In The Meantime - Finding Unconditional Love - Iyanla Vanzant

This fabulous book that I have reviewed here in the paragraphs below is most definitely one that you must read.

Have you recently ended a relationship or marriage? Are you sad and lonely? Are you full of anger at yourself and others? Are you frustrated and horny? Are you sick of being alone and single? Are you in a relationship that is not what you hoped it would be? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are most likely at the beginning of a meantime experience. Finding the love you want is easier than you think if you are prepared to look deep inside your self.

In the Meantime is an extremely personal, internal journey of emotional house cleaning. It is about getting rid of the trash inside your mind and heart. “I can’t live without you baby.” is rubbish, “Something must be wrong with me.” is absolute trash. “Something must be wrong with you.” is the outgrowth of clutter in the mind. We make excuses. We keep hiding. We refuse to check in, to identify or discover the truth about what we feel and what we are doing in response. The next thing we know is the rug gets ripped away and our heart is bleeding and love, or what we thought was love, has blown up in our face-again. We want to move on, but we’re angry, we want to be brave but we’re hurt. Somewhere in back of our mind the voice of love is whispering, “Get a mop and broom so we can clean up this mess." Let’s begin by telling ourselves and everyone involved here the truth. Everyone finds out what love is NOT, on their way to finding out what love IS. (Iyanla Vanzant, In The Meantime, 1998)

Where do you live in the house of love? Are you a basement dweller; blaming everyone else for your failed relationships? Vanzant uses cleaning house, and the different levels as a metaphor and guides the reader towards finding the love they want. Ms Vanzant explains this journey in plain, easy to understand language. You will travel from the basement to the first floor onto the second floor and then the third floor, this process is complete when you reach the attic. The attic is where we all want to live. The attic is where true, unconditional love for our self and others reigns supreme. In the first part of the book, you will learn which floor you are currently living on. If you are living in the basement, you will not know which floor you live on. A willingness to learn and grow is all you need to advance from the basement to the first floor.

The problem with human beings and relationships is that we keep trying to get an A+ in the relationship stakes. All we need to do is pass, it’s as simple as that. Perfection will not necessarily make one happy and perfection does not exist, especially when it comes to humans and relationships (Vanzant, 1998). You will learn from reading this book to forgive yourself and others. Forgive yourself for ever thinking you did anything wrong. You will learn to discard all of these negative emotions, and apply love to every situation. If you and your partner start to argue and you are both beginning to feel angry and hurt, this book will teach you to stop, ask your partner for a timeout and go somewhere quiet. When you are calm, ask yourself: What would love do here? I know this seems as though it is easier said than done, however it is possible to apply love to any given situation in your relationship and this book will teach you how to do it. Ms Vanzant explains what needs to be done on each floor to achieve the ultimate love that we all want; unconditional love.

You do not need to be a deeply religious or spiritual person to benefit from reading this book. Ms Vanzant talks about God and praying and asking for His help, however this is not a book that preaches religion. We all have our own beliefs and Ms Vanzant’s book recognizes and respects this. I have read this book many times for the simple reason that Ms Vanzant’s words were of great comfort to me and motivated me to be a better person. This book changed my entire outlook on life and love, and I can honestly say that many who read it will feel the same way. Whenever I have had a row with my partner or I am feeling down, I pick up this book; it never fails to make me feel better and gain a more positive outlook on life and love and most of all Ms Vanzant’s writing reminds me to love myself and others unconditionally. This extremely influential read is worth immersing yourself in simply for the excellent writing. There is not one part of this book that will bore you.

If you are into spiritual healing and self-help literature, then I highly recommend this book.




In the Meantime - Finding the Love you Want by Iyanla Vanzant can be found at all good bookstores and online at Amazon.




Copyright ©2010 Janelle Coulton

YES! You can win back your true love, even if you feel hopeless, even if your lover is resistant, even if you have been apart for a long time! You cannot afford to miss seeing this website: A secret breakthrough formula has just been released and is literally taking the world by storm. Lovers everywhere are getting back together and it’s all down to this simple, step-by-step program called ‘Win Back Love’.

