Live Deliberately

I know it’s almost February, but I have taken some time to process this in my own mind.  It’s a new year, and I am grateful.  On January 1, 2012 I woke up with the revelation that this would be a year of RESTORATION and RENEWAL!  What a relief.  Last year seemed to be the year of death and dying.  I believe in my heart that broken relationships will be restored.  That those who need a healing will be renewed.  Broken dreams and dashed hopes will take on a new sense of urgency this year as people have a renewed hope in their purpose in the world.  Their purpose is restored in their hearts.

I don’t tend to get on the resolution bandwagon, but I read an article by Gretchen Rubin who spoke of taking one word and putting a theme to the year.  By creating a theme, your actions are essentially filtered through it.  I toyed with idea of a one-word resolution, but I just couldn’t bring myself to a resolution.  A phrase rang in my soul, though. 

Live Deliberately.

I like that.  Live Deliberately.  It gives up the old living-by-chance approach.  My success as a freelance writer, a novelist, a magazine publisher or any other job or role I am in, simply cannot be left to chance. 

In 2012, I choose to live deliberately. 

Everyone has a story.  By living deliberately, I can help write my own, rather than allowing others to write a story I may not want read or be a part of.  How about you?  Give it a shot and create a theme for the year...and let me know what you came up with.

What Truly Matters

Christmas was different this year.  Actually, 2011 was a different sort of year all together.  We lost many people in a circle of influence during the past 12 months; a friend’s 10 year old son, a friend’s 27 year old son and then his father just months later, a life-long family friend, my daughter’s friend’s father in his early 30s, my mother in law, and most recently a family friend’s mother on Christmas day.  There are others, too.  We went to at least 8 visitations and funerals this year, and couple others that we couldn’t be at.

This year was different.  It served to remind us how fleeting life can be and how significant relationships are to our own existence.  Many have written that social media has caused us to detach from relationships, thus becoming more isolated and leaving countless people feeling alone despite having hundreds of “friends” and “followers.”  I think there’s some truth – if we allow the social media to replace real people.

Our family chose to simplify this Christmas season.  We helped others with Christmas gifts who otherwise had virtually nothing, and we chose to downsize our own celebration.  Having been very blessed in recent years, it was a deliberate shift back to the focus of family time, face to face time, and being in relationships with each other.

Christmas day found us in church after opening gifts with our children, age 11 and 13.  Gifts were kept meaningful and simple, a shift from digital technology that dominates the world around us.  As we later gathered with my parents, we opened gifts which were again deliberate and scaled down from years past.  We shared a traditional meal, played Bingo and Apples to Apples, and watched Red Skelton.  As we drank tea and munched on Christmas cookies, I reflected that we are so blessed.  We drank tea from 40 year old Centennial Rose china and ate our meals with gold plated cutlery, while others in the world think about their next meal, and live just one day at a time.

It’s okay to be blessed.  It’s a blessing to be so blessed, but let us not lose sight of the things that truly matter in our lives – the people, the relationships, and the memories that we make.  As the Christmas season quickly closes and we move on to the next mass marketing campaign of Valentine’s Day, I hope that we will spend the coming year focusing on this simplicity that matters.  Take the time to connect to real people, face to face, and care about them – don’t just poke, like or tweet.  Help out a neighbor, open the door for a stranger, buy someone’s lunch, lend a shoulder for a tearful friend or stranger.  We are all in this together.  When we take the time to slow things down, we learn that each of us has something to share with each other.  Let’s again become a community.

Everyone has a story.  Take the time to listen to someone’s.  They have a story to tell.  They may have a story that needs to be told, one that you need to hear.

Back to Christmas

I have been encouraged this holiday season.  An increasing number of people, including co-workers, store employees and people on the streets are reverting to saying “Merry Christmas.”  Not one retailer has wished me anything other than “Merry Christmas” and I think that simple gesture helps to bring in the spirit of season.

After a number of years of political correctness being shoved down the throats of Canadians, Common Sense seems to be making it’s long awaited return.  In all likelihood, Common Sense is just visiting for the holidays and we will soon resume taking a stand for nothing…other than a stand against offending someone.  But the holiday is called Christmas, no matter what you believe.  December 25 is Christmas Day, just as July 1^st is Canada Day if you’re not Canadian, and February 14^th is Valentine’s Day even if you’re not in love.

