The Smart Blog

Video tips about smart marital choices…

Deborah Dunn — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 20:04:32 +0000

Need some timely information about making smart relationship choices? Then watch this video!

El Salvadore….

Deborah Dunn — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 05:54:21 +0000

Yes, I’ve been home for over two weeks now, and still haven’t been able to sit down and write about my mission trip to El Salvadore. Of course, I’ve been busy since I’ve returned, seeing clients and having lots of company. I’ll share more about that later. But I also think I didn’t really want to write about it. Not yet. At least until now…My experiences are still too fresh and precious. I wanted to think about my experience before I wrote about it.

But I realize that the time is come and if I don’t share with you soon, you might think I’ve forgotten you. Trust me, I never forget you. It’s just that I want what I write to be worth your time to read. I don’t read many blogs and when I do I want them to be full of good information and worth my time; not just the ramblings of a self-indulgent narcissist who thinks the world hangs on every word they say. If I had any of that in me (and I most certainly have, most of my life) a lot of it got stripped from me in El Salvadore. How can one stay in that mode when witnessing first hand the struggles of those whose daily lives are so difficult, but yet who also manage to stay positive, healthy, focused on their families, and grateful for what they have…so different from what I experience here in the U.S. especially as a marriage counselor.

My first days there were about adjusting. We arrived in San Salvadore on Wednesday, July 21, in the mid-afternoon, wearing our wonderful lime green mission shirts. Actually it was a great idea. Since most of us didn’t know each other it was a way of keeping our group together until we got where we were going.

The airport was small but bustling, and the various lines we had to go through intimidating, especially customs. But in general, the El Salvadoran people were friendly and didn’t try to be harsh or unpleasant. Still…the miltant looking security walking around with rifles didn’t help me feel very safe, even though I knew I was.

The air was muggy and I immediately noticed that everything looked grimy, a bit bedraggled, and certainly not state-0f-the-art, a result of years of disaster and war, I’m sure. Of course we were a bit tired and grimy ourselves, having left Raleigh at 6 a.m. Once we completed the security process we gathered outside where we were met by Juan de Dios Pena, the very young and sweet director of the Methodist Conference of El Salvadore. My first impression of him was that he smiled all the time, and no matter how many missions groups he worked with, he made us feel special, and as if he were having the time of his life.

Juan de Dios, his wife, and daughter

We all boarded a bus (didn’t realize that all yellow school buses go to Central America when they get too old here) and bounced and laughed our way to Ahauchapan, nice-sized town about an hour or so from San

Salvadore, up near the Honduran border. En route we stopped at a Methodist Clinic and dropped off medical supplies several people had brought into the country in their backpacks. I was sad to realize that even aspirin, Tylenol, and basic antibiotic ointments are scarce in most rural villages. I was also surprised that one of the first people I met was a young man from Rocky Mount, N. C. by the name of Brian Wubberly. I learned that he was from First Baptist Church there (the place where I saw my first counseling client EVER) and when I found out we had mutual friends I shook my head in amazement. At that moment I knew this was God’s way of showing me how far I had come and reminding me of where I had started, and that I was right where He wanted me to be.

The Methodista de Clinique

After we dropped off the medicine we headed up to the Colonia de Victorias outside of Ahuachapan, a hostel for missionaries run by Della Quintanella, a sweet woman whose husband had died suddenly of a heart attack the year before. We learned that it had been their dream to build this retreat and that now she and her sister and son (an agronomy student at the university) were now in the process of building this lovely place. I was blessed to have a GREAT roommate, Brenda Hudson, a nurse from Littleton, N. C. This was her fifth trip and we were so much alike it was sometimes a bit unreal. Trust me, having a good roommate was a really big deal for me!

My wonderful roomie!

Rustic though it was, I loved where we stayed. Della was a wonderful cook who grew all of her own vegetables (we ate lots of cucumber, squash, beans) raised her own chickens and eggs, and grew much of the fruit, such as the limes, watermelon, and the fruit in the drinks she prepared. We ate our meals in a huge high-ceilinged dining hall that was cool and spacious.

: dining hall

This is Della on the left, her sister on the right, and Della’s two younger children.

Of course, there were challenges with the language. But we all smiled a lot, pointed, and used our few words of Spanish and that got us a long way in the communication.

