I hear the complaint, feel the gushing, rushing from the Maine real estate buyer who I ask “is something missing in your life?” Building A Better, Happier, Peaceful You Starts With Looking At Your Life’s Layers.
That is the lead in welcome question on our Maine real estate website. Often the purchase of a Maine property listing is sparked by the buyer’s need to “fix something”.
Many city dwellers if asked what is missing in their life will start with the word space to feel safe, to just be able to think. They realize their jammed in, wall to wall existence is cutting off air and robbing their peace. Slowly learning that their first world problems are not life and death important.
Worries about crime, keeping up with the marathon pace all take their toll on a body. Add a couple of pallets of heavy high cost of living for good measure and let simmer as the temperature, pressure rises.
You are not born a Type A personality but are taught and rewarded to be that way.
Competitive, hard driving, at war with time, feeling guilty relaxing. Add in some worries, fears that cause a daily dump of stress hormones in to your system and you become a Rambo on a mission. A force to be reckoned with, like a wild animal being attacked. Wondering if it’s to be the main course, what’s for supper tonight. Feasted on by the approaching crouched approaching predator. That is not here for just a social call. Hears the dinner bell ringing.
We create layers of stress, like a life lasagna of worries, negative thoughts.
Nothing motivates like the fear of survival. Except instead of fight or flight to avoid being eaten, our fear is man made, social engineered. Like the term artificial intelligence, it was nothing God intended. Or that you find between the covers of the red or black or white bound family Bible. When you climb on your personal survival exercise machine and you have trouble finding the off switch. To shut down, relax and release the pressure on your body and over crowded, no vacancy mind.
This is the part where a shameless pitch for buying a piece of Maine real estate comes in. A property on a pristine lake, wooded acreage on the side of a hill with a long expansive view. The setting designed to help you slow down. Because man has not invaded it, spoiled it, set up any carnival tents yet. Just you, your thoughts, some wildlife that meanders, wanders in and out to visit through out your relaxing Maine day.
Slow Down, Capture Your Thoughts In Maine By The Water Video.
In Maine, the eat or be eaten heavy protective armor is removed.
Vacationland is the 4th lowest crime state. People wave, smile and say hello rather than ignore or suspect you are up to something no good. Or mean them harm. In Maine property is so low cost you own the title to the land free and clear. Out right. No mortgage demons tread milling in your head to weigh you down with worry.
Back to the part about your thoughts. If you head and heart are filled with junk, worries, hurts, how can you experience life and be fun to be around? Hurt people hurt people. Without knowing why. As an island forms and you become the only Gilligan on it. No Ginger or Mary Ann to enjoy the sunsets with.
With a lot of work, the type A personality man or woman with the fight or flight, five alarm fire bell ringing in their head can recover.
It starts with seeing what all those stress hormones are doing flooding their system. Always feeling anxious, multi tasking around the clock means you never catch your breath. Can not spend time in relax mode with your feet up, in the sun and able to watch the world go by. Without a care in the world. The ability to put down your sword, walk away from fights and eat some desert.
Baggage, how many pieces, what size, shape, color are you carrying?
God examines your heart, can start pruning and replacing the weight of sin with the breath of life, pure love. If you let him, if you are ready. Or continue to blame others for your problems, feel sorry for yourself and be robbed blind of all the peace and joy you deserve. And that so do your family, loved ones, community around you do too. Happy, content, not being heavily burdened carrying the weight of the world delivers you to still waters. Frees the mind, soothes the soul. Isn’t that the perfect setting for loving others, the relationship with yourself?
Maine, have a piece. Own some Maine real estate. Start small, think big. Just an acre in the woods is the base camp you need to explore Vacationland and your personal life. To begin replacing the clutter, guilt, overbooked fatigue with feelings of joy, contentment, peace.
I knew a person once who lamented I wished I had your faith but can not live my life unless in total control. Bumps, Bruises, Heartache And Suffering Happens In An Imperfect World.
