Author: Joyce De Ridder

Categories
Poetry Relationships

Quiet Time

Recently Allen Arnold wrote about a sign on a Mexican restaurant that read “In a hurry? Come back when you are not.” It seems each order was hand-made and the process could not be hurried.

In our frantic, overscheduled world in which we often hear and often say how busy we are, our quiet time with the Lord, if we have one, is often hurried. I have been a critic of one-minute and five-minute devotional books for a long time because they would have us cram in a verse and a thought and a prayer without allowing time to wait, to listen, and to hear what the Holy Spirit wants us to know as we move into our day.

Today I want to share another poem by Ron Owens set to music by Patricia Owens along with a link so you can listen to this lovely song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pux5GuhHbkQ

The Quiet Time

The Quiet Time, The Quiet Time,
when I sit at Jesus' feet.
Those special, hallowed moments
when the earth and heaven meet.
Preparing for the day ahead,
I feast upon the Living Bread;
my soul restored, my heart renewed
in The Quiet Time.

The Quiet Time, The Quiet Time,
the savior's voice I hear,
communing with my blessed Lord,
His holy presence near.
I look into His matchless face,
I praise Him for His amazing grace,
I face the day, I go with Him,
From The Quiet Time.

I love the featured image on this post. It calls forth memories of my own childhood, the period of my life when I learned the importance of having a Quiet Time. It is so focused, so undisturbed, so intimate. How did I ever let time, age, and activities, move me to compromise that time, abbreviate it, forget it or lessen its priority?

In another one of his Daily Thoughts, Arnold quoted a friend as saying “Hurry is an attitude which comes from an agreement with a lie that God is expecting more than you can do.”

I have spent more days of my life than I care to recall with an attitude of hurry. At this time in my life I am working at confronting that lie and at recognizing that being fully present in the moment and relishing quiet togetherness with the Lord and with others is far more significant and satisfying than mindless busyness. I am learning that even doing what must be done can be done can be with a quiet heart and mind.

For those of you who are interested, you will find some thoughtful writing at www.withallen.com/blog

Categories
Poetry

His Name Is Jesus

April is National Poetry Month. This week I am choosing to feature the first verse of a poem, His Name is Jesus, written by Ron Owens and set to music by Patricia Owens.

Ron and Patricia have been dear friends since I met them through Joe Ann Shelton in 1989. Joe Ann sang their song as part of a medley which we played at her memorial service. Because I wanted to give you a link to the medley, I have included the words from another song written by Danny Lee that Joe Ann sings as part of the medley; they appear as the second verse below, following the chorus. This medley is a favorite of mine and I am including the link here so that you may hear it. https://vimeo.com/720367464

May you have a blessed Easter as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. How wonderful to serve a living Lord!

His Name is Jesus

There are some who only know His name as just another name,
There are many who think there's no difference - that He's just the same
as all other prophets, sages, who've walked down through history,
that He died as any ordinary man upon that tree.
For they've never met my Jesus, they have never seen His face.
They know nothing of His boundless love nor of His saving grace.
They have never walked beneath the stream that flows from Calvary, 
they know only what is said of Him, He's only history.

His name is Jesus; yes, He's the One.
His name is Jesus, God's only Son.
His name is Jesus, bright morning star;
Come to this Jesus just as you are.

The busy streets and sidewalks, they suddenly grew still
as a man came through the entrance to the city.
He touched and healed a blindman with a little piece of clay,
and with trembling lips you could hear the people say
Jesus, Jesus, He is the Son of God.
Jesus, Jesus, the precious Son of God.
Fairest of ten thousand, bright and morning star,
sweetest rose of Sharon, He came to set us free
Jesus, Jesus, He's everything to me.
Yes, He's everything to me.

His name is Jesus; yes, He's the One.
His name is Jesus, God's only Son.
His name is Jesus, bright morning star;
Come to this Jesus just as you are.
Categories
Self Reflections

To Ponder: what is its meaning?

When I was a young teenager, I looked up a lot of words in the dictionary. Sometimes what I was looking for was a defintion that explained how the word works or how I could put it to work in my life. Take ponder, for example. I only had a King James translation of the Bible in my teen years and many words I read were not part of my daily vocabulary. Proverbs 4:26 read “Ponder the path of thy feet and let all thy ways be established.” Then, Proverbs 5:21 says, “For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings.”

