Every Monay Matters

AMBER- America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response

76% of the children who are abducted children who are murdered are dead within 3 hours of the abduction and 88.5% are dead within 24 hours.

We can't afford not to pay attention to AMBER alerts.

You would want someone to look out for your child.

What can you do?
Pay attention to the alerts on the freeway.

Download the application to your computer and text message.

Pay a bit more attenion.

All it requires to help protect our children, is a bit of attention.

The End of an Era

My little sister left for college this week.
That's weird in and of itself.

I still call her my "little" sister even though she is 18 and onher way to being an adult.

But when I picture her, I still see the little seven year old running around the Christmas tree is pj's with her goggle and snorkel on. She's been the baby for forever. And always will be.

Still, she has grown up and moved away to college. The last of us to leave.

Its crazy because as she was moving into her dorm, I actually passed through my hometown.

I stopped at home for a while and I went up to look for something in her bathroom.

And there on her vanity- hanging from a light fixture- was her leather cord cross necklace.

Now I can count on one hand the number of times in recent history I have seen that girl without that particular necklace on. It was her thing. Her signature look. She wore that thing out.

So to see that left behind as she moved on was a sign to me.

That she really has moved on. That she is growing up. That she is starting the next chapter of her adult life. And that she is going to be just fine. That she is ready for it.

You see- her ability to leave her cross hanging there-signals to me her ability and willingess to approach whatever life holds in store for her in this new time of life and not getting trapped by the past chapters. Yet, the fact that she kept the cross and hung it somewhere she could see it told me that she wasn't trying to erase the past. That she is able to look back and see the lessons learned and remember the good memories made.

My little sister is all grown up and moving on. And I couldn't be prouder.

Top Five

Went to the fair last night. Brought back some nostalgia. So here we go for this week's edition of top five:

Things I Miss About Being a Teenager:
1. Going to school- and getting to see your friends all day every day.
2. Football games on Friday nights (ok I still get to go to these but its a little different)
3. Summer vacation!!!!!
4. Passing notes in the hallway between classes
5. Somebody else cooked dinner (at least in our household)

There is this story about a man on an African safari deep in the jungle. The guide before him had a machete and was wacking away the tall weeds and thick underbrush. The traveler, wearied and hot, asked in frustration, "Where are we? Do you know where you are taking me? Where is the path!?" The seasoned guide stopped and looked back at the man and replied,

"I am the path."

Did you hear that? That quiet exhalation, so unconscious it almost could go unoticed. But happened out of relief. Did you feel the lightening of your shoulders? The little flip of joy in your heart. Well, I did.

It's nice to be reminded that I don't have to see clearly where I am going. I just have to see clearly the One who is leading me.

I need the reminder that I don't have to follow a certain path, I just have to follow a certain Guide. For He is the Way.

Every Monday Matters #2- Turn Off the Box

Turn Off Your TV!

How often do we miss opportunities for great conversations because we have the TV on?
How often do we get invested in TV shows instead of in people's lives?
I'm not saying all TV is bad. In fact its a guilty pleasure of mine.

But I am saying that maybe we use it as a crutch too much.

Its a time pit.

So this week- I'm going to watch TV less.

Read more. Make phone calls. Clean my house.

Do that thing I"ve been putting off for months.

This Monday. I'm turning off my TV.

Sunday a Day Late

--not been good about blogging last week. Hopefully this week will be a little bit smoother and allow for more creative time.

Sunday's Top Five- 5 Things I Love About My Job (since yesterday I wanted to quit...)

1. getting to share in people's lives in an unique way
2. looking out at the congregation on Sunday morning and seeing people who are genuinely happy to be there
3. spending time with young people as they figure out how to live out their faith in their own way
4. watching young people grow in God and discover who He has created them to be
5. Hugs- you get alot of hugs in my job. I love it.

Every Monday Matters

52 Mondays in a Year.

52 Ways to Make the World A Better Place.

Starting Today.

Monday 1- What Matters the Most

Apparently, the average person spends 100 hours communting to work versus the 80 hours of vacation time.

91 hours per work week for a dual career family with kids.

1.8 hours a day on household chores.

2.6 hours a day watching tv.

That's messed up. We should spend more time doing stuff that actually matters. We should invest our time in the things that last. Not that the things that will end.

What to do about it?
1. Stop and think- make the list of what matters most to you.

