Holidays often trigger old losses and the memories of loved ones, time spent or regrets.

Holidays can also come with unexpected losses. This holiday season held both. It was a remembrance of the death of my son three years ago and the wonderful memories we shared as a family about him. It also brought the loss of a beloved sister. Yesterday we shared memories of her as we celebrated her life in memorial at her gravesite.

Others too share unexpected griefs during this holiday season. Share stories of your loved one with others. There is healing and a lifting of spirit in that sharing and comfort as all laugh and cry together.

God in His great love graciously gives us people in our lives to help on our journeys of healing. And He stands ready to bring comfort to our hearts and peace as we rest our sorrow in Him.

May the peace of God be with you in your laughter and tears of this wonderful season of Christmas.

Marlene Anderson

As a therapist, I help individuals confront their past, challenge irrational thinking patterns and replace negative beliefs with possibilities. In the process, they are able to let go of the pain, heal and take personal charge of their life.

Therapy is a tiny microcosm of freedom. When we feel there are no options, we strike out, hang on to resentments and anger and blame others for our problems. Remaining in that mindset, however, takes away our personal power.

It is so easy to buy into the idea that we are entitled to a happy life and that somehow others are responsible for that. But when we buy into that belief system, we relinquish our freedom. We are no longer In charge of our lives – someone else is.

I wanted to share with my readers a review of a new book entitled, Shadow Remnant, written by Michael Duncan. It is a captivating and riveting novel that takes us a hundred years into the future.  To purchase a copy of Shadow Remnant go to – http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Remnant-ebook/dp/B009XUQOOY.

Imagine a future where we have survived a third world war. In the process, our country not only bears the scars of war, but our governing body is no longer the same. The government we knew built on the principles of freedom and individual rights has now been replaced with a single head of state and government rule that dictates what we are allowed to believe, what we can and cannot do, what we are allowed to read and learn.

Churches have been destroyed and religions replaced by a secular government who now takes care of you. Any rebellion against this new ideology is squashed with re-training and indoctrination programs. All communication sources are governed by one source and we only receive the information our government wants us to have.

Shadow Remnant 

Shadow Remnant tells the tale of a boy who escaped from a re-training and indoctrination school, is hunted down by government police, is shot and presumed dead. But a member of the Shadow Remnant, living in the wild rescues him and nurses him back to health.

During those days he hears about God and love and grace for the first time. He hears accounts of what his country was like a hundred years before. When he goes back to retrieve a bible he had found while on the run, he is captured and sent to a prison island for insurgents who are forced to survive any way they can.

It is here he meets his father who he thought was dead. His dad had at one time been a member of the new government. But when he found and read some of the old documents of our founding fathers, he no longer could live the lies now imposed by this new government rule. He became part of a shadow remnant of people. He was hunted down and condemned for life on this island. His wife was killed and his son sent to state schools.

This is a fast paced book that holds your attention from beginning to end as we follow this young man, Peter, from capture to escape from the island to find other members of the shadow remnant. He makes it his mission to share with the rest of the nation what was lost – liberty and democracy and freedom.

The story weaves through many perilous journeys. But God is with him and in spite of enormous dangers; he is able to find his way to other members who guide him on his mission.

Scary? Preposterous? Perhaps. Yet many people have succumbed to the lure of giving up their responsibility by placing their freedom in the hands of someone else. When you read historical accounts of countries under dictatorship or socialistic rule, it is not only plausible but possible.

Have we become spoiled with our freedom believing that it could never happen here?

Life can be brutal and tough. But when we reach out and help one another, we can find the courage, strength and perseverance to not only survive tough times, but make our dreams come true. Shadow Remnant gives us a glimpse of what it might be like when we no longer have the freedom to work hard and be in charge of our own lives and destiny.

Marlene Anderson

Curled up in my comfortable chair warm and cozy against the blowing wind and pounding rain outside, I finished another book about our country’s history and the early settlers that came to this country many years ago. They started with nothing but worked long hours in difficult and dangerous environments in order to be free. It was not an easy life. But they knew what it was like to live under suffocating rules and taxes and they thrived in the ability to work hard, be independent and free.

There is a tendency to romanticize the stories and accounts we have of historical times. But when we remove the rose colored glasses and look at the raw data, we see within these stories real people who lived and fought and died for their beliefs.

