Behind Great Minds©

 

Behind Great Minds©

A Limerick A Day to Keep You On Your Way©

There once were two talkative minds,

Telling stories of double kinds.

Truth or dare,

Still must bare,

Words from lips or words from behinds.

 

“You are talking out of your behind.”

I hate those words. I hate them when spoken by someone who doesn’t know my heart.  I love those words.  I love them when the person who speaks them does know my heart.  It is like two stories with different outcomes. 

As the middle child of seven kids, three older sisters and three younger brothers I was caught between doing all the girly things and trying to fit in with the boy things.  It’s not so bad until your brothers realize you are a girl and they don’t want you being part of their toys and games.  Your sisters are okay with you playing with the brothers but they can’t figure out why you want to play with the boys more than them.  

Most of my life up to my early twenties was centered around on trying to fit into the male model.  My father supported my desire to go to college to become a toolmaker even though it was definitely considered a male occupation back then in the  eighties.   I think it was mostly because my plan was to get into the best company in my local community that also was recognized worldwide.  We were raised with the mindset that a good job is all you need. You stay there until you retire and that makes a complete life.  I didn’t realize that was “talking out of your behind” talk.  My father didn’t realize it either.  That talk cost him his own dead end job. I can look behind now and understand  how depressed he was.  This affected my mother and siblings in ways we never understood until much later in life.

I am thankful my father did not talk me out of my truth to dare to break the traditional all-male toolroom. It was indeed a great company and when I was hired I surely believed my struggle to get here was behind me.  For a time it satisfied my need to be in a boy’s world.  I will always be grateful for the skills I learned but… some of those boys didn’t want me in their games either.  I endured many more experiences of “you are talking out of your behind.”  (Stories of that will be in the book I am writing.)

If I had stayed in that toxic work environment until retirement I believe my life would have become bitter and resentful.  I needed to dare to tell a story of truth.  It was time to leave, to leave the job that paid very well with the “promise” of retirement.  I had been daring to for years. I hesitated once when I could have left with the company paying for employees to leave.  I talked myself out of it because I was listening to the voice of my behind.  It was telling me I was not worthy of a better life, I would let my family down, I would never make the same money elsewhere, my dad would be disappointed and on and on the lies screamed. It cost me 9 more years of living a behind life.

This reminds me of a story found in Genesis 19. A man named Lot had a wife and two daughters who were pledged to be married. They lived in a city called Sodom. It was a wicked city, part of the five cities of The Plains. The cities were to be destroyed because of their wicked sins of perversion. The stench of the peoples’ sin had reached heaven and God said enough. HE was about to destroy all the cities by fire and flaming sulfur. The people had told themselves a story, God was not watching the way they lived.  They were engaging in sodomy.   Only Lot, his wife and two daughters who lived in Sodom were to be spared. The Lord sent angels to warn them with instructions to flee quickly and not look behind. As they fled, Lot’s wife disobeyed.  She looked behind for a moment at the city and the story says she turned into a pillar of salt. What story did she tell herself?  What was she afraid to leave behind? That one glance of hesitation cost her. It cost her, her life. How thankful for the grace we live in today that our momentary hesitations may not physically kill us but they may kill opportunities to truly live.

Words are powerful tools to keep our behinds, the ones we sit on and the ones we speak to move past our behind and move forward to living out our stories.

Pray this prayer with me.

Dear Jesus,

Thank You for loving kindness.  Today I put behind me anything that has kept me from moving forward.  Help me forgive anyone who spoke evil intent over my life knowing or unknowing the power of their words.  Forgive me for doing the same. Let my life story speak only truth from this day forward.  In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.

 Philippians 3:13-14

13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

 

 

Written by Paula Ann Kochanek

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