Why God Made The
Most Important Body Part
My mother used to ask me what is the most important part of the body. Through the
years
I would take a guess at what I thought was the correct answer. When I was younger,
I thought sound was very important to us as humans, so I said,
"My ears, Mommy." She said, "No Many people are deaf.
But you keep thinking about it and I will ask you again soon."
Several years passed before she asked me again. Since making my first attempt,
I had contemplated the correct answer. So this time I told her, "Mommy, sight is
very important to everybody, so it must be our eyes." She looked at me and told me,
"You are learning fast, but the answer is not correct because there are
many people who are blind."
Stumped again, I continued my quest for knowledge and over the years, Mother asked
me a couple more times and always her answer was, "No. But you are getting smarter
every year, my child."
Then last year, my grandpa died. Everybody was hurt. Everybody was crying. Even
my father cried. I remember that especially because it was only the second time
I saw him cry. My Mom looked at me when it was our turn to say our final
good-bye to Grandpa. She asked me, "Do you know the most
important body part yet, my dear?"
I was shocked when she asked me this now. I always thought this was a game
between her and me. She saw the confusion on my face and told me, "This
question is very important. It shows that you have really lived in your life. For
every body part you gave me in the past, I have told you was wrong and I have
given you an example why. But today is the day you need to learn this important lesson."
She looked down at me as only a mother can. I saw her eyes well up with tears.
She said, "My dear, the most important body part is your shoulder."
I asked, "Is it because it holds up my head?"
She replied, "No, it is because it can hold the head of a friend or a loved one when
they cry. Everybody needs a shoulder to cry on sometime in life, my dear. I only
hope that you have enough love and friends that you will always have a
shoulder to cry on when you need it."
Then and there I knew the most important body part is not a selfish one.
It is sympathetic to the pain of others.
People will forget what you said...
People will forget what you did...
But people will NEVER forget how you made them feel...
~Author Unknown~
-----------------------------------------
Reprinted
with permission from Janice Sattele
of
"Happy Thoughts"
-----------------------------------------
Did you feel Shame and Embarrassment within you
of your Parents.
Young Parents, was the following true in your life as you were growing up.
OR
Kid's, is the following true in your life.
What my father wore embarrassed me as a young man. I
wanted him to dress like a doctor or lawyer, but on those
muggy mornings when he rose before dawn to fry eggs for my
mother and me, he always dressed like my father.
We lived in south Texas, and my father wore tattered
jeans with the imprint of his pocketknife on the seat. He
liked shirts that snapped more than those that buttoned and
kept his pencils, cigars, glasses, wrenches and
screwdrivers in his breast pocket. My father's boots were
government-issues with steel toes that made them difficult
to pull off his feet, which I sometimes did when he
returned from repairing air conditioners, his job that also
shamed me.
But, as a child, I'd crept into his closet and modeled
his wardrobe in front of the mirror. My imagination
transformed his shirts into the robes of kings and his
belts into soldiers' holsters. I slept in his undershirts
and relied on the scent of his collars to calm my fear of
the dark. Within a few years, though, I started wishing my
father would trade his denim for khaki and retire his boots
for loafers. I stopped sleeping in his clothes and
eventually began dreaming of another father.
I blamed the way he dressed for my social failures.
When boys bullied me, I thought they'd seen my father
wearing his cowboy hat but no shirt while walking our dog.
I felt that girls snickered at me because they'd glimpsed
him mowing the grass in cutoffs and black boots. The
girls' families paid men (and I believed better-dressed
ones) to landscape their lawns, while their fathers yachted
in the bay wearing lemon-yellow sweaters and expensive
sandals.
My father only bought two suits in his life. He
preferred clothes that allowed him the freedom to shimmy
under cars and squeeze behind broken Maytags, where he felt
most content. But the day before my parents' twentieth
anniversary, he and I went to Sears, and he tried on suits
all afternoon. With each one, he stepped to the mirror,
smiled and nodded, then asked about the price and reached
for another. He probably tried ten suits before we drove to
a discount store and bought one without so much as
approaching a fitting room. That night my mother said she'd
never seen a more handsome man.
Later, though, he donned the same suit for my eighth-
grade awards banquet, and I wished he'd stayed home. After
the ceremony (I'd been voted Mr. Citizenship, of all
things), he lauded my award and my character while changing
into a faded red sweat suit. He was stepping into the garage
to wash a load of laundry when I asked what even at age
fourteen struck me as cruel and wrong. "Why," I asked,
"don't you dress 'nice,' like my friends' fathers?"
He held me with his sad, shocked eyes, and searched
for an answer. Then before he disappeared into the garage
and closed the door between us, my father said, "I like my
clothes." An hour later my mother stormed into my room,
slapped me hard across the face and called me an
"ungrateful little twerp," a phrase that echoed in my head
until they resumed speaking to me.
