Everyone Should Try This At Least Once

Here it is, the secret to strengthening relationships with the important people in your life. It hardly takes any work on your part but you will find a new appreciation for the ones you love. Here it is: imagine you’re moving away. Create a scenario in your head that only gives you a couple months with you’re favorite people, and even your not-so-favorite people. Imagine that once those few months have passed you are moving across the ocean and don’t know if you’ll ever get to see them again.

And then start treating them that way. With that in mind, only a few months left, you will appreciate every moment in a new way. You will make an effort at the things you once put off until later. Time was on your side, but now the clock is ticking. You will find purpose in everyday and a drive to make the most of your time with the ones you love. If you’re going through a rough patch with someone you care about, this new “knowledge” that you’re leaving will quicken the healing process.

So do it, try it just once. Or even a few times, maybe once every couple of years. Bring your relationships back into the forefront instead of letting the busyness of life smother them. (But don’t tell people you’re leaving if you’re not really leaving, this isn’t an April Fools joke!)

Was it a mistake?

I am normally not one to write about anything political. As much as I enjoy sharing my own opinion and expressing myself, somehow I feel like I come up short in dealing with anything on the political side. Maybe I feel a little too uninformed or just not politically savvy enough, I don’t know what it is.

Regardless of those feelings, I shouldn’t let it stop me from joining the conversation. And today’s conversation is obviously going to be centered around the hottest debate of the moment – national health care in America. The bill has passed and we’re not likely going backwards.

The question I pose is this: was it a mistake?

I’m looking for some insightful, thoughtful answers. Large, sweeping statements that aren’t backed up won’t do. If you think the passing of this bill is the end for the United States of America don’t say it and run, tell me why and how exactly this country is over. If you think this bill is the best thing since Apple Pie, tell me why and how. If you’re going to say that Obama is the Antrichrist, don’t.

Are you down on this bill because other countries with nationalized healthcare have taxes that take away up to 50% of workers’ wages just to fund it? Give me some examples. Are you against it because you don’t want the government in your business?

Are you for this bill because you know someone who has needlessly suffered because they couldn’t afford the proper medical care? Are you pro nationalized health care because you believe health care is a human right?

What’s your opinion, was it a mistake? Or was it the best thing our politicians have done in years?

Wanderlust

Sometimes I feel like a nomad, wandering the desert without a permanent home. And since I’m literally writing this from the Nevada desert I’d say it’s a pretty good analogy.

I find myself in far off lands, in worlds so different from the one I grew up in. There is a part of me that longs for the comforts of home and the sights & sounds of the familiar. But that part is tiny in comparison to the unquenchable thirst for knowing what is “out there.” What is beyond me, beyond my world, beyond my scope of comprehension.

It’s the disease I’ve carried since I was a child, it’s called Wanderlust. At least that is what my mom calls it.

It’s been a fun little “disease” so far. I learned to speak another language, eat spicy foods and love it, feel comfortable with all manner of people and so much more.

Yet the older I get, the more I struggle with it. Not because I miss the comforts of home, but because I miss the people of home. My family. I’m wondering if there is ever a time to turn the passport in (metaphorically speaking). Or can a balance be reached. Should a balance be reached?

How do you get rid of the wanderlust? Should you get rid of it? Can you feed the monster of Wanderlust and stick close to your family at the same time? Can you have your cake and eat it too?

What’s a girl to do?

Just Say No

Why is that we can’t just say no? I mean what is the pull, really? Why, in a nation of so much education and opportunity and knowledge, is it so hard for us to say no to food? Food has become a vice comparable to sex in our society.

Neither are bad. But we have taken good things meant for sustenance and for pleasure and we have abused them, used them in excess and depreciated their value.

And for what? A momentary pleasure. The way my aunt’s famous homemade cheesecake melts in my mouth, the way the fizz of soda feels in my throat, the way the juices of a bacon bleu burger sink into my taste buds. It’s a really good momentary pleasure. Some have even referred to it as a “food orgasm.”

A piece of cheesecake, a can of soda and a juicy burger are not vices. They’re delicious food. A piece of cheesecake, a can of soda and a juicy burger at every meal, those are vices.

We know the consequences. We may do dumb things, but we’re not a nation of dummies (hmm, is that an oxymoron, someone intelligent who does dumb things?). We know what happens. Feeling tired more often and extra rolls of fat aside, we have diabetes, heart disease, gastric reflux, erectile dysfunction, hernia, kidney failure, stroke, depression and gallbladder disease to deal with. Those are just some of the results of our overindulgence.

