Christmas hamper, a family in need

A Christmas hamper - a collective collection for a family or individual in need during the Christmas season to help carry them through. As noted in a previous post (see here), my family has been working with little leading up to this holiday season. With the kids getting older but yet still very young, it became a point of figuring out how to help them understand the balancing act of living a simple lifestyle as a choice versus living frugally due to circumstances of life. This will be the second holiday season in which the kids will be experiencing this. And here is where the blessing comes in. We have been blessed to be living in a community that cares and loves each other in a very neighborly fashion, where neighbors care for and are concerned for the wellbeing of other families. In essence, they believe a neighborhood is more than just a place to live but a village of families supporting each other.

This community of families, after finding out that my family will be making this hard choice once again this holiday season, decided to band together and do a Christmas hamper drive for us. They wanted the kids to be able to have gifts under the tree. They wanted us to have enough resources to have a family Christmas dinner. They wanted us to be able to spend time as a couple and have a date night. This is a community of families and neighbors that decided on their own that they wanted to bless us in this season of blessing. They wanted us to be able to experience a normalcy that was lost due to the circumstances of life.

I am very thankful for this community. I am very humbled by this gift and this help. Although we were pushed to making these difficult choices in life, we weren't pushed over the edge. Yet this community didn't want to see us over the edge before they helped, they wanted to be there while it was rough and wanted to walk alongside us to help us get back on our feet. I was humbled. For those of us that have had better days, we may be used to helping others. We too are used to being the ones to help give a hand to those in need. And often times, we don't realize it when we ourselves need help too. I was humbled by this experience and this quote from one of the organizers of the hamper.

"We can never be too proud to accept help. All of us need help at one time or another. Sometimes it is for us to help and sometimes it is for us to receive help. We have to be gracious in accepting help. What comes around will eventually go around. You may need a lift this year, but next year when things are better you will be able to give someone else a lift."

This sums up the holiday and Christmas spirit quite well. We have been blessed and gifted with so much in life and we are responsible to use what we have to bless others. And none of us are so above that we can't use a little help here and there in life.

In entering into the Christmas time, this humbling experience has helped me reflect on life. Reflect on the greater gift that was given to us, the gift of love, blessing and grace that came from God in the form of His Son Jesus. We were in trouble, and although not necessarily looking for or asking for help, He initiated and offered. And we can only accept humbly and graciously this gift given to us and be thankful.

I am thankful for this community in which I live. I am thankful for those who have rallied around my family to support us through this season. And I am ultimately thankful for the hope that God gave us and continually reminds us of in the events, remembrance and celebration of Christmas.

So step back a little. If you have extra, use it to bless someone else. And if you are in need, be willing to receive help. It is there.

 

Entering into the holiday season with little

A few months back, I wrote about a mom detailing her emotional pain of not being able to give to her daughter the things the little one has asked for due to the financial situation the family was experiencing at the moment (Read it HERE.) Little did I know that my family would be in a similar situation come this Christmas season. Over the course of this year, my wife and I have experienced a number of job changes and job loss and with this in mind, we are in a season of financial constraint, with neither of us officially working for a pay cheque.

For sure, there could be worse situations in life. And to be honest, despite the tightness of finance, we are still relatively positive in being able to find something before our finances become critical and run dry. And I am fully aware of families in situations that are worse off than we are. And here is the reflection that I have, we take so much for granted but life is not something we can take for granted.

In being placed in this relatively uncomfortable position (read about my thought of being in a state of discomfort HERE) of constraint during a season characterized by consumerism and entertainment, it is in itself a blessing and a curse. It's a curse in the fact that you feel you are not able to enjoy the holidays as much as people that are less constrained in their lifestyle. But it's a blessing in the fact that you are essentially sidelined from the consumeristic nature of the holiday season and are instead forced to focus on what the holiday is truly about.

