Tag: fear

Seven Wise Teachings We Should All Remember

/ colleen arnold / 10 Comments

Tomorrow would have been Neil’s 62nd birthday. It’s nice to think of him today and smile without tears. He wasn’t perfect like me (lol) but he sure did have his good points. He was the most generous person I ever met– he would give away his shirt if someone else needed it – and in fact, on several occasions, did just that. He was level-headed and calm and loved to laugh – even when his jokes weren’t funny. And he had a remarkable wisdom that I didn’t always appreciate at the time. This is an old post, but it seems appropriate to resurrect it:

Neil had a way of teaching me things. Sometimes I learned from him, other times I learned because of him, but in retrospect he was pretty wise. Here are seven of his great life lessons we should all remember.

1. Don’t be afraid. Be reasonable, but don’t be afraid – to try something new, to go somewhere alone, to make a new friend, to do what you want.

2. Be compassionate to everyone – young people, old people, tattooed people, long-haired people, smokers, drinkers, drug users, folks in jail  – because underneath it all they’re just people like us. No one is perfect, and every one of us is human and flawed, yet God loves us all. We should love each other.

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How Do I Get Through This?

/ colleen arnold / 20 Comments

“How am I going to get through this?” my friend asked, as quiet tears slid down her weary-eyed face. There was no easy answer for her question, so I just reached across the table and held her hand.

The odd thing was that she was the fourth person lately who asked that same question. My guess is that each of us has asked it before, probably more than once. Between the grief of a husband’s sudden death, the loss of a miscarriage, a terrifying health diagnosis, and unexpected marital separations, it seems I know a lot of people who are struggling. I have been thinking about how I survived when Neil died. Here’s some thoughts.

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Help! I’m Drowning!

/ colleen arnold / 2 Comments

Although we lived on a lake in my early childhood and I knew how to ice skate, I never learned then how to swim. I loved the water; I just didn’t feel any overwhelming desire to be under it.

Then came third grade swimming lessons at the community pool. I tried to love the lessons, really, I did, but there was nothing fun about being cold and wet. My tense paper-weight-like body refused to float and instead I reliably sank. While the other beginner students jumped in and out with joyful abandon, I gently lowered myself inch by chilly inch into the water. Instead of graceful arms and fluttering feet my strokes looked like a flapping chicken hit the water. So, when the day came for everyone to jump off the diving board, I was not enthusiastic. 

My mom wisely stayed home that day, and my dad came instead. I had no intention of going off the board, but he gradually talked me into it. After watching everyone else have their turn, and noting no near-death experiences, I decided I could at least try. Here is a key detail though: I still couldn’t really swim. Everyone thought that as soon as I jumped into the deep end, weeks of lessons would suddenly click, and I would paddle proudly over to the edge and climb out. That most definitely did not happen.

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