ALL OUT OF LOVE THIS VALENTINE’S DAY?
Here’s 7 ways to fill up your heart!
By Columnist Chris Benguhe – Author of Overcoming Life’s 7 Common Tragedies: Opportunities for Discovering God.
If you don’t have a special someone to spend Valentine’s Day with this weekend, all the extra amor in the air is bound to get you down.
If your heart is feeling like its running on empty, then why not fill it up with what Valentine’s Day is REALLY about – REAL love – not just romance! There is a whole lot more love around you then you realize.
Our lives are naturally enriched by surrounding ourselves with those that love us. From family to friends, and even people we meet for a moment in passing. We all can reinforce each other with love.
Here are 7 simple ways to find it and fill up your heart—
1. Visit an older friend or relative or simply stop by a senior center to share some goodwill and cheer.
2. Volunteer your time at a charity – St. Vincent de Paul is my favorite.
3. Pick one person who has helped you the most this year and bring them a Valentine’s gift just because.
4. Reach out to a neighbor.
5. Call a long lost friend or relative just to say hello.
6. Pick 5 people out who help you throughout the year and say thanks (hint – a police officer, your garbage man, your mail carrier and that cashier at the grocery store who always smiles and remembers your name for starters.)
7. Spend the day smiling and saying hello to everyone you encounter.
And remember it’s not about whether the glass is half full or half empty – it’s about the value of the glass. The glass of your life is always valuable because you can fill it up with lots of love!
Read more of Chris Benguhe’s inspirational thoughts in his latest book available at Amazon through the link below-
Chris Benguhe is a columnist for the Catholic Sun and the Author of “Overcoming Life’s 7 Common Tragedies: Opportunities for Discovering God.”
ALL MATERIALS ABOVE ©2007 by Chris Benguhe
It’s not about whether the glass is half full or half empty— it’s about the value of the glass. The glass of your life is always valuable.
That’s because we can fill it with opportunities to love and be loved.
As we face tough times this holiday season, maybe it’s important to remind ourselves of how special every single person we meet is, and how much they have made our lives worth living over the last year.
So here is a simple way to make a special gift that will help you to remember the most important gift of all – each other!
A. First, go rummage around your house for an old vase or glass jar that you have always liked but that doesn’t get enough use.
B. Then between now and Christmas you and every member of your family answer one of these five simple questions below each day on a slip of paper and place it in the jar.
1. Who do you love and why are they special to you?
2. What’s the nicest thing anybody did for you today or this week and how did it inspire you?
3. What’s the kindest thing you did for anybody else today or this week? How has helping that person helped you?
4. What is something you saw somebody else do today or this week to help someone else that filled your heart with happiness?
5. Who loves you and how do they show it? How has their love and support changed your life?
C. On Christmas day after all the other presents are opened take down the jar and start reading all the wondrous ways that you all have loved and been loved, and it will be the greatest Christmas gift of all.
Then keep the glass out somewhere for the rest of the year in plain site where it will always remind you of all the love you have now and long after the holiday season is past.
Now email this along to at least five people this holiday to remind them too!
Then go fill up your glass with all the reminders of God’s mysterious spirit of love.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Go to www.OneMoreDayAlive.com all this month where you will discover more FREE inspirations from with Chris Benguhe’s latest book.
Learn why tough times might be a window to the best times of your life!
GIVE THE GIFT OF JOY!
Best-Selling inspirational author DEEPAK CHOPRA declares “Chris Benguhe eloquently reveals the secrets to finding joy during hardships.”
Overcoming Life’s 7 Common Tragedies: Opportunities for Discovering God By CHRIS BENGUHE (Buy the book at Amazon link below)
One more day alive – it’s a miracle for everyone.
Because even the worst of times are windows to the best, and out of pain and struggle come inspiration and hope!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809143917?ie=UTF8&tag=beyondtragedy-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0809143917
Last week a teenage boy stuck a gun to my head. The peach fuzz on his face was still not mature enough to make a real beard, but the gun was all too real.
