I've gone over the edge! A funny story about a baby frog found in a friend's toilet

I've lost it.....apparently.....the stress needed to be dealt with and so, when a friend called me quite upset about finding a frog in her toilet, I responded.....I did and continue to maintain that this is just a fun piece and a play on words....without getting smutty...  I think I need to get a job!  Ha!

Once upon a time there were 3 frogs named Tad, Pole and Sweet Cheeks.  One afternoon they were sitting around croaking their stories when Tad decided to ask about Pole's and Sweet Cheek's interesting names.  Tad began with, my name is boring, but I am my father's son and they didn't want to call me junior so I got stuck with Tad.  How did you guys get your names?  Pole looked at the other two and blushed, I was ribbiting away one day in the winter and someone dared me to sample a basketball pole saying the ice on it would quench my thirst.  I bought into the premise and lo and behold, my tongue stuck to the pole, hence my name.  Tad and Pole looked expectantly at Sweet Cheeks, who was wishing he'd just out and out croak.  After stammering a bit, he spoke.  As a younger frog, just past infancy, I want to feel cool, so I decided to join a gang.  Unbeknownst to me they had a initiation, part of which was learning to roll my tongue and growl....I placed my tongue on the roof of my mouth and expelled air sounding like a cat.  One day the guys stopped by an apartment and when the woman inside wasn't watching, they dared me to pop into her home.  My intent was to go in and come right out, but the door got shut too soon.  I was desperate knowing that my skin needed the replenishment of water, so I set on a mission to find some.  I hopped about and finally found a room with its own water source, it had a makeshift kind of lilypad and so I attached myself to it.  During the evening I mainly stayed hidden because the water source became a white water rafting center complete with rafts and logs.  During the day, for the most part everything seemed quiet.  On those occasions I would sometimes venture out.  One day, I did just that.  I was minding my own business when I noticed an eclipse.  Not sure what was going on, I started humming to myself making that growl noise.  I was kind of nervous at the amount of time it was remaining dark, so I stuck my tongue out to get a sense of what was going on. My tongue touched something, I wasn't quite sure what but it was sweet.   Apparently this was the wrong move because the sun suddenly appeared and I heard all this shrieking going on.  I sat glued to my spot trying to blend in but this was virtually impossible.  The next thing I knew the white water rafting center was exploding and a raft of spongy material provided a way for my exit.  As I rode the waves I exited into a stream very far down field.  When I explained my dilemma, other frogs smiled and nodded in agreement.  A few days later they announced my arrival as a charter member of the horny toad frogs and named me sweet cheeks.

LOVE is...

We all (should) remember "love means never having to say you are sorry."   What a crock!

Or  Tom Cruise saying in a movie I can't recall its title....."You had me at hello."  Again what a crock.

What, me  dispeling the myth of "love?"  Yes.  Love is not meant to be a myth.  It is meant to be shared between people, regardless of their sex, because LOVE is NOT sex.  Love is an intimate relationship between people.  And intimacy does not have to mean sex.  Instead, as a very wise writer pointed out....intimacy if taken phoentically is INTO-ME-SEE.

Most of us hide from this type of exposure, mainly because one of the two parties present doesn't feel worthy as a participant.  If we look at our naked bodies we (well, most of us anyway) inwardly cringe.  No way do I want THAT on display.....it's bad enough I have to look at it.  Well, and I'm chuckling as I write this, because my BFF just this morning called me an overthinking upside down friend.... INTO-ME-SEE is the allowance of our naked souls to be seen and shared with another.  I will just add, that God sees all anyway, so for this context I'm speaking about sharing our souls with one another.

What is love?  Go ahead, re-read 1 Corinthians 13.....I'll wait.  Yeah, all that, but what does that mean, the stuff of not being  jealous, about being kind and not proud....etc?   What, oh wait, you mean we are supposed to take that quite literally?  Oh, I thought it was just something nice said at weddings!!!  Am I the only one saying ouch?  I don't need a band-aid here, I need a darn tourniquet.

