Stolen Wisdom

I ran across another gem of a post on the social medias today. Specifically, it was the Facebooks. There’s so much wisdom in it that I’m going to copy it and share it as is. It’s called “Habits I Stole from My Grandma that Make me Disgustingly Calm & Unbothered.” Of course there will be a link to the actual post after:

“1. Wash the stress off in the shower, then leave it there. She said your bed is for rest and your shower is for release — never mix them up. Let the water carry the day’s weight down the drain, step out, and start clean. Some things are meant to be rinsed off, not slept with.

2. Move slow, especially when everything feels fast. She walked slow, spoke slow, poured her tea slow. Rushing tells your body there’s an emergency even when there isn’t one. The calmest person in any room, she said, is almost always the one who simply refused to hurry.

3. Say your no plain, with nothing after it. No apology, no explanation, no reason someone can argue with. “That doesn’t work for me” was a full sentence to her. She said every excuse you add is just a handle for them to pull. Give them nothing to grip, and they let go.

4. Keep a little money tucked away that’s only yours. Not for secrets — for peace. She said a woman with her own quiet cushion never stays anywhere for the wrong reason. Calm isn’t just a feeling, she told me. Sometimes it’s a small amount saved that nobody can touch.

5. Don’t argue with anyone who needs to be right. You can’t reason a person out of a story they’ve chosen to believe about you. So she let them keep it and kept her own peace. Unbothered, she said, isn’t winning the fight — it’s quietly deciding not to show up to it.

6. Eat something warm when the sadness comes. Not for comfort — for the body. She said a cold meal on a cold mood makes both of them worse. Warmth is the oldest signal there is that the danger has passed and you’re safe now. Let your body hear it and settle.

7. Leave while you’re still enjoying yourself. She ended the call first, left the gathering early, walked away from talk that only circled. Staying past your limit, she said, is exactly how resentment is built. People remember the woman who left while things were still good.

8. Treat other people’s panic as their weather, not yours. Their urgency is a report on their own planning — it’s not an alarm your body has to answer. She paused before absorbing anyone’s emergency, and most of the time, she simply chose not to pick it up.

9. Keep your hands busy when your mind won’t quiet. Knead the dough, tend the garden, fold the washing slow. Idle hands, she said, let worry take the wheel. Give the restlessness something useful to do, and the storm inside quiets while something small gets made.

10. Set the grudge down — you’re the only one carrying it. The anger you hold punishes you, not them; they sleep just fine. Letting it go, she said, wasn’t forgiveness for their sake. It was finally unclenching the hands you’d kept in fists for years. Set it down.

11. Sit in the quiet every day, even for a few minutes. No radio, no chatter, no phone — just you and the silence most people run from. She said you can’t hear your own life over everyone else’s noise. The answers you keep searching for are already waiting in the still.

12. Keep one small ritual that belongs to no one but you. Tea at the same hour, the same slow evening walk, the same quiet moment before bed. Never shared, never explained. A truly unbothered woman, she showed me, always keeps one room that only she holds the key to.”

Going Back in Time

“Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did was wrong. But we think you’re crazy to make an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us… In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain…and an athlete…and a basket case…a princess…and a criminal. Does that answer your question?… Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club” (from the movie The Breakfast Club).

I may be the only one, but I very much doubt it. The older I get, the more I really want to go back in time. I don’t think I’d stay — I’d miss the new technology too much, especially the GPS that keeps me from getting lost. But I think I’d like to visit some of the place where I grew up and see some of the people that aren’t around anymore, even if only for a few moments.

I know there’s no Delorean that’s going to take me back to 1985. I know there’s no time machine that can ever take me back to my childhood. Sometimes, I wonder if my memories might be a little rose-colored, conveniently leaving out all the hard and stressful moments.

Still, I have memories. I have some really good memories. Plus, music always seems to act as a kind of time machine to take me back, especially if it’s a song from back when. It could be a certain smell, or a combination of smells that instantly takes me back. And of course, Christmas makes me more nostalgic than any other time of the year.

I think what I’m really longing for can only be satisfied in heaven. I do think heaven will be all those best moments in my life, multiplied by a million, and never-ending. It will be that feeling of the first day of vacation or the last day of school times infinity. Plus, I’m sure those people I miss most will be there.

So I’d still like to go back, but I’m not holding my breath on this one. I know that what lies ahead is far better than what lies behind me because with God, the best is still yet to come.

An Excerpt from The Magician’s Nephew

If you want a good read (and you’re okay with reading children’s books), then I suggest The Chronicles of Narnia. It’s best to start with The Magician’s Nephew, a story which tells of the origins of Narnia. I’ve included an excerpt to give you an idea. Also, good books are good books, no matter who the intended target audience is. I’ve learned that much in my life so far:

“Well,” said Aslan, “can you use a spade and a plough and raise food out of the earth?”

“Yes, sir, I could do a bit of that sort of work: being brought up to it, like.”

“Can you rule these creatures kindly and fairly, remembering that they are not slaves like the dumb beasts of the world you were born in, but Talking Beasts and free subjects?”

“I see that, sir,” replied the Cabby. “I’d try to do the square thing by them all.”

“And would you bring up your children and grandchildren to do the same?”

“It’d be up to me to try, sir. I’d do my best: wouldn’t we, Nellie?”

“And you wouldn’t have favorites either among your own children or among the other creatures, or let any hold another under or use it hardly?”

“I never could abide such goings on, sir, and that’s the truth. I’d give ’em what for if I caught ’em at it,” said the Cabby. (All through this conversation his voice was growing slower and richer. More like the country voice he must have had as a boy and less like the sharp, quick voice of a cockney.)