If you happen to be one of those who is wrapped up in celebrating a completely non-offensive and politically correct holiday, do you enjoy living?  Don’t change Christmas for the rest of us.  Actually, if you aren’t celebrating Christmas, what exactly are you doing on December 25^th?

Everyone has a story.  Let those who celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ have Christmas.  That’s the story that gives you Christmas anyways.

Welfare Mentality

“I have to start school in January or they’ll kick me off welfare.”  It was intended to draw sympathy to the person’s plight, but it stirred me.  It actually disturbed me.  Truth be told, it’s disgusted me.

Call me prejudice or oppressive, but take a moment to hear me out. 

The latest statistics that I could find show there are 201,600 welfare cases in Ontario, with 382,000 total recipients.

Welfare was created to help people through difficult times.  That’s noble. 

Welfare was not created to develop a lifestyle.  That’s enabling. 

Approximately $1200 per month is paid to a parent with one child (plus the child tax benefit which I understand is at least $200 to a non-working parent, tax credits, GST returns and other government incentives).   A run down on the province’s website that summarizes the benefits for those receiving social assistance can be found here, including dental and vision care as well as prescription coverage.

There are many individuals and families who maintain employment, yet do not receive the same benefits.

My struggle with the claim of attending school to maintain welfare is this: there is no internal drive to become a “better person.”  There fails to be an intrinsic value on bettering one’s self.  No drive to gain employment.  No drive to create a self sustaining life or contribute to the community.

Instead, a mindset has been developed that makes welfare a career of choice.

How has our system of social supports created a segment of our communities that are content to only receive without giving?  Even more disconcerting, to limit one’s potential?  If we allow our neighbours and fellow community members to limit themselves, aren’t we allowing ourselves to be hurt too?  We are in this together. 

I am not disgusted with the person who made the statement.  I am disgusted that we have allowed this to become a viable option.

Everyone has a story.  I hope that I can be a part of showing people that they have so much more potential in their life and I hope that you will join me to encourage people in your circle of influence.  To do otherwise is to allow mediocrity to become the standard, and leave a life’s story unwritten, unread, and untold.

It's a lifestyle. Live with purpose, on purpose.

I think it all began when I was a child living in the Old Atkinson house on the fourth concession.  It was a big white farmhouse that had been abandoned for a few years when my parents decided to move in.  The landlord kept the rent cheap and said that we could stay there, as long as we did the renos and refurbs.  At least, that’s how my memory plays it out.

There was a Christmas in the 1980’s that stands out.  We had three extra house guests.  Three men who were invited for Christmas from a London outreach centre.  I don’t recall their names, although one was called “Stretch.”  As gifts they were each given a bible, socks and a pack of cigarettes.  

I can’t really say why this stands out, but it is well embedded in my memory as a significant event.  Looking back, I think it spawned in me a desire to serve.  To serve those in need of material needs, basic needs, emotional needs, and need to know Jesus.

In 2008 I traveled on my first “missions trip.”  As a part of a team of 10, we went to Russia to do some construction work.  We spent the week working exceptionally fast at framing and dry walling an apartment for an orphanage.  We spent two weeks in Russia, tucked away between Mongolia and Kazakhstan, just above China.  There was a moment in time as I walked down the dirt road on a cold September morning that it struck me.  I was on the other side of the world.  Walking on a dirt road, forgotten, even unknown, by much of the world.  And in that moment, God knew where I was.

I took advantage of a day off to venture into the inner city slums with a group from the church that brought us over.  This area of town was known for heroin use.  There were needles on the children’s playground.  It was a world that I had never seen before.  I walked through the apartments with the Pastor and met with various residents.  They welcomed us in, knowing we were from the church.  One family was kind enough to put the bag of heroin in the small oven while we visited so it was, well, out of sight I suppose.

We met a man who was a sniper and daily relived the memories of the multiple lives he took in the name of service to his country.  He lived a dirty, tiny apartment with rotting floors that had deteriorated from leaking pipes.  But he saw the hope that was offered through Jesus.

