More Fabric Softener Please! :-)

I remember back in the late 70s when fabric softener sheets made their debut in our house.  My favorite brand became “Cling Free” right away because they were not made of perfumed paper but of spongy sheets. J  And of course they smelled oh so good.  I was hooked.  But as time passed, and not too much time I might add, the amount of product in the sheets decreased and also the fragrance did not last in your clothing as when the sheets first hit the market.  Yet the price did not reflect the decrease of product in the sheets.  Pas du tout.  I felt like I was being cheated so I switched to liquid fabric softeners, and I fell in love again.  Ah, love affairs.  LOL!! 

Well you know what happened there too because perhaps it has happened to you.  You find a fabric softener you like for the right price and all is well for a while.  Then new names pop up with new fragrances and you get the roving eye and nose, and gradually your favorite is not the only one you love. J  You now have multiple lovers in multiple colors, sizes, and shapes.  So you make your rounds, sometimes buying more than one at a time because there are just too many to settle for just one at a time.  Ahem.  Then the prices rise and the sizes shrink, and now it’s more economical to buy refill tubes.

So, with these tubes you are instructed as to how much water to mix with the concentrated liquid, which means you now control the strength of the product.  Hmmm.  Not a bad idea eh?  More softener please.  Maybe some people will take this to mean if they add more water than instructed they can make the liquid last longer, and you would be right.  But would the results be as satisfying?  Watered-down fabric softener makes for . . . You get the feeling don’t you?

On the other hand maybe some people would use less water in the mix thinking this will make the clothing softer.  This too may be correct, but of course the product will not last as long as it is supposed to and you will be refilling more often than you had planned.  Not really sure if it’s created to work best that way, but hey, not sure it would hurt either.  It’s your call bien sur. 

Well, I’m of the old school that if you’re going to read the instructions at all, you might as well follow them to the letter.  So I usually mix the right amount of water with the concentrate.  But I noticed that without the usage of a clothes dryer, air drying ones clothing, even when using fabric softener in the right amount does not always result in soft clothes.  This is absolutely no fun.  And en plus, where is the fragrance that caught my nose and desire causing me to two-time my previous fabric softener choice?  So I decided to add an extra cap or two of fabric softener, but then I forgot about it. 

While folding the towels I noticed that they were softer and I wondered how is this possible?  Then I had a duh-aha-voila-eureka moment.  I had added more fabric softener.  Hmmm.  And the fragrance was there too, which made my normal chore of folding clothes fun again.  Fabric softener truly can make washing, drying and folding clothes a fun passing of time.  It doesn’t have to be a boring chore, or a chore at all.  But something else happened while I was savoring the feeling and fragrance of clean clothing.  I heard Holy Spirit say “This is what YOU need, more softener in your soul.  It will change your character.”  Wow!!  Ouch too.  LOL!!  Talk about a eureka moment.

As I moved in closer to receive this great revelation from Holy Spirit, He said to me that time with Jesus, day in and day out is like adding fabric softener to the fabric of our characters.  The texture of me (and you) becomes changed and easier to “wear”, like lamb’s skin. J  You get the picture don’t you?  Romans 12:2 states,  “. . . be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” [Emphasis mine.]  Can you say “Transformer?”

I Corinthians 13:4-8 describes for us the many facets of God’s nature and personality – Love.  God IS Love, and Love is patient (God is patient), Love is kind (God is kind), Love is . . . etc.  Also Galatians 5:22-23 gives flavor to our Lord (“oh taste and see that the Lord is good”)[Psalm 34:8] calling His character traits “The Fruit of the Spirit”.  We know that we become like the ones we spend the most time with, whether we socialize with them in person, through books, through the internet and television, etc.  We take on the mannerisms of others and they take on our mannerisms too. 

