Happy Anniversary Sweetheart

Happy 34^th Anniversary!

Happy Anniversary Sweetheart! Six great kids, eight wonderful grand-kids, thirty-four awesome years, and a bright eternity to continue the celebration! Now that's priceless! Love you, always and forever Natalie Jane!

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When I was 14 years old, my 8th grade locker partner and best friend died in a tragic drowning accident. For weeks I knelt at my bedside and prayed to understand why? Why would God allow this to happen to such an outstandingly, good, young man?

Immaturely, in my heartbreak and confusion and frustration I vowed to never have a best friend again! As I prayed repeatedly, I expected God to answer this request: "Show me, in my mind's eye, who my future wife will be." Childishly, I reasoned that if I was going to ever have a best friend again, it would only be my wife.

After weeks of tears and heartfelt petitioning, the answer came. With all the love and understanding of a benevolent and caring Father, the answer came. As clear and warm and gentle as any other spoken words could be, He said, "Calvin, I won't show you your wife to be just now, but I will promise you this, when you see her, you'll know that she's the one."

My pain and heartache subsided. There was a renewed confidence and assurance. I knew that God was truly in control of the universe, that I mattered, and that He loved me.

It was more than four years later, the first week in my senior year of high school, sitting in the back row of a mechanical drafting class. The events of those four years earlier were a distant and mostly-faded memory. There were only two girls in that class. As I was assessing their 'potential', I focused in on one. And then it happened. That old, but unforgettable voice spoke a second time.

Again gently and lovingly, He said, "Do you remember when I told you that when you saw her you'd know her?" Oh my!!! I'd almost forgotten it... almost, but not quite. "You're seeing her now."

There's much more to this Romeo and Juliet love story... but about two-and-a-half years later, 34 years ago today, June 27, 1981, we were married for time and eternity. Always and Forever! Calvin loves Natalie! Cinelli loves Jane! Happy, happy anniversary!!! You're amazing!  

— Celebrating our 34th anniversary. 7/27/2015

THE PROS AND CONS OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS

THE PROS AND CONS OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS

I had an “aha moment” the other day! It’s probably something that every other human being on the planet already understood... So, I’m just a little slower than most.

I’m still trying to get my brain fully around it, but as far as I can appreciate it at this point, it seems that almost all that’s good in life, and almost all that’s difficult in life is intrinsically and interdependently related to our relationships with each other. Relationships with our families, our neighbors and friends, work colleagues and church family – all of our interpersonal associations.

It may seem trite, but it’s true – it turns out that in life, relationships are everything!

And, like it or not, we need these relationships with each other. And equally important, we need both sides of these relationships – the good and the not so good. Tell me if this holds water…

Relationships are complicated. They can be the source of feelings of ecstasy – the “I’m on the top of the world and nothing can stop me!” and they can be the source of unbearable pain – the gall of bitterness and “I just wish it would all end.” In this life, most people have the privilege of experiencing thousands of stops along the infinite spectrum of emotions found on the vast highway of human relations. What a blessing the reality of this epic realization!

In relationships, the good comes with the bad. It’s a given – maybe even a universal law of nature. With all relationships there’s a wonderful intermingling of opposites, a magical blend of both joy and drama, love and pain, excitement and boredom, comfort and anger, inspiration and frustration. It’s both encouragement and discouragement, kindness and meanness, dreams and nightmares, compassion and cruelty, hope and despair. It’s a mixture of laughter and tears, compromises and disagreements, truths and untruths, heaven and hell, successes and failures. It’s a blend of sanity and craziness, grace and thoughtlessness, intimacy and conflict, triumph and tragedy, health and sickness. It’s both ups and downs, both sweet and sour – it’s the ease and the complication of a million times a million emotional aspects of fragile, unique human relationships. It’s life! It’s the fabric of what life is made of!

Achieving and maintaining good relationships takes real effort. It’s hard work. It requires continuous, meaningful attention from both parties. We need to work on them all the time. Because, when neglected, relationships suffer. They don’t improve or repair themselves. Relationships, left unnourished, like all things in mortality, fall under the unforgiving umbrella of the Second Law of Thermodynamics – ‘entropy’. They disintegrate, they decay, become disorganized. Some might even say, they rot!

The good news… there’s a ‘glass half full’ side of every characteristic and every relationship! The value and proportion of every emotion can not only be learned and enhanced, but also strengthened or minimized for the better. It’s a lifelong process of self-awareness; of self-improvement and being conscious of those around us and the impact of our words, choices and actions on them (and on ourselves). It’s a process of learning from our own mistakes and successes – as well as learning from the errors and accomplishments of others. It’s a process that requires patience and forgiveness, faith and temperance, and the tenacity to press ever onward, ever upward.

The beauty of it all is one of the grandest gifts that God has given to mankind. The ability, really the opportunity to create something of immeasurable value – something that transcends both time and space. The prospect of consequential improvement, of perpetual growth, toward an eventual brushing-up against the qualities of Godlike conduct.

Relationships can be both wonderfully rewarding and extremely challenging. But the heart of the matter is that God has given us the ability to make something of infinite worth and of eternal providence out of every aspect of every relationship. It is a significant part of the test of mortality – a part that will help  us hone our characters as we work on applying the admonition of the Savior, the Master of relationships, when He taught His followers from the Sermon on the Mount: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

May our relationships be treated with great importance, and may they prosper, producing fountains of perpetual joy!

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Wm. Calvin Hughes  |  Lake Elsinore, California  |  June 25, 2015

Happy Birthday Mom, Grandma Marks and Baby Kado!

Pain and the Glory of God

Pain and the Glory of God

Pain is not relative. It hurts. Hurting is not relative. It is not exclusive, it’s more of an ‘equal opportunity offender’. Neither age, nor beauty, nor nationality, race, heritage nor religion can deter its course. You can’t get out of its path. Everybody gets some. And one person’s capacity or experience for pain has absolutely no relation to someone else’s. They are absolutely incomparable. And there is no amount of money in the world, no amount of privilege that can make you exempt. When it chooses you, you’re suddenly thrust into a club that you didn’t ask to join. You’re shipped off to a violent and brutal war, even though you never enlisted. But you look resolutely into the face of this raging storm, you grit your teeth, and you fearlessly exclaim, “Do your best!” You pick yourself up, put on your armor, and know that if you’re lucky, you’ll discover new and amazing sides of yourself – like a will you never knew you had, and strength and fortitude that somehow had been elusive and hibernating in unchartered territory. And there’s an upside! You’ll have a unique opportunity to experience God’s goodness, to see first-hand His Glory in action, and feel His limitless love for you as an individual and His concern for your one-of-a-kind circumstance. There’s even more upside. You’ll get to see new and beautiful sides of both strangers and the people who matter the most to you in the world. They’ll wrap you in their love and lend you their strength when yours is depleting or fleeting. And then, at some point, you accept your fate and you’ll fight – you fight with everything you have – your last dollar, your last ounce of strength, your last drop of will-power, your last breath! Because, really, what other choice do you have? What other choice is there? But even in tragic pain, in imperceptible hurt, there is a silver lining – it’s the miracle of life! As dark and cold and lonely the long night is, the sun will still come up in the morning. There’s got to be a morning after. Hang in there and cling to that wellspring of hope in a better tomorrow. And regardless of all the naysayers, tomorrow will come! It always does! See you in the morning my friend! It will be a very, very good, sun shiny day!

Wm. Calvin Hughes | Lake Elsinore, California | June 11, 2015