Control is boring, tiresome, makes you bone weary. Just like external happiness where you plan an event down to the finest detail. And announce, hand out everyone’s role in the elaborate production. Lacking flexibility to adjust to variables that come up. And not considerating that friends, family and people around you don’t belong to some kind of union who’s by laws demand they play along. No matter how well intentioned or glorious the final outcome you picture in your head will be you think for their own good. Others don’t always share your vision, goals, are not in the same dream.
Driving your life 10 and 2 does not take in to account approaching potholes, other drivers you may bump and hurt.
Crouched low in your bumper car of life where it is a always good idea to keep your arms and hands inside that fast moving, direction spinning hard rubber ring protected vehicle.
When you and I try to drive through our day to day, if our thoughts, actions are not pure, thought through with a sincere WWJD attitude, mistakes are made.
Lots of them. Then frustration and depression can happen as trying to fix the situation makes it worse. And hopefully you know someone for more than one 55 minute session on an open Maine home porch to help sort it all out. While getting back on your knees, praying incessantly about the problem area for answers and solutions.
It is times like these where your 10 and 2 Christian life can suddenly require frequent stopping. Letting go of the steering wheel. God and others asked to take over, drive, for help and forgiveness when looking for life’s directions. Because you can become hopelessly lost. But like lost kids, we don’t blame ourselves for becoming that way. Mistakes made with good intentions.
We often miss the bigger picture. Are being tested in new ways to grow deeper, less narrow and to learn more patience, greater understanding as we grow up and figure out one by one some of life’s mysteries. Our faith is leaned on heavier. We have to labor, work harder to capture our thoughts and wait for the next step. And just live in today.
We are an impatient, imperfect society wanting drive through quick results. But flipping out because one small fry is missing in your order that you discover many miles down the Interstate does not warrant turning around to go back and give someone a piece of your mind. Using your own skills to easily derive the pathway around an obstacle, those potholes is a life long struggle. For the journey to get headed for the stretch of easier straight away out there to enjoy.
Let go of the wheel because life is not an easy straight away.
With a single dotted line where you can always pull out and pass. Obey the law, go the speed limit, sometimes pull over in to the breakdown lane. Release your hands, bow your head on the wheel. And ask for help, guidance, direction from God.
When you cry out for specific attention to a problem, watch out, put the top up because a hail storm will happen. But during that being parked, everything else in your life but that area needing emergency room attention will be pulled aside during the operation. For 20 20 focus with full crystal clear clarity in your head and heart. Exposed to the direct sunlight, open to the fresh air. To have you realize here’s your problem, the cause of your stumble.
Surrender, suffering is where you learn the most.
Because you are on the ground, looking up and can hear, see the best. But you don’t have to stay there. Pray about it incessantly. If you acknowledge the sin, go to the people you hurt, ask for forgiveness without explanation, rationale, but pure love and real sorrow, that is a start. Then remembering the pain you caused others but regardless of whether they extend forgiveness or not for the offense(s), you don’t have to flog yourself, stay in the ditch. Reconciliation, atonement is the next step in the long process of healing. But sure beats a band aid on a gunshot wound and expecting a quick complete recovery.
You can pick yourself up, find the value in other areas of your life where you do get high marks, shine. Everyone has value, more than a few good points but in many areas you and I come up short. Welcome to the club. That is why we need other people to come along side. For a hug, prayers, friendship. So we can be there for them too when the situation arises.
We all make a mess of the precious life we try to lead and hurt the ones we love the most in the process.
And hurt people hurt people the hardest. Stop the cycle, let go of the wheel, understand and pray about the situations that trouble you most. That keep you strait jacketed. And missing out of life’s rich goodness that we all need to be grateful for every minute of every day. And go easy on your parents, instead of blame rethink the good, bad and the ugly they carried, passed on to you and me.
Release the burden, take inventory of the baggage and lighten the load you carry to experience peace. Let go and let God is not just an expression used at weekly AA meetings. Easy does it, moderation and giving way for a higher power, all knowing God is actually easier in the long run. It means not needing control and trusting God to drive the car, not you. He is your GPS, your speed control, radar detector for approaching pot holes and other life road hazards.
