Untethering, But Not Going to a Tropical Island. Unfortunately.

Recently tweeted by a great preacher friend of ours (a great friend, and a great preacher!):

"Christ promised LIVING WATER; Endless strength & faith. Life's demanding. Stay connected, never outflow more that you intake, You'll Crash."

With that in mind, I will be spending some time intaking, reconnecting, regrouping, refocusing, and enjoying my church, my family, and the Christmas season. I may or may not post for a bit. I'm feeling the need to untether a few areas of my life and slow down for a while. It's all good, just a season to spend more time offline than online!

I won't be going to the place in the above picture, however. At least not right now, although it seems like a great idea! Last year I was ready to skip Christmas because all the hype and commercialism was doing my head in, but common sense prevailed.

Catch you later!

Image credit

In Which I Am Thankful for My Family, and Point Out That Safeway Probably Won't Run Out of Food

It's the day before Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays. I love that Thanksgiving is right before Christmas. I think we would do well to set aside time purely for giving thanks and cultivating a grateful attitude before the greed season Christmas.

As a side note, and not really the point of this post, but I'm throwing it in:

I'm not a Grinch. Really, I'm not. I love Christmas and all that it means. I decorate, I do a Christmas tree, I cook and bake and I love the gift thing, family traditions, spending extra time with family and friends. I love it all, but underscoring everything during Thanksgiving is the need to remember that we are celebrating God's greatest gift to mankind: Himself. Jesus. This should set the tone for all we do in the upcoming weeks. Also...I stay out of malls this time of year and shop as little as possible. I hate traffic. I hate fighting for parking. I hate that the general population acts like all the groceries in the world are going to run out tomorrow, and that Target, Walmart, Costco, and Best Buy are all going to close their doors forever this afternoon. I hate spending money I have no business spending on cr*p that no one really wants anyway. (I do love it when I find the perfect gift for someone, but it doesn't have to be Christmas for that to happen!)

I really think we need to step back and have a look at what's really important in our all-too-busy lives. Jesus, family, friends, all the God has done, is doing, and will do. This, for me, is what's important in life. A food processor or a bottle of perfume under the tree a month from now won't go amiss, to be sure, but those things are just extras. We need Thanksgiving, the holiday and also in our hearts all year long! We need to remember Who gave us life and everything in it!

Today I am thankful that all three of my kids are here with us (two live here and one flew in yesterday) and that we will all be together as a family with some of our church family joining us for dinner tomorrow. After all the turkey is gone and the pies are reduced to crumbs I want to remember this year as a blessed year, one that we were able to spend together as a family, reach into the lives of others, let them reach into ours, and welcome a new family member, a son-in-law.

My kids doing what they usually do when they are
together: messing with each other. 

Let the Gluttony Begin. Or Not.

Our lives have been super busy lately between the wedding, traveling back and forth to Arizona, visiting with old friends, making new ones (hi Syria!!), returning home and preparing for company and holidays. I love every minute of it, don't get me wrong, but somewhere deep inside me is a desire for a simple uncomplicated life.

A life that does not require caffeine to be enjoyed.

I jest.

Sort of.

The American culture and society is consumed, and I need a stronger word here...maybe obsessed???...need something still stronger, with stuff. Gotta have more, do more, be more, get more, and do it now, immediately, yesterday. I think that somehow we as a culture measure our success and derive our identity from our stuff.

I did that for years. It wasn't something I thought about, but that drive to obtain stuff became a motivating factor for much of what I did and decisions I made.

Recently I have swung in the opposite direction. This is partly based in the fact that I'm tired of shlepping unopened boxes of cr*p around the world every time we move. For example, for how many years is my grandmother's china going to sit unopened, unused, and unloved in my succession of garages? I have memories of her and photographs that I cherish. Her china is not something I particularly like or would use, but I've kept it out of guilt. My change in thinking is mostly based in a desire to focus on what's truly important and not be distracted. I believe that the days until Jesus' return for His church are short and we simply don't have time to faff around with pursuits that take us nowhere as far as eternity is concerned. The important things boil down, as I see it, to two issues:

1. Our personal relationship with Jesus. Is He our Lord and Savior? Are we on our way to Heaven? Is He pleased with our lives? (I am lumping in with this everything that flows out of relationship with Him: maintaining a good marriage, quality parenting, committed friendships, etc...it all starts with Jesus!)

