Well, another Christmas has come and gone. All that hype for one little day. We had a good Christmas. We spent a lot of time with our extended family, but we were able to have some down time at home too. Saturday we went to my sister’s house and celebrated with the rest of our siblings, my niece, nephew, and all four parents. Sunday we visited Mike’s dad’s family and Christmas day we visited his mom’s family.

Christmas Eve was our day. It has always been our day. (more…)

Sometimes I listen to NPR. Yesterday, for example. They were talking about the problems with China making toys with lead paint. I was a bit skeptical about this being an actual cause for concern but I learned from a random woman in a coffee shop today that lead can cause brain damage if kids are exposed to too much of it. (However, she said the problem is usually more because of the area they live in and not the toys they are drooling on.) The radio show played an audio clip of a D.C. mother’s complaint. She was upset that the powers-that-be were allowing these toys to enter the country. I don’t remember it word for word but it was something along these lines: “What this has done has forced me to play a more active role in protecting my child because the government isn’t.” (more…)

I was telling my father-in-law yesterday about how I “played” volleyball my senior year of high school. They let me practice with them and wear the uniform at games. I sat on the bench and cheered everybody on. I think I still have the shirt (I was #1). I was not much of a volleyball player but I was a happy, smiley little sprout so I was great for team morale.

Today I was complaining to a co-worker about having to work in the suite down the hall while everyone else has already moved to the new space. I told him I didn’t feel like part of the team. He reassured me that I was part of the team, but that I was just one of the bench players. Nice
Such is my life - on some level I have always felt like the bench player. Everybody loves me, I’m always welcome, but I am really just watching from the sidelines because I don’t quite fit in to the game. I don’t know where this comes from and it’s probably not all that true (if it is, don’t tell me) but I’m going to blame it on being the middle child. Yup, it all goes back to that. I’m sure of it.

I watched an outstanding movie last night: “The Girl In The Cafe“. I thought it was going to be a simple love story but it was so much more. Simply put, it’s a story about two broken people trying to make a difference. I’m not great at movie reviews so I won’t attempt that, but I will give this movie two thumbs up and a big toe. I will warn you, there was one entirely unnecessary scene with brief nudity but it could easily be fast forwarded through. In another scene the f-word was used, but it was not used flippantly so it didn’t bother me.

The weird coincidence (or not so much) is that last night I watched that movie and it was about world poverty and this morning I read this post in my bloglines about the same subject. Now this coincidence may just be the affects of some media campaign but does that mean I should tune it out like I do with all the other information I am bombarded with? I can’t end world poverty. I can’t even make a significant dent in it, but the message I heard last night was that we can’t use that as an excuse to just give up. We must not compromise or become complacent on matters of life and death.

I don’t know what I can do. To be honest, I’m a little overwhelmed with the figures. More than 1.5 billion living on less than $1 a day? I spend $0.73 on coffee every day. That’s pocket change to me, and yet there are billions whose lives depend on that. Billions. I can’t even comprehend that. What’s even harder to comprehend is the six million children dying each year before their fifth birthday. I can’t imagine the pain of not being able to feed your own child. Luke cries if he has to wait thirty seconds for his dinner. It would break my heart to hear him cry from hunger, knowing I had nothing to offer. How do you explain to a six month old that there is no food? How do you explain that to a four year old, knowing she may not make it to five?

I don’t know what I can do. I would like to think that this knowledge will stay with me and change my perspective and cause me to make changes in the way I live that will make a difference. The sad truth is that I will probably forget all about this by Christmas, but let’s pray that I do not.

I always feel better after talking to him. How do I forget him so easily? I’ve been asking that question for years and have yet to find the answer. The best I can come up with is that I’m human. Of course he knows that I’m human and he has plenty of grace to make up for it. I just hate that I keep taking advantage of that. But I guess his grace covers that too.

You know when you meet up with an old friend you haven’t seen in awhile, and you chat like no time has passed, grinning from ear to ear the entire time? That’s what it’s like with God, only 38,000 times better. It’s coming home again, only you didn’t know you were homesick. You were so used to your present state you didn’t realize it. For example, I didn’t know I had been sleeping poorly until I got pregnant and realized what good sleep felt like. You could also use the boiling frog parable. It’s all the same concept. When we let our guards down or stop paying attention, we reach a dangerous state of complacency.

