Just Breathe

The following post is dedicated to

Marie Louise Adams Henrie Fuertes 1976 ~ 2011

and

Christopher R. Thomas 1973 ~ 2011

Two young people gone long before their time.

Gone on different days, for different reasons.

Friends of my kids.

JUST BREATHE

Yes, I understand that every life must end, uh-huh,

As we sit alone, I know someday we must go, uh-huh,

Oh I'm a lucky man, to count on both hands

the ones I love,

Some folks just have one,

yeah, others, they've got none, uh-huh

Stay with me, Let's just breathe.

Practiced are my sins,

never gonna let me win, uh-huh,

Under everything, just another human being, uh-huh,

Yeh, I don't wanna hurt, there's so much in this world

to make me bleed.

Stay with me,

You're all I see.

Did I say that I need you?

Did I say that I want you?

Oh, if I didn't I'm a fool you see. . .

No one knows this more than me.

As I come clean.

I wonder everyday

as I look upon your face, uh-huh,

Everything you gave

And nothing you would take, uh-huh,

Nothing you would take

Everything you gave...

Did I say that I need you?

Oh, did I say that I want you?

Oh, if I didn't I'm a fool you see,

No one knows this more than me.

As I come clean, ah-ah...

Nothing you would take,..

Everything you gave.

Love you till I die,..

Meet you on the other side.

This touching comment was left on YouTube after the above song:

"i'm 92 years of age and i try to keep up with the younger generation but when i found this song i cried because it reminds me of my wife who passed away 6 years ago at the age of 89 we had been together for 59 years this song just warms my heart. hope your happy in heaven Ann.... I love you so much.... "

Little Ways

Saint Theresa is known as the Saint of the Little Ways,

meaning she believed in doing the little things in life well and with great love.

She is also the Patron Saint of flower growers and florists.

She is represented by roses.

I am not Catholic, but I believe that good comes to us from many sources.

This prayer came to me today and helped lift my spirit.

May it lift your's as well.


St. Theresa 's Prayer:

'May today there be peace within.

May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and in others.

May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content with yourself just the way you are!!

Let this knowledge settle into your bones,

and allow your soul the freedom to

sing,

dance,

praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us.'

15 Ways to Look at Love

Love Your Pets

1. "There is only one happiness in life -- to love

and to be loved."
George Sand French Novelist

2. "A kiss is a lovely trick, designed by nature, to stop words

when speech becomes superfluous."

Ingrid Bergmen

3. "When you are in Love you can't fall asleep because
reality is better than your dreams."
Dr Seuss

4. "Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty,

or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent,

but because they are themselves."
Henri Frederic Amiel Swiss Philosopher

5. "The best thing about me is you."
Shannon Crown

6. "Pleasure of love lasts but a moment,

Pain of love lasts a lifetime."
Bette Davis

7. "Love is the energy of life."
Robert Browning

8. "You come to love not by finding the perfect person,

but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly."
Sam Keen

9. "To the world you may be one person,

but to one person you may be the world."
Heather Cortez

10. "The best and most beautiful things in the world

cannot be seen or even touched.

They must be felt with the heart."
Helen Keller

11. "What I do and what I dream include thee, as the wine

must taste of its own grapes..."

Elizabeth Barret Browning

12. "Like music on the waters is they

sweet voice to me."

Lord Byron

13. "The only true gift is a portion of yourself."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

14. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;

what is essential is invisible to the eye."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

15. "Love is a battlefield."

Pat Benatar

(click on Pat Benatar and Rock On! Happy Heart Day.)

It is All About Love

Each Sunday my husband and I are privileged to help conduct a LDS Sacrament Meeting at the CareSource Hospice in Holladay. The sweet, elderly people living there are terminal, most with less than three months to live. We call the hospice "God's Waiting Room" and we are the send-off crew.

CareSource Hospice in Holladay

A wonderful part of the calling is to ask a friend or ward member to speak at our half-hour meetings. We have heard some touchingly sweet messages from our neighbors. In turn each of these speakers is moved by the amazing spirit in this facility.