2. Our effectiveness in leading others to Jesus. Are we more concerned with the needs of others than with making sure our own needs are met? Are we telling others about Jesus and showing them how to be saved? Truly, salvation is the greatest need in any of our lives.

The two go hand in hand. Our relationship with Jesus is enhanced as we look outside ourselves to the needs, physical and spiritual, of others, and as we are evangelistic our personal relationship with Jesus grows.

With this in mind, I have been cutting out the unnecessary from my life. This is not a minimalist blog, and the unnecessary looks different for everyone, but my journey begins with getting rid of physical things that are of no use or value to me, including my grandmother's china and also about 50 pounds of excess body weight! --our body is a temple for the Holy Spirit and we are responsible for our stewardship over our bodies...more on that in another post.

With all of that as a backdrop, I turn my attention today to food. Halloween always seems to be the beginning of the "food season." As my dad would say, "Let the gluttony begin!" Food is obviously necessary for our life and health, and of course it's a nice and often needed addition to any get together, but do we really need to junk out? I think not. Today I had coffee (with sugar), oatmeal (with sugar), more coffee (with sugar), lunch followed by a couple of brownies (with sugar) and you know what? I feel terrible. I'm not used to eating so much sugar and I seriously feel like I've been poisoned. At this moment I have acorn squash ready to bake and well seasoned chicken breasts in the oven. I'll steam some broccoli and we'll have a very tasty and healthy dinner. In the morning I'll probably have an egg on whole grain toast and more chicken breast with probably quinoa and black beans and veg for lunch. I know for a fact that this time tomorrow I will feel fantastic. (I also hope to get in a jog, but let's not get TOO ambitious! LOL)

Over the next several months to a year I hope to pare down my life in such a way that I am healthy, my home is a place of refuge and relaxation without clutter everywhere making anyone uptight (about breaking something, spilling something, or feeling overwhelmed by too much stuff), and my outlook and disposition are peaceful.

So! On that note, I am thankful today for healthy food that nourishes my body, not just feeds my sweet tooth.

Image credit

Written on 11/18/11, edited on 11/19/11 to add: I'm also thankful for being able to sleep in today. It's not often that I get to sleep until I wake up, no alarm clock. Yay! Of course the cat decided it was time for me to get up, but whatever. By the way, why do they just sit and stare at you while you are sleeping? Cats are weird.

Haiku

I think one of the reasons I love the poem Fog by Carl Sandburg is that it creates such a beautiful image with so few words. I love Haiku for the same reason. I think I'm a minimalist at heart. Really. I'll be posting about this soon.

I came across this recently and the post spoke to me on many levels. Please click over and enjoy.

Image credit: I found this image by doing a Google search for "fog"....not sure where it came from originally, but I imagine there are zillions of public domain pictures of the Golden Gate bridge covered in fog because I'm pretty sure the fog factory for the whole world is located in San Francisco.

Focus, and Focus Well

Sometime after all the dust of Christmas begins to settle and the New Year is on the horizon most of us look back at the previous year, take stock, evaluate, regroup and make some goals for the upcoming year. It's a good idea to keep these things in mind, maybe even in written form somewhere, so we don't forget them, and revisit them from time to time. Life starts to happen and even spiral out of control sometimes and we forget our goals if we haven't noted them somewhere.

With that in mind, this being a bit past mid-year, it's time for me to take another look.

This year, instead of making lofty goals that I may or may not achieve (probably wouldn't achieve if the truth be told, and then I would feel bad and flog myself and feel like a loser) I chose a word that would be my theme, the hinge pin of sorts, for 2011. My idea was that this word would color all the decisions I would make throughout the year. It needed to be something that would encourage me to continue to grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually (not physically, thank you very much! I've grown way too much in that regard and need to shrink! LOL). It needed to be something simple that would encompass the areas of my life that I wanted to address over the months of this year.

The word I chose was focus.

Where is my focus? Do I have clear goals and purpose? What is that purpose? Does it line up with God's purpose for me? Are the things in life that I'm pursuing furthering that purpose? What do I want to be doing in December of 2011? How have I been productive? What exactly has my life produced over the year?

I made a decision to simplify my life in any way I could, and dedicate myself wholeheartedly to whatever I was doing. The scripture tells us in Colossians 3:23, "And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men..." .  I wanted every single decision I made, whether that be concerning my attitude, thoughts, or actions, to be purposeful and intentional.