I can’t say my complacency has really reached a point of danger, but I have been sensing a nagging, a tug at my heart as if there is something missing. Or someone, rather. I have this amazing family, amazing friends, and yet there is still this space that is left open, reserved only for my creator.

Maybe subconsciously I want to become distant from God, so that when I come back to him I appreciate him that much more. Maybe secretly I like that euphoric rush that comes with reconnecting, and as a result have adopted a martyr mentality. I say every time that I don’t want to go back to that lonely place but somehow I always do. Whatever the reason, I am just thankful that God continues to woo me back to him.

“Slow down. Hold still.
It’s not as if it’s a matter of will.
Someone’s circling. Someone’s moving
a little lower than the angels.
This voice calling me to you:
it’s just barely coming through.
Still, I clearly hear my name.
I’ve been fingering the flame
like tomorrow’s martyr.
It gets harder to believe.

All I need is everything.
Inside, outside, feel new skin.
All I need is everything.
Feel the slip and the grip of grace again.”

~”All I Need Is Everything” by Over the Rhine

I’m reading a book called “Blink - The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” Very interesting. It pointed me to www.implicit.harvard.edu, where you can complete a short exercise to see how you really feel about things. I took the ”Young - Old” IAT and discovered this about myself:

You have completed the Young - Old IAT.

Your Result

Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Old and Young.

Thank you for your participation. Just below is a breakdown of the scores generated by others. Most respondents, even the elderly, find it easier to associate Old people with Bad and Young people with Good compared to the reverse.

Many of the questions that you answered on the previous page have been addressed in research over the last 10 years. For example, the order that you performed the response pairing is influential, but procedural corrections largely eliminate that influence (see FAQ #1). Each visitor to the site completes the task in a randomized order. If you would like to learn more about the IAT, please visit the FAQs and background information section.

You are welcome to try additional demonstration tasks, and we encourage you to register (easy) for the research site where you will gain access to studies about more than 100 topics about social groups, personality, pop culture, and more.

Making The Cut, a short article about the circumcision debate (a debate I was not aware of). I was actually discussing this with someone a few days ago. It’s an interesting topic I guess, but what struck me about the article (and many others like this) is that it seems to lack any real purpose. Skim through again. It’s purely useless information. They’re telling us how other people feel and giving us statistics on the decisions they have made. Why do we care about that? I finished reading the article thinking, “Hm, that’s interesting. Now what was the point?”

This is the way I feel about most “news.” It serves no purpose other than to entertain and it’s not the kind of entertaining that leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy. It’s a huge waste of time and usually leaves us feeling stressed or worried about things that we have no control over and won’t affect our lives in any significant way.  I am still puzzled at the need for channels like CNN. Do we really need all that information 24/7? It’s clutter of the mind, and you know the only real way to battle clutter is to not let it in in the first place.

I was talking to a friend last night about the issue of Halloween. She has sort of the same dilemma that I have in that one spouse loves it and wants to celebrate it and the other spouse is morally opposed to it. In her case she is the one who loves it but it is the opposite in my case. Mike loves Halloween. He had great childhood memories of dressing up and trick-or-treating.

I don’t have a ton of memories of celebrating Halloween. I was raised in a pastor’s home and for much of my childhood we lived in the country, so trick or treating was really just more like excercise. There were a few times we dressed up as Bible figures and one year we even passed out little religious messages attached to pieces of candy.

Mike looks forward to trick or treating with Luke. If I had my way we would not participate at all. We have fought about this over the years and I don’t think we’ll ever agree. Some years I have given in and put on the costume and passed out candy at the door. Other years I have put my foot down. Now that Luke is here I feel like I have to make a decision one way or the other. At this point I am leaning towards not participating, but trying my darndest not to spoil the fun for Mike and Luke.

My friend’s husband is opposed to Halloween. Strongly opposed. And he can probably very clearly articulate why. I am not so articulate but I will try. I just don’t get very excited about holidays. If I do, it’s because I feel there is something worth celebrating. I get very excited about Thanksgiving because it’s about celebrating time with family, what God has given us, and of course food. I will not get excited about a holiday simply because some greeting card manufacturer put it on the calendar and convinced us all that *that* is the day we must tell our sweetie we love them, or whatever. I do believe every day should be celebrated simply because it means God decided to give us one more day that was not promised to us and that we did not deserve.

