10 Minutes

I'm a sucker for resolutions. I write them down, organize them, write out a twelve step program that will ensure success ... and that's it. I spend more time thinking of ways to improve myself then I actually spend adhering to the new habit. I am that statistic and running joke. I'm ok with that. At least I realize there are imrovements I can make.

However, this year I'm trying to fight the urge to make a list. As I write this, I already have things popping in my head. Spinning three times a week. Write 15 minutes a day. Stop playing with your hair. It's a sickness really, I'm always talking about what to do and I never do it. Even my husband even notes my obsessive Pinning habit and lack of finished projects.

So this year I'm going to focus not on making resolutions or plans, but to focuse on 10 minutes. Not planning months or years, but taking responsibility for make the healthiest, wisest, kindest, Godliest decisions in the next ten minutes. I can control the next couple weeks as much as I can control the weather, but I can control the decisions I make right now.

So with that thought, I will go eat more sugar cookies. January 1 is right around the corner after all....

Broke

When I was in third grade, my best friend was kidnapped, stabbed twice, and left to die in the woods. I remember my small eight year old mind sitting in the bathroom stale at school replying the words the teaching said over and over in my head. "They don't know where she is, but don't assume the worst." It was that moment that I realized something could be terribly wrong and I may never see my best friend again.

The events in Newton take me back to that time in my life. The wondering, the pain, the questions. It's something that stays with you your entire life, no matter how old you are when it happens. Even up to my wedding day, I thought about the time on the play ground where her and I talked about our weddings in a little girl way. No talk about boys, rather more about the pretty dresses and promising each other that we would be each others bridesmaids. My wedding day has come and gone, and I thought about my friend many times through that day, saddened by the thought she never got to experience love or have her first kiss. 

When you go through loosing a good friend at a young age, every exciting milestone is marked with sadness and almost guilt, knowing they never had the same privilege. Even at 8 I remember thinking I should have asked her to spend the night that evening and maybe it would have been someone else. Not that it would have been better, but in my young selfish mind, I would still have my friend.

So when I heard the news about Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut, my heart broke and broke and broke. I cried and got a headache from crying. I can't do anything but relate it to my frame of reference and realize the young lives that will forever have scars. They will go through life thinking of not one friend, but of multiple friends and even how a teacher died so that they could live. I pray with all my heart those tiny children and families find peace and comfort in Jesus as I did, because that's the only way to deal with the pain. 

There may be commotion around the politics, motives, policies, and so many other frivolous things. In my mind there is one thing that hurts the most, and it's that a little girl lost her best friend and was there to witness the entire event. My heart breaks, because in no fathomable hell should any child have to learn to cope with that. 

My prayer is that these children learn to heal and rely on God, because there is no other answer.