A Snake Is In The Building

I work in a warehouse, and just the other day a rat-snake entered into the building. To me, it was very shocking to see a four foot snake in the building. Especially in a building where a dozen men were working and the loud noise of gas fork lifts were roaring about.

It just so happened that I heard the boss calling out as if someone was hurt. In an industrial environment you drop everything that you are doing if possible to answer the cry of distress.

I came running to see what the ruckus was all about, only to see a large snake crawling along the floor. My first instinct was to kill the snake, but the security guards had another plan. They would capture the slithery creature and set it free in an adjoining open field. I ran and got a push broom to hold the snake in place while someone figured out how to pick it up and put it in a bag.

One of my coworkers kept playing with the tail of the snake. The snake looked as if to say, "don't do that". The coworker kept agitating the serpent. It became very angry and went from fear mode to attack mode. I told the security guard that "I am not going to hold this snake any longer". He took the broom and let the pressure off of the snake. The snake jump up in the air about three of four feet. I stood back at a distance. The snake moved under a stack of parts. We could no longer find the snake. A lady from another building came to search for the snake. She informed us that she had handled snakes before. She searched for about and hour and a half and found the snake. She grabbed it by the tail and while another person help put the snake in a bag.

This story reflects how strange things can enter into relationships without invitation. It is there to sir up trouble. I learned from this incident is that we should deal head-on with things that come to bring trouble in our relationships. If we let troubles just have its on free course there could be real trouble ahead. The woman who handled the snake represents relentlessness to resolve the issue right now. The gentleman who taunted the snake represent people whom we allow to speak into our ears of to stir in the problems. The are many keys in this story to me about resolving issues in our relationships. We must not let it pass us by. We must act now. We must develop a plan. We must never allow a snake into our relationships.

Pressing Forward Even Harder

To achieve the goal that is set before me, I must not have any reservations about it. There are things that are in front of me that would make me shake if I give into my fears. I can not give them value. Have I changed from the past? Am I any different from the way I used to be? No, not really. I am not doing anything different. I just have a different resolve. I view things slightly different. I only have one life to live and I want to live it to the fullest. That does not mean that I am ignoring anything that is before me. I just view it as a step between me and what I want to achieve.

At 51 years old, I have learned that no one is going to do it for me. What I mean by that is that others have opinions of the way that they think things should be. But, for me they can not make decisions. They are not concern about the wealth of my life. They are only concerned about their own, and rightly so. There was a old spiritual song that went, "If I die and my soul be lost, it is nobody's fault but mine". To me that means I am responsible for my own destiny. I am accountable for my own decisions. I can't now blame others for what God has given me the necessary tools to acquire the things that make me successful.

Relationships are built on emotions and that is on so many levels. Yet their are many things that has to be investigated on so many levels. I am not speaking on levels of distrust. I am speaking on levels and terms of what it will be for you in the future. It is the reason that we have parents. They at the beginning taught us that we should have used better judgment in bad decisions that we made as children and adolescents. That, in itself was a call to look into the future with the insights that we were given and decided to do or not to do a certain action. It is not that we can not see the obstacles before us, but what will we do with those obstacles. Well as an older man I choose to use those things before me as steps to where I want to go. It may well be that others have opposing agendas within their plans of action. Again I must take those things into consideration. I am the choice make of what I allow to go on in my life. Some things I can control and somethings I can not. The things that I have direct control over is how I respond to things around me and things that confront me. The illusion that others want me to have is not the thing that I should focus on. My focus is upon the goal that I have set. Isn't this the reason for Christian faith? That is, depending on God to see the things that we can not see and know the things that we can not know.

This thing of which I speak of is sometime hidden for others unless you are involved in a relationship. Pressing forward to do the right thing even if the other does not do the right thing. I am held by a higher standard than others. When I stand before God some day, I want to hear him say well done. not because I allowed things to just happen, but I made things happen by pressing forward harder. This has been a lesson that has been hard-learned over the last six months

The Old Unseen Block

The time it takes a couple to get over an impasse is just wasted time. Why so many many divorces in our land? Why so many struggles in marriage and relationships? What does it take for a couple to see that these roadblocks are very straining to a relationship? There is never an "I'm right", only a bad understanding that it takes to to make it in a relationship. Compromise is never a counting contest to see how many times you or your mate gave in and was wrong. If we are to make it, it is by first, God's grace, secondly and understanding that we must work at breaking down the unseen road blocks. The need to be right is often a symptom of unresolved history. Perhaps a learned behavior. We must work very hard on seeing ourselves as people that need to constantly work on ourselves.