I hope that you have been spending this week like me: concentrating on all that we have to be grateful for.
So many of us want sunshine in our lives and feel that if life is not without it’s storms, then we have been dealt an unfair blow. The truth of the matter is that how we view our world is our choice.
I am reminded of the story in which two new families moved into a small town. The father of the first family asked a long-time member of the community by the name of Bill what kind of town their community was. Bill asked, “What kind of town did you just move from?” The father replied, “It was horrible. No one was kind or courteous. Everyone gossiped and we never felt welcome.” To his dismay, Bill told the father, “Oh, I think you will find this town just about the same.” Then, the father of the second new family approached Bill. He asked Bill the same question. Once again, Bill asked the father, “What kind of town did you just move from?” The second father responded, “Oh, the town we just moved from was wonderful! We loved it there! We made many friends! Everyone was wonderful and friendly!” Bill responded, “Well that’s wonderful! I know you are going to love living here as well!”
The moral of the story was that each father was going to get what they expected. We often are no different. Our expectations (attitude) most often dictate the outcome.
If we want the most amazing outcome possible for our lives, we must practice gratitude – not just as an occasional meandering into the area but as a deliberate way of life.
I love the article I share with you today! I hope you will enjoy and keep practicing that Attitude of Gratitude!:
5 Simple Ways to Develop an “Attitude of Gratitude”
by David A. Christensen
Our attitude is defined by the way we think and feel about life. It all begins with the way we see the world—which triggers a reaction, response, or behavior. Developing an “attitude of gratitude,” or seeing the world in such a way that spawns a thankful heart, produces many positive results.
Studies in what has become known as the “science of gratitude,” show that being grateful helps us feel more alive, promotes better sleep, fortifies our immune system, and even influences our looks. In short, grateful people are friendlier, healthier, happier, and even more attractive.
If you’re having trouble developing this habit in your life, then here are five suggestions to help you master an attitude of gratitude:
Develop the habit of “looking up.”
We live in a world where we look downward while we text on phones, check our email, view iPads, or even when we walk. Much of the news is centered on looking at the downside of life and what’s wrong on this planet. How much better would life be if we remember from time to time to look up, look outward, and look heavenward?
Years ago—before email, text, and Facebook connections—we moved our young family from Arizona to Michigan. My ninth-grader had to leave a lot of her friends, which created quite a bit of stress. When she came home each day from school, she would look down at the table or the desk for snail mail from her friends. I decided this might make a good teaching moment for her.
Since my wife and I were the ones who normally picked up the mail, we placed the letters and cards in high places in our home—a hanging light fixture, a high fireplace mantel, the top of a picture frame on the wall. This helped teach our daughter to “look up”—that’s where we find happy things. Looking heavenward can bring happiness. Heavenly Father wants us to notice His blessings by looking to Him. At our house, “looking up” stuck! It’s helped us be more thankful.
Start a gratitude journal or a tender mercy board in your home.
Anything that helps us to put our busy lives on pause—long and often enough to count and chronicle our blessings—will go a long way in developing an attitude of gratitude. On a daily basis, find a way to pause and take in these blessings.
Ask yourself: Where did I see God’s hand today? What happened for which I am thankful? How were even the tough moments of the day a blessing in disguise?
Writing and remembering blessings every day will make you more aware of His hand in your life. Maybe even try switching up your individual or family prayers, at least for a while. The morning prayer could be focused on asking for blessings that you or the family needs and the evening prayer could be centered on giving thanks.
Have you ever tried to offer a prayer of 100% gratitude? Not asking for anything? It surely makes you think about your long list of blessings, which can often seem overwhelming.
Make a list of all the people you are grateful for.
Take some time and make a list of all the people in your life that have changed your life for the better. As you make the list, write a few notes by their name stating why they are special to you and what they did that qualifies them to be on your list.
Go back as far as you can remember—teachers, friends, advisors, grandparents, parents, siblings, and anyone who touched your life for good. Make it an open list that can grow as you remember more experiences or meet new people.
This practice can be a great energizer to your life. God blesses us with spiritual and literal brothers and sisters who make a difference in our lives. Remembering them develops thankful threads in our hearts and minds.
Make a list of all the enriching experiences in your life.