THE RIDE OF HIS LIFE

A Short Story by Janelle Coulton:  Written on 05 November 2001

It was a chilly, crisp morning at the racetrack.  The sun was just beginning to come up over the mountains in the distance as Dad and I led one of our thoroughbreds out of the stables and out towards the training track.  We were waiting to start track work with one our thoroughbreds; Paragon Prince, but unfortunately, once again the jockey had apparently forgotten to show up.  This particular jockey had tendency to spend many a night out with the boys getting on the booze and the hangover that ensued the next morning, inevitably led to his unreliability.

“Damn that jockey!” cursed my father, rubbing his hands together, attempting to warm them. “He’s not going to show.”

I tethered the Paragon Prince to the rails and studied my Dads face, thinking this was going to be another one of those interesting mornings.  He was extremely irate and angry and when Dad got irritated with the horses or situations connected with the stable, any sign of frustration in my father, usually meant trouble.  In all his years of training race horses, I had lost count of the number of times Dad had lost his temper.

“What are you staring at?” Dad suddenly snapped at me. 

“Nothing,” I said quickly, turning back to the horse, checking over the saddle, bridle and straightening up the saddle cloth.  I slid my hands under his long thick mane, attempting to warm them, and avoided eye contact with my father, anything to avoid incurring his wrath.  I was convinced that Dad was about to lose it and it was not going to be a pleasant morning.

I should explain why I was so worried about my father’s temper.  I had been going to the stables and helping out my father since I was five years old.  I was now fourteen and in all our years dealing with horses, trainers, owners, jockeys and the like, there had been many an occasion where things had not worked out the way Dad had envisioned.  Dad was always telling me, that you could not rely on anyone in the horse business.  He would say, “Son, don’t trust anyone in this business.”  Therefore he would quite often lose his temper, spit the dummy and do some extremely off the wall stuff.  The racing game and more importantly thoroughbreds can be very unpredictable creatures and things can invariably go awry and my father could be usually seen, should I say throwing some kind of hissy fit.  

Like the time, a few years ago, when he couldn’t catch one of our brood mares.  Granted, this particular horse could be a prize pain in the neck when she wanted and this particular day was no exception.  She really didn’t want to be caught that day and after two hours of Dad and I trying out every plan that we had hatched the night before, she (the mare) decided to go into the paddock dam and stay there.  My father was infuriated with this mare, and proceeded to call her all sorts of creative names and then he decided to hurl rocks at her.  This stubbourn mare just stood there, with an expression of complete arrogance, regarding my father with absolute contempt.  She was not going to budge.  She had won this round, and my father knew it.  Anyone watching this little performance would have considered Dad to be quite mad, but that was just his way of doing things, not necessarily the right way, but Dad’s way nonetheless.  This particular story and many others involving our thoroughbreds have been told and re-told to family and friends, ending with everyone rolling around in fits of gut wrenching laughter.

Getting back to the morning in question, my father and I were cooling our heels still waiting for this jockey to arrive.  Cooling our heels was right, it was freezing.  My father was huffing and puffing, pacing around, totally infuriated with this apparent ‘no show’ jockey.  My mother would later say that Dad’s temper and rash deeds could’ve been disastrous to him and our family.  I’ll never forget the dressing down she gave him. It was one of the numerous arguments they have shared during their forty-five years of marriage, concerning our horses and Dad’s tendency to flip a lid.

I stood there with our horse, stroking his mane watching my father pace up and down.  He was mad, real mad.  I did not see it as the end of the world.  We could just unsaddle the horse, take him back to the stable and go home.  Tomorrow was another day.  Dad could ring our jockey and give him a right blasting for not showing up and that would be that.  If he didn’t have a hangover, he certainly wouldn’t feel too good after Dad was through with him.  I was not going to be so bold and suggest it.  Why make my father more furious than he already was?

Suddenly, Dad stopped pacing and walked over to the horse, with an expression on his face that spoke volumes. A look someone gets when they think they have a brilliant idea, but in reality the notion is moronic.  This was one of my father’s idiosyncrasies that I have long learnt to fear.  He untied the horse and began to fiddle around with the girth and stirrups.

‘Oh no,’ I thought to myself, not fully certain what he was about to do.