Holidays for us now, with the material gifting and shopping taken away, along with some of the paid experiences being priced out of range, has become an intentional time of relationship and quiet reflection. When you are not able to compensate relationships with material, you are challenged to gift the gift of time and presence, a gift in its truest sense: priceless. You are challenged to reflect on what matters in your life, to reflect over the past year's experiences, relationships, and where life is heading in general.

For me, it truly is becoming a time of reflection. This is probably one of the first Christmases that I don't have to work the various Christmas services and events at my local church. The idea of the holidays and the Christmas season takes on a more pure meaning. It has become a time to reflect on the gift that was once given to us 2000 years ago in the form of a babe named Jesus. A gift of love and peace, a gift of salvation and reconciliation, a gift to which no other material gift can compare. And at the same time, in acknowledging this gift from God, I have come to challenge myself in reflecting how I have been a gift to other people.

Some of the questions that I have been asking myself recently:

1. Have I been present for my kids and family? In a fashion where I am willing to sacrifice and gift myself for them?


2. Have I been a gift for my friends, neighbors and acquaintances? How have I been serving them out of love with no expectations of gain or recognition?

We have been gifted so much in life but often times we don't realize how much we have been blessed until we truly are put in a position of little. And my challenge for all of us, including myself, is this:

Even with what little we have, or for some that have plenty, be willing to serve and be a gift to those around you this season in the measure that has been given to us by God.

This is what the Christmas spirit is about, whether we have much or little, we can give the gift of love.

 

Living in a state of discomfort

Everyone wants to live life comfortably. There's a whole industry and marketing on how to make life more comfortable. The idea of comfort, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, but there's a danger with comfort that's often overlooked.

Comfort gives a picture of stability and calmness. But at the same time, this stability and calmness comes with a price. A price in which uncertainty and change doesn't have a place within the framework of comfort. And here is the Achilles' Heel of comfort, it is the inability to change, move and to grow organically in life. Comfort ends up being a sanctuary built and created by ourselves against the tide of the world around us. It is a place in which we are able to find stability and the knowledge of knowing what we know is enough and that we can rest comfortably in what we know.

So then, why is being comfortable negative? It isn't in and of itself, but if ever need to navigate change in life, and personal growth in and of itself is a process of continual change, it will rock the stability and comfort level in your life.

Most people and families operate on a level of certainty. We generally call them routines of life or patterns of life. However, the flipside to this is generally known as chaos and a breakdown of structure. I'm not advocating that living in a state of chaos and lack of structure is a good thing, that in itself is very counter productive due to the nature of not navigating with any intentionality or purpose or direction.

Rather I am looking at that in between place of life. The balance of being fully comfortable and fully basking in chaos. This is a very unique place. It's a place in which you haven't fully abandoned comfort and stability but you have jumped off the cliff into the storm of chaos. And here is the unique place where growth and change happens.

It is in the state of discomfort and intentionality that we are able to push toward growth and change. This isn't just within us personally but can be extended toward businesses, organizations and even our own family. In order to move forward and change organically, we have to be willing to step out of our comfort zone. We need to be willing to embrace a level of discomfort and chaos in life. We need a bit of the unknown. And it is within this unknown and discomfort that we find who we are, where we are going and who we can depend on.

It is a unique position in life. It is a posture of allowing what you have built to be destroyed and rebuilt. It is a gamble that the outcome will be better than what you had before. But without this, you will only continue being where you were and who you were before. There would be no change, no growth.

Some of this growth will demand us to give up something or let go of something. And it'll be alright. You're learning to move beyond to something greater.

So the thought and challenge I want to leave with you today is this:

Are you so comfortable and stable that you have ceased to grow and improve? And how are you maneuvering your life so that you can keep growing, improving and changing?

 

Using Microsoft OneNote as a Family

I have been a longtime user of Microsoft OneNote since its early days with the very first version released in 2003. I have always found OneNote to be powerful and quite flexible but it's often highly misunderstood and somewhat overwhelming of an experience for new users. It's one of those productivity programs that Microsoft has had in their arsenal of tools that was created more for themselves and for fans. But this is a program that can revolutionize your life and your family's digital organization.