Let your mind wander from your earliest recollections to what happened in recent days. What experiences, both hard and joyful, have blessed your life? Make a list and add a description of what the experience taught you and how you’ve become a better person for having lived it.
Be sure to include the adversities that made you stronger. Remember those special experiences which magnified your testimony or lifted your self-esteem. These experiences enlighten our view and generate gratitude in our lives.
Make a list of people you need to forgive.
Every major religion teaches about the renewing power of forgiving and letting go. The wellspring of gratitude is sometimes dammed in our minds when we cling to unkind feelings for others.
Is there someone in your life that you need to forgive? It could even be something so simple as a sarcastic comment or unintentional slip of someone’s tongue. Let go of those unkind feelings and see what happens to your heart. We become more grateful for those around us when we do as the Savior does. He forgives us and expects us to do the same. Love for life and thankfulness expands in our hearts as we forgive and let go.
Perhaps one of the most important people on your list is “you.” Forgive yourself as you forgive others, and allow the Lord to break the dam and let gratitude flow to your heart.
Place yourself in situations in which you can make sure that you can be hurt…
Do people tell you these things often? Of course not! You’ve probably never had those conversations because we live in a world of minimizing hurt, damage, and exposure.
I believe that our ability to expose our hearts is an important component of being emotionally and spiritually healthy. Let me tell you why.
First, let’s do a test of opposites. I will list a word and you fill in the blank with the opposite:
Black __________
Dark __________
Day __________
Love __________
What did you fill in for the opposite of Love? Did you use the word hate? Hate is not the right answer…the right answer is apathy.
There was a time in my life when I would have said that hate was the opposite of love too. But that was before I personally witnessed my two adopted children protect themselves at the cost of everything I believe to be most important.
My youngest two children were adopted from Russia when they were 4 and 9 years old. They were not orphans – they had been removed from their birth family due to neglect and abandonment. As you might imagine, they have experienced some difficulties in their lives.
They, of course, are not the only ones who have ever been through difficult life circumstances. However, their choices and behaviors strongly reflect what they experienced in those years prior to our adoption of them.
Our adopted children spent more time in our home with our love and influence than they spent in their birth country of Russia. However, I can assure you that the influence of those initial years has heavily outweighed the influence we have been able to have. As family and friends have watched our family struggle to help our adoptive children the frequent suggestion has been that we just need to give them more love.
I was once blessed with the experience of re-visiting heaven. I saw there the preparations that were being made for each of us to come to earth. I also saw that even there where our perfect Father in Heaven reigns and where His perfect love infuses everything present there – that God and His perfect plan for this earth was rejected by a large number of his spirit children. So even where perfect love dwells – love was not enough.
My adopted children have found that guarding themselves against hurt, rejection and vulnerability is the easiest way to make sure they never are hurt, rejected or vulnerable again. What that means is that they shut out family, loving relationships, and even passions and interests they might have.
Imagine what your life would be life if you made sure, at all costs, that you were not vulnerable. There would be no truly loving relationships – only manipulative ones. You couldn’t have any goals because you might fail in reaching those goals. Excitement and passion would be taboo because those emotions would make you too open to failure or disappointment.
I am not suggesting that we deliberately set ourselves up to be hurt but I understand now how wonderful and amazing it is to be vulnerable!
By being vulnerable I can love (even when I might get hurt), I can get excited about goals and future events that I want to happen in my life and I can embrace the talents and passions that I have – even when it might mean I will experience failure and disappointment. I can imagine and what I imagine can become a reality – all because I am willing to expose myself to whatever outcome may result.
Everything that I hold dear is a result of my willingness to allow myself to be accessible, susceptible and vulnerable – my marriage, my family, my friends and everything that I am passionate about!
So while I would never suggest that we intentionally seek hurt and pain – I hope you will join me in recognizing what a gift having an open heart and being vulnerable is!
I am all about stewardship – in my mind, that means responsibility to create a meaningful life for myself and to be a meaningful part of the lives of my family, friends, and fellowman.
While that includes being responsible, it does not mean that life has to dull and dreary!
