AKA: What I’m reading

The great thing about good friends is they tell you about books they are reading, what they are learning and it makes you want to read the same book. That is how I came to have TWO books titled Right Here, Right Now, on my nightstand. After hearing all my friend was learning from this book I decided I wanted to join in. So I went online, found the book by that title and ordered it. Then I excitedly texted my friend to let her know.
Her responding text: The book I mentioned is free. Did you get that one or the other with the same title?
Uh, I paid for it. BUT since the real one was free online I promptly ordered it. Both sound interesting and I paid for one, so I’ll be reading them both.
One Thousand Gifts is like the Christian world’s  most popular books right now. I actually received it as a gift in March. Started it and then left it behind after a summer vacation. So I’m hoping to finally finish it.
The Mission Minded Family is a very practical, easy to apply book on teaching your kids how to look at their world from a more global perspective. I don’t love everything in the book but there’s lots of great ideas.
Loving the Little Years is a fun little book that my mom sent me after hearing the author speak at a conference. I have really, REALLY enjoyed it and find myself highlight much of it. One of my favorite things about it is that each chapter is short, like a page and a half. So I can sit down for 5 minutes and read and actually feel like I’m getting somewhere before I have to jump up and pay attention to the kids. This girl does not claim to have all the answers, she is in the absolute midst of parenting in the little years with five children under the age of 5! But she writes well and hits hard. Here’s a sample:

    “…the state of your heart is the state of your home. You cannot harbor resentment secretly toward your children  and expect their hearts to be submissive and tender. You cannot be greedy with your time and expect them to share their toys. And…you cannot resist your opportunities to be corrected by God and expect them to receive correction from you.”

Good stuff.

Remember when you were first married and you and your man would stay up late laying in bed talking passionately about things? It could be about anything from politics to how you raise children to how you load the dishwasher but it was exciting and frustrating and challenging and stimulating and just wonderful. Well I’m not sure what happened, kids and early morning runs I suspect, but I’ve realized that I almost never make it past, “Good night, I love you” before I am asleep. Those days of excited discussion came largely in part because we had so much in common. We read books together, read the same websites, told each other about other stuff we were seeing. In general we had lots more time to read and talk than we do now days. But I miss those days, I miss those connections. So, Kris recently finished Healing for a Broken World and suggested it. So I’m reading it so that we can talk about it. I may not be able to stay up late talking about it, but maybe we can have afternoon discussions.

So that’s what I’m reading. Nothing terribly deep and NO FICTION but still some good stuff.

Before you read any further, let me just say this post has nothing to do with the Super Bowl.

Last week my daughter and I attended a college gymnastics competition. We, through a great deal, got season tickets to watch “our” college team compete any time they are in town. So most Friday nights my daughter and I drive downtown, sit with friends, and watch these amazing college age girls tumble, balance, and awe us.

This time we arrived right on time but I had to take Jennika to the bathroom before we got to our seats….okay, actually I had to go to the bathroom and just used her as my excuse.:-)  After the bathroom we stepped into the arena just as the lights went down. They won’t let you go to your seats when it’s dark so Jennika and I stood in the back as both teams were introduced and then we all rose and we sang the national anthem.

Now, call me crazy, but for some reason 12,000 people singing together makes me cry. I was choking down sobs as I held my daughter and sang “…O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”

It has nothing really to do with the national anthem, we could be singing Amazing Grace together and I would still be in tears. I cry too when a basketball team makes an amazing, last second point and wins the game. Its not so much the players who make me cry, it’s all the people around me, cheering, laughing, hugging, filled with joy.

It’s not limited to sports either. I’ve found myself emotional at the end of a play as the audience applauded the cast. The look of joy, relief, and completion on the actors’ faces paired with the cheers from the audience is just too much for me.

And finally, the same thing happens to me every time I watch this stupid video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYAUazLI9k.

Don’t get me wrong, I love it but I hate watching it when others are around because I feel so silly crying  over people dancing and singing!

