For those of you who aren't on Facebook, there is this silly phenomenon sweeping the interweb. According to today's NY Times, over 5 million people have done this silly "chain" email in the past 2 weeks. I have enjoyed reading countless friend's and family's entries. And for those of you have yet to see them, here are my little quirks... or at least the first 25 I thought of.
1) When Los proposed to me in France, I started laughing/crying hysterically and fell on the floor beside him. It took me a couple minutes to catch my breath and answer him. Not quite the “movie moment” I was hoping for.
2) When everyone got braces I was jealous, even though I didn’t need them. I talked my mom into letting me get them for 5 months. Now I wear a retainer for the rest of my life. Great.
3) I have studied 7 languages to some extent. I am fluent in 1, yes, English.
4) My husband is the only person I’ve ever French-kissed. And the only guy worth my heart. He’s amazing. I’m ridiculously blessed by him.
5) I hate running if there’s no soccer ball in front of me. Yet I want to run a ½ marathon.
6) Most people crave sweet or salty things. Not me, but I love sour, vinegar-y things, weird.
7) I travel like a maniac. Yet I still get nervous on flights. And I’m married to a pilot, what?
8) Los and I were the original Brangelina- we have always wanted to adopt from around the world.
9) Contrarily, I never wanted to get prego- I thought I had a broken “biological clock.” At week 21, I finally got excited that I’m growing a little person inside me.
10) On the scale of passive-aggressive, I weigh heavily on the aggressive side. I probably wouldn’t harm someone in real life, but I think about it in my mind, and like to throw out phrases like, “I’d punch them in the throat.” Creepy. Yes, this probably stems from my childhood.
11) I am super independent, yet love my husband’s chivalry.
12) I am a liberal conservative, or conservative liberal, I don’t fit inside the political boxes in this country.
13) I would rather my husband do the inside chores and I’d rather do the outside chores. Cooking and cleaning aren’t as fun as taking out the garbage and working in the yard.
14) I am obsessed with all things citrus. I ate 42 Satsumas in one sitting. It was a competition and I lost, but I got a crazy Vitamin C high.
15) I have a hard time being friends with people who don’t like cilantro or avocados, maybe it’s b/c I’m from CA, but I think it should be a law that people love those two things.
16) We haven’t had a tv since we’ve been married (3.5 years) but I love tv on dvd or online- currently I can’t watch Extreme Home Makeover without bawling my head off.
17) I think I could be a pretty decent long-haul truck driver (minus the greasy food and porn they watch). I drove across the country in 3 days by myself, San Diego to Jacksonville.
Or a Nascar driver- not gonna lie, I went 120 in my Acura on I-5 one night, jff. Bad girl.
18) I have very selective OCD in our home: in organizing my closet and the dishwasher- if someone else loads it, I will rearrange it. Sorry.
19) I am all about snobby, healthy food, fresh, local, organic, free-range, whatever… Yet I love corn dogs and mac’n’cheese, go figure.
20) When asked the question, would you rather have a home at the beach or in the mountains, I get really stressed out. I don’t know. BOTH.
21) I am obsessed with my dog. I carry him like a baby. When people don’t like him, refer to #10
22) I have spent close to $200,000 on my education- I have a very expensive brain. And I have no job.
23) I have been to 45 states and 20 countries, and I can’t wait to go to 40+ more countries; we love to travel.
24) I suck at talking on the phone, and am probably bad at communicating this, but I am passionate about my friends and would die for them.
25) I didn’t know I had curly hair until college?! I am frugal in many areas, but hair is not one of them, bring on the Bumble and Bumble and stylist.
OUR THOUGHTS ON LIFE AS WE GO FOR IT, ONE DAY AT A TIME...
