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Big Hearted: Inspiring Stories from Everyday Families
Big Hearted gives you an inside look into the triumphs, struggles, joys and sorrows of ordinary families with generous hearts. It invites you to witness extraordinary love in ordinary moments like the simple cooking of a meal or the hug between a teenaged brother and his baby sister. Just like your family, these families experience pain, setbacks, and challenges. And just like your family, they also experience love and immeasurable blessing through their commitment and care for each other.In this book, you will learn the story • A father of seven healthy boys who struggled to love his Down syndrome baby girl• A mother of twelve who learned an important lesson about Christmas from her children• A special relationship between a teenaged brother and his infant sister• Two grandparents in their final days who inspired their grandchildren in simple ways• Two orphan children from Kenya who prayed for adoption by an American family and got what they asked for!It has been said that God cannot be outdone in generosity. The stories in these pages will show you how big hearted families experience this truth in a myriad of ways, sometimes miraculously.
140 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 2, 2013
2 people are currently reading
19 people want to read
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October 27, 2024
“Love doesn’t consist of gazing at each other, but in gazing Outward in the Same Direction.”
Antoine Saint-Exupery
Read my Kindle excerpts... You know, we All would like to be Just Like the folks in this book. To give it all 200%!
But most of us can’t.
So why NOT?
We’re SO conditioned to model our moods on the same old ‘fair, firm & friendly’ behaviouristic norms, because for most of our life we’ve concentrated on our own needs.
And we were so purpose-driven, we didn’t notice that our lives are getting into much narrower ruts.
Transparency in our social life is a thing of the past. And we’re Constantly putting ourselves down if we don’t live up to our own conditioned expectations.
Can we be FREE to BE OURSELVES?
Possibly not.
Maybe we have to make Friends with our Differences FIRST.
Welcome to the “Edgy” 21st century. The time of hype-awareness.
For what we’ve done, T.S. Eliot says, is to
multiply variety
In a wilderness of mirrors.
We’re stuck in our self-awareness.
But are we? Donald Craybill, in his wonderfully lucid book, The Upside-Down World, says we’ve sacrificed our hearts, putting our self-consciousness and needs on a towering pedestal. The world’s no longer warm, but cold and unforgiving.
And we’re cold and unforgiving to Ourselves, too.
There’s the paradox: we’re as Free as we can be (in a Fallen World) yet we’re Imprisoned by the mood-pictures (endlessly reflecting our selves) that’re constantly thrown up to us on our screens, be they from our TV, computer or film.
We’re stuck in a mold. Until we gain the mature outlook of a separate, highly individual Adult.
For this book is about being conflicted AND loving all at the same time. We just don’t WANT to be as open as the folks in this book.
But Life can be a rich broth, teeming with strong emotions. And this book is like that, but tempered firmly with caring individual love for our family’s various Separate Identities.
So can we BECOME like these folks?
Let me tell you a story...
In 1954, my baby sister was born. It was a bone-chilling cold night in late October when my Dad rushed my Mom into hospital as her contractions intensified.
But first, he had dropped me and my little brother off at our friend Molly’s place, down the road from us.
Molly and her husband were warm, caring and highly emotional folks. My brother and I felt right at home in their house. As the night sky darkened, I remember Molly lifted my small frame up high, and sat me down on the kitchen counter - I guess I must have wanted to look out her back window.
Now, back in 1954 it was Easy to see the multitude of stars in the night sky, even in the suburbs...
I stared at those bright little lights - twinkling in the cold Wintry sky - and thought of my Mom - all alone and suffering the agonies of childbirth somewhere in that dark frigid night.
And I felt for her deeply.
But Molly and her husband were wonderful, loving hosts. People were more apt to be like that, back then.
But you know what happened to them?
Molly’s husband was later to spend most of his adult life bouncing around mental hospitals. The toll on poor Molly must have been dreadful!
You see, those were the risks people ran by being free with their emotions in those joyful post-war years. And one fairly valid reason for our rigid regimentation now...
So we’ve become maladapted to our present over-organized world. And it’s a Wide-Awake World.
We HAVE to awaken from the womb of our personal preferences.