Why does this happen to me? Can anybody else relate to this weird outpouring of emotion at such times? I have to admit it is embarrassing for me because it is hard for me to explain to my husband, daughter, or friends why I have tears running down my face.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot the last few weeks, probably because I am crying nearly every week at the gymnastic meet. Here’s my theory on why I cry:

-There is power in numbers. This really isn’t so much a theory as a proven fact. There are times when people in a group, charged by emotion, can do so much more than individuals. The emotion is strong.  Sometimes it can be great, powerful and wonderful (example: the protests in Egypt)  and sometimes it can be horrible (example: stampedes on Black Friday).

-Emotion is contagious. I think this one goes hand and hand with the above idea. Ideas catch on fast in groups, again sometimes leading to good things but also, often leading to very bad things.

And the primary reason….

- We were made for this. As a Christ-follower I believe that we are all made to worship, together. When I am with a group of people, or even just watching a group of people, experience joy together I think I am getting a tiny taste of what I was made for. Now of course our “praise” in these setting is misplaced, but just feeling corporate joy gives me an idea of what Heaven may be like.

It’s 3:36 a.m. and I can’t sleep. It doesn’t happen very often but some nights I wake up thinking and just can’t get my brain to stop. So I debate staying in bed, cuddled next to my husband, staying perfectly still and willing myself to go back to sleep, or getting up and actually doing something about all the things I am thinking about.  Usually the staying in bed wins out and after an hour or so I fall back asleep. Tonight, I just couldn’t do it. I was having too many good ideas to just stay in bed.

So in the stillness of the night, in the absolute quiet of our house (something that is quite rare in this shared household of eight), I am getting lots done. I’ve already found (online) and ordered four wonderful, favorite children’s books of ours as gifts for Christmas and upcoming baby showers. I’ve also written a long reply to an email that was waiting for me in the morning.

And now, I get to blog. Sigh, Smile. It’s been too long since I last got to actually write something here. I’ve missed it. But, what shall I share with you? Insights from my recent eye procedure (no pun intended)? New challenges and adventures that are sprouting up with the end of summer and the beginning of autumn? Or maybe what I’ve been learning about poverty. How about that? It doesn’t sound like that riveting a topic but stick with me, it’s worth it.

Recently my SIL has been writing some terrific posts about about being wise with money. They aren’t your typical guilt-trip, you-should-be-spending=less-and-saving-more posts about money. They are more about her journey and she invites her readers to join her as she discovers ways to save and insights in being a good steward of all our resources. I suggest you check her out.

We also recently started a new series at church called The Hole in Our Gospel. This series is more than just another sermon series, it is a small group study, a daily journal, and a book, written by Richard Sterns, head of the reputable charity, World Vision. Most importantly this isn’t just another sermon in a long line of sermons heard, and then usually forgotten, throughout the years, this is a call to change. Change what, you ask? Well, our perspective on being a Christ follower, which in turn will change the way we give, the way we see the poor, the way we spend, and the way we change the world.

I have been overseas. I’ve been to third world countries. I’ve seen kids in rags, with infections and parasites. I’ve been exposed to poverty, on some level. But I’ve also grown calloused to it. This series is helping to remove those calloused scales from my eyes. It is making me cry and rethink some of my values. As I read and see and hear about young girls selling themselves for 25 cents(!) or children dying every 21 seconds due to waterborne illnesses I keep asking myself, what if those were my kids? As I put my own precious children’s faces to statistics I am asking what would I want done about it? What would I say to the big, rich, self-focused Western church today?

“Thanks for your 2% giving that went outside your own congregation, demonination, community, and country. It’s really making a difference. You should feel great about yourself, now go buy that iced latte in your foyer for you and your friend. The cost of that alone would nearly purchase a reliable food and income source for me. But hey, don’t feel guilty, you deserve that coffee!”