To be honest, Microsoft OneNote is not the only program of its kind but at the same time it's relatively unique. Its closest competitor would probably be Evernote, but Evernote was never created with as flexible nor as powerful of a framework nor is it as feature rich. Evernote was created and catered to a very specific need of writing and jotting down notes, ideas, lists and having it all accessible and searchable. It does a very admirable job. I have used it myself, until recently. (You can read about it here.)

I have found OneNote to be more than just a place to collect thoughts, notes and lists. Yes, it does all those things and does it pretty good. Especially considering that they allow for graphics, sounds and videos to be attached. Its power lies in its flexibility for the user to mold and create a system as they see fit. It's like a blank notebook or binder or even a scrapbook. It's a blank slate for which tools are provided to use as you will.

This idea of OneNote as a digital blank slate is what makes the learning curve so steep and so overwhelming for some users. But I'm here to guide you through some the ways that I have used it with my family to help us organize and be at the top of our communication and information game.

Recipes. Everyone probably has some way to keep family recipes together, recipes that you find off the internet, or recipes that you begged from your friends and associates. TheWife and I used to have a shoe box in which we kept our collection of recipes. It had no organization nor system of cataloging. It was just in the box. And it was hard to find what we needed. It took time, but we eventually digitized all these recipes and created a collection within OneNote that is indexed and searchable. This made it so much easier in finding that dessert or that roast that we want to make. Or even that bread recipe that we use regularly for our church ministry. Having it digitized in OneNote organized the collection of recipes and most importantly, made it digitally portable to all of our devices. We can simply pull up the recipe we need from anywhere that we have WiFi or data connection. We can email off these recipes to friends and families when they ask for it. It is just that simple. Cooking has never been more simplified. It's just so much easier to have a tablet like the iPad or Microsoft Surface on and opened to the recipe when you need it.

Lists. Man, this is one of the earliest functions that we used as a family and one of the ones that we showed off to families and friends most often. List making is nothing new or revolutionary. But OneNote's ability to sync between devices in real time makes this so much cooler. I can be at the grocery store and checking off the list (yes, it has actual checkable check boxes), and theWife can be at home adding to the list. It would just pop up for me and she will know what items I have already gotten. And to top it off, she can make notes on the page and I would be able to get it almost instantaneously. Additionally, sometimes certain things you are buying just can't be described in words. Things like these are perfect to have a picture attached as an item on the list. There is no error of grabbing the wrong thing, cause someone needed a particular brand and such. Lists are just this simple with OneNote and powerfully expanded. We use lists for shopping, trip packing, to do's, etc.

Projects and Thoughts. OneNote is a scrapbook at its heart. We have used OneNote as a place for collecting our research on parenting skills and techniques, especially in relation to our son's needs (read about it here). We have used it for building our home renovation, improvement and maintenance planning. We have used it for storing ideas, prices, needs and priorities. We have used it collecting and storing random information. It has been a place for general planning of life, events, trips, ideas, etc. Essentially, OneNote is a place where you can dump your family life.

OneNote has been indispensable for theWife and I in all these years of relationship. From our initial wedding planning, to when we moved several times, to learning to be parents, to our personal and family projects, and even to the most basic shopping list, it has been a place where we gather information that is important to us. It's a system that's always evolving. It's a notebook that's constantly being reorganized and restructured as the need of our family changes. It's also been a place to can look back and see how far we have come and some of the memories that were made.

I'm not sure what system or tools your family uses to organize life and to get all the information together. But I would recommend that you take a deep look at Microsoft OneNote as a starting point for organizing the crazy life any family may have. If we want the time to do what matters most, if we want to experience life to its fullest, we all need a system to help us get there. For my family, OneNote is one of those tools. And I hope it may be yours too.