In My Dreams They Are Still Young

 In my mind and in my dreams you are both still young.  As I sleep we take trips where dad is strong and takes charge.  Mom has no problems moving around or hearing.  In my dreams my dreams nothing has changed.  In the reality of the morning mom sits quietly in her own world.  Her hands are shaking and her knowledge of what all is being said in the room is almost nil.  Sadness fills me for I know her heart is silently breaking.  Her soul mate, my dad, is slowly succumbing to water that is putting pressure on his brain.  In the reality of the day dad eats less, makes less sense when talking and seldom has clear and lucid thoughts.  When he is lucid he understands where he is and what is going on and he tells us he does not want to live this way.  He's no longer capable of walking and most often he can't sit up on his own.  It's heartbreaking to watch and to listen to, as are the tears my mother lets out during times she acknowledges that we are losing dad slowly day by day.   A preacher asked me not too long ago why it was that he, being a preacher, had to live after his wife had died. I told him what I believe in my heart.  Preacher your works is not done. God still has work for you to do.  As we may or may not understand the why of the continued life my parents are living, if you can call it living, there is a purpose. Every day with them in this life has been a gift.  God's not done with them here yet.  As in my dreams I know when God does call them home they will be able to do all the things they can not do now.  They will not hurt, nor will they need for anything.  When God calls them home I will miss them, but I am comforted in the knowledge that it will not be long until I see them again in heaven. Until then they will be forever young in my dreams.

 

Skin Tone and our Savior

Praying for people is not always easy.  It’s what we are called to do by God, but it’s not always easy to follow that rule.  I will do it.  I do it daily.  What do I mean by this?  It’s easy… yesterday I was notating/commenting on someone’s post.  I have that post saved and all commentary.  Let me first tell you that this person is very full of herself and self-actualization.  It would have been easy to get angry at her and fly off the handle, but no through the grace of God all I felt for her was sadness.  She’s lost in an inability to look at the broad scope of what I was trying to say to her.  Anger is a wasted emotion.  She allowed a comment someone put on Facebook on Christmas Eve to get into her soul and eat at her to the point she felt compelled to write about it.  Let me tell you that this woman is not short on words either.  She can go on for days and say little to nothing.  I tried to get her to understand that her anger towards this man and her post written about him did nothing more than to justify him doing it again.  I understand that the law must stop abusive behaviors.  I understand that she has as much a right to voice her opinion as he did; however, that being said if he read her post he smiled from ear to ear as people like that are trying to get a rise out of people.  It’s their whole point.  It’s the game they play in hopes that they will get people talking about them and their point of view.  She also called Christmas Eve as a Holy day.  It’s not the day that is holy.  It’s what we do with it when we worship God that is holy.  She also was walking on the very thing she stated she was fighting for which is equality of religion.  Now whether this guy is religious or not could be debated but why go there.  He stated his opinion.  He made a vulgar post to most that to him was not vulgar.  She was also taken back by the fact that he as much as called Baptist Atheist.  I’m Baptist and he can call me whatever he likes.  It matters not.  Did our Lord and savior Jesus not get called a false prophet?  People lash out at what they do not understand.  The devil lashes out at anything that is righteous.  The people of God will be crucified for following His word.  Now she’s a politician so I guess she has to spin it.  I had a laugh when she stated she was a lapse Catholic.  Anyone out there know what exactly that is?  I imagine it means she professes to be Catholic but doesn’t follow or practice it except for when it suites her needs.  I’m writing this post out of humor.  I had a good laugh on her behalf yesterday and I felt sorry for her at the same time.  I put a post and tagged her in it because it was so long and I wanted dual color to continue the conversation with her on my blog.  It didn’t name her and it held no picture of her.  She threatened to sue me for using her intellectual property and her image and name.  well the two later I didn’t use and the first one first assumes as she claims that her written post on Facebook is one intellectual and two as she stated creative.  I guess some people would call an anger post written because you’d been allowing a silly post to crawl up under your skin and live there for a couple of weeks creative.  I personally didn’t find anything very creative about it.  First off it was all about race.  I’m so tired of people trying to split everything up into race.  I personally don’t find it racist to have a picture of a white Jesus, a black Jesus or any color you want.  It comforts people.  What color was Jesus?  Well since he was middle eastern I would assume olive or darker of skin tone.  Does it matter?  No.  I don’t know anywhere in the Bible where it debates his skin tone.  She’s missing the whole point of Christ.  She also said what would Jesus do more than once in her post.  Jesus would forgive.  Jesus would not care what color they made his skin.  God created all people and all races.  He loves them all equally and He could make Jesus any color he wanted.  He did have a virgin bride after all did He not?  Our only job as a Godly people is to live the way God wants us to.  To honor him.  She stated it’s basically our job to police people like this guy.  Ok, if it offended her so much she could have done what you’re supposed to do and sent the post to Facebook as offensive and they could have dealt with it.  This woman is not judge and jury.  It’s not her job to jump to this gentleman’s defense by writing a post that has no more help for him, but perhaps looks to further her needs and her agenda.  If she wanted to defend him why not do it on that post to that gentleman who was saying these things?  She also didn’t answer any of my questions in my post to her but wanted to meet.  My time is too valuable to meet with someone who wants nothing more than to beat her point of view into my mind.  There are several things I’d like to know about her out of curiosity such as does she believe in Jesus?  Is she pro-life or pro-choice?  They are only idle curiosities though.  When it comes to politics I vote the way I feel Jesus and God would want me to vote.  I don’t get offended if someone doesn’t like my opinions.  I have people of all walks on my page.  I still speak my mind.  They are free to stay or leave.  I love all my friends and my true friends love me.  We don’t have to like or agree with the others posts or lifestyles or religions.  I very rarely drop or block people.  I blocked her because she went to threatening real fast.  I understand she used to be a paralegal and I understand she’s worked in politics and law offices and the first instinct for her wasn’t to say will you please remove that post I don’t want it out there.  Here’s my email let’s take this offline and I’ll answer.  It was to say take it down now or I’m going to sue you.  Really?  This is supposed to be a rational person.  If she had asked me kindly I would have taken it to a place of discussion, but her first thing was to lash out and try to strong arm me.   All it left me to do was to save and document for future use if needed.  I will pray for her.  I will pray that she comes to understand that a soft word and a kind gesture always go farther than a bat.  Since she likes presidential comments so much maybe she should remember to “Speak softly and carry a big bat.”  I wish her well, but I’m still smiling ear to ear.  God bless you all.

