nineteen

From Rachel's Challenge (http://www.rachelschallenge.com/)

1. Eliminate Prejudice by Looking for the Best in Others

2. Dare to Dream - Keep a Journal - Set Goals

3. Choose Your Influences - input determines output

4. Kind Words - Small Acts of Kindness = HUGE impact

5. Start a CHAIN REACTION with Family and Friends

eighteen

{ I hesitate to even write this and put it out there for others because really, it is for me. It's part of my grieving and part of my healing. Yet, I do put it out there because I want people to remember the importance of human connection. Connection not through email and text, and yes even blogs, but the real thing. Connection through the human spirit. }

My muse awakens me in the night and I must write…
Why do these memories flood back to me everyday, why can’t I just forget? Why, now, do I think of you every day when I haven’t seen or thought of you for years? Why can’t I just forget. Why can’t I believe that you are gone? Are you really gone? You seem so real to me in my dreams, in my thoughts, in my pictures and in my memories. And yet all the proof is there, you are gone. I’m part realist and have to believe it. Yet I’m part dreamer and don’t want it to be real. Wasn’t it all just a bad dream. Wasn’t it just yesterday that you took me driving on the country roads singing me your favorites like Hank and Bread and Jim? Now I hear those favorites and it is impossible for me to forget. You are still here. You are still here when I listen to the radio and hear these songs. You are still here when I see my little boy and I think of your little boy and I wonder if he’s already forgotten. Has he forgotten or will have these sudden memories like I have these sudden memories and we somehow you just keep holding on. We can't forget. You appear from nowhere. You are a smell or a sound. You are a whisper or a song. You are a picture that I see. I miss you. How is it possible that I miss you now more than ever. When was the last time I saw you? August 2003. Has it really been that long? I haven’t seen you for years yet for all that time that I didn’t see you and I didn’t think of you, you were a part of me… all along. You were a part of me all that time because a long time ago, you were the part of me that helped me survive. You were the part of me that got me through. I called you my boyfriend and you called me your girlfriend, but was that really what we were? After you no longer called me your girlfriend and I no longer called you my boyfriend, we laughed at the thought of it. We were best friends is what we really were. We talked and we talked and we talked and talked so much that I got grounded from the phone “until spring.” And we found ways to talk more and you became my best friend. The person I trusted more than any other person and you were the person that I needed to be there for me. I told you that you were my “strength when I was weak, you were my voice when I couldn’t speak, you were my eyes when I couldn’t see, you saw the bester there was in me, you lifted me up when I couldn’t reach, you gave me faith because you believed, I’m everything I am because you loved me.” You loved me in a way that was different than anyone had loved me before. You loved me for who I was and who I was going to become. But where was I when you needed me? You reached out to me. I tried to reach back but I feel like I pressured you and was too bossy and too pushy. And I feel like I let you down. I wasn’t there for you in the way you needed me to be. Where was I? Why couldn’t I figure out the way for me to be there for you that was right for you? Why wasn’t I your strength, your voice, your eyes. Why didn’t I see the best in you and help you to become everything you needed to be? What happened? Did life happen? It seems so easy to toss it aside and say life happened. Life happened and I wasn’t there for you. I thought you would be fine. I thought you were okay. How could life happen like this? You were so many things to me and I let you down and now you aren’t here. How could you leave like this? I didn’t even know you anymore? I didn’t know your dreams and troubles. I didn’t know your anxious or gave you reassurance. How does that happen? How does life just happen? And then when life no longer happens, death happens. And when death happens all we are left with is questions. Why? How? What? Why? Why? Why!

seventeen

Always remember to...

Live as if it's your last day so you have no regrets and don't wish you couldn't have done something else or said something else.

I'm reading Rachel's Tears right now. It's a story about one of the students killed in the Columbine Shooting in 1999. It's a very good read and inspriational book. The relationship Rachel has with God is one all of us should strive to have.

sixteen

Always Remember...If it's meant to be, it will happen.

This is Tyler's famous line. Whenever I'm worrying about something, he quotes it.

fifteen

Always remember to...Take pride in how far you've come. Have faith in how far you can go.

I've been working out a lot lately, even ran a 5k without having to walk yesterday, but am still struggling with eating better and losing weight. Pride, faith. I need to have both.

fourteen

Always Remember To...Live Simply

thirteen

In reference to Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery...

Always Remember..."It matters less of what they went to find that what they did find...as a tem they were better than the sum of the parts." --Dayton Dalton

twelve

I recently wrote about The 5 People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. I liked it so much that I read tuesdays with Morrie and finished it earlier this week. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book.

Always remember...

"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in."

"Most of us all walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do."

"Love eachother or perish."

"It's very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it."

"Mitch, it is impossible for the old not to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that."

eleven

Scott Thorson was a dear friend of mine from high school. On May 14 he died. I was heartbroken. For myself, for his family, for his son, for his friends. At Scott's funeral, Rev. Chris Kadrmas said,

Always remember..."God can't take death away from you, but he can roll up his sleeves and go through it with you."

So, though we may be heartbroken, God is heartbroken with us and will help to heal our hearts.

I will always miss Scott.

ten

Always remember to...Smile before bed, you'll sleep better.

nine

Always remember to...



Watch your thoughts; they become your words.



Watch your words; they become your actions.



Watch your actions; they become your habits.



Watch your habits; they become your character.



Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.



---Frank Outlaw

eight

From the five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Albom:

1. "That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate the breeze from the wind...Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know."

2. "Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices."

3. "Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves."

4. "Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end, Love doesn't."

5. "...the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one."

seven

Always remember...It's nice to be important, but more important to be nice.

(Taken from the bottom of my good friend Rachel's email signature.)

Lost

I've lost my yellow sheet of paper that I have been keeping my quotes on for so, so long. I'm sad. I keep waiting for it to turn up and it won't. I was slowly putting quotes on here that I had on my sheet...now I wish I would have put them all up at once. Maybe I'll keep hope alive and maybe it will still show up. Until then, I'll have to keep my eye open for new ones.

six

Always Remember...Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

I watched a very inspirational video today by Randy Pausch and encourage anyone out there reading to watch it also.

five

Always remember...You are in charge of your own day.

I was at the boys basketball district tournament over the weekend and read this on a piece of artwork in the staff lounge. It made me think of all the grumpy days I've had and really, I don't need to have those grumpy days, I just need to take charge of my grumpy days and make them better.

four

Always remember...When the pupil is ready, the teacher will come.

three

Always remember to...Follow your insincts.

How often have we all just felt like something was right, did the opposite and then wished we would have followed our instincts? I'm sure that there are stories upon stories of where people wish they would have believed their gut.

two

Always remember to...Smile, people will wonder what you've been up to.

one

Always remember to...Keep the promises you make to yourself.

For a long time now...

Last year I read a book that inspired me to be a better person. I can't even remember the name of the book, but as I was reading it, I kept finding the words of the characters inspiring. Since then, I've been writing quotes and phrases down that inspire me. They are on scraps of paper everywhere and today I decided that I need to put them all in one place. So, as I find them and others, I'll post them so that I always remember...