A modern translation uses the word “consider” in place of ponder in the fourth chapter of proverbs and “examines” for pondereth in the fifth chapter. But I actually like better the definition of ponder given by my pastor in a sermon many years ago. I noted it in my Bible. To ponder is “to weigh prayerfully; it is to give mental consideration with heart approval.” That helped. I find it a little more meaty or meaningful that simply “consider.”

Although we seldom use the word “ponder” these days, you may find the invitation to do so in thought questions at the end of Bible study guides. Rick Warren gave a “Point to Ponder” at the end of every chapter of The Purpose Driven Life.

So why am I writing about this? Maybe, because I’m doing a lot of it lately. But also, because I’m again reading the works of Henri Nouwen, an author whose writing causes me to exercise the process of pondering more than anyone else. Although I have about thirty of the books he wrote over his lifetime, I am just beginning to collect some of those in the Henri Nouwen Spirituality Series, a collection put together since his death. These books are on selected topics that were not the focus of a single one of his books but were addressed in many of his writings. These small volumes put together by others are made up laregly of excerpts from his writings.

Having been Joe Ann’s caregiver for a few years, I wanted to read A Spirituality of Caregiving. I got it this week and finished it this morning. In it I found so much to ponder. Perhaps I will write about some of it later.

What I most appreciate about Henri Nouwen’s approach to every aspect of life is that he was looking for the spirituality in living every part of life. It seems all too easy for me to mindlessly get on with the activities of daily living without mental consideration accompanied by heart approval of what is taking place. It is not about just doing what I am doing “as unto the Lord” but more importantly about what is He doing in me. I was reminded again that God is not loudly trying to get my attention. Becoming aware of the movement of the Spirit in my life requires silence and solitude.

What He is doing to transform me to His likeness is more important than what I am doing.

Categories
childhood memories

A Childhood Playground

Recently I joined a weekly creative writing group at the senior center in Holland and finished my second meeting this past Tuesday. This is a new experience for me and one that is already enriching my life. It is stretching me to write in new genres. There is value in the writing exercises, pleasure in hearing what others write and simple joy in doing something I love with others.

Each week we are given a word or two as prompts for our writing. Last week one of the words was “bullfrogs”. My immediate thoughts went to a favorite place of my childhood and I decided to share today what I wrote this week. It evoked a lot of childhood memories among those who were in the group on Tuesday. I hope it does the same for you.

Three-quarters of a century ago there was a magical place for me, a neighborhood formed by two streets, teeming with children, bounded on one side by an avenue and on the other by the entrance to a magical playground.

At the end of the upper street was we entered the special place where our adventures began. Walking down a slight slope and onto a winding sanding trail, we sometimes walked two abreast and at other times single file. If we paid attention we might see slithering garter snakes or scurrying field mice. At the right time of the year, there were buttercups and wild violets, and a variety of flowering weeds. Looking up and following the sounds, we spied birds we heard in the trees.

Although we were headed to a special place, we sometimes diverged from the path for a while to swing like Tarzan on wild grapevines that hung from climbable trees. Our destination was the end of the trail, the sights and sounds of the river with cattails and bullfrongs, and bloodsuckers that attached themselves to our legs and feet as we waded and splashed in the water of Black River. We had to examine each other to make sure the leeches were pulled off before going home.

My mother and the other mothers of my playmates were not always happy about our adventures. They worried about the poison ivy and poison sumac in the woods and what they considered human dangers in our playground. But we never saw the humans just the evidence they had spent time resting and eating in our shared space.

A block from the upper street were railroad tracks alongside a feedstore. Occasionally there were empty boxcars on those tracks and we played in them. I guess they were the mode of transportation for the hobos who had their camps in our playground. We didn’t mind sharing our space because they were never there when we were and what they left behind was sometimes of interest to us as we poked around in the remains of their campfires.

Although I have been carried back in memory to that neighborhood and playground, I can’t take you there to show it to you. It no longer exists. I the house I lived in on Columbia Avenue was between the Swift company ice cream factory and that of an old man with a wooden leg; we called his Peggy Mouw. Beyond his house lived his relative, Mrs. Mouw, who kept rabbits in a cage in her backyard. None of those places are there now. The houses on Fifth and Sixth streets are also gone. My neigborhood and playground were replaced by Windmill Island and Freedom Village.

