Growing up as a kid, my favorite cartoon was “Rock-a-Bye Bear”…
Quiet…I want Quiet!
These days, it seems like everyone has something to say. Everyone has a belief or opinion. But if everyone is talking, who is listening? Unfortunately, no one.
Everyone has a voice…but how often and when you use it is up to you.
How do you know?
God gave us one mouth, but he also gave us two ears. So that makes it pretty clear to me that the way we were made was to use what we were given in the proper ratio:
One of my favorite new pastimes is walking our dog, Maggie. I get my exercise, she gets her exercise and we are both so much better for it. But we don’t just hook up the leash and go for it…as we have both learned from our obedience school lessons…there is a correct way to walk… and an incorrect way to walk.
The correct way to walk (to heel) keeps Maggie on a loose leash on my left side. She walks even with me and sometimes slightly behind. In this position, I am the leader and I can turn left or right or take an abrupt about-face and she can move with me with ease because she is close to me and can easily see me. Her being in this position is not restrictive to her either because I can also easily keep an eye on her and when she needs to sniff or “take a break” I can simply slow down or stop. I lead, she follows and we both enjoy our walk.
Conversely, the incorrect way for her to walk is ahead of me. As she moves ahead of me, she loses sight of me. Losing sight of me means that she becomes the leader and the decision maker and as I have learned about dogs…they don’t like to make decisions, they need a leader…it stresses them out if they feel they have to lead. So now we have a stressed-out Maggie out in front of me and “pulling” on the leash. (If dogs feel tension on the leash, they naturally feel the need to pull against it…I learned that in “doggie school” too.) So she’s stressed out and pulling against me and now when I want to turn left or right or around, the only way to do so makes me pull on her leash…which creates more stress…in her and in me. The walk becomes a struggle. The enjoyment is gone.
Despite the pulling, the stress, and the anxiety…she always feels the need to initially take the lead and to get out in front of me on our walks. So each time, I have to spend the first few minutes of our walk (and sometimes more…) “reminding her” to heel…and here’s how I do it…
When she takes off and begins to walk ahead, I can tell that she is no longer keeping tabs on me. She is lost in the new smells, the sights, and the countless other things competing for her attention. Once I see that she is no longer aware of my presence…I’ll simply stop walking abruptly and hold tight to the leash. The result is she quickly gets to the end of the leash and she suffers the shock of an immediate “correction”. Meaning…she gets the heck jerked out of herself.
The extent of the jerk is never my doing…it’s always based on the speed and momentum of her moving away from me. The quicker she leaves me…the stronger the impact of the jerk will be when she reaches the end of the leash.
Sometimes I’ll have to start and stop walking several times in a row and each time she’ll jerk, stop and look at me and then when we start walking again…she’ll take off and I’ll stop and she’ll jerk and we do it several times and then she finally catches on. She’ll take off and I’ll stop and she’ll take another step and realize I’ve stopped and then she’ll stop and look back at me until I start walking again. This is our “dance” over who will be the leader of the walk. We do it every night.
The best nights are when we both slowly walk out the front door and slowly turn down onto the sidewalk. One stop and she’s reminded and then she returns to my side (or slightly behind) and off we go. Loose leash, no anxiety, both of us enjoying the walk and each other’s company…
So why go into so much detail about walking a dog…?
Well, I think sometimes God must feel the same way about us. He knows where we should be in relation to Him. He knows that when we keep Him in our sights, our lives are better and we are happier and safer. In essence, he wants us to “heel”.
Yet, we don’t. Like Maggie, each day we take off with our own ideas, agendas, thoughts, beliefs, and needs and it’s not too long before we suffer for it. God simply stops walking and we get jerked by our own doings.
I’ve learned a lot about myself from Maggie. We are more alike than I care to admit. I love that dog with all of my heart and it breaks my heart to see her “corrected” each time we walk. But I just have to love her enough to let her experience the “correction” that she has created by leaving me.
So when I’m feeling stressed, anxious, or frustrated about something, I now think about Maggie and our walks and I ask myself…
As they say, when one door closes, another one opens…and it sure did.
Several weeks after we lost Finn, our 13-year-old poodle, we welcomed into our family Maggie, a 10-year-old Goldendoodle rescue. To say she is a sweetheart is a dramatic understatement, but with all that goodness comes 10 years of baggage that we are seeing glimpses of each day. We were told by her foster parents, that she needed to be “socialized” because she gets really anxious around new people and other animals. We immediately saw that and we have since been adding to that list…cars, trucks, bicycles, noises on TV, and leaves that blow in the wind to name a few… but nonetheless…we love her and all her baggage…God knows we have enough baggage for her as well.