I know that it is hard to comprehend, but heaven is truly amazing and enthralling and worth our very best mortal efforts. Life is not about what’s in it for me, me, me. If it is to be meaningful for the duration – both mortality and eternity – it needs to be about what’s in it for us.
None of us knows how much time the Lord will grant us to live on this earth, but I know that we all inherently sense that this gig (called life) is important and is not to be wasted.
The article I am sharing today takes a few minutes to read, but do it anyway. Your life deserves it! Take a few minutes and contemplate on how you can improve and make your life better! I promise you will be blessed for your efforts! Have a wonderful weekend! 🙂
45 Ways To Live Life To The Fullest
Man.
Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.
And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;
the result being that he does not live in the present or the future;
he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived
Do you feel like you’re “sleep-walking” through life? Do you wish you had more freedom? Do you wish you had more adventure? Do you wish you had more time? Do you wish you had more love? Do you dread Monday mornings?Are you still trying to figure out how to live life to the fullest? If so, you’re far from alone. the sad thing is that most people go through life having never really experienced what life has to offer.
What you need to understand is that everything holding you to a life you don’t want to live is a prison created by your own mind. That doesn’t mean you can just wish yourself into a new life, but it does mean that you can actively work towards living life to the fullest.
Some of these ideas you’ll have heard before, some of them you’ll dismiss. Some of these ideas you’ll be able to put into practice right away, some of these might plant the seed for ideas you’ll put into practice for the future. Still others you’ll spend your lifetime working towards.
Without further ado, here are 45 ways to live life to the fullest:
1. Create a bucket list and start checking things off.You will die one day, but before you do, experience as much of this world as you can.30
2. Set goals and write them down. Set goals by month, year, 5 year, and 10 year periods. Know what you want to achieve for each stretch of your life, and make sure to look back and see if you actually made the progress you wanted. This list will constantly evolve and you won’t reach every one of your goals, but writing your goals down will make it more likely that you will achieve them.
3. Don’t live for others. Don’t choose your path in life based on the expectations set on you by others, whether its your parents, friends, or society in general.
4. Live for others. Don’t let others choose your path for you, but don’t choose a path that will hurt those around you. Its easy to get caught up in your own life, but if you don’t take care of those you love, what is it all for in the end?
5. Maintain an internal locus of control. There are 2 kinds of people, those who focus on what they can control, and those that focus on what they can’t. Don’t blame others for your own failure – there’s always someone out there who was dealt a worst hand that made more of it than you did.
6. Don’t complain. If you’re not happy with something in your life, you can complain about it, or you can actively work to change it. Which one will you choose?
7. Don’t be jealous. Not because its morally wrong, but because jealousy is a destructive emotion. Its also a symptom that you’re not living your life to the fullest – people who are fulfilled can celebrate other people’s success. People who aren’t fulfilled fill up their emotional void through negative emotions.
8. Don’t be a crab in the bucket. You’ve heard the expression “crabs in the bucket” – its the tendency crabs have for pulling other crabs back down, right when they’re about to climb out. When you break from the norm, you’ll get pushback from your loved ones. Its not jealousy – they genuinely care for us. But people living the life society tells them to live get scared when they see others going for it. Even if they do it subconsciously, and even if it’s out of genuine concern – its still harmful. It creates a culture of conformity, mediocrity, and quiet desperation. Don’t be a crab in the bucket.
9. It’s OK to fail. The only way to avoid failure is to not try anything. Don’t be afraid to fail…that’s how you succeed. Besides, it’s only really a failure if you stop trying.
10. Overcome fear of failure by visualizing the worst case scenario. A great way to overcome fear of failure is to confront your worst possible nightmare. If you try it and fail, what is the worst thing that will happen? Write it down, then write down what it would take to get back to where you are now. 99.9% of the time, you’ll find that the worst case scenario isn’t nearly as scary as you thought it would be and the only thing holding you back is your own mindset. The .1% of the time where failure will push you past a point of no return (so basically, death or life altering physical harm) – those are you may want to reconsider.
11. Don’t gossip. Sure it might make you feel better about yourself, for the moment. But it can have negative ramifications, both internally and externally.