By the way, we did have running water, but the water is collected in cisterns, turned off during the day, and there was just enough to take one lukewarm trickle of a shower and flush the toilets when needed. There is no flushing of toilet paper in Central America because all the sewage pipes are too small, so the custom is to place used toilet paper in a plastic bag that is emptied once a day. Not a favorite memory for me….If you ever go there, make sure you take LOTS of baby wipes, as they are also needed for freshening up during the day. But the place was very clean, beautiful, and relaxing. The food was great. We had a big fan in our room and that helped LOTS. The beds were very comfortable.

After a delicious full breakfast on Thursday (bread, juice, pancakes, melon, various puddings, eggs, etc.) we loaded up on the bus and drove into the town to the church where the team would be working on building a cinder block room that would be used as a kindergarten during the week and a Sunday School on Sunday mornings, and where I would be teaching on Saturday. I was very glad to be able to see the building and get comfortable knowing where all the electrical outlets were, etc. It was a gorgeous space, and relatively cool considering that it was about 85 degrees outside and very humid. I worked on my presentation and talked to the Duke University interns there on a nine week tour, while the rest of the team worked on the building.

Thursday we all paced ourselves, getting used to life without air conditioning, the change in water and food, and getting to know our team mates. There were eleven of us altogether, including two high school kids and one senior at N.C. State. Half the team was from Littleton where our team leader, Rev. David Haley, used to pastor, and the rest of us represented Winstead UMC in Wilson, N. C. where David now pastors. By the way, he has been to El Salvadore 24 times! He actually is my mother’s pastor and preached my father’s funeral. It was during my father’s illness that we met and began to dream about the possibility of bringing my trauma mental health and community disaster resilience seminars to the pastors of El Salvadore. I am so grateful God used that difficult time and this pastor for His glory!

Pastor David Haley, Winstead UMC, Wilson, N. C.

Even though Thursday was a rather lightweight day, we were exhausted Thursday evening, and giddy/silly now that we were settled and getting to know one another. On Friday, the team left me behind at the hostel to work on my presentation. I was joined around noon by the young woman who was to be my translator, Sindy. She needed to read my slides (and help me make more) to make sure my presentation flowed smoothly and she could translate for me without difficulty. We immediately hit it off and she was so helpful to me. We worked all afternoon outside under the trees. Della brought us fresh pineapple smoothies–a welcome break. Later that night, after supper, we drove into Ahuachapan for some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had. Of course, by then I was in such a state of bliss that everything seemed wonderful. I even slept like a rock, something that’s not that easy for me anywhere, much less in a third-world country! By the way, this structure was in the middle of Ahuachapan, just across the street from the ice cream shop. I thought its beauty was magical. It looked like a wedding cake.

Saturday dawned bright and clear. Of course I was nervous, especially when we couldn’t open the Powerpoint presentation both Sindy and I had so carefully downloaded onto a USB stick the day before. And of course, my laptop malfunctioned. But I stopped and prayed, and we remembered that I’d also emailed the presentation to Juan de Dios the day before and he had it on his Blackberry, which he then downloaded onto HIS laptop.

I cannot tell you the feeling I had when I stood up and greeted the 37 pastors (both men and women, young and older) who sat before me. I had a huge rush of gratitude and a deep knowledge that the day was going to be good–not because I was so wonderful, but because God is so good. He had planned this day from my birth and knowing I was walking in His will and that He was using me in ways I never dreamed could be possible just took my breath way. I knew He had not taken me this far to let me down.

Of course, I made mistakes, left out some material I wished I’d put in, and put in some I wished I’d left out. But you know, God didn’t ask me to be perfect, He just asked me to be obedient. And I am oh so grateful that I was….I will never forget the look of gratitude on the faces of the pastors as they asked me to continue my work there and thanked me profusely for giving them so much practical information.

The seminar ended mid-afternoon and after it was all over we loaded up, went back to the hostel and freshened up, packed up and headed back to San Salvadore. En route we picked up a family that David has known for six years and took them with us for the weekend. We ate pizza, which was amazingly good by then, having dined on rice and vegetables for three days. We reached San Salvadore late that evening and crashed at the Hotel Novo, where we reveled in hot showers, good water pressure, and air conditioning. But honestly, I was already missing Ahauchapan and Della’s special place.

