Hey gang, I’m going to put the warning placards out to protect those delicate toes of yours☺️☺️. I know the title is just a number, how bad can it be?….right!!☺️. Well this may be old news for some, but a questionable portion of my audience, does not share my make up , when it comes to things of a spiritual nature 🤔. Let’s see if I can make a point here. First up, the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness forty years, but in year Forty-one, they moved into the promise land that was flowing with milk and honey ✔️. Then God had it rain for forty days and forty nights, but on day forty -one, the rain stopped and the sun reappeared ✔️ . Moses, fled from Egypt after killing an Egyptian and spent forty years on the lamb, but in year forty-one, God spoke to him from a burning bush, and he was called to lead God’s people to freedom after four hundred years in captivity✔️ . Jesus, Himself spent forty days In the wilderness being tempted by Satan himself. He defeated that temptation with the word of God , and on day, you guessed it, day forty- one, the temptation was over and He was ministered to by angels. ✔️How about one more just for good measure? ☺️☺️. Forty is also the number of days that Jesus appeared to His followers after the Resurrection, and on day forty-one, He returned to the right hand of the Father. ✔️
Ok, so is it the forty or the forty-one ? And what is the significance.? The obvious answer is without forty-one, there is no victory, no reason to celebrate, no fulfillment of hope. Four 💯 years is a really long time to have hope☺️. My focus today is on people who throw in the towel at the blink of an eye. This one hits close to home for me as well, because I’ve not really been known for being a patient person.☺️ Sometimes my patients with certain people and things, does absolutely surprises me. If I can be off kilter, then it goes to me having patients with people , places and things that I shouldn’t be so patient with for one reason or the other. Turn the tables and the situations when I should absolutely have the patience of Job,☺️ is when I come up short or deficient in the patients department. The whole thing about patience basically comes down to the waiting and our will being tort in some way. I detest sounding like a spoiled brat, but we want what we want, when we want it, and that’s usually yesterday or last year, if we are keeping it real☺️☺️. We dwell in this instantaneous culture, where we don’t believe that we should be forced to wait for anything at all. Amazon prime tells us that they can have it there tomorrow ☺️.We view waiting as cruel and unusual punishment, as if we are on death row, waiting on pens and needles to be executed ☺️☺️. The last thing may sound like a slight exaggeration, but have you been out to a busy restaurant waiting on a table lately? People want to be seated and served asap as if they are the queen of England or something ☺️☺️.
I just spoke about my mix matched times of showing and demonstrating patience, and I see that I’m not alone in this. Maybe it’s just that one more thing, or the straw and the camel’s back☺️☺️.
Some of us put up with a lot from our jobs. I think that one of the biggest things that just irks people to no end, is having someone else making decisions about their work and them not being a part of the conversation, you know included in the process or outcome. There are other things that push our buttons as well such as scheduling and deadlines and sometimes long hours, to name a few. The whole corporate mind set of doing more with less ☺️. We also tolerate an awful lot from our families and our adult children living in the basement or out in the garage. I’m always amazed at the freedoms that our kids are privy to, that we just knew wasn’t an option for us with our parents….what changed?☺️ I think sometimes we feel guilt as if we didn’t do a great job or even a kind of ok job as a parent, so we self sacrifice our privacy with so many other things to make an amends for our weak parenting skills. I mean they are ours….right? We had them so we kind of feel responsible for the outcome. I get that the economy isn’t always the greatest, and inflation has just been crazy off the chain , so I’m not talking about the ones who are trying to make ends meet or are trying to save some money for some lofty goal. It’s the other ones and yes you know who they are. I told you that steel toes were going to be required ☺️☺️. I’m not here to upset anyone’s apple cart, but ask yourself, what’s the end game?. The days have become weeks and the weeks into months, and…..well you get the picture☺️☺️. I’m not here to beat you up or to add to the weight of the guilt that you are already experiencing. I think that you should cut yourself some slack. God set up a perfect scenario in a garden and it still got sideways . Sometimes we just get duds for kids, but that’s still no solution to that pot smell coming from the attic ☺️☺️. There is so much more that I want to say and could say, but why beat a dead horse ?☺️☺️.