12. Ignore the things you can’t (or won’t) change. Ever notice how insanely emotional youtube comments are? People cling to their opinions like they’re a lifeline. Yet these are almost always opinions about things that have absolutely no effect on their daily lives. Yes, there are shitty things going on in the world. Unless you’re planning to do something about it, ignore it and focus on the things in your life that you can change.
13. Change things. You can make a difference – once you stop dismissing yourself. Approach challenges with the mindset of “how am I going to accomplish this?” instead of “what can I possibly do?”. But if you’re not actually going to work to to change something, then see the point above. Time to put up or shut up.
14. Take care of your body. Eat healthy when you can, get a good night’s sleep, and exercise. Your only connection with this world is through this fleshy meat vehicle we call our bodies. Take good care of it.
15. Take care of your mind. Stop feeding it a constant stream of junk. A little downtime is alright, but don’t dedicate every free hour you have to watching realty TV, watching gossip blogs, checking sports scores, and doing other stuff that requires little mental energy. Even the news can rot your brain with its constant barrage of negativity and biased sensationalism.
16. Plan for the future, but live in the present. A 25 year mortgage, retirement with full pension at 65, working hard for the bonus and putting off the big vacation until next year – while planning for the future is important, don’t sacrifice all of the present. Find a way to enjoy life as you work towards bigger and better things.
17. Live consciously. We all get into ruts and routines we use to get through the day, but we only have a limited number of days on this earth. Don’t put life on auto-pilot – live consciously. Always ask yourself – why am I doing this? If you wake up too many mornings in a row without a good answer, then its time to make a change.
18. Overcome your fears. We all have things in our lives, whether its our circumstances or personal flaws that are holding us back from doing thing we truly want to do. You can either accept it, rationalize it away, or face your fears. Which one will you choose?
19. Improve your social skills. Some people are natural social butterflies. For those of us who aren’t, make an effort to improve your social skills. There’s nothing wrong with being an introvert and enjoying time alone, but don’t poor social skills hold you back when you need them. Improving your social skills will also help you in whatever line of work or business you choose.
20. Do work you love. Not everyone gets to play football or in a rock band for a living, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find something you love waking up in the morning for. Keep looking for it, and don’t give up until you find it. Life is too short to fear Sunday evenings.
21. Follow your effort. One of Marc Cuban’s keys to success is to follow your effort, not your passion. If you don’t have a passion for anything in particular, pick something and do it as best you can. Passion often comes from doing something well.
22. Prepare to win. Another of Marc Cuban’s keys to success is that everyone has the desire to win, but very few are willing to do the work to prepare to win. If you care about winning, do the work.
23. You don’t always have to win. On the other hand, life isn’t always about winning. No matter how strong you are, no matter how rich, no matter how beautiful, no matter how smart, no matter how talented, no matter how loveable, there will always be someone better than you. In the end, we all end up in the same place – wherever that place may be.
24. Love your parents and cherish them. If they’re still around, give them all the love you’ve got. If you’ve been lucky enough to have loving parents, its easy to take them for granted because they’ve always been their for you. That won’t always be the case.
25. Don’t confuse pleasure with happiness Pleasure comes from the quick-fixes that give us joy – shopping, alcohol, sex, listening to great music, seeing great beauty. Happiness comes from self-actualization and meaning. Pleasure is important to a happy life, but pleasure alone is not sufficient.
26. Smile. If you smile, you will be happier.8
27. Improve your posture Did you know that your posture and body language not only shapes how people see you, but it also shapes how you feel about yourself? Watch this TED talk if you’re not convinced.
28. Find the time for what you want to do. A lot of us constantly complain about not having enough time, or being too busy to do things we want to do/accomplish. What we need to realize is that we’re the ones putting ourselves in those situations in the first place. If you feel trapped in a job, are you actively taking steps to extricate yourself from the situation? If you are, then you shouldn’t waste time complaining. If you’re not, what are you complaining about?
29. Don’t chase money for the sake of money. Having money is important in life, but only because it gives us the freedom to chase what we really want in life. You only get one life, and money is no good when you’re 6 feet in the ground.
30. Overcome laziness. Do you have big goals and dreams? Do you stop short of taking steps to make changes because you’d rather watch TV? Do you quit after a few tries? A little procrastination here and there is natural, but if you look back year after year and don’t see any changes, you probably need to work on overcoming your laziness.
