Lost

I have become dependent upon my TomTom GPS. I had David’s family saved and their locations are in the country so it was really a life saver. Then the GPS got swiped and I had to find my way to places in town and out without any help. I got lost or turned around a lot. Sections in the country look alike to me since I haven’t driven them very often. I hate getting lost as much as being late.

A GPS has become a required technology tool for me. I like to have a route laid out for me. Careful analysis of the routes and traffic are critical to commuting 25 miles each way. I like to know if there is traffic ahead and have the GPS do the heavy lifting to recalculate a new route.

There are other kinds of lost, such an the intangible “spiritually lost.” In Pioneer Club the favorite verse that all kids were taught is Psalms 109: 105 states that the Word is to be a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. We have a song as well. Its important if the kids get nothing else out of the whole program that the Bible is the GPS for us. Its our flashlight at night when we are all alone and feel isolated, rejected, awkward, or sad.

Many times in my own life, when things become difficult, I realize that I have allowed myself to drift. I have lost my way and am not in the place that God has called me to be. I have put other priorities ahead of reading the Bible and meditating. It’s a constant effort for me to set my personal will aside and be a follower. I am always thankful that Jesus stands willing, with arms outstretched to welcome me back after I get lost. I find the only way I can keep from getting lost is in daily bible study of some type. The Bible is a better navigation system than my GPS and the only chance of a straight path.

Questions come to mind - are you continually reading His Word and soaking it into your heart so that you may know His will?

Are you being led by the Word?

Is your “path” being illuminated by God’s Word or are you trying to do it yourself?

I survived Lent 2009

Lent is one of the coolest seasons there is in the church calendar. Yes, I am a Methodist but I spent half my life Catholic so I have an appreciation for Lent. It is all about self-examination and what we are about, who we believe Jesus is, and how we long to be more like Him. Its about giving up something and taking something on.

I decided for Lent, to give up alcohol consumption and to take on forgiveness. I learned several general things - lent is 46 days not 40, its not about making a juvenile bet, growth seems to always hurt, reflection time has been like skin being peeled off layer by layer, and losing a friend of 20 years the week of Easter stung like a bee. It reinforced the thinking that life is fragile.
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Gave Up (alcohol) Lessons Learned:
- I want/like/need a glass of wine in social settings. I need the social lubricant - I chase numbness when I feel isolated and have drifted from God. - I don't let my guard down easily and a social drink has been the remedy for this - My friends use alcohol to ease life's challenges and speed bumps
- I found 75 verses related to alcohol in the Bible
- My role is to be a good role model for my kids
- I want to be a better person today then I was yesterday. Social drinking doesn't fit into that goal.
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Took On (forgiveness) Lessons Learned:
- Forgiveness is a complex topic that not many people understand.
- I wrote down 4 people that I should work on forgiving - 1. relative, 2. friend, 3. myself, and 4. coworker.
- A smart guy said that I should forgive myself first so I changed my thinking and started there.
- The challenging part was knowing if I had actually done it, all I could figure was if I didn't have an emotion about the situation.
- It's about changing your perspective. The event that you want to forgive, can't change but you can change your view about it.
- Bill reminded me of a book called "The Traveler's Gift" by Andy Andrews.

The sixth dimension for success - I will greet this day with a forgiving spirit.

I will forgive even those who do not ask for forgiveness
I will forgive those who criticize me unjustly
I will forgive myself
I will greet this day with a forgiving spirit





It was the most developmental Lent I have ever had, wouldn't have changed a thing.
We are capable of change,
Kathy

1. 
   
2. Things I was smart enough not to give up for Lent

- Pranks or kidding around

- My blackberry

- Cheerleading a beat down tired team

- Wearing a lucky blue shirt if I am "selling in" something at the office.

- Text messaging my friends (DM's suggestion)

- Listening to music when running

- Pioneer Club

- Time with inner circle friends

- David's favorite day of the week - Naked Tuesday

- Randy Wayne White books

- Indian food

- Being stubborn - according to Bill and Tony, this might be hard to do. Geez

- Coffee, I have gone without coffee two different times, 21 months for each one so I have done this before during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Not going to ever do this again. :)

Time, sitting by Time, Time standing still, all depends on your perspective

I do some of my best writing while watching Maranda swim. My blackberry Bold can barely keep up. :)

Question for you - What is your relationship to time?
Do you have enough time?