Freedom is never cheap or easy. It requires sacrifice, hard work and hard choices.

I am a history buff. We can learn from history. Yet I see the same patterns repeated over and over again. Men thirst for power and once they have drunk from its well, they are ready to do anything to maintain it. So, it is even more amazing that when we won our independence so many years ago, the men who designed our constitution laid aside personal power and gain and came before God with a desire to create a republic that was not governed by a king or dictator – but by the people themselves.

Today people in other countries are rioting in the streets, once again willing to sacrifice everything to be free.

What would you do to be free? What would you sacrifice? And what is freedom anyway?

Freedom means we have the opportunity to make goals and work hard to accomplish them. It is taking a dream – an idea – and developing it into something productive and useful.  We can fail and pick ourselves up and try again and again.  It is living a life without unreasonable restrictions and without the fear of someone taking what we have earned away from us. It allows within the fair justice of law the ability to exercise free will and self-determination. It enables us to govern our lives without fear of domination or imprisonment. It is earned and maintained.

What does freedom mean to you?

When life throws us one disappointment, loss and struggle after another it is easy to get discouraged and give up. But when I am the most tired, I ask myself, would I give up the struggle to make life work in order to get something I have not earned?

The answer is no. Because when I buy into the idea that I am owed something, I lose my freedom. I have now become dependent on someone else. I have lost my personal power. I have been made a slave.  And I love freedom.

Marlene Anderson

A friend struggles with weariness and exhaustion, driving miles every day to be an advocate for a sick spouse. Another struggles with crisis after crisis that seems to wash over them like pounding waves. Yet another struggles to survive against the onslaught of rejection after rejection for potential jobs. Goals have been set aside. It is all they can do to keep plodding forward and survive the chaotic world around them. There is little time to pray and little time to relax.

From the first hours of dawn to falling into bed too exhausted to think, people struggle with tough times. How will we make it? Will we survive? What can I do that might make a difference? How do I resolve these problems?

When life has turned into chaos, we can find ourselves drowning in whirlpools that suck us down into despair and exhaustion. Problems become larger than life and every effort we make to deal with them seems to do no good. We wrestle with options and solutions seem to elude us. Yet when we try to escape the clutches of worry and fear, we are simply sucked deeper into it.

Perhaps you are going through your own tough times that seem to overwhelm you. I know there have been many such times in my own life. But when I read the comforting words of God, I discover peace in the midst of my wrestling, wisdom that makes sense of challenges and strength to endure when exhausted. In the tenants of His Word I have found solace and rest that goes beyond anything I or anyone else could create.

When you have done all you can do, then let go and rest in Him.

Marlene Anderson

Life can teach us many important things if we learn to observe what goes on around us.   

What is the outcome from bad choices?  What happens when greed or anger are played out on the stage of life? 

In the past two years I have had the privilege to be involved with a local community theater. The theater encapsulates tiny portions of life and hands it to us in the form of entertainment. When we look beyond the drama of the stage for that defining moment of understanding ourselves better, our lives can be enriched. 

The Christmas Carol is such an opportunity. As a participant in this production which opened this last weekend at a local performing arts center, I am able to get involved with the story.  

In this traditional Christmas story, we can learn many lessons of life that we can apply to our own lives. One of the most important is that we are not a victim to our past.  

As the story unfolds, we see played out on the stage the results of choices made by a lonely, unhappy, rejected and forgotten young lad that crystallize him into a heartless, stingy, greedy, and loveless old man. Scrooge made goals that left no room for love, marriage, fun, compassion or joy. His choices left him lonely and friendless.

Life can be heartless and hard. But Dickens reminds us it is how we react to hard times that is important.

The Christmas Carol is a story of redemption. The ghosts of Christmas past and Christmas present come to give Scrooge an opportunity to see how his choices have hurt him and others. The ghost of Christmas future gives him a chance to recognize, repent and redeem himself.   

Throughout life we will be confronted with difficult choices. And we will make many mistakes. It is part of the human condition. But we can learn from them. It takes courage to acknowledge, admit, and change directions.  

There are many opportunities for reflection

Many choices become a habit – a way we have chosen to live our lives. When things continue to go wrong, we have an opportunity to stop and reflect on those choices.   

How often do you find yourself blaming others for your problems? What grievances do you perpetuate and inflate that keep you stuck in a past filled with resentment? 

