Advent week 1

Today starts the church's Christmas season. While consumer America has been at it since Halloween, I now feel justified in listening to Christmas music and  baking unhealthy and delicious items. But one thing that I have already finished and am now simply fighting the pressure for "more" is my Christmas shopping.

For the 1st year ever, I am done with my Christmas shopping before Dec. 1. Hooray! I get weird about our focus on gift giving during this holiday. I don't like feeling like I'm giving out of obligation; I want to find the perfect gift; or I have trouble sticking to a budget. The past several months I've come across a number of awesome products that help someone else, in addition to giving you a gift to on Christmas morning.This is a way for me to feel a whole lot better about the gift I give and the purpose of this season. It makes my money matter more than the item that gets shipped. It allows me to live out my values of care and concern for a hurting world. It gives me a neat way to give to people I know and love, and people that some may consider unlovable or forgotten.

A few examples have been added to one of my Pinterest boards - Shopping that's Worth It. I LOVE being able to help someone in need while loving my friends and family through gifts at Christmas. I hope you'll check out some of the ideas and sites included there and give me more suggestions.

Merry Christmas!

Trick-or-Treat OR Mooch & Take Advantage

This will be brief, but it has to be said. Trick-or-Treating has gotten out of hand. My neighborhood in LOVES Halloween and decorates really well. People come from everyone where to visit the house across the street that is always awesome. A cop even comes to direct traffic once it's dark to ensure safety and hope to avoid parking accidents. I always run out of candy before kids are finished walking around. It's quite an event and one I like to experience, but I have to vent - Trick-or-Treating has some rules, and people today are breaking them!
Rules: 

• Be under 13 years of age
• Be in costume - homemade, store-bought, even if it needs to be explained.
• Say "trick-or-treat"
• Only take the candy that is given to you and only FOR you.
• Say thank you
• Again, be under 13

Violated Rules:

• Repeatedly I had to ask some teenagers who they were dressed as, because they didn't appear to be in costume at all.
• I saw a few 10-12 year olds who had a 2nd bag for their "nephew" waiting in some unknown place. 
• I reluctantly gave candy to adults who were with their children, but with their OWN bags. 
• I asked several, no - numerous children what they should say to get candy. Most said please, then with some coaching, finally said trick-or-treat. 
• Once I let a girl with a good costume pick her candy, and she took a HUGE handful of tootsie rolls. I said - um...just 1 please. Then she didn't say thank you. 
• One teenager couldn't even come up with "Uh, I'm a high schooler" as a lame answer to what she's dressed as. She got so uncomfortable she just walked away. I felt slightly like a jerk, but had to stick to my conviction and enforce the rules above. 
• This isn't quite a violated rule, but I was slightly offended. A man was dressed in a gray sweatshirt with multiple paint sample colors attached to him. All were variations of the sweatshirt color. I looked him in the eye and said "Seriously are you 50 shades of grey?" He confirmed it and even suggested I count them all. I was disgusted. The only thing I could appreciate was the creativity in the delivery, but honestly - it just shouldn't have been done, especially as you walk your 8 and 10 year old daughters around the neighborhood. 

I'm trying not to become completely jaded about this tradition, and actually doing my best to protect the rules of the game :) In additional to all the ones that drove me nuts, I saw awesome bumblebees, Avengers, witches, Alice in Wonderland, a great TinMan and a lot of cute lion and monkey 2 year olds. I also had a lot of parents verifying that their child did indeed say "thank you" after receiving candy and held their hands as they walked down the road. I saw a couple parents dress up and walk with their kids, just because they wanted to be with them. They didn't ask for candy.

I want more kids like these at my house:

Wine, Resumes, Margins and Metahpors - Oh My.

Do you ever stop to think about what you want to be like? Stop to mediate on what God has uniquely gifted you with? I hope so. When I do, I usually reflect and see things in my life that don't reinforce the "me I want to be" (thanks John Ortberg) Recently the word margin has been ringing in my ears as I scramble to increase my productivity in work and life. I need more margin but I also want to make good use of the life space I have.