31. Analyze your weaknesses. One of the hardest things for people to do is to be objective when it comes to their own weaknesses. We’re naturally inclined to rationalize away things we’re not good at, or believing that we’re better than we are. Once you can recognize your weaknesses and understand how they’re holding you back, you can take active steps to work on yourself.
32. Constantly work on improving yourself. If you’re not doing something to improve yourself everyday, then you’re not going to reach your goals.
33. Master the art of persuasion. Not to manipulate others, but so that you control your destiny
34. Stop trying to please everyone Trying to please everyone is a great way to ensure you never do anything remarkable.
35. Understand that personality traits aren’t static. While we all might have some natural inclinations and gifts based on genetics and the environment we were raised, everything is changeable. If you’re being held back by aspects of your personality, whether its laziness, social awkwardness, mediocre intelligence, know that these are all things that can be improved if you’re willing to work on them, instead of accepting them as immutable personality traits.
36. Simplify. The less you need to be happy, the happier you’ll be.
37. Surround yourself with the type of people you’d want to be. There’s a saying that you’re the average of your 5 closest friends. While this may not be a scientific fact, its a useful thought exercise. If you constantly spend time with negative people, you’ll become negative as well. If you spend time around people with no ambition, you’ll find your own dreams slipping away as well. On the other hand, surrounding yourself with awesome people who want the same things you want in life will set you up for success.
38. Design your ideal life. Its easy to go through life on auto-pilot if you don’t know what you want. Your first step is to figure out what you want from life. Read the 4 hour work week by Tim Ferriss if you want a great framework for accomplishing this.
39. Make a plan to attain your ideal life and execute. Nothing will be handed to you. If you wait around to “find your direction” in life, you’ll end up finding yourself on track for your exciting career at MegaCorp moving paper from one account to another. There’s no good reason to wander aimlessly through life once you’re out of college.
40. Stop giving up. Have you ever heard the story (urban myth?) of the man who was lost in the desert? He was found half a mile from a large oasis city. The point of this story is to illustrate the danger of quitting. Things are always hard until they get better, but you’ll never know how close you came to achieving your goals if you quit before you see them all the way through.
41. Block out haters. Constructive criticism is one thing, but know that if you’re out there trying to accomplish great things, you will attract haters who want to criticize for the sake of criticism. You’ll find haters frequently trolling message boards and Youtube comments. Don’t take their comments personally and don’t get sucked into flamewars.
42. Accept constructive criticism. At the same times, haters can be good because sometimes they can be right. Haters show us our weakness. You’ll likely recognize a legitimate criticisms when you feel the sting of cognitive dissonance – you want to dismiss the thought because it comes from someone critical of you, but you can’t help but shake that pit in your stomach. Instead of burying that feeling, accept that you might be in the wrong, and work to improve yourself so you don’t make the same mistake in the future.
43. Be the hero of your own movie. Does life feel joyless, hopeless? Do you feel like you’re stuck in a rut with no way out? You already know how to get out – be the hero of your own movie. Pretend you’re the hero character in a hollywood blockbuster. There’s a point in every movie where the hero is down and out, with seemingly no way out, yet he always finds a way to overcome the odds. Pretend you’re that hero, you’re in a tough spot, and its your job now to overcome the odds and come out on top – because its in the script. Pretend there’s a documentary crew following you around, and one day your kids will see what you’ve been doing. Do you want them to see a hero who overcomes the odds, or a loser who plays the victim? Last time I checked, the hero doesn’t overcome the odds by watching TV 5 hours a day. Do what needs to be done, no matter how hard it is.
45. Remember that you’re going to die one day. Steve jobs talks about this in his now famous commencement speech at Stanford in 2005. To quote the Dalai Lamai. Do we live as though we will never die; then die never having lived?
Today’s inspiring article was shared from the following website: http://www.keepinspiring.me/how-to-live-life-to-the-fullest/
Today’s story has reminded me of how very much I have to be thankful for. I live in a country where clean water is often taken for granted. I don’t have to wonder if I will have food to eat, all I have to wonder about is what will I eat. If I need to go somewhere, I get in my car and turn the key.