You notice how two strangers can meet, spend some time together, fall in love and then marry.  Then after a few years they begin to look like each other, talk like one another, maybe even walk with the same gait especially if they have taken many long walks together.  They may even finish one another’s sentences or say the same things at the same time because they are thinking alike.  They can feel when the other one is upset or happy even when they’re not in the same room or city; Because their hearts have become one.  The textures of their personalities have become intertwined changing their original single way of being, creating a whole new tapestry, but yet somehow still maintaining their own uniqueness.  Yes, this is spiritual for sure.  Heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul. . .  And this is what God desires to have and be with us.  One.

I noticed that the more time I spend not just reading God’s Word but letting His Word read me, I see me like I’ve never seen me before. J  I begin to see me like God sees me, the good, the bad and the ugly.  The good He uses to encourage me that I am not a bad person and that He loves and accepts me just as I am, so when I see the bad I don’t become depressed.  And whoa when the ugly rears its ugly head that I don’t give up, throw in the towel and call it quits.  The Lord is not about just identifying what’s wrong with us, but He’s about revealing to us Himself in us, who and what we are to become in and through, and by and for His Son Jesus the Christ, the Ultimate Soul Fabric Softener.  See, when we are impatient and unkind to ourselves, we have really rough personalities.  We can smile all the time and say nice things in a sweet voice, but there is always an edge to our disposition which is cutting and biting, and sensitive people can sense it (and see the bite marks in our personality) and they may even move away from us in advance, because they don’t know when we might strike. 

When we are impatient and unkind to ourselves it means we lack . . . Love, Which is patient, Who is kind. . .  I know that’s kind of tight, but it’s right.  When we don’t exercise the Fruit of the Spirit towards our own selves (love, joy, peace, longsuffering, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, temperance) then we have not been very nice to ourselves, which means we will not know how to be nice to others.  We are “softless”.  J  Just rough not only around the edges, but throughout our entire personalities.  We can’t give to others what we don’t have. We cannot take others where we’ve not been.  We cannot teach others what we have not learned.  And we cannot give until we have received. 

God desires for His love to be a reality in our lives, not just an abstract principle we read on a bumper sticker or lapel pin, and not just something we say to people when we don’t know what to say, “God loves you.”  He wants us to know exactly what it means (feels, sounds, tastes, smells like) in our everyday reality and interactions first with ourselves, then with our families, friends, coworkers and the world beyond our world.  But this can only happen as we continually make time for Him as our priority 24-7.  He cannot be secondary and His Word cannot be an option. 

To be honest with you, I did not know how mean to oneself one really is when he or she is impatient.  Maybe we react impatiently towards others on a daily basis, but that means we’ve first been impatient with ourselves.  Life is so much more calm and peaceful now that I am exercising patience with myself (and eating the other Fruit too).  No more internal stress, less injuries, and the roses smell oh so nice. J  I didn’t have to water down the fabric softener to make it last longer because there’s a never ending supply from where that comes.  Jesus never runs out.  Neither did I have to use less water to get the softness I desire.  I can follow the instructions to the letter and still get what I need and want.  (And no static cling!!)  All I have to do is add more fabric softener, and enjoy the feeling being soft brings.  You can never add too much of the Ultimate Fabric Softener, Jesus Christ.  So go ahead, pour Him in and see what happens.  I’m sure you will love the results.

Peace.

Pretty in Pink

Not too long ago I witnessed first and second hand what seems to be a common phenomenon, if I can call it that. Give me a minute, okay a few minutes to explain and paint this pretty and then not so pretty picture. Once upon a time there IS this beautiful young lady. Wow, she was (and is) gorgeous and everybody knew it. (I know I keep switching tenses on you. Please forgive me for this is a real time story with a past tense reality.) (Now did that make sense at all?) Anyhooo, all the men and women who see her cannot stop looking at her because of her beauty. She also is down to earth, approachable which makes her even more beautiful and desirable. She also had a beautiful little baby by a beautiful and handsome man. They were, to all our eyes, the picture perfect family, but they were not married. So they got married. The wedding was beautiful – I didn’t go, but I saw the photos. Which evoked another “wow”! Anyhooo, the marriage lasted a good five months and then he was gone. To say we were surprised is the greatest understatement of this decade. Were we ever!

