"How do you prepare for life?"

You know, painting a bedroom really doesn’t take all that long. I guess you can paint a bedroom in several hours, can’t you?

What takes so long is the preparation. First, you have to move all of the furniture, either taking it out of the room, or moving it into the center of the room. If it stays in the room, then you have to cover it. Next, if there are pictures on the walls—and who doesn’t have pictures on the walls—you have to remove them. Most of us then spackle over the holes, sand them lightly, and create a smooth wall surface. Now if you have wallpaper up and you want to paint, removing that is a whole other matter that involves more tools and chemicals and more patience than I have some weekends. But all of this preparation, when done properly, is what insures a beautiful paint job.

Sometimes life is a lot like painting a bedroom. It takes a lot longer to get ready to actually do something than it does to just do it. Preparation is important and what insures a job well done. So prepare with God as you listen to life and make a life, not just a living.

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"Do you divide life?"

A parent told me a story recently about their daughter and dinner. It seems that one of their table rules is that if you want to have dessert, you first have to eat all of the food on your plate. Sounds reasonable, right?

Well, their daughter who’s about five, had not eaten all of the food on her plate. She put down her fork anyway, stuck out her stomach, patted it, and said, “Oh me, I’m full.”

Her mother then said, “Oh, well if you’re full, and you haven’t cleaned your plate, I guess you don’t want any dessert.” She was trying to avoid going to war over dessert again.

The little girl just kept patting her stomach, and said, "Yes, I do want dessert.”

And the mother said, “Oh, but you’re full, remember?”

“Well,” the daughter, “the dinner side of my stomach is full, but the dessert side is empty.”

Do you divide life like this little girl does? Into the sweet situations you think you can handle and the rest for God? Let God have all of you as you listen to life and make a life, not just a living.

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"What should you do?"

I don’t remember exactly who I was listening to, but I think it was either a politician or a preacher. One of them was talking about what we ought to do about a certain situation. “You ought to do this…” he said. “You should do that…” he went on. I kept listening, hoping to hear something other than what I ought to or should do; struggling for any tidbit of encouragement or advice about how I could actually do what I was being told I ought to do. But none ever came. So there I was left hanging between what I ought to do and how to do it.

It’s amazing how often that happens, isn’t it? For instance, at work, do you ever tell someone they ought to do or to have done something differently only to realize later, they didn’t know how to do it? Or does it happen at home with your spouse or child?

Put yourself in that person’s place today as you listen to life. Ask yourself, “What would I like to know besides what I ought to do?” Then answer your question.

And that’s one way to listen to life and make a life, not just a living!

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"Life's about the little things, isn't it?"

I spoke to a group recently, telling stories like this one while coaching them to listen to life. Later I saw a man from the audience in the restroom. He shook my hand firmly, looked me in the eye, and said, “Thank you for what you said. I really enjoyed it and you reminded me of something that I might have forgotten.”

“What’s that?” I said. I love it when people tell me their stories.

“Well,” he said, “when my wife and I were first married, she did something that irritated me. You see, my Mama raised me to always hang the toilet paper so that it fell under the roll. Well, my wife hung the toilet paper so that it fell over the roll.”

“So how many arguments did you have about that?” I asked.

“More than a few,” he said. “Until one day I realized that life’s about the little things and I didn’t need to be right every time.”

He’s right this time, you know. Life is about the little things and you don’t have to be right every time. Listen to your life for the little things as you make a life, and not just a living and let somebody else be right occasionally.

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"What are you afraid of?"

One of the things I remember from trick-or-treating as a child at Halloween is that my younger brother was scared to death of ghosts. Or, actually other kids dressed as ghosts.

He and I would walk from one neighbor’s house to another and all of a sudden, he would scream and start crying. I would look around and there was a kid dressed as a ghost. I would hug him until “the ghost” walked on by.

He was afraid of ghosts not because they were ghosts but because they were dressed in all white. You see he had surgery a couple of times when he was a baby and later as a preschooler. All of the OR people wore white as did the other nurses and doctors. He associated their white dress and the white sheets of “the ghosts” with pain.

You know, we’ve had a lot of pain in the world this year—tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, terrorist attacks. It’s easy for you to associate that pain with every dark shadow in life and be frightened of lots of things.

Ask God to hug you until your ghosts walk on by as you listen to life.

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