe it’s guidance you are seeking in the darkness.
It is in that darkness that we seem to look for that hand will provide comfort and security. We search for the hand that we know in our hearts should be there.
Maybe the hand has become a metaphor for you. You know who to seek out in that darkness but are you someone that people seek in the dark? Are you the person that becomes the light in that darkness?
How can we be the light for someone else? It’s the small things. It’s the phone call, the cup of coffee, it’s caring when it’s hard to care. It’s saying I got your back.
One of my mentors would close his band concerts reminding each other to hold hands while crossing the street, and take care of each because we are all we have.
So, my friends this weeks challenge is to hold hands while you cross the street.
They told us month’s, then it was hour’s, maybe a day and that became minutes.
I walked into her room, I held her hand, I kissed her forehead, I told her that I loved her, and thanked her for being my mom.
There were so many other things that I wanted to talk about with her, I hadn’t showed her this weeks picture of Lily or Tuna. We had a routine, I would say hi Sunshine, and she might answer me depending on the day. But she would wave, always a wave.
No more teasing her about watching the Vikings with me or NASCAR or the Twins. No more asking me if I planned on cutting my hair; no more asking the original foodie if she was going to make the recipe that she was looking at.
Now the memories start, trips to Boston, “Mom, will we be able to go to the House of the Seven Gables again, and the Ocean?” I’m pretty sure that those trips to Boston in the mid 70’s and early 80’s created my love of history, seafood and the ocean. Trips to Florida and her being willing to go to Disney World and ride the rides with her daughter. She even made sure that I got to an Alligator farm on one trip to Florida, because she knew my love for the magnificent creatures.
A road trip to Missouri, and the start of sharing with her what soon would become one of my favorite authors. She never tried of hearing about the book I was reading or the authors I discovered.
My mom took us to Valleyfair and rode the rides when she had to. I think she was probably secretly happy when I was finally tall enough to ride by myself. We made a tradition of going to the Hopkins Raspberry parade every year. She drove us to dance rehearsals, sports practices music lessons and my list could go on.
My mom was the ultimate band mom. She never missed a concert.She even made the last concert via you tube.
I got my love of crafting from her, she was artist when it came to her crafts. There was not a Leggs egg in the 70’s that was safe from creative transformation.
She passed on her faith to me, and taught me that faith isn’t about Sunday morning’s but how you live every day. She also taught me that you don’t have to be perfect but you really do have to try your hardest at everything that you do.
When my mom made a friend, you were her friend for life. Whether she met you in the fourth grade or in 1985. She made sure that there was a yearly Christmas card and letter at the very least to remind you that she was thinking about you. She would send birthday cards, and gifts long before Amazon was ever even a thought.
My mom put her family first. She might not have said I love you, gave out hugs or said 100 other things that come easily to others but she loved deeply.
So in those last moments of her life, I held her hand. I told her that I loved her and thanked her for being my mom.
Maid is a limited series on Netflix. Perhaps you have watched it. If you haven’t I will give you a short review. It’s about a young mom who is trying to get out of an emotionally abusive relationship with a small child all while caring for a a bi polar mother.
Too a point it was really my life, as I was watching this show I just kept thinking that was my life.
My husband was bipolar, suicidal and emotionally abusive. My father in law suffered from depression and threatened to kill himself more than once and mother in law had an eating disorder. My in laws had an explosive relationship and my husband had an explosive relationship with them that they hid from me until after we were engaged. In fact the first fight happened the night we got engaged. But I believed him, that it would never happen again.
The first mental health break happened within the first three months of our marriage. Hospital time, doctors, meds,that lasted for about 6 months and he was fine and didn’t need the meds.
My life became a lot of walking on eggshells. I never knew what would set him off. What would make him yell, or worse the silent treatment. We watched what he wanted to on tv, we listened to his music, I made sure that the bills were paid, and that he had spending money and drug money. If he wanted something new and I said no he would either just go buy it anyways or break the current one so we would need a new one.
He never understood that we were out of money, because he would tell me to go ask my parents or his mother. It put me in such an uncomfortable position. I never told them the truth that he was spending the money on drugs or on random things. I just needed to make sure that our electric bill and gas bill was paid.
There came the time that I finally said enough is enough and asked him to leave. He drained our bank account while I was at work, attempted to put my house up for sale, and when I saw that evening he broke my wrist.
I spent my spring and summer dealing with lawyers and advocates and judges and suicidal husband. My husband died right as our divorce was finalized and for about two years I blamed myself for his death, He died of heart attack 4 days after his mother died from cancer. So maybe he died from a “broken heart” .
It’s been almost 4 years since all this happened and I have realized that I still think about that time with him, I always will. I am angry about the things he stole from me. Working on that. But really the hardest part is figuring out who I am now. As I told someone yesterday, I am not really divorced and I am not really a widow. I live in a weird place. But more importantly I need to figure out what is next.
So my friends if you read this far, and you recognize someone who is a situation like this. Reach out to them, tell them that you are there for them and will do anything to help them. If I hadn’t had a few people in my corner including a doctor. I wouldn’t have been able to do it.
Grace, it’s a word that I have heard used a lot lately. That got me thinking what does grace mean?
According to Oxford dictionary the top three definitions of are:
Oxford goes onto say that grace is generous, free, and totally unexpected and undeserved.
So, really grace is in all definitions of the words a personality trait. It is how we choose to live.
When we choose to live selfishly, we are choosing to put ourselves before others and sometimes we have too. That is just a fact. But how do we intertwine grace and self?
Ask yourself this question? Am I doing this because it makes me look good or am I doing this because it is the right thing to do? If you can honestly answer that question with it is the right thing to do whether or not someone else is going to like the outcome, the next question you should ask yourself is, how do I approach this so the least amount pain is inflicted on someone? That is the key. That is where grace comes in.
We need to approach how we interact with people as we want people to treat us. And lot of times that means we need to give them grace and sometimes grace upon grace. It is so hard. It is maybe one of the hardest things that we can do as a society. Treat people as we want to treated. Did you provide time for someone else today? Did you listen? Did you smile? Did you wait that extra minute to see if someone answered the question of how are you? If you did then maybe, you gave someone grace.
It’s hard because it is something we don’t think about and lately it seems like it is further from our minds then usual.
So, my friends your challenge this week is to look for grace and remind people that you’re glad you had a chance to interact with them. Maybe it’s just a smile or a simple how are you, but the challenge is to keep trying to change the negative to the positive.
Seems like a simple question. Did you smile today? Unfortunately I am beginning to think that smiling is a lost art.
We are behind masks and people think that we cannot see what is happening but the answer is we can still tell when someone is smiling and when they are not.
Smiling is easy and it says so much more than words can. Smiling can say that you are happy to see someone or that you are in good mood or so much more including compassion.
You didn’t realize that your smile said so much did you? I think that we have lost some very basic skills in the last few years. We have lost the ability to smile and maybe more importantly how to interact with each other.
We have gotten to the point that things that were once considered common such as hello, please, thank you , have a nice day. Have gone the way of a lost art. Does that mean that we stop smiling too?
I am pretty sure that we can all do a little better, it doesn’t cost you anything to smile. In fact it makes not only your day better but the person that is receiving it gets a little bit better.
So whether you are behind the mask or on a zoom meeting or just talking with a friend. Take that extra second and smile. It’s so easy.
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