Showing posts with label true self. Show all posts
Showing posts with label true self. Show all posts
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Monday, April 21, 2008
Young Life Banquet: part one- Nuggets
This past Friday night, we went to our local Young Life Annual Banquet. The speaker was great and told some stories that were gems. He recounted playing hide-and-seek with his grandson. The goal of the game for this little boy is not to stealthily evade his grandpa, but to be found. He will rustle around in the bedroom closet or somewhere else, excitedly anticipating the moment when he is found by the one who loves him. The speaker then transitioned into how today’s teens are just like his grandson, making noise in closets and wanting to be found.
He quoted Eugene Peterson’s version of scripture from the book of John that explains our motivation for incarnational ministry, saying God put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood. He told the story of the YL leader at Columbine from the day of the tragic shooting there. Like many other days, Kevin came on to campus to meet with a student. And like many other days, the student had forgotten, and was a no-show.
So Kevin went into the dining hall and sat down with some students, getting to know them. A short while later, when someone came in announcing the gunshots elsewhere on campus, Kevin was there with and for the teens, diving under the table with them. He eventually helped lead them out to safety and hundreds of students came over to his house that week, processing with him. The speaker made the point that teens don’t need a big program, they need people who will dive under the tables in their lives with them.
Another story he told came from this past week in New Zealand. A Young Life leader there was with a group of 10 people, canyoning. They were pretty far out, when a flash flood came. The river water rose 50 feet in 30 minutes, and 7 out of the group of 10 died. Tony, the leader, was a 29 year-old guy, tall, strong and capable. He could have made it out of the river if he had only considered himself. But he had invited a student named Tommy along on the trip. Tommy had cerebral palsy and was less physically able. Tony refused to let Tommy die alone and did everything in his power to save him. When the survivors and rescuers found their lifeless bodies, Tony had Tommy on his shoulders.
The gospel isn’t incarnational unless it requires sacrifice. Hopefully not an actual physical death, but a sacrifice of comfort, a sacrifice of selfishness, and of time. It takes diving under the tables with people, it takes carrying people on your shoulders. What do you do to lift others up like this? There are as many ways to live it out as there are willing people. These stories inspired me to want to be a person like this. I don’t know what that will look like throughout life, but I want to be attentive to opportunities to make sacrifices for the benefit of others.
He quoted Eugene Peterson’s version of scripture from the book of John that explains our motivation for incarnational ministry, saying God put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood. He told the story of the YL leader at Columbine from the day of the tragic shooting there. Like many other days, Kevin came on to campus to meet with a student. And like many other days, the student had forgotten, and was a no-show.
So Kevin went into the dining hall and sat down with some students, getting to know them. A short while later, when someone came in announcing the gunshots elsewhere on campus, Kevin was there with and for the teens, diving under the table with them. He eventually helped lead them out to safety and hundreds of students came over to his house that week, processing with him. The speaker made the point that teens don’t need a big program, they need people who will dive under the tables in their lives with them.
Another story he told came from this past week in New Zealand. A Young Life leader there was with a group of 10 people, canyoning. They were pretty far out, when a flash flood came. The river water rose 50 feet in 30 minutes, and 7 out of the group of 10 died. Tony, the leader, was a 29 year-old guy, tall, strong and capable. He could have made it out of the river if he had only considered himself. But he had invited a student named Tommy along on the trip. Tommy had cerebral palsy and was less physically able. Tony refused to let Tommy die alone and did everything in his power to save him. When the survivors and rescuers found their lifeless bodies, Tony had Tommy on his shoulders.
The gospel isn’t incarnational unless it requires sacrifice. Hopefully not an actual physical death, but a sacrifice of comfort, a sacrifice of selfishness, and of time. It takes diving under the tables with people, it takes carrying people on your shoulders. What do you do to lift others up like this? There are as many ways to live it out as there are willing people. These stories inspired me to want to be a person like this. I don’t know what that will look like throughout life, but I want to be attentive to opportunities to make sacrifices for the benefit of others.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Calling
"Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism and direction lived out as a response to God's summons and service."
-Os Guinness
"Vocation comes from the Latin vocare "to call" and means the work a person is called to by God. There are different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say or the superego, or self-interest. By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work a) that you need to do and b) that the world needs to have done... The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness/joy and the world's deepest hunger meet."