Therapy, sessions to help sort out personal problems weighing a person down in life.
Space, Elbow Room Helps With The Personal Life Baggage We Struggle With. Usually the baggage the guy or gal you look at brushing teeth each morning in the mirror can not uncover by themselves.
To sort through what we all carry, the take away from experiences in life’s relationships with others.
A simpler life in a rural state like Maine can make for less baggage.
When you hang your hat in Maine, your today is not wrapped up in living to impress others. When you have eleven people per square mile in Aroostook County, which is the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island, you don’t have many neighbors to envy period. To study, covet, wish for something they have that you don’t.
In Maine there are no Jones to keep up with because we are taught early on to think for yourself, find your own path.
Keep your eyes on your own paper. The story we write as the life journey unfolds has basic tenements. Family, church, community, hard work and self improvement for quality of life. Less money needed for basic housing helps in the 46th lowest state for foreclosure, short sale, repossession of Maine properties too.
Living in Maine, you and I are always just a gallon or two of precious gas from hundreds of outdoor recreational outlets. Recharging, renewal, “therapy locations”. The best way to find the size, shape, number of pieces of baggage we carry is spending time in a natural, unspoiled by man Maine outdoor setting. Uncluttered, fresh thinking happens when you remove the noise, buzz, dissention of a crowded, elbow to elbow city like existence filled with annoying distractions. With jack hammer noisy surroundings where you can’t even hear yourself think.
The 4th lowest Maine crime state statistic removes another layer of daily worries urban dwellers carry too. Mainer’s don’t live in fear of personal safety. No gangs, no deadbolts, no tasers. Keys left in the ignition. Hitchhikers picked up because you know their parents. Went to school with their older brother. There is a sense of connection, community in a smaller rural lower populated state like Maine. We need each other.
Back to that Maine house outdoor porch blog post headline. Growing up there were no 55 minutes of weekly therapy sessions to teach coping skills from a paid impartial professional. Our older, wiser grandparents, aunts, uncles were local, helped our parents in our personal education. We spent time on that open Maine home porch as kids listening to family stories. That gave us a historical perspective to build on. We felt part of a special group, surrounded by folks we shared with, could count on for the ups and downs of daily life. We were not alone to struggle with grief and our family reunions were not just during funeral calling hours.
Maine home open porchs of no use if you don’t spend time there.
Morning coffee as the sunrises, the birds sing and you admire the lupine, flocks, cone flowers from your perch in a porch swing makes your heart receptive. For perspective, healing, and filling it with hope and dreams for your life ahead. No matter what trials or setbacks the roadway behind you is cluttered with.
We are taught growing up to bring our joys and cares to the Lord daily. To pray without ceasing. Besides being on our knees in church as a regular mainstay of our personal, mental and spiritual health, the “therapy sessions” continue on that open porch. Through the day. In a Maine winter, the players coming inside to a southern exposure glassed version of the same room.
Growing up as a small child who has just picked fresh peas, beans, corn from the garden with a grandparent, your Mom or your Dad, you are back on that open Maine home porch. Sitting with a grandparent preparing the vegetables for the nightly supper. But during your labor, you listen, you talk, you share. Problems don’t build up, questions inside your heart and head don’t get left unaddressed, unanswered. Healthy two way communication on that open Maine house porch happens.
After supper and dishes are done, back on that open Maine house porch as crickets take their cue, the sun retires, the moon checks in right on schedule.
You are aware of the seasons passing when you are outdoors on a Maine house porch. Instead of planted in front of a television or computer screen and detached from others, the world around you inside the home.
Cool freshly squeezed lemonade, hand turned ice cold home made ice cream. A juicy slice of succulent watermelon. Or age old family recipe cookies, squares, hot out of the oven pie made of fruit you picked just taste better on that open Maine front porch. And sometimes its just you, solitary use of the open porch. Naps on the glider, porch swing happen as you mark your place, close a good book. Fold up the Sunday newspaper and close your eyes. Nod off hearing the hummingbirds industriously tapping the hollyhocks or sugary red fluid in the hanging feeder. The purring family cat curled up in your lap or on your stomach.