On Sunday morning we attended church services at Juan’s church in San Salvadore. The music was wonderful. David Haley preached as well as Juan. The anointing of God was strong on the place, and the joy of the people palpable. After a bit of lunch, we got on the bus and drove up to Chatelango, a mountain town about an hour up near the border where we shopped in the artisan’s markets and heard the incredible history of how this town once ravaged by disaster and war was transformed by a local famous artist who returned to teach the people how to paint and make crafts. The mosaics all over town are amazing. It was raining most of the day (it rains a LOT in El Salvadore) and the drive back down the mountain was a bit scary as there were mudslides and large rocks in the middle of the highway–all reminders of just how fragile and on the edge this country lives. After all, they’ve had over 250 disasters in the last thirty years!

On Monday we returned to the church in San Salvadore but this time to excavate. With no presentation to prepare for, I had no excuses this time. So I got in and shoveled dirt like everyone else. Of course, now I have a touch of tendinitis, but hey…just a little twinge every now and then only reminds me that I was there. It felt good to contribute in this real way. Funny how attached one can get to a hole in the middle of a garage-turned-church and a mound of dirt in a remote country far from home! This mound was only one of about five created and then hauled off by trucks as we excavated the ground floor of our renovation project.

On Monday we had the added excitement of having a team to arrive from a Methodist church near Columbia, S. C.

This team was very different in makeup from ours, but nevertheless we enjoyed sharing and the air of comraderie and competition with the new team was a shot in the arm for all of us. With their help the work went amazingly fast, and meals at night were more interesting as we met new people and shared our personal stories. Our work continued on Tuesday and at the end of the day we enjoyed a celebratory dinner at a local restaurant up on a volcano (no longer active, of course) overlooking the city. We dined on varieties of “pupusas” a traditional favorite dish of the El Salvadorans made of grilled Maseca cakes and various fillings like cheese, beans, chicken, and pork and a drink called “The Rose of Jamaica” a strong berry drink similar to pomegrante/acai juice. Pupusas are to that region what barbeque sandwiches are to eastern North Carolina, although not nearly as good, at least not to me. But I think by then I was on sensory overload!

Wednesday, our day of departure, came much too fast. Our plane flight home was quiet and lacking in incident. But one thing summed it all up. I ended up sitting next to a young woman with a 18 month old child. The young woman was crying, sad to leave her own mother behind in order to return to the states, and lonely because her husband, an El Salvadoran, was fighting for the U.S. in Iraq. I comforted the mother and offered to pray for her husband. Her baby crawled up in my arms to look out the window, and within minutes fell asleep in my arms. She stayed there for over an hour.

I looked at that baby and realized–this is the future of El Salvadore. How can we turn our backs on the people who need our help, especially the little one I held in my arms. God help us all.

Headed to El Salvadore…

Deborah Dunn — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:21:42 +0000

The countdown has begun. I’m headed to bed and tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. will board Delta Flight 1949 to Atlanta, Georgia. Then another flight to San Salvadore, where I will be working for a week with the remainder of my team from Winstead UMC in Wilson and Littleton UMC in Ahauchapau, El Salvadore and in San Salvadore.

Besides the fact that I’m finally getting to go on a mission trip, my thrill is that I will experience the dream of a lifetime, of teaching 50 plus El Salvadoran pastors community disaster response and disaster mental health information. I will teach counseling skills, communication skills, and team building, as well as understanding vulnerable populations and things they can do to build community disaster resilience

More so than books, television, and radio, I feel that I was born to do this. I’ve been commissioned by God to help prepare the world for the “dark days” and this is my small contribution. If He so desires, I will do it until the day I drop dead–and die happy.

Of course, I want to share my journey with you. On the few times I’ll have internet access I’ll try to post pictures and memories here and on my Facebook page. When I come home, I’ll write more extensively.

Please pray for me. I’ll pray for you, and for all my readers, friends, and life journey companions.

By the way, 1949 is my birth year. Isaiah 49 is my signature verse. No accident.

God bless you all.

Deborah

Independence Day

Deborah Dunn — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 03:33:35 +0000

As much as I love travel, I’ve never wanted to live anywhere else in the world except North Carolina (although I’ve surely longed for an extended vacation from it on occasion..) This is my home. I love it, I do.