“And if enemies came against the land (for enemies will arise) and there was war, would you be the first in the charge and the last in the retreat?”

“Well, sir,” said the Cabby very slowly, “a chap don’t exactly know till he’s been tried. I dare say I might turn out ever such a soft ’un. Never did no fighting except with my fists. I’d try—that is, I ’ope I’d try—to do my bit.”

“Then,” said Aslan, “you will have done all that a King should do.”

C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

A Narnian Excerpt

Because I’m sleepy and my brain is banana pudding, here’s an excerpt from one of my favorite books out of one of my favorite series. The book is The Horse and His Boy, and the series is The Chronicles of Narnia. Both are by C. S. Lewis, and I recommend both, whether you’ve never read them before or have read them each 100 times:

“Bree turned round at last, his face mournful as only a horse’s can be. ‘I shall go back to Calormen,’ he said.

‘What?’ said Aravis. ‘Back to slavery!’

‘Yes,’ said Bree. ‘Slavery is all I’m fit for. How can I ever show my face among the free Horses of Narnia?—I who left a mare and a girl and a boy to be eaten by lions while I galloped all I could to save my own wretched skin!’

“We all ran as hard as we could,” said Hwin.

‘Shasta didn’t!’ snorted Bree. ‘At least he ran in the right direction: ran back. And that is what shames me most of all. I, who called myself a war horse and boasted of a hundred fights, to be beaten by a little human boy—a child, a mere foal, who had never held a sword nor had any good nurture or example in his life!’

‘I know,’ said Aravis. ‘I felt just the same. Shasta was marvelous. I’m just as bad as you, Bree. I’ve been snubbing him and looking down on him ever since you met us and now he turns out to be the best of us all. . . .’

‘It’s all very well for you,’ said Bree. ‘You haven’t disgraced yourself. But I’ve lost everything.’

‘My good Horse,’ said the Hermit, who had approached them unnoticed because his bare feet made so little noise on that sweet, dewy grass. ‘My good Horse, you’ve lost nothing but your self-conceit. No, no, cousin. Don’t put back your ears and shake your mane at me. If you are really so humbled as you sounded a minute ago, you must learn to listen to sense. You’re not quite the great Horse you had come to think, from living among poor dumb horses. Of course you were braver and cleverer than them. You could hardly help being that. It doesn’t follow that you’ll be anyone very special in Narnia. But as long as you know you’re nobody very special, you’ll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole'” (C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy).

Growing Through Obedience

“‘Aslan” said Lucy “you’re bigger’.
‘That is because you are older, little one’ answered he.
‘Not because you are?’
‘I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.’ (C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian).”

There’s one part in Prince Caspian where Aslan calls out to Lucy to follow him, and to get the others to do the same. The catch is that Lucy is the only one who can see or hear him. The others will have to take her word for it.

That’s the moment where Lucy chooses to trust in Aslan and obey him, even though it might feel like she’s the only one. She has to go even if she goes alone.

That’s what genuine faith looks like. Faithfulness and obedience can be lonely sometimes, especially when so many others are too busy trying to blend in and not make waves to truly follow Jesus. When you are obedient, sometimes your biggest critics will come from inside the Church, not outside.

William Carey, the father of modern missions, faced opposition from other clergymen for wanting to take the gospel to India. Imagine that. Pastors and church leaders not wanting to take the gospel to unreached people. But it happened.

William Carey’s faithfulness made it possible for others to take the gospel around the world, so that heaven could be filled with voices from every tribe and tongue, every skin color and hair color, gathered around the throne as depicted in the book of Revelation.

Obedience might mean standing in the minority for what’s right versus what’s popular. William Penn once said, “Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.”

In Prince Caspian, Lucy gets the rest to follow her. Some were more willing than others to go, but they all went. None of them could see Aslan until after they had stepped out in faith, but once they were committed to following, they could see him leading the way.

That’s the way faith is sometimes. You can’t see God until you obey what He’s told you to do. Obedience leads to faith being made sight.

Victorian With a Twist

Charlotte Markham

I know. It sounds like a cocktail gone horribly wrong. It would be. But for a novel, it fits together quite well.

I’m talking about the book, Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling by Michael Boccacino. If Emily Bronte and Tim Burton had a secret love child, it would be this book, a sort of Jane Eyre meets Beetlejuice. Needless to say, I loved it.

The atmosphere starts off gothic and gets weirder from there. I was immediately captured from the very first sentence and could hardly put the book down until I read the very last sentence. I could very easily see this book turned into a motion picture directed by the above-mentioned Tim Burton (or some other director with an eccentric and unorthodox flair).

I won’t give away any of the plot surprises other than to say that the novel starts off with a newly-hired governess to a man recently widowed and his two sons. Then there’s a horrible, unexplainable murder. And it gets better from there.

If you loved the book Johnathan Strange & Mr Norell by Susanna Clarke or any of the fantasy writings by George MacDonald or C.S. Lewis, (another amazing Victorian/fantasy blend), you’ll love this as well. If you don’t care to have your perfect Victorian world sullied by the supernatural and otherworldly, then I’d advise you to skip this one.

It took me approximately two years and two days to read it. Two years to think about buying the book and then deciding to put it on my birthday wish-list and once I had it in my hands, two days to actually read it. It would have been less if I hadn’t had to bother with trivial things like eating and sleeping.

All that to say this: check out the book. You’ll like it. I’ve saved you the trouble and put the link to the amazon page on here, so you have no more excuses. Now go and buy it.