Yes, the world would be a better place, you would have a healthier mental outlook if we had, used those open Maine house porches. If you need a Maine home with or without that open porch and plenty of land, I know of a good Maine real estate broker to help with the new setting. To begin your therapy to seek the peace and joy that may not fill your heart and head now where you live.
My Aunt Ruth was a lady you never forgot if you ever met her.
Especially if you were a kid. Camp Little Ponderosa Was Disney Land For Horse Riding Maine Kids. Her years of teaching horse riding lessons at Camp Little Ponderosa summer camp touched many young lives in the Houlton Maine area. I remember also seeing her in action when my cousin Dave at an early age were with her at Hodgdon High School where she taught music. With large brown eyes, I remember clearly watching her mesmerize the large group. Demanding and getting each and every students undivided attention.
Maine kids that thought they could not sing, carry a tune if it had handles could suddenly find melody, harmony and bring something to the group’s overall horsepower sound. In a playful, a little good natured teasing sort of way, Aunt Ruth had an ability to take a shy kid, lacking confidence and inject ten cc’s of “atta boy or girl”, you can do it. Aunt Ruth was very good at involving all kids, making each and every one feel special, a part of the production.
That’s the Aunt Ruth who was accepted at Julliard School of Music, the one with Stardust and Melody two horses in their thirties she had had since childhood.
The same Aunt Ruth that lived with Freeman Taylor who was like a second dad, and a kid himself for the many cousins lucky to be exposed to summer horse riding camp at the Ponderosa.
Freeman kept our snow sleds running in the winter. Took us to the Borderland Drive In Outdoor Theatre, Mt Katahdin to climb summers. Taught us about haying and horse farming. While Aunt Ruth schooled us all in the fine points of saddling up. Riding English and Western hore disciplines. Competing in Maine horse shows here stateside and ones across the US border in Canada.
The first Camp Little Ponderosa I vaguely remember from bits and pieces of stories. About a small structure on the north side of the Ludlow Road, east of the Hogan Road (aka McSheffery Road). Then new and expanded in its hay day at Freeman’s farm on the Callaghan Road. But in it’s slow decline in a new metal indoor arena building back on the Ludlow Road. Where she never made a FmHA payment farm building arena payment on.
Aunt Ruth touched a lot of kid’s lives, was their champion.
I also heard she was gorgeous in her youth but also willful, spoiled, a little overbearing contentious in a high strung emotional way growing up. With the best of everything. Also with parents who doted, could not say no in a Maine farm household in time infested with the decline ravages of alcoholism warfare. With not so friendly internal fire, upheaval causing damaging drama.
My grandfather Albert Mooers was a sweet gentleman. But partnered with a wife Bessie who reminded him often of his limitations. As he slipped further in to the jug. His dad AE Mooers was a local success story with a large shdow. Other family shoes way way too big to fill. He drove a pickup that never got out of second gear, and often was half lit but mild and harmless when he drank and drove. In small Maine towns, folks looked out, pulled over when they saw you creeping along. Heading for home. Less cars, trucks on the road too in those days.
Wearing a church hat, a button sweater, tie, I played cribbage with him on Camp Little Ponderosa’s summer porch growing up. Cousin Butch, Albert the 4th was the checker king. Grampy died of throat cancer, smoked professionally a cigar before that. I remember going in to see him one winter night when it was snowing. At the Madigan Hospital run by local nuns. In a room smelling of Cepacol and seeing a metal ring throat trachea hole with a gauze cover that scared me as a small child. Hearing him cough, hack, strain and suffer. But still smiling, not wanting to burder anyone else with his medical ailment load.
Houlton Maine Draft Horse Show Video
Meadowbrook Farms had expensive, prize herds of dairy cows and several large potato tracts. And Aunt Ruth’s finest horses that were spit polished, washed, groomed, and had Hudson Bay blankets as covers. AE served on many local bank, utility and other boards and I see his name in the registry all the time in my Maine real estate job. In fact the first house I owned was part of his Byrd Farm, where Houlton High School is now.
