Tag Archives: Life

Just The Way You Are – But Wait, There’s More!

Charecteristics, Life Notes, Music Related, My Life, Rants, Thought, , ,

Clearly, I was too brief … I have heard this song several times in the past few days. PLUS, another song that … let’s just say “punctuated the point” that I need to expand on my previous post.

Yes. This song is Bruno singing about the beautiful woman in his life.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the words in this song.

At the time my wife and I got married, there were numerous other couples who had gotten or were getting married. I seriously have no idea just how many marriages I was aware of over the course of 5 years.

I state that, to state this … of those many marriages … MOST … yes most of those marriages have ended. Divorce. I will not spend time picking apart those marriages. It is NOT my place, nor am I even close to being an “expert” in marriage relationships. Lord knows, I had my flaws.

The purpose of this continued post is … the words of the song.

(I have the video below. Watch it and LISTEN)

Whomever you are with. BE INTENTIONAL! BE REAL!

You need to OPENLY tell them how wonderful they are. You need to intentionally tell them how important they are. You need to randomly/consistently find and emphasize the positives!

LOVE is not “sex when you want it”. LOVE … TRUE LOVE ‘REQUIRES’ effort. Love is omnidirectional in effort as well as in benefits.

Accentuate the Positives!

Love is Patient, Love is Kind. Love does not envy, Love does not boast, Love is not Proud. Love does not dishonor others, Love is not self-seeking, Love is not easily angered, Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil; Love rejoices with truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love Never Fails.

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Just The Way You Are — Take The Time!

Charecteristics, Life Notes, Music Related, My Life, Rants, Thought, , ,

I have shared before how special this song is to me. I made the last chorus of this song a ringer for Lucenda’s phone. Only when I called her phone, it would play. I would leave notes all over the place telling Lucenda how beautiful she was, how much I loved her, how special she was, how important she was. When this song came out, it was … in essence … a culmination of the years of notes I had left for her (but sung by someone with talent).

Today, I was listening to it again as I was standing in my kitchen. I thought of something different this time. I knew that I needed to type these thoughts for others to see.

We do not know when our time on this earth will end. We do not know if today is our last chance to BE a light to someone.

Take the time to find the positives. Take the time to be encouraging. Take the time to be a friend. Take the time to be a helper. Take the time to be a listener. Take the time to BE POSITIVE. Take the time to be SELFLESS.

Your words could very well be the last words someone may ever hear on this earth. Choose wisely what you say.

A Traumatic Detour

Charecteristics, Life Notes, Thought,

You are driving down the highway. You are sailing along on your way to something you just can’t miss. Music playing on the radio. You are singing along. Life is good.

Suddenly, you react before you even realize what is happening. There is an accident happening just up the highway in front of you. You are looking all around to avoid being hit as you slam on your brakes. You come to a sudden stop. Your coffee landed in the floorboard. The cars behind you managed to stop without any more “accidents” happening.

You, along with other drivers, jump out and run to see if there are survivors to be helped. There is a person laying in a pool of blood at the edge of the road. They must have been thrown from the vehicle. There is evidence of a large animal in a mangled mass on the road. You see antlers, it must be a deer. There are now 7 or more people around you and the driver. One person pushes forward saying they are a doctor. You hear crying. More than one person is on the phone calling this in.

After 2 hours, you are back in your vehicle, driving to … where are you going? You can’t go to work like this. OH NO! WORK! You immediately call your boss to tell them what just happened. Your boss tells you to go home and take the day to rest and recover. You are in a daze. You are in the parking lot of a gas station, in your car, covered in blood. You snap out of it and drive home.

You get home, you throw the bloody clothes in a pile. You take a long shower. You feel like you cannot get the blood off. You are thinking now of what you saw. The blood. That person. How are they doing? Will they survive? That is going to be one crazy insurance claim for them to report. What are the odds of a doctor being behind you? What if that deer waited a moment? Would you be the one to have …. Would it have been me? I missed work. My sick days are limited. I had the report to finish. This is really going to mess things up at work. We are already shorthanded. I hope I can get the blood out of that shirt. That was my favorite shirt. The water is cold. I have it on HOT. How long have I been standing here?

