I'm branching out

Lately, I've started to read other people's blogs. I've been reading friends' blogs for months now. But sometimes I stumble on other people's blogs that I find interesting. Here are links to two that I've enjoyed lately:

Stuff Christians Like (hilarious!)

This Walk - a good read about a 25 year old single Christian woman from Texas who is also a foster mother

Life lessons from a dying man

Tonight I heard a piece on abc news that caught my attention. At Carnegie Mellon University's commencement, Randy Pausch, a computer science professor with terminal cancer, gave a five minute speech about life lessons. You can listen to his speech here. His life lessons don't seem to be coming from a Christian worldview, but we can learn something from them nonetheless. He said three things which I found particularly interesting.

1) It's not what you did in life but what you didn't do, that you will regret at the end of your life.

2) You need to find your passion. It won't be in things or money, but in people and your relationships with them.

3) I waited until I was 39 to get married, because it took me that long to find someone where her happiness was more important than mine.

It was his third point that really hit me: to put your spouse's interests ahead of your own. I hope I can be that unselfish some day. Most days I'm still a pretty selfish person. It's something I need to work on, with God's help.

So I'm wondering, if you had to share your life lessons with a captive audience, what would you say? It gives you something to think about.

Take time to smell the roses...

Sunday mornings are always interesting because I have to get the boys and myself to church before 10 am, looking at least half decent. =) Sometimes at least one of us is in our pajamas. (Not usually me). Hey, Sam's a baby. He can still get away with it! Anyway, we've gotten into somewhat of a routine, so usually it's not too bad. This morning we were in low gear, not running late in a stressed-out way, just going in slow motion. We pulled out of the driveway at 9:54. Luckily, church is just around the corner. Isaiah was being kind of pokey as we walked from the car into the church. Before I got a chance to tell him to hurry up, which I was about to do, he stopped on the sidewalk. "Mommy, what kind of flowers are those?" "Buttercups," I said, smiling. Thank goodness we have kids to help us remember to enjoy the beauty God has given us.

How fast are you?

If you're bored and looking for something do to, try this test to see how fast you type. I type 81 words per minute. (And I was trying really hard!) Guess I'm not as good at typing as I thought! I wonder what is considered good?

China and Myanmar

Every time I check the news I'm shocked by the developing stories on two major world catastrophies. First, the death toll from China's earthquake is expected to reach 50,000 soon. Yesterday I read that soldiers were sifting through rubble with their bare hands in hopes of finding survivors.

The other is the aftermath of the cyclone in Myanmar that is quickly becoming a humanitarian crisis. I just read that over 200,000 are feared dead there. My mind can't comprehend such numbers. And the junta is so afraid of the influence of the outside world, that at first they wouldn't accept any foreign aid. Now they've realized that they can use the aid to their own advantage and are not distributing it fairly.

Yet we go on in our daily lives with the sun shining brightly, enjoying the fresh blooms of spring while around the world catastrophic events have taken the lives of tens of thousands of people.

I feel guilty living out my normal day. But what can I do about those crises?

Don't get me wrong. I'm enjoying life, and I want to see my boys grow up, but on days like this where I'm reading about almost unfathomable catastrophies, I have to ask the Father, "How much longer will the earth go on this way? When will you come and put an end to the evil and suffering?"