Intentional Seed Sowing

I am a seed.

I look small and lifeless, but inside of me is a

Mysterious powerful indwelling LIFE.

When I meet soil, water, and light,

It's as though a resurrection happens.

For there, in the soil, as I lie still,

I am not dormant, but

Busy, incubating life within.

Add some water and some warmth and the

Miracle happens.

My favorite place to be be sown is in the human heart.

I can lie still literally for years but

When mixed with the water of tears and

The warmth of love,

I will provide a resurrection experience.

A sun rise experience.

A new birth experience.

So do not grow faint-hearted or weary.

Sow your seeds of kindness, compassion, faithfulness,

Love and mercy.

Sow abundantly, not sparingly,

For a packet of seeds costs so little.

But when you visit the heart-garden overunning,

You will be amazed.

Journey

Wish I knew who deserved credit for this: "If as Herod, we fill our lives with things, and again with things, if we consider ourselves so unimportant that we must fill every moment of our lives with action, when will we have time to make the long slow journey across the desert as did the magi, or sit and watch the stars as did the shepherds, or brood over the coming of the child as did Mary? For each one of us there is a desert to travel, a star to discover and a being within ourselves to bring to life."

Making Space in the HeartHouse

Spring seems to be the time to give the house a thorough cleaning. I am sure you have done it: "spring cleaning". But the truth is, our emotional house, the heart, could use a good cleaning out also. Nothing like a good trip to the garbage dump carrying away the junk that has been accumulated in our hearts. We could even have a "soulish garage sale". Actually, on second thought, we might want to ditch that idea because most of the hoarded things in the heart certainly should not be sold to anyone else, even for the cheapest of prices. No, we have to take a trip to the garbage dump.

We could go through the heart closets and rooms, and search for the rotten resentments, horrible hurts, grungy grudges, and crumpled up injustices. Hmmmm....the rooms to our hearts may be barricaded with all sorts of things for fear of feeling that hurt again. Work, work, work. Also need to check around for some loosened morals, twisted up values, and messed up priorities that sneaked in during the year and took up residence. We would do well to invite God on this search and find mission since the heart is deceitful. It takes a prayerful

attitude, one of humility, to embark on this kind of search.

The reason I thought a "fall cleaning" would be helpful is first of all to make room for the possibilities of bringing in newfound thanksgiving into our hearts. Not just the lip service kind but the heartfelt celebratory kind. So as Thanksgiving comes our way, we could have room in the heart closets for bringing in the many gifts that have come our way and truly truly be grateful.

Then just behind Thanksgiving, we have the whole season of Christmas absolutely running over with gifts for us to store somewhere in the hearthouse. All kinds of love, joy, peace, and good will toward men in beautiful packages, ours for the taking, if only we have room for it.

Also we have the possibilities of storing away some newfound hope as we sing the themes of new birth and anticipation. Anticipation of the new things that will fill our drawers and closets, accent our rooms, will make the work easy. So grab the brooms, the dustcloths, and maybe even the dreaded plastic gloves, and go after it!

Love As a Shock-Absorber

Here it is: confession time. I have found myself to be way too much a perfectionist to be a real blogger. I have to write, research, edit, etc which is quite time consuming so.....I am going to try something new....just the tidbits of my musings. So how about, I just try some ramblings. The idea I have been chewing on for 3 or 4 days is that love serves as a shock absorber in all relationships, but particularly I am thinking about marriage. When the fantasy wears off, there will absolutely be a period of disillusionment. I like to call this the "slippery slope" of disillusionment. Truth is, if you don't intercept it and begin to embrace reality, your relationship will end.

One day I was driving down the road recently, having a debate in my head about evolution. I had just had a session teaching a client about some of the intricacies of the brain. The brain always proves to me there was an intelligent designer. But on that day, I began thinking about man with emotions. A wide array of feelings I might add. I even saw a documentary on wolves where the alpha wolf came to a precipice every day for weeks howling after his "wife" had died.

