Tag: need

The Need to Be Needed!

Jennifred Jones

Some may think it’s selfish to feel needed.

I believe it’s part of our drive for purpose. We want to know something we did mattered in someone else’s life…that we were noticed. (I also realize it can become backwards and cause people problems, dependencies etc. etc. etc.)

But! What I’m getting at is this need to make something of value to someone else. It’s like a gift that no one else could or did make and they are happy to receive it. They like it and they like you for giving it to them. That makes us happy. That’s how it’s supposed to be.

People need what we can provide for them in a good honest way!

I want to raise this idea up a notch. In our relation to God, it’s different. He made us, but he doesn’t need us. He wants us. He doesn’t need anything of ours. It’s all his anyway. But we’re his kids and like any earthly father, he wants us. That’s a big difference between the need and the want. The want comes from choice. The need comes from a necessity.

We not only need to be needed, but we want to be wanted.

God wants us. Let’s want him back.

It’s Not My Responsibility

Jennifred Jones

The stretch of highway between home and work is 5 miles of treacherous roadway. ..curves with steep embankments, abrupt drop-offs just inches away from the white line, caved in culverts under the roadway making unsafe, uneven road conditions. Top this with a little ice and snow and one of the many accidents/fatalities is ready to occur, and many have. This road intersects with another state road at a yellow flasher.

Well that all sounds terrible, why doesn’t somebody do something about it???

I am that somebody.  You are that somebody.

One of the yellow flasher lights was out for months, I was sure it would be fixed as other highway trucks were driving through when I’d go by. Finally I emailed the highway department a thoughtful note that perhaps they didn’t realize the bulb was out. Within 3 days it was fixed and I had a nice response back from them.

Several years back there was a lingering pothole, at a corner in town, growing larger every day during the winter and it would damage your car if you fell into it. I emailed thethe street department and that very day they sent someone to fill it. I thanked them for it.

There are many things that seem to slip through the cracks unnoticed that could be changed for the better if someone would speak up. I’m not referring to complaining about any little thing I disagree with, but for normal everyday things we can begin to show our care for others by speaking up to obtain the help needed.

This is my community and I want to help improve it. I wrote in a previous blog about just picking up the trash around your neighborhood and workplace for a real morale booster.

I believe we allow ourselves to be overcome in our thoughts to do good by thoughts of, ‘mind your own business’, ‘it’s not your concern’, ‘it’s not my responsibility’, ‘somebody else will do something, ‘they’ll think I’m sticking my nose in someone else’s affairs’. So we shrink back.

Yet we love reading stories about others who stepped up and caused a miracle, preventing someone else heartache, merely because they spoke up to a need they noticed.

Let’s silence those voices and begin to change the areas in our surrounds by contacting the necessary authorities in a respectful manner. Let’s not shrug off what we can do something about and then complain because no one has done anything.

I am contacting my highway department about my road today.

I will get back with you…

How about your hometown?