Aunt Ruth would resist financial guidance and the first to admit at the tail end when backing herself in to a financial boxed canyon that she was no business woman. Her health declined along with the economy. Becoming less the picture of health, harder to manage. She was loud, overbearing and had a way of making her problems your fault. Unruly, bucolic, a tad bitter of all the people she had helped but that did not return the favor in unquestioning large supply. Just give me the money right now, I would you if I had it was a familiar refrain.
If you were her brothers, my Uncle Fred or my father John, you took turns trying to reason with her. And tip toed.
Tightened up when she would blast in to the yard in an old rickety car where her bank was the glove box and in book keeping disarray.
She was awfully good to my Uncle Bud’s eight kids. Bud was funny, good looking but became a professional, black belt alcoholic. I never knew him when he was not drinking. Dad’s family’s alcoholic haze growing up did not permeate in to our household. But he carried scars, shame, guilt and had more than his share of insecurities because of it. My mom was the bag balm, salve to nuture. Had patience, took the time to see his good points. And understood the reasons behind not so pretty attributes we all struggle with, admit, work on.
Sometimes it was a peaceful break around my home growing up when Aunt Ruth took turns hating one brother, then the other in rotation. Loud, hollering exchanges and bitterness, ranting happened if Aunt Ruth did not get her way. To the letter of the law the way she demanded. My Dad’s household growing up was the same stage of out of control emotion mixed with booze with more than one family member self medicating and getting numb, mulled. As the family fortune dwindled away. Jealous of Uncle Finley’s, Grampy’s brother success and the farm I grew up in, now own also mixed in to the fracas, hub bub.
Aunt Ruth lived in a small camp in her later years on the upper end of the Callaghan Road with a bohemian, hand to mouth existence by choice. A fixture at the Big Stop, earlier called Traveler’s Texaco truck stop and bingo, beano games in the area. Where the family would remind her, you can not make a living under “B… 9” winnings. Despite efforts by her brothers who subsidized her to get her in town into an apartment, she loved the pair, but did not like them. Displaying her nastiness in lack of gratitude for their charity. She resisted conventional wisdom with a don’t tell me what to do. Don’t fence me in attitude.
Lighthouses in Maine are one of many attractions Vacationland offers. The fascination with Maine light houses stems from several personal reasons.
Follow The Light, Visit A Maine Lighthouse.
The craggy Maine rock bound coastline surrounding them with the sound of the surf, smell of seaweed and fresh salt air renews and inspires a person. The lapping or pounding effect of incoming or receding tide creates a rhythm. Reminds us we all have internal metronomes that are set at the right speed. Or need the counter weight adjusted with a just a tad slide up or down to moderate the tempo.
The weather and time of year affects, shapes, colors your experience too in what you take away from a Maine lighthouse visit.
So does the condition of your head, heart and spirit as you walk along the rocks. Opening your eyes and ears to receive answers, instruction, or just a sense of peace. Happy or sad, enthused or desperate, the revolving light is perpetual to all. A constant to believe, trust, have faith in to draw from it’s strength. No matter how dark your day, the light beam it broadcasts will always be there. Some days you need the lighthouse more than others for direction.
A solitary Maine lighthouse can be right along side, partnering with us to navigate through a sea of change. Vigilante, constant, never leaving us in the journey of our life’s uncertain ebb and flow. Or just serving as a spot that is quiet, calming, refreshing to relax. Allowing you time for repose, to think, sort things out. Then to looking back at your life’s path to see what was left in the wake. Considering too what is good going on it your life to strive to maintain. That there is joy, contentment and pleasure on sunny days we have been lucky to enjoy and the need to take it all in stride. Overall, you and I have been pretty lucky, have much to be grateful for in our life right?
Turning your gaze to the future, looking out to sea and praying about where you would like to be.