So in an effort to help her cope with those things that have been a negative impact on her previous 10 years of life, we decided to enroll her in a doggy training academy. Each day I take Maggie to doggy daycare where trainers try to help her unlearn some bad behaviors and teach her some new behaviors as well. She’s been great about it all and I can really start to see some progress…but we have a long road ahead.
As part of our enrollment into the academy, they gave us a book to read about dog training, it’s called “Smile!” by Lynne Swanson, DVM. One of the initial chapters of the book really impacted me and I’ll share it below:
“Whether or not anyone is watching, please look up from the book and smile. Even if you don’t feel like smiling, do it anyway. Allow yourself an honest, up-to-your-eyes, laugh-line-creating, smile. I’ll wait.
Did you notice the relaxed breath that followed your smile? Smiles trigger them. Do you notice reduced tension in your shoulders and neck? Perhaps less stiffness in your posture? Smiles help there, too. Smiles are very powerful. If a stranger smiles at you from across the room, you tend to smile back, don’t you? You may even feel in the moment, happier about yourself and a bit more trusting of others.
That is how dogs feel when people offer genuine smiles. Smiles convey a heck of a lot more than words do, and what our facial muscles do to all our other muscles when we smile says volumes about us when we communicate with nonverbal species. As a pretty darn verbal species, we tend to forget that.”
The chapter goes on to say that the author rewards her dogs with only sincere, relaxed smiles. No dog biscuits, no “good dogs” or baby talk…smiles relax dogs and lower their energy level and they are always with you, unlike biscuits or treats.
Since reading this, I’ve made a conscious effort to smile more…way more!
I’m not much of a natural “smile person” and often think of my smile as that look I had the first time I ate broccoli. Not a good look. Regardless, I’ve been smiling and it seems to work! On Maggie and also on ME! I can give Maggie a big smile and immediately I’m in a different state of mind. No longer am I thinking about all the tasks that need to be accomplished that day or who or what had “ticked me off” in some way…but I really think I’m a better version of ME! All by smiling at my dog! Who knew!?
Looks like Maggie isn’t the only one going to school these days…!
Finn was my constant companion when I hurt my ankle…
I’ll bet that anyone that has had a pet has been heartbroken at one time or another. I am living in that space right now.
Finn is 13 years old. Like many pets, certainly dogs, he is a perfect example of pure love, forgiveness, and being present. He never worries, holds grudges, or is in a bad mood. He has been an incredible friend and part of the family. As I write this, my eyes are filling with tears and the lump in my throat is making it difficult to swallow…because I know what is coming and it is breaking my heart.
Finn is suffering. He tries to hide it, but it’s getting the best of him. Not to get into specifics, my wife and I have come to the realization that we need to put an end to his suffering and allow ours to begin for a while… So tomorrow, we are going to have someone come to our house and have him put down.
….no words…
This morning coming to work, I was wrestling with that inevitable decision. I was praying as I drove to work and asking God to give me the strength to be able to go thru with it and then be able to comfort my wife for the difficult days to follow…then it hit me…
This is Easter week. Friday is Good Friday. If I am feeling this way knowing what I know I have to do tomorrow…I now know (in a very small way) how God must have felt knowing what He had to do…
It’s amazing how many Easters I have experienced and how often I have read about and meditated on what Jesus willingly did for us…but I never thought about the anguish of God and what He was going through knowing that He was the one that would end the life of the one he loved so dearly… I can’t imagine…but now I have a small sense of the pain that must have been caused.
God did what needed to be done…regardless of the pain that it caused him. He did it for love. Love for His son and an even greater love for us…His creation. God did it for love.
Now I must do the same.
Finn has brought me an incredible amount of joy and happiness. He is being called home to begin his “forever life” and I need to release him to go…regardless of the pain. I need to do it for love…too.
The tears…the lump in my throat that won’t go away reminds me of that love…the love I have given and the love I have received.
Easter will be different this year…and probably for years to come with the realization of what love really looks…and feels like…. It’s not always pleasant…
Years ago, I was getting a massage. There I was lying on my stomach with my arms down to my sides as the masseuse worked on a pinched nerve in my lower back. I remember her saying, “why are your hands closed, you’re supposed to be relaxing?” I didn’t even realize it! Since that time, I’ve often caught myself “relaxing” with closed or clinched hands! This says a lot about what I sometimes struggle with. Let me explain…
Clinch your hand. Look at it… What does that feel like? Closed-handed living is not good…for you or others. When your hands are closed, you’re more tense and tight. Most likely, you’re closed off from others. You’re giving off that “leave me alone vibe.” Closed-handed living leads one to try to control situations…because they fear losing control. The ironic thing is, that they are losing control of the very thing they are trying to protect! Closed-handed living limits generosity, light-heartedness, and ultimately happiness! Closed-handed living makes you fear being exposed, seen, or scrutinized…it makes you live a small life…
On the flipside, open your hand! You don’t have to stretch it out, just soften it and allow it to open. Look at it and feel what that feels like. Feel as if you’re allowing a baby bird to sit in your palm.
