“One of the best ways to mind your own business is to be about the difficult task of honoring another’s path, even if you think they are going the wrong way…To watch someone for whom you care deeply go down a path that, by all indications, is negative or not good for them is a major challenge. As the parent of two young adults I grapple every day with the penchant to step in when I see what I deem is a step in the wrong direction. However, as the old adage goes, that which hurts instructs.
I am not suggesting that we deliberately put ourselves in harm’s way. But we humans as a species seem to learn more from our hurts (which can take a long time) than we do from our hits (which we tend to “skip” over and downplay). No one – often not even the person involved in a “situation” – can predict what life-changing lesson or opportunity will come out of what seems to be a bad move at the surface.
History is filled with men and women whose lives were changed for the better when things looked the darkest. If you dig into the biographies of some of our most successful leaders, you will most likely find a time or ten when a situation appeared that challenged them to move up to the next level. It was only by going through the difficult times that the better times showed up.”
John St. Augustine, in “Every Moment Matters”
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Jeff Maziarek, author of Spirituality Simplified and Codi’s Journey, launched Pondercentral.com in April 2007 as a Web-based forum for “PONDER on THIS,” a series of weekday inspirational email messages he began sending to subscribers in March 1999. A FREE service since its inception, “PONDER on THIS” provides subscribers with meaningful content to assist them on their individual paths of spiritual growth. In addition, it benefits subscribers, authors, and publishers by including links to Amazon.com where subscribers can learn more about the book being quoted, and also purchase it.