But also realizing that Maine lighthouses can create, shine a brilliant powerful beam to help us find the path. The one we all need to take around obstacles. Some made by others, many fixed, given hazards to accept. Several others that we create out of fear, shame, regret or guilt that we are forced to carry within us. Pinning us down, holding us back. Then ending our Maine lighthouse visit with a recant of all that is good in us, others. Counting our blessings for all that has gone right in our life. Remembering there is much time ahead of us to use wisely, to enjoy and make the most of and enjoy.
Many churches use the lighthouse as their cornerstone. As a foundation to lash yourself to in times when you feel scared, full of fear and maybe lost at sea in life. Lighthouses in Maine can be reduced to one word definitions. Communications…the simplest kind with a revolving many candle power powerful fog cutting light beam. More basic than the dit dit dot of Morse code that carries more instructional detailed information.
Our society tends to overbook. We all have the capacity, many are proned to cluttering our lives with just too much busyness. The brutal scheduling makes us to the bone weary. To ignore or table what needs attention that comes up short. We become exhausted, overwhelmed and finally to the point of whoa. Stop. Or you get knocked down with a control, alternate, delete measure needed to restore, move forward. Confusion of what to do, how to handle difficult situations means mistakes get made. Lots of them. Well intentioned reactions as a spiral out of control takes on a life of its own.
Erasing the messy life chalk board to begin a new simpler existence outline primer.
One by one defining what is needed in your life at this stage you find yourself in. What is the purpose of your life, what needs to stay in that junk drawer or be removed to make room for a healthier life style? How to fill your days with the free time beyond obligations that are givens like making enough money to food, cloth, provide shelter for your family. Work, work, then nursing home means you missed out on the wonders, joys of the life that is yours, no one else’s to script.
What are your priorities? The source of your joys, pleasure, fulfillment needs a seat in the mini van. And maybe something removed, pruned that is dead weight. Resentment, bitterness, apathy have no place in the limited seating vehicle you pilot. The lighthouse that helps you charter the life course is God. He has the answers to your problems. He is there to share in your instruction along the way. If you make time to listen, apply slowly what needs correction in your thinking, reaction to situations and people in your life you try to build a better realtionship with.
I have two Maine lighthouses under my belt out of Vacationland’s 68 to sample, collect.
The Lubec West Quoddy Head Maine lighthouse is the one closest to me. I took a diversion from delivering youngest son Elliot to Boston’s Logan Airport recently and sat, watched, absorb another in Cape Elizabeth. The Portland Head Light is by far Maine’s most notable, photographed and visited.
The map location of Maine’s lighthouse is mental spread before me to chart a course to one my one visit. No hurry, no exasperation or need to cram them all to one summer spent searching them out. But if I can do two a year, I think sitting on a rock and just listening to the surf, my inner most thoughts is healing. That those locations like being high on a Maine hiking or ski mountain are pauses along the trail of life. For answers to mysteries, and a place to praise God for all that is right, good in your life.
Consider adding more Maine lighthouses to your busy schedule. Take the time to seek them out. Learn about their rich, individual maritime history and importance. Create a thought provoking experience you won’t forget. That you will trek back to to learn more. Understanding, developing you own personal outline for changes, corrections you may slowly need to be making in your life. To live it fuller and with more satisfaction, reward.
The way you and I remember the dead, especially our family members is often more lofty than when they We All Inherit Character Traits Good, Bag, Ugly. Work On Your List.were alive on earth.
We tend to see the good points we enjoyed, loved and miss most.
The rest of their faults, sins, mistakes are dismissed.
Free to go, escorted to the door or dimmed in our thinking.
In history, all Presidents, Kings, Queens or notable standouts were not pure white like the driven snow.
Since they were all human, none were without the scarlet red stain caused by sin for all to see.
We are made to experience, account for our mistakes, and weather the set backs, tough patches in life for a reason. To improve so the quality of life for us, others in it does too.
And as a shiny example for our kids, our mate, the community and world around us. In this temporary place that is a very short training grounds for eternity spent in a location yet to be determined.
Our parents are supposed to be our role models.