I edit resumes all the time. I mean all the time! And I've come to have my preferences when it comes to formatting - .7 margins, 11pt font, no extra spaces after paragraphs, the black circle bullets, etc. These preferences have purpose - increase readability, attractiveness, inviting, clean and concise. In my conversations with students I find I have to help them reword, prioritize, and eliminate excess, unrelated or superfluous words.

Right now I need a life resume review :) I was told many years ago to "work smarter not harder" and have tried to hold to that ideal and create healthy work boundaries. So far, I think I've done this rather well. I have consistently maintained a social life while adjusting to my work life after college. I've even found myself helping others face this reality. I've made hard choices in how I spend my time. I've done it.

The thing I notice now is - while I have done it, it doesn't just stay done. I have to stay on guard by sneaky margins and misplaced punctuations.

Tonight I attended a talk from author Doc Hendley who is founder of Wine to Water, a nonprofit that provides clean drinking water to people all over the world. Tonight he spoke primarily to college freshmen who read his book as the summer read. It was a fun environment full of earnest and hope. The students had good questions and were engaged in what he had to say. He was clear that he's just a normal guy who chose to try something and it turned into this nonprofit that has helped thousands of people and perhaps even saved their lives. His passion is obvious and each time he quotes a statistic on access to clean water or the realities of not having it, I get choked up and have to bite my lower lip to keep from confusing all those around me who aren't getting emotional. Something just resonates within me and I know the Holy Spirit is doing something. I have wanted to go to Africa for a while and in the past year God has brought me more and more opportunities to explore others stories, learn more history, see films and read books regarding Africa. I even know some people who live there. When Doc spoke about his time in Darfur and Uganda, he had a few slides of photos. Each one I saw my stomach clenched and I just kept thinking - I need to go and see it. I just do.

Right now I am in the in-between of 1. knowing I need more margin to give the Holy Spirit more room to move and 2. living in overdrive pursuing things that are important, but maybe not MOST important. Steven Covey always talked about "keeping first things first" and it's so much easier to say than to do. As soon as I want a break from being intentional, my priorities get skewed and my life gets rearranged into something not worth writing about. I want to go to Africa before I'm 30 (or at least have the money and the date arranged by then). I want to do it now because I think it's somehow part of my story. I've LOVED the travel God has brought to my life and every time I go someplace new I'm changed a little. I need more margin to allow room fro God to change me more into the "way I was made" (thanks Chris Tomlin).

Until next time. Oh and you can bet I'll be buying some wine from Wine to Water soon :)

It's Christmas time

In lieu of sending Christmas cards this year I decided to create a Christmas letter. It can say a lot more than what I could write individually in cards, saves time and gets there immediately. I hope I saved some trees and I know I saved some money. This may sound like an easy way to get out of sending Christmas cards or that I've just become more inconsiderate, but that's not the message at all. This year I've had opportunities to examine who I am as a consumer and I want to make some changes. I also highly value connectedness and historically love Christmas cards, so this choice was a struggle. I'm not "writing them off" forever, but at least for Christmas 2011. I hope everyone will understand and can enjoy the full-color version of parts of my letter posted here. Have a more green Christmas - a merry one and a blessed one! 

Dear friends and family,

I’m declaring this season a time of Gratefulness.

 Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Here's to another year of so many things to be grateful for!

Values

I've been talking a lot about values recently.It's come up in a number of groups so I felt it was worth some reflection.

One of the most meaningful discussions I heard about values came from the creator of the Life Values Inventory, Dr. Kelly Crace. He spoke at a conference I attended last year (and was an amazing speaker) and suggested the following:

At the end of each day, rather than considering your day in terms of what you accomplished, how effective you were or how many things you completed (which is never enough and always leaves you feeling inadequate) consider instead asking yourself the questions -

Did I live out of my values today?
What's one thing I can learn from today that will help me tomorrow?
What do I know I can do? (Know what your strengths are, which I'll address in another post)
What is the most right devotion of my time and energy tomorrow?

The idea is that you would consider your values, line them up with your behaviors and use your energy (which is finite in any given day) to facilitate living out your values, not necessarily focused on outcomes. Think - life is a journey not a destination.


"You gotta know yourself, to grow yourself"

Have your cake and eat it too: http://roadtripnation.com/WarrenBrown