A Christmas List
Although Christmas is just a few days away, I wanted to share an idea with you that might make next year’s Christmas season a little bit less stressful. While the focus of the Christmas season should be on preparing our hearts to receive Christ, there’s also an element of gifting. Gift giving is a wonderful and generous practice that allows us to show, in a material way, the internal feelings we have for one another. At its heart, gift giving is one person seeking to bring joy or help into the life of another. We give the gift of money to charities to ease the pains and sufferings of others. We give gifts to our spouses and children to meet some need or to bring them joy. We give gifts to our coworkers to thank them for their diligent work. Gift giving only becomes a negative when it takes our focus off of Christ and puts it on to materialism.
A perennial problem with gift giving is figuring out what to give a particular person. We all have those “hard to shop for” people, or even just people that we want to knock it out of the park for. Oftentimes, those people are our children, our siblings, or our parents. The more people that you have on this nebulous list, the easier it is to lose focus on preparing for Christmas.
Thankfully, Alison has a solution for you. Since last year, she’s put together a list of 20-30 prompts that she asks her siblings and I to fill out. The list covers all of the bases when it comes to gift giving. There are prompts for big gifts and small gifts, charitable gifts, homemade gifts, disposable gifts, and of course, those “must have gifts.”
Although she changes it each year, I wanted to share it with you as a way to help bring some clarity to your life. I’ll share it earlier next year, but for now, this list makes a great prompt for gift shopping. In fact, it might even make a great list for birthday presents. We hope it helps!
2015: The Year of the Gazelle
I absolutely love this time of year. The anticipation of Advent, the joy of sharing Christmas morning with my own little family, and a chance for all of us to breathe a little easier and take stock of our year. It’s been a big one in the Collins household and I hope that you’ve had a fun year as well.
Many of my posts this month have us looking towards 2015 and considering how we can do it even better in the New Year. Certainly I want us both to move beyond flippant resolutions and instead implement long-term strategic goals. More importantly, I want us to meet back up here on the blog next December and celebrate the fruits of the work that we’ve done this month.
I want to focus today on something that’s very near and dear to my heart, and that’s also something that I haven’t been the best at this year. Finances make our world move, that’s something that none of us would dispute. While money shouldn’t be our god, it is the means to provide food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and comfort to both us and our family. We’re all money managers and, as such, we have the duty to do it well.
Unlike other types of goals, we all have financial related goals, whether we acknowledge them or not. We want to go on vacation, buy a new computer, get our kids that outdoor swing set or get out of debt. For Alison and I, our #1 goal right now is getting out of debt.
Like other goals, we wisely recognize that we can’t do it alone. We knew that we needed to get some outside counsel to help us figure out the best way to reach this goal. We’ve got a big hole, and an ever growing shovel, but we know that if we aren’t good money managers, that money will disappear and not help us pay down debt. We turned to Dave Ramsey who has an extensive line-up of products, classes, and services to help us.
One of Dave’s teaching tools is what he calls “Gazelle Intensity.” The gazelle is the prey of the fastest animal on land, the cheetah. Yet, despite their frequent interactions, the gazelle escapes the majority of the time. It does so by outmaneuvering the cheetah. In the illustration, it’s reveled that if we want to get out of debt, we need to be the gazelle. The cheetah represents many different enemies of financial stability: immaturity, credit marketing, impatience, reckless spending, and whatever that “next big thing” is. If we want to be successful, we have to outmaneuver those wants and focus on the goal.
I don’t know what your financial goal is, but I do know that if you want to reach it, you’ll need to be disciplined and it will take time. Why not make next year the Year of the Gazelle?
What if, for just 1 year, you poured all of your focus into reaching your financial goal? You’d have to eat at home more, spend less, and maybe even postpone that vacation. It would be hard, that’s for sure. You’d not only face the battle of wants, you’d face the battle of attrition. January would be easy, but by September, you’d be fatigued.
Right there, in that scenario, is the secret to success. Yes, in the short term, it would be hard to save money to buy a new TV as opposed to putting it on your credit card. But, if you save your money and pay cash, it will only take you 12 months. If you put it on your credit card, you could be paying for it for 3 years!
The secret is realizing that, while more painful on the front end, you’ll spend less time overall dealing with the goal. If Alison and I pay off her student loans in 5 years, that will save us 15 years of paying on them on the back end!
