When you sleep with your arm purposefully resting along your side so your cat won’t damage your kidneys when he leaps on your exposed waist at 5:07 a.m., you do have to wonder, “What is the message?” when he does just that.<\/p>\n
I was dreaming of a man talking about a thief. Judging him for what he’d done.<\/p>\n
POUNCE!<\/p>\n
Shocked awake.<\/p>\n
Instead of strangling the cat, I pray.<\/p>\n
What is the message?<\/p>\n
I am immediately reminded, because of the dream, of an incident that happened to me recently when I went away to see a friend get married and lead the Inspiring Workshop, Cultivate Your Courage, in Vancouver.<\/p>\n
When I returned home from the trip I noticed that a traditional Native-looking beaded bracelet was missing from my bathroom. I waited a few days, not really thinking it could be stolen, and then looked in all the places I may have put it for safekeeping.<\/p>\n
Not there.<\/p>\n
I called the house-sitter who had been staying here and asked her if she’d seen it. She said she would ask her granddaughters.<\/p>\n
I had met one of her granddaughters when the lady arrived to look after the apartment. A small child of five, the young girl had played with the cat while I hurriedly did a last minute check before heading for the airport.<\/p>\n
Sure enough, the house-sitter called back and said her granddaughter had the bracelet and could she come over to apologize?<\/p>\n
Poor thing, I thought. How sad. How sweet.<\/p>\n
I imagined her coming into my apartment, crying, and I would sit her down and say, “I used to steal things, too. It’s okay. You told the truth. That is all that matters.”<\/p>\n
When the knock on the door came and I readied myself to teach the crying little girl a profound life lesson, I was surprised to see a 16-year old Native-looking girl as tall as I am standing before me.<\/p>\n
“Sorry,” she said and handed me the bracelet. She wasn’t crying. Her mother looked more sheepish than she did.<\/p>\n
A teenager! Boy, I could really teach her a lesson! I could give her a lecture she wouldn’t soon forget. I could tell her about all the things I stole and how I’ve had to make amends. I could tell her that despite the fact that she wasn’t truly remorseful she one day would be.<\/p>\n
“It takes a lot of courage to do what you just did and I appreciate that,” I said.<\/p>\n
Her mother and I exchanged a smile.<\/p>\n
When your cat leaps on you at 5 a.m., what is the message?<\/p>\n
Take advantage of it. Blog for change.<\/p>\n
Inspiring Message of the Day: It is better to thank someone for what they did do rather than chastise them for what they didn’t .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When you sleep with your arm purposefully resting along your side so your cat won’t damage your kidneys when he leaps on your exposed waist at 5:07 a.m., you do have to wonder, “What is the message?” when he does just that. I was dreaming of a man talking about a thief. Judging him for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forgiveness","category-inspiration","category-motivation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}