Monthly Archives: October 2010

This week I finished reading Snow Day by Billy Coffey.

Here’s a quote from the book …

“The Bible says that we should give thanks for our blessings. And everyone, I think, has plenty of things to be thankful for. but what is the best way to give thanks? Me, I’d always thought words were best. I always tried to make it a point to do more thanking of God than asking. But how about showing Him? Maybe the best way to say thank you to God for our blessings is to use them to bless someone else.

As Christians, we tend to take the easy way out when confronted with the problems of this world. If people are sick or hurting or just down in the dumps, what are the first words out of our mouths? “I’ll pray for you.”

Which is fine and wonderful. But sometimes the best prayers are ones we do instead of say.”

Stop back on Wednesday — I’ll have a review of Snow Day and an interview with Billy Coffey.

Plus a chance for you to win a copy of Snow Day.

Title: Speaking at Encore: The Festival, Celebrating Vitality!
Location: Garden Spot Village, New Holland, PA

Description: Encore: The Festival is a day long celebration focused on living well.

Encore: The Festival is a day long celebration focused on living well. I’m honored to be part of the speaker lineup which includes nationally known authors and speakers, Dan Buettner and Leonard Sweet. Topics range from living a healthy lifestyle to exploring spirituality, from starting a new career to finding new hobbies, from understanding technology to going green, to building a strong community and giving back through volunteering. My speech is titled “Hope … One Step at a Time.”

Date: June 4, 2011

Check back for a schedule of the day’s events and my speaking time.

My gratitude list this week is all about my weekend.

I am thankful for a busy, crazy, but fulfilling weekend. I’m grateful I could be a part of helping to transfer this room from this …

to this …

I love flowers and eons ago, I took a floral design class, so it was put to use helping with the decorations at a friend’s daughter’s wedding. (See her professional wedding pics here.)

I’m thankful for friends, a helpful husband, flowers, beauty and new beginnings.

Your turn – what are you thankful for?

Title: Sharing My Story

Location: Fairmount Homes

Description: This event is open to everyone.
Start Time: 1:00 PM
Date: 2010-12-09

Title: 2010 Jingle Bell Run/Walk®

Location: Lancaster, PA

Description: I will be doing the 5K (hope there’s no blizzard!)
Date: 2010-12-12 at 1PM

Title: Amish Country Bird-In-Hand Half Marathon and 5k
Location: Bird-In-Hand, PA
Description: I will be doing the 5K … planning on doing intervals of 4 minutes running and 2 minutes walking.

Start Time: 8:15 AM
Date: 2010-11-06

Too often we all want more. I want more, you want more. We think if we had more, then life would be good.

More stuff, more money, more coffee, more time, more, more

So we have supersize, timesaving, credit cards, huge closets/garages and storage bins.

Are we happy?

photo © 2009 Pascal Champagne | more info(via: Wylio)

No … because less is more.

Some of us don’t believe that for one second. Others think there is something to it, but change is hard, so we keep gathering more. Some of us think it might be true, but haven’t tried it enough to really believe it. Others know it’s true, but find it hard to make it our lifestyle.

I know it’s true — less really is more — and I want to live that way.

I have lived with the less is more attitude and it was so freeing. In ’03 we sold our business, house and property. We bought a motorhome and packed it with essentials for a year-long roadtrip around the country. The rest of our stuff we stored in my mother-in-law’s extra garage. I did not want to store junk, so as I packed the boxes, I asked myself one question. “Will I be happy to see this when I unpack this box?”

If the answer was not a resounding “Yes!” … I did not pack it. I gave it away or threw it away.

It was a freeing process and when we moved into another house after the trip, it was a joy to only unpack things I wanted.

I thought I would continue with that mentality, but over the past few years, clutter has crept into my life again. Now I’m making a concentrated effort to live with less again. I want my whole life to be less cluttered, but my focus at first will be stuff. Every time I plan to buy something, I will stop and ask … do I really need this? Why? Could I live without it?

How do you feel about less is more? Do you think that is true? And do you live that way?

There is a cool story happening right now … in 2003 Donald Miller wrote a book called Blue Like Jazz. The book has sold over 1.5 million copies. They planned to make a movie of it, but they weren’t able to get the funding. On September 16th Don wrote a post saying the movie project is dead.

Two fans of the book assumed that if so many people read the book, maybe they’d help fund the movie. So they put together a plan to Save Blue Like Jazz. The movie director, Steve Taylor, said a barebones price to make the movie would be $125,000, so that was their goal. The BLJ fans (me included) rallied and as of this writing, $203,295 has been raised, making it the biggest crowd-sourced project in American history.

History is being made as we speak! (well, as I type and you read)

Reading about this project reminded me of something Donald said when I heard him speak this past April.