So, let’s talk about my head scratcher. There are other people, places, and things in our lives, that are just begging to add value and joy to our lives, and we simply just don’t have the time or patience for. In our upside-down world, maybe that makes perfect sense. Keep the bad in, and the good out.☺️ We will often invest heavily in the things that rob us of life, joy and fulfillment and the other side of the equation looks much like a vision board put together by a three year old 😀. I get that we have to eat, so not bringing home the bacon is not an option. The adult children still in the nest, well that one is on you , and for you to figure that one out. There has just got to be more to life than the occasional Facebook post to see who likes it or not. Ok, the other nouns that want to add value to our lives. There is a place that is your happy place, be it the mountains or the beach, or just some random park, where you watch the children play. What keeps you from spending more time in your happy place or happy space? There is this thing that refreshes you, it could be an exercise routine or a hobby or some travel adventure, but You just can’t find the time to fit it in and enjoy it, …as little kids would say….how come? ☺️There are a variety of personalities that interact with our lives. It may be your Boyz or a collection of ladies that you get together with to go clubbing or to do drinks with, but as much as you share with them, you really don’t trust them to do more than gossip about your situation behind your back ☺️☺️. The primo craving is for that person that You can let your hair down with. The judgement free zone, where we are freely accepted and loved , no matter what. A place where foot messages are granted without out question or even being asked for. They get your quirks and you get there’s . A guy letting his hair down is being able to un-buckle his pants as you watch the game on the couch ☺️☺️. Where is that relationship and why isn’t it present In your life? Do I even dare suggest that it’s a little bit of that mixed matched patience thing ? I don’t, but I do! … I don’t have it for the things that I desire, but absolute have it for the things that drain me☺️☺️. Are we just to busy managing it all?
When it comes to personal relationships that would add quality to our lives , we are really quick to give it the old heave hoe, if it requires the least amount of work or compromise. I think it’s just a bit crazy to think that two different people from different upbringings and backgrounds , would just click from day one, especially at this stage of life. I will be the first to admit that chemistry goes along way, so I’m not talking about people that you just have nothing in common with or don’t have some kind of draw or sex appeal with. This is about people who we click with on some level, and not a base level as we are both human beings ☺️☺️.
So…what am I saying here? This is about a possible quality relationship with someone, that may require a few tweaks here and there, to make it viable, or as I like to think of it , is someone to finish the dance with. ☺️. Frankly, I’m a little dumb founded by people who will go from one honeymoon period to the next, and just constantly starting over, with different partners, hoping to catch lightning in a bottle. The lightning in a bottle may just be your willingness to roll up your sleeves and meet someone at half court☺️☺️. One of the biggest things that we absolutely can not over look is baggage. Theirs absolutely, but our own as well . Past hurts make us prone to draw conclusions that just might not be there. Just because something looks similar or like something that you have seen before, doesn’t mean that it is. I mean if you really knew the future or what was coming around the corner, then you probably would have won power ball by now and living on a tropical island somewhere ☺️☺️
I often wonder what the success rate would be if we had the same patience level with potential partners, as we do with our families, jobs , or our adult children.? I guess it comes down to a question of one, I have to and the other is always optional. I will propose the question is it really? Is it actually optional? We live in a time with the most loneliest people of all times. We live in a day and age where every day, people pass away and there is no one to say a kind word about them outside of family. An even worse scenario is that we sometimes pay someone to say kind things over there departure, who never met or knew them. I mean what do people really know about us other than the niceties that we share with them, which are usually superficial in nature? Who have you felt safe enough with to share your deep and darkest? The painful memories from childhood which left you feeling really insecure and fragile on the inside. Who actually knows the pains and scars that you carry over a painful divorce, which left you feeling like,…..never again !,while all along craving that person that will allow you to just be you without any pretense? You know? The person that will help you take your hair down and cuddle on those cool nights. ☺️