And our love, like Saint-Exupery’s, has to GROW UP and Face the Music.
It’s the price we pay for staying on our feet.
Our world IS a Free World cursed - and blessed, in a way - by the unfreedom of conditioned Self-awareness.
But if we - the pawns of this world - can face it head-on with a willing suspension of our own wills, in a humble self awareness, finding strength in our vast differences and hope in a higher purpose not our own...
We’ll make it to our destination, purified by that very unfreedom that now seems a curse.
And that curse will, in fact, in time become a Blessing -
If we always are in touch with our hearts!
Antoine Saint-Exupery
Read my Kindle excerpts... You know, we All would like to be Just Like the folks in this book. To give it all 200%!
But most of us can’t.
So why NOT?
We’re SO conditioned to model our moods on the same old ‘fair, firm & friendly’ behaviouristic norms, because for most of our life we’ve concentrated on our own needs.
And we were so purpose-driven, we didn’t notice that our lives are getting into much narrower ruts.
Transparency in our social life is a thing of the past. And we’re Constantly putting ourselves down if we don’t live up to our own conditioned expectations.
Can we be FREE to BE OURSELVES?
Possibly not.
Maybe we have to make Friends with our Differences FIRST.
Welcome to the “Edgy” 21st century. The time of hype-awareness.
For what we’ve done, T.S. Eliot says, is to
multiply variety
In a wilderness of mirrors.
We’re stuck in our self-awareness.
But are we? Donald Craybill, in his wonderfully lucid book, The Upside-Down World, says we’ve sacrificed our hearts, putting our self-consciousness and needs on a towering pedestal. The world’s no longer warm, but cold and unforgiving.
And we’re cold and unforgiving to Ourselves, too.
There’s the paradox: we’re as Free as we can be (in a Fallen World) yet we’re Imprisoned by the mood-pictures (endlessly reflecting our selves) that’re constantly thrown up to us on our screens, be they from our TV, computer or film.
We’re stuck in a mold. Until we gain the mature outlook of a separate, highly individual Adult.
For this book is about being conflicted AND loving all at the same time. We just don’t WANT to be as open as the folks in this book.
But Life can be a rich broth, teeming with strong emotions. And this book is like that, but tempered firmly with caring individual love for our family’s various Separate Identities.
So can we BECOME like these folks?
Let me tell you a story...
In 1954, my baby sister was born. It was a bone-chilling cold night in late October when my Dad rushed my Mom into hospital as her contractions intensified.
But first, he had dropped me and my little brother off at our friend Molly’s place, down the road from us.
Molly and her husband were warm, caring and highly emotional folks. My brother and I felt right at home in their house. As the night sky darkened, I remember Molly lifted my small frame up high, and sat me down on the kitchen counter - I guess I must have wanted to look out her back window.
Now, back in 1954 it was Easy to see the multitude of stars in the night sky, even in the suburbs...
I stared at those bright little lights - twinkling in the cold Wintry sky - and thought of my Mom - all alone and suffering the agonies of childbirth somewhere in that dark frigid night.
And I felt for her deeply.
But Molly and her husband were wonderful, loving hosts. People were more apt to be like that, back then.
But you know what happened to them?
Molly’s husband was later to spend most of his adult life bouncing around mental hospitals. The toll on poor Molly must have been dreadful!
You see, those were the risks people ran by being free with their emotions in those joyful post-war years. And one fairly valid reason for our rigid regimentation now...
So we’ve become maladapted to our present over-organized world. And it’s a Wide-Awake World.
We HAVE to awaken from the womb of our personal preferences.
And our love, like Saint-Exupery’s, has to GROW UP and Face the Music.
It’s the price we pay for staying on our feet.
Our world IS a Free World cursed - and blessed, in a way - by the unfreedom of conditioned Self-awareness.
But if we - the pawns of this world - can face it head-on with a willing suspension of our own wills, in a humble self awareness, finding strength in our vast differences and hope in a higher purpose not our own...
We’ll make it to our destination, purified by that very unfreedom that now seems a curse.
And that curse will, in fact, in time become a Blessing -
If we always are in touch with our hearts!
Displaying 1 of 1 review