Chinese fortune cookie!

Excuses, excuses, excuses......hard to sell? I think not! Not in our society today.....Victim victim,victim.....even now after all my work at not being a victim.....My life as a runaway from sexual abuse and trauma...yes I have been a victim, I have walked that line of not being sure if I could possibly live and be functional......A padded room at times seemed like a place of security and freedom....... But my life has changed, I worked hard at being the woman I am today only to realize how imbedded it is into my core.....what do I expect from life anyway, how silly for me to expect not to fall if I go on ice not prepared......I remembered a scripture today, one from when I was very religious that shares this: Jesus says to the man crippled from birth....after he learned the man had been sitting there along time......"Dont you want to get well"...the man made many excuses, how he didnt have help.....that when ever he tries, something gets in his way.....sound familiar! But Jesus said get up pick up your mat and walk.....I used to think that it was a bit insensitive of Jesus....but realized today......the point wasn't what I had originally thought......
  The point Jesus makes is to stop making excuses and get up...stop blaming everything and every one for the outcome of your life.....do what ever it takes....do something, its better than nothing.....we look for miracles and some one to save us from what we are handed....but how foolish is that.......how many of us complain about our weight while sitting on the couch......or like me wonder why every one is stepping on me when I made my self a door mat.....in all Jesus miracles he performed he always required people to take the steps....the blind man he made him go and wash....the spit and mud he (Jesus put on his eyes)
Why is it such a surprise when random bad things in life occur.....when some one is surprised that they fail a test because they have a hang over or halfheartedly studied or get a DUI because they drove drunk.....we live in a society that makes excuses.......over and over and I am no better........we have all been handed things in life they may not be fair.....but that is never the point.....it is our choices that define who we are and if we sit around wallowing and wonder why things are the way they are.....it isn't anyone's fault but our own.......if you spend too much time looking up and fall over a root......lol
...its not the trees fault......it isnt the systems fault I have no insurance......it isnt my x-husbands fault......it isn't the cosmos fault if I have melanoma after baking in tanning beds.......how did we get like this......do I want someone to blame for that also? Yes, probably!!!! Why not its easier......
I mean come on seriously......some things do just happen but how we handle them is up to us......I am fifty years old and still surprised that I have lived so long.........I will probably live until I am eighty! I need to stop being surprised that I actually am alive and start actually doing something to take care of my self.....I think of the four year old girl who last week called 911 when her mom had a medical emergency saving her mothers life......what excuses am I making..... why and who is to blame for my own mentality....
No one but my self.....it is what Jesus was trying to say.......you are not a victim....you are responsible for your self.....do you EVEN want to get better is what he asked......it is time to stop focusing on all that is wrong and focus on all that is right.......we choose what we have and how we end up.....in every way! Even as a teenager.....we hand our children too many excuses....Our children reflect our own mentality ; its my mother, its my father, the kids they hang with ,the peer pressure, the broken home, the government! We are creating our own hole in every way and we have no excuses....... IT IS Very simple! ITS ME!

Funny, I just finished having sushi at the local place and read my fortune cookie!!! It says: Excuses are easy to manufacture, but hard to sell! There is nothing worse than sitting around hoping someone will fill your excuse bucket.....I need to be called higher and am so grateful for the fortune cookie in my life.

The Origin

The title of the post first came to me a couple of years ago as my son and I sat in the emergency room of a local hospital. As many of us have experienced, we could be "dying" and still be waiting to be seen.
My son Tim is an intellectual, with a great sense of humor and although in a deal of pain,  sat and laughed at the thought of a emergency room joke book entitled "In the process of dying".
We discussed how it might feel seeing something like that if we had been in a very serious situation, so after some thought at least for the three hours we waited, we decided  against  it.

Why a Blog? Why now after a couple of years.  Realizing after a friend asked my advice regarding grief ( her friend whom had lost two sisters had been struggling with grief for years and she hadn't know how to help her ) that there is so so much to learn. So much to share.
All of us are in some kind of process; living, growing, grieving and dying and it is important to see it all as journey. A Journey that we all share and like birth, every ones experience is different. Time is never the same for me as it is for you, neither is grief.

We all grieve and learn differently, some never learn, others force them selves to learn or are forced by life's circumstances. Some allow them selves the grace and time to heal. Regardless, no one is better than another and although on the outside  we try to help each other, it is important to realize much of the process is alone.

Dying, whether our selves or people close to us is really a process that many do not understand and/or are afraid to talk about. Many of us cannot even listen to people who are going through this process whether they are going through it them selves or are witnessing family die,for that matter. We don't know what to say, words are caught in our throats, are brains scrambles for the right words as we meet some one with cancer or who was just recently widowed and we can only seem to mutter "I am so sorry". Maybe reach out the hand in comfort.
Many of us when we find out the person who has died was old there may be a little relief, for us, rationalizing they lived their lives..... its was their time, as we quickly look for the nearest exit sign.

In 1991 I watched my mother dye of lung cancer, a horrible death and heard many around me talk about people who have aged. They had lived there lives and it is a blessing they did not suffer long. All words of comfort, all well meaning, but of no use for the pain and suffering the sisters, the daughter, the sons, the husband or wife are going through.

We dont know how to feel others suffering of loved ones that have aged. We dont know how to talk about our inevitable ends. The fears, the unknown......... we live in the Pepsi generation were life is about the now and just have a mountain dew or a Pepsi and all will be well with the world. We are so removed from life as a society, so when tragedy occurs we have few people to turn to and really talk about it in a deep way.

After the death of my mother I looked around at people on the streets as they went merrily along and thought dont they get it. A wonderful woman is gone. Why do they not feel it, how can they not see that the world I lived in has stopped for a moment. Then as I was driving passing a funeral home I saw her a woman in her late sixties, coming out alone from a funeral home leaning on a pole crying. I couldn't pass her by and it didn't matter to me about the fact I was a stranger I could feel her pain. I pulled over and went up to her and asked her if she was OK? Arms out stretched to catch her she held my arm and cried and just told me her best friend had died suddenly of a heart attack. It was tragic and what was more tragic is I had pasted that funeral home for many years and this was the first time I had seen a woman in tears or anyone for that matter.

There is so much to learn from people and the way people process their lives and grieve the loss of others.
We can share in this with one another and in that process of dying learn to live and see things in a more sensitive and caring way. It is from things like death we really learn to live.