An Editor's Journal

I got this book for free as part of “Blogging for Books” program. I honestly didn’t think it would be very good. I judged it by its cover and and I’m always wary of things that say “30 days to a better [insert anything]”. 

I was incredibly surprised when I cracked it open and gained oodles of knowledge and insight. It is geared towards being a book on marriage, but also claims that it speaks to any relationship in your life - which is definitely true. 

I would really recommend this book to anyone looking to strengthen the relationships closest to them. 

A few highlights after just a few chapters: 

• The adventure of a lifetime is right in front of us - cleverly disguised as familiar faces. 
• Every relationship has the potential to be better the next time we’re together. 
• “We are as we love. It is love that measures our stature.” -William S. Coffin 
• The greatest gift you can give is your presence. 
• The number one problem in relationships is that they usually take place at arm’s length. 
• We’ve been led to believe relationships could come to us. We receive notifications throughout the day from our phone, email, social media, etc. As a result, we develop the expectation that relationships ought to be convenient and easy. 
• Just the effort it takes to physically show up in someone’s life speaks volumes. 
• We all long to know we’re worth someone’s total attention. 
• “Wherever you are, be all there.” 
• The truth is that “being all there” isn’t very efficient, but it’s crucial to the success of human relationships. 

Many of these fly in the face of our social/digital world.

Be challenged by it.

Let it change the way you interact with people.

-JA

My coworkers will probably laugh at me for this post, but hopefully they’ll bear with me. I’m discovering in the last few days that there are two types of losing. The difference may seem small, but it’s actually quite a large gap - and makes a big difference in how you feel about losing. 

The first way to lose is when you’ve clearly made mistakes and haven’t played your absolute best. This kind of losing isn’t all that hard to put up with, because you can clearly see that had you made all the right plays, you would have won - whether it be office ping-pong or after-hours racquetball (my two personal favorites).

The second type is much harder to deal with. This is the kind of losing where you do play your best, and you do make all the plays you are supposed to, and you still lose. This type of losing actually makes me much angrier, because I know there is absolutely nothing I could have done to win. It’s actually a little depressing. 

Here is what it teaches me though: One of the hardest and greatest lessons we can learn is how to lose gracefully. As I said, I’m only really learning this the last few days, so I don’t quite know how to do it yet, but I’ll get there. 

For some reason I’ve been stuck with this attitude that if I did my best, I would win at anything I tried. The reality is that this just isn’t true. There are people around me that are just better than me at certain things. 

This attitude is certainly a character flaw, but one that doesn’t come out until you actually start to lose - even if it is something as seemingly insignificant as racquetball with coworkers. 

Jesus teaches me to be humble in all things, to never consider myself better than others, and to be filled with grace.

Here’s to taking that to heart this week. 

-JA