God is creating a story — an epic story, that encompasses all of creation. Within that story, each of us has a sub-story that we are the director of. God gives us life – a blank sheet of paper and a set of markers and says, “Go crazy, have fun.“ We choose what is put on that paper. If we want to make a purple horse, we can.” – Donald Miller

The rest of my post from that evening is here.

I thrilled that Donald Miller and Steve Taylor can now go crazy and have fun by making a great movie. Hmm … I wonder if the movie will have a purple horse in it.

You probably woke up thinking it was just going to be a normal Friday, but no — not anymore!

You can be part of history!

They’ve exceeded their fundraising goal, but the budget is still low for a movie, so if you are interested in helping to shape history, add to the funding of the movie so they can draw the biggest, bestest, greatest purple horse ever drawn.

Go. Now. Visit … Save Blue Like Jazz!

Fundraising ends Monday, October 25th at midnight.

It’s Thankful Thursday again.

I couldn’t see anything to be thankful for during my depression two to three years post-accident. It took me awhile to go down into that dark, bottomless pit (my stubbornness managed to ward it off for a time) but when I went down, it was ugly/overwhelming/lonely — how many miserable adverbs do you need?

Nothing was right with me or with the world.

I had lost the me I knew before and I didn’t like the new me.

So what was there to be grateful for?!

With help from counselors, mentors and books I learned how to let go of expectations and find joy living in the moment. Slowly I crawled out of that pit. One thing I did that helped was write a list of things I still had to be thankful for.

I never want to go back into that pit, so I will continue to write list of thanks. Every Thursday. Here. Just for you.

This week I am thankful for:

Your turn – what are you thankful for?

I participate in a Blog Carnival bi-weekly. Today’s word is condemnation. What! Why? I was thinking I’ll skip this week, because I didn’t feel like writing about condemnation.

But then a dragon came to my rescue.

Yes, a dragon.

Dragons usually aren’t a part of my life. I grew up in a strict Pennsylvania Dutch world and there are no dragons in that world. They are much too sensible for make-believe — it’s all about hard work. Along with being PA Dutch, my family was super-traditional Mennonite, so there was no TV, radio or fairy tales. Therefore no dragon had ever rescued me before … but that all changed last night.

The story begins with my high-school senior having the flu and a new movie.

He has always liked dragons (I left the boxes of my childhood, so make-believe has been a part of his world) and after seeing a scene of “How To Train Your Dragon” play at Wal-mart, he promptly bought it. (this time I’m glad he forgot about all my advice not to spend money impulsively)

Yesterday he was home from school with the flu and asked if I wanted to watch the movie with him. A cartoon movie about dragons on a Monday afternoon? No, not really. That’s what I thought, but did not said … even when my childhood tried to rear its head and remind me that I should be working.

I settled in to learn how to train a dragon … (expecting to be bored, so I kept my laptop close by)

The vikings had been at war with the dragons for years. The viking’s goal was to eliminate all the dragons and live in peace. Over the years hundreds of viking and thousands of dragons had been killed. The vikings weren’t any closer to winning than before … but each generation was sure they would be the one to solve their pesky dragon problem.

All viking children heard endless stories about the dangers of dragons and knew dragons were condemned to die, so they eagerly went to dragon-fighting school hoping to become a hero by slaying the most dragons.

This was a problem for adorable young Hiccup. He would rather draw or go for walks than hurt anything. Actually he couldn’t hurt anything even if he tried. He got weak all over and his knees buckled under him. He tried to be mean and tough like the other kids … but he never succeeded.

But he had no choice since his dad was a leader in the community and expected his son to become a great viking. So dragon-fighting school it was. The boys and girls (yes, this was an equal-opportunity dragon-fighting school) mocked him. The teacher (who had both a hook arm and a peg leg) had to save him from the mouth of dragons more than once.

After an embarrassing day – with the teacher annoyed, his dad angry and his friends laughing at him – he escaped to the woods berating himself for being a wimp.

As cartoon movie fate would dictate, he met an injured dragon in the woods that day. Through a series of fumbling, bumbling events, Toothless and him became friends. (by now my laptop was closed)

Hiccup realized that dragons weren’t vicious — they were only aggressive because their lives were constantly threaten by the Vikings. Once he took the time to get to know a dragon (which no one had ever done before) he knew they shouldn’t be condemned to die.

First he shared his secret with a friend (the girl that he admired) and then he risked his own life to show everyone else that dragons are cool.

He became a hero and now all the children have dragons as pets and everyone lives happily ever after … because once you really know a dragon (instead of just knowing handed-down information and oft-repeated stories) it’s much harder to condemn them.

Are there any dragons in your world that you should get to know instead of condemning?

For more blog posts about condemnation … go to the One Word At A Time Carnial here.

PS. Thanks to Shawn Smucker for the twitter convo that lead to this post.