It takes maturity, it takes discipline, and more than anything, it takes wisdom. It takes the wisdom to understand that the pain will be less if you just rip the bandaid off instead of a slow pull.
That’s my challenge to you for today. You know what financial goal you want to hit, so sit down, talk to your wife, and decide to make 2015 the Year of the Gazelle.
Turning Your Thoughts Back to God
We have a lot of mentally idle time. Folding laundry, cleaning the kitchen, running errands, and even doing work that requires low levels of mental resources, and we oftentimes fill those spaces with day dreams, list making, or anxiety. What if instead, we took those times and turned our thoughts back to God?
I think there’s a lot of benefit in using our downtime to thinking about the things of God. Too often we’re tempted to focus on the negative, and so spending our resources and energies on contemplating good things can help us have brighter days. The more time you spend thinking about the things of God, the happier you’ll be, the more energy you’ll have, and the less anxiety you’ll experience.
What kinds of things should you ponder while thinking about the things of God? Thinking about how generous God has been towards you, how amazing the Sacraments are, and the blessings He’s given you can be a tremendous boost to your day. You could also spend the time thinking about ways in which things seemed to work out poorly in the moment, but in hindsight you can see how they were for the best. Of course, you could also have a simple dialogue with God about your thoughts, ideas, and emotions.
I find that contemplating the mind of God helps me to remain grounded. There are many things that impact my attitude on a daily basis, and by keeping my perspective focused upwards, I’m able to remain better grounded. That means less time being impatient or frustrated, and more time being joyful and energized.
Spend less time focusing on the negative and more time focusing on the things of God. You’ll be glad you did.
Food Diaries Are A Pain
The tactic in weight management that I’ve found to be the most effective and also the most cumbersome is keeping a food diary. The concept is simple: record and monitor your intake. The data you record will help you to better understand the needs of your body, what foods should be cut out of your diet, and ultimately help you balance your calorie count in order to achieve your weight goal. While the concept is simple, the execution is not.
Keeping a food diary is tedious. We eat all of the time, and oftentimes there’s no nutritional information available. Even if it is available, you might have to do some digging to find it. There’s also the sticker shock of going out to eat and realizing that the meager sandwich you just ate was 85% of your daily calorie goal. Bummer.
I prefer to do everything digitally, so finding a food diary app was a problem for me. Thankfully many have a scanning feature that allow you to scan a barcode on the food packaging and the app will do the rest. The limitation of this feature is whether or not the food you just ate is in the system. Digital food diaries can take away the friction of recording intake, but there are still real challenges.
Perhaps the most difficult part of keeping a food diary is that they make us admit reality. Yes, I really ate those cookies. Yes, I really ate two lunches. Yes, I had too much to eat at dinner. Reality is uncomfortable, but that was likely the reason you started keeping a food diary in the first place.
Using a food diary is the single most effective tool in achieving weight loss. Take your time to select the method or app that’s right for you, and be disciplined enough to record your intake consistently. Make eating decisions based on your intake and, over time, harvest the benefits of success.
Hell Isn’t For Me
While I was in Drivers Ed, I learned a valuable lesson. Where your eyes go, the car goes. We’re playing the long game here on Earth. In the routine of our daily lives, thinking about where we’ll be in the life after this one can be easily overlooked. Yet, at the same time, our actions and choices within our daily routine point to where we’re oriented. I’ve never once been happy as a result of committing a sin, yet sometimes I find myself in a cycle of decisions leading me further away from the life that God has planned for me.
The design of the human mind is intriguing. Although intellectually we can grasp that sin is harmful and doesn’t lead to happiness, we still choose it on a regular basis. There are many theological explanations, but isn’t it interesting in and of itself that the human mind, without morals or guidance, will tend toward making decisions based on impulsive wants.
The challenge of the Christian life is to overcome this self-centeredness. The challenge is to respond with love when your wife is annoying you, to respond with love when you’re tired but your children need something from you, and to respond with love when another person deeply offends you.
Heaven is real, and so is Hell. When standing in the Confession line it’s easy to say where we want to end up. Yet, in the moment, when we’re out in the world confronted by temptation, our decision making process can become much more cloudy.
Perhaps the greatest irony is that in order for us to have true happiness, we have to reject things that present themselves as something good or beneficial for us. Sin always dresses itself in the robes of goodness, yet when unmasked its true destruction is revealed. By saying no to sin and denying ourself a passing pleasure, we choose to embrace and accept the lasting happiness that following God’s Will brings.