-Frederick Buechner
-Os Guinness
"Vocation comes from the Latin vocare "to call" and means the work a person is called to by God. There are different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say or the superego, or self-interest. By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work a) that you need to do and b) that the world needs to have done... The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness/joy and the world's deepest hunger meet."
-Frederick Buechner
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Shoulders, Burdens and Jesus
What was the deal with Atlas anyway? Trying to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders; what a waste of effort and energy- that is not how we are made. My shoulders are small. God’s shoulders are big. I hardly have enough time and energy to carry around my own burdens, let alone anyone else’s.
So why, then, do I try to be perfect at times? Why do I think it is up to me? Why do I blame myself if a situation doesn’t go perfectly? That’s kind of self-centered and arrogant. Why do I feel anxiety and beat myself up before a situation even happens, thinking that I might not do well enough? Even when it does go well, and people praise me for it, why do I discount their opinions? Why do I listen to the lie that if people are kind to me, it’s because they don’t know the real me, and if they did, they would see I am a fraud. Why do I polarize things into the unrealistic and unhelpful categories of black and white, perfect or failure, strength or weakness, good or bad? This is a lose-lose situation where I don’t set myself up for success. All I set myself up for is an impossibly heavy load on my incapable shoulders.
Control. Apparently all of this is about control, and apparently I want to be the arbiter of my own reality. That is silly. Laughable, even. In my right mind, I would NOT want the weight of the world on my shoulders. I wouldn’t even want the weight of my own problems, really. Carrying them is exhausting. And ridiculous. Unnecessary. Jesus said that his yoke was easy and his burden was light. A good trade if you ask me. Give him the big stuff. He is more equipped to handle it anyway, being God and all that...
Proportions. My friend said that we get our proportions backwards. We think, “the demands on me, the questions, doubts, and fears I have, the things I have to do are all so stressful and BIG.” And we make God out to be small. When in reality, the converse is true. GOD is big, and all of the competing things that steal our joy and time are small. I want to rest in truth and be freed from burdens. I want to remember that though my shoulders are small, God’s are big. That allows me to experience grace. Then I, in turn, can offer grace to others. And invite authenticity. There is no condemnation for those in Christ, there is grace, there is peace. And that feels a lot better than a heavy load on my shoulders.
So why, then, do I try to be perfect at times? Why do I think it is up to me? Why do I blame myself if a situation doesn’t go perfectly? That’s kind of self-centered and arrogant. Why do I feel anxiety and beat myself up before a situation even happens, thinking that I might not do well enough? Even when it does go well, and people praise me for it, why do I discount their opinions? Why do I listen to the lie that if people are kind to me, it’s because they don’t know the real me, and if they did, they would see I am a fraud. Why do I polarize things into the unrealistic and unhelpful categories of black and white, perfect or failure, strength or weakness, good or bad? This is a lose-lose situation where I don’t set myself up for success. All I set myself up for is an impossibly heavy load on my incapable shoulders.
Control. Apparently all of this is about control, and apparently I want to be the arbiter of my own reality. That is silly. Laughable, even. In my right mind, I would NOT want the weight of the world on my shoulders. I wouldn’t even want the weight of my own problems, really. Carrying them is exhausting. And ridiculous. Unnecessary. Jesus said that his yoke was easy and his burden was light. A good trade if you ask me. Give him the big stuff. He is more equipped to handle it anyway, being God and all that...