I’m going to flip the script a little bit. I know and have been learning over the past five years or so that I’m not always a picnic ☺️☺️. I think that some times being too self confident can actually be a crutch. The saying is that you can’t learn anything if you are always doing all of the talking, or even worse, If everything is about yourself. I don’t like the thought process of me being high on myself or full of it, may be a better estimation ☺️☺️, but there are certainly times that is true. 🥲🥲. I’m always on the prowl to improve and that means to constantly be open to reproof and constructive criticism, and trying to do that without being defensive☺️☺️. If I can’t, or won’t do that , then I’m stuck and not growing or improving with age. It’s about not faking humility. Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself ,but but less about yourself as in putting others before yourself and being able to take a lesser position, status or role, and yes, being a servant to others, especially in interpersonal relationships. Honestly!, I have learned and seen things about myself that have left me less than impressed. Once again I’m amazed by some of the the blind spots that I have in my life. The worst part of that is that no one in my circle loves me enough to make me aware, or I’m unapproachable, or I surround myself with people who have the same blinders on that I own, either way, it’s not a good thing ☺️☺️. I can be no picnic and that’s probably true of yourself as well. Take a personal inventory and be honest with yourself.
Since I’m so good at wondering about things at times. I wonder what it would look like for us to not and try to impress people with all of our, so called accomplishments in life. I think we sometimes come across as bullies as in look at me and all that I have accomplished . I mean it’s nice if you were an adrenaline junkie when you were younger, who among us didn’t take risk and do stupid things when we were younger? Academic status at prestigious school and universities, ok, I get it, but as the saying goes, if you got your medical degree from John Hopkins and someone else got there’s In a third world country, they both are called Doctor ☺️☺️. Don’t write to me about experience and so forth, of course if you are going under the knife or seeking treatment, that you should absolutely do your homework ☺️☺️. What would it look like for us to take the time to actually to get to know someone.? Yes , absolutely share the basics of family and day to day, but other than that, do some discovery , and find out about those likes and dislikes from a first hand experience, and maybe why they like the things that they do, there may be a very interesting back story 😀
I have this guy who speaks into my life on a regular basis. His name is John Ortberg and I’ve probably mentioned him before. One of his favorite sayings is that the biggest thing that God gets out of a relationship with us, is the person that we are becoming ☺️. Just think about that for a second and not let it flow over your head. What kind of person are you becoming? I hope that it’s someone who is more loving and not just to your family, even though that is important. I think that maybe we shouldn’t look so much for our relationships to be a hand and a glove, which is always nice, but not full proof. Maybe, just maybe we should look at our relationships as a pair of old jeans that we were hoping to get back into some day, and just maybe a tweak here and there , could get them from the back of the closet. ☺️☺️. I’m going to share something a little political that someone planted in my head many, many years ago and I’m really not trying to be divisive , but more so to draw an extreme comparison. Ok, here goes, what if the child or the person that they were supposed to become, would have been the person to come up with the cure for cancer , but we aborted them somewhere along the way. I’m not really a soul mate kind of guy, but what if the person you were supposed to finish the dance with, was someone that you didn’t have the patience for or the time to get to know them.?
As I get older, I find that God just keeps redefining the definition of love. Every time that I think that I have it down, He takes me to a deeper understanding of something that I hadn’t considered or thought possible. It’s something much more deeper and full of richness. I think one of the most profound things about that is , it makes very clear and distinguishing contrast as to what other people call love and it’s a difference so vast that I might as well be talking about the grand canyon ☺️☺️. True love is usually grounded in some form of a sacrifice and often will cause us to change and grow if we are open to it. It’s rarely easy or pain free, but scar tissue can make us so much stronger than we ever thought possible ☺️☺️. Life can be hard and you know what else is hard? Loving people is hard, really hard if you have your whole heart into it, and honestly I don’t actually know how we do that without God’s help. My parting gift to you today is….what or who is your forty-one and are you going to be patient or not. ?
