KEEP ON SWINGING IN LIFE

Mobile Suit Gundam model kits - “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

They say that opportunity only knocks once. But temptation seems to
pound on my door forever. Even opening up and letting it in doesn't
seem to make it go away. More temptations come along and the beating
goes on.

Those temptations that cause me the most problems are those that
pull me away from being my best self. So I can relate to the Swiss
woman who was served dinner on a domestic American flight. She
opened up her dessert - a delicious looking piece of chocolate
cake - and immediately sprinkled a generous layer of salt and pepper
over it. A shocked flight attendant exclaimed, "Oh! It's not
necessary to do that!"

"But it is," the woman replied, smiling. "It keeps me from eating
it."

She found a way to drive temptation away from her doorstep, at least
for a while.

The most persistent temptations in my life are distractions that
keep me from doing what is in my best interest.

I forgo some much-needed exercise because I "just don't feel like
it" today. Have you ever felt like that?

You may want to quit that reading group, that difficult class or
those music lessons. It's easy to become distracted and get
discouraged.

Or maybe we say we just "can't find the time" to spend with those
closest to us, such as family. We may want to do these things; it's
just that sometimes we need a nudge.

Something baseball great Hank Aaron once said can help out here. "My
motto was to keep swinging," he said. "Whether I was in a slump or
feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do
was to keep swinging."

Sometimes we just need to keep swinging. And if we tell ourselves
that all we need to do today is to take one more swing, that may be
enough. We can always take one more swing. And who knows -- today we
might hit a home run.

From Lifesupport

Lifesigns Life Quotes