Authenticity
To Live With Grace means the real YOU shows up every single day. You do your best with what you have. To recover from loss and grief — or to turn your Time, Talent, and Treasure into Legendary Wealth — you become all you are meant to be when you choose to be actively authentic.
Definition: Being authentic is living your life according to your own values and goals, rather than those of other people. Put simply, authenticity means you’re true to your own personality, values, and spirit, regardless of the pressure that you’re under to act otherwise. People who are Authentic are comfortable in their “own skin” and succeed in life. People who have no idea who they are or what they value rarely find the success they desire.
My First Christmas Without Jan…
"Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God's perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with...
Love With Grace™: Legacy & Legendary Happiness
"Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our...
A Graceful Christmas
"Christmas is the spirit of giving without a thought of getting. It is happiness because we see joy in people. It is forgetting self and finding time for others. It is discarding the meaningless and stressing the true values." ~ Thomas S. Monson My First Christmas...
Marriage With Grace™
"Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly." ~ Richard Bach A thought on the future... This past week I edited the full version of...
Hope & Grace
"Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us." ~ Samuel Smiles A Reason to Hope... Our dream is to love and be loved again. It is also our greatest hope in life. So often when we lose a person we love, hope is the...
Our Future
Future Fears Vs. Our Current Loss…
When we lose someone very close to us, as I did Jan, the future seems murky and foreboding.
Bad things have happened to us.
We project that bad things will continue to happen to us.
And fear will control every decision we make and every action we take.
Until we accept our loss…
And accept responsibility for moving forward.
Everyone Grieves Sometime…
Choose Life…
For many of us, the dark times define our life.
And darken our future.
It is important to remember that no one is happy all the time.
No one is sad all the time.
The highs and lows of our life define the rhythm of our beliefs, faith, and actions.
Reflections on Loss
I’m Not Sure…
Precisely what it means to lose someone you love.
When Jan passed at 5:15 AM on January 9, 2022, her body succumbed to the ravages of a highly aggressive form of brain cancer—90 days exactly from diagnosis to death.
Clearly, her body is gone but her spirit lives deeply in every breath I take and every thought I think.
After 30 years of the best marriage anyone could hope and pray for, I am left with her legacy, wisdom, and everything that made her “her” is still alive in me today.
The Grace Habit
An Important Tool For Healing…
So much of our lives are spent in search of meaning and purpose, especially during a time of pain and suffering.
The other day, as we were wrapping up a Grief Share session, I advised a young woman that she would carry her grief and pain until she made Grace a habit.
Every time she mentioned her departed husband’s name she would break into uncontrollable tears. Just hearing his name, or speaking it triggered a torrent of tears.
Quite inadvertently she had made grief and crying an unwelcome habit.
Feeling Angry?
Remember, To Love and Be Loved you Must Love…
Much of the time I spent in anger—with God, the doctors, my pitiful life, everything—was nothing more than wasted energy and ultimately, wasted life.
It is so easy to fall into the anger trap but, like a mouse, if you don’t chase the cheese you won’t get caught!
What is hard to understand is that it is impossible to love when your heart is filled with hate.
Sure, you will intellectually get it, but our emotions create a blockage that short circuits our belief that anger is robbing us of love.
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Really, Me?
"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair." ~ C. S. Lewis The Journey From Despair to Grace... I like to think of...
Grief-Stricken vs. Grace-Stricken
You Are Just…
Grief-stricken and everything will be ok…
Over time you will feel better and not hurt so much…
You just need to get over it and snapback…
If you have experienced a great loss you have heard these words. Maybe not exactly the same words but the same meaning and intent.
People, especially those close to you, have no idea what to say to help, so they express their feelings in odd ways. Usually with what they think you want to hear.
The Power of Authenticity
The Power Authenticity Has Over Your Life…
Psychologists define Authenticity as someone who isn’t afraid to be true to who they are, including their personality, values, and principles in life. They don’t bother compromising the entirety of who they are just for the comfort of others.
If you need to cry, you cry.
If you need to shelter yourself, you do it.
You never betray your core values in hopes of being accepted rather than being authentic.
When happy, sad, or when moving from grief to Grace.