And yet living on the same dirt and occupying the same planet as us are the majority of the earth’s population. For them, a choice and abundance of food, let alone sufficient food for proper growth and sustenance, is a completely foreign concept.

I know all that. I’m aware of the facts. I know how dangerous my overindulgence can be to my body and my health. I know how selfish it can be as I feed what doesn’t need to be fed (me!) instead of feeding those who do need to be fed. And yet I still have not perfected the art of just saying no. Three simple words – just say no. More often than I’d like to admit, I can’t do it. Rather, I don’t do it.

Out of the Mouths of Babes & Small Children

It was one of those unplanned discussions. We were sitting around the dinner table, the kids had gotten up and the adults were lingering. Clean-up was interrupted by a questioning heart. Have I become hard, am I going to wake up one day and find that I’ve lost my faith? Or have I just grown wiser, less prone to the emotional ramblings that encompass the Christianity that surrounds me?

As we discuss and wrestle the question becomes clearer. Is our brand of Christianity, the kind we grew up with, the kind that we craved in our youth, truly spiritual or just emotional? There was a day when we were certain it was spiritual. The less we could understand it, the more spiritual it was. In fact, everything was spiritual. God told you to dress up in a chicken suit for three years? Wow, we’d think. God really speaks to you. Everybody is crying in church and you’re not? Hmm, you must not love God as much as the rest of them. We seemed to evaluate everything based on how “outside the box” it was, because as we knew, God moved “outside the box.”

It’s not that we are now questioning if God moves outside of the box. There’s no question that His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. The way in which He moves and speaks may very well contradict our expectations of how He should do it. But somehow the why is becoming more important as we grow older.

Is God so random and pointless that He will tell you to dress up in a chicken suit for three years and give you no explanation, no purpose, no reason? And three years pass – and still no understanding, no fruit, no results.

God told Noah to build an ark. The earth had never even experienced rain up to that point in time! God did it to protect those that would listen from the deadly flood to come.

John the Baptist dressed in camel’s hair, ate locusts & wild honey and hung around in the desert because that was what God wanted. And through this man many came to know God.

Purposeful oddities.

It seems we are aligning less and less with what some of our contemporaries would call “spiritual.” Because what we once saw as spiritual now seems emotional to us. Let God be wild, let Him move miraculously, let Him surprise us and let Him move outside the box. But let Him do it all with purpose.

As the six year old chimed in when asked what she would do if her daddy told her “I’m going to slap you in the face, because God told me to”, it all became a little clearer. “God wouldn’t tell you to that, because He’s not like that.” God is not out to hurt people, it’s not in His nature. And God is not out to do strange things “just because.” His very nature, His character, is full of purpose. His purpose is to reach out to His creation, to love and be loved by the ones He created.

We didn’t answer the question – are we becoming hardened or wiser? We could easily chalk it up to wisdom. Then again, we could chalk it up to hardened hearts, always putting a negative spin on things we can’t wrap our minds around.

For tonight I’ll just go with the wisdom of the six year old (out of the mouths of babes and small children) – God does what’s in His character and His nature.

You too can prevent swine flu

Working in an office where we receive and process public files on a daily basis can be dangerous. One never knows exactly where those papers have been, what food has been left on them, if they’ve been grabbed by someone who didn’t wash their hands after using the restroom, if an ill person has coughed up their saliva on them. For those reasons alone it’s important we take every precaution to prevent H1N1… aka Swine Flu… and other such illnesses that are easily transferred from one person to another.

Today’s lesson on the Prevention of Swine Flu in the Workplace comes to us from an undisclosed location, but the lesson is clear. Take it to heart, because you, too, can prevent Swine Flu!

Prevent Swine Flu... DON'T lick your files!

First Impressions

First impressions. They are preconceived notions of how certain people are going to fit into your life. You meet someone and without meaning to you’ve already got them figured out. You think you know if you will be close to them, if you even want to be close to them. With one glance you decide if they will be friend, foe, acquaintance or lover.

Thankfully first impressions often fall by the wayside. Prejudgments are shown to be misjudgments. What you thought about someone was just that, a mere thought. It wasn’t truth, you weren’t right, you didn’t know.