This is a huge challenge here in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's an area dedicated to materialism and commercialism. Culture and lifestyle here is a one hundred and eighty degree shift from living in southern Spain, the most recent place we lived prior to here. People in Spain enjoy their lives. They aren't caught up with 'stuff,' or making more and more and more money. They are generally content with what they have, they work to pay the bills and provide for needs, but they aren't running here and there and everywhere consumed with the rat race of life. It's a very relaxed, happy, family oriented culture. It's a much slower and enjoyable ritmo de vida. I can't speak for other areas of Spain, but where we lived, on the southern coast, right on the shore of the Mediterranean, people had a passion and love of life that I rarely see here. In the summer time the beaches were filled every day by mid afternoon. Folks took care of the necessary affairs of life as quickly as they could, and then spent the rest of the day enjoying being alive. They didn't have a lot of 'stuff,' and didn't feel a need for it. They weren't so consumed with making their way in life that they forgot to enjoy life!

What a sad legacy it would be to have lived all my life striving to do and have more and more and more, so much so that I forget what's really important. Am I enjoying my relationship with Jesus, or has what I do for Him become an obligation? Am I enjoying my family, or have I allowed so much selfishness into my heart that they irritate me? Am I noticing the small joys of daily life or am I too busy being busy that I forget those things? Are my friends more important than my stuff? What am I focusing on? To what am I applying myself?

Did I notice the way the edges of the clouds turn silvery pink right before the sun comes up? Did I notice the way my cat runs to greet me when she hears my car drive up (I know...she's a weird cat. She sometimes thinks shes a dog. She even plays fetch)? Did I enjoy the process of creating a healthy tasty meal or just throw something on the table so we could hurry up and eat and move on to the next thing? Did I help that young mother on the sidewalk trying to get her stroller over the curb and in the process meet someone new? What am I focusing on? I am guilty of letting all these and more totally pass me by, but this year I have been applying myself to focusing on the task and hand, completing it well, and living more in the present moment that wishing for something else.

I don't want to be so caught up in busyness that I forget to be content. That's really the issue right there. Is what I'm focusing on bringing contentment or is it making me wish for more and more and yet more? And do I focus completely on the current task and complete it well or am I so scattered that do a half job at everything? And perhaps the most important question of all: Is God pleased with the focus of my life?

'Cuz really, that's what life is all about anyway.


I'm not sure where the original image for the picture for this post came from, but I found it here.

In Which I Enjoy Life Instead of Continuing My Endless High Speed Rush to...Where Exactly?

Some time ago I was privileged to post this on Carmen's blog but I wanted to post it here too in the interest of resurrecting this old blog! This version is updated and slightly edited.

Life is pretty complicated sometimes. Sometimes in this techno-fast-paced-gotta-set-higher-and-higher-goals-and-do-and-be-everything age I think we need to slow down and appreciate little things. Where, exactly, are we going so fast? And what are we missing on the way there? And when we get there will we be glad we're there? “Enjoying the journey,” is a phrase that I think is highly overused. After all, the destination IS important and goals are very useful things, but we do need to find balance; recharge periodically; assess priorities and enjoy life in general. Yes, the goal is important, but it's not ALL about the goal. Having said that, however, we do need to stop every now and then and realize that life is for living, not for rushing through until we collapse exhausted, just to get up the next day or week or month or year and start it all again. I've been thinking about simple pleasures...things we can do to make the load seem lighter for a moment while we continue on this journey called life. So here are thirty one simple pleasures, one for each day of the month. Little things...things that can be done with little or no expense. These ideas are easy and inexpensive. If we don't take time to smell the roses, pretty soon we'll forget what the roses smell like!

This list is in no way complete, nor is it in any order. Some of these ideas may appeal to you, others not so much. The point is, enjoy life! It's made for living!

1. Take a walk. Don't take your music with you. Just walk. Barefoot if possible, for half an hour. Breathe the fresh air and enjoy your surroundings.

2. Take a hot bath. With bubbles. And a book. And the door locked!

3. Sleep in. Take one day and just sleep until you wake up. No alarm clock, no nothing. If you have small children who are up early, this may be more difficult, but at least stay in bed until you feel like getting up. Maybe use the time to cuddle up under the covers with the littles and read a story. Or maybe cuddle up under the covers with someone not so little.... ;-)

4. Make a cup of hot chamomile and peppermint tea. Use two teabags, one of each, and leave the teabags in the cup. Or hot chocolate. Here's an awesome recipe!