Maybe a rock after millions of years could possibly turn into a toad (still impossible! how did the inanimate object start to breathe and have a beating heart? give me a break!). But if the rock that turned into the toad really happened, not only did it breathe and have a pulse, it also had feelings? It began to love and be disappointed, etc?

Okay, the emotion of love, which no scientists can seem to quantify in the lab, is an amazing phenomenon. The emotion of love is so strong that Jesus went to the cross because of it. For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son.

When love is present in a relationship, the basic irritations are just that: irritating, frustrating, but they are absorbed in the big picture of "BUT I love you/him/her." Love absorbs it. This is the 1st Corinthians passage. Love keeps no count of wrong.

There are some things that can stop love in it's tracks however. One is a critical judgmental

filter. That would be a negative filter to clarify. One that blames and finds fault. Another thing is an oversensitive spirit. This one is easily hurt, feels abandoned, rejected, overlooked, left out, etc. and I can guarantee this one is linked to the script of the past. Unforgiveness can be a block to love. It can harbor and harbor till the infection in the wound turns to gangrene. Nasty stuff.

If you need more love, go to the eternal well. God is love. A fruit of the spirit is love. Love is there for the asking if you need more. As long as you can pick fruit, it is on the tree. Why pick just a little? Get a whole basket full. If you are living with another human, you will need it. Love is a shock absorber! to be continued.....

What's it all about, Alfie?

Well it is quite early morning and life has been hectic upon returning from vacation. The vacation was one of those rare vacations where we actually vacated. So reentry is like going from 1st gear to 4th in one fell swoop for all those who learned to drive a stick shift. (I learned on a stick to drive my VW beetle at 16 and only tore out one set of gears in the process).

I had a lot of walking, thinking, meditating and praying time while I was gone. One of the things I sought was "What is the message I have for the world? What specifically drives my passion?"

I was taken back to a reality I discovered in my 30's. One day I was flipping through an old family album and came across a picture of myself at 12 years old. It was an out of body experience, observing myself from 3rd person stance, seeing this pathetic little girl. The thought instantly went through my head, "You look like an orphan". Upon further examination, I realized for the first time, I had been orphaned through the death of my mother at 10 years old. She was very very ill for a year before she died and I have realized lately I really lost her when she went to surgery the first time and received the diagnosis of melanoma. From that time, I began my adult life, cutting my own hair, giving my own perms, and by 15 began making my own clothes. I also began taking care of all, I mean all, of my own needs: physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

So all that to say, knowing what it is to lose a parent, I have had this unquenched desire to see families stay intact. I have had a driving passion for people to reconcile. I have had a drive to get people together, love each other, have fun. The "more the merrier" has truly been my theme. Another driver inside is to let people know how amazing, how loving, how intricately involved, is our God. This too is sourced in the time of agonizing over my mother's illness and finally her death.

A lot of you have heard me talk about our house in those days being filled with people: round the clock nurses, my mother's parents and siblings, women from the church. It was a SMALL little house. So the only place to be alone was the one tiny bathroom in the house.

Daily I tucked my little New Testament under my shirt and made a visit to God. I would get on my knees, place the Bible on the toilet seat....not an ornate throne room experience but it became holy ground to me. There I would read scriptures to God....I would read Him His promises to me. I would hold out my two small hands and say, "You promised if I asked for bread you would not give me a stone. Just in case You are confused, God, my mother living is

bread (hold out my left hand) , her dying is a stone (hold out my right hand)." We had constant conversations because no one in the house talked to me about the thing on my heart. They all tried to keep me distracted, keep me happy. I don't blame them. It was all they knew back in 1958 and 59.

The point is "Where else could I go, but to the Lord?" as the old song says. It was me and God in the foxhole and I was sparing nothing. Raw and real gut honest conversations. He entered my struggle. He was there every inch of the way and I know that He cried with me when she died. I want everybody to know God. I want everybody to wrestle with Him, to climb on His lap, to KNOW Him in the fullest most intimate way. He is the best friend in the world.