I Can Still Hear the Silence

September 11, 2001 will forever be embedded in my very soul.  I remember the drive to work listening to 97.3 FM.  I remember when they told of the first tower how I thought that it was such a horrid joke and didn’t know why anyone would say that on the radio, but the more I listened the more I thought maybe it’s not a joke.  I tuned the radio to WOWO.  No, it wasn’t a joke.  For a moment I almost forgot how to breath.  The air seemed thicker than usual.  My mind was trying to wrap itself around such a tragedy.  As I pulled into the parking lot of work the second plan hit.  The realization with the rest of the world that this was no accident was slowly sinking in.  I walked briskly into the building as I had no cell phone at that time and went to the phones set up in the hallway for employees.  I called my mom and dad and told them to turn on the news.  My friend Chris was there with them.  I walked into the call center as I did every day but it was dead silent.  That isn’t a norm for a call center.   I found my desk and was logging into my systems as I saw supervisors wheeling television sets out onto the floor.  None of us could fathom what was going on.  You hear of war on other soils, but it had been so long since one had been brought to our lands, at least of this kind.  There are drug wars and inner city wars from gangs but this was a much larger attack on our country.  We tried our best to do our work.  The company was very quick to offer assistance, people to talk with and breaks from your desk if you required them.    Most of the people who did call into the center were not aware of what had happened and upon learning no longer had want of us, but rather to reach out to their loved ones and make sure they were safe whether they were in this state or another.  Television programming was all eyes on what was happening in New York.  We watched from work as the towers fell.  My mind went back to a few years prior when I had been in New York and saw those proud towers for myself.  The next few days the worlds eyes were glued to the television screen.  All minds were wondering if we were about to go to a war here on our homeland and everyone wanted to know how President Bush was going to react.  My beloved dog Snickers had died in July of that year so I hadn’t been outside as often as I had before he did, but it seemed like that week I stood or sat outside a lot.  I looked up at the sky.  There was a no fly order.  It seemed strange not to see plans in the sky.  The sky somehow looked brighter and time seemed frozen in that moment.  My heart ached for those people that had died on that day and for their families.  I shed many a tear thinking of what they must of endured.  Before they censored it they showed people choosing to jump to their death out of the tower rather than burn.  Magazines captured pictures of people in mid fall.  The horror was all there for anyone to see.  People seemed to come together in that time.  They forgot what color they were.  They forgot how selfish and needy they were.  Everyone was reaching out to help the other.  Flags were at an all-time high in sales.  Work gave us flags for our desk.  There was no one saying we couldn’t wave the flag because it offended someone.  That really pisses me off when someone won’t let our flag be shown in our country because it might offend someone who came here from another country.  I say let them go back.  The flag was here and waving proudly long before they were.  There are whole generations of children that are now adults who were not old enough to remember.  I wonder how many people went back to life as if it never happened after a year or so.  I remember it.  I keep it fresh in my mind.  Evil exists.  True, pure evil that is meant to do nothing but destroy.  I remember the deafening silence.  The skies were empty it seemed.  My heart still aches for those poor people who endured that awful and painful journey to meet their demise.  The brave men and women who ran into to try to save lives and the ones who realized that there was no way out for them.  I can’t imagine anything as horrible, although as I stated true evil exists so there are things more so evil than this was.  Never forget was what we said.  How many have forgotten or placed this horrible day in the back of their minds.  As for me, I can still hear the silence.  It calls to me.  It beckons me to remember, to never forget.  Yes, I still hear the silence of that day.  September 11, 2001.

