Tippy Toe Friendships

Good Friends are like stars. You don’t always see them, but you always know they are there! However, ‘good’ is a term often used too loosely in regards to friends. It’s been said that friends met in a bar disappear like streaking comets never to be encountered again. In all aspects of life, that is much the same. Move miles away to another location, and ‘time’ will extinguish most flames of ‘friendships’ into an invisible reality and a foggy memory occasionally remembered by the heart.
Friendships are like the ‘tango dance’ - it takes two fully committed to make it work! Friendships are like ‘gardens’, they take care and consistency as well as a deep compassion to weather the rains and the seasons of change. That change should at least include at least a ‘little conversation’ from time to time when possible. Always friendships need the openness on both parts to give ‘homage’ to the precious moments of mutual experiences.
Everyone has a self responsibility to cultivate an openness and compassion of the mind and heart, especially for friends. All strangers are potential friends and all friends were once strangers. It’s always loving to oneself and others who have touched the heart, past and present, to keep open the doors of communication. Most do not, and only because they have not taken the time to love themselves enough to love others.
Current friendships, and seemingly friendships that have drifted away, grow best with all doors open to communication with no fears of having to ‘tippy toe’ on egg shells to maintain the ‘relationship’ on going. I’ve found that all but a rare person puts walls up, or locks doors to either giving energy, or improving the depth of a friendship. The very best friend you will ever have is locked behind that door, and in you. Why create a ‘suicide of friendship within yourself’? Is it ‘you’ who limits friendships? Never be the last one to ‘not connect’ - that closes doors to the sensitive. Give love, and receive love - no ‘tippy toe’ stuff, and unlock the floodgates to real communication!

yeremiah@aol.com
Yeremiah Hardt

Is There Hope for the Separated?

Reality Check


You dreamed of a marriage where each made the other supremely happy. Now one of you has walked out. Separation is not the time to capitulate. In a very real sense, separation calls for intensive care, much like that given to one in grave physical danger. The condition of your marriage is 'critical'. Things can go either way at any moment. What happens will be determined by what you and your spouse say and do in the next few weeks and months.
Marital separation sometimes brings a temporary sense of 'peace'. One husband said, "This is the first week of peace I've had for years." Of course he felt peace; he had left the battlefield. However, retreat is not the road to victory. You must come from that retreat with a renewed determination to defeat the enemy of your marriage. Your dream can live again. But not without work ... work that will demand listening, understanding, discipline and change.
New Day, New Choices

I do not wish to minimize the hurt, pain, frustration, anger, resentment, loneliness, and disappointment you may feel. Nor do I take lightly your past efforts at marital adjustment. But this is a new day and calls for new choices.
When marriages fall apart, where do we go for help? The Christian turns to God because we know that He cares. The Bible is God's clearest voice for guidance. And the Bible calls us to repentance and reconciliation. Notice I said repentance. There can be no reconciliation without repentance. In marriage, this calls for mutual repentance, for almost always the failure has involved both parties.
If you are separated, use this time to examine the biblical principles for building a marriage. Discover where you went wrong and how to correct it. Deal with your own failures and ask God to help you do something positive today. I wrote Hope for the Separated to help you do this.
Hope and Help

Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better. I know that you cannot make your spouse reconcile. But you can reach out for help. Call a pastor, a counselor, a friend; read a book.
Separation does not equal divorce, and is not necessarily the end. It may be the beginning of rediscovering the dream you shared when you were first married. Discover your options and don't forget that God is the God of miracles. There is hope for the separated.
Share your questions, thoughts, insights, or comments:

Join the conversation on Facebook at www.facebook.com/5lovelanguages.
Adapted from Hope for the Separated by Gary Chapman.

