The starfish story

Posted on June 6, 2016 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

While walking along a beach, an elderly gentleman saw someone in the distance leaning down, picking something up and throwing it into the ocean. As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, picking up starfish one by one and tossing each one gently back into the water. He came closer still and called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”

The young man paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean.” The old man smiled, and said, “I must ask, then, why are you doing this?” The young man replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.”

Upon hearing this, the elderly observer commented, “But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!” The young man listened politely. Then he bent down, picked up another starfish, threw it into the back into the ocean past the breaking waves and said, “It made a difference for that one.” (author unknown)

Death is every day

Posted on June 3, 2016 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

There’s an old story about a man who was walking towards a town and he sees Death walking along beside him. They start to talk and Death says that he is going to kill everyone in the town. The man bargains with Death and says “Please don’t kill that many people” and Death says “Okay, I’ll only take 100.” When they get to the town, the man warns everyone there that Death was there and he was going to take 100 people. After a week a thousand people had died. The man finds Death and speaks with him, saying “You promised you would only kill a hundred people!” Death replied “I did. Fright killed the rest.”

There’s yet another story going around that says that the world is ending soon. This most current one says that they miscalculated the Mayan calendars and that it really is going to be June 3-4. This doesn’t give us a lot of time to get ready.

When my mother-in-law found out that she had a terminal diagnosis of cancer, I asked her what she wanted to do. She said she wanted to live. I pointed out that there is a difference between living and being alive. What do you want to do with the time that you have? What do you want to be remembered for? How do you want to contribute to the world? She didn’t have an answer. All she knew was that she didn’t want to die.

Our life is God’s gift to us. How we use it is our gift back to God.

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.” – John Donne

Jesus had many parables about constantly being ready for the kingdom of heaven. This could be interpreted as death or a change in our way of understanding. Perhaps the “Kingdom of Heaven” can be seen as a death of the way things have always been, and a new life of peace and harmony.

But he also said that even he didn’t know when this would happen. So how could these predictors know, when they aren’t anywhere as connected as Jesus, who heard directly from God? They don’t. But it doesn’t matter. The idea of being ready for death is useful.

People many years ago would keep a souvenir of a loved one who had died. It was called a “memento mori” – a reminder of death. It was not only to remember the loved one, but also to remember that death is their fate too.

Our society has sanitized death to the point that we don’t even see it anymore. Our dead are taken away from us by professionals. We don’t experience death as a part of life like our ancestors did just a hundred years ago. They took care of their own dead at home. They washed them, laid them out, built a coffin, and buried them, all on their own. Now because that is done for us, we are divorced from the idea of death. We see it as an aberration, instead of as normal, which it is.

Death waits for nobody. Death is every day. There are no second chances, no do-overs when death comes. Death isn’t a punishment or a failure. Death is the natural result of life. It is best to make friends with it because it isn’t going away.

What would you do if you knew you had only a year to live?
Why aren’t you doing that now?

Thoughts on the Eucharist

Posted on June 2, 2016 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

The Eucharist is the Christian ceremony that commemorates the Last Supper, (also known as the First Lord’s Supper) in which bread and wine are consecrated and consumed. The term also refers to the consecrated elements, especially the bread.

According to the online dictionary on Google, the term comes from the late Middle English: from Old French eucariste, based on ecclesiastical Greek eukharistia ‘thanksgiving,’ from Greek eukharistos ‘grateful,’ from eu ‘well’ + kharizesthai ‘offer graciously’ (from kharis ‘grace’).

It is literally a meal of thankfulness. We are eating thanks.

The last meal that Jesus shared with his disciples is described in all four Gospels (Mt. 26:17-30, Mk. 14:12-26, Lk. 22:7-39 and Jn. 13:1-17:26). In each story, he follows the Jewish practice by first giving thanks for the elements of the meal before consuming them. He blesses the food by blessing God, the creator of that food.

There is an echo of the miracles of feeding the large crowds of people.

The first instance, “the Feeding of the 5,000”, is in all four Gospels: Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15. The second instance, The “Feeding of the 4,000”, is reported by Matthew 15:32-16:10 and Mark 8:1-9. Both times, he gives thanks first. He is pointing out to his disciples and us that we must give thanks before we receive anything. Thankfulness must come first for miracles to occur.

Contract

Posted on June 2, 2016 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

While writing a story yesterday, I realized that I am / was expecting something of my brother that he did not agree to. I expected the “Hallmark” family and instead I got an abuser as my role model. I now suspect that he did not want to be anybody’s brother. Perhaps he wanted to be an only child. Perhaps he didn’t want to share his time or toys, didn’t want to share our parents attention and energy.