My parents wanted to teach me responsibility when growing up. At 16 they gave me a car, checking account and Visa. And a cell phone too. It was the size of a brick and I was forbidden to use it but I had one.......

My first experience with "time" was at the age of 17, Junior in high school. I encountered extreme disgust with "time" every Friday and Saturday evening at 11:00pm. The amount of time I was paroled was not enough. Eleven pm was my curfew and it just sucked.
My Dad came up with this one. At 11:00pm, a small, travel, battery powered alarm would go off if I had not gotten home to turn it off. My parents were not going to get up out of bed to check and see I was in my bed.

How to stretch "time"? became my obsession and I thought of nothing else. Surely I could find a short cut to this ridiculous problem and spend more time with my friends. I was taking honors physics for gosh sakes. Strategizing and problem solving began with a vengeance.
I came up with a plan, or found a design failure with Dad's plan. My Dad watched the news, let dogs out and went to bed. So, I set the alarm clock to 10:35 and then took the battery out. I successfully stopped "time" on the parents grid and expanded my own grid. I tested my theory and didn't come home until way after midnight the first chance I could. It was the single best night of my Junior year. It was all dead still on the quiet street of Robin Road in a sleepy town called Abilene. I successfully stretched "time".

"Stretching time" or removing the clock's power source went on until I got an early admission to a 9 hour summer honors program at OSU in January of my Senior year. I was set for the big "time" circus with no travel alarm clocks.

In January, I started coming home at 10:45 and forgetting to turn the damn thing off on purpose. I let the alarm be the "time keeper" and wake the parents up while I was nice and snug in my bed. I still bust out laughing now about it. The parents would eventually, come peek in my room. It was entertaining to get in trouble the next day. Yap yap yap you woke us up...yap yap yap...I only had one response "I don't know why you don't trust me? Why are we still using the alarm clock after all this time?"

Back to the question - what is your relationship to time?

My relationship today with time is directly proportionate to the decisions I make. If I forget my priorities, I make the wrong decisions about "time" and that cascades into intimacy issues.

What are your priorities? If you don't have a set of top 3, how do you manage your time?

My priorities get upside down all the time. For most of my career my priorities had my employer in a much higher position than it should have been. One job, I loved the people I managed, the work was an adrenaline rush, and I loved everything about this high performing team. The best group I ever worked with I think of affectionately as the "broken glass" group. Once a year we all get together and its good to be with people that you have sweat, cried and fought hard with and for. We get together for birthday lunches in between and I hug these guys without any reservations. This group is special because there isn't one team mate that I wouldn't rip off my socks and walk on broken glass for. I am already barefoot waiting.....

I invest time in mentoring both directions. The return is so high whichever end it is. Growth and development of my spirit refreshes me. As much as I get I try and return. I am suppose to be helping others or I am just taking up space. I work at balance now between husband, kid #1, and kid#2. Except on weeks of travel and that week is an outlyer. If I don't prioritize my goals, then I don't manage time right. If I don't manage time right, I end up with intimacy issues with either God or DM. It's a linear chain reaction of the worse kind.

Rules for me so I can make new mistakes:

1. Spend time first with the most important priority. It's the single most important thing the whole day.

2. Never never ever say "yes" to a second class during a semester for Charlene. It can't be juggled and what fell out last semester was date night. I gave time to a class and it came out of my time for DM. It wasn't a conscious choice, it just was what gave when time wouldn't stretch. (Charlene doesn't really have a red bat phone to God. Don't tell her I said that.)

3. Actively find a babysitter that has a clue and thinks "boys are bad" and doesn't date. Book her months in advance so date nights don't get shelved.


4. Every once in awhile, I track my time from wake up to going to bed. I need a month to get a good picture due to travel. Mathematically I can tell what I am spending my time on. Then match with what my priorities are. Adjust and correct and try try try again.

Whistle blew, swim practice is over,

my next 15 minutes are booked

(encouraging our little fish in the family)

What is your relationship to time?

Kathy
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Gaps in 2008

I started my thinking on 2009 improvements based on what didn't work or were gaps in 2008. There are areas that I need to turn up more and other areas I need to turn down. I am striving to make new mistakes every year not the same ones over and over. :)

Gaps that I recognized:

1. Women's bible study concluding in May of 2008 and I didn't go looking for another one. I miss it and more importantly I need it.