5. If your coffee maker doesn't have a timer, get an inexpensive one used for lighting when you go out of town and set your coffee pot to start brewing fifteen minutes before you are going to wake up. Nothing like the luxury of getting up to freshly made coffee just waiting for you!

6. Stay up late into the night with a good book. (Don't do this right before you have to be up early for something, though!

7. Go to a local bakery and purchase 2 super duper exquisite indulgent cupcakes. One for you and one for a friend. Or make some. Chocolate lover's recipe here.

8. Color. Like when you were a kid. Get some crayons or colored pencils and a cheap coloring book and color. Don't worry about staying in the lines!

9. Spend 30 minutes in silence. Turn off your phone. Turn off your TV. Turn off your ipod. Turn it all off and enjoy 30 minutes of absolute total silence.

10. Have some old fashioned chicken noodle soup. Not just any old canned soup, either. Get a really good quality one. Or make some.

11. Put a couple of tablespoons of yummy flavored syrup in your coffee or hot chocolate. Hazelnut is amazing in chocolate, by the way! Make a cup for your spouse or friend or son or daughter or work colleague too. (Make your own syrup:http://catfeetstudio.blogspot.com/2010/04/some-calorie-laden-recipes.html

12. Call an old friend or relative you love but haven't talked to in a while and catch up.

13. Laugh. A lot. I read this somewhere (if anyone knows where it came from please let me know and I'll credit the source!), “Children laugh over 300 times a day whereas adults laugh only 15 times. This is because children laugh unconditionally while adults do so only if there is a cause.” Laugh as loudly and as often as you can. For no reason. Who cares if they think you are crazy!

14. Write a letter. A real one. On real paper. With a real pen! Add some doodles and little drawings and personalize it. Tuck in a tea bag or a couple of photos (yes, real ones! Printed on real paper!).  Put it in a real envelope with a real stamp and put in in a real mailbox to send to a real person. I'm a huge user of email and I think technology is great, but there's just something about an old fashioned letter in the mailbox...and you never know...you just might get one in return!

15. Take your sheets and blankets off the bed and launder them in nice smelling soap and softener. Before you put them back on put something soft like an old comforter on the mattress under the fitted sheet. Then put the sheets back on and count the hours until you can snuggle down in your sweet smelling homemade feather bed.

16. Use a towel fresh, warm and fluffy, straight from the dryer when you get out of the shower.

17. Hold hands with someone. A child, a spouse, a friend, a grandparent. Human contact and touch go a long way in the well-being department!

18. Do a small random act of kindness for a stranger. Look around you as you are out and about. There are opportunities for this all around us all the time. Anonymously pay for the coffee for the person behind you. Help a harassed mother with a stroller to put her groceries in the car. Let someone go in front of you in line at the checkout.

19. Have fresh berries for breakfast.

20. Turn off the news in the car and listen to music you love. Don't listen to the news for a full day. The world will still function even if you aren't up to the minute. The news doesn't usually change from day to day anyway. If there is a major catastrophe someone will tell you.

21. Go outside at night and look at the stars.

22. Lie on your back outside in the afternoon and watch the clouds change shape.

23. Do something you've been putting off and check it off your list. Complete that pesky task and get it out of your hair!

24. Clear all the extra junk, stuff, trash, and knick knacks off your desk. File papers. Throw away spent pens and stubby pencils. Keep only what you need to use regularly on your desk. Put everything else within reach, but neatly away, out of sight. A clear workspace contributes to a clear and productive mind. (More on this in a later post!)

25. Make popcorn. Extra butter. You won't be able to eat it alone, because the smell of popcorn will attract people from miles around, so make a lot!

26. Leave the house ten minutes early in the morning so you won't be so rushed and stressed on the way to where ever you have to go.

27. Smile at a stranger. You never know what kind of day that person is having and a smile will brighten even the darkest moment. For you and for them!

28. Grow something. Mint or basil if you like herbs. Flowers in a pot. Plant a strawberry plant. Get a cactus or succulent if you have brown thumb (like me!) Anything. Inside or out. But plant something.