2. Create a list of how you currently spend your time.

3. Organize your list and identify activities that are optional and waste time.

4. Rearrange your schedule so you can spend time doing what matters most.

5. Don't waste time.

What matters most to me:

1. my faith- continuing to grow in my relationship with God. moving past complacency.

2. my family- i'm including friends in this category, cause they are the family too.

3. myself- I often let myself take backseat and at this point in my life I need to devote sometime to creating a healthy happier me.

Top Five

My family and I play a game which we have dubbed "Top Five." We pick a category and then every goes around giving their top five in the category. I am trying to get more dedicated about writing every day- so Sundays (due to it being my extreme work day) are going to become my "Top Five" days.

Today's category: Top 5 Things- that I forget to be thankful for

1. Home- the security and identity that comes from having a happyone
2. Hugs- I forget how much physical affection really encourages me
3. Sight- I watched the sun rise this morning and realized how awful it would be to not be able to visually experience it
4. Adults who shepherded me as a teenager- and still continue to do so
5. Change- often I fight it, but I know it pushes me to grow.

We have a tendency to get used to stop signs. There is a place near my home, where there is a stop sign that is rarely noticed. People slow down, sometimes even pause- but very few people come to a full and complete stop. And someday- this is going to end badly. There is going to be an accident. Someone is going to get hurt.

When did stop signs become optional? When did they become something that we might see but not respond to? When did we become numb to what they mean? When did bright red signs stop signaling danger or caution?

Stop signs come in so many forms in our lives. And we have become numb to them. When our bodies, our spirits, our hearts start throwing their version of stop signs in our way, too often we continue to barrel down the road we are on. We forget to pause- assess the situation and figure out what the danger might be. We forget that when certain things start trying to slow us down to look and see if we are about to run into something or run over somthing. Often these stop signs come in the form of pain. Whether its heartache, or heart break. Times when our spirits hurt. We forget that the pain is often there to signal that something is amiss in our lives. We try to ignore the pain. Work through it. Bury it under our busyness. We forget that the pain is there for a reason. Often- its there to warn us to stop and slow down and see what lies ahead of us.

There was an episode of Grey's Anatomy that worded it better than I ever could.

"Pain. You just have to ride it out. You can olny hope it goes away on its own. Hope that the wound that caused it heals. There are no solutions, no easy answers. You just breathe deep and wait for it to subdue..."

Stop signs serve a purpose. Sometimes you need to stop for awhile until the danger passes. Until its safe to move again. Until you have a clear way to continue on. We need to start noticing the stop signs again.

"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit...."

-Stephen Hawking

Too often I forget that life is not about the here and now. I get caught up in work, school or lack thereof, relationships, etc and I forget that in the end it really doesn't matter. I get caught up in work. I get frustrated, out of whack, and cranky when work goes bad. I have a tendency to let work define me because I forget that there is more to life than work. I stress about school, grades, and whether I'm going to pursue another degree or not. I base my self esteem on what my grades are. I get caught up in relationships- ones that go well, ones that go bad, and the ones that cease to exist. I let these determine my mood and how I feel about myself on a given particular day.

Why do I let such circumstancial things determine me? Why do I get caught up in things that change from moment to moment, day to day instead of remembering that there are more things in heaven and earth.

I forget that this is not permanent. This is not eternal. That this earth will end. That life is about much more than grades, salary, size, home. That faith, hope, love. Those are the things that in the end will matter. That will last. That will follow us long past our mortal lives.

I just have a tendencey to forget that.

Notice Me!

I went to the youth building yesterday in search of caffine.
But what I found was a white napkin taped to the door of the refrigerator with a note on it written in blue marker. The note said:

"I bet no one even notices me."

At first I smiled, because I'm pretty sure I know the person behind the note.
But I kept thinking about it. It was like a one of those headaches that aren't strong enough to really hurt, but are just present enough to nag you.

I decided its because people are all the doing things just to see if someone notices. And I wonder, how many people actually notice?

Recently, our town has grieved its way through a string of teenage suicides. I think these were last ditch, tragic efforts of kids to get people to notice what they were going through.

But we need to notice people before things get that tragic.

People tape figurative notes to themselves every day. In can be in the shape of words spoken, things gone unspoken, through cloths worn, piercings gotten, hair color, tattoes.

Are we noticing? Do we see the people right in front of our faces?
Are we noticing the people who desperately need us to notice them?