In time they forgave me, and as I matured I realized
that girls avoided me not because of my father but because
of his son. I realized that my mother had slapped me
because my father could not, and it soon became clear that
what he had really said that night was that there are
things more important than clothes. He'd said he couldn't
spend a nickel on himself because there were things I
wanted. That night, without another word, my father had
said, "You're my son, and I sacrifice so your life will be
better than mine."
For my high-school graduation, my father arrived in a
suit he and my mother had purchased earlier that day.
Somehow he seemed taller, more handsome and imposing, and
when he passed the other fathers they stepped out of his
way. It wasn't the suit, of course, but the man. The
doctors and lawyers recognized the confidence in his
swagger, the pride in his eyes, and when they approached
him, they did so with courtesy and respect. After we
returned home, my father replaced the suit in the flimsy
Sears garment bag, and I didn't see it again until his
funeral.
I don't know what he was wearing when he died, but he
was working, so he was in clothes he liked, and that
comforts me. My mother thought of burying him in the suit
from Sears, but I convinced her otherwise and soon
delivered a pair of old jeans, a flannel shirt and his
boots to the funeral home.
On the morning of the services, I used his pocketknife
to carve another hole in his belt so it wouldn't droop
around my waist. Then I took the suit from Sears out of his
closet and changed into it. Eventually, I mustered the
courage to study myself in his mirror where, with the
exception of the suit, I appeared small and insignificant.
Again, as in childhood, the clothes draped over my scrawny
frame. My father's scent wafted up and caressed my face,
but it failed to console me. I was uncertain: not about my
father's stature - I'd stopped being an ungrateful little
twerp years before. No, I was uncertain about myself, my
own stature. And I stood there for some time, facing myself
in my father's mirror, weeping and trying to imagine -- as I
will for the rest of my life -- the day I'll grow into my
father's clothes.
By Bret Anthony Johnston, Reprinted by permission of Bret Anthony Johnston
(c) 2001, from Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Tough Stuff by
Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Kimberly Kirberger.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Reprinted
with permission from Janice Sattele
of
"Happy Thoughts"
----------------------------------------
A backbone is better than a wishbone
A bad conscience has a very good memory.
A Bible falling apart belongs to a person who isn't
A Bible in the hand is worth two in the bookcase.
A big fall begins with a little stumble
A caring parent will be conscientious and strict.
A changed life results from a changed heart
A cheerful heart makes its own blue sky
A child of God is always welcomed home
A chip on the shoulder indicates wood higher up
A clean conscience makes a soft pillow.
A clear conscience is a soft pillow
A closed mind is a door closed to God's surprises
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
A contrary wind raises the kite higher
A crossless life is a crownless life
A day hemmed with prayer is less likely to unravel
A diamond cannot be shaped without friction
A diamond is a chunk of coal that made good under pressure
A Faith that Fizzles before the Finish had a Flaw before the First.
A family altar can alter a family.
A father/mother is someone you look up to, no matter how tall you grow
A fellow who says it can't be done is likely to be interrupted by someone doing it.
A fool talks, it is the wise man that listens.
A friend is someone who walks in when everyone else walks out
A friend is someone you can count on to count on you
A friend walks in when everyone else walks out.
A friendship is a treasure beyond measure
A gift is not a gift until given.
A going church for a coming Lord.
A good example is the best sermon.
A good marriage is the union of two forgivers
A good name is greater than riches.
A good pill to swallow is pride
A good place for the buck to stop is at the collection plate.
A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit....
Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
A good way to save face is to keep the lower half closed
A grateful mind is a great mind
A great deal of talent is lost for want of a little courage.
A Grouch spreads good will wherever he does not go!
A half-hour of preaching is like raising the dead
A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.
A head hung in despair cannot scan the horizon of God's provision
A holy person serves God passionately.
A hypocrite is a person who's not himself on Sunday.
A leader know the way and show the way
A life without prayer is a powerless life
A little humility is good for us all.
A living Christ in you is a living sermon
A living faith is a working faith
A loose tongue can get you into a tight place
A lot of kneeling will keep you in good standing.
A lot of people would do right if they thought it was wrong.
A man who can kneel to God can stand up to anything.
A man who fails to listen is blind, not deaf.
A mind in the gutter is a life down the drain
A nation is only as strong as the character of its citizens
A parents greatest responsibility is to point the way to God.
A perfectionist takes great pains and gives them to others
A person who hungers for money will starve to death spiritually!
A pint of example is worth a barrelful of advice.
A prayer is a wish turned heavenward
A proud person is seldom a grateful person
A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits
A rabbit's foot didn't work for the rabbit.
A radical is someone with both feet planted firmly in the air.
Reprinted
with permission from Janice Sattele
of
"Happy Thoughts"
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created on April 6, 2001
Updated on April 20, 2005
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