But there does come a time in your life when you don’t just see them as Mom and Dad. If you are so lucky to have enjoyed living parents. And know who they are, where they are if you do. When you from time to time reflect on your parents by their God given names John and Mary Lou in my case, you see them from a different more honest light. And see you as them when childhood events unfold. Spend some time in their moccasins, experience why they did or did not do what you thought was best at the time. Before logging this many miles away upon follow up review looking back reflection.
Understanding, wisdom, valuable experiences come only with the passage of time.
Is not vending machine quick, coin slot delivered. And the partnership your parents had was a summation of first their childhood. What they brought in to the marriage for the good, bad and the ugly. And the rock polishing, refinement of life’s up and down process the two of them needed to both improve.
What one lacked in character in one regard, the other was well stocked in.
Heard, sensed the cue to come in, assume leadership to take up the slack. Address the issue as the alpha male or female called for at the time. Because both trusted each other, knew each other, and for the common good of the two, it was the logical rhythm of the marriage, union’s harmony.
Wouldn’t you agree that most people in the world are well intentioned? Having beating hearts with a spirit seeking peace, greater love to bask in with harmony the goal? Wanting solutions rather than to create turmoil, chaos, pain if they can just figure out how? Then sometimes looking at your parents honestly, or having a mate you trust help in discussions can reveal see the source of why fuller peace and greater love are not so easy to achieve. We learn just as much from our parents short falls as illustrations and guidance on where we need to improve, areas we need to work on.
Without getting defensive, you see, understand where one parent came up short in a few departments and that you used to just leave it alone.
Not discuss. But you can not, should not skip around the exercise or feel defensive, disloyal. Working on that draw back does not threaten your overall love for the person under the microscope. Because the truth will set you free. It turns lights on when you are in the dark without a German Sherperd, a white cane. And you are looking at part of yourself, the product of the best, missing or worst that your parents provided you with from the best of intentions. We all have limitations to work on. And will not improve, find greater happiness in life with others until we find it within ourselves first.
Help with understanding, explanation of why earlier events in your relationship with them unfolded the way they did. As you balance it out with credit due for where they got high marks in other areas. You can not like or enjoy a trait, tendency in a loved one without stopping the love for them. If you take accept the whole person as overall good intentioned, with valuable other traits, tendencies.
You and I inherit traits, tendencies that prohibit, impede us from peace in our relationships.
And seek the unlocking key for the sweet passage moving us closer to our loved ones. If your mate said your Dad tended to judge people as good or bad. To quickly categorized them like the same process standing at a potato grading table in the spud storage house. It does not mean they think the person is all bad, off with their head. Or to stop loving them and serve as a cue for you to run to the defense of the parent. Because when you don’t consider the pearl of wisdom they just shared, you are performing the same “you’re in, you’re out”, good or bad judgement sorting.
And it does not mean now is a good time to point out a flaw on the other side of the in laws. Held up your sleeve like a fifth Acre in the card game to drop at the appropiate time for a little tit for tat, how does it feel reaction.
Developing open mindedness, knowing we are all prone to making quick judgements about another person without all the facts is a vital start in our new way of thinking.
Basing your opinion on a person with absolute certainty but missing experiences, many interactions with that person might filter, color your thumbnail sketch of the individual. Just arriving at a conclusion with other people’s remarks is dangerous too. With the microwave quick thinking concluding the total person is overall good or bad. No shades of gray for you, just black or white. Based on just your own world view, perspective which is pretty limited.
It can all make for a small room of trusted friends, family and associates as someone hands you a scepter and a lead goblet not containing milk or honey but bitter tasting vinegar. And puts you on a pedestal throne that is exposed to the harsh north wind of isolation, a prison of your own making.
When you one by one acknowledge your weak points, the areas needing daily attention to improve and enhance, it leaves less time and removes the desire to study, judge others. The need to point out everything that is wrong with them should change focus, shifting your eyes to your own inventory clip board of items you humbly create. The areas you ask God to help you with that need serious daily attention. And are life long exercises as we stretch, grow, improve.