That’s not to say I love it all the time. In fact, there are times I feel that if I have to drive 70 East to the coast and I-40 west one more time I will surely die of the monotony alone, not to mention the fatigue of fighting traffic and tourists. I’ve seen and done just about everything there is to do here, and in a few border states as well. After all, I’ve lived here over sixty years. But still, there is comfort in the familiarity, even if it does get boring from time to time.

Long term marriages are like that. I’ll be married forty-one years next Monday, July 12th so I ought to know. We’ve got a good marriage and we love each other dearly, but I’ll be honest, there are times when marriage to the same man over such a long period of time seemed like an endurance contest. I longed for travel, excitement, adventure, and new experiences. On the other hand, my husband could eat in the same restaurant, wear the same clothes, and travel to the mountains every few months and never, ever get tired of the routine. He loves routine. I have always hated it.

Of course, those differences created a lot of conflict through the years, especially when he was the primary breadwinner and my choices in life were limited because I was dependent on him to pay the bills, and there was never enough left over for me to fund the adventures I so desired.

But there was more to it than that…I was dependent on him emotionally, because I was fearful of doing things by myself. I couldn’t imagine traveling overseas without him, and I when I did have a few coins I would always find something I needed in my house or for work that gave me an excuse to avoid pursuing the adventures I thought I craved.

But as the years went by, I got a bit smarter, braver, and after the children left home, a whole lot more independent. I realized that my husband was never going to change and that if I didn’t want life to pass me by I was going to have to stop being so dependent on him and start marking some things off my “bucket list.”

So on my fiftieth birthday, I declared my own personal Independence Day. I made a list of things I wanted to do before I died. I began to travel some, I started writing, and began engaging in hobbies that I’d given up on years before. I declared freedom from fear, excuses, and self-sabotage. I finally reached my longtime career goal of becoming a therapist.

In a few weeks (July 21) I will achieve another life-long goal of participating in a foreign missions team. I’ll be going to El Salvadore with a team from Winstead UMC in Wilson, NC. We’ll be gone a week, and while there I am thrilled to say that I will be teaching a group of El Salvadoran pastors who will be coming into the city from all over the country about disaster mental health and community disaster preparedness. I’m working on the materials that I’ll be taking now.

This is a huge step for me. I’m nervous and feel inadequate. I could really use your prayers.

When I think of my life now and the days I was home all day long with two toddlers and nothing more exciting than a game show on television, I stand amazed. But honestly, now that I’ve finally achieved some of my dreams, the more I realize the wonder and joy in an ordinary day. If I hadn’t been so emotionally dependent back then and more secure in the knowledge that one day I would reach my goals and dreams, I’d have savored the sweetness of those days with more patience and gratitude.

Dependence on others to make you happy and to give you a life does that to you–it takes away your emotional freedom and joy in life. It makes us a slave to the “what if” and regrets that come from wasting time being afraid and settling for a boring life.

This July 4th, think about freedom–but not just the country of your birth. Think about the country in your heart. Are you free to live, love, laugh, and enjoy your life? Do you feel like a slave to a boring marriage, a routine job, or you just don’t seem to find the courage to reach for your dreams because you are waiting on others in your life to make them come true?

Declare your own Independence Day. And let Freedom ring.

A few photos….

Deborah Dunn — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:14:44 +0000

Living Room/Dining

fenced in play area for children

Check out www.seadove.org

Deborah Dunn — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:03:53 +0000

Hey…I’m back. Yes, I know its been awhile and I’ve missed posting to you. But the reason is that for the past three months I’ve devoted myself to remodeling our former home down in Morehead City to that we can rent it out for summer, as well as list it for sale. I didn’t have internet access, and on the rare days I was home, didn’t have time to blog.

But if I must say so myself, it is beautiful. I’ve just listed it on www.vbro.com (give it until Friday…its still in the works) and the weeks are already being spoken for fast, just from my own mailing list. So if you are interested in an affordable vacation close to the water, restaurants, and a good place for small children or quiet pursuits like writing or reading this is the place for you. It is not on the water, but it does have two majestic old live oak trees that are just as calming and fascinating to watch and all the amenities, including access to a private beach on the sound.

