When I was in college, I spent a couple of summers up in the San Juan Islands in the Puget Sound northwest of Seattle, Washington. During one of those summers, I was talked into taking a water bike out into the waters to catch salmon.  The resort I worked at was running a contest that rewarded the first one to catch a salmon a dollar a pound.  So out I went one afternoon, on a very high profile water bike, fishing rod, bait and enthusiasm all ready.  I positioned myself off a point of land where I was most likely to be successful and started fishing.

Picture in your mind a happy little puppy, so excited and eager for a walk with its master.  Jumping, leaping and excited to explore their world, but after a few blocks the little guy gets tired and begins to whine.  He lies down or jumps up to be carried.  The owner has two options:  carry the puppy or drag him along.

Leaders often face the same situation!  The folks who began with great enthusiasm grow weary along the way and now leaders are faced with stragglers, whiners or sometimes drop outs.  How can a leader re-focus tired and weary workers?

I want to tell you the story of my encounters with grief and what I have learned over the past year. I hope it helps any of you in a similar situation.

My mother died at 42 after a long battle with ovarian cancer. I was 13, my sister was 15. My brother was married and expecting their first child. Each of us bore our grief differently.

For most people 2008 has not been an easy year.  The global weakened economy produced financial pressures on almost every one.  Many faced the fear of job cuts and some actually lost their jobs.  Increased food, gasoline and heating prices also added stress to most families.

REAL Women - Issue 6 - Volume 11

Articles:   

Remember: He is Able
Leadership Encouragement: A Puppy Parable
Building Together Across Generations: Dealing With Grief, by Malana Ganz

Just sharing (in words or deeds) with someone in and around your life that they have added value to yours can bring great encouragement to them.  I call this "The Art of Honoring", which gives proper respect to others for who they are and what they do.  Honor results in treating others with proper dignity.  1 Peter 2:17 says we are to honor all people. And this would be especially true of the household of faith, but not exclusively.  It is my observation, however, that honor is a lost art in many of our lives.  Oh, we all want honor on some level or other, but how well do we give it to those around us.   Three observations reveal we need to learn how to honor.

Over a period of time our experiences can begin to shape our expectations and even our doctrines if we are not careful, rather than continuing to let the Word of God and the Spirit shape us and our expectations.  If we leave off of letting the Word shape us, we begin to shape our life view through rational reasoning.  And it is amazing how easily this can happen. For instance, how does our outlook on how healing get shaped? 

The Holy Spirit was present in the days of creation giving form and shape to the declaration of the Word of God. The first two verses of the Bible (Genesis 1:1-2) reveal what the Holy Spirit was doing just before God said in verse 3, "Let there be light" which resulted in "and there was light."  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

My dad was a fisheries biologist, with a devotion to life science.  As my sister and I grew up we were included in several studies, collections and hobbies of animals and plants.  Usually there was a shelf life to each new pursuit, but not until some pretty in depth projects were completed.  The studies and collections (all taking place in Northern California and Washington) included the pressing and mounting of wild flowers, a vast insect and butterfly collection, reptiles and and native and tropical fish, the banding of birds, the eating of strange and exotic sea life, and the study of pond life and ocean shore life.  Somehow spiders and algae didn't make it on the list, but pretty much everything else did. 

What makes a good food dish a special food dish?  A little somethin'.  The basics are always necessary to cook a good dish, but it is always the "little somethin' " that puts it over the top.  Every great cook knows this.  The secret ingredient, the special order of preparation, the careful attention to amounts of spices or merging of flavors - often these are the "little somethins" that make for an extra special dinning experience.  These are the things that in themselves seem insignificant, but when they are added to the process of cooking, transform the dish without calling attention to themselves.