Each time I looked at her and her beautiful child I wondered “why in the world would he leave her?” Well, the more time I spent in her presence the more I realized that she was full of herself and her beauty, and that she uses it to draw and attract men to herself – the way she dresses, walks, stands etc., whether or not they’re married to other women. She doesn’t care. All she knows is she is beautiful and she needs someone to continue stroking her ego. Then something happened. I was just a few steps away from witnessing first hand this unknown-by-many incident, which was told to me just moments afterwards. She said something that was so negative, so seemingly out of character which revealed the true state of her mind and character, I was floored. It would take too long to tell you the story for I would have to build the entire edifice for you to understand its context, but suffice it to say, the words which come from our mouths, and not just isolated words, but the statements which describe our beliefs, emotions, etc. reveal the depth, or lack of depth of our character. When I learned this about her, my question was answered: this is why he left her. She had nothing inside of her character to offer him. She was/is empty inside of hope and life. She was/is pessimistic and depressed, and thus depressing. He was drawn by her outer beauty long enough, and to the point of making a child with her, but when he married her and spent “defenses down” time with her, he found out what was beneath all that pink. Not much. :-)

Now, I know better than to make a judgment like that without knowing both sides of the story, but it’s not possible because I’m not intimate friends with this former couple. Nevertheless, you and I know there is another side to this story and that the man who left was not all right, nor always squeaky clean. I’ve no doubt, the few times I saw him that he too suffered from the “I know I am beautiful” syndrome that she has. It may be contagious among “beautiful” people. They may have had civil wars over mirror time, and other men and women looking at them too long. That pink is starting to look a little dusty and dingy now. Dusty rose pink? Maybe she (and he) was “empty” inside because of many disappointments in life that drained her of hope, and/or maybe she’s afraid to believe for better because she is empty inside. Is that a conundrum? So she uses her outer beauty, something she knows she has for sure, because people keep telling her she does, but something she’s really not CONVINCED of because she misuses it unnecessarily, and in a negative-for-others way. Suddenly that pink doesn’t look pretty anymore. Or is it the one IN pink that’s losing her luster?

I have a book called Understanding the Dreams You Dream, by Ira Milligan, in which he gives the significance of certain colors, and he says the color pink signifies: Flesh – sensual; sensuous (as in “hot pink bikini”); immoral; moral (as in “a heart of flesh”); chaste; a female infant. Now maybe you agree or disagree with some of these descriptions of this color, and surely that’s your prerogative (thanks Bobby Brown), but this space is not the place for us to debate our opinions. I however, agree with the “flesh” description, and “chaste” and “female infant” significance, for when most people know they’re going to have a baby girl, pink seems to be the most popular color chosen for clothing and walls, and toys etc. When I see a woman in light powder pink, I think of someone who is calm, relaxed, quiet, observant, peaceful, nice. When I see a lady in hot pink I think of someone who is firey or spirited, exciting and excited, hot, on the move, a fighter. I try not to think of men in pink. :-)

Recently I saw a woman of color, my color as a matter of fact, on the RER and she was wearing not hot pink, and not powder pink, but a pink somewhere in between. Her hair was platinum blond and cropped short to her scalp and her makeup was so great. I found myself staring at her to see if she was real. I thought “I could do that.” LOL!! Anyhooo, I also wondered, “is her personality as pretty as she is in pink, or is she a devil on two feet?” You see, we can use all the tools of the trade at our fingertips to create a certain look (“You Got the Look” I know I do MJ! Thanks for reminding me.) that turns the heads of men, women, children, bullfrogs, cows, dogs, cats, and snails, but what about when we have to take it all off? What about when we’re not wearing pink? What about when we’re wearing other colors on the spectrum? Are we still pretty, or do we become someone/someTHING else? Are we still that chaste person, a human being with needs, desires, mistakes? Or do we become something inhuman that needs to be caged?