I hope there are other magical places like those of my childhood where today’s children are building memories. I hope that one day when they reflect on memories of their childhood, they will not be of a playground in a video game but of places where living things are giving their imaginations space to run free./

Categories
Slovakia Memoir

Able and Willing

Sometime in 2004, Joe Ann and I were invited to visit a large psychiatric hospital in Slovakia that treated alcoholics, other drug addicts, and gamblers. After our first meeting with the the head of the hospital, we were invited to come another time for Joe Ann to share her story as a recovering alcoholic.

Of course, Joe Ann shared the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and their importance in her recovery process. After hearing Joe Ann’s story, the hospital administrator said this to us, “Under communism we were not permitted to have anything in our treatment program of a spiritual nature. Would you come here and bring the spiritual dimension to our patients?”

“Yes, we would be happy to do that. We will bring a proposal to you.” It was more than we could have asked for.

Introducing the Twelve Steps

Every treatment program in the U.S. knows the Twelve Steps of AA and about 95 percent of centers include them in some way as part of their treatement. We were being asked to bring the Twelve Steps to a place where they were totally unknown. Scouring our addiction library, we found an old book with a chapter that gave a model for introducing the Twelve Steps to a treatement center for the first time. We used that model to build our eight-week introduction which we ran in cycles. Since treatment was three months, most patients were able to take advantage of our weekly sessions during the course of their treatment.

Meditation on Step Two

Not long after we began the eight-week program, I wrote a workbook for those in our classes that summarized the teaching of each week, gave some additional material, and included daily meditations with space for them to write their thoughts. Most of the meditations were very short, just one or two paragraphs. However, when we introduced Step Two – Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, I wrote a long meditation on the story we find in the Bible in Mark 9: 14-27.

The story is about a man who came to Jesus with his deaf and dumb son. The boy had seizures and when he had convulsions he foamed at the mouth and fell on the ground violently and became rigid. Sometimes when he was near water or fire and had a seizure, he fell into the water or fire and nearly died.

As this man came to Jesus, his son had a seizure. Earlier in the chapter we read that Jesus’ disciples had tried to help but they were unable to do so. You can imagine the helpless and hopeless feeling the man had. As he sees his son in a seizure there in front of Jesus, he pleads with Jesus and says, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”

Two questions

There are really two questions or doubts in that plea from the father. One had to do with the ability of Jesus to do anything. The other was about the willingness of Jesus to help. The man struggled with both of these. He had tried other things and they had not worked. He had gone to other people and they had not been able to help. Was Jesus able?

Then, even if Jesus could help, why would he want to help? Was he willing to help this man and his son? After all, there was nothing important about the man. He is asking Jesus for mercy. He had nothing to recommend him. There is no reason he deserves this. He is just a suffering human being and so is his son. He asks Jesus to have compassion – to enter into his suffering with him.

Then Jesus looks at the man and says to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” What incredible words for the father to hear. The Bible says that immediately the father of the boy cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”

What he heard from Jesus was that Jesus was willing. What he also heard was that Jesus was not going to do something for the man without the man’s participation. He had to believe.

I went on from telling the Bible story to talking about the curious phrase in the second step, “came to believe”. The phrase implies a process. We don’t see the process before the story begins in Mark. We don’t know if the process in this man involved first hearing about Jesus and others being helped by him. Then, perhaps seeing others who were healed by Jesus, before he came to Jesus himself. But he came. Then he came to believe.

What about these questions and you and me?

I have seen Christians who are not confronting an illness and praying for healing, but instead they are struggling with these questions when it comes to serving the Lord is some way, accepting a challenge or taking a step of faith. They know God is able to do great things and that God uses people to carry his message and minister in many ways. Their question is not about God’s ability but about his willingness to use them.

When we have that question or doubt, I think it is because we are looking at our own inadequacies and forgetting that God is looking at how he gets glory from using us with our weaknesses.

Categories
Relationships Self Reflections

Never Too Late

When I started this blog last October, I had planned to post something each weekend. However, over the last month it hasn’t worked that way. Instead, it has been every other week. In the midst of other obligations, I am working to meet a deadline in completing my manuscript of the memoir to get it to a copy editor by March 1st.

Asking for forgiveness

People have shared with me and probably with you too the experience of having a disagreement, a falling-out, or something said or done in a relationship that was never resolved. Maybe words I regret or a tone of voice from yesterday, or something else that happened a week ago, a month ago, or even longer. I’ve not only heard this from others but I’ve also been guilty of it myself.