In 2009 I traveled to Cuba with my son.  People were so caring, so loving towards us.  We blessed them with material goods for ministry, but left with far more in our heart and memory.  The efforts they took to make us feel welcome was so unnecessary, yet they poured our their love to us.

I climbed a homemade ladder to cut coconuts from a tree.  We helped paint a home.  We gave children animal puppets and watched their faces light up.  

We left with more that we came with.  We came home with a change in our hearts and attitudes.

Last weekend, we took a different sort of trip.  We loaded up the van and headed to Columbus, Ohio for the weekend.  The Ohio Central chapter of the Heaven’s Saints Motorcycle Ministry reach out to the homeless once a month with material supplies, food, friendship, and prayer.

I haven’t seen in our city what I witnessed in Columbus.  Men and women living in tents, some held together with duct tape.  Some living in plywood shacks, ones that they call home.  I expected to see a level of greed when it came to giving out blankets, clothing, and food.

But there was none of that.

These men and women were all polite, humble, and engaging.  They were a community, a sort of family.

Tattoo, Angel, Ron

We met a women, Angel, who lived on the streets and struggled with addiction.  She found salvation in Christ through the outreach ministry of the Heaven’s Saints who led her to a new understanding of Jesus.  Angel is now off the streets, living in an apartment, has a job, and has been clean from drugs.  She knows it’s still a struggle, but there was a genuine smile and glimmer in her eye that you just knew she was the real deal.  A success of sorts.

We met Dale, a homeless man who was cutting trees to make some money.  Last week he was cutting a tree when the chain saw kicked back and seriously injured his legs.  He received 181 stitches, a prescription for pain medication and sent back to his shack with a walker and a wheel chair.  Dale had no money for medication and was suffering excruciating pain.  The Heaven’s Saints came along side him to help carry his burden.  Together, we took him to the pharmacy to have his doctors prescription filled.  We prayed with him.  He later told us that he had been laying in his bed in the shack in the woods, praying that the Heaven’s Saints would arrive because he knew they would help out if possible.

We met Mike, a homeless man living in a tent by the railroad tracks under an overpass.  Mike lost his job last December.  He lost his home and was staying in hotels until last month when he was forced out to the street.  Broke.  Homeless.  Mike hasn’t lost hope though, he will keep looking for work.  We were able to bless him with a blanket, pants, batteries, propane, and food.

We met another man named Mike.  He was just a young guy with incredible art skills.  I looked through three of his books and papers that he had compiled.  Bob, who was ministering with us that day, has strong connections in the arts community and he was able to give suggestions and make connections for Mike.  We wish him the best.

Finally, we met Frank.  He moved to the US from Germany over 20 years ago.  Due to job loss and health problems, he has found himself homeless and living in a tent.  Frank has nerve problems in his back that his in undergoing surgery for in the coming month.  The procedure he is having costs roughly $1200 twice a year, and needs to be done repeatedly.  He has been able to get the cost covered for the first two years, but is then on his own.  Fortunately, he has a friend who recently landed a good job and is able to bring Frank on board to the company in two months, after his surgery.  I asked Frank if he would be looking to leave the tent community after he started his new job.  His response spoke volumes to the closeness of the community, the family.  “No.  Not for a while.  I want to stay and help the others out with their needs.”

Sharing another’s burdens.  Not taking them away, or carrying them for them.  Helping carry their burdens.

I believe that each of us who serves selflessly ends up receiving more than we give.  Whether we volunteer in social services working with young children, helping to mentor a young mother to build her skills, when we secretly give much needed money to a friend in need, or travel the world doing work on the ‘mission field.’ we are blessed with a satisfaction of doing the things that we know we should do.

Tattoo, Sam, Ron, Me

I continue to come back from these sorts of trips with a real sense of blessing.  And a better understanding that all of our belongings are just, well, just stuff.  We really need very little to get by and be happy.  Relationships are what sustains us, above our basic physical needs.

Relationships.  People who care about each other.  People who come alongside one another and help carry their burdens.  People who can sit and talk, and care, and pray.

Relationships.

What began in the 1980's in the old white farm house, has crept into the fabric of our family.  Missions.

Everyone has a story.  No matter how down and out any person may seem, everyone has a story.  Missions is a lifestyle, not an event.  Live your life on purpose, with a purpose.