Give

Hello 2008. Happy New Year. I am pumped about the new year. 2007 was fantastic. It had ups and downs, bumps and bruises and we all survived and learned from it. No children were maimed or killed off so they are equally grateful. :)

Instead of focusing on resolutions this year I am going to focus on a word. Of course I have the normal resolutions that everyone does. Work out, eat better, get more organized. Those I am working on as more of a lifestyle change instead of changing it all at once and then stopping because it got overwhelming.

I have pondered many words over the past few weeks and I think I have settled on the word of the year. GIVE. It encompasses many things of course and I'm going to narrow it down into bite size chunks, especially for the kids, but it fits. I really thought about kindness being the word, but I found that in practice runs of my word that I was in fact kinder to everyone when I was in the spirit of giving. I can give in kindness and it serves both my words that I had pondered.

I am going to talk to the big kids about little things. Giving more random acts of kindness type things. Instead of stopping at Sonic for a drink treat, why don't we go to HEB and grab a $10 dollar gift card and stick it on a random persons vehicle. Or why don't we pick up the tab of the person behind us in the drive through line (whatever drive thru that may be....however, I will draw the line at walgreens pharmacy). Give a kind word to someone who looks like they need it. Give some space to the stressed out person checking out in front of you who has 11 items in the express lane. Give 10 min to read to your little brother or write a nice note to a family member. Things that take hardly any of our time, but make a impact when we take the time. There has been a quote that stuck with me for a long time now and I try to keep it in mind. It says something to the effect of "their burden may be much larger than yours". We never know when the person we're irritated at may have a burden so much larger than ours. And in the event they do have a really large burden sitting on their shoulders I really don't want to be the person that adds to it.

We are very blessed. We have the same struggles many do; our overhead is pretty large for this family and for our business, we are always pressed for time, the laundry is never caught up, and the children think we secretly hide their favorite things in the middle of the night when they really forgot to put them in their place, but when we look at the big picture we are blessed. So I want our family to focus on being a small blessing to the rest of the world in little bite size chunks. And after we're able to do that, move onto bigger bites.

So here's to baby bites and being better at giving. :)