As I stared down the shiny black, cold-steel barrel of the gun, I wasn’t as scared as I was shocked — that a boy this young could be so desperate and so willing to destroy life.
It was just after dusk, when I parked my car at the edge of the parking lot at a local restaurant in Central Phoenix, only a few blocks from my home.
I emerged from the car and only made it a few steps before a young, wiry youth, donning a black-hooded sweatshirt pounced on me, pointing a small caliber gun in my face and screaming at me.
I had just given a teen talk at a local church a few nights earlier, and as strange as it sounds, the first thing that popped into my head was that he reminded me of one of those kids. Was this for real? Could this be some badly conceived prank? But the gun was no joke, and as I hesitated he became more irate.
I pulled a wad of five singles from my wallet and threw them at him. The flying cash distracted him long enough for me to make it into the restaurant and call the police.
Within minutes the place was swarming with cops, and half an hour later they had three suspects in custody down the street.
As a police cruiser drove me a few blocks away to where they were being held, I reflected on the whole event for the first time. I wasn’t as angry as I was sad. As I thought about the years of jail time he would receive for armed robbery, I wanted to sit this foolish boy down and drum into his brain exactly what he had done, and what he jeopardized.
What might have been
I thought about my mother who recently had a stroke and depends on me. I thought about my friends and the rest of my family who would be so extraordinarily traumatized by the event if this kid would have shot me.
I thought about his family and what they would lose if I were armed and shot him.
I thought about all the people this young man could help in the future.
I thought about the children I would never have, he would never have and all the ways the world would be deprived of one or both of us.
I know how much I have to offer; he obviously had no idea how much he could give, and he was willing to throw both of our lives away for a few dollars.
I wanted to tell him all of that and more as we neared the sea of flashing lights sitting atop the caravan of cop cars surrounding the suspects. The cruiser stopped 20 feet away, and three suspects were dragged from the back of an SUV and paraded in front of the headlights. None of them were him.
My heart sank a little. I could never look this misled youth in the eye and tell him why what he did was so insane!
But I am still here to help and to make a difference. And maybe there still is a way to get to him, by telling you to share this story with every young man and woman you know, so that they never make the same stupid mistake.
So that maybe eventually every one of them will know what he didn’t — that God created us to live, to let live, and to revel in the love that surrounds us no matter how much we have or don’t have everything we want. And that blessed mission is priceless.
The recent tragedy surrounding “self help” author James Arthur Ray’s sweat lodge ceremony in Sedona, Ariz., which killed three people has stunned the spiritual community there and left many across the nation condemning the author for abusing a culturally revered ceremony that he knew little or nothing about not to mention violating city codes which he made no attempt to adhere to.
But what nobody is talking about is the bigger problem, and the bigger issue that Ray represents – a cancerous culture of success that has permeated the American psyche, if not the world’s, and has practically become a religion unto itself. It’s an addiction that Ray and countless others like him have tapped into for profit – one which promises that you can have anything you want, whenever you want and however you want it or as the cover of Ray’s book Harmonic Wealth reads, “The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want.”
Well as a Catholic self-help author, who does not ascribe to this point of view, I think it’s high time that we call this ridiculous charade for what it is – snake oil salesman claiming to sell the elixir of life when what they are really selling is death – usually spiritual but in this case actual.
For God’s sake have we not evolved enough to realize that our happiness cannot wait for the good times to roll around in a world where tragedies and tough times never cease?
The bottom line is that for all of us, there is a reality, and no amount of positive thinking or perception twisting rhetoric is going to make it go away.
We can make that reality meaningful and constructive, not by becoming obsessed with changing it, but by finding a noble purpose in the way we deal with it, that purpose is to love and be loved by others.
What if our problems, our inadequacies, our imperfections and our failures don’t make us less worthy or less important but even more important because they give others the opportunity to reach out and love us – giving their lives even more meaning – and they give us the opportunity to reach out to God?