Life hands each of us a different story…but no matter what our circumstances, we all have the ability to choose. We choose our attitude. We choose how we will use our resources. We choose how we will treat others. We choose how or if we will use the gifts that God has blessed us with.
What kind of choices are you making? I hope that today’s story will inspire you to be the very best that you can be!
Meet the Wonder Women of Indonesia
Battling the darkness of poverty with lamps, filters and stoves one at a time.
I came to know Rovina Surat, one of our Wonder Women in late 2014.
Living in the driest part of Lembata Island, in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, is already tough to begin with, but the challenge for Ibu Rovina goes beyond the dry well and months of failed harvest.
She is a single mother of two, and had been living in her brother’s living room since her then-husband left for Malaysia in 2012, and never returned. She said that this was rock bottom.
Left to care for her daughters alone, she made ends meet through various creative ways: from renting out her old motorcycle to neighbours, to gathering honey from the forest, to skilfully using a traditional harpoon to hunt squid and sea cucumbers.
Simple dream
In 2014, she joined Kopernik’s Wonder Women program in the hope of realizing one simple dream: to build a home for her children.
At every opportunity, she enthusiastically talked about the d.light S300 solar light, which she always carried with her when hunting for squid before dawn.
This demonstration of simple technology in action worked better than any big budget advertising campaign, and Rovina began to sell more and more technologies.
Within a year and a half, she had saved enough money to start building her house, and in June 2015, she finished.
It is a simple house made of bricks and bamboo, but up on a hill with a million dollar view overlooking the beautiful Flores Sea, mountains, and breath-taking sunset.
To see Rovina standing in front of her house during sunset made me smile – and still makes me smile each time I remember it.
She is such an inspiration.
One villager in her community said: “I’m so proud to see Rovina now. She has transformed from a weeping widow without a house to an inspiring woman in our village.”
“Thanks to her, the whole village doesn’t have to live in complete darkness anymore.”
When asked her what her next dream was, she said she wanted to open her own small kiosk selling everyday goods.
“I used to keep all of my money in a soap tin and bury it in the ground. Now I’m starting to open my own bank account, so I can save more and make this dream come true.”
To see her grow through the journey she’s gone through, and transform from a woman to a “wonder woman”, is one of the most inspiring things about Kopernik’s Ibu Inspirasi programme.
Micro-social-entrepreneurs
Rovina is one of hundreds of “wonder women” in the initiative that has empowered women to become clean energy micro-social-entrepreneurs, connecting life-changing solar lights, clean cookstoves, and water filters with last mile communities in some of Indonesia’s poorest provinces.
More than 80 million people live without any electricity in Indonesia, and many more live with unreliable access to electricity.
Almost 100 million people rely on smoky, fuel-hungry three-stone fires for cooking.
And clean drinking water is often a costly luxury.
There is great demand for affordable, clean energy technologies, especially in the poorest provinces of eastern Indonesia, but geography and demography make energy access a huge challenge.
This is where Kopernik’s Wonder Women Eastern Indonesia initiative comes in.
Equipping women with the skills and resources to become clean energy micro-social entrepreneurs is a viable, sustainable way of connecting these technologies with the people who need them the most.
It creates access to clean energy technologies for last mile communities, allowing people to save money and time spent collecting firewood, buying costly kerosene, boiling water, or buying costly drinking water. It allows them to enjoy improved health and safety.
Not only that, the wonder women like Rovina and Ibu Bekti, get training on financial management, sales and marketing, public speaking, technology use and maintenance, as well as mentoring to motivate them to expand their businesses.
They also get the clean energy technologies on consignment, so they can start their own business without going into debt, and they earn something from every sale.
These women’s determination to help their families and villages, along with their smiles and laughter often seen amid challenging situations, make them truly some of the most inspiring people you’ll ever meet.
Today’s inspiring story is shared from the following website: https://www.ourbetterworld.org/en/story/kopernik-indonesia-wonder-women
I am very grateful for prayer. I have seen its work in my life. I am blessed by prayer daily. What is your experience with prayer? Is it difficult for you to feel like you are praying to a real being with real and perfect love for you?
Since the time of my near-death experience, prayer has become especially meaningful for me. I no longer have to imagine what God is like or wonder if He is listening to me. I don’t have to wonder if He knows me or if He loves me.
