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Today’s gratitude list is a bit more lighthearted.

Ten Types of Small Animals I’m Thankful for (and Why)

  1. Hummingbirds: Talk about an amazing combination of loveliness, energy, diligence, and grace packed in a tiny little body.
  2. Elephant shrews: Speed, ingenuity, and sharp instincts plus what might be the cutest snout in the world.
  3. Chinchillas: Holding them and petting their luxurious fur should become a technique used by therapists.
  4. Sparrows: They remind me of the simple beauty and hidden value in every living being.
  5. Spiders: (Why am I adding one of my least favorite animals to this list??) They decrease the surplus bug population.
  6. Cardinals: Their song brings me cheer on a winter’s day like few other things can.
  7. Robins: They remind me be patient – winter will end and spring will