I am offering special rates for church groups, ministries, nonprofits, and pastors and their families. Email me if you are interested!

In the meantime, I hope to be blogging a whole lot more. I am praying about my life, career, and writing right now, and I think God has some plans for me. But my job right now is to rest, reflect, take care of my family, and pray. Let me know if you need my prayers or if I can help you in any way.

God bless and I hope you have a wonderful summer!

How to Talk about Sex Without Getting Into Hot Water

Deborah Dunn — Wed, 19 May 2010 02:33:02 +0000

Even the best sex life needs improvement from time to time. But it can be difficult to talk to your partner without making him feel inadequate or embarrassed. You can learn to talk to your partner about touchy subjects like sex in a way that not only improves your sex life, but builds a healthier relationship in the long run too! Here I outline different steps, or “stages” that will help you think concretely about how to manage communicating about any touchy subject, not just sex…

The Preparation Stage

Choose your timing carefully, being sensitive to the mood of your partner. Once you have agreed upon a good time to talk, turn off cell phones, television and put the kids to bed. Find a cozy spot where you both feel comfortable. According to experts, body language constitutes 70 percent of all communication between humans, so avoid negative body language like crossing your arms or rolling your eyes, smile, and don’t worry if you don’t say everything exactly right–it’s the spirit that matters.

The Affirmation Stage

Look your partner directly in the eyes and declare your love. Affirm her importance to you. Say something like this: “I love you and I love your body. When we make love I feel so alive and much more confident as a man. I feel so connected to you. But we need to talk about ways we can make it better, if that’s okay with you.”
Lean forward, smile, and touch your partner to emphasize your loving intent. Make your partner feel safe.

The Validation Stage

Invite your partner to be the first to talk. Your job at this point is simply to listen. When he is finished, repeat what you think was said, affirming your partner’s right to his feelings–even if you disagree.

Do not argue, defend yourself or explain your views to your partner yet, even if she blames you for all the problems. This might be tough, but the goal is to validate her right to her own point of view; not to prove who is right or wrong. According to the authors of The Communication Workbook, the need to be right is one of the major enemies of marital happiness and certainly a block to effective communication.

The Problem Identification Stage

Ask your partner to name the one or two points he believes are the most important problems that need solving. Give her plenty of time to talk. Then add your own points, (such as “I really like to take a shower after sex, but you like to stay in bed and cuddle. That seems to be a problem for us.”) Ask your partner to share his feelings about what you have said. Remember that the key is to get to the problem-solving stage without dwelling on how the problems evolved or assigning blame for them.

The Negotiation Stage

Once you both have fully stated your views, then negotiate the one or two areas you both think are the most important to address. Keep negotiating until you both are in agreement. Try to focus on the easiest problems to solve in the shortest amount of time. A little success goes a long way. Enhance a sense of unity by using the words “we” or “us” instead of “you” and “me” as much as possible.

The Problem-Solving Stage

Brainstorm together about concrete ideas to help you both create a game plan for improving your sex life, focusing on the two most important problems. If the other has ideas you do not think are workable or realistic, state your concerns neutrally, without criticism. Keep doing this until you both agree on a plan of action. For example, if fatigue is a problem, offer to help more so that your spouse is not too tired. If there is not enough emotional intimacy, have a date night once a week and agree that your dessert will include making love. Be creative.

The Happy Ending

Thank your partner for their kindness, understanding and willingness to talk even if you are not totally happy with the outcome. Remember that baby steps will still get you there in the long run. Creating emotional safety so that it is easier to talk in the future is critical. Give your partner a loving hug and a kiss. Follow up with a note, a phone call the next day or a small unexpected gift. But remember that you might need to give your partner some emotional space. But hey, if you both are ready to practice on new-found insights, then go for it!

There’s No Place Like Home!

Deborah Dunn — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:18:06 +0000

Quick post to tell you about my strange, scary close encounter of the twisted kind this past Sunday evening traveling home after spending the day with my mother in Wilson, N. C.

I was shooting down Interstate 264 about 7:30 pm, chatting with my girlfriend while the traffic wasn’t so heavy (yes, I use my phone responsibly and keep my eyes on the road and don’t talk in heavy traffic…) and I had just crossed over the Wake County line when it dawned on me that the small, rather nondescript cloud that I was seeing ahead on the horizon didn’t look all that normal anymore. The sky was turning a sickly yellow, and rags and filaments of cloud began to dance in a bit of a strange circle.