Did he save my mother from death? No. Was I angry and disappointed? Oh my goodness, you wouldn't want to hear those conversations. But He took it. And He didn't run from my hot anger. I know He wept and His heart was as wrenched as mine.

So I have my "drivers", my inner firehose, defined on at least 2 points. These 2 things have pretty much defined everything. I daydreamed of a large family, Walton style. I had a real relationship with God and wanted it for others. When we first moved to Freetown, Sierra Leone, we were in an upstairs apartment with a balcony. Masses of people passed below on the street. I would weep as they passed by because I wanted every one of them to know God and his Son Jesus. I wanted it so badly, I would literally cry.

I want you to love and be loved. I want you to know God and know Him intimately. I do believe He can tell all of us at any given moment how many hairs are on our sweet heads. Amen and Amen.

"Bookending" Your Day

margaret's musings on.....Bookending Your Day

As any American knows, bookends hold things together and keep them from falling apart: In this case, books. So when I talk about bookending your day, I am trying to find ways to keep the day held together. Even with our best efforts, the day can surely unravel, but here is my recommendation.

Begin the day with a prayer of surrender. Give up running the day before you start. My own practice has been to face the morning sun with a chalice in hand, first greeting the day with thanksgiving and recognizing God deliberately decided that we we have another day on this earth. What we decide to do with it is up to us. I then offer it back to Him. I tip my chalice over and offer to pour out my agendas as best I can, then hold the glass up , asking Him to fill it as He will. Sometimes I ask for certain things to fill it but submit my asking back to Him.

David said, "My voice You shall hear in the morning, O LORD; In the morning I will direct it to YOU, and I will look up." (Psalm 5: 3) Jean-Pierre de Caussade says "There is no spiritual path more secure than that of giving yourself entirely to God." (The Joy of Full Surrender) I am sure that is true. However, I am a very long way from full surrender. Do you remember singing, "All to Jesus I surrender.....all to Him I freely give" ? It was an aspiration, never attained, but sought. Mary replied to the angel, "let it be with me according to your word" (Luke 1:38)

I recommend the other end of the day, before retiring, be "bookended" with a list or a prayer of gratitude. Stop and recognize the provision that has been made throughout the day. Look for God's fingerprints on your life. Note the twists and turns of the day, any surprises that came, good or bad, any kind word or touch that came your way. Look for the tangible provisions of food, clothing, shelter that were blessings of the day.

Gratitude brings a perspective of fullness and abundance. We really need this stance of heart because as affluent as we are, America is plagued with an attitude of scarcity. I read a book several years ago titled "Affluenza" which is written on the premise of our culture metaphorically displaying the symptoms of affluenza, the "flu": congested, running a temperature, achy, upset stomach, feeling weak. The practice of daily gratitude, simple as it sounds, is a great antidote to affluenza. If you are struggling for the words, you might just open to the Psalms and pray along with David.

He was masterful at his words of gratitude.

The important part is establishing practices that keep our "books from falling off the shelf", practices that hold our lives together in the midst of so much pressure and stress. Let me "bookend" this musing with a couple lines from Watchman Nee in Table in the Wilderness...The January 11th reading is from Habakkuk 3:18: "Yet I will rejoice in the lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." He says you may give yourself to God and then find everything going badly wrong. But we have to persist. "Then day by day let us go on giving to Him, not finding fault with His methods, but accepting His handling of us with praise and expectation."

Wanting, Longing, and Yearning

I have been doing a lot of reading lately on attachment theories. even going back to Harry Harlow's experiments with rhesus monkeys. He constructed a wire "mother" with a face (but no eyes or features) and a nipple through which monkeys could be fed and a terry cloth "mother" with a face with eyes and a nipple that delivered milk also. The eight infant monkeys clung to the cloth mother 16 to 18 hours a day, even though she gave zero nurturing responses. It makes me think of a practicum I did in graduate school spending time with children in foster care. There were some little boys I visited every week in a beautiful brick home hosted by a set of loving foster parents. Each week when I would be alone with the boys, they would seize the opportunity to beg me to find a way to get them back with their mother. The boys had been discovered in a home with a mom totally out of it on crack, feces everywhere inside the house and out. This was a non-responsive "terry cloth mother", but they yearned and longed for her. She was indeed , as I call it, "home base".