29. Get a pedicure. Pick a beautiful polish, even in cold weather when you wear closed toed shoes. When you take off your shoes at the end of the day your feet will look and feel gorgeous. Even if no one else sees them, you do!

30. Put your pj's on early in the evening, lounge around and be comfy.

31. Pick up a cheap bottle of bubbles and blow bubbles in a public place. Try to do it where no one can see you but let the bubbles float out where people are. Something about bubbles makes everyone happy.

32. And a bonus! Work out. Hard. Really really hard. (Obviously this will take longer than the ten minutes I mentioned at the beginning of this post!) Then take a long hot shower and let the water pound the muscles you've just used. Finish with a quick burst of cool water and you'll get out of the shower refreshed and raring to go!

Photo Credit

In Which I Return a Cheap Purse and Consider Becoming a Minimalist

I just returned from Target, where I bought nothing. In all fairness, I was there to make a return, not a purchase, but I do need a replacement for the item I returned. This is the second time I've had to do this within a very short span! I'm sick and tired of the trash that is offered for retail at exorbitant prices.

To digress...

Lots going on in my mind lately. Thinking about simplicity, minimalism, what's really important in life materially, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, what's not. How much "stuff" do I really need? Has my "stuff" become my identity? How would I cope if I lost all my "stuff" due to some natural disaster or other event?

I do a lot of reading about living simply, downsizing, minimalism and the like, and I am becoming temporarily introspective to a degree; re-evaluating priorities and decisions and even personality characteristics. Sort of New Year's in the spring in a much bigger way. I'm making decisions about the kind of person I would like to be for the rest of my life. (Mid life crisis? Maybe, but I think it's a good thing. My youngest child just turned 18, and I realized that all my children are adults now, and I still have my whole life ahead of me! Pretty exciting prospect!)

Heavy...I know. This was all precipitated by the breaking of my purse strap, the second one in as many weeks. I returned to Target, from whence the offending article came, only to find that I couldn't return it for the purchase price because it had gone on clearance and I didn't have the receipt. It had originally been a gift, but no gift receipt. So I ended up with a $5 gift card. I wasn't in the mood to argue and what could I do anyway? So. This brought me to a point of thinking about retail products, their quality, what's really important concerning my belongings, and did I really need to purchase a new purse right this minute.

I concluded that, no, I did not need to make that purchase. I do have other purses that languish in a closet. I don't use them because I don't particularly care for them, but they are functional. I did clear out a whole bunch of junk in my latest decrapification session, but I saved a few of those old purses. The decrapification thing is a slow process of letting go. I'm seeing a need for balance on the decrapification front, by the way. It makes sense to keep some things, while others need to go. The balance is in figuring out which is which!

So. The conclusion to this long and convoluted post is that I am further investigating what minimalism means to me, and learning to remove my focus from what's not important, freeing me to focus on what is.

Oh yeah. And since I do make bags and purses for sale, I should probably make an every day one for myself. The quality will be much better than retail trash, for sure! And while I'm at it, I think it's time to restock the store.

Photo credit: Me! That's one I made and sold, not one I bought! :-)

In Which I Determine That Purchasing Cleaning Products Makes Me Happy.

So. I bought a new mop, Murphy's Oil Soap, new sponges, Bar Keeper's Friend, and a toilet brush. Obtaining these items has made me inordinately happy. What does that say about me? That I need to get a life? That I take house keeping seriously? That the doors on my kitchen cupboards need to be cleaned? That I have dirty floors and toilets? All of the above? Or maybe I just like to buy cleaning products.

Seriously, though, spring has sprung and that makes many of us want to clean up, and clear out the old junk. Lots of simplifying and decrapification (to borrow a term from...ummm...somewhere....???) has been going on lately and I'll be listing a bunch of stuff on Craig's List in very short order.

I'm also in the mood for lighter cooking and I'm in the process of cleaning every inch of my kitchen. My cupboards were never properly cleaned before we moved into this house, so I'm tackling them first. It doesn't help that my husband cooks a hamburger at about 1000 degrees for lunch every single day of his life. Word has it that Murphy's Oil Soap is the best thing for cleaning grease off the cupboard doors. You know what I mean...that sticky shiny stuff that looks totally gross and appears out of nowhere. Nowhere, that is, unless you have a husband who likes to cook hamburgers at exceedingly high temperatures.

Photo credit: 
http://keepingitpersonal.com/author/leah/