Choices that promote forgiveness, grace, understanding, compassion, and love may be hard to make at times, but they are the ones that open the door to happiness, contentment, opportunity and exciting new opportunities .

Marlene Anderson

Every year we have the opportunity to stop for a moment and count our blessings. Unfortunately with Black Friday and now even Black Thursday, Thanksgiving has become more a symbol for early shopping than it is for giving thanks.

Humility and gratefulness shows strength of character – not weakness.   It is disturbing to think we may have forgotten how to be grateful for all the things we already have.

Thanksgiving isn’t just a time for turkey and stuffing. Giving thanks is an important value humans need. It isn’t some corny, left over virtue from the past that we don’t need any more.

Gratefulness and humility is important to our health: mental, spiritual and physical. It motivates us when the world looks black. It energizes us to pick ourselves up and begin yet again. It gives us hope when our future looks hopeless.

The more we practice it throughout the year, the more we benefit from it.

Here are some of the things I continue to be grateful for:

• The freedom to develop my talents and use them in service to others as well as myself

• The opportunities to express myself in positive and helpful ways

• The ability to choose how I will respond to whatever life throws at me

• The freedom to worship a God who is gracious and forgiving and gives me wisdom and strength

• The capability to reach out, encourage and help another in their struggles

• That I still live in a free nation, where I have the opportunity to work and choose positive principles and values

Blessings to each and every one of you this Thanksgiving. May the bowing of your head in prayer and thanksgiving give you the greatest blessing of all.

Marlene Anderson

Finding the humor in any situation was one of my husband’s many abillities that often went overlooked and taken for granted because of his other talents and accomplishments. I had the best in the world to learn this skill and apply it to my own life. 

Let me give you a personal example.

Years ago our family was getting ready to go on a camping vacation. The tent was packed, the car serviced and I was busy washing the clothes we needed to take with us.

Our washing machine had a water pressure problem that we were unable to correct. So my husband had cut a short hose I could attach to the adjoining laundry sink faucet to use to fill the washing machine.  The only problem was you had to stay nearby to shut the faucet off when the washing machine was full. Two times in the past my attention had been diverted with potential disastrous results. So I was very selective when using the hose.

With a limited amount of time to get everything done, I decided I needed to use the “hose” and I was close by in the kitchen packing food. We were leaving early in the morning. 

Everything went smoothly for the first two loads. Then it happened. The phone rang and I needed to go to our home office to answer questions about our band business. Because I thought it would only take a few minutes, I didn’t shut the water off before leaving. When I hung up the phone, I realized I was gone longer than I thought. I rushed to the kitchen. 

But it was too late. The water had been spilling over onto the floor long enough to flood both the laundry room and part of the adjoining kitchen. We had kitchen carpets in both areas and not only were the carpets saturated but there was standing water. The water had even reached my sewing area and material stored in boxes on the floor were saturated.

I quickly shut off the water and stood there feeling frustrated, stressed and angry. My automatic thoughts went something like this: How could this happen. I wasn’t gone that long. Why did I use that stupid hose? Why hadn’t my husband found a solution to the low water pressure instead of giving me a stupid hose to use?

My anger escalated in seconds from my use of the hose to anger at my husband. It was now all his fault. It is so easy to fall into the blame game trap.

At that moment, my husband opened the door and saw the water and knew immediately what had happened. There was just the hint of a smile along with empathy on his face for he could see both the frustration and humor in the situation.

I remember vividly in that instant being presented with two options. I could continue to be angry and dump this anger onto my husband, or I could choose to see the humor in the situation as he did.

The urge to remain angry was powerful. But I knew that if I remained angry it would not only spoil the rest of my day but impact our vacation as well, I decided I needed to choose to see the humor.

In that split second of choice, my anger instantly melted away and I found myself laughing.

As I thought about this incident later, I realized that we can choose what we do with our first responses. I could either clean up this mess with angry resentment or do it with a positive attitude and humor. 

Humor made it so much easier. Humor energized me that if I had hung onto my anger would not have. It was a powerful learning experience that I continue to use to this day. 

Even when our first response to an incident is anger or frustration or helplessness, we do not have to stay in that place.

When we change a negative response to a positive one, we are able to resolve any problem.

Marlene Anderson