Category: Daily Living

2010 Resolution #4

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My fourth resolution is my tithe before wants. Everyone of you know how I feel about tithing. I believe in it and I give my tithe not out of a feeling of I must but out of a feeling of I want to. I am a cheerful giver. When I was first a believer I was taught to tithe and the reason for it and I got it! How could I not give him everything when he gave me everything?

Only I have confession to make. I have absolutely no problem tithing my money. I give tithes and then some, I give offerings and plenty of them but I don’t always give the tithes of all of my life. Remember tithe is not just money. That would be easy for me to give I’m not a control freak about the tithe. I am a control freak about the 80% I live on I’ll admit that. What I don’t always give is my time and talent. Sometimes, I tithe my time to the Internet, sometimes to a good book, sometimes I tithe my time to sleep, sometimes I tithe my time to a good friend who I want to share a tea and gossip with and many times I tithe my time to chores and work.

I’ve become really good at fooling myself. I say, “My whole life is a tithe, I work for the church.” Not true, the time I work for the church is service to others and not about my personal relationship with the Lord. Sometimes I feel like Jesus is speaking to me when he said to the disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, “Could you not have kept watch with me an hour?” I am so so sorry at the time and I try to do better but just like the disciples I go back to the slumber of my life. I don’t neglect my prayer life, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t take the challenges that come my way necessarily as first fruits but rather I take them for granted and sometimes give what is leftover.

This year, I’m striving to stay awake. Take an assessment of your life. Do you tithe? Money? Time? Talent? Or do you give the leftovers? It will determine your life’s blessings. Wisdom comes from the Lord. God knows I need more wisdom, yet the word tells us she cries in the street. I want to still her cries this year and I want to sit at her feet. That demands my attention and the best of me, not what is left over.

2010 Resolution # 2

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My Second Resolution is my family before my obligations. Christmas Day, I watched my mother who is 68 go into mom mode. She is a good Mexican mother so she quickly put the tamales on the stove, the chili verde to warm along with the beans and rice. We arrived and all the food was ready. Her face fell when we said we weren’t hungry. She then went into mega mom mode as she asked us every 15 minutes if we were hungry now. We finally all sat down to eat with her.

Her face shone with satisfaction at having her family home. I watched her gleam as she watched her grandchildren. Anthony is her favorite, something about a Mexican grandma and her first born grandson. Anthony hung the moon in my mother’s eyes. She hovers over him and Anthony has such a love for his Nana that the scene just oozes love. After my kids left, Doug and the kids and my stepdad went into the family room to watch television. I cleaned up my mom’s kitchen all the while she kept saying, “LEAVE IT”. She wanted my time not my service.

When I finished cleaning her kitchen I sat with her at the kitchen table. She brought her homemade candy and cookies so we could talk. I looked at mom and how happy she was. Once again she told me how worried she was about how much I worked.

I realized that each year one of my goals is to spend more time with my mom. It never happens. There is a church to run, counseling to do, a store to manage, a family of my own, my girlfriends say they miss me and my dog needs a walk. Too much stress in my life and suddenly months have gone by and I haven’t visited my mom. Instead I call her every other day. She deserves and needs more than that.

How many times have I been told by my friends who don’t have their moms here anymore how much they wish they could have spent time with her? How many times have I heard from my friends who live in the same town as their mom how much their mom drives them crazy? I’ve never made room in my life for my mom to drive me crazy. This year, I’m going to put my action where my mouth is. I won’t have my mom forever, I need to make time for her now. What about you? Are you neglecting family putting others first? Are family members asking for your time?

2010 Resolution # 1

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Those of you who have known me for years know that I am a big proponent of annual vision statements. I have made one since my 20’s and I continue to make them. They keep me focused and on path. I used to brag about how I would write down my goals for the year and by September or October my statement would be complete. I thought I was just that good. Until one day the Lord spoke to me quietly and said that the reason I had accomplished my vision statement early was that I wasn’t dreaming big enough.

So now, I am really seeking the Lord for what my vision statement should look like. I am asking for His will to be done in my life not just with lip service but also with heart as never before. So what about you? Are you thinking about your goals for 2010? Do you have some plans and ideas, and more than that, has the Lord given you a word? If he has not, can you honestly say that you’ve asked him earnestly and waited to hear an answer?