Disruption of attachment, a nice anesthetic label, for a broken relationship, has profound consequences in our lives. Death, overworking, betrayal. Hmmm. There are many ways to disrupt attachment. Our yearning, however, for something to cling to is indelibly imprinted on our souls. It is the source of much if not all, addiction. I know a lot firsthand about disruption of attachment. The dark night of the soul was for me on November 15, 1959, when my mother was finally set free from the prison cancer had created for her body. My home base slipped out to sea, like the ball in Tom Hanks life when he was alone on the island. One of my friends who lost his mother at 12, slipped into his mother's chest of drawers the night of her death, and found a nightgown that he took and hid in his bed in a desperate attempt to hold on to something. I wish I had had the presence of mind to think of that.

Then comes the big dilemma: shall I attach again? Shall I risk being hurt again. To love is to lose (sometimes, many times). Do I want to go through it again? But if I don't, what will I do with the wants, the longings, and the yearnings. How will I live with their silent screams? The hunger of the soul becomes ravenous, unbearable, like trying to hold your breath. My grandmother told me the story of going away to boarding school when she was 12 and being so homesick, she literally wanted to die, so she would hold a pillow over her mouth as long as she could, until finally she would have to take a breath. Is it better to live without connection and passion than living with the pain and fear of loss? Dan Allender refers to this as the "complex web or desire and defense, of longing and contempt" (The Wounded Heart).

Wretched people that we are! Who will save us from such a pit? Enter God. Go ahead. Taste and see that the Lord is good. We are always moving toward or away from. If you are standing still, you are moving "away from". Disruption of attachment yields all these mixed signals inside:" you want, you need, move closer", but the other side is saying, "No, please don't take me there, I don't want to hurt again." People on the outside are recipients of these push-pull messages. "Now you see me. Now you don't." They can be caught in a game of hide and seek that they didn't sign up for. Connect. Disconnect. Crazy-making!! Irwin Kula, in his book, Yearnings, applauds the great Biblical characters when he says,"there isn't a single character who understood beforehand the outcome of any journey he or she underwent. What makes these characters so special is not that they are somehow superhuman, wiser, or more evolved. It's that they don't scale down their dreams to the size of their fears. They are masters of the dance between uncertainty and certainty."

Jesus says "Come. Move toward." Sounds good. But oops, sounds painful. Dare I trust again? What is all this talk about a "personal relationship with Jesus"? Relationship you say?

This subject always leads me back to C.S. Lewis' statement: "Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to not one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket safe, dark, motionless, airless it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbation of love is Hell. I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God's will than the self-invented and self-protective lovelessness."

Oh, God. We need your healing of our shattered hearts. We do not have the courage to try again. So we come to you, asking you to give us the faith, the courage, the sheer ability to love, to connect, not just a little here and there, but fully with abandon. We repent of contriving our myriad ways of self-protection, of making our own provisions. We repent for bowing to the god of fear and even being afraid to taste and see if you are really trustworthy. We need, we want, we desire, and we can't stop. Please meet us in that place, provide a bridge for us to walk across....to YOU. And then, as our hearts are healed, provide the planks in the bridge for us to walk across to meet our fellow human beings, our mates, our children.

