Quotes by Counselors - Page 15

To grow is not to timidly sit on some safe shore at water’s edge and clumsily grab whatever happens to float by me. Rather, it is to deliberately step into waters both calm and turbulent in order to wrestle great things to shore.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
With God, a mountain before me is soon to be a memory behind me.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If the amount of times we get up is just one less than the amount of times that we've been knocked down, then we're spending our lives lying down.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe I need to immerse the fabric of my soul in torrential nature of Christmas, and in doing so to finally understand that it is the very thing that can make the world what I so wish it were.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Will I live yearning for a world that I need not yearn for because the message of Christmas is entirely undaunted in its ability to handily penetrate and completely subjugate the very world that I doubt its ability to survive in?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It is my wish and most cherished hope that God would be pleased with my legacy, that lives would be changed by it, and that the world would be immeasurably better because I was privileged to leave a legacy at all. And if perchance I am fortunate enough to have these things come to pass, I can then rest in the fact that I have lived well.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I feign fullness, but in reality I am achingly empty. And it is because I too often sit at the table of the world instead of the feet of God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I see only my bias, I have surrendered to a single myopic lens through which to view the world. If I dare to surrender my bias, I will spend the rest of my life seeing the world and throwing away lenses.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It is not within my power to refuse the journey of life regardless of the nature of my fears or the depth of my selfishness, for the definitions of ‘journey’ and ‘life’ are indistinguishably synonymous. I can however sufficiently inhibit them and amply fight them to the point that I have accepted the journey, but the journey is now solely defined as my effort to forsake the journey.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
No, I am not powerful nor do I wish to be, for it is God using my weakness that makes me potent and I would never wish to surrender that.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If I have not been both soothed by love and on the opposite extreme left devastated by it, I will never understand its power nor respect its majesty.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
What insanity would lead me to believe that I possess the power, much less the aptitude to manipulate all of the consequences out of all of my decisions?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We’re making our decisions … or so we think. Yet in truth, ignorance, greed, and the scourge of immediate gratification are often the things that are making them. So if we’re going to truly live well, maybe the first thing we need to decide is who’s deciding.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Have we ever thought to consider that the need to be loved grows because of its absence, but that love also grows because of its presence? And does this not speak to the power of love?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
You can't fight a battle you don't think exists.
John Eldredge
Under this aura of perfection he knows how flawed he really is but his intact denial system keeps this awareness suppressed in the far recesses of his mind.
David W. Earle
Teenagers can spot hypocrisy a mile away and here I was telling them how to cope when they witnessed the shambles of my own life and how I was living.
David W. Earle
Chaos limits the free-flow of love and becomes a roadblock to what family members want most and sadly, it becomes the normal for the family.
David W. Earle
When someone obtains peace and serenity, this shines a bright spotlight on others’ own unhappiness making their discomfort even more apparent.
David W. Earle
If no one has boundaries…how can there be any transgression?
David W. Earle
Swirling in a squirrel cage of perpetual motion, the head-committee meets, argues, votes out the guidance available from emotions, and successfully keeps serenity at bay and chaos close at hand.
David W. Earle
Children naturally believe without question and absorb knowledge at an incredible rate; since there is no other frame of reference; they believe their parental reality, true or false.
David W. Earle
Putting labels on others creates a black hole of disregard where judgment thrives and schisms deepen.
David W. Earle
Change is hard, difficult, painful, and often messy
David W. Earle
Being real is being true to you.
David W. Earle
We ardently desire to take down our masks and say to the world, “This is who I am…and I am okay.” This is simple…not easy.
David W. Earle
REAL people do not have to lie, exaggerate, or brag for they are self-contained in self-understanding and acceptance of themselves. REAL people can make a mistake knowing that even when they do, it is only a mistake and just because the outcome was not to their liking, they know…THEY are not a mistake. REAL have the attitude this is who I am…and I am good enough, right now…just as I am. People who have chosen REAL have already clicked their heals together and returned home.
David W. Earle
When you journey inwardly exploring yourself, a sense of personal trust begins.
David W. Earle
Families living in dysfunction seldom have healthy boundaries. Dysfunctional families have trouble knowing where they stop and others begin.
David W. Earle
Boundaries represent awareness, knowing what the limits are and then respecting those limits.
David W. Earle
The more dysfunctional, the more some family members seek to control the behavior of others.
David W. Earle
Shame is a powerful feeling. There is a tremendous difference between making a mistake and believing you are a mistake...If I don’t see myself as being a mistake then it is I who must take responsibility and I am not ready to accept that.
David W. Earle
Others hide from being real by filling the air with words; the more words they throw out, the less actual communication happens and they are left with only an illusion of connection. This is the intimacy they so ardently seek but with these coping skills find so elusive.
David W. Earle
Mature adults gravitate toward new values and understandings, not just rehashing and blind acceptance of past patterns and previous learning. This is an ongoing process and maturity demands lifelong learners.