Then as I stared, a long blue finger of cloud began to descend out of nowhere, like the finger of God reaching down to touch earth. It took a moment to register that a huge tornado was forming right in front of my very eyes!

Like any normal, red-blooded blonde, I panicked. Then I said a word I won’t repeat here, and told my girlfriend there was a freaking tornado in my path and hung up on her. Shaking, I hit speed dial to call my husband. When he answered, I calmly told him that I was in the path of an oncoming tornado, and this probably would be the last time we talked until heaven (yes, I am a bit of a drama queen…I know…) And in case that happened, I wanted him to know I loved him even if I yelled at him from time to time. Then I told him to put his butt in gear, and that remote to good use and get Greg Fischer (whom I normally can’t stand…but hey…any port in a storm…) on the television. I wanted information PLUeezE!

Then we had to have a little discussion–what to do, where to go, how in the heck do I get out of there since the tornado was directly in the path of oncoming traffic, looking as if it was going to slam right into us! There were about 20 cars around me and some of us stopped, pulled over, or just moved really, really slowly. A few people got out of their cars and crouched in the shallow ditch. Most of us just seemed to freeze….

Finally, I decided to pull over as my very calm husband relayed the information to me (thank you, Greg) that the funnel actually had a trajectory that was moving it NE instead of straight into oncoming traffic. So I decided the best course of action would be to get out of there as fast as I could. I surely wasn’t going to sit there and wait for it to change its mind. As I approached Zebulon (barely breathing) I could see glimpses of the twister (now very large) through the trees moving down through fields past me just to my right, probably less than a quarter mile away. Much too close for comfort, that is for sure.

I finally started breathing again when I took the exit at Hwy. 96, the way I normally go home. But my relief was short-lived. Seems that is where the twister formed and touched down. There were tree limbs, debris, and shopping carts from the Food Lion flung all over the place. The most dramatic damage was that all the big green signs on the overpass had been ripped off and flung into the highway. But, thank God (yes, really…thank GOD…) that no people or cars seemed to have been involved.

So the next leg of the journey back home involved trying to avoid the EMS, firetrucks, idiots paying no attention to other drivers, tree limbs, and power lines. I ducked through back streets and the parking lot of the Food Lion, relieved when I finally got through town and hit the back roads toward Archer’s Lodge. Home sweet home!

But as I drove, I glanced back and saw another very surreal sight. Now, keep in mind that at this point the sky was perfectly clear, the sun was setting, and the moon was full. Nary a breeze in the sky. But when I glanced back toward Zebulon, I saw a huge ball of a thunderhead in the sky, perfectly round, self-contained, discrete ( very crisp lines of demarcation and no blurry edges) and so huge it was almost of biblical proportions. It had to have been at least 50 miles high. It looked just like a nuclear explosion. And even more dramatically, there was a ball of lightening circling almost continually inside its pink, yellow, and blue-black interior, filling it up entirely from top to bottom. Honestly that was almost as frightening as the tornado, but in a different way, simply because it was so strange to see this one big huge ball of fire in an otherwise cloudless sky….reminded me of the reference to pillars of fire in the Bible, first when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, and again in Revelation as a sign of of what will happen in the last days.

I was so relieved to be home. So glad to see my dear sweet Rick the Rock, my dog, and my cat. And, of course, I immediately had to call my kids and tell them all about my grand, scary adventure.

I meant to blog about it that night–but honestly I was just too exhausted once the adrenaline wore off. My only regret is that I didn’t grab my Droid and video the thing. But some others did. Check out the pics on WRAL.com.

Trust me, there is no place like home….

Paying Attention?

Deborah Dunn — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:20:00 +0000

Good morning. I hope the pollen storms didn’t plug up your system and slow you down too much. What a crazy spring. Earthquakes, volcanoes, pollen clouds, and the like. El Nino, La Nina–when the earth wakes up and decides to change directions, humans need to pay attention!