The Art of Self-Examination

The Art of Self-Examination
One must possess a certain degree of health to be able to face their own weaknesses and failures. Otherwise the self just collapses under the weight. May God help us to be able to have the eyes to see, the courage to explore, and the willingness to surrender our weak areas, what Alcoholics Anonymous calls our character defects. I did a year long internship for my masters at the L.I.F.E. program in Osprey, Florida. This amazing drug rehab program for young people 16 to 28 years old had the kids sitting at a table before bed each night doing a fearless moral inventory. They would examine their day which included thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors and write about these in their journals....every single night for 2 years.
The Big Book (manual for AA) states that “A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking a commercial inventory is a fact-finding and a fact-facing process. It is an effort to discover the truth about the stock-in-trade. One object is to disclose damaged or unsalable goods, to get rid of them promptly and without regret.” p. 64 It goes on to say “Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we seolutely looked for our own mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened? Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man’s. When we saw our faults we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We placed them before us in black and white.” p. 67
Be willing. Be courageous. Be honest. Be thorough. Ask for God’s help in the process. Awareness doesn’t change anything, but it points the way and tears down denial. Dr. Phil is always coming back to identifying what is not working. In the Encounter Training (see fullyaliveministries.org), the trainer is trying to get people first declare the kind of relationships they want and then examine attitudes and behavior to see if those are accomplishing what they say they want. Examine the results. Look at the fruit. I call it being a fruit inspector.
I used to wonder if it was possible to take a fearless moral inventory. Maybe it doesn’t really matter. What matters is our willingness to throw ourselves onto the Potter’s wheel, our trust in the Potter. So with that, I will share some of the Examen of Consciousness taken from the Benedictine literature I have so learned to appreciate:

*Have I been a good memory in anyone’s life today?
*Have the ears of my heart opened to the voice of God?
*Have the ears of my heart opened to the needs of my sisters and brothers?
*What do I know, but live as though I do not know?
*How have I affected the quality of this day?
*Is there anyone, including myself, whom I need to forgive?
*Have I worked with joy or drudgery?
*What is the one thing in my life that is standing on tip-toe crying, “May I have your attention please?”

Women Who Are Afraid to Love Enough

or....Women Who Struggle with Fears of Intimacy and the Lengths They Will Go To Avoid It

I have long considered the other side of the coin to Robin Norwood's book, Women Who Love Too Much. Her book addressed the dynamics of strong women attracting weak men. These women basically were addicted to a man's "potential." The faulty thought pattern went something like this: "If he just had a good woman by his side, he could get a better job, quit drinking, be a better father to his children. As the worm turns, the scenarios in the book never had this potential realized, so the female loved too much and the male didn't love enough.

Throughout the years, I've seen another recurring pattern that has a very different look and a very different thinking pattern. These are women with a vision for a traditional marriage but once in the marriage, they maneuver endlessly around the edges of intimacy. Often they struggle with their strong desires and natural passions before they say, "I do.' But once the "I do's" are done, their fears of intimacy surface big time, as unpredictably as a thief in the night.

Before marriage these fears are camouflaged because she is outside the circle of intimacy. There is an invisible internal map embedded on a chip in our hard drive coded with our ability to do closeness and distance. It is not until we are actually faced with this inner circle that the codes will show up. Yes, it will show up in a big way in marriage with avoidance of sex, a tangible flag flying that no one can miss, but that is just one symptom. She will always have a reason, endless rationalizations, and a parade of problems to be solved before she can be intimate. She must always keep something in the middle of the relationship and then "one day' when she has enough time, rest, passion, etc. she will grant this man entry into her vulnerable world. In face she does an amazingly intricate dance of avoidance in her life, hoping people will love her enough to join her in the denial and cover-ups, and when they won't, she will experience it as a betrayal.

this is one of the most difficult strongholds to break through. I believe it is constructed in the mind with the same building blocks as anorexic thinking patterns. Anyone coming to tear down this wall will be experienced as a threat, someone who just doesn't understand. I am not going into the deep dynamics here of the theories of attachment that explain the hardwiring, but suffice it to say that the fears run deep, covered with a thousand strategies to control. The outward cover is one of compliance but the internal driver is one of defiance, giving a "come here, go away" message that is crazy making.

Francis Frangipane (The Three Battlegrounds) defined a stronghold as a "house of thought." I believe he also said, a stronghold is something that has a strong hold on us. the woman who is ultimately afraid to love enough is imprisoned in her house of thought. The door knob is only on her side of the door. She alone must open the door. She has likely convinced herself that she doesn't really love her husband, she married too young or for the wrong reasons. So she is left with the belief, "of course, I could love. It's just that John or Harry or whomever is so this or that. Her fears construct an intricate system of denial and hold her husband hostage.