The thing about love (my view) is that it is not about us, but instead is an extension of us for the recepient.  Huh?  Let me ask a question.  When you love someone, do you want your own way?  If you answered that any other way than to say yes, you are kidding yourself.  Of course you want your way...your way is to be loved back.  Can you demand that someone love you back?  Well, you might try, let me know if it works for you!  No, love is about wanting to reach out to the person whose attention you are trying to attract and meeting them in their space.  The sad part of love is that all too often, it is one-sided.  Either one is too needy or one doesn't know how to receive it and thus patterns are formed until one day you wake up and find yourself saying....hey, wait a minute, what about me? ( if your are the "lover") or what happened? ( if you are the "lovee.") 

When was the last time anyone met you where you needed to be met?  Love can't be forced and as my friend was reading to me out of the book "The Shack".....God even loves us enough NOT to force our hands.  Anything forced isn't love, but control.  Love to me is active listening and involves hearing what might not be necessarily said, or maybe even said in a passing way.  It is then portrayed through action because we all know that talk is cheap (or should know) and is heard and most often filtered down to drivel when action doesn't back it up.  Love is the sharing act and once again, I'm not talking sex.  Sometimes the activity is a surprise, sometimes the planning of the activity can be part of the fun of sharing as well.  What keeps us from enjoying life is that because we are so darn busy and need to plan even our bathroom breaks, we miss out on opportunities that allow two people to demonstrate their acknowledgement of one another.  Bluntly said, look at your calendar and see if the 3rd Saturday from never is available because I need between 15 - 30 minutes to see you to let you know I care.

Wow, and to the one friend who likes to say to me....no one has "pissed" in my cornflakes this morning.  I understand responsibilities, yeah, I like to eat and sleep with a roof over my head.....but when material things come before loved ones, I guess you could say I do overthink and am culturally upside, backwards, inside out or whatever it is I am.  Am I angry....maybe.  The one constant in everyone's life is that they want to be what they were created to be and that is LOVED!

How do you ask for it?  Can we even walk up to our families and just say.....love me without getting some strange look, or maybe hearing them say back to you, "I do love you."  Huh?  Obviously we aren't getting the message.  So, how do we get the message....again, I point back to active listening.  I have a friend who loves horses.  I saw this google thing and it talked about a trail ride.  Neither she nor I have much in the way of money, and yet God seemingly let Goggle intervene and a deal was made apparent to me via the web.  This is a small gesture of love, but hopefully it makes her feel heard and valued (at least I hope so) and guess what, I get something in return, the pleasure of enjoying her enjoyment and maybe even some of my own, once I get passed the fear of falling from a moving animal.  I also get the opportunity to pursue other things I enjoy....the outdoors and photography opportunities.

I am blessed to be married to a man who is very generous.  For our 25th wedding, he asked me what I wanted.  I'm simple, I said something with the family.....he took that idea and ran with it and unbeknownst to me until shortly before the event occurred, he planned a cruise for the entire family.  There were 31 of us all total and he paid for all the immediate family adults!   Those with kids, paid for their own kids. Talk about love. This cruise happened 5 years ago and is still talked about as one of the best vacations any of us have ever taken.  And now....as now, as he faces an uphill battle with cancer, the care, love and support we are being shown is beyond description in its aura!  Family is THE most important relationship to me.  But and I truly mean this, Family is not just blood relatives.  Family is those who love you despite your faults and care enough to want to share in your life without terms and conditions. 

For God so LOVED the world, he gave his begotten Son..... If we can't understand the concept of God, how can we possibly understand the magnitude of HIS gift?

That is what love is.......

Looking up!

BArb

Talking about Rhythm (picture musical notes)

