Friends Around Your Table

The friends around the table, St. Jacut

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." - C. S. Lewis

As I sit writing this morning, there is a cool breeze through the open window. The sounds of the gathering day echo from the street below. It is my last morning in Curitiba, Brazil and those sounds are different but also quite familiar to the ear. While the language is Portuguese, the ebb and flow is very comforting.

A laborer power washing a building wall.

A woman shuffling her children into the car.

A plane in the distance approaching to land at the local airport.

The other is the sound of our families former neighbors and good friends Annie and Dave Spell. It is here to Brazil that they moved over a year ago. It is here that they now call home in Curitiba. It is amusing to me that I have flown 4691 miles in order to see my neighbors.

Yet friendship has that ability, to cross thousands of miles in separation or to simply cross the street. Friendship is a powerful part of our lives as humans.

In an article by Tarra Conte, she outlines five important values of having friendship with others.

Concern: a matter that engages a person's attention, interest, or care, or that affects a person's welfare or happiness.

Compassion: a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

Honesty: truthfulness, sincerity, or frankness. You may have heard that this is the best policy, even if the truth hurts.

Understanding: a state of cooperative or mutually tolerant relations between people. The word "tolerant" in this definition made me laugh.

Support: to sustain (a person, the mind, spirits, courage, etc.) under trial or affliction.

For my wife and I, friends matter. And whether they be friends found around the kitchen table, neighbors living around the corner from you or living thousands of miles away in Brazil; our connection to others is what makes living life great.

I hope the same for each of you. That life presents you with a large basket full of friends, near and far. For you not only have friends, but you are also a friend to them.

Stay friendly my friends!

SIDE NOTE: Our friends Dave and Annie Spell are doing great missions work in Brazil, working with Ps Ronald Berg and the C3 Church Curitiba. If you wish to support their efforts, a small (or large) donation is greatly appreciated. For those in the United States, your gift is tax deductible.

Regain Your Balance

“If positivity is not your mindset, then reset” ― Josh Stern

When I was growing up on the farm, we had an over-sized black Labrador Retriever dog named Butch. He was and remains to this day the best dog I have ever been around. Each day when the school bus would pull up at our farm to drop me off, Butch would be laying near a Mulberry tree waiting for me. As I stepped off the bus, he would come galloping up to meet me at the bottom step.

A big and goofy dog at times, he could be very protective of all that he watched over in his domain. It was very comforting to have such a dog out on the farm. In terms of being mans best friend, the term certainly applied to this dog named Butch.

My mother would call him a big lummox.

Butch could be big and clumsy at times, but through that clumsiness, when he regained his balance there was a true sense of his reliability and abilities. Interesting enough each of us have those same moments of clumsiness. It is like being a big lummox, similar to my dog Butch from so many years ago.

I myself have had those moments when I felt like a clown tripping across the stage. Nothing I did seemed to make sense or work in a rational manner. A feeling such as this can put you in a state that just seems very much out of the ordinary.

To regain your balance, think of pushing a reset button on your thinking.

Take a moment, relax and re-adjust your thoughts to get back to your abilities. The stumbling feeling we get can be debilitating when we know we can do better. That feeling will go away when you reset. And be assured, you are not a big lummox.

All you need to do is take that moment, re-adjust, reset and regain control of your domain.

Stay inspired my friends!

Two Coffee Cups

Coffee and Cigarettes

"Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

There are times in our life when we just struggle to get through the day. For some reason, maybe we know why, maybe we simply do not know, the day seems to be in perfect alignment against us. The act of even placing one foot in front of the other is a battle against the weight of our struggles.

It is during those times that we could use the helping hand of another.

You could be that person, to enter into the life of another. You could be the one that will help burden some of that person's load. That is the type of person we need and should be. It does not take much to be a person that cares.

You can have a significant impact on another person's life when things are going bad for them. Use your smile, provide a word of encouragement or maybe just buy them a cup of coffee to ease the day. The little things can impact big.

Stay inspired my friends.

Defeat

Defeat III - Self-portrait by Todd Marinovich

"Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure." - George Edward Woodberry

Failure is one of the biggest fears that many people have in life. Failing at work, failing in relationships, failing at school or failing at trying. It grips us to the point that we settle back into a stagnant frame of mind. The safety of not trying to do anything takes over our lives.

It is at this point we stop growing. Our life will be as it always was and change can never happen if we allow the fear of failing to overtake our mind. We have now accomplished true defeat if we let it happen.

When we step out and try, defeat is merely a teaching point on our road. We take the lessons learned and turn them into an experience that places us closer to success. But you will never know unless you step out and try.

Let go the fear of failure and gain more in your life. The dark walls you surround yourself with will fill with the brightness of light. As you make your attempts and failures occur, your steps forward will not cease. You will continue moving forward with the new found knowledge towards greater things.

Stay inspired my friends!