Strength in family...

This topic has been on my heart for many years and it is more important as well as potent than almost any matter we face today.
I can only write this by means of what I have been taught and learned over the years. Satan and the world has long sought ways to separate the family dwellings. The reason is, to take away the strength that is in the many. In order for the world to control us and Satan to reach each person, there had to be a separation of family ties. The strongest part of the family has always been the dinner table. It is where we find out what our children are doing and who they are seeing as friends. The world knew that if they could separate the family, they could gain control of the children and cause a gap in the ties that make a family strong.
The T.V. is said to be one of the greatest invention of our time. I say it was and remains the most destructive invention ever created. The T.V. tray became the place of choice to eat our meals. No longer were questions and conversations about what our children are doing asked. No more would we laugh together at our happenings or know what classes our children were taking, passing, failing. The conversation was replaced with the words "hush, I want to hear this part" or "I am trying to watch this show!" Our children follow our lead and when we get too involved in something other than their lives, they will take it elsewhere. The cost of t.v. taking the place of our children is immeasurable. The price is way too high and the loss too large to even imagine.
Strength is always more effective in numbers and as we watch the breakdown of our family ties, we are in fact witnessing the fall of our future. Satan is winning and we are losing the most precious gift of all. The computer has come to us amidst the already unstable structure of our families and added more separation. To have to walk into a computer room to have a conversation with our children is a sad state of affairs. It is just one more wall being built between us and our family. If we lose contact with our children and our family, then we lose everything precious to us. We need Discipline. We can take our children back. We can become strong as a family again. But first, we have to choose to do so. We must weigh the facts and find where we are lacking and then, shut the t.v. off or close down the computer if we are to regain our place as a family.
Can we reverse this fall? Can we become a family as it was meant to be? You would find, I believe, that your children would be most responsive to the change. They yearn for our attention and grow from our actions. We do have the power to make our family what it was before we had t.v. and computers. We must choose to do this because our home is not the only place that suffers for our separation from the dinner table. The whole country is truly at stake when we choose to watch a show over listening and talking with our family. No one will starve while waiting for the entire family to sit down. If a show is THAT important to you, record it and watch it after you have spent time with your family. You will find that you didn't miss a thing on t.v. And if you must turn the t.v. on then watch a family show that it is ok for your children to talk and ask questions during. You might learn something new about your kids AND yourself. It is up to You.

Balancing the Scale...

Spring has Sprung... I think. Sixty degrees when I went to bed and snow on the ground when I woke. Sounds like Spring to me. Well, at least in Iowa, U.S.A. So, I do the balancing act, as I do every year. I rush to get things done when it is nice and then huddle in the warmth of the house when the nasty weather rears it's head again. While thinking about this, I had another thought. Isn't that really what I do with my Life? Try and balance the good and the bad, while trying to process what makes me a good or bad person?
I look back through my life and try so hard to see the "good" man that many have tried to show me. As a youngster, I surrounded myself with those "less fortunate" than me. That is not to say I had More. It is writing of a time when I was my blind Brothers eyes and I made friends with kids that had any and every physical affliction one could imagine. My father was sometimes leery of opening the front door because he wasn't sure who would be standing there. Would it be the deaf kid from next door? Maybe it was the kid that was born without a nose, save the two holes that made up the center of his face. He might even find the boy that was born with one breast that grew like a girls while the other stayed flat like a boys. Whether they were blind, crippled, slower in thought or just Different in some way from other kids, they made up the group I hung with and called my friends. Money nor material things meant nothing to them. Friendship was the most valuable commodity and sadly sometimes, the most easily traded.
I played the balancing act in those days too. I would slip away to the river to meet friends that had No afflictions from time to time. But the two worlds rarely met and when they did, they simply were not compatible. I grew up following the same pattern. One side of my world, being a hero and the other side of the Spectrum, I was "freak" because no one could understand why I would hang with kids that were so unlike me. Was I a good kid or was I merely someone that felt more comfortable with kids that depended on me, looked up to me and appreciated me just for being there? I am still processing that one after 45 years.
Enter, present day. I think my father is still a little afraid to open my front door. He might still find someone standing there with afflictions that make them unacceptable or at the very least, avoidable by the rest of the world. Still trying to balance my life but now, it is for a different reason. I am trying to decipher of I am a good man or a not so good man that surrounds himself with reasons to look good to others.I want to believe so badly in my heart that the good and kind things I do today are because I simply have a good heart. I want to feel inside that I Have reached out to those "less fortunate" because of a love that was instilled in my soul many, many years ago and not because I am trying to find a balance in my life.
DO I Make any sense to you at all??? Welcome to my little world of Bipolar and uncertainties. Of black and white and Grey and Abstract thoughts. What truly gives cause to someone, anyone, calling me a good man? I have hidden from the world a often as I could. I have loved and left and have cheated on hearts that loved me simply because I was me. A confusing occurrence all in and of itself. Issues in my life that find me driving to the Lake, early on a calm, dark Spring morning, to sit, headlights on the river in front of me, and cry. To try and convince myself that I am worthy of the love and the friendships that are part of my daily living. To tell myself that I reach out and help people enough to balance the hurt and pain I cause those that choose to love me. Do the words "Good Man" apply to me, even though I have hurt so may over the years? For every wrong I do, making certain I do something that is right... Is that balancing or do the wrong always weigh more than the good?
I guess that I wonder... can one truly balance the scale once it is loaded with so much sorrow and remorse for causing someone to cry? I wonder...