What does it mean, TO PAY ATTENTION. That is a phrase I like to use so that I don’t sound like some kind of New Age baldie standing on the street corner chanting about Cosmic Consciousness. After all, I’m a conservative Christian woman living in the south who likes to shoot from the hip and whose momma didn’t use words like conscious awareness. But, nevertheless, that’s what it means.

You gotta wake up, look around you, be aware, and pay attention to what is going on–not just drift through every day mindlessly, unaware of what you are saying, doing, thinking, eating, watching, loving, and rejecting. But more and more I see people in my office who are simply flowing down the raft on the great River of Life and not paying any attention at all to where they are going; totally unaware there is a huge waterfall straight ahead and without warning, one day they are going to plunge right over it and drown.

Do you pay attention to what you eat? I thought I was a very healthy eater, until the high blood pressure I was genetically gifted with became resistent to medication. When I analyzed the lowfat, low glycemic diet I was eating, I realized that I had forgotten to add “low-sodium” to the list of “shalt nots” that rules my daily intake.

As I began to pay attention to sodium, I was stunned. The lowfat, grilled chicken cubes I put on my salad and in wraps several times a week contained 548 mgs of sodium PER SERVING. OMG, that is enough to pickle cucumbers. No wonder I was swelling like a puff pastry! And that didn’t count the low-fat, thin crust pizza I bought, the canned vegetables, the Mexican food I adore. No wonder I was hyper-tensive.

Now that I’m PAYING ATTENTION to the sodium in my diet, if something has hidden salt in it (I rarely eat blatantly salty food like salty chips, popcorn) I can taste it. I don’t like the taste of salt as much. My blood pressure is slowing going down.

The ability to pay attention to everything in our life is crucial. As I am writing this I’m sitting in a corporate office waiting for employees who have experienced the death of a coworker. Through the years, the story is always the same–we wished we had paid attention to the stress, emotions, and habits of our coworker.

A couple of years ago, the Holy Spirit nudged my son about sharing the gospel with an elderly couple in his neighborhood. But he failed to pay attention to what God was telling him to do. The couple was killed in a head-on collision a few weeks later.

The good thing is that when he had the opportunity to share the gospel with his grandfather last summer, he paid attention this time. As a result, my father accepted Christ and a few weeks later suffered a stroke.

Paying attention can have life or death consequences. Wake up and look at the world around you. Pay attention to what God is doing in your life, your marriage, with your children, and your neighbors–to the world. You might be surprised at what you learn, how much healthier you will be, and how God is able to use you.

Shalom…

Top ten mistakes that make men stupid about women….

Deborah Dunn — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:58:29 +0000

I cannot convince my publishers that men need a book titled Stupid About Women, but by the emails I’m getting I can sure tell there is a felt need. But in the meantime, I can address the main mistakes men make in my blog, and hope I will help a few of my male readers. By the signups I’m getting, more and more men are reading this blog. First I will list them, then I will address each one and how to change the behavior and thinking that goes along with it in upcoming blog posts! So here goes…the top ten mistakes men make when it comes to having healthy relationships with women, whether it is your wife or your girlfriend.

1. Being a bully either emotionally, verbally, or physically. If you are doing this, I would advise her to leave you.

2. Using romantic language to get women you don’t really love to have sex with you. This is a character flaw, and needs a heart change, regardless of what movies and magazines teach you. They don’t tell you that eventually you’ll end up old and lonely, and you’ll get back what you give out in return.

3. Expecting a woman to mother you, acting like a child, and then accusing her of trying to be your mother

4. Thinking that women were created to serve you, meet your needs, and make you look good to others

5. Not learning how to communicate open, honestly, and directly. Forcing her to do all the work on the relationship.

6. Trying to control her. Refusing to encourage her freedom, independence, and right to her own opinions. Withholding money, affection, and freedom so that she is subservient to you.

7. Thinking it is okay to cheat on her, then to make matters worse, accuse her of cheating on you

8. Refusing to hold down a job, working her to death, and spending money without regard to the effects this has your family

9. Expecting her to be thin, beautiful, and sexy when you are just an average guy yourself. Then using sarcasm and criticism to shame her into dieting and exercising.

10. Refusing to spend quality time with her, not taking her on dates, and continually wanting to do the things you want to do–like watch sports, hang out with the guys, and work. Not helping her with the housework and kids is a big, fat stupid thing to do.