This Defies Logic

What do you say to them when they get counseled, are offered free pregnancy and child care assistance, see the ultrasound, hear the strong heartbeat of their own child, and still tell you, 

"I don't think we're going to keep the baby"???

Children shouldn't die because a girl is afraid to tell her parents she's pregnant. Children shouldn't die because a girl is going to college to get a job. Children shouldn't die because they are "unexpected" or "unwanted." 

The price of a life is much greater than the burden of any circumstance, especially in this country, in the life of a privileged, college-age girl, who could have chosen differently for the sake of the life of another.

This defies logic!

Revelations in Venice

I spent time on Venice Beach today.

It was a great day for the beach. Not going to bother describing it to you, because I'm sure you know what it's like to enjoy lamb gyros, poki bowls, and funnel cake on the beach when the sun is warm and the air is cool and the beach is clear and spacious on a Thursday when almosteveryone else is in school or at work.

Right?

This is the joy of being an entrepreneur. 

Venice Beach is hippieville, apparently. I'd like to thank the hippie-surfer-probable-yoga-master-guy that I saw on the beach today for his example. Thanks for emerging from the waves to sit back on your ankles in the sand and shut your eyes in meditation or prayer.

I joked with my friend that, perhaps, he was thanking the gods for an awesome surf. But then I got up and folded my legs beneath me as well. "Thank you for the food, and the beach, and the awesome day," was basically my prayer. "Amen!"

My friend and I also took our Venice visit as an opportunity to dream-build. As we lay back on our towels on the sand, we made plans to do exactly that, except we would do it in France and Greece. We would bring our friends. We would buy things we couldn't presently afford, and eat twice as much food. 

And, now that we know what's down in Venice, we know what to come back for, once we're millionaires. 

Character-Building Day in L.A.

I'm sitting at a cafe on Ventura Blvd in L.A. right now, and I'm realizing that I've reached the top.

Not because I'm sitting at a cafe on Ventura Blvd in L.A., but because I had a character-building day yesterday, and I knew it. 

Situation: The friend with whom I am presently staying, A, was sent an emergency text yesterday from one of her friends. This friend, B, had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend and wanted A to come and get her. B could have come and met us rather than have us come and get her, but A felt that she couldn't trust B to leave the situation on her own: B has a habit of perpetuating her lousy boyfriend situation, and A, in spite of her best efforts, has been unable to change that. 

So, rather than spending my vacation time and A's hours off from work enjoying Venice Beach and the sights of Hollywood, we ended up in L.A. traffic in an Uber car for two hours with a girl who didn't actually need or take full advantage of the help offered by A. In fact, B may have made up with her boyfriend by now.

Character building: Both A and I could have been very disgruntled--We were at first. We were in our beach clothes, the sun had already gone down, and we were sitting in an empty hole-in-the-wall called The Black Sheep in downtown L.A. when A began to apologize and vent about our apparently  fruitless sacrifice for B that day. 

But I stopped her and said, "No. Today was a good day. I think it gave us the chance to realize a few things."

For A, it gave her the chance to evaluate how valuable her own time was and how there are some friendships you simply have to let go of because they no longer give value and, in fact, secrete poison. A said, "You really are the average of the five people you hang out with." A knows now that she doesn't want B to be one of the five people with that kind of influence. "I want to surround myself with positive people," she said. "And you can't help people who don't want to be helped."

That was a lesson for her and a reminder for me. 

Valueless friendships are so easy to hold onto, but they can be deadly to our state of being.

As for me, I managed to spend two hours in a car in an attempt to "help" someone I had never seen before on an day I had hoped to enjoy, without going crazy! At first, I just telling myself to relax, but by the time A and I made it to a dark corner of The Black Sheep (where, by the way, we devoured two of the most delicious hamburgers in the world), I had taken hold of a whole new vantage point. So instead of feeling angry and venting for the rest of the night, A and I were able to change the affect the situation had had on us and realize that we had just experienced an awesome, character-building day.

P.S. And ending up in downtown L.A. after dark turned out to be awesome.

Here are links to some of the delicious places we visited:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-black-sheep-los-angeles

http://www.yelp.com/biz/las-perlas-los-angeles

http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-varnish-los-angeles-2?osq=Las+Perlas

Mentor Moment: It's a Struggle!

"It's a struggle!"

Thus spoke a successful woman in the business of real estate, Toni, whom I had the pleasure of spending time with when she agreed to sit down with me and my mastermind group the other day. She dropped a lot of gems as she described her life to us, so this post about her may be the first of many.
She was a mother of two, suddenly single, twenty-odd years ago. She had a job she hated, and a desire to create a better life for herself and her sons.  She was working for the airlines when she faced the reality that she had to do something different; she had to escape the life of an under-paid, over-worked, mistreated employee. So, she jumped ship.

"Don't be afraid to go for a swim and struggle!"
She had to struggle to be independent of her parents. She had to struggle to provide food and education for her sons. She learned that:

"Life motivates you."

and she pointed out that

"When you have a choice, you're complacent."
Sometimes God asks us to struggle by showing us that we have no choice to do otherwise. He asks us to go down paths that we don't necessarily like. Toni said that she herself had hated the path she had to follow! But she had faith and she persevered. She says that when you are ready, and God is ready, a light bulb will go off, and you will know what you have to do. And you will struggle. But you'll know you're in the right struggle. The key, according to Toni, is to remember to

"Always focus on how life can always get better."

And then you'll look back someday, like Toni, and know that you'd struggled for reasons much bigger than you can presently imagine. 

Why Limit Yourself?

Today, I found myself driving through the afternoon traffic with two complete strangers sitting in my car. This sort of situation actually isn't usual for me. What was unusual was the conversation that took place during the short ride we had together.

They were a couple, backpacking (as made clear by their giant backpacks) across the Pacific on their way to Australia. They'd had a long layover in Guam, so they'd stayed the night at a bed n' breakfast I clean for. The couple had needed a ride to the airport, so I had agreed to take them there before I went to work on cleaning the apartment they'd stayed in.

The man was quite talkative and they were both very grateful for the ride. He was from New York, and she was from Berlin. He asked me if I was from Guam, and I said yes. He asked me if I'd grown up here, and I said yes. Then he asked if I had any siblings, and I said, "Yes. I have ten brothers and sisters."

Typically, when someone gets around to asking me that questions, I'll pause for a moment and think of how to tell them how big my family is. No matter how I answer, however, the usual response is drowned in surprise.

And he was surprised.

But very pleased. They both were.

"That is so awesome!" He said. And she said, "It is! It's beautiful."

It was a pleasant surprise to hear that.

I mentioned how people are usually surprised, and how, sometimes, people wonder, "Why have so many?" 

I think the real question to ask is, "Why limit yourself?"

He responded, "That's how people react when I tell them that I want a big family--like six kids. They freak out. But it's like you said--Why limit yourself, if that's what you want?"

I asked them how many siblings they had. He had one, and she had none. She admitted something that I've heard so many people admit before: "I wish I had siblings."

I'm not married or anything. I'm just one kid out of many. But that's kind of the point. By merely existing, I get to be a witness. I am evidence of something "awesome", "beautiful", and definitely surprising.

So here's my question to you young, married people out there: "Why limit yourself?"