One thing I know about the God we serve is He is a planner. The plan in the bible was written before the foundation of the earth and it tells a story from beginning to end. We are in the final chapters of the book but since we don’t know exactly where in those chapters we are, we must look toward heaven for our next move. God is a planner and you were made in His image. Are you planning and seeking out His will?

I want to write about those things that have struck my heart and where I feel the Lord is leading me. Maybe there will be a cord or two, which will resound in your spirit and you’ll be able to move forward into 2010 with passion, with vision and with purpose in the will of the Father.

1. This year I plan to put people before my to-do. I like to work. I believe it’s a blessing and not a curse and I am a firm believer that every able bodied person should work. However, I work a lot. That is the American way isn’t it? In an effort to get the American Dream I’ve learned some lessons that perhaps don’t serve me all too well. I have to confess that there are times when I am in the middle of work at the office and a visitor comes in and I am annoyed at the interruption, or my kids call and I have to call them back because I am too busy. This year I must learn to put people before my to-do list. After all the legacy I leave will not be one of a clean house, because it gets messy as quick as it is cleaned, the legacy I want to leave is of a people well loved. This year, let’s get out of debt so that we can get to a place where people become more important than things. Where we can decide to work overtime because we want to not because we need to. Let’s be mentored by those who understand how to do this wisely and let’s get on it.

Please Don’t Do This!

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These are yours to take!

With weddings costing on average $30,000, you can see that the couple has gone to great expense to make their day perfect. They’ve spent money on photographers and a video choreographer and florists and a wedding planner. They’ve selected beautiful centerpieces, wonderful dinners a beautiful cake and favors.

Favors are what the wedding couple has selected for you take home as a remembrances of their special day. It’s their gift to you. A thank you for coming to share their special day with you.

What I’ve been seeing for years now is that people are taking whatever is not nailed down. Ladies, this is stealing. Plain and simple. At one wedding I saw the mother of the bride run out of the reception hall chasing down someone who was leaving with the centerpiece of their table. The person had to audacity to be upset because the mother of the bride said she wanted it back. You see, the centerpieces were rented! Please don’t do this! Don’t let this be you! What are you going to do with the centerpiece anyway?

These you leave on the table!

It’s the same at church. For each dinner or special event we’ve had to let people know that the decorations are not to take home. We reuse them. We change them up to make them look fresh but it’s for your looking pleasure not your take home pleasure. Yet and still, people walk out with things.

And the same goes for dinner parties. I’ve had dinner parties where women, sorry, but to date I’ve never seen a man do this, put the napkin ring holders in their purse. What are you going to do with one napkin ring holder? How am I going to replace the napkin ring to complete my table setting? I had to let them know, I like my napkin ring holders and I want to keep them! I know for some of you reading you are staring at the screen with open jaw. Some of you would never think of taking anything and others of you are mad because I’m spoiling your thieving tradition.

One of my friends stole something from a dinner party I had recently then she mailed it back to me as a joke because she knows it’s my pet peeve. Also, you don’t leave a dinner party taking food with you unless you are invited to do so. You don’t ask if you can take a few pieces of pie home to your kids. You don’t arrive telling the host that your husband didn’t want to come because he was watching TV but he wants you to send a plate home for him.

Please take pictures, no not the ones that are in frames in the person’s house! Bring a camera and take pictures if you want a remembrance. Don’t take the host’s supplies!

What Do I Need?

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During this season a question keeps getting asked of me. “What do you want for Christmas? What do you need?” Normally, I have a list of things people can buy. One Christmas I gave Casey the job of getting white Spa Towels, big and fluffy. I gave Anthony the job of getting a lip gloss from Bare Essentials, you get the picture. This year wasn’t an exception, I gave everyone their list but the question struck me this year in a different way.

Do any of us really know what we want? Do we understand what we need? I mean those of us who are followers of Christ say we need God, yet we come to him as our last resort. We try every other angle first and then come to God when nothing else is left to try. We raise our hands in service as an act of submission then go back to the chaos that leads our lives. Why is that? Do we believe in the chaos more than we believe in the Father?

This year I want and need for my home to serve the Lord. What I see is that many of us leave a legacy where God is unwelcome. What do we want? What do we need?

We enter relationships where we say we want one thing but then find that thing boring and move on to the more dangerous partner. The one who is unsettled, the one who is unprepared to receive us. Or is it that we are unprepared and unwilling to make a commitment to wait even if it means being alone?