“What are you doing?” I protested, a feeling of dread gripping my stomach.

“What does it look like?”  He snapped at me, leading the Paragon Prince onto the racetrack.

“Dad,” I protested again.  “What the heck?”

Suddenly I began to comprehend what he was about to do.  Dad was going to ride the horse himself.

“If this lazy jockey ain’t going to show up son, then I’ll ride track work.”  He bellowed.

“You can’t.”  I argued.

“I can so.” He shouted stubbornly, “It’s my blasted horse.”   

I didn’t argue that would have been useless.  You didn’t argue with Dad when he was like this, he was not kidding.  I wasn’t even sure if he could ride or not.  I had never seen him mount a horse.

“Dad,” I yelled, feeling just a bit cheeky, “Can you even ride?”

“How hard can it be?’  He asked me, meanwhile hauling himself up into the saddle.  He turned the horse and guided him out onto the course, not the training track, but on the course proper which was forbidden territory for track work galloping. 

“Oh brother!” I muttered to myself, thinking that there are a million reasons why he shouldn’t do this.  He’s not wearing a hard hat, just a stupid, blue, floppy thing.  He can’t ride, obviously.  Mum is going to be livid and will probably kill him, if he doesn’t kill himself in the process.  Thoroughbreds are mad at the best of times, but with my crazy father, with his erratic Irish temper who couldn’t ride a horse to save his life on a nervous thoroughbred, this was not going to be constructive track gallop.

“Damn!”  I muttered to myself.  Where was my mother when I needed her?  If she were witnessing this, she would have a cow.  A total melt down.

“Dad, you can’t!”  I shouted, but it was too late.  He couldn’t hear me anyway, it was a futile attempt.  He walked Paragon Prince around to the 1200 metre starting area and gathered up the reins.  He lent forward, giving the horse an unnecessary sharp kick in the guts and they took off at a flat out gallop.  Dad just clung on for dear life, grasping at handfuls of mane and reins.  I guess he was hoping the horse would just carry him to the winning post.  They galloped around the corner into the straight, heading for the winning post.  I ran down towards the straight and stood at the rail watching, still expecting the worst to come.  Then all of a sudden, Dad saw it, I saw it and the horse saw it.  The piece of metal wire that had been placed across the track to prevent idiots-like my father galloping their horses on the course proper.  My father tried and tried to pull him up, but to rein in a thoroughbred without warning, traveling at around sixty kilo-metres per hour is virtually impossible.  He leaned back and dragged on the reins using every ounce of strength he possessed, but it was hopeless and he knew it.  I stood there rooted to the spot, thinking for sure that my father’s number was up.  He didn’t have a chance in hell of stopping Paragon Prince before they reached that metal wire. 

All of a sudden, Dad did the only thing he could do under the circumstances; he bailed. He just plain jumped out of the saddle on to the ground still holding the reins and it was the funniest thing you ever saw; my crazy father running alongside this horse, which he somehow managed to pull away from that lethal looking piece of wire across the track.  Don’t ask me how he did it.  It was all so fast, but he did it.  I sighed in total exasperation and relief, leaning against the rails.  Dad walked over leading the horse behind him.

“Well.”  he said, trying to catch his breath, his expression giving away nothing, “That was hairy.”

I said nothing, thinking that his words were a huge understatement and also knowing full well if I even opened my mouth Dad would be right in my face, justifying his actions.  I decided then and there to just shut up and agree with him.  I decided leave this task to my mother.  Mum would, and did lock horns with him later, she literally had him for breakfast and then some.  As for the ‘no show’ jockey, well did he cop a well deserved dressing-down from both Mum and Dad.  I don’t recall him ever riding for us again after that day.  I assume my father had to go before the turf club officials over that incident and furthermore, he probably got into an abundance of trouble over it.  I’m not really sure, I was only about twelve at the time, so I don’t recollect all that eventuated after that day.  However, when I witness that determined, stubborn, cantankerous expression on Dad’s face, I know the ever -dependable hissy fit is just around the corner and to hell with the consequences.  As far as I know, after the events of that morning my father never again attempted to ride a horse.

Copyright © 2001 Janelle Coulton