Our neighbor Stacey is a remarkable woman with an incredible story. She shared her account with the residents at the hospice last Sunday. It goes something like this:

Fresh out of college, Stacey was asked to teach at the homeless shelter's one room school near the freeway viaduct in downtown Salt Lake--a daunting challenge for an experienced teacher, let alone a young woman of twenty-two.

As she arrived the first day, with fear and trepidation, a wild-eyed, wild-haired man led her to a group of adults huddled around a fire they had built under a viaduct. Some of them were parents of children she would be teaching. He introduced Stacey as the new teacher and the others began firing questions at her. They laughed when she admitted that this was her first real job. A woman sitting on the curb said, "Well, honey, you ain't got nowhere to go but up."

At The School with No Name, as it came to be called, Stacey taught up to 25 students a day, ranging across all 13 grades, crammed into a 12' by 12' room in a shed. Each time someone needed to reach one of the battered books on the cinder block shelves, the whole back row had to stand up and move their desks. Stacey would walk around in the morning knocking on parked cars to round up her students for class. She didn't know then that she would come to regard this bottom-of-the-barrel job as the one place in the world she was meant to be. "At first I cried every night. Now I would be sick if I had to leave," Stacey says. "The children give much more to me than I give to them."

Such was the case of nine-year-old Dana. When she first came to the school she wouldn't talk or even look up at Stacey. Dana flinched if someone tried to touch her. Slowly she gained enough confidence to talk a little. Then Stacey had to go into the hospital for radiation treatments as a follow-up for thyroid cancer. Dana lingered after school with her hands hidden behind her back. She asked Stacey if she were scared and Stacey admitted she was a little. Then Dana said, "I have something that will help you." She placed a black-and-white stuffed bear on the teacher's desk and stepped back. "He'll go with you to the hospital. It helps to hold him tight when you're afraid," Dana explained, promising, "It really works."

Stacey's eyes filled with tears and all she could manage to say was "Thank you, Dana." All went well at the hospital and Stacey returned to her classroom--only to find Dana gone!

Later she asked the shelter staff about Dana's history. The little girl lived with her father but custody had been awarded originally to the mother. A neighbor had called the police because she had not seen Dana or her little brother for several days. The mother and her boyfriend claimed the children were away visiting an aunt. But the police persisted and found the two children locked in the cellar. They were crouched on a damp, dirt floor in an unlit, windowless room. They had no food or water and were very weak. With one hand Dana was holding her younger brother, and in the other hand she clutched a dirty, black-and-white bear.

Stacey was heart-broken to learn that she possessed the one and only thing in Dana's life which gave her comfort and stability. She decided to tell Dana's story in order to help others learn this poignant example of love. Dana gave Stacey the only thing she had to give.

Such heart-rending stories were not uncommon in Stacey's job. One day she was talking to her class about the importance of friendship and about showing people we love them by the things we say. A boy replied matter-of-factly, "You know, teacher, nobody don't love nobody."

That searing phrase haunted Stacey and she choose it for the title of her book about the lives of the shelter children and her experiences teaching them. She felt she had gained so much from the children, she wanted more people to have a chance to learn what she had learned: that each of us is merely the product of what was given to us as children—not the things, but the time, experience, and love.

Nobody Don't Love Nobody is sad and inspiring. "It has really spurred incredible interest," says Stacey who has become a national figure, traveling all over the country advocating the educational rights of impoverished children.

Our elderly friends at the Hospice are like the young children in Stacey's story. Many cling to stuffed animals, baby dolls, or pictures of grandchildren. It is all they have left in this life, other than their personal knowledge of our Savior and his love for them.

It really is all about LOVE, whether we are nine or ninety. Each individual is valuable and loved in God's eyes---so it should be with us.

First Love

Brett and Danielle

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” ---Mother Teresa

"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in." ---Morrie Schwartz