Maybe the problem is we really have no idea what we want and we certainly have not conferred with anyone as to what we need. So we are tossed here and there by what sounds good to our ears at the moment. We go off chasing things we think we need so desperately only to find that it is unfulfilling. Only it didn’t meet the need we thought and we leave disappointed and ready to chase the next best thing.

Israel had a legacy of chasing whims until one day God said he’d had enough and stopped speaking. 400 years later we heard his voice in the sound a baby’s cry. We believe the story, we believe the salvation but we don’t know if we are ready to make that commitment. What if we aren’t happy with the results? What is happiness? What is the thing we are chasing? Do we even know anymore? Is a good enough life, good enough?

This year, I have to be honest. I need no material thing. I want no material thing. The Lord has spent this year talking to me about rest. I have changed a few things in my life to enjoy my life a little more but I have a long way to go. I know what I need and I know what I want and it’s nothing you can buy in a store. I want more Jesus this year. I want more time to spend time in relationships. You and I both know what will happen now. Things will come up left and right to make me take my eyes of the focus of what I need. We call those things the tyranny of the urgent. It will be up to me to stay focused. Just like an athlete I will have to train.

Enough about me, what is it that you need this year?

1 Corinthians – Christmas Version

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My Christmas Tree before the dogs decided to play tug 'o war with it.

First Corinthians- Christmas version

If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows, strands of twinkling lights and shiny tinsel, but do not show love to my family, I’m just another decorator.

If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, preparing gourmet meals and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime, but do not show love to my family, I’m just another cook.

If I work at the soup kitchen, carol in the nursing home, and give all that I have to charity, but do not show love to my family, it profits me nothing.

If I trim the spruce with colored lights and crocheted snowflakes, hang stockings on the mantel and attend a myriad of holiday parties, but do not focus on Christ, I have missed the point.

Love stops the cooking to hug the child.

Love sets aside decorating to kiss the husband.

Love is kind, though harried and tired.

Love doesn’t envy another’s home that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens.

Love doesn’t yell at the kids to get out of the way, but is thankful they are there to be in the way.

Love doesn’t give only to those who are able to give in return, but rejoices in giving to those who cannot.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. Video games will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust.. But giving the gift of love will endure.

-Something to think about as we try to provide the “perfect” Christmas each and every year.
The stuff is forgotten but the memories of love, happiness, friends, and family will remain.

Broken

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A homeless man who is mentally ill and needs some warm clothes.

A welfare mom who was born to a welfare mom and doesn’t know any better.

A woman whose husband has left her, alone and afraid with small children and without income.

A person who knows how to work the system.

A drug addict who is looking for something to steal to sell for money for more drugs.

A pregnant woman who has no home.

A family who, due to the economy, has lost their home.

A person with excess who hasn’t learned to give.

A religious person who stands in judgment of it all.

A person who looks away because they are afraid.

A person who believes others owe them something.

A teen who feels entitled because all of her life she’s been told she is princess.

A cheater who thinks others don’t know.

A person who can never get enough because of their poverty mindset.

A smooth operator.

A person who points fingers at everyone but themselves.

I meet these people every day in my ministry. They all have one thing in common. They are broken. For whatever reason, for whatever circumstance, they are broken. Powerful in their original design by the Father but life has taken its toll.

Everyone to an extent is chipped and fragmented. Some hide it better than others, others insist that everything is fine. I can’t ignore it. I can’t fix it. I can only lead them to the One that has a remedy. Nights like tonight it seems overwhelming.

He Won’t Disown Me Because I Am A Part Of Him

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God chose me before the foundation of the world. There is no going back on that. When I recognized him for who he was, I gave myself fully to him and I haven’t looked back. Divorcing God is not an option for me. I’m in it for life.

This how your relationship should be. It shouldn’t be one where you are just there until something better comes along. It should be solidly cemented where neither of you has a desire to go anywhere else. This is what it truly means to be a part of one another.

Find someone who at 2 a.m., when he’s opening a bag of chips and waking you up with the crunching and you give him the death look, you love him anyway, knowing you’ll have bags under your eyes. Find someone who loves you when you do your own manic things as well. Don’t hook up with a man who doesn’t understand that there are times in a marriage when you both don’t want to deal with anymore of your stuff but you do anyway. Don’t hook up with a man who thinks it’s okay to throw the relationship out the window when times are tough. Find someone who recognizes that you are a part of him and he is a part of you and without the other there would be a part missing. Find someone who is in it for life. Most importantly do the work right now to be that person with whom a man wants to claim you and be a part of your life forever.