The Birthday Project

I recently came across a blog that described the writer's 38th birthday. She decided she wanted to do 38 random acts of kindness to celebrate the day and enlisted her family in helping do that. She wrote about it and it has exploded into a Facebook page and groups all around the world "going and doing likewise."

I really want to remember this and follow suit. I'll have to enlist all my family to pitch in because I'd otherwise have to take a week to fit in a RAOK for every year of my birth! I'm wondering how to incorporate it into more purposeful living and celebrating every day? I wonder if we could do something like this at Christmas. I just dread the holiday anymore because it's such a financial drain and it ends up being a bunch more crap to find something to do with. Why not take some of that money and put it where it would actually bless people? What kinds of lessons would Sophie learn from watching us do it? Would God be glorified more in that act than in paying too much for another electronic gadget to take the place of last year's electronic gadget?

Striving to be intentional at thanks-living is so against the nature of man. Or woman.

Thanksgiving

Living a life of gratitude is such a challenge. At least in my corner of a very materialistic world, it is way too easy to dwell on what I don't have or how what I do have compares to what others have. Funny thing is I never compare myself or what I have to those who have less. Only those who have much more or much nicer or much newer. Then I feel sad. Discontent. Lacking. Cheated.

You would think my eyes would have been opened (and they were, though apparently not permanently) when I spent time in a far poorer country. Walking the streets of China, riding the train through the countryside I saw poverty. I saw real lack. Even the ones with much have less than I have. I should feel shame and guilt to think for one moment what I have isn't enough. Why it is such a temptation then to feel like life isn't fair because I don't have as nice a house, new a car, great a vacation...? It's one of the devil's most effective snares.

I want to be different. I want to be a blessing. I want to be less burdened by stuff. Free to give of what I have - physically and emotionally - and not worry about what's left. Will I have enough? I serve a God that is Enough. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. He is Enough. May I have the grace and the strength and the will to remember that and live in this season of Thanksgiving like I believe it.

Another stab at it

It's been a year since I wrote a word.  I lost my voice.  I'm not sure how to find it again but I'm pretty sure not writing a thing isn't going to help the situation.  Much has happened in one year - much that I wish I would have captured for Sophie's sake.  Maybe if nothing else I'll get in the habit of writing down Sophie's sweetness so we won't forget the precious days.

I think Facebook is responsible for the death of a lot of things -- meaningful communication, writing things that are longer than sound bites, getting anything accomplished....yeah, it's bad all right.  I say as I have it open in another window right this minute.  Sigh.

ANYWAY, here we go again.  I'm going to write, I'm going to write, I'm going to write.