That means none of us are dysfunctional or any less worthy of life, no matter what we do or don’t do, no matter how many mistakes we make, no matter where we go right, where we go wrong, how much we succeed or fail or how well we fit or do not fit into society.
Or as Author and psychologist Viktor Frankl put it, “We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed.” Frankl suffered the atrocities of a concentration camp during World War II where his entire family lost their lives, culminating in his wife’s execution in front of his eyes. After overcoming the compulsion to end his own life, he realized that the pain he was experiencing because of their deaths was proof of his extraordinary ability to love, and he wanted to go and love some more.
I guess sometimes only death reminds us of the value of life, and that every day is one more day alive, a miracle, and an opportunity to experience that miracle in oh so many ways.
Hopefully these three deaths will not be in vain but will remind all of us that’s life’s value lies not in whether the glass is half full or half empty but in the value of the glass itself. That glass of our lives is always valuable.
Consensus has a value, especially when it is reached through a common high value rather than the lowest common denominator. Isn’t it about time we find that when it comes to health care?
It seems like that highest common value should and could be the respect for human life.
The debate over healthcare is dominating the airwaves, and suddenly people are coming out in droves at town meetings speaking their minds, questioning and criticizing.
Let me buck all the other pundits who are getting all shook up and say this is the best thing that could have happened to America.
Because Americans all over the place are looking for the most just and effective way to take care of each other; wow – that’s downright beautiful.
Furthermore people are actually taking the time to scrutinize a policy decision and think about how it will change our nation.
Finally, and even more importantly, they are trying to figure out what is morally right!
Intellectuals forever have worried that a rise in populism in America was going to bring about mob rule – a society in which people no longer thought but simply made emotionally directed decisions that were supported by a swell of support.
When I first saw President Obama swept into the White House last year in a wave of popular euphoria, I marveled at the public swelling of support. But I was concerned about whether in all the excitement people were really examining and questioning his policies enough, especially those that dealt with the issue of the sanctity of human life.
But right now I am witnessing a greater responsibility in our population than I have seen in my life time, and a greater concern for humanity than I have seen in a long time.
Most Americans want to help those that are sick, polls show, but they are equally concerned about losing benefits for themselves and their loved ones to pay for it and wondering whether the elderly and those on Medicare will have their care compromised.
Then there is the very real concern for whether or not the government should have the right to decide quality of life and length of life issues. Though the bills currently proposed do not implicitly endorse euthanasia, as some overzealous pundits have stated, they do paint a picture of a new government healthcare system that will pick and choose who deserves what level of care. That could lead to government deciding ultimately who will live and who will die.
Personally, I think it might make a lot more sense to build on what so many others have worked to create – making it better, helping to make coverage available to those who don’t have it through cooperatives, lowering premiums with subsidies, and increasing our nation’s commitment to faith based human services charities. In a nation as wealthy as ours, that shouldn’t be that difficult!
But there is one thing I know for sure, something I also believe the America people are starting to understand more and more because of this whole discussion.
We all have a divine right to life, and we do not receive that from the government but from our Creator. (Gallup Poll results in May showing more pro-life Americans than pro-abortion rights Americans for the first time since 1995 is a good indicator.)
I think maybe we could find the answer to this problem by looking deeper into the innate value of life and how to honor God’s dominion over it. He gave us this precious life, and only He should decide when it starts and ends. But in the mean time, it’s up to us to figure out how to best respect it in ourselves and others.
Here’s a link to my latest TV appearance!
On Friday, July 24th, CatholicTV’s talk show “This is the Day” featured Reverend George Winchester, SJ, and Chris Benguhe. Fr. Winchester is a priest and a hospital chaplain. Chris Benguhe is a Catholic author and columnist for The Catholic Sun, the diocesan newspaper of the Diocese of Phoenix.