Find out more at http://www.5lovelanguages.com/.
Saturday, June 26: "Dear Gary"

Building Relationships Radio
Whether it's a question about marriage, singleness, parenting, or dating, listeners have come to trust the answers given by Dr. Gary Chapman. On the next Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, you'll hear more questions for the author of the NY Times bestseller, The 5 Love Languages™. See if you agree with Gary's advice to callers this week, and learn how you can better speak love into the lives of those around you.
Featured resource for this program:

The 5 Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman.
Tune in to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, the weekly radio broadcast brought to you by Moody Radio and Moody Publishers. Listen live online Saturday mornings at 10 a.m. CST at moodyradio.org,check your local radio station, or download free podcasts and get more information




yeremiah@aol.com
Yeremiah Hardt

Meaning of F.R.I.E.N.D. S.H.I.P

· "F" is for Fun......... ...That friends share when they are together.
· "R" is for Reliability. ...A true friend is someone that you can always rely on.
· "I" is for Interest.... ...Someone like Mukesh who is genuinely interested in you, your fears, joys, and life.
· "E" is for Energy...... ...They pick you up when you are down, and give you the energy to go on and believe in yourself.
· "N" is for Nothing..... ...Nothing is ever too much, no matter what time it is, night or day.
· "D" is for Distance.... ...Although the miles may separate you, a true friend like Mukesh is never far away.
· "S" is for Secrets..... ...Your feelings and personal/private thoughts that you can only share with a friend like Mukesh.
· "H" is for Happiness... ...The way I feel when we are together.
· "I" is for Inseparable. ...Through good times and bad, tears and laughter. A friend like Mukesh will always be there for you jst frnds like u ..
· "P" is for Perfect..... ...The friendship that you and Mukesh share. You make normal days into special days. Turn my tears of sorrow into tears of laughter. My world is a brighter place due to the friendship and love that we share.



yeremiah@aol.com
 Yeremiah Hardt

Brilliantly Beautiful

We are all beautiful. We are all alive and brilliantly beautiful. We also have to respect all life or it will vanish. Through respecting life, we will encourage it through all the magnificent intentions we perform and wonder it encourages a great life. Life could always improve.

There is no hurry to improve life. Life is a living breathing process which is of great value, the circumstances do not matter. The point of view has no value, except to you, unless you make it have value.

yeremiah@aol.com
 Yeremiah Hardt

Why Friends exist

Having friends makes you feel good. They may make you feel uniquely enthused, always. Friends help us through all of life's difficulties. Such ease comes to you with the more friends you have as well as the more fun you will have in this great existence, in which we call existence within reality.

The greater the variety of friends you have the more uniquely your life is. Friends add a variety of aspects to your life. The more you have the fuller your life is and the greater amount of ideas you could incur.

These ideas reciprocate many times over. They lead you to whole new plethora’s of ideas, which have the ability to even surprise you.

 Yeremiah Hardt
yeremiah@aol.com

The Qualities of a good friend

Sometimes we think we will be fine by ourselves because a dream is a wish that we make all alone. It is easy to feel like we do not need help from nobody but it is harder to walk on our own. Soon we change inside and also outside when we realize that the world come to life and everything’s bright from beginning to end when we have a friend by our sides. That helps us to find the beauty we are when we open our heart and believe in the gift of a friend. But how do we want our friends to be and what are the qualities we expect from a good friend.

There are many qualities we would love to see from a good friend. In my opinion, we can group all these qualities in three different categories. First, a good friend is honest and humble. It is the first things I look at in a friendship. It is the foundation, the base of all friendship or any kind of relation in this world. When we are humble and honest with our friends, there is a connection between us. And we will never get in trouble about how to trust each others. I always try to be honest as much as I can with my friends, but when I do not feel their honesty or their trust in return, I immediately know that we are not good for each others. And that create a small distance between us. Our conversations become a bit about general things and we finish by just saying “hello” to each others. So for me, it is important to be honest and humble in a friendship.

The second quality of a good friend is to help us to fix our mistakes. A good friend helps us to improve and save us from doing the same mistakes over and over. He is not there to judge or criticize us because we had a bad behavior about something or we reacted very badly in a situation. As Madonna said: “Nobody is perfect” so he or she is there to support us by giving us advices. When our hope crashes down shattering to the ground and we feel alone, he might be there to give us hands and give us energy and strength we need. When we do not know which way to go and there are no signals to lead us home, he might be able to tell us that we are not alone and take us to the right way.

The last quality I always expect from a friend is his presence and his time for me. A good friend might be there physically, mentally and emotionally (sometimes financially but that is not very important) for me in bad and good moment. A famous French expression say: “We know who our friends is when we are enduring a bad moment”. And that is true because some “friends” try to be our best friend just when we have money, we can take them to dinner, travel or party and buy their drink. A good friend is not like that. He is someone who is present in our life and knows when we are lost and we are scared, someone who knows there are through the highs and the lows and despite that he can stand up for us and get our back. A good friend is that person we can count on, someone who cares for us. For instance, a good friend assists us when we lost a parent, we lost our job or we are in the emergency room. That is what we can call a good friend.