I would have never asked for a near-death experience, and yet my life and understanding have been exponentially blessed by that experience. It is now my hope that I help and bless the lives of others by sharing what I have learned.
I love the story that I am sharing today. I can tell that Kevin really understands prayers, whether or not he has full comprehension of other areas of his life. I hope that as you read today’s story, your life and understanding will be blessed!
God’s Under the Bed
My brother Kevin thinks God lives under his bed. At least that’s what I heard him say one night. He was praying out loud in his dark bedroom, and I stopped outside his closed door to listen. “Are you there, God?” he said. “Where are you? Oh, I see. Under the bed.” I giggled softly and tiptoed off to my own room.
Kevin’s unique perspectives are often a source of amusement. But that night something else lingered long after the humor. I realized for the first time the very different world Kevin lives in. He was born 30 years ago, mentally disabled as a result of difficulties during labor. Apart from his size (he’s 6’2″), there are few ways in which he is an adult. He reasons and communicates with the capabilities of a 7 year old, and he always will. He will probably always believe that God lives under his bed, that Santa Claus is the one who fills the space under our tree every Christmas, and that airplanes stay up in the sky because angels carry them.
I remember wondering if Kevin realizes he is different. Is he ever dissatisfied with his monotonous life? Up before dawn each day, off to work at a workshop for the disabled, home to walk our cocker spaniel, returning to eat his favorite macaroni-and-cheese for dinner, and later to bed. The only variation in the entire scheme are laundry days, when he hovers excitedly over the washing machine like a mother with her newborn child.
He does not seem dissatisfied. He lopes out to the bus every morning at 7:05 eager for a day of simple work. He wrings his hands excitedly while the water boils on the stove before dinner, and he stays up late twice a week to gather our dirty laundry for his next day’s laundry chores. And Saturdays — oh, the bliss of Saturdays! That’s the day my dad takes Kevin to the airport to have a soft drink, watch the planes land, and speculate loudly on the destination of each passenger inside. “That one’s goin’ to Chi-car-go!” Kevin shouts as he claps his hands. His anticipation is so great he can hardly sleep on Friday nights.
I don’t think Kevin knows anything exists outside his world of daily rituals and weekend field trips. He doesn’t know what it means to be discontent. His life is simple. He will never know the entanglements of wealth or power, and he does not care what brand of clothing he wears or what kind of food he eats. He recognizes no differences in people, treating each person as an equal and a friend. His needs have always been met, and he never worries that one day they may not be.
His hands are diligent. Kevin is never so happy as when he is working. When he unloads the dishwasher or vacuums the carpet, his heart is completely in it. He does not shrink from a job when it is begun, and he does not leave a job until it is finished. But when his tasks are done, Kevin knows how to relax. He is not obsessed with his work or the work of others.
His heart is pure. He still believes everyone tells the truth, promises must be kept, and when you are wrong, you apologize instead of argue. Free from pride and unconcerned with appearances, Kevin is not afraid to cry when he is hurt, angry or sorry. He is always transparent, always sincere.
And he trusts God. Not confined by intellectual reasoning, when he comes to Christ, he comes as a child. Kevin seems to know God — to really be friends with Him in a way that is difficult for an “educated” person to grasp. God seems like his closest companion.
In my moments of doubt and frustrations with my Christianity, I envy the security Kevin has in his simple faith. It is then that I am most willing to admit that he has some divine knowledge that rises above my mortal questions. It is then I realize that perhaps he is not the one with the handicap — I am. My obligations, my fears, my pride, my circumstances — they all become disabilities when I do not submit them to Christ.
Who knows if Kevin comprehends things I can never learn? After all, he has spent his whole life in that kind of innocence, praying after dark and soaking up the goodness and love of the Lord. And one day, when the mysteries of heaven are opened, and we are all amazed at how close God really is to our hearts, I’ll realize that God heard the simple prayers of a boy who believed that God lived under his bed.
Kevin won’t be surprised at all.
Today’s inspiring story shared from the following website: http://godslittleacre.net/inspirationalstories/gods_under_the_bed.html
I hope that you have been spending this week like me: concentrating on all that we have to be grateful for.
