Dealing With Our Pain

[Ann]

You are reading from the book Touchstones

I've never started a fight, but I never pulled back from a fight either.
--Billy Martin

Sometimes we walk around with chips on our shoulders. We're like a tightly wound spring ready to jump at the slightest trigger, when other times we would let the same event go unnoticed. We even say self-righteously, "I didn't start it." Now that we are becoming more responsible for ourselves, we are owning our part in relationships. Maybe we have a problem with being like a spring ready to jump. When we are like that, we are difficult to live with or be around.

We can change by getting in touch with our pain. We need to explore our feelings. Perhaps we need to be honest with ourselves about low self-esteem, about feelings of loneliness or fear. Then we must talk with another person or our group about our feelings and continue to talk about them. In this way we become reconciled to ourselves and to our friends around us.

God, help me accept my own pain, and help me be tolerant of my friends' mistakes.

From Touchstones: A Book of Daily Meditations for Men ©1986, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation.

[IO Storm]

Ouch!

And thanks Ann.

Love,



Sherry

[hope3]

Wonderful Ann, and please let me turn my pain and anger into

something positive............hope3

[IO Storm]

Something beautiful.....
Something good...
All my confusion..
He understood...

All I had to offer Him
Was hopelesness and strife...
But, He made something beautiful
Of my life.

(An old song)

Love,



Sherry