No, that’s not what I would say, and okay, maybe that’s a little bit dramatic and extreme. What I would say and am learning to say to myself is this:

“You Christ-followers claim to know the hope of the world. Prove it. You claim to have given your life to one who healed, loved, and spent time with the poor and sick. You claim he is your example. Prove it. You claim that Jesus has and will continue to change this world. Prove it.”

I think those are harder words than my first response. Yet they are true. Millions of people who have no hope and no future are asking us to prove our faith. Put our money and our very lives where our words have been for years.It is time to start proving it.

Some statistics I’ve learned in the last week*:

• Every three seconds a child dies because he or she was hungry.
• Americans spend an estimated $20 billion annually on ice cream. An amount that could fee 83 million hungry children for an entire year.
• Contaminated water kills a child every 15 seconds.

*All taken from the Hole in Our Gospel study.

We all have bad days, days when nothing seems to go like we’d choose. We all have days where we’ve felt misunderstood or mistreated. Hard days are part of this life, we have little (or no) control over that. However, letting those days effect our mentality, worldview, and actions is completely in our control, and sadly all too common.

My mom called them the poor me’s. Some people call them pity parties or the blues. If they last long enough, like years,  they can be called a victim mentality. You know what I’m talking about…that attitude that occasionally plagues us all. When this nasty attitude settles into my mind I feel like the most unloved, unfortunate person in the world. I seem to see everything through a veil of grey and can’t find the bright side of any situation or conversation. When I’m feeling this way, I think everything bad happens to me and that I don’t have any control on anything or a way to change my situation. Basically when I’m feeling this way I am stuck feeling sorry for myself.

Some people are more  prone to this attitude than others.  However we all have our days. The problem is when those days turn onto weeks, and then months and then years. I know people who have a gloomy, pessimistic outlook on EVERYTHING. Even their attempts to be positive seem weak. Bad things happen and yes, life can be hard, but living in such a dark hole is not really living.

I am not an expert on depression or on changing my bad attitude. However, here’s what I’ve found to help me on those dark days.

1. Change your thoughts.
My mom used to tell me, garbage in, garbage out.  I HATED it when she’d say this because I didn’t want to change my thoughts or the things that were influencing my thoughts. However, she was right. When I had yucky thoughts, my words and responses were yucky, even when I didn’t want them to be. If I dwell on good things, and as cliche as this sounds, think positive thoughts, I was more optimistic and willing to be cheered up.

2. Change your actions…or lack of action.
Dance to fun music (I suggestion “I Will Survive” by Cake), go for a walk, make a healthy dinner, play with your kids. Basically just DO SOMETHING that will get your mind off yourself and your troubles and maybe even make you smile. From personal experience I have found that if I get up early and run in the mornings my days feel so much better. For me exercise equals healthy thoughts and stress relief. Find what will do this for you.
Equally important is to make changes in your actions. If you find that you respond to stress or negativity by turning on a movie and just vegging out, or maybe by posting negative comments on Facebook, then may I suggest you STOP?!  Don’t do the things that you know don’t make you feel better. Don’t eat that bag of Hersey’s Kisses, because you know they will just make you feel disgusted with yourself afterwards…okay, eat three and then be done.

3. Change your company.
There are people in our lives that, despite their words, are not good friends. They may be surface friends or sucker friends. They will listen to you whine and complain and commiserate with you, and that’s nice. They will justify your feelings and actions, but they won’t ever tell you to move on and get over it. They won’t ever tell you that it could be worse or that you are being too dramatic. They won’t tell you this because you make them feel good about themselves.When you’re in a funk these are NOT the types of friends you need.
Choose to be around people who will listen to you, love you, and push you. Place yourself with people who are positive, who challenge and inspire you to be better yourself. Chose people who will tell you the truth, even if it’s hard for them and who will hope for and fight for better in your life.

4.  Ask for help.
Sometimes we need people to know that we’re struggling. We need help, accountability. There’s no shame in admitting that cloud over your head just won’t go away.