I’m not just talking about women here, but men too. We all must be careful about the “colors” folks are wearing when we meet them, for they may not be true representatives of the person inside. What do I mean by “colors” this time? Well in my last topic we used it to focus on race and ethnicity, but this time I’m referring to character and personality. See, I’m a visual (and visible, LOL!!) person. When I sing, listen to music, and hear other voices I see lines, images and colors. When I see people’s characters and personalities through their voices and words, I see colors. Most of us have heard phrases like “green with envy”, “black sheep of the family”, “green with jealousy”, “blue blood” (what does that mean?), “red hot mama”. Okay I think you get my drift. When I see and think of a rainbow I think of life and second chances, the sunshine after the rain, Noah’s Ark, and Dorothy and Toto trying to get back to Kansas. Too bad all those animals couldn’t just click their hooves and skip the flood. LOL!!

What kind of person am I when I’m wearing black or red, brown, electric blue, gold, green, white or pink? One thing I’ve learned through studying Psychology is that colors affect our moods, and thus sometimes it’s best to not wear certain colors when going for an important job interview, for instance. Not only do colors affect our moods, but they also speak volumes to those we meet, even saying things we’re not intending. Hmmmm. Many times we make assumptions about people based on the color(s) the person is wearing, until we hear them speak. Then our illusions are dashed. Or maybe confirmed. LoL!! All isn’t necessarily bleak though. (Dorothy and Toto do make it home safely in one piece.)

Psychology, the Bible and the Holy Spirit also helped me realize that humans are multi-dimensional beings: we are Spirit, soul and body and thus we may appear to have multiple personalities from time to time depending on the weather (SAD: Seasonal Attention Deficit, for example), hunger, lack of sleep, lack of exercise, etc. And I’ve learned that some people do have multiple personalities, and this is real life for them, not another Sybil movie. Our characters are shaped and our personalities created by and through our life’s experiences, whether our needs are being met or not, how long we’ve had to make do with what we’ve never had, just trying to survive life, and so on. Many people change with the seasons, others change with the days, while still others change by the hour, with the speed of a pendulum. Hang on if this is you, or if you have to often deal with people like this. Nevertheless, underneath all this drama and dust is the true person’s color, which sometimes comes up for air. Sometimes we may find ourselves talking about someone who just rubs everyone the wrong way, but in a footnote we will say that “He/she has a great heart, a big heart, he will give you the shirt off his back.” That’s who the real person is, the one the world would like to see more of and more often. (Not naked of course, but you know what I mean.) Remember the long ago television game show, “What’s My Line?” Each contestant would be asked something about themselves, a series of questions, and the one asking the questions had to decide which of the three hidden persons with whom he or she wanted to take a chance. “What’s my line”? is another way of asking “who am I really”? What is my true color?

One more real life phenomenon, if you will indulge me. Have you ever taken notice of the colors of the walls and logos of restaurants? Most of their colors are oranges, browns, and reds. Studies have proven that humans are affected subliminally by colors and these specific colors evoke the need and desire to eat. Could this be one of the reasons that fast-food customers eat more (the longer they sit inside the restaurant) and thus are usually larger than those who usually prepare their meals at home (or buy at the drive-thru)? Just a question, you can answer on your own time. This is not a test! :-) Also, has it ever happened to you that you can eat a large meal before going to the movies and still find room for popcorn? It’s not just because of the aroma, but also because of the colors in the lobby and theatre before the lights are turned down. About myself I’ve noticed that whenever I’m wearing white for instance, I desire yellow, red and brown colored foods, so I end up eating a hotdog or hamburger and French fries (not German or Italian or American Freedom fries. Just French.) to get the yellow mustard and red ketchup, and the chili and or beans. How do I know this about myself? Because it’s inevitable that I usually drip some mustard and ketchup on my white top, and it’s not easy to get it out. I have the stains to prove it. :-()

Pretty in Pink. Hmmm, most females are truly pretty in pink when they wear it well, but of course we cannot judge a personality by the person’s clothing and makeup. It could just be a mood swing, so it’s safer to wait for the statements that come from within before deciding how pretty she or he may or may not be. And by the way, I know men can wear pink – ties, shirts, sweaters, but I truly prefer a real man to leave pink for the ladies. That’s just my personality. ;-0

Peace.