This subject will be continued over time, but suffice it to say, it takes a lot of courage to start to face the fear, but everything begins with the statement, "I have a problem". That statement alone begins to put up the white flag of surrender.......and an invitation to God to come in with answers.

Want to change something in your life?

I well remember Don Finto bending his knees one Sunday and holding out his hand in the position of a catcher, teaching us that we must position ourselves to receive the things we ask for. Positioning evidently counts. I want to think about this kind of positioning: that of the heart. To make a change in anything in my life, the most important question I can identify is, "What stance of heart would I need to commence to begin this change?" (STANCE: the attitude or position of a standing person; one's emotional or intellectual attitude or position) After all, if you want to change something, you must take a stand against something or for something. This question fits all sizes and shapes of change! If If I want to change a messy habit, address my overspending, overeating, overdrinking, overpleasing; If I want to read my Bible more, pray more; If I want to get up earlier and exercise, drink less caffeine, stop seating sugar; if I want to improve my relationship with my wife, husband, child, parent, friend..."What stance of heart would it take from me?"

Because the heart can be a divided heart it is important to explore the inner terrain. What parts are "for" the change, and what parts are pulling "against" it.? These wiley beasts can produce ambivalence thus diluting the concentrated efforts. The heart must be unified. All parts must buy in.

Because the heart can be selfish, lazy, stubborn, and in general narcissistic, these negative character defects need to be identified as well. Once acknowledged and confessed, we are ready to surrender and ask for God's healing and help.

Because the heart may have become a hard heart, we may have to ask god to apply some tenderizer. Sometimes there is a big "Do not enter" sign erected over the heart or a "Keep out" sign on the door of the heart. These are for protective measures of course: our provision of shields, walls, and bolts,, all the while protesting that we are lonely or isolated. God's application of tenderizer may include forgiveness, mercy, surrender, and grace in order to allow the light of love inside. But don't overlook the fact that being tenderized sometimes requires beating with a hammer-like tool. Some walls require a chisel.

So back to the examination: What stance of heart will be required to make a change in something that matters to you? I highly suggest that you don't let this question float around in generalities and get lost in the recesses and endless corridors of the brain. No. Get serious. Get pen and paper out and nail it. Write out a declaration of intent, then examine the heart and identify the stance it will take from you: "The stance of heart it will take from me to give up smoking is.....", "The stance of heart it will take for me to forgive my husband is....", and on and on. Then pray really hard for God to give you extra measures of this.

Are you willing to do whatever it takes? If not, then pray for willingness. Change needs to be happening for all of us as we become more like Jesus. Transformation is needed! It can happen so0ner than later if we lean into it!

Judgments: If I had a hammer

I can simply state that all our thoughts and actions either move us toward another or away from another. Because of hurt and fear, we develop a host of savvy ways to protect our hearts and consequently one of the tools in our coping kit may be a "judging mind". The beauty and the beast of the judging mind is that it creates distance. It separates. It divides.

Judgments are placed from a one-up position. Becoming a judgmental adult often stems from the coping style of a dysfunctional family. A trademark of the dysfunctional family is the use of evaluative language. Loss and the grieving of that loss is always at the center of the dysfunctional family. And those living if grief are susceptible to depressive filters, filters that are negative and critical.

A title of a book years ago, was Hurt People Hurt People. I am not speaking here of a clear cut moral judgment, for there is good and evil on the earth. I am talking here about the thousand little negative critical opinions we can generate in our own need to feel in control. It is so easy to create a courtroom scene: the one on trial, the judge, the jury, the evidence. So beware of the thousands of possible adjectives that can describe someone in your head or out of your mouth.

Once these adjectives are spoken and ingrained as part of the story you tell in your head, they will become true to you. How convenient to build a box for someone and slap a label on it.

