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Health & Fitness

A Weekend Or Week Of Heaven

A friend of mine, Brian said a very interesting comment when he came back from doing some acting work he is involved in. He said “this was a weekend from Heaven.” This is a lovely description of the work weekend he participated in and it showed how happy he was that it had happened to him. How often do we think we had a weekend from Heaven? Can you count on your fingers when this has happened to you?

When I was single so many years ago and I was going with my husband from October 1957 until we married on July 1960; I believed all the weekends we went out together and saw each other, that they were  “weekends from Heaven.” After you get married, your girlhood or womanhood thoughts believe in advance that every day will be from Heaven. When it happens, we know instantly that life is not always Heaven, but it is OK to believe that sometimes they are. Every day cannot be Heaven, but every day can be great; even the ordinary days present in our lives are grand in some ways, some of the time during that day.

I found a saying  “make happiness a habit.” We all have our habits, some good, some not so good and if we try to be happy all the time and if we believe we are happy; then I imagine we could be really happy. A fortune cookie that I received with my Chinese dinner the other night said “you will win success in whatever calling you adopt.”

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I had a friend Margaret, a senior who is gone now and lived in Columbia, Maryland who was born in Hungary and she and her husband and children came to the USA from there and she and her husband John always felt that they had success in just being able to be citizens of our country. John wore a flag pin in his lapel, long before our politicians started to do that.

Someone said in a movie I viewed the other night “do not try to fill your late father’s shoes, fill your own shoes, you are competent enough for that.” Sometimes, we know of a person who has accumulated great wealth or fantastic notoriety in their profession or they are always doing fun things. We think to ourselves, why is he or she so fortunate that all this is happening to them, when I am just as good a person as he or she is, why do I not walk in their shoes and have that great fortune? You need not walk in their shoes; you can walk in your own shoes and you can accomplish many important achievements. In this country, we have countless ways to achieve any amount of greatness we desire.

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I have a friend, an email pal in Steilacoom, Washington State who always ends his emails to me with “have an unbelievable day.” His name is Steven Behr and he is a Wellness Educator and he practices this with his utmost belief that wellness is in our reach. This is a comment he wrote to me in an email the other night. He said “you know helping yourself and making each day an unbelievable one becomes a reality when we use everything in our power: prayer, mind/body, a small step every day, balance work, medicine and anything else.”  He also said “in my case being proactive in all components will make it happen.”

In his book called Gifted Hands, Doctor Ben Carson, M.D. tells of his childhood where he was made fun of by the other students in the class. Even a teacher ridiculed him when he finally got high marks, needling the other students that he was doing better than them and they should be better than him. He realized that he need not walk in their shoes, because his shoes were as good as theirs and he probably was superior. He proved all this to be true graduating as a physician and he became at age thirty-three, the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He rose up from not reading very well in the early years, to this high position at this prestigious institution.

This proves to all of us, that “achievements can be achieved by starting out at the complete bottom and rising to the utmost position at the top.” This is my own saying. It shows us that every one of us can overcome adversities by believing in our self and our innate sense of what our goals are and that we can attain them, regardless of many setbacks early on.

We need not walk or step in the shoes of others with our thoughts. Our thinking can rise above that and as Doctor Ben Carson states in his book, the kids made fun of him and his brother and they called him dumb and even ridiculed his clothes.

He rose above all of this with many a tear in his eyes and he never let these taunting kids see the tears; he stood there proudly and conquered everything that fell before him. Doctor Carson ends his book with this “if we choose to see the obstacle as hurdles, we can leap over them. Successful people don’t have fewer problems. They have determined that nothing will stop them from going forward. Whatever direction we choose, if we can realize that every hurdle we jump strengthens and prepares us for the next one, we’re already on the way to success.”

 

We can all learn a wonderful lesson from this outstanding person. Even if there is a tear in your eye from someone saying something unkind; that tear can eventually become a tear of joy, if only we realize that we can leap up high when we understand that a hurdle is temporary and none is too high for us to jump over. We leap and we soar and we rise. We have finally gotten to the pinnacle and we now are at the top, the paramount and we came a long way and we deserve all the accolades given to us, because we never gave up our dreams of accomplishment and goals.

We surely walk in our own shoes and this is mighty exciting. I am today, December twenty-first, seventy nine and a half years old. I still feel that there is time, God willing, that I can leap and soar in the many things there are still to do. As Doctor Carson says “whatever direction we choose, hurdles we jump strengthens and prepares us for the next one and we are on our way to success.” You can too and you can jump wearing your own shoes. You will have many weeks from Heaven.

My friend Harry Burstyn from Pikesville where I live has found out that life changes in even a few hours. He received from his cousin Yossi Burstyn a kidney three weeks ago at the University of Maryland Hospital his new piece of  life, a kidney given to him with love from his cousin. He believed in the idea that he would get a renewed portion of a healthier life and it happened and now he is in the recovery zone and he is progressing marvelously helped along with the love of his wife Linda, daughter Shana and son Aaron along with numerous family members.

Last night he went out for dinner for the first time since his surgery to his brother Joe’s house that his sister-in-law Sandra threw for him so he could meet his new great niece as she came to visit her grandparents and she came with her mom and dad from out of town.  So Harry is a great uncle and that in itself is something to be proud of. I happen to be not only a great aunty; I am a great, great aunty as my great niece now has two children. This too is a great, great thing.

All of us as Steven Behr so kindly told me help yourself and make each day an unbelievable day and then you yourself are unbelievable too. You will have a week and weekend of Heaven.

 

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