Traumatic things happen in our lives. No matter how hard we try to convince ourselves of the contrary, we most often, NOT prepared for tragedy. It comes at us, often, out of “nowhere” as it were. Some tragedies are extremely overwhelming. Loss of a job, weather disasters, death of a loved one.

That day of the accident on the highway was traumatic. It disrupted your routine. It brought about unsettling feelings. It led to horrible nightmares. What you did not know … a mile down the highway from where the accident took place was a bridge you have crossed numerous times going to and from work each day. That day, just moments after the accident you encountered, a section of that bridge you would have crossed collapsed onto the road below it. No lives were lost from it.

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Captain’s Log …. DUDE YOU ARE WAAAAY BEHIND!

My Life, , ,

I have been a tad busy since my last post … (cough)

I was focused on a huge project this past spring. You see, my son was about to graduate from high school. I had taken on the task of preparing the Senior Slideshow. If you know me, you know, nothing is JUST what it was asked to be. I proceeded to create a Senior video, highlighting each student. Oh, and for those to do not know, my son has been homeschooled. Our “Umbrella School” is based just outside Knoxville, TN. Yeah, talk about “remote” working. We moved to Michigan last November.

ANNNNYWAY, being that the school is SailAway Learning & Academy, and much of the curriculum they have is “nautically themed”, I naturally thought of “Sailing” by Christopher Cross as the background music for the video. Well, again, nothing about me is simple. It took time to find the RIGHT instrumental version of the song. THEN, oh yeah, THEN, since the song was NOT long enough, I had to “creatively” edit/extend the music to fit. It was a painstaking task, that I accomplished!

Again, it is me. SO, this project was NOT the ONLY thing I did. In addition to the video, I created a slide set to be used as the students received their diplomas. As each student walked across the stage, their picture and a “quote” from them was displayed.

I will NOT elaborate on the challenges of the day. The fact that the computer system at the location of the graduation did not have the software to run either of the projects, nor did the CD version I had created work. PRAISE GOD, the young man helping setup found a way to get it to work … with some last-minute tweaks by me.

ALL THAT … to help celebrate the accomplishments of the students that day. My son was part of a group of incredible students who graduated from high school that day!

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My partner in crime/life started working for a wonderful company this past January. He shared often of the environment in which he was thriving. Early June, I filled out an application and had an interview. Within a few days, I received a call from a manager interested in my potential. This turned out to be a second interview.  A couple days later, I was offered a job. Yes, I accepted the offer!

October 18th was the 8-year mark of when my wife died. My son had the “brilliant” idea to “persuade me” to go out to our favorite burger place for supper. (For those who don’t know, she loved hamburgers.) He and I had a blast that night.

Moving on, it has been almost 5 months since started my job. As “wordy” as I can be, I struggle to find the right words to describe how I feel about my job. October 21, I posted this on Facebook, “Have you ever felt out of place because you actually fit in place?”

The next day, I heard a special song on the radio. Just hearing Whitney singing “One Moment In Time” I realized something. After Lucenda died, I faced many challenges.

I had Many “Moments In Time“. Not just after she died either.

There are countless naysayers in this world. Far too many have swarmed me numerous times in my life.

The .. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING is that GOD’S Opinion of me is ALL that matters!!

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Fast forward two weeks … this was my Facebook post:

Nineteen years ago, a force of nature entered this world. This force of nature has encountered far more proverbial “curve balls” in 19 years than most experience in a lifetime. There are not enough words to describe how this force of nature makes my heart swell. I love this force of nature beyond words. I am so very proud of this force of nature. This ginger-haired force of nature is 19 years old today.

We had a family gathering for dinner … at THAT place with the GREAT burgers!

OH, and he VOTED for the FIRST TIME this month!

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