In the routine of our daily lives, we need to do things that keep us oriented to our destination of choice. Like our eyes in the car, if we look towards Hell, we’ll end up there. But if we keep our eyes fixed on the eternal good, on the fruits of Heaven, we’ll surely end up there, right where we belong.
Raising Wholesome Kids
My goal in raising Benedict is that he grow into a wholesome, mature man worthy of a great woman. The path to this ideal is filled with challenges, especially as he will face pressure from his peers and the temptations to make poor choices. I want him to preserve his honor, and the honor of those whom he associates with, so that he can present himself as a worthy gift to his wife should he be called to the married life.
There are so many messages being thrown at all of us today, that even I sometimes can find it difficult to wade through them to find the truth and I’m an adult. I know that Benedict and his peers will increasingly face more and more messages that are just wrong. As a sad result, kids will make bad choices based on those wrong messages and the consequences will be lasting.
In order to raise a wholesome child, parents have to do the difficult things. We have to put reasonable restrictions on them and help them to understand why those restrictions are there in the first place. We have to be parents, not friends with our kids. Even more importantly, we have to have difficult discussions on topics such as sexuality and drug use with our children before they get bad information from others. That may be uncomfortable, and it’ll have to happen sooner than we’d like, but it’s a fact of life.
The goal is for us to help our children mature into functioning, healthy adults who aren’t saddled with the regret and consequences of youthful indiscretions. It’s a true challenge, but a worthy pursuit nonetheless.
Raising wholesome kids has never been easy, the nature of the threats are simply changing and becoming more aggressive. Our job is to help Benedict grow into a well-adjusted, mature adult capable of making reasoned and logical choices. I’m also praying for the parents of Benedict’s future spouse, that they will be as successful as we are.
Drive Safely This Season
As the cool fall air moved into the region, I made a concerted effort to get Benedict outside more. We ran around in the yard, cleaned up our garden, and put away flower pots. He’s a determined little guy who loves his freedom, so we’d also walk the 50 yards or so of sidewalk in front of our house. Since I regularly take him on my walk with me (he rides in the stroller), he’s had plenty of opportunity to see cars drive by. During our walks on the sidewalk, he’d stop for every car, yell “HI!” and wave as they passed by. Many drivers looked and waved back, most did not.
Are we really so distracted that we miss a 3ft child waving at us as we drive by?
Driving is one of the most dangerous things that you and I do on a daily basis. Although we’ve grown complacent in our surroundings and confident in our abilities, the fact remains that driving is an activity that demands total focus. Even a momentary lapse of judgement could result in serious bodily injury or death. The complacency is what’s really getting to us. We’re too comfortable. We’re comfortable enough to text, to talk on the phone, and even to develop tunnel vision.
The result of this complacency and comfort is experienced by each of us every time we drive. Motorcyclists drive near the centerline, changing lanes without signaling, and rapidly accelerating and decelerating. Vans drive slower than expected, drift, and make sudden corrections. Motorists unfamiliar with a particular area drive erratically as they seek to balance finding their destination and not crashing. Drivers text while traveling at speed on highways, or even in dense congestion.
While this is partly a warning about the dangers of complacency while driving, it’s also a warning against tunnel vision. We often only look out the window to glare at someone whose driving habits displease us. We can’t be complacent, we can’t be comfortable, but we also can’t be solely focused on what’s ahead.
Drive safely, drive defensively, but also be aware enough of your surroundings that you can anticipate changing situations and keep your passengers safe. We need to bring safety and courtesy back to the road, and it begins when you and I get behind the wheel.
Everyone Craves Respect
The Golden Rule should be the gold standard in human relationships, but my experience tells me it seldom is. I think we’re all a bit confused about just what it means to be respectful of others. The fact remains, we all have within us a desire to be treated with respect, even when we disagree.
We live in a pluralistic society with a myriad of hot button issues. In the discussions, debates, and arguments over those issues, it can be easy to see how rarely the Golden Rule is utilized. Instead of approaching a discussion with calm collected reason and logic, we see both sides maliciously attack one another’s background, character, and intelligence.
In the marketplace, both as consumers and employees, we see companies and managers act disrespectfully towards people. Companies refuse to stand behind their product and managers fail to be open and honest with employees.
If we all agree that the Golden Rule is a great thing, then why don’t we follow it more uniformly?
