OK....I've finally added my inspirational page....a page where every once in awhile, if I find something that inspires me, or makes me happy, I'll include it here....Also, if anyone else has anything they would like to see on here, feel free to e-mail me and I'll try and add it! :-)
February 9, 1998....
Most of these entries will probably be from this book I just got called,Love Adds a Little Chocolate by Medard Laz. Here's todays.....
Minutes passed and the father stood and called again to his son. "Time to go now?" Again Todd pleaded, "Five more minutes, Dad. Just five more minutes." The man smiled and said, "OK."
"My, you certainly are a patient father," the woman responded.
The man smiled and then said, "My older son, Tommy, was killed by a drunk driver last year whie he was riding his bike near here. I never spent much time with Tommy and now I'd give anything for just five more minutes with him. I've vowed not to make the same mistake with Todd. He thinks he has five more minutes to swing. The truth is, I get five more minutes to watch him play."
--Author unknown
February 11, 1998.....
She was a bag lady. At least she looked like one. And she seemed to sing her conversation, repeating each statement or question about three times. --Gloria J. Gibson
February 12, 1998....
Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good
mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him
how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!"
He was a unique restaurant manager because he had several waiters who
had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the
waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural
motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the
employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.
Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry
and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the
time. How do you do it?"
Jerry replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, 'Jerry, you
have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can
choose to be in a bad mood.' I choose to be in a good mood. Each time
something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn
from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me
complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out
the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life."
"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.
"Yes it is," Jerry said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away
all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to
situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be
in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line It's your choice how you live
life."
I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the
restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but often
thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.
Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never
supposed to do in a restaurant business he left the back door open one
morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers. While trying
to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the
combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was
found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center. After 18
hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the
hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body. I saw Jerry about
six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied,
"If I were any better, I'd be twins. Wanna see my scars?"
I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through
his mind as the robbery took place.
"The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have
locked the back door," Jerry replied. "Then, as I lay on the floor, I
remembered that I had two choices I could choose to live, or I could
choose to die. I chose to live."
"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked.
Jerry continued, "The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I
was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and
I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really
scared. In their eyes, I read, 'He's a dead man.' I knew I needed to take
action."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me," said
Jerry. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes,' I replied. The
doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply... I took a
deep breath and yelled, 'Bullets!' Over their laughter, I told them, 'I am
choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.'"
Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of
his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice
to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.
--by Francie Baltazar-Schwartz
--Contributed to me by Sam Amick
February 17, 1998
THE GOOD SAMARITAN
One day while I was extremely busy attending to our six children, the telephone rang just as I was ready to go out the door to take the girls to Brownies. It was a friend from church who was upset because her husband had left her.
--Carol Goll Burris
February 26, 1998....
SOMEONE WHO CARES
One day a grief-stricken mother sat in the visitor's lounge of a hospital. For her, the world had come to an end. She sobbed and sobbed as tears poured down from her eyes. She had been a single parent and now her daughter, her only child, had just died. The nurse on duty and the chaplain were trying to comfort her but her mind and her heart were light years away.
--Author unknown
ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD....
While at the park one day, a woman sat down next to a man on a bench near a playground. "That's my son over there," she said, pointing to a little boy in a red sweater who was gliding down the slide.
"He's a fine looking boy," the man said. "That's my son on the swing in the blue sweater." Then, looking at his watch, he called to his son. "What do you say we go, Todd?"
Todd pleaded, "Just five more minutes, Dad. Please? Just five more minutes." The man nodded and Todd continued to swing to his heart's content.ENCOUNTER IN A BOUTIQUE
She entered the boutique and my life shortly after noon. It wasn't a particularly cold day, but then, it wasn't shelther she was seeking. Rather, she sang out her desire and seh sang it thrice: "A pair of ski pants. A pair of ski pants. A pair of ski pants." This got everybody's attention. Some noses went up a level. Some backs turned. One set of eyes couldn't resist peering over a shoulder to sneak a look.
Why me?? I moaned inwardly. I was just a part-time book-keeper. I had never worked the floor with this higher-classed clientele whose charge cards I tallied and billed from the room upstairs. I simply had been pressed into sales-clerkdom by a small sales staff who wished to take the owner to lunch in honor of her birthday. Sure, I'd handle the store. I could do it for an hour.
But now this. A larger part of me than I like to admit resent the unlikely customer. We never got bag ladies in this shop. Yet my shobbishness surprised me, and so I softened a bit under self-reproach. In retrospect, I can't really recall how she was dressed. I don't even remember if she actually carreid a bag, this bag lady. It doesn't matter. She was out of her place. Except she didn't seem to know it. She beamed with graciousness, and innocence...as unselfconscious as a newborn.
