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    The Bodacious Blessings of Balance: The Change-Your-Life Experience
    The Bodacious Blessings of Balance: The Change-Your-Life Experience
    The Bodacious Blessings of Balance: The Change-Your-Life Experience
    Ebook88 pages1 hour

    The Bodacious Blessings of Balance: The Change-Your-Life Experience

    By Hardie Meade

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    About this ebook

    This is an easy read with some humor, but is mostly autobiographical in content. It explores the role balance plays in everyday life and how important it is to God.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWestBow Press
    Release dateApr 9, 2013
    ISBN9781449790431
    The Bodacious Blessings of Balance: The Change-Your-Life Experience
    Author

    Hardie Meade

    Hardie Meade wrote this book at the urging of his spirit and probably because he needed to learn about balance. He didn't have any. This is largely autobiographical, telling about what was going on, what happened, and what it's like for him now. He changed a lot through the years, going through three serious back operations, two bankruptcies, one heart attack, and a retirement-killing Ponzi scheme that left him totally broke late in life. The book is written in an informal, conversational style for people who discover that their life is out of balance. A fun read but full of ideas that might be helpful too. Hardie is very provincial, having lived all his life in Birmingham, Alabama. Since he was born in 1940, that seems like an awful lot of southern-fried living!

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      Book preview

      The Bodacious Blessings of Balance - Hardie Meade

      Chapter One

      A Few Boundaries

      BODACIOUS IS MAYBE OUTRAGEOUSLY BIG, strong, outstanding, or any superlative you might like. I like to think of blessing as God’s special favor, mercy or benefit, promoting or contributing to happiness and well being. Let’s consider that balance is a state of equilibrium, and/or the equal distribution of weight, amount, and pressure.

      My life has been terrific so far - great grandparents, all living until I finished college, and super parents, great wife, two children, one girl and one boy, five grandsons, plus some loyal friends. Being born in 1940, I have seen all the normal seasons of life, from early childhood to let’s say maturity. It’s been a terrific journey. However, it would have been a lot calmer if I had been well balanced. Extremes are the norm for me. I frequently use the expression take it to Arizona in describing incidents where I get way out in left field. (Since I live in Alabama, Arizona is a long way off.) Life seems to move from one crisis to another. What a soap opera! A calm collected day is not my modus operandi. When a serious problem arises, I can turn it into a full blown disaster.

      A couple of years ago, I had a bad fall down some basement steps while I was showing a new house. Most people would simply say to take me to the emergency room. Oh, no! Being too macho and stubborn, I asked for help in getting into my car and drove myself home with a broken right foot and ankle. This happened on a Sunday afternoon and I wanted to wait and see my doctor the next morning. It caused tremendous pain to me and lingering hardship to my family because the delay in getting medical attention ended up causing me to be in a wheel chair for weeks.

      Most of us have been in situations where it was hard to stay balanced, especially when family or friends are involved. That’s where I get seriously whacky. For instance, in my thirties and forties, I made commercials, etc. and took lessons to learn ways to express emotion. The teacher knew how crazy I am about my kids so he told me to react to the imaginary news that my daughter had been injured by a hit-and-run driver and was in the hospital. My mind went to the worst possible thing and tears popped out of my eyes. The mental picture of my daughter lying in a hospital bed covered in bandages and crying in pain gripped my heart in a vise of fear and sorrow. I’m emotional on a good day, so involving my family and friends really gets to me.

      You probably have things that push you over the edge occasionally, like me. Try doing whatever you can to stop and refocus on something else, even if only for a minute or two, until you can cool down a bit. There are usually two sides to a situation and it may take time to get some perspective.

      Now that we have some loose boundaries, think about all the applications balance has in your life. First, God has arranged for this globe we live on to keep turning in the most miraculous way. You must admit, God has really done an amazing job where this world is concerned.We set off bombs, move mountains, endure earthquakes, dam up rivers, and all sorts of traumatic things and this globe keeps its cool. It keeps turning in an orderly way giving us security and dependability we can count on. The tides have a lot to do with the balancing mechanism but I don’t have a clue how all that works. It does and that’s enough for me.

      There are also many amazing things regarding balance that people have known about for a very long time. We may have discovered a lot in the last few decades, but wise men have been around for centuries. Consider, for instance, Moses, David and especially Solomon, long believed to be the wisest man of his or any other time. Before them was God, whose depth of wisdom and knowledge are beyond comprehension. Again, I point out that in I Peter 5:8, the Apostle Peter says Be well balanced, be vigilant and cautious at all times, for that enemy of yours, the devil, roams around like a lion, roaring in fierce hunger, seeking someone to seize upon and devour. This verse of scripture is the basis for this whole odyssey.

      Scripture says clearly that God hates a false balance. It is so hard to consistently do the right thing when things are unbalanced in your life. The trouble comes when the highs are too high and the lows are too low. It’s never as good or as bad as it seems when emotions and feelings and agendas and you name it start creeping in and influencing the situation. As a real estate broker, bad offers on property should be expected but I have never become accustomed to them and usually let them depress me. Many times, the offers work out later. It’s hard for me to keep that in mind and go forward anyway.

      It all started for me at a very young age. I was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1940, so the Second World War played a big part in my young life. My dad was drafted when I was about two years old, leaving my mother, my sister, and me in our new house he had just built for us. The trouble was that we didn’t have the money to pay the utilities and buy the groceries. The solution was simple, easy, and convenient. My mother’s parents lived close by and had a big house with only two people living in it. We moved in with them. They loved having us and my sister and I loved living in that big ole house. We went to a Presbyterian Church as a family. My grandparents were very close to the preacher and his wife so they were around frequently. My first impression of this preacher was he talked like God must talk. His presence made me feel safe in a childlike way. Later on in the war, my aunt and her baby also moved in, diverting our attention away from the war somewhat.

      When my dad came home for a weekend furlough, I was in heaven. I always thought he was home to stay. Then he’d leave on Sunday to go back. It only happened a couple of times but I remember it like it was yesterday. I cried and held on to him as tight as I could to no avail. He left crying and everybody else cried, too.

      Nights were tense as the adults all listened to the radio after dinner to get the war news. My sister and I had

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