Relationships

The Steamboat Springs Syndrome

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Scribbled on one of the many scraps of paper I accumulate is something from a recent church care group meeting in our home.  We get together a couple of times a month to discuss ideas sparked by recent sermons.  One of our members mentioned that we humans have the tendency in our thinking to be vague about the problem but specific about the solution, and he gave as an example the above phrase, something he’d gotten from a friend at work.

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Two Not-So-Trivial Books

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My So-Called Life as a Proverbs 31 Wife (2011) and My So-Called Life as a Submissive Wife (2013) by Sara Horn, Harvest House Publishers.

Try to ignore the dorky picture on the cover of the Proverbs 31 book.  Really, the book isn’t like that at all.

I’m not sure how I ran across these books, but I think they popped up on an Amazon.com page when I was looking at something else.

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Two good acronyms . . .

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. . . that will help keep you from being BORING.  You know both of these, but they’re so good that they deserve space here.

So the two acronyms are:

MEGO:  “My eyes glaze over.”  It always amazes me that people can’t tell when they’re boring me to tears.  It’s probably just as amazing that I can’t always tell when I’m the one who’s boring.  Not everyone reacts quite as obviously as the woman in the photo.

TMI:  “Too much information.”  Do you really need to go into all that detail?  Probably not.  Edit yourself.

Why am I writing this post?  Because I realized recently that I was talking and talking about my blood-sugar issues.  Do I really need to go into the whole thing yet again every time I’m offered a sweet and feel that I should turn it down?  No, no, no.  Just say, “No thank you” and let it go.  (Just as I don’t need to go into why I don’t eat low-fat ice cream, or indeed low-fat anything if I can possibly help it.)

Just say, “No thank you” and be done with it!

How to start a restaurant and live to tell about it.

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Delancey : A Man, A Woman, A Restaurant, A Marriage by Molly Wizenberg, Simons & Schuster, 2014.

I try to remind myself periodically that every single business, whether part of a chain or not, large or small, scruffy or classy, is the product of someone’s vision and hard work.  There’s a couple in our church who recently opened a franchised consignment women’s clothing store, and it was quite a process, from obtaining a location to getting a small business loan.  (For instance, the man had quit his job so that he could concentrate on opening the business, but the bank wouldn’t give him a loan unless he had a job.  But his job was going to be the business.  I think he had to go back to work to get the loan so that he could then quit.  Or something like that.  It was incredibly complicated.)  Once the store actually opened the real work began.  It seems completely impossible to me; I guess I’m just not all that entrepreneurial.

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The Myth of Control

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The Surrendered Wife:  A Practical Guide to Finding Intimacy, Passion, and Peace with a Man by Laura Doyle, Simon and Schuster, 2001.

I’m going to have to rein myself in on this post because there is a lot to say about this book’s ideas.  Where to begin?  I guess with a description of my initial reading of it, more than ten years ago.  A woman I greatly admired and respected mentioned it, saying that her husband had suggested she read it.  “How come?” she’d asked him.  “I don’t boss you around!”  And he’d said, “Well . . . ”  She seemed to think that it had indeed had something to say to her.  So I got it, and read it, and was indeed quite struck with it myself.  I wish I’d paid a little more attention to it at the time, but I guess it’s never too late to learn.

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Shaming never works . . .

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. . . It’s only inspiring that works.” (Amit Sood, Professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic)

I caught this statement on a radio segment about keeping New Year’s resolutions.  It aired sometime in January, I think, and now I can’t find it, but I was so impressed at the time that I looked it up to be sure the quotation was correct and to get the name of the speaker.

What do you think?  Do you find that you try to shame yourself or others into doing the right thing?  What kind of results do you get?

The only person I can change . . .

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. . . is myself.

Just one more day of the old year.  I think my only resolution should be to remember that I can only make resolutions for myself.   I want to set the very highest standards for myself but refuse to apply those standards to others, to remind myself that people are (or at least may be) doing the best that they can, to carry out the description of love in I Corinthians 13:5:  “It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”  As I’ve said many, many times, I am the Queen of Grudge-Holders.  If I concentrated on just that italicized phrase all year I’d be much easier to live with.  (“If thou, O Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, who should stand?”)

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There’s no great pleasure . . .

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. . . without some small pain!

Below you’ll see a slideshow of some of the wonderful pictures Jim took this past week on our traditional visit to the Denver Botanic Gardens “Blossoms of Light” tour which they have during December.  (This post was originally written in December 2014. Please note that because this site was moved to a new platform some images were lost, among them, sadly, the pictures for this post.) 

Last year we missed it, for some reason.  This year they had absolutely outdone themselves.  There’s one small drawback to this outing:  It’s usually pretty COLD.  I’ve gone before wearing a totally inadequate jacket and shivered my way through it.  More of an endurance test than a pleasurable outing.  This year I made sure to wear my heavy-duty parka and did much better, but 23 degrees is still 23 degrees.  I found myself alternately being distracted from the cold by the lovely displays and distracted from the lovely displays by the cold.  I’m so glad we made the effort, though.  What a great memory, and how little the discomfort really mattered.  Don’t we often switch those priorities, though, and concentrate on the small inconveniences and difficulties?   I think back to my father’s funeral, for example, which was on the whole a wonderful service.  What stands out in my mind the most?  The fact that their sound system picks up police scanner transmissions in the area, so periodically the testimonies and the Gospel-filled sermon were interrupted.  Later my brother said to me, “Why were you sitting there making faces at me while I was giving my testimony?”  I was so irritated and distracted by the sound system’s defects that I irritated and distracted him.  I do try any more not to let myself dwell on the imperfections inherent in any human event, but it’s a struggle for me.  I’m sure there will be more posts on this topic.

The Great Secret to Happiness . . .

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. . . is to like what you have.  As in, for me, cats.  Three of them.  I am NOT a cat person.  (I’m obviously also not much of a photographer–but I’m working on it.  The middle photo, of the gray cat Smoggy, isn’t really a mistake so much as a reflection of her general personality.)  I am a DOG person.  I get this sappy grin on my face at the sight of a dog, any dog.  I miss my darling little long-haired Chihuahua Lupita, who died several years ago.  But, for various reasons having to do with expense, convenience, and life’s vicissitudes, I don’t have a dog right now.  I could walk into the Denver Dumb Friends League tomorrow and get a dog on the spot, and believe me, I’m periodically tempted.  But then I think of housebreaking, and walks, and how much easier it is to get a petsitter for three cats than for one dog, and I resist the temptation.  I tell the cats all the time, “I love you guys, but you’re not dogs.”  But hey, guess what?  They’re what I have.  So there it is.  I can pine over the “not dogs” part, or rejoice in the “I love you guys” part.