2. Spent alot of time "planning" or thinking "forward" with elderly parents thus was not in the present as much as I should have been.

3. I didn't run as much as I should have

4. Let moments where I should have reach out and pulled a friend in go more than I should have. There were just a few but 1 is too many.

5. Priorities got upside down alot - code name: Backbay and DBU

New Thinking for 2009, ways to fill the gaps from 2008

1. Manage priorities better - faith, family, then everything else

2. Be present - (not obsess about past or future events.)
3. Hug more - (its about the hug you give than the hug you receive)
4. Run every other day - (even if it means using the treadmill due to weather and feeling like a hamster!!)
5. Write more……can my friends handle this??? :)

I am interested in what yours are so please "add a comment" or ping me an email.

May great things happen to you and 2009 be the best year ever!!!

Kathy

Candles in the dark

Through DBU, I have met so many incredible "influencers" as I call them. The list of influencers is long and I treasure each of those connections. “Influencers” start out as students but after the grades are in, the relationships flip flop. Alot of the people I meet just need a little encouragement and confidence. It's such a simple thing to do for someone else. Going back to school at any age above 20 is hard. I admire those students that come back to college to finish what they started many years ago. It's 100 times harder and I wouldn't know that if I hadn't done grad school at night for 4 years.

The relationships with influencers build out over time and coffee, lunch, patios, email, text messages or whatever. It is then I start to learn from them, if I haven’t already been during the class. I have learned a lot from students by observing discussions on topics of integrity, humility, empathy, compassion and forgiveness.

This past semester, on Monday nights, I met 6 amazing students now “influencers”. There is something special about each of their spirits and I can’t put my finger on it but there is a reason why our paths crossed. I have figured 2 of the 6 out as far why our paths crossed. I am lucky, I have lots of “influencer” experiences and stories that make me smile and warm my heart.

One "influencer", from a March mini-term class 2 years ago, asked me to have lunch this week. She had read the prior post on hugging. In her email she mentioned "I read your last post , You are too hard on yourself. Oh and get ready, I am going to hug you at lunch."

And she DID!

It was an extremely long hug too………. long enough to draw eyes of strangers in Diego's.

I am a better person for that relationship and her Christian influence on me. It has become more important to me to have friends of faith in the past few years. I am gravitating more to them than ever before. It’s helpful to my head and heart along this very twisty journey that includes elderly care.

And then there is this one “influencer” that tells me that she prays for me. Out of the blue and for no reason. There is not a better feeling in life. It makes me smile ear to ear to know that someone out there on this huge planet full of chaos is praying for me. I do a lot of stupid things and they seem to always involve a power tool. Not today though, I used a rototiller to rebuild a flower bed and only ended up with bruises not stitches so there DM. :)

Recently, I had to write a document that was really out of my comfort zone. I think actions speak louder than words spoken or written so it was overwhelmingly hard. I shared my challenge with an influencer that has an amazing grasp on compassion. That story is a great one but back to this one. She had to write something similar and made one suggestion. It made all the difference and I was able to take the advice and knock it out. A subtle nudge was all I needed, not someone shouting in my ear. I sent her a copy of the document and result is that it drew us closer. The whole experience deepened the relationship.

I got an email from another influencer last night telling me that she was graduating in the spring. She is a VP at a major firm and finishing what she started this spring. I am so proud of her. Single parent of 2 finishing what she started. It doesn't get any better than that.

A standing O for the candles in the dark, or my influencers. God bless you always.
Kathy

New brand for wine labels are lauched!!!

Bill Blaydes is the creative talent behind me in the past but now right up front.

Thanks to Bill for taking a squirrely idea of mine and always making it better.


FRONT:

BACK:

Brand attributes of fun, unconvential, about the experience

The “inner circle” idea is that its a wine that is made to be shared with friends. Ripples represent the networking of 1 drop or person.

If you get a bottle with this label from me, I will be acknowledging you as a friend – a member of my inner circle.

Thanks to Bill and Tony for their creative support.

Yes, I know that Naked Bastard, DM's brand, is superior. I blame Bill for that!

Kathy