Oftentimes the most significant people in our lives come across us “accidentally”. We weren’t looking for them, and we sure didn’t think, upon meeting them, that they would end up playing such an important role in our story.

I have a pretty decent sized list of such people. People who, upon our first meeting, I didn’t think would play any meaningful role in my life. People who, it turns out, marked my heart and my life in ways I’ll never forget. People who make me so thankful that first impressions can end up meaning absolutely nothing.

We can’t stop our first impressions. We’re human and we make snap judgments, sometimes unconsciously. Without knowing it we make decisions about people before getting to know them. But we can make an effort to get past our first impressions, to look beyond our initial reactions. And by doing that we just might find a friend for life or a love we’ve never dreamed of.

Instant Gratification

I was trying to book a hotel room on the internet today and the transaction took me a whole six minutes. At about the two and a half point mark I was starting to get agitated. I’ve been meaning to install some updates on my mac all week, but I’ve been dreading the fifteen minutes or so it would take to restart and install the upgrades. So because I’ve delayed updating things, the speed of my machine has been less than stellar. I mean, c’mon, about six minutes to make a financial transaction?! Who has time for that??

And so goes my general reaction to just about everything in our fast-paced, high-speed, drive-thru society. I get stuck in traffic and wonder why nobody but me can drive. ‘Stuck’ being loosely defined as my commute being extended for one or two minutes. I have to wait a few extra minutes at Starbucks because there are a lot of customers in line and wonder why they’re so sloooooooooooooow.

We live in a culture of instant gratification. We no longer wait to talk to our friends, we text them. We cut our face to face communication with the ones we love in favor of giving most of the free world a play-by-play via Twitter. We don’t exercise and eat healthy to shed the pounds, we take pills and go under the knife because it’s faster.

If it were just silly things – a little frustration in traffic, a bit of annoyance at having to wait in a fast food line – this culture of instant gratification wouldn’t be such a big deal. But we have been pervaded with a compulsion to have “what I want when I want it”. And the results have been nothing less than devastating.

Families torn apart because people have lost their feelings. So instead of taking the time to work it out they jump ship because that is what brings relief in the moment. Babies born to teenage parents wholly unprepared to care for them because having sex was what felt good at the moment.

Not to say that instant gratification is to blame for all society’s problems, obviously the brokenness run deeper than that. But, just for a moment, imagine a society where delayed gratification was the order of the day.

Where instead of jumping into the sack with someone just because you’re feeling horny, you waited. Instead of turning your back on your family just because things are rough, you made all the more effort to love them unconditionally. The truth is, it’ll probably be really difficult for a while. Like the proverb says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick”.

That’s what often happens in the midst of delayed gratification. In the place between your desire and the time that the desire is fulfilled you become acquainted with heartache.

But the heartache is only temporary.

When the delay is over, when the desire comes, it becomes more than a moment of gratification. It actually becomes a tree of life. The whole proverb goes like this, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.” Prov. 13:12

You’ve waited, even suffered in the wait, but now you’re enjoying the reward of that wait. Delayed gratification is, in the end, not about the wait. It’s about how worth it the wait is. It’s not merely a moment of gratification, it’s a whole tree of life that you get to feed off of. Trees generally last a long time, longer than our lifetime. Gratification that lasts for more than a mere moment. Now that, I can wait for.

10 reasons to be thankful today…

1. I have a steady job in an economy where many don’t.
2. My steady job allowed me to buy a car I actually wanted (and I still didn’t break the bank with that purchase).
3. I live with some of my best friends in the world… so I don’t have to go very far to have some fun or find an encouraging word.
4. My folks are coming out to visit me soon!
5. I’m bilingual.
6. I’m an aunt to the cutest, sweetest baby girl ever.
7. Not only do I always have food to eat whenever I’m hungry, but I get to eat yummy food that I like.
8. I have an amazing hairdresser!
9. As fall and winter are starting to approach, I’m pleasantly reminded that I don’t have to deal with freezing cold temperatures and snow for months on end.
10. Boys think I’m cute (no matter my age it still feels nice!).

the great abyss

the great abyss
the space in between
yesterday and tomorrow

void, dark, lonely
empty, dry, afraid

the great abyss
the space in between
what was and what will be

wondering, longing, begging
and wanting

the great abyss
the space in between
Your promise and the fulfillment

believing, expecting, praying
and hoping

the great abyss
the bridge that leads
to all Your goodness