Basically, I’m accusing him of violating the contract he didn’t sign. He didn’t agree to having a sister, so he never said he would act like a brother.

This is the very same thing I’m saying that my sister-in-law is doing to me. She is mad that I wouldn’t help out with our in-laws estate, when I never said I would. In fact, I told my husband (the only person I need to tell) that I wouldn’t, because it was his task to do with his brother. I had done the same task, alone, at 25. Perhaps she has a script that says “daughters-in-law should take care of all family matters”, like I have a script that says “brothers should not abuse their sisters”.

I’m coming to understand that it is best to start with a clean slate, to not be prejudiced for or against situations / people / experiences.

Values

Posted on June 1, 2016 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

I know a couple where the husband said to the wife that they have to make a certain amount of money a year. It is a very high amount. They have only one child and live in an apartment.

Meanwhile, the wife is miserable, stuck at a job that she hates, where her manager is abusive to her. She is so stressed out that she has begun pulling out her hair. Doctors have put her on anti-anxiety medicine, but it isn’t helping because it is treating the symptom, not the disease.

I believe that the husband has his priorities wrong. It isn’t about money at all, and it never should be. If his wife is so miserable that it is affecting her health, then something has to change. They need to evaluate everything that they are spending money on and how much money is coming in. Perhaps he needs to get a second job. Perhaps they can trade out a car for a cheaper one. Perhaps they can move back in with a parent.

But there is no reason that a spouse should ever put money before the health of their spouse. No money is worth more than your spouse.

My husband was very stressed out recently about extra responsibilities with his job. This is a new job, but suddenly he is being expected to do things that he did not sign up for and is not trained in. He wants to do well, but these added expectations are not reasonable. It was obviously very overwhelming to him.

I chose to play the biggest card and speak of my fears. I told him a story that I’d just read about a woman whose husband was very stressed out over his job. He was so anxious over all that was going on that he had constant pains in his stomach (the stomach and the head are the most common sites for stress to manifest). Doctors, as usual, gave him medicine to treat his stomach pains but did not advise him to seek help about his job. She woke up one night to discover that he’d killed himself while she slept.

I told my husband that I don’t want to live through that. No job is worth that kind of stress. If his boss got angry that he wasn’t able to do what he expected him to do – a duty that was not on the list of expected tasks when he was hired – then perhaps he needs to find a new job. We can make do. We will work it out. We have before. But his health is worth more than money.

Don’t ever put money before your spouse. Remember “forsaking all others” as part of the vow? It normally refers to intimacy – that we promise to only be intimate with our spouse. But I take it to also mean that their well-being should be seen as important and valuable.

It doesn’t make sense if you have a lot of money but your spouse is miserable. It doesn’t make sense to demand that your spouse work at a place that is harmful to their well-being. Even if that man’s wife doesn’t kill herself from the stress, she’s living a half-life already because of it. It is not right for him to demand that. But this is her battle to fight. If he cannot see that, then she must speak up for herself.

Step by step

Posted on June 1, 2016 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

How is health achieved? One step at a time. You just have to get out there and do it.

You have to be active about your health. It’s not something you can find in a pill. The simplest thing you can do is to go for a walk. There’s no special equipment to buy, no gym membership required.

Sometimes I come up with every excuse possible for why I can’t go on a walk. I’ll tell myself I don’t have enough time. I’ll get lost. I’ll be too far from the house when I want to pee. I’d rather make art. I want to sleep in.

I don’t like exercising. But I do like that I have exercised. I like how I feel in my body after I’ve moved it in a purposeful manner. But I think more importantly I like how I feel in my head for having made a commitment to myself, to my body, to my future, and having gone through with going on a walk.

Some mornings I don’t have a lot of a lot of time to go for a walk but I realize that even 10 minutes is better than nothing. Even five minutes is better than nothing. And then I resolve to get ready earlier to go out earlier the next day. And I forgive myself if I don’t. And then I try again.

Taking care of your body is like putting money in your bank account. It is worth every step. It pays you back double in a stronger body and lower stress levels.

My work schedule has changed so that we go in 30 minutes later and therefore leave 30 minutes later. Rather than lamenting getting out of work at six, I have chosen to celebrate going into work at 9:30 because that gives me 30 minutes in the morning I didn’t have before to go for a walk.

I could have used that time to make art. I’ve chosen to walk instead because it’s important. I know people who say that they don’t have time to eat well or exercise. They don’t get that if they don’t do both of these things they won’t have any time to do anything because their life will be a lot shorter and a lot less worthwhile. Who cares if you live a long time but your body is feeble because you didn’t take care of it? The years of your life are important, but the life in your years is important too.

We only have one life.
We only have one body.
It is your choice how you use them.