I looked down at my own light tan cords, neat but hardly new, and I was reminded with a resentful twince that I was a bit out of station myself. It didn't help my suffering self-confidence to realize that I was probably closer to this bag lady than the clique of customers I knew were lying in subtle wait to pass judgment on how I handled such an intruder. Oh, they were unobstrusive, alright, studiedly so. And I felt vulnerable to the exposure of my blueless blood. I would have to quickly dispatch this unwanted creature with aplomb, and, of course, politeness.
But as I approached this objectification of my own internal demons, she smiled so warmly that my hardline offense melted. I responded in kind. "Can I help you?"
"These would be fine. These would be fine. These would be fine," she sang in a high-pitched lilt. She was lifting a pair of famous-maker ski pants from an antique display bin. They were marked 50 percent off. They wee also marked size 18, much too large for this small-framed woman.
"I'm sorry," I answered. "Those pants are all size 18. Too large, I'm afraid. Could I show you some others?"
The smile never left her. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she sing-songed. "You're a lovely lady. You're a lovely lady. You're a lovely lady."
Now why did she have to say that? Couldn't she see the embarassment I felt for her?
Yet, I felt flattered by this incorrigible bag lady's praise...and my neediness disgusted me. Then, something else happened.
I was suddenly relieved I had not given in to my baser instincts to dismiss this "lesser" sister of mine. I felt shame flush through me for having considered using her to the approval of my su-peer-iors.
I thanked her for coming in, this streed creature, and I wished her a good day. She smiled widely. Was there really a space where a tooth should have been?
But that smile....Perkily touching her right forfigner to her cheeked, she challenged me, singing:
"A kiss on the cheek and I'll be gone. A kiss on the cheek, and I'll be gone. A kiss on the cheek and I'll be gone." I could almost hear the clientele gasping.
The moment expanded and stopped. I had seemingly unlimited time to assess my feelings and motives. I could express disdain. I could acquiesce out of pity. Or I could simply comply.
Oh hell, I kissed her on the cheek. Time began again. The lady with the bag looked at me one final time. Was the smile gone? (Strange I can't remember her face.) But I do remember what she said as she turned to leave the shop.
"I am an angel of the Lord," the woman told me, "and you shall be blessed the rest of your days."
Quote for today...
"It's better to have a rich soul than to be rich." Olga KorbutATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING
My life was in constant turmoil, and I did not want to set one more moment aside for another unsolicited interruption, so I said, "I don't have time to talk, because I'm just ready to leave to run an errand."
I hadn't driven more than a mile before I was forced to come to a standstill due to a road construction project. I waited for over thirty minutes, and my having to sit at an idle for so long caused the car to overheat, and, sure enough, it stalled. I got out of the car, started waving my arms in the air to every passing motorist along the highway, but no one would stop.
Finally, forty minutes later, an elderly man pulled over, assessed the situation, and drove to the nearest filling station for some water. He came back and worked with my radiator until he got the car started again. After the man finished and was ready to leave, I said, "Thank you. I hope I haven't made you late for an important engagement."
He answered, "No problem, I was just on my way to the hospital to visit my wife, who had major surgery on her back yesterday. Besides, I couldn't just drive by without helping." He bid me a good day and left.
He was certainly a Good Samaritan. I told the children what a kind man he was for helping us and started down the highway again. Of course, we didn't make it to the Brownie meeting, so I got off at the next exit and headed home.
After supper, I decided to visit my troubled friend. We spent over three hours together, and I didn't feel rushed at all. I learned from that experience that the more love I give to others, the more room I make for God's love.Quote for Today
No one knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan, and raised an adolescent.
--Marcelene Cox
Outside the lounge, in the hallway next to her daughter's room, stood a forlorn little boy. His head was bowed and his eyes were shut. The nurse looked over and saw him standing there all by himself.
"Do you see that boy standing there in the hall?" said the nurse. Through her tears the mother looked into the hallway toward her daughter's room.
"Now there is a story," continued the nurse. "That little boy's mother is a young Serbian woman who was brought in here a week ago. They lost all of their family in the war and they came to this country four months ago with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They had been living in one shelter or another the whole time. They didn't know anyone in this country, They only had eachother. Every day the boy has come and stood or sat there from morning until dark, in the vain hope that his mother would get better. She died about an hour ago. Now he has no one, not even a home to go back to."
The grieving mother was litening now. The nurse continued, "In a little bit I am going to have go out and talk to that little boy and tell him that he now has no one in the whole world that he can call family." The nurse paused and looked plaintively at the woman next to her. She said hesitantly, "Would it at all be possible for you to go out there and tell him for me?"
The scene that took place at that moment was one that will forever be remembered by those who saw it. The woman stood up, wiped the tears from her eyes, composed herself, and went out into the hallway and put her arms around the little boy. She led that homeless child of with her to her childless home. In their own darkness, they became lights to each other.Quote for today
Don't ever let your problems become an excuse.