This is most deadly when it is your mate. There you can keep them locked in the box till death you part and give yourself justification for your coldness and distance. You can for justified for your "withholds". This is a great methodology for covering up fear of intimacy. Some people build boxes for everyone around them. They are the constant victim. Again, how convenient! You can stay safe and protected that way.

Years ago, my mentor in Florida, Dr. Stan Tsigounis, insisted in supervision that we speak something that was "right and good" before we offered one complaint. It is an incredible exercise to groom our eyes for what is right and good.

Panties in a Wad Syndrome: PIAW

I wish there were the right semantics to include men in this syndrome because they are plagued with the same dis-ease. Maybe they have BIAW: Briefs in a Wad. the syndrome can be activated from things like Nashville end-of-the-workday traffic, grocery store lines, soggy newspapers, lost keys, corporate phone lines, etc. In other words, any of life's daily glitches can set off PIAW syndrome.

The mental affect can be feelings of frustration, anger, helplessness, and general dis-ease. Physically, these triggers can set off an entire chain reaction: blood pressure rises, the adrenals begin dumping adrenaline, the brain is signaled to dump serotonin, norepinephrine, and any other stress chemicals it can find, not to speak of the mental angst and possible whininess. Spiritually the dis-ease is manifested in discontent, lack of peace, ingratitude, and that I-am-not-God feeling. You know that one: "Why can't the world work according to MY timetable, My needs and wants?"

Treatment for PIAW or BIAW syndrome includes 1) surrender upon awakening. This means resigning immediately from the God position and putting God back in charge of the universe. 2) become a student of the Serenity Prayer. Keep it on index cards in strategic places and keep working it into your soul like yeast. 3) Live as much as possible in the big picture: The bigger the picture, the smaller the "small stuff". 4) Accept the reality of humanity, accent on accept.

You will then live in the reality of the fallen world of frailty, flaws, brokenness, sometimes just full- on failure. 5) Develop practices around mercy, patience, and gratitude. Make a habit of talking about what is right and good. Thank people face to face or in written notes. 6) Say prayers of thanksgiving to God for holding the universe together, for principles as simple as gravity that holds your feet to the earth, air to breathe every time your lungs require it, water that comes directly through the pipes to your sink, sheets on the bed, forks, invention of the wheel, discovery of amazing medications, especially chemotherapy! Well, you get the idea.

So the next time you suffer from PIAW/BIAW , just un-wad, take a deep breath, choose a new perspective and readjust. Your body, your mind, your spirit, and those around you, will thank you for it.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time;

accepting hardship as the pathway to peace. Taking as He did this sinful world as it is, not as I would

have it. Trusting that he will make all things right if I surrender to His will; that I may be

reasonably happy in life, and supremely happy with Him in the next. AMEN

LESSONS YOUR MARRIAGE CAN LEARN FROM THE TITANIC

The world has been fascinated with the Titanic long before the recent movie made its debut. In fact, Walter Lord's book A Night to Remember, has undergone 65 reprints. Several weeks ago we heard Jack Deere deliver a cutting-edge message at our church on the Titanic as a prophetic symbol for the church. You may easily extrapolate the basic message just upon hearing the subject matter.

However, since much of my life is given to another great institution called marriage, I could not but muse and mull for quite a while on the similarities between the gigantic ocean liner and many of the marriages I have encountered. One such tragedy is indelibly imprinted on my life, or I grew to personally care a great deal for this couple. In fact, they lived in a home and in the midst of a lifestyle that would be quite representative of a luxury liner. They had been married for nearly 35 years. For their entire married life this couple and their children, while they lived at home, were found on the church pew each Sunday morning. He, a leader in the church as well as in the business community, was a favored Sunday School teacher. She was a fervent student of the Bible and could sharpen her Biblical sword with the best of them.

