Illustration results for Disappointment
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An old lady spent much of her summer setting and swinging in the old swing hanging on her front porch. Her husband had been dead several years and she had withdrawn from all but the closest family. Her lonely time grew and grew??
One spring day, the old lady went out in the garage and dug the old roto-tiller out from under the rusty tub that covered the engine. Seems the old lady had found a big bag of seeds that was a vine that would bear bright red flowers. The old lady loved bright red things. She made a decision, get out of the swing and grow beautiful flowers to enjoy.
With great excitement,she pulled real hard on the rope, and with great effort she finally got the old roto-tiller to run.
There was a wall of concrete blocks between her and the neighbors driveway. The blocks were laid...a block and a space, or a gap...then another block and a space all the way down the driveway,....all the way to the garage.
With great effort the old lady plowed betwen the driveway and the wall. She blistered her hands, her back hurt, but the jarring roto-tiller finished the task.
With feelings of accomplishment and pride, she got down on her knees and planted all the seeds in several rows along the wall.
The rains came, the Lord blessed the little seeds and the sun shine warmed the ground. One day the little old lady saw the heads of the plant break forth, and the vines grew and grew ....until the vines completely covered the wall. The vines so grew that the wall could not be seen. She would set daily in the swing and watch the progress of the vine. This was great joy to the old lady.
Beautiful vines ....but no flowers, zero. da nada, nothing. Where are all my bright red flowers?? One day after much dissapointment and great thought the lady decided...I planted those vines for flowers, bright red flowers and there are none. I am going to cut those dumb empty vines down and burn them.
She went down the drive way into the garage and got the rusty old hoe, sharpened the edge and started chopping the vines down.
About the third vine was chopped down and she grinned ear to ear. The neighbor pulling into his drive way, skidded to a halt and jumped out of his car and ran over to her .
He said, "What on earth are you doing?? I know this is your property and that is your vine, and you can do as you chose. But, why are you cutting down this vine??"
The old lady explained to the kind neighbor, "I planted this not for the vine but for the bright red flowers, and there are none. After all my sweat and blisters and watering, not one flower. I am cutting this down because there are no red flowers and that is why I planted them!!!"
Without one word the neighbor took the feeble old lady by the hand and lead her to the other side of the wall. And on his side of the fence, there were over a million of the brightest red flowers you ever saw, between every block were many of the brillant blossoms.
Quote from Anne Landers:
“ I’ve learned plenty, including most importantly what Leo Rostea had in mind when he said,
“Each of us is a little lonely, deep inside and longs to be understood.”
I have learned how it is with the stumbling tortured people in this world who have nobody to talk to. The fact that the column has been so successful underscores, for me at least, the central tragedy of our society. The disconnectedness, the insecurity, the fear - that bedevils, cripples, and paralyses so many of us.
I have learned that financial success, academic achievement, and social or political status open no doors to peace of mind or inner security.
We are all wanderers, like sheep, on this planet.”
Friday at quitting time, Jim said,
‘Boss, have you got any extra work I can do tonight?’
Sure do but I can’t pay you overtime.
That’s okay, I just don’t want to go home.
Why not?
Well, I’ve been in the doghouse since last night.
I see...Why? What did you do to deserve that?
I still don’t know, it must be one of those woman things.
I was minding my own business relaxing in front of the TV.
My wife enters the room & asks, "What’s on the TV?"
And honestly, I swear all I said was, "Dust!"
She’s been mad ever since!
The wife found fault with her husband’s grace/truthfulness & forefeited her companionship.
We also forfeit a great deal when the find fault with God’s grace.
WHAT TO DO WITH LONELINESS
Lee Strobel writes: People today will admit any problem - drugs, divorce, alcoholism - "but there’s one admission that people are loath to make, whether they’re a star on television or someone who fixes televisions in a repair shop. It’s just too embarrassing. It penetrates too deeply to the core of who they are." People don’t want to admit that they are (sometimes) lonely. "Loneliness is such a humiliating malady that it ought to have its own politically correct euphemism: ’relationally challenged.’ Or its own telethon. Anything to make it safer to conf...
Author Mary Ann Bird shared this very personal story in The Whisper Test. She wrote, “I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech.”
“When classmates asked, ‘What happened to your lip? I’d tell them I’d fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me.”