Because some of the problems seemed so small or so common, I never did anything about them. I rationalized. It’s history. It happened too long ago. They’ve probably forgotten all about it. But I was convicted that no matter how small it seemed to me or how long ago, if I remembered it, then it was not too small and probably the other person also remembered.

Several years ago I started practicing something I began advising others to do, i.e. to go back and say something like “Do you remember what I said to you last week Thursday when I was angry? I never should have spoken to you in the way I did. I want you to know I haven’t forgotten it and I’m asking you today to forgive me.”

Sometimes I’m not asking for forgiveness for what I said but for the way I said it. At other times, I have to say I was totally wrong about the whole matter. Also, it is not always about what was said or done. I can’t forget that some things I need forgiveness for are promises broken or expectations I created and then didn’t meet.

Those who work a Twleve Step program know that Step Nine is about making amends. When people start making their list of those whom they have harmed, they are often thinking of “big” things. But it is often the “little” things we ignore that slowly kill a relationship or cause love to die. Step Ten is about taking a daily inventory and “when we were wrong promptly admitted it.” What I am reminding myself is that when I’m not prompt in my admission, I don’t get a pass.

Expressing gratitude

While writing my memoir I found there was a person who appeared repeatedly doing significant things but she was never in the limelight and I hadn’t realized how valuable she was to me and the ministry. It has been fourteen years since I’ve seen her and I know I have not expressed to her the gratitude I feel even today.

Lord willing, I will see her this summer when I am planning to be in Slovakia. At the very least, she deserves a bouquet of flowers. As I have been reminded of her, I have thought how important it is to say thank you and I appreciate you. I also need to be specific about what the person said or did that made a difference in my day. These expressions can grow the love between us, enrich our lives, and bless the person who blessed us.

While writing this I had a picture in my mind of what the church would look like if everyone of us who needs to express gratitude to another showed up with a bouquet at the same time. It made me smile.

I want to not only be a more grateful person but also express my thankfulness. Just like asking for forgiveness has no expiration date, it is not too late to give thanks for something said or done a day ago, a month ago, or even fourteen years ago.

Categories
Relationships

The Joy of Getting it

Isn’t it exhilarating to finally understand something you have been trying to learn?! I love to learn and I love to teach. There is always reason to celebrate whether I am doing the learning or I am helping someone else.

Most of the time we have to use words to explain something and that can be troublesome when it’s hard to grasp the meaning of a word. I am often looking for a definition that aids me in applying a word to my life. I’ll share here a few words that I have learned to put to work.

Delight

For example, when the Bible tells us that the Lord delights in us or when we are told to delight ourselves in the Lord, I want to know how I can describe and experience what delight looks and feels like. Somewhere a long time ago I read a definition that satisfied me and gave me an experiential understanding of delight. It is this: to love with enthusiasm.

Ponder

Or take the word ponder. It says in the Bible that Mary pondered what was told to her. It is not a word I use. What does it mean to ponder something? I was helped by this definition: to ponder is to give something mental consideration with heart approval.

Love

What does it look like to love others. On several occasion I heard people say incomprehensible things like “I don’t really like him, but I love him in the Lord.” Now what does that mean and how do you do that?

Is love a feeling? If so, how do I love those I don’t know? I don’t want to be overly simplistic here, but when I wanted to get a handle on this, I was helped by a pastor who said when we love other people we have “a relaxed mental attitude toward them.” Of course, that is not the whole of love but it is a starting place. When I apply that definition, I realize that it is not possible to judge someone at the same time I am having a relaxed mental attitude toward them.

Grace

Or take the huge concept of grace which I am forever experiencing and learning about. I learned about saving grace when I became a child of God. I learn every day about living grace. And I watched Joe Ann experience dying grace. I don’t know that there is a single definition that explains it although I know it from experience.

When I asked about its meaning as a child, someone said, “Grace is God’s riches at Christ’s expense.” That’s a nice acronym but it wasn’t satisfying.

One day while watching a tennis match I caught a tiny piece of its meaning. Everytime a player was a point away from winning the match, the announcer would say, “Advantage, Williams” or whatever the player’s name was. At that moment it occurred to me that God announces that in every situation in which I find myself. “Advantage, Joyce.” I have the winning edge in things that are frustrating, joyous, sad, perplexing, or any situation in which I find myself; he gives it to me. The match may not be over, but the advantage I have is that I can meet the challenge in him.