Open-handed living allows people to be more relaxed, happy, and comfortable with themselves and their environment. It allows one to be generous, transparent, and have a healthy view of themselves and their life. Open-handed people tend to be humorous “go with the flow” types of people. Open-handed living attracts people. Open-handed living makes you smile a lot and you’re most likely healthier. Open-handed living may make you a bit more vulnerable, but living openly allows you to feel and sense things better than closed-handed living. Good things usually happen to people that live open-handed.
I know that I sometimes struggle between the two. On my own, I would probably be more close-handed than I would like to admit…but I know it’s not good for me and I intentionally work on being more open-handed…but it’s not natural…yet. I would love to live my life naturally more open-handed and I’m going to keep working on it. It’s certainly worth the effort. Who knows… one day I might be lying on my stomach getting a massage and I’ll hear the masseuse commenting, “Wow, you’re really relaxed!” That would be a good day.
For anyone that has ever interviewed for a job, one of the first questions you’ll most likely hear is, “Tell me about yourself…” To many of us, we hear that and then begin to tell a story that we have told countless times. We select bits and pieces of our life experiences and we weave them together to give the listener an impression of us that we want them to have. But have you ever wondered…is it true?
True, the events most likely actually happened, but does the story we attribute to those events accurately reflect what actually happened and why? And if not…what is the real story?
“Tell me about yourself” statements are WAY more important than what they may appear to be. They actually reveal more about how WE view our lives than how they may actually be. They tend to support a narrative that we have told ourselves about ourselves and support our belief that we are “less than” we could have been or should have been. We are a failure or a victim or that we were mistreated in some way or a number of other reasons or excuses we allow ourselves to cling on to. They basically scream out, it’s not my fault!
But is that true?
Think of ALL the experiences you have had in your life. Think of ALL the challenges you have had and have struggled with, but you found a way to succeed. Think of ALL the people that helped you along the way, and those YOU helped as well. Also, think of the same events of your “old story” and ask yourself, what good came out of that event? Ask yourself what did you learn from it? Basically, go back and view your life through a new lens and craft a story that empowers you! Create a narrative where you are the champion, the hero, the one that wins in the end! You don’t even have to tell anyone…just tell that story to yourself!
Now how do you feel?
Which story is better? Which story is true? Which story “should” you be telling…to yourself?
Although I don’t remember it or the circumstances around my mishap, I do notice a couple of things:
No protective gear. No helmet, no elbow guard…nothing to protect me from the abrasive surface of the concrete sidewalk I encountered.
No help. As I lay on the ground after my fall, my loving parents chose to snap a photo rather than to run to my rescue.
No crying. As you can see from my face, the fall was certainly not planned, but it was also completely under my control…I did it…I fell…
So what can I learn from this “ancient” photo of just one of the many random days of a child learning to live in this world…?
I think I first have to acknowledge that we all fall. We all fail. The difference is, some of us fall back and others of us fall forward.
We’ve all met people that fall back. First, they try to hide it. Then they try to place the blame on someone or something else. They are also clearly not at peace about it. Just talking about the incident whether it was yesterday or 30 years ago will unleash a torrent of emotions that surround the incident. Falling back is not healthy.
So what is falling forward?
Falling forward the act of using the incident to get better. It’s being better for having fallen. It’s learning to take the pain and grow from it into a much stronger and healthier you.
Falling forward I believe requires 4 primary steps.
Reflect. We have to stop and think about what happened. We have to be objective about it and see it as a reporter would report the incident if they witnessed it.
Own it. Regardless of what happened, we have to claim our responsibility in the event. We have to clearly see what we did and how it contributed to our fall…as painful as it might be.
Course correct. We have to learn from it. We have to commit to a change in future behavior if we ever find ourselves in a similar situation.
Be kind. We have to be kind to ourselves. We’ve had enough pain, we don’t need to invent more pain to inflict on ourselves. We also have to be kind to others. We can’t retreat or withdraw. Isolation does not make anything better…exposure usually does. Get back out there!
So there you have it…all of that from one random photo.
I have fallen thousands of times since that day. Many have produced significant amounts of pain for me and others…yet I’ve always tried to fall forward. Falling forward has given me a rich and deep life to reflect upon and I wouldn’t trade any of it…regardless of the pain. I’m a better man for it.