David W. Earle
The more severe the dysfunction you experienced growing up, the more difficult boundaries are for you.
David W. Earle
The greater the pain associated with love, the more likely a person is to be attracted to others who will inflict this pain…for isn’t this what love is? Hurt people tend to hurt other people.
David W. Earle
It is one thing to know about your dysfunctional habits but quite another to change them.
David W. Earle
If you are looking for love under rocks or bringing home water moccasins, you might be confusing love and pain.
David W. Earle
As a parent who raised his children in dysfunction, I know the parental wounds my children received were not intentional; often they were my best expression of love, sometimes coming out sideways, not as I intended.
David W. Earle
Sitting on the hot seat of change requires much courage, patience, and persistence.
David W. Earle
If we want to improve, first we have to recognize our own maladaptive coping skills, called codependency, then change.
David W. Earle
Change will not successfully happen unless the emotional component is solved.
David W. Earle
Today is WOUND FREE WEDNESDAY! You start to feel it during the Holiday season; a tug in your heart, the friction within your soul, all the past complicated feelings that rise up. Choose to stay in the moment with the life you are living NOW instead of allowing the past to dictate you choices, feelings, and responses. Be love, be compassion, rise above the past and stay in the moment. BE the GRATITUDE that is within you.
Midge Noble
A parent holds within their hands the gift of a child to which they must expend the gift of themselves. And in such a monumental outpouring, the parent will lose both the child and the gifts given, but they will possess the far greater gift of knowing that they gave both.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Every parent is an artist, for the bared canvas of a newborn’s soul begs for the artist’s touch. And because this is so, a parent must prepare the palette with the utmost care, choose the brushes with poised caution, and mindfully attend to every brushstroke regardless of how slight. And such caution is utterly imperative for the emerging rendering will be both a legacy borne of the parent, and a life lived by the child.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The child you hold in your arms is your gift to a future that you will not see. Therefore, we must turn a blind eye to ourselves and selflessly pour the best of ourselves into our children while rigorously sifting out the worst of ourselves. And once we are utterly spent by such daring gestures, we will shockingly discover the resulting emptiness as astonishingly filled.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
All too soon the garden of childhood is paved cold with the asphalt roads of adulthood. And while it is not within her power to halt this unrelenting progression, a mother can diligently guard this most precious garden and insure that the roads become gentle paths that wind through it instead of byways that kill it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
One of a mother’s greatest gifts is to teach her child that to grow is not to timidly sit on some safe shore at water’s edge and clumsily grab whatever happens to float by. Rather, it is to deliberately step into waters both calm and turbulent in order to wrestle great things to shore. And that lesson can be best taught by a mother who stands before her child dripping wet.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Chilled ice tea that tempered tepid summer days lathered thick with humidity. Frothy hot chocolate that cut winter’s chill. Bedtime prayers that sent our fears scrambling in panicked flight. Golden bouquets of dandelions aromatically rich with the gift of summers scent. Family meals that wove yet another binding thread in and through the tapestry of those seated around the table. These are but the slightest sampling of the innumerable gifts my mother handed to this child of hers. And without them, my life would be impoverished beyond words to describe.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
With the gentle force of their words, the dogged warmth of their embrace, and the assuring touch of souls softly bared, mothers are silently shaping whole societies and authoring entire cultures that sit poised on the horizon of the future. And although we ignorantly relegate such roles to some lower caste status, we would be wise to understand that the role of a mother sets the cadence of the future.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If a father does not altogether embrace a life of uncompromised sacrifice as the core of all principles by which he nurtures his children, he is a father by birth only and no power on earth can ever or will ever make that sufficient.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The difference between a ‘man’ and a ‘father’ is that the former shares his genes, but latter gives his life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Making amends is not only saying the words but also being willing to listen to how your behavior caused another’s pain, and then the really hard part…changing behavior.
David W. Earle
Through the eyes of men an utterly irrational birth followed by a terribly improbable execution are miscues of the most pathetic sort. And all I can say is that I’m immeasurably thankful that I’ve been given access to the eyes of God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am far too often the author of terribly poor decisions. Yet I must rest in the unalterable fact that God says I am far better than what the sum total of those decisions would ever suggest.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
My decisions determine my destination long before I ever get there. And once I do get there, I suddenly realize this is not the destination I had in mind because what I had in mind was the fantasy that my denial had created verses the reality my choices crafted.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Too often fantasy is not a rich elaboration of life designed to enhance our existence, rather it is our pell-mell escape from life with the intent of exiting this existence. And the most imaginative fantasy of all is to somehow think that I can do that in the first place.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To live a fantasy is to avoid a life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I want to have the eyes of an adult to see the world as it is, but I more desperately want to have the heart of a child to make certain that I never forget what it could be.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
If my heart is set on pursuing real treasures, my mind must be fixed solely on the privilege of enjoying them and freed of the obsession of owning them.
Craig D. Lounsbrough