You might even cry...

Once upon a time, there was a foolish boy who had a bag full of beautiful marbles. Now this boy was quite proud of his marbles. In fact, he thought so much of them that he would neither play with them himself nor would he let anyone else play with them. He only took them out of the bag in order to count and admire them; they were never used for their intended purpose. Yet that boy carried that coveted bag of marbles everywhere he went.

Well, there was also a wise boy who wished he could have such a fine bag of marbles. So this boy worked hard and earned money to purchase a nice bag to hold marbles. Even though he had not yet earned enough with which to purchase any marbles, he had faith and purchased the marble bag. He took special care of the bag and dreamed of the day it would contain marbles with which he could play and share with his friends.

Alas, the foolish boy with all of the marbles didn't take care of the marble bag itself, and one day the bag developed a hole in the bottom seam. Still, he paid no attention and, one by one, the marbles fell out of the bag.

It didn't take long, once the foolish boy's marble bag developed a hole, for the wise boy to begin to find those beautiful marbles, one at a time, lying unnoticed on the ground. And, one by one, he added them to his marble bag. The wise boy thus gained a fine bag full of marbles in no time at all. This boy played with the marbles and shared them with all of his friends. And he always took special care of the bag so he wouldn't lose any.

And what about the foolish boy? Because he was selfish and careless, he lost all of his marbles and was left holding the bag.

If you wrote down all the things in your life that you have, from life itself to the trinkets you own, to the feelings you feel, would you feel grateful for such tremendous gifts?

Regardless of who you feel grateful to, you would feel pretty good. You might even start to cry.

Imagine what your life would look like (speaking to myself) if you walked around all day and thought "What is my responsibility?" Rather than thinking (speaking to myself) "What are my rights, what's owed to me?"

Can you imagine the profound impact it would have on your soul to always be thinking of what your responsibility is to your husband, your children, your friends, your community, your world?

You might think this is the way most people think, but a quick glimpse into the human psyche might prove differently.

What happens when you rent an apartment, pay money, money that you earned, worked hard for, and then everything from the front door to the fridge breaks within months? How would you feel?

Most of us would feel angry, hurt or used and we would probably be calling the lawyers before we called the landlord to see what can get fixed.

The Abba and I had the merit of living in the Holy Land, The Old City of Jerusalem to be exact, for a couple years. During this time we lived in one particular apartment known to many as "The Cave". The Cave was probably 100 years old, without exaggeration, and was beautiful as ever. But literally, everything in the Cave broke, front door, shower, faucets, floors, oven, fridge, light bulbs crashed from two story high ceilings onto the floor just missing my head! I'm oversimplifying the story by writing it in two measly sentences but I trust you get the idea.

The Abba decided this was going to be our opportunity for tremendous growth and enlightenment in our lives if were going to be sensitive to the messages we were receiving. I was apartment hunting.

We got to the point where when things broke, we laughed. The lessons we needed to learn were so clear! We needed to realize that none of these things belong to us, they are just gifts that can be taken away in a second. And each second they were being taken away! (This should not negate the idea of working hard for your belongings and feeling a sense of accomplishment for hard efforts, and most importantly taking pleasure in the things we have. To be discussed in a different blog!)

Recently the Abba took a trip to the Holy Land as I told you about, and after he came back we were sitting up talking, folding laundry, catching up, and he looked at me and said "You've changed". I gulped. "You are even happier now than you have ever been." I smiled.

But then I started to think, what is it that changed?

I thought and talked it out and came to the astounding realization that the only reason I am able to be more at peace now than ever before in my life is because I have somewhat, to a very minuscule degree, begun to internalize this idea of feeling "What is my responsibility to the world around me, rather than what are my rights?"

Imagine how your life would look if all day long you were only thinking, what is my responsibility to myself, to my husband, to my parents, to my children, to my community, to my world, to my creator?

Can you feel for a moment how your life would shift from the foolish boy with the marbles so scared to let go of his own, to the wise boy who gains infinity by giving to others?

No relationship can fail if each partner is thinking "what is my responsibility to this person" Every relationship can suffer if even one person is thinking "what are my rights in this relationship"

There lies a deep secret here in parenting, amongst many other things. If we focus only on what our responsibility is toward our child we will feel a deep sense of love and appreciation and if we feel that we are entitled to things in life or things are owed to us, we may find ourselves riding a roller coaster of disappointment.

I often cringe when I see ads that say, "You deserve the best." I mean let's face it lady (talking to myself) we were given this tremendous gift of life with all its beauty and pleasures and we did nothing to earn it! Nothing! We were born into it! And we 'deserve' it? Can you even imagine telling your child he deserved to be born? What does that even mean? We don't deserve anything in truth, we are just here enjoying and taking the incredible gifts that life has to offer. So we need to get outside of ourselves and stop thinking of what is coming our way and start thinking, "Wow, if I was given this tremendous gift of life FOR FREE, I wonder what my responsibility is toward this world?" What can I do for it?

Think about it. God knew what he was doing. He entrusted us with a gigantic beautiful awesome world, told us to find a spouse that is in itself a gigantic beautiful awesome task, and then to have children and that is a gigantic beautiful awesome thing and then to be part of society and change the world oh and on a side note perfect the world through morality and goodness.

That sounds like massive tasks that require a whole lot of responsibility! Alas, that is the design! God knew what He was doing. He designed the world in a way that only through taking responsibility for ourselves our husbands our children our society our world, would we be able to resemble Godliness, which in essence just means being a giver rather than a taker. Being the wise boy rather than the foolish boy.

Where do we start?

If you wrote down all the things in your life that you have, from life itself to the trinkets you own, to the feelings you feel, would you feel grateful for such tremendous gifts?

Regardless of who you feel grateful to, you would feel pretty good. You might even start to cry.

We can start by writing all those things down, feeling grateful. You will feel pretty good, you might even cry...talking to myself...