‎"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything."
~ A.A. Milne

Cause when we stop and look around us...


When you hit a crisis, you need to stop and look at what is going on around you.  

I didn't do that.  I kept trying to do the same thing over and over.  I didn't think there was any chance that how I was raising the kids was wrong when it was right there before my eyes.

During the most important years of Kara's youth, I was trying to figure out how to make God happy.  It was hard for her to watch I now know, but at the time I thought if I worked hard enough and kept the kids under control as much as possible, God would be happy and we would all reap the rewards.

Instead, everything fell apart.  And, not slowly.  It kind of all fell apart at once.


Even the man in the moon disappeared
Somewhere in the stratosphere

                                         Shinedown


The night she ran away, I was out of my biggest lifelines.  Keil was in Alaska on his way home from a West Pack tour and Zac was on vacation with Amanda's family in Disney.  I couldn't get ahold of either one of them.

That was the worst feeling of all.  They were the only ones besides my mom who could help me calm down.  I think God wanted me to help myself.

Two beers later and feeling not one less bit stressed, I wasn't working for me.  All the Bible reading in the world was no consolation.  Praying wasn't going too well either.  

The only thing I kept thinking was, "How could God do this to me after everything I was doing for Him?"  

This song is so special to me now.  On the night of November 1, 2011, I had to put my mom back into hospice because I could no longer care for her.  I came home after hours of filling out paperwork and getting her tucked in for the night.  I laid on my bed and Ian came into my room.  He said, "Mom, I posted a song on fb for you."  I opened up my computer to see what it was and this is the song he posted.  I hadn't cried all day, but listening to this song made me completely break down.  Not only because it was so perfect, but because somehow Ian knew it was perfect.

I had a friend whose life was perfect. She always said to me, "I'm truly blessed." I thought, "Of course you're blessed; your life is perfect." Even during a difficult time, circumstances moved to take care of everything for her. When I remarked on this she repeated, "I'm truly blessed." I never put it together until I discovered The Secret; it was her words that BROUGHT her blessed and perfect life!

Rhonda Byrne

I have read a lot of books which have changed the way I look at my life.  This book has to be up in the top 5.  I can hardly read one page of it without stopping to try and digest the words which just bounced off of my brain.

I have posted a lot of Neville's quotes and I was about to post this one when I decided I needed to not just post the quote, but also write about what it means to me.

"Never accept as true of others what you would not want to be true of you."  

I wish I could explain how hard this hit me today.  How many times a day do I look at what someone does or how they are and label them.  The moment I believe that label as a truth, it bounces right back onto me.  The real "truth" is that which I judge, I am.

You can't see in another person something which you aren't. Even if someone exhibits a characteristic I do not like, I do not have to claim that as being their truth.  I can choose to think about it another way.

For instance, if I see someone mistreating another person, instead of labeling them as mean or inconsiderate, I could just say, "They must be having a bad day."

By giving them a pass on their behavior, it makes their action not a truth.  I would not want to consider myself mean or inconsiderate, so I shouldn't judge someone else as being either one of those.

The lesson for today is to watch what I think of others and before I use those terms to define them, figure out if I would want someone to use the exact same term to define me.

“The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.”
~ Rumi