An Age of Doing the Bare Minimum at work…

Anymore one is almost hard pressed to get good customer service.  Politeness and smiles and a thank you for shopping/doing business with us are almost impossible to get anymore.  It would be easy to blame the employees.  One could say they are too demanding or that they are self-centered or even that they have no respect for this world anymore.  It’s easy when you get bad service in a restaurant to automatically blame the waitress or when you’re shopping to assume the cashier could care less about you as a customer.  Although some of this may be true I blame the leaders of this world and of the companies.  A company is a compilation of its employees and its employees are a reflection of its management, plain and simple.  Let me explain.  In the eighties as I was a young woman coming into the working world I watched as managers and coaches alike tried to help their employees improve and get ahead and move on up the ladder.  The management then understood that if your employees succeed so did they.  Managers then also cared enough to know their employees.  There was a vice president in the one company of over 300 employees I knew that knew every employees name, their family’s names, how many children they had, and a lot more.  It was very impressive and yes he was above average, but it made you respect him.  He always had a smile for you and he actually cared if you as a person were doing well.  It made one want to work hard for him and make him proud of you.  In those days your ideas, even if not good ones, were accepted to consider and you were thanked for them.  If you saw something you felt was wrong and you voiced, it to management they tried to help you work through those feelings.  Fast forward to today.  Upper management is lucky if it knows it’s direct employees names and could care less about your family or if you have one.  They don’t want you to get ahead because they are afraid you will take their jobs.  Well this is most of the ones I’ve known recently.  If you voice your opinion they accuse you of being crass or of being offensive and non-company supportive in your comments.  You are treated like and feel like a nameless number.  After a while it starts to beat down even the best employees till they are just doing what they have to in order to make their numbers and make their paycheck.  Instead of being a place you enjoy going to, it’s a mundane existence of let’s get this day over.  True there are employees that are not doing what they are supposed to just because they are bad employees, but other employees that were once good employees fall into a non-caring let me make it to Friday existence.  When one employee fails now instead of taking that employee aside the company feels a need to take the whole group into a room and tell them what went wrong without naming that person or pointing a finger at them (let’s face it we all usually know who it is) and tell everyone that they need to do a better job, which only beats down the good employees even farther.  Then companies are in a cycle of let’s fix what is wrong instead of let us maintain and try to prevent things from going wrong in the first place.  Companies want to hire fewer bodies for more work.  Employees leave and instead of replacing them they simply send it on to the already over worked employees who have few instructions and little training.  Employees call off a lot due to one not caring and two fatigue and frustration.  It’s a vicious cycle that just goes on and on.  Me?  I get beat down and I do get discouraged, but unfortunately for me I am not a person who cannot care.  I care whether my company succeeds.  I care how we are perceived in the community.  I care about my fellow co-workers.   What does this get me?  Usually not much.  I recently marked my 20^th anniversary with my company and not one piece of paper saying way to go.  Not one supervisor in our department who said way to be there; although I took in donuts and informed them thus that it was so they knew.  No value felt by me as an employee of twenty years.  What did they do.  Put my name on a list that you have to look up on their internal web page saying congrats from a generic person whom I’ve never met with 200+ other people that someone would have to really be looking at to ever see.  I still love my company but it isn’t hard for me to see looking around why so many employees have no respect for them.  Respect is earned, it doesn’t just come with a title.  That has always been my belief.  Either way most people these days are just doing the bare minimum at work and I can’t help but believe it could be better but it starts at the top, not the bottom.