Attitude

We have all heard the word attitude invoked many times. We’re told to have a good one, change one, or get rid of a bad one. This brief definition of an attitude is my favorite because it tells me what it is and suggests how I can deal with it. An attitude is an emotional habit. When there is a recurring attitude, I recognize it for what it is and know that habits are not easy to break but they can be broken.

The definitions I share with you are like shorthand to me. I like them because I often have to put these words to work on the spur of the moment. These definitions help me understand what I am doing or what I need to do.

Do you have some to share? I’d love to hear them.

Categories
Slovakia Memoir

Missionary Internship

Dr. O'Brien at Missionary Internship Graduation

Today, as I am writing, it is January 19th, an unforgettable day for me. Seventy years ago, January 19, 1953, I became a follower of Jesus Christ. I was a week away from my 11th birthday and it became the day of my new birth, a day that made an eternal difference.

Twenty-nine years later on January 19, 1982, my youngest sister, Susanne, took her own life at the age of 31 by a gunshot to her head. For most of that year I felt like I was hearing people from underwater drowning in an internal sea of tears.

I begin my memoir with that year not because of what happened in January but because of a meeting in December where I met the man who was to introduce me to Joe Ann Shelton five years later. I will pick up here with the third paragraph of chapter one.

I was teaching at Houston Baptist University in Houston, Texas. What I do remember is an incident in December of 1982 that led to my meeting someone very significant to my story who was part of God’s plan that resulted in the two of us, Joe Ann and me, being in Slovakia in 1997.

Prior to meeting him, one of my students told me that since she was twelve years old she felt called to be a missionary. I asked her what she had done to clarify her sense of calling. She looked at me with a puzzled expression and asked, “What do you mean?”

Following the conversation that ensued, I thought about her and other students who needed to have some way to determine over the years whether they were truly called and suitable for a career in missions. As my thoughts evolved, I put together a proposal for a summer missonary internship program designed to help university students explore their call to missions. It would require them to work under the supervision of a Southern Baptist ethnic pastor in one of the 19 different language churches in Houston for the summer, live with an ethnic family, and study the language with a native speaker. These requirements would be part of four courses established for the internship program for which they would gain twelve hours of credit.

To get approval from the university to conduct the program and obtain supporters like the Women’s Missionary Union in Texas and in the Houston area, as well as others, I put the proposal together in a slideshow outlining the components and began meeting with potential supporters. The last person I met with that December was Dr. Bill O’Brien, the Executive Vice President of the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (now the International Mission Board). He was speaking at a youth conference in Dallas and I went there specifically to meet him and share the program idea with him.

All went well and people were able to catch the vision and back it. The program was launched in the summer of 1983 with 14 students who worked in Chinese, Korean, Laotian, and Spanish congregations. It successrfully clarified for some students that a career in missions was their calling and for others that it was not. A flim was made to document the program and Bill O’Brien came to speak at the graduation ceremony in August.

In the spring of 1984, I interacted with Bill one more time when I took the film to be shown to a group at the Foreign Mission Board headquarters in Richmond, Virginia.

I did not see him again until December at a mission banquet in Houston right after I had resigned from Houston Baptist University. A week later I had a call from the Foreign Mission Board asking me to interview for a position. After three interviews, I accepted a position in the Medical Services Department as the coordinator of short-term medical volunteers and began my new job on March 1st of 1985.

I tell that story not only because of meeting Bill O’Brien who would later introduce me to Joe Ann but also because when we went to Slovakia we created an internship program for students who graduated from Calvary Schools in Holland where I had been the principal. Our first two interns came in the summer of 1998. One of them, Jeannette Wolters, married Ben Gerth and went to Tanzania as a missionary. The other, Vanessa Lake, came back to spend 15 months with us after graduating from Moody Bible Institute before going on to the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague.

Categories
Relationships

Being Held

I like this image for its symbolic value – being held by a hand. It is a tiny reminder to me of the hand of the living, eternal God that is infintely bigger than me and able to hold me.

For years I have gone to bed at night thanking God for the everlasting arms that are beneath me. I also quote the lines below from Martyn-Lloyd Jones almost every night. The realization that I am a day closer to home allows me to go to sleep with joy. 

Here in the body pent,
               Absent from Him I roam,
               Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
                 A day's march nearer home.