I do not believe that evil should be celebrated. From what I can see that is all Halloween is about. Yes, there are innocent princesses and quarterbacks weaved in along with harmless bags of candy, but I think that’s just a lame attempt at sugarcoating such an ugly celebration. Can’t we just cut out all the scary, gross crap and just make it one big day of playing dress up?

*Update* My friend had to correct me because I was a little off when I said that she “loves” Halloween. I’m posting a paraphrase of her thoughts because I think they are worth sharing:

I don’t “love” Halloween and I don’t want to “celebrate” it either. I actually believe that it celebrates and honors pagan rituals that speak against my core beliefs. However, I live in a world that I don’t want to be of, but in. My discussions with my husband have been focused less on how we feel personally but more on what to actually do. Should we hand out candy and be a blessing to our neighbors? Or, do we not celebrate in order to make a point of not conforming to the world?

Tough questions. We obviously can’t take a hard stance on every little thing (unless we are interested in the Amish life) so where do we draw the line with our convictions?

It’s 56 degrees and drizzly and the air smells delicious. It’s bringing me back to when Kari and I went to Georgia during my senior year of high school. At least I think it was during my senior year. Time frames have always been a bit fuzzy for me. Details are fuzzy too, but I do remember what that trip meant to me. It was my first taste of independence and marked the beginning of my crossover from childhood to adulthood. It was also a great time of reconnecting with my sister. We are close in age and have always been close in spirit. She had moved to lived with our mom a year or so before that so we had lost touch. I remember missing her a lot after she moved and I remember fearing we would never be close again. Silly me. Even after all those years apart after high school, we were able to reconnect a few years ago and this time the glue stuck. Kari is the best sister; the best friend a girl could have and I cannot imagine my life without her. No matter where life takes us, I don’t ever want to be in a place again where I am not a part of her life and she a part of mine. I am grateful for who she is and all the good times we have had. Kari, thanks for being the amazing person you are. You are caring, thoughtful, funny, smart, strong, beautiful… the whole package. You win the Wonder Woman aWard!

I filled four bags of trash last weekend! I also filled two bags for donating. It’s all sitting by the front door, ready to leave my life forever. I’m really getting addicted to this.

I cleaned out the bathroom closet and had no qualms about dumping all the lotion and bath oils. They were all tucked in the back so I wasn’t using them anyway. I only kept three bottles of lotion and one of bubble bath. I threw out all the expired medicine. Now I have room to easily get to the things I use! What a novel concept.

I went through a box of mementos in the hall closet and threw away any items that didn’t tug at my heart when I looked at them, and I was surprised at how many items were like that. Many held memories that just don’t matter to me anymore, and a few items I couldn’t even remember why I kept! I still have work to do in the hall closet but at least now I can see the floor.

I am starting to really see the ridiculous irony in this country and our attitude towards “stuff.” The American definition of bettering yourself involves having more things, right? People brag about what they have. The more things you have, the cooler you are. Just watch MTV’s Cribs. Now for the point of irony: Close your eyes and picture your ideal home. Clean, wide open space, right? Where is all the stuff? It’s hiding. We buy bigger and bigger houses with beautiful closets and shelves to store all the stuff.

I saw an interesting word equation today: waste = want - need. While I don’t agree entirely with the philosophy, I do feel it’s worth thinking about. I can’t even tell you how many times I heard this question as a child from my dad: “Is it a want, or is it a need?” Think about what you have that you really need, really. Everything else is excess. Either you have room for it or you don’t. If you don’t have a home for it in your home, it doesn’t belong in your home. If you don’t have room for it, it is getting in the way of your life. Get rid of it and get back to living!

My American dream is not to have more stuff, but to have more time with my family, better time with my family. I envision my home being a place for my loved ones to chat, relax and enjoy time with each other, no stuff required (well, maybe a deck of cards or two). Let me tell you, it feels so great to be working toward this vision and to see it coming true!