“There was, however, a teacher in the second grade that we all adored—Mrs. Leonard [was her] name. She was short, round, happy—a sparkling lady.”
Annually we had a hearing test . . .
Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn. I knew from past years that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back—things like “The sky is blue” or “Do you have new shoes?” I waited there for those words that God must have put into her mouth. [They were] seven words that changed my life. Mrs. Leonard said in her whisper, “I wish you were my little girl” (Quoted in Larson, p. 90).
Like Mary Ann Bird, born with a cleft palate, each and every one of us is born with a cleft heart.
A young boy was sent to the corner store by his mother to buy a loaf of bread. He was gone much longer than it should have taken him. When he finally returned, his mother asked, “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick about you.”
“Well,” he answered, “there was a little boy with a broken bike who was crying. So I stopped to help him.”
“I didn’t know you knew anything about fixing bikes,” his mother said.
“I don’t,” he replied. “I just stayed there and cried with him.”
I’ve been reading a book by Robert Putnam, a professor at Harvard. The book is called "Bowling Alone," and in it, he documents the decline in community life in American over the last four decades. The title comes from a trivial but telling example: the percentage of adults who belong to a bowling league today is only about ¼ of what it was in the 1960’s. Other examples:
· The percentage of people who volunteer in a political campaign - stuffing envelopes, making phone calls, going door to door - is today about half what it was in the late 1960’s.
· Active membership in local clubs and organizations, like the PTA, has dropped by about half, percentage-wise, since the 1970’s.
· People are visiting one another less frequently, having friends over for dinner less frequently, getting together to play cards less frequently.
In short, every objective measure of participation in community and civic life is declining.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
When the 1960s ended, San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district reverted to high rent, and many hippies moved down the coast to Santa Cruz. They had children and got married, too, though in no particular sequence. But they didn’t name their children Melissa or Brett. People in the mountains around Santa Cruz grew accustomed to their children playing Frisbee with little Time Warp or Spring Fever. And eventually Moonbeam, Earth, Love and Precious Promise all ended up in public school. That’s when the kindergarten teachers first met Fruit Stand. Every fall, according to tradition, parents bravely apply name tags to their children, kiss them good-bye and send them off to school on the bus. So it was for Fruit Stand. The teachers thought the boy’s name was odd, but they tried to make the best of it.
"Would you like to play with the blocks, Fruit Stand?" they offered. And later, "Fruit Stand, how about a snack?" He accepted hesitantly. By the end of the day, his name didn’t seem much odder than Heather’s or Sun Ray’s. At dismissal time, the teachers led the children out to the buses. "Fruit Stand, do you know which one is your bus?" He didn’t answer. That wasn’t ...
The NY Times had a story about a little boy who was riding the bus. He sat so close to a woman dressed in a gray suit that everybody assumed that he was her son & she was his mother. Until finally another lady sat down on the same seat with them.
And when the little boy put his feet up on the seat & got the other lady’s dress dirty, she turned to the lady in the gray suit & said, "Would you please tell your son to put his feet down because he is getting my dress dirty?"
The lady in the gray suit pushed the boy away & said, "He’s not my son. I’ve never seen him before in my life." The 2nd lady looked at the little boy sadly for a moment & then started talking with him. She asked him if he was traveling alone.
"Yes," he said, "I always travel alone. My mommy & daddy are both dead & I live with Aunt Clara. But Aunt Clara thinks that Aunt Mildred ought to take her turn in taking care of me too. So whenever she gets tired of me, she sends me to Aunt Mildred. I’m going to Aunt Mildred’s now."
The woman said, "It must be tough traveling alone." "Yeah," said the little boy, "it is. But I never get lost. But," he said, "sometimes I do get very lonesome. So whenever I see someone with a kind face I sit close to them, & pretend that I belong to them & that they belong to me."
He continued, "I sure hope that Aunt Mildred is home when I get there, because it looks like it is going to rain & I don’t like to be outside when it rains." The woman reached over & grabbed the boy, hugged him so tight that it almost hurt & wished for a moment that this little boy who wanted so much to belong, could belong to her.
Greg Slayton is the CEO of ClickAction.com. He says, in the busy dot.com world in which he now succeeds, he is exhausted by the frantic pace. This is how he describes where it has left him in relationship with others: "The sense of isolation is a curse. It is the curse of 10,000 acquaintances. You find no one to talk to when things go really bad."
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