Encourage Someone Today

If you’ve ever had a mean coach, teacher, or someone else in your life, you know what it’s like to either retaliate verbally back at them, or sullenly walk away, feeling like your defeated.  With all the every day living issues that we deal with, driving in bad traffic, getting bills on a weekly basis, bad television programming, social issues that we feel we can’t do anything about, it’s not very encouraging when someone or some people are mean to you.  The opposite of discouraging someone is encouraging someone. People have it tough today. Some worst than others. So we really have no place to put down other people or be mean to them.

I don’t think it’s too hard to find creative ways to encourage others. For a parent it’s telling your child or children that no matter what happens to them, they are loved and they have a lot to offer to others.  For the incidental meeting with a stranger, it can just simply be a smile or presenting yourself as being able to help. Others are going to need more than that to feel encouraged, but don’t settle for putting someone down, instead, reach out and pull them up.

Encourage someone today.

2010 — Happy New Year

Having just finished another decade, and with me being born in 1960, this means I get to celebrate my 50th birthday this year. I have mixed feelings about that and will write more on that later on. 2010 got me to thinking about the past 10 years.

Here are my remembrances:

10. Y2K. What was all the fuss about time becoming the year 2000? I remember going to work at midnight hoping something would be amiss so I could go home. Not a chance.  Nothing went wrong and I worked my eight hour shift.

9.  I became a dad in the last decade. My son Isaac was born January 24, 2000 and my daughter Anika was born in 2002.  I love being a dad and it’s probably the best thing for me that I was a dad just before I turned 40.

8.  9/11 changed a lot of things in the world. But really had little impact on me personally. I remember watching the second plane crash into one of the twin towers and it seemed so surreal. I think that was due to the six hours I sat watching the Columbine High School tragedy. It seemed to make 9/11 less impacting. I do remember the silence and weirdness of no planes flying for many hours after the tragedy.  I also remember praying for days for every large jet I saw in the sky that they would reach all their destinations.

7.  My family and I took two trips to the “Happiest Place on Earth — Disneyland.”  Once in 2003 and then again in 2007.  Very good times. First trip we drove, with Anika only one year old. That made for an interesting adventure.

6.  Buying a new house created a fun, challenging, disappointing, time. Fun to watch it being built, challenging to sell a house in order to buy the new home, pick out the things we wanted in it and then the disappointment of losing a great job and not being able to afford the home anymore and having to sell low.

5. The best movies I saw:  Disney’s Cars, The Incredibles, Up, Both National Treasure movies, both Night at the Museum movies, High School Musical Trilogy, The Bourne Trilogy. When you have kids, you watch what you watch.

4.  Reconnecting with over 500 friends via Facebook. Probably one of the best things that happened to me in 2009.

3.  Celebrating my Grandma Grogan’s 90th birthday. Very nice to spend time with relatives we hadn’t seen in way-too-many years.

2.  Celebrating my parents 50th wedding anniversary.  Too much fun, especially seeing relatives and some pretty old friends.

1. In the past decade I was greatly impacted by how church was done, is being done, and isn’t being done.  I spent hours studying church growth, creating community with those far from God, creating and administrating different ministries, including young adults, children’s ministries, and small groups, and today I have a way better understanding of what people who don’t attend church, need or want.  So much time and money spent on helping those already on their way to Heaven, developing leaders, when all Jesus really wants us to do is hang out with those who don’t have a relationship with Him. I pledge to do much better at spending time with those far from God. God has given me a great opportunity to do just that. I currently work full-time in the grocery department of a Walmart Super Store.  I meet and work with people every day who need to be connected to a loving, forgiving, life-changing God.  This last decade has challenged me to make a difference in other people’s lives.  Happy New Year 2010. May it be a good year for you and yours.