The problem is that we’ve become very confused about how to apply respect in our interactions with one another. Respect doesn’t mean rubber stamping or rolling over for someone else’s viewpoint. Instead, respect insists that we see each other for who we really are, people with feelings. The Golden Rule asks that we share truth with people with whom we disagree, but without attacking them as people. It’s entirely possible to have an intellectual debate over an issue and to still be friends with your debate opponent. At their core, they’re still a human person worthy of dignity and respect.
If a company is disrespectful towards you, they’re unworthy of your business, so take your dollars elsewhere. If your employer is disrespectful, they’re unworthy of having you as an employee, so take your services elsewhere.
While we want everyone else to adhere to the Golden Rule, the only person that we can really force to change is ourselves. Although respect may not be reciprocated, set a good example. Be mindful of your interactions and treat others with the respect that they deserve.
My Own Biggest Obstacle
When your thirst for change exceeds the threshold of your objections, things start to happen. We all have a series of objections when it comes to making changes in our lives. We like things the way they are, or the cost to make this particular change is too high. While it’s convenient to place the blame for our lack of change on external factors, the truth is that we’re our own biggest obstacle.
In our quest to change everyone else, we forget that we have full sovereignty over ourselves. We have within our power the ability to control every aspect of our lives. We can choose which pains we hold on to, how active of a lifestyle we lead, what activities we spend our time on, and how we manage our relationships. The only thing that I need to improve my physical health is discipline and time. The only thing that I need to let go of pain is permission from myself. The only thing that I need to improve my intelligence is literature, which I can get free of charge at the library.
The biggest obstacle in my life is me.
Change is part physical pain, part mental block. If I choose to make reading a priority, I’m going to have to cut back on something else in my schedule that I like, such as Netflix. If I want to get my family out of debt, I’m going to have to cut back from some other area of my budget, like entertainment. If I want to break free of habitual venial sin, I’m going to have a few rough weeks of temptation and behavior correction. If I want to move past pains, I have to revisit uncomfortable memories in order to dismiss them.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle that we put up in our lives is the mental block. We should give our mind some serious credit as it holds a lot of sway in our decision making. The creative power that it possesses is often the last bit of weight that we need to tip the scale and get momentum moving in our favor. The mind tends to the negative, so it needs convincing.
One of the more common mental blocks that we give ourselves is, “You’ve tried this before and failed. Don’t bother again.” We need to recognize when our mind is limiting itself, it’s trying to save us. When we hear it tell us things like that we have to change the script. “You’ve tried this before and failed. Now you know what you need to change in your plan so you can succeed!"
External factors can make change and healing difficult, but far and away the biggest obstacle is the one that we set up before ourselves. Recognize that reality, and smash through those walls like the Kool-Aid man.
Ask God for the Big Things
Understanding God with the human mind is impossible. In order to help us bridge that gap into the impossible, we have to equate Him to something we can relate to. At various times and in different situations we may think of Him as our Dad, as a disciplinarian, or perhaps even as Santa Claus. The mistake that we make is that we pull God down to our level, instead of raising our minds to His. When we bring God down to our level, we miss out on the opportunity to truly experience His glory.
Time and time again, Scripture tells us to ask and we shall receive. Truly God hears and answers our prayers in all ways, shapes, and forms. Yet, too often we fail to be like King Solomon. When presented with an offer of anything, Solomon asked for the wisdom to lead his people. Wow! Now that’s a big ask. Not only is it a big ask, it’s the right ask. Solomon asked for a gift that he might use to serve others. He understood in some small way the capacity of God, and asked for a gift that only God could grant.
We need to be more generous in what we ask of God. While there’s certainly no limit to the number of prayers and requests we make to God, we should use those prayers to benefit others. Our lives are comfortable and easy compared to many others. This is a habit of the greatest saints in the Church: spending more time asking for graces for others than for themselves.
We also need to stop asking God for the trivial. As students, we asked for help for a test that we didn’t study for. Looking back, we asked the God who created us out of literally nothing, who built us out of two single cells, to help us circle a few right answers. We need to be more like Solomon, and ask God for the big things.
God has chosen to limit our ability to fully understand His existence, and at the same time, through the Church, has fully revealed Himself to us. In order to become the saints we were made to be, we need to stop trying to pull Him down to our level and instead let Him raise us to His. He’s capable of anything, let Him reveal His power to you.