She had another kind of sword in her arsenal as well. It was her tongue. This tongue could be sweet as honey, quite full of wit, yet could whip out some of the most cutting, biting remarks I've ever heard. And the main one on the receiving end of this sharp sword was her husband. Her critical eye rarely missed a thing about him--his tie, his shoes, his car, how he spent his time, how he did his work, how he sat, where he sat, and the list seemed to be endless. I guess he felt that way. After a multitude of warnings, begging, counseling with professionals and the pastor, suddenly the ship sunk. She arrived after a Bible study one morning, and there on the dressing table in the bedroom lay a piece of paper: "I love you and always have, but I can't live like this any longer. You can have everything. All I want is peace." And as she looked around, everything of his was gone as if he had never existed. Her world crumbled. Suddenly everything was clear, but it was too late. No chance for further discussion. No chance to renegotiate. No time for I'm sorry.

At 11:00 p.m. when Jack Phillips received the seventh warning from the Californian stating, "Say, old man, we are stopped dead in a field of ice," he radioed back, "Shut up, shut up," and went back to communicating frivolous messages from passengers to their friends and relatives on shore. Phillips had sent the first five messages regarding "a field of ice" ahead to higher ranking officers, but they were totally ignored, so he ignored the sixth and final warning. After all, "the ship was unsinkable."

What made the four-block-long ship unsinkable? The main argument made for this seemed to be its sixteen compartments which could be shut off individually. The ship could sustain water in the first four compartments and still stay afloat. No one could imagine an object large enough to hit all four. The iceberg, however, towered 100 feet above the water and 800 feet below. It managed to cut a gash in the first six compartments. I believe couples are deceived the same way. After all, there are many compartments that would seemingly sustain the "marriage ship"--the vows taken in the presence of witnesses and God, the children, friends and family, joint finances, church relationships, memories of Christmas, vacations, on and on.

Believe me, I have seen marriages be able to take some really hard hits--infidelity, abuse, and the list goes on--and still stay afloat. But I've seen that no marriage is unsinkable and that a relationship can only sustain so much damage. One should not be so naive as to think that just because it survived a really bad swounding, it will keep on surviving more and more damage. Not all marriages end in overt divorce, you will notice. Some die a quiet, unnoticeable death.

One could say that pride sunk the Titanic. Everything seems to lead back to that culprit. Even the fact that there were no binoculars aboard seems to be traceable to pride. Who could imagine that on this oceanliner, Frederick Fleet, the lookout perched in the Crow's Nest, had made a request for a pair of binoculars! Someone felt so cushy and secure that this provision which would appear to be a necessity was, in fact, not provided. In my musing on this subject, I keep hearing, "You have eyes to see, but you do not see. You have ears to hear, yet you do not hear." How many wives and husbands have, in fact, tried over and over to explain a particular area of dissatisfaction, only to have a gesture of change made, a mere tap of the little finger on the table of life.

I so believe that marriage is a garden to be tended, especially in our day and time. Maybe Albert and Etherl who lived out on the farm and were concerned about getting the crops planted and having shoes for the kids weren't facing the troubled waters marriages face today. There was a day and time where Etherl probably wasn't going anywhere even if Albert never said, "I love you," or even kissed her goodnight. That era is bygone. Proactivity is the only course open to those who want to strengthen and thrive. Binoculars. Wow! Do you have some? A man told me last week that he should have gone to a marriage seminar every six months, should have read some of those books that his wife kept bringing home, should have gone tot he classes offered at the church on relationships . . . but . . . well, you know the PRIDE word. The sixth compartment may have been hit. Time will tell if it's too late.

And then the end of the story--the lack of adequate lifeboats, only enough for 1,178, only half enough. In the fury, only 28 were in the first boat that held 68 passengers. Only 12 in another one. What a disaster! Unlike the Titanic, the children are the ones left on the sinking ship of divorce. Sometimes a wife or husband. . . while one is so selfish that he or she jumps into the lifeboat and leaves the others on the ship. But in my experience, the children are always left on the ship. They are, without fail, the victims.

Urgency. Vision. Humility. An equipped lookout. Eyes to see. Ears to hear. Diligence. All around us the messages are coming, "Say, old man, we are stopped dead in a field of ice." Are you apathetically throwing the messages away? I hope not.