Proportions. My friend said that we get our proportions backwards. We think, “the demands on me, the questions, doubts, and fears I have, the things I have to do are all so stressful and BIG.” And we make God out to be small. When in reality, the converse is true. GOD is big, and all of the competing things that steal our joy and time are small. I want to rest in truth and be freed from burdens. I want to remember that though my shoulders are small, God’s are big. That allows me to experience grace. Then I, in turn, can offer grace to others. And invite authenticity. There is no condemnation for those in Christ, there is grace, there is peace. And that feels a lot better than a heavy load on my shoulders.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Emotional Exhaustion
After week three of working at the hospital, I feel emotionally exhausted from the sheer volume of information and encounters I’ve experienced… I’ve cried every week. At least I am in touch with my emotions and can do that; one lady related that she and her husband are emotionally frozen and she can count the # of times she’s cried in her life… I laughed inside, since Los and I are both big criers. It’s so cathartic, I can’t imagine not being able to cry! Thank God my mom always encouraged that when I was a kid. I cry at movies, when I talk to friends, wherever- out of sadness, joy, love, whatever. This weekend I cried b/c one of my pastor’s 2 year old has cancer. I want to go to the blood drive in his honor in November. I can’t imagine the pain that family is experiencing.
One of the major foci in my experience as a chaplain is getting in touch with deep buttons within yourself, so that when they are pushed, you don’t react from a place in the past, and can identify the situation for what it is. One of my buttons is needing to achieve/belong, so when I heard the 6th person (in 3 weeks) remark on how young I was (“you are my kids age!”), it began to get to me… What I heard was, “you’re too young/not qualified to be here…” which I took offense to. But when I brought it up to people, I heard the exact opposite. They all said how jealous they were of me for being “wise beyond my years” and wished they’d known how to be more confident/assertive/perceptive at my age. Funny how communication erases misunderstandings.
When you are living out of your ‘true self’ then you can be present for others, to hear beyond their words. This great speaker we listened to said to pay attention whenever you feel ‘resistance’ inside of yourself. Exploring that resistance can shed light on what you might need to change to be fully available to another.
Thinking about that I realized that even though I’ve done a pretty good job (I think, so far) as a chaplain, I identified that I have a desire to assure people, or fix people, rather than to stay present with them in their pain. So I’ll need to explore that some. For example, one of my favorite people just lost a sibling to suicide, and I lost my grandpa to suicide, so when in the ICU today, there was a 25 year old guy who had just attempted suicide, I wanted to go in his room and tell him so much stuff, “You’re not alone!” and so forth. But a seasoned chaplain asked why I had that need, and encouraged me not to impose my needs on the patients, to be more of a listener, etc.
It’s SO hard to leave my own stuff at the door and not to say everything I’m feeling. I’ve always been more of a speak-first, think-later person, a terrible flaw at times… So I have lots to work on. But first, I’m going to lay down on the couch.
One of the major foci in my experience as a chaplain is getting in touch with deep buttons within yourself, so that when they are pushed, you don’t react from a place in the past, and can identify the situation for what it is. One of my buttons is needing to achieve/belong, so when I heard the 6th person (in 3 weeks) remark on how young I was (“you are my kids age!”), it began to get to me… What I heard was, “you’re too young/not qualified to be here…” which I took offense to. But when I brought it up to people, I heard the exact opposite. They all said how jealous they were of me for being “wise beyond my years” and wished they’d known how to be more confident/assertive/perceptive at my age. Funny how communication erases misunderstandings.
When you are living out of your ‘true self’ then you can be present for others, to hear beyond their words. This great speaker we listened to said to pay attention whenever you feel ‘resistance’ inside of yourself. Exploring that resistance can shed light on what you might need to change to be fully available to another.
Thinking about that I realized that even though I’ve done a pretty good job (I think, so far) as a chaplain, I identified that I have a desire to assure people, or fix people, rather than to stay present with them in their pain. So I’ll need to explore that some. For example, one of my favorite people just lost a sibling to suicide, and I lost my grandpa to suicide, so when in the ICU today, there was a 25 year old guy who had just attempted suicide, I wanted to go in his room and tell him so much stuff, “You’re not alone!” and so forth. But a seasoned chaplain asked why I had that need, and encouraged me not to impose my needs on the patients, to be more of a listener, etc.
It’s SO hard to leave my own stuff at the door and not to say everything I’m feeling. I’ve always been more of a speak-first, think-later person, a terrible flaw at times… So I have lots to work on. But first, I’m going to lay down on the couch.
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