For many years as a reporter for People magazine, The National Enquirer, The Globe, and The National Examiner, I was up to my scruples in sensational tragedies, from the O.J. Simpson story and the Jon Benet Ramsey mystery to Princess Diana’s death and countless others. Then the Columbine story broke and my life changed forever. Columbine was a devastating incident, but the irresponsible mass media hysteria that followed was worse and undeniably brought about a copycat shooting by a similarly deranged youth the following month at Heritage High School in Rockdale County, Georgia.
As I saw society depressed more and more by this journalistic “tragicide,” I knew that there were hundreds of uplifting and incredibly dramatic stories that go unwritten or relatively uncovered every day, involving people who have overcome life’s greatest obstacles to achieve happiness for themselves and their loved ones. So I quit my job and began writing about those people in my first book, Triumphs of the Heart.
In writing that inspiring book, I found people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and cultural perspectives from one end of the country to another. What they all had in common was that after losing everything they originally thought life was about — success, money, comfort, or luxury — they realized that life’s true worth lies not in the results but deep within the process of noble and sincere living. They realized that happiness wasn’t even about overcoming their hardships but about loving others and yourself every day and in every way while enduring those hardships. Even as their own lives were plagued with troubles, they all understood they had the capacity to love and respect humanity and the right to be loved themselves.
They understood that since the beginning of time mankind has had to care for each other even as pain, suffering, and hatred exists, and even as we toil to make a living by the sweat of our brow and contend with the struggles of everyday living.
I leaned that the people who ultimately master the ability to live in this inspiring manner are real heroes to themselves and to the rest of the world. And in the grand scope of life that means that everyone can and should be a hero. Because living like a hero will yield unimaginable joy, success, and contentment for you and the rest of society.
At the heart of this hero mindset is a set of principles — integrity, duty, self-respect, faith, devotion, altruism, compassion, listening, and forgiveness — that makes our commitment to love others real and brings about remarkable changes in the lives of others as well as our own.
We can and should be a hero at our jobs, at home, even when we are waiting in line at the grocery store. In every single relationship or encounter, we must ask whether we are respecting human dignity or instead thinking about what we will gain or lose from the interaction. If we answer the latter, then it’s time to change our game plan and step up to the plate to be a hero.
The next time you are feeling down or depressed, try this simple little exercise below. It will remind you of your own heroes and your own ability to be a hero. I guarantee you it will pick you up and head you in the right direction. I call it “The Road Map to Happiness.”
1. Who do you love (pick one person) and why are they so special to you?
2. What’s the nicest thing anybody ever did for you and how did it inspire or help you?
3. What’s the kindest thing you ever did for someone else that helped to make their day or their life better? How has 4. helping that person enhanced your own life?
4. What is something positive which filled your heart with happiness that you saw somebody else do yesterday or today to help someone else? It could be a family member, a friend, or even a complete stranger who you felt made somebody happy.
5. Who loves you and how do they show it? How has their love changed your life?
Watershed events, like a parent’s illness, can move us towards our own healing as we reflect on family, relationships, and soul.
A few months ago, while bogged down in the ultra-important details of promotions, media interviews and speaking engagements for my latest book, life got in the way.
It was 9 a.m. when I called my mother’s house to say hello and was greeted by the cold, distant voice of a young man I didn’t recognize — a paramedic.
“Your mother fell and she’s not responding, so we are going to transport her to St. Joseph’s Hospital,” he informed me.
“What?” I shouted back almost uncontrollably. “What’s wrong?” “We don’t know,” responded the voice. “She is not responding.”
The lack of info was terrifying. The 10-minute drive down to the emergency room was an eternity — rushing against the lights while fighting mentally not to rush to conclusions or imagine the worst. A parking nightmare later, I was in the emergency room and no longer had to imagine.
My mother was not moving! My eyes frantically searched out the heart monitor to assure myself she was still alive. I watched and waited helplessly as a whirlwind of people and machines surrounded her.
“Do you know what year it is?” a doctor shouted at my mother, but there was no response.