Falling is not failing. It’s a part of life…and a good one if you fall forward.
Today has been a day that I have not been particularly productive. I got up and went to check out a nearby farmers market. I bought carrots, tomatoes and eggs. I used the carrots, onion, chicken breast in a soup that I made in my new crockpot.
After the farmers market, I walked down the street to check out a new breakfast restaurant called Santa Clara’s. It was a wonderful bakery and good cheap eats. It took a while to get my food, but it was good. I then walked into town to pick up Amy’s house numbers and then returned home.
I worked on my new iPhone because it wasn’t syncing anymore and finally got that working. Hugo and his wife are here and they will be having people over for lunch on the roof today.
I got dressed and then walked to the gym. I did my 7 minute workout plus some weights and then came on home again. I rested and goofed around until about 6:00 debating whether to go out or not. I decided not. I need to remember why I’m here and what I’m supposed to be doing. Bars and restaurants are way too tempting and can quickly get me distracted, spending money and diluted. I don’t want any of those. I took a shower and from that point on…I began to feel the heaviness descend upon me.
I am trying to embrace the reality of my Dad’s situation and I realize that he will soon pass. I have been preparing for it and I thought I had everything under emotional control. But this dark heaviness is telling me that tonight is the night. That may or may not be the case…but the reality of that message really makes me sad. I don’t want to do anything. I am not hungry (partially because the soup sucked) and I don’t really want to watch a movie. I just want to hold onto… and be held by God. That is what I want. I want to be held in the arms of my Savior.
I’m not running from this reality, but I am trying to package it differently. The word death is not a great word and it carries with it a termination…not a continuation. I realize that this will be the termination of Dad’s time on earth…but the word death doesn’t point to his return to the presence of Christ.
I also don’t like the word passing, or passed away. That seems so fleeting and inconsequential. Dads life was anything but inconsequential. He made a ton of miscues…but he is a wonderful loving father. I am lucky to have him.
What I would prefer to call this transition is an event. It is an event where God comes to return my Dad into His presence. Think of that…God coming for you….
I remember playing football in High School and during some of my practices, right before wind sprints and the final hitting drills, I would look up to see my Dad entering the practice field. He was on his way home from work and he stopped off to watch me practice and then take me home. I remember that feeling and I think that is what is happening now. I like to think that God has come to take Dad “home.”
Dad was created into the presence of God and in 1924, he was “loaned” to Allen and Louise Cloyd to learn, teach, and experience all the joys and disappointments that living has to offer. Dad’s life was rich with experiences and he left his fingerprints on the lives of many others along the way. He was blessed with a long life and he used it to try to make others feel good around him.
I am sure that I contributed much worry and heartache to Dad’s life, but I think I also gave him some wonderful moments that made him proud. I am lucky to have been told many times how much I was loved by him and many times he expressed how proud he was of me. Dad was full of grace.
That is how I will remember him…full of forgiving grace.
So tonight as I fully immerse myself in the coming reality…and the pain it will bring…I delight in the fact that my Heavenly Father is coming to take my Dad home with him so there will be no more earthly pain and Dad will begin his new life, in a new body, surrounded by all those that have been called home before him.
I worship a wonderful and loving God and I thank him for the Grace that He has given my family and my Dad to be able to enjoy life together with him as we have done for so many years.
One thing my Dad always, said when we talked on the phone….right before we hung up…he would always say, “I check with ya later!”
There are many things in this life that we can see…yet there are also things in this life that are unseen. However, that does not mean that they do not exist! For instance, we cannot see the wind, yet we can clearly see the affects of the wind during a storm.
The reason I bring this up is to remind me that for all the good that I am seeking in my work…I must be also reminded that there is just as much darkness that must be acknowledged. I need not be afraid…but I cannot ignore it either.
This became evident to me on recent trips to San Jose Pinula. On several occasions I have now seen what has become a “staple” in the town…and a very sad one at that. Oscar calls him “naked man” and rightly so. This man walks through the streets and among businesses totally naked. He is filthy dirty and constantly beats himself in the head. I am reminded of the story of Legion in Mark 5. A similar demon possessed man that Jesus casts his demons into a group of nearby pigs and they immediately drowned themselves in the lake. This man is much like that man…definitely demon possessed. Yet, he continues to roam the streets and people just get out of his way.
I have no idea why nobody does anything with him, but knowing my luck…one day I will come face to face with the man. I’m not looking forward to it…but I have a feeling it will happen. When it does, I am going to pray for him and demand the demon to come out of him. The Bible says we have the power to do so…and I believe what Jesus said…so stay tuned…