Those words become sweeter as each year goes by. I often speak them to God by changing the word Him to You. Not every night is naturally joyful, of course. There are nights when I add these words from Zephaniah 3:17, “he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing” and reword them as a request to God.

You may wonder why I am sharing so personally in a public blog. I do it because I believe there are people who crave and need the intimacy with God the Father that is available to those of us who are His children and we are invited to it. Maybe there are others who enjoy this intimacy but could use a reminder today that they are being held by an everlasting, loving Father.

In this new year I have had people dear to me who have died and others who are actively dying now. The comfort I have felt is in knowing that those leaving know the Lord Jesus and will be with him.

Others I know are entering unknown but difficult paths of different kinds of separation. Those of us who are left can walk beside them, offer the touch of Jesus through our hands and arms and through our presence.

While moving my books around recently, I picked up one written 50 years ago that I have had in my library almost that long. The title is Loneliness by Robert Weiss. He wrote that there is very little research and writing on the subject of loneliness and hoped that his book would encourage other social scientists to write on the subject. I paged through my copy to see what I had underlined many years ago.

Picking here and there I found these things worthy of reflection even as I think about intimacy with God. Loneliness is an experience of relational insufficiency, particularly an intimate relationship of knowing you are known and understood without having to explain. There is trust in that kind of relationship and the sense of knowing the other as well.

Our lonely self is tense, restless, unable to concentrate, driven. I know that self, although I sometimes deny it is my “real” self.

Loneliness is not the product of being alone; one can be lonely in a group. It is the absense of an intimate relationship.

Weiss writes, “our problem in estimating the prevalence of loneliness is that loneliness is not a condition like a broken leg, which one has or doesn’t have, but it is nearer to fatigue, a condition that can vary from the barely perceptible to the overwhelming. How much loneliness must one feel for it to be counted?”

In Ecclesiastes we read that God has planted eternity in the human heart. We are made for a relationship with God, which we know through Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh. While God is physically absent and invisible to our physical eye and inaudible to our physical ear, we see him and hear him in his Word. And he sees and hears us.

One of the beauties of this relationship to me is that we are not equals. He is Creator and I am creature. He is father and I am child. His love is perfect and mine is not. He is never changing and I am always changing. When I understand these roles, I can grow in the relationship.

I never have to wonder where he is or how he feels about me. I never have to fear rejection or separation or abandonment. Human intimacy is wonderful and we need intimate relationships with others but it has none of these guarantees and cannot be compared.

This morning as I got ready for another day’s march toward home, I was reminded “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Being held by God is a comforting experience at at any age.

Categories
Poetry

Habits and Change

There is a poem by Portia Nelson that most people who are in recovery from some addiction or destructive habit have read or heard. Although I worked for many years with those who were addicted to a substance, I believe An Autobiography in Five Chapters is a poem that speaks to most of us.

Someone who was interpreting for Joe Ann at an AA meeting in Slovakia told us that he had gotten into a habit of playing games on the computer and that it had become a habit that absorbed more and more of his time and was interfering with what he should have been doing. There are people who spend more time than they want to on social media or watching television or eating the wrong things or any number of things. I believe the reason these habits are so difficult to break is because we experience them as pleasant, a relief from stress, or an escape and we like what we feel. When they become habits we do them unconsciously and they have a life of their own. We are all good at rationalizing, justifying, and minimizing what we don’t want to give up.

If you have a habit that you want to change, think about replacing it with something better. And let someone know that you are working on getting rid of a habit. Ask them to ask you how your doing. I think this statement: “you alone can do it but you cannot do it alone” applies to most of us trying to make significant change.

An Autobiography in Five Chapters 

Chapter 1 
I walk down the street. 
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. 
I fall in. I am lost... I am helpless. 
It isn't my fault. 
It takes me forever to find a way out. 

Chapter 2 
I walk down the same street. 
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. 
I pretend I don't see it.
 I fall in again.
 I can't believe I am in the same place.
 But it isnt my fault.
 It still takes a long time to get out.
 
Chapter 3
 I walk down the street.
 There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
 I see it is there.
 I still fall in ... it's a habit. 
My eyes are open.
 I know where I am.
 It is my fault.
 I get out immediately.

 Chapter 4
 I walk dow the same street.
 There is a deep whole in the sidewalk.
 I walk around it. 

Chapter 5
 I walk down another streer.