Again he repeated the question. I watched my mother’s lips desperately, waiting for anything. Then suddenly, happily, I saw the slightest movement and heard the sweetest sound: “2009,” came back the answer, faintly. Thank God! She was OK, or at least aware.
The storm of activity around her slowly dissolved and tense voices grew calm, a sign I hoped that things were improving.
A doctor turned to address me. Finally, information.
She had suffered a stroke, and there was a blood clot about the size of a quarter located in the middle of her brain. It was located too deep within the brain itself for them to relieve the pressure or drain the blood without threatening her life. But nobody knew how extensive the damage was yet, or the danger. All we could do was to wait — but for how long?
A friend arrived. She was a physical therapist, so she could help me to understand what the doctors weren’t yet telling me. Thank God, I thought. But her professional opinion only sent chills down my spine.
“She will recover, right?” I asked her. “She could,” my friend cautiously replied, “and she might not. There is no way to know. But either way her whole life will change, and so will yours. Just do the right thing and trust God.”
But there were a whole lot of “right things” to be done. And God didn’t seem to be saying anything I could understand.
How much would she recover? When would she recover? How would we care for her, what would we do with her house, with her expenses, her bills, her cat? Where was I going to find the strength, the wisdom, the time and the resources to handle this? Why did this happen now?
A wall of anxiety and depression overwhelmed me.
As I stared at her lying there in a mesmerizing mesh of tubes and wires, my eyes suddenly fell on the most unexpected thing — her hands. Suddenly, they didn’t look old to me, but were the same ones I remember reaching out for when I was a child, the ones that always reached back.
I reached down and squeezed her hand. Without a word spoken, she squeezed back. I knew instantly what I needed to do and how I would find the strength to do it.
But it was just the beginning of a journey that would transform my life, her life and the lives of everyone we knew.
PART 2
Within 24 hours, my mother had regained her ability to speak and use of her right side. Thank God, I thought, at least she was out of the woods. Not quite.
“We need to do an MRI to determine if the bleeding in her brain has stopped,” she said soberly. “But your mother refuses. She is afraid of the machine. She says she’s claustrophobic.”
“What!” I screamed. Why had nobody told me? I only went home for a few hours to shower and clean up. My mother was barely conscious and they were leaving life and death decisions to her!
“If we can’t do the MRI, we can’t do much more for her,” the nurse said coldly. “If she doesn’t want the MRI we cannot force her. But then we don’t know if she is going to have another stroke.”
Here’s a little info for any of who have never been in the hospital – when you don’t follow orders, they stop giving them. They were giving up on my mom.
But at least I wasn’t the only one pulling my hair out. My brother arrived a few hours earlier. We were scared, angry – and now frustrated with my mother. Why was she doing this? She was a headstrong woman – I had learned to accept that for all its pros and cons over the years – but now it was endangering her life, and it was hurting us.
We spent the next hour trying to talk her into the MRI. Finally someone made a simple suggestion – what if they allowed me into the scanning room with her while they performed the MRI. Amazingly it worked. Suddenly she agreed.
Later that night we entered the room together, and she entered the narrow tunnel of the MRI machine, while I held her leg from outside the tunnel. After a half an hour of incredibly loud clicks and clacks that could have traumatized even somebody who wasn’t claustrophobic, it was done.
I needed to sleep, so I grabbed a few hours back home then rushed back to the hospital the next morning for the results. But I spent the next 24 hours waiting for info that never seemed to come. “We are still analyzing the results,” was the common chorus.
As I glanced up at the Crucifix on the wall, I said a prayer. Please send me a sign. Just then as I looked away, I saw a familiar face in the distance. It was a friend from the local coffee shop. What was she doing here? Then I remembered – she was a doctor—– a neurologist, and of all the coincidences – in THIS hospital?
“Please help me,” I practically begged her. “My mother had a stroke and nobody will tell me anything.” She led me down the hall to the doctor’s lounge where she showed me everything – the results of the MRI, my mother’s case file—and she carefully explained every single detail of my mother’s case.