In conclusion, it is hard to believe in friend nowadays, but when we look around us, we can still find some humble persons who have good qualities and share our life with. When someone cares, try to be present in your life and also is honest with us, do not screw it up but return that favor. We may have a lot of friends, but not all of them are good friends.

yeremiah@aol.com
Yeremiah Hardt

Slow Down and Enjoy Relationships

From going fast in cars
I’ve piled it up high
From saying hello to friends with a quick goodbye
Kathryn Williams,

Flicker Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Corey Allan of Simple Marriage.
The world is seemingly moving at a faster pace. Everywhere you turn, the pace is quick. Deadlines are moved up, workload is increased, kid’s schedules are packed, to-do lists are long, housework never ends – it’s chaos. At least it feels this whews the world really sped up? Are there more things happening today than 50 years ago? No, and no.Some things around us may involve more pressure and feel like it’s moving faster, but many times it only feels this way. Thanks to the Internet and cable we hear about everything that happens, immediately.

Our interconnected through technology has helped create the illusion of a faster paced world. It’s also created the illusion of less loneliness and isolation – but there’s nothing that can replace real life connections with other people. Physical contact and interaction is vital.

This loss of contact and the perceived pace of the world produces a feeling of chronic anxiousness and a decrease in the ability to find pleasure in some of the simple things, when was the last time you stopped and took in the smell of fresh baked bread? Or colored with crayons? Or walked barefoot in the grass? Or took a few minutes to just breathe?No where is the impact of our pace felt more than in marriage and family. It’s extremely difficult to move hurriedly through your day and then slow down enough to enjoy your family or your spouse in the evenings of the reasons marriage and family relationships go through sour patches is the squeezing they get from our schedules, disconnection, and pace.

It’s easy to get caught up in other things and have the immediate outweigh the important reverse this, here’s a few ideas to try:Start small.

No change in life is easy or comfortable. Working to let go of the pace around you and creating your own speed takes time and should be attempted in small, incremental steps. Begin by giving yourself permission to slow down. This may seem like a no brainer, but many people believe they don’t have permission to slow down. You do. Whenever life seems to move too fast, take a deep breathe. Three to five slow, deep breaths will slow everything down.

Leave the office. And I mean leave the office. Shut off all projects, messages, emails, phone calls and conversations and leave the office at the end of the day. Most everything can wait until the next day, so leave it alone until then. As an added help, create a routine to help you disengage from the office on the way home. Walk down the stairs slowly rather than taking the elevator. Drive down tree lined streets rather than the interstate. Walk or bike home from work if possible. Listen to good music while on the train or bus.

Stop by the gym for a workout. No matter which way you transition from work to home, make it intentional. Breathe. Relax. Breathe. Let work go. Then walk through the door to your home and enjoy time with those you love. Turn off all electronic gadgets.

This one is simple. Turn off the phone. The Internet. The television. Spend time talking, playing games, take a walk outside. The point is, unplug and connect with other humans. Be 100% present. This is tough at times. But it also is a source of increased tension in life. When I’m with my kids and have other things on my mind, my kids become a pest and source of frustration – at least that’s the way it plays out. When I’ve got work on my mind, my son’s request to play cars is an annoyance rather than an invitation into the world of imaginative
play with my child. Whatever you are doing, focus on being 100% present. Multitasking is impossible anyway. Focus on doing one thing at a time and being

100% present while doing it.

Take a Walk Make it a priority to walk with your spouse and your kids each day. There’s tremendous benefit to being out in nature, even if it’s nature in the city. Want a sure-fire way to improve your marriage? Walk and talk with your spouse at least 30 minutes a day. Eat outside.

There’s something great about being in nature. There’s something even greater about sharing a meal with others outside. Head to the park for a picnic, eat on the patio at home or restaurants.

Prepare for your day.

Spend a moment at the end of your day preparing for the next day. Pick out clothes, make lunches, talk with your spouse. Then in the morning, before you jump into your day, take some time a simply sit quietly. Enjoy a cup of tea or coffee. Breathe slowly, meditate, pray. What a great way to start each day.

yeremiah@aol.com
Yeremiah Hardt