When last I left you I was speaking about life rhythms…. and being ever the witster (not) every time I hear the word rhythm, my mind, for whatever reason goes to Catholic birth control. Don’t ask me why, maybe it is an upbringing thing…I’m not practicing. Ok, don’t go there either, I’m in my mid-50s.
I was reading with a friend this morning, a devotional in which it talked about the need for levitating. Ok, now I’m sure to have grabbed your attention thinking I’m going on a hocus pocus theme. Truly I’m not. What the devotional talked about was how one-tracked our minds are and how that track usually belongs somewhere in NASCAR. Again, not trying to upset race fans. As depicted, because we are such a busy people, we rush everywhere. If we levitated and looked at our lives from God’s point of view, we would only laugh at ourselves. The vision given in the devotional was of an elderly couple on a drive, meandering (probably going the speed limit – emphasis mine), chatting about their grandchildren with me driving behind them, late for an appointment. Can’t you just picture it? Red faced, scowling, road ragist?! Or, a couple on their way to their oncologist possibly about to hear news they don’t want to hear and not wanting to rush to get there…boy can I relate to that one! Well, levitate and look down on yourself, what do you see? How do you feel now? And my only remark is that if you still feel the rage inside yourself, how sad!
Rhythm allows for a variance in speed, but wants to slow down to enjoy the sights. I truly enjoy conversations (that have depth). But to get to the crux of the story, one has to set the scene, it is after all a story. Does a joke not build? Do you just come out with the punch line? No! So, when telling a story, one has to sometimes go in a circuitous route to get to the point. When interruptions are made, the story sometimes gets lost. But in our rush, we want the facts and only the facts. Not me, I want the story. I want people in my life to KNOW that I have time for them and enjoy their stories. People need to be heard. People need to be valued. And that is quickly becoming an obsolete art. We continue to devalue human contact, replacing it with device contact…ATMs, texting, instant messaging and even as I say this and get ready to post this on FB, I know I am guilty. But….given the opportunity, I’d rather be face to face because then I can pick up the true story.
Are we distracted talkers and listeners? Yes. Anytime we try to do two or more things at the same time we are either talking or listening. Does the person whose presence you aren’t in, but still in communication with know you are distracted? I do and I don’t think I’m unique! Again, view it from above.
When I volunteered with hospice, we had to take a CEU class on Anticipatory Grief. Underline the word anticipatory. That meant we had to listen to what was NOT being said and be prepared to broach topics that were being talked around but not about. Sometimes we all need what it is we are so afraid to admit to. I’m a thinker/an analyzer and an anticipator, sometimes I am wrong, but my track record to date tells me, not often. Again, it isn’t about how "great" anyone thinks I am, because truly I can only say I’m not anyone different than anyone else. It is only that I allow myself to listen to what is being said. I’ve slowed my rhythm (or in some cases have had to enhance it) to the speed of the person I am in conversation with. I love this. I love the connection. Sadly, too few want this type of connection.
That said, I don’t analyze content for judging purposes, but instead to allow the person to vent and in some cases come to conclusions that have stymied them. I too need that type of person in my own life. It is the feedback that helps one get over the road hump. Again in another devotional it was depicted as driving in a fog, but then scaling a hill thus getting above the density and looking and seeing it from a different perspective, but then descending back into the mist, hopefully with a better understanding of what may lie ahead.
Can’t you just visualize life that way? In the parable about Jesus in the boat with the disciples as it crosses the lake in a storm. Jesus lies in a restful sleep, while his friends are terrified of the storm about to capsize their boat. They wake Him, questioning how He could possibly sleep. The commentary provided by Joyce Meyer sums it all up quite simply. When we have storms going inside us (fear, anger, resentments, lack of trust, lack of faith, lack of self-esteem, etc.) how can we possibly quiet the storms going on about us in the world (health issues, financial issues, marital issues, child issues, whatever other issues). We have to quiet the inner storms first. How? And I alternate on this point at different times in my life, now being one of them. How? For me, it is in giving the problem to God and trusting that HE will render the solution in HIS time, which unfortunately doesn’t always coincide with my time. But when I am able to look back on whatever the issue was, I ALWAYS see that HIS timing was perfect. I dislike pain, as much as anyone else, but without pain, I don’t grow. Sometimes God needs to sever the deadwood I’ve allowed to accumulate in my life. Why I want to hold onto something that has no benefit for me, I don’t completely understand. In terms of a boat, it is like having barnacles attached that only weigh it down, possibly to the point of sinking it.
Anyone? Maybe it is why I like the beach so much. I look at the surf and see it ebb and flow. Sometimes the waves are rolypolies, other times they are stormy, but always they make their way into the shoreline, but always retract. Rhythm.
Looking up!
Barb