“It looks like the bleeding has stopped, and I don’t see any permanent damage,” her words were like a gift from God. “I think she could have a full recovery. But–” she added, “it’s up to her when and how that happens.”
The next day they moved my mother out of the ICU – next stop the rehab facility. She would have to quickly learn to trust people she didn’t know who were telling her to do the opposite of what her body was saying– to walk when her legs said they couldn’t, to stand when her body said rest, and to stop worrying in the midst of the battle of her life. That was not an easy thing for a woman who had had trust issues her whole life.
I had to trust God would put people there to help me, especially the rest of my family. That was easier said than done. We had not been a cohesive unit for a long time, not since my parents split up after thirty years together.
We all had our reasons – for not trusting, not working together, for running away. None of us had done the best to help each other. Now we had to.
PART 3
Hospital rehab programs place people in one of two categories – those that heal and those that don’t. Unfortunately they placed my mother into the ladder.
She was scared, stuck literally and metaphorically. And rehab programs, especially those funded by Medicare, don’t tolerate anything less than success. If you don’t make progress, you’re out and with only a few days notice.
So suddenly and without warning they asked us to take my mother home– helpless. She could not even get herself in and out of the bathroom, and she could not afford 24-hour a day home health care. Their solution – a nursing home!
Now telling my intelligent, capable, and headstrong mother to go a nursing home was a sure way of getting her to use her good hand to throw a heavy object at me. Plus, it didn’t seem right. She deserved a real chance to recover her independence.
Out of the darkness came one voice that cared– the physical therapist friend of mine who came to comfort me when my mother first had her stroke.
“Let me work with her,” she practically ordered me. “If we can get her into my center for one month, maybe we can get her well enough to go home.”
It was worth a shot. I had to trust my friend, and my mom had to trust me.
“Mom I know you can come back from this,” I explained. “But it’s not going to happen here. We need to go somewhere else for a little while – a month. I promise we will bring you home after that.”
“You are the boss,” she said simply. I was flabbergasted. It was tantamount to the falling of the Berlin Wall! My mother had ceded control. Now it was up to me – to us – to deliver.
A team of newly dedicated therapists at Arizona Grand inspired by my friend worked on my mother seven days a week. The first day she stood on her own. The first week she was walking. By the end of the month she was doing sit ups and yoga. There was no way to explain the progress. Actually there was. They cared. My mother knew it, and she trusted them.
Each night either my brother or I visited, trying to boost her moral. Sometimes we succeeded, and sometime we failed. Sometimes we looked past the person – the mother, the human – we were too obsessed with fixing her.
But little by little we cleaned up our acts and tried to respect, to appreciate and to make each other shine. We scrubbed twenty years of grime and grease off the floors and the walls of her house. We changed the carpets, and cleaned out the past as much as we could. She did her best to let us let go of the past.
A month after my mother’s stroke I was speaking to my brothers almost every day; we haven’t done that since I was a teenager. My oldest brother – who kept to himself too much for his own good—became my teammate. Together we worked on the game plan for my mother’s recovery.
Today my mother is home. She is walking more, talking more every day, but we depend heavily on the kindness of friends, new and old.
We cannot “make’ her heal. But every day we learn to love, to grow and to rejoice a little bit more instead of squandering these days wishing things were different.
I reflect on that as I slip in a CD of old jazz standards. I ask my mom to stand up and let go of her walker and hold onto me instead. For the first time in over a decade I dance with my mother.
“The memory of all that” sings Ella Fitgerald. “No they can’t take that away from me.”
Chris Benguhe is a former PEOPLE Magazine Reporter and now a columnist for the Catholic Sun and the author of the recently released Overcoming Life’s 7 Common Tragedies: Opportunities for Discovering God
This article appeared orginally in theCatholic Sun, Phoenix AZ, from which it was adapted.
