A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable,

but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

George Bernard Shaw

Irish dramatist (1856-1950) 

Open Your Eyes  

by Karen Ball  

 

 

After 30 years of working in publishing houses (Tyndale, Multnomah, Zondervan, and B&H Publishing Group) as an executive editor, I now head up my own business, Karen Ball Publishing services. Through KBPS, I'm doing all the things I love: editing, speaking, consulting. And I'm also a literary agent with the prestigious Steve Laube Literary Agency. GREAT fun! You can visit with Karen at her website www.karenballbooks.com and also on her blog,  http://karenball.blogspot.com.

     

This month we have an article, "Open Your Eyes," by Karen Ball. Karen is an award-winning editor, author, and speaker who loves honoring God through the wonder of words. I met Karen at a writers' conference where she discovered me and my first two books. You can visit with Karen at her website www.karenballbooks.com and also on her blog,  http://karenball.blogspot.com.

 

 

 

"When's the last time you stopped and looked around you--really looked--at the beauty nature has ready and waiting for you? I was sitting in a hotel in the Seattle area not long ago, sipping my morning coffee, mind occupied with what I was going to say at the workshop I was teaching that day at a writer's conference. I glanced out the window, not really focusing, but a splash of vibrant color just reached out and grabbed me. I focused in on the flowers bobbing in the wind and rain--hey, it was Seattle--and discovered an entire ballet taking place. Huge, full tulips danced atop slender green stems, bowing and rising, tapping one another and backing away, all perfectly in step with each other and the weather.

"It was beautiful.

"I set down my coffee--a miracle, that, considering it was my first cup of the morning--and made a beeline for my room. And my camera. By the time I got back downstairs, the rain had passed, so I went out and shot the following to share with you.

"Hope you enjoy them as much as I did. And that you open your eyes to whatever beauty there is around you today.

"Peace, friends."

Karen

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A hillbilly family took a vacation to New York City. One day, the father took his son into a large building. They were amazed by everything they saw, especially the elevator at one end of the lobby. The boy asked, "What's this, Paw?"

The father responded, "Son, I have never seen anything like this in my life. I don't know what it is!"

While the boy and his father were watching in wide-eyed astonishment, an old lady in a wheelchair rolled up to the moving walls and pressed a button. The walls opened and the lady rolled between them into a small room.

The walls closed and the boy and his father watched small circles of lights above the walls light up. They continued to watch the circles light up in the reverse direction.

The walls opened again, and a voluptuous twenty-four-year old woman stepped out.

The father turned to his son and said, "Go get your maw!" 

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A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.--George Bernard Shaw

Many of us have made mistakes. In order to make a mistake you must be doing something. Mr. Shaw thinks that is more honorable than doing nothing. What do you think?

The best thing about mistakes is that they generally teach us a lesson. The trouble is if we'd known the lesson first, we wouldn't have made the mistake. But sometimes that's not the way things work.

And that's the sad part of mistakes. We make them but don't know we're making a mistake until afterwards. Then the impact of our mistakes hits us: regret. When we reach the point where we regret our mistake, the regret usually grows out of proportion to the rest of our life.

Regret has a healthy appetite-it takes up a big part of our lives. So many times regret overstays its welcome. Regret eats into our mind, even on occasion makes us physically sick.

It's a fact: people make mistakes. Try to put a positive spin on your mistakes. I say try because that isn't easy to do. Be thankful for the lessons you learn from mistakes. Hold those lessons closely so you'll not make that same mistake again and thereby ward off regret in a similar situation in your future.

A mistake is not an indication of failure or lack of intelligence. A mistake is a sign that we are human. That we are not living a life spent doing nothing. Use the lessons learned from your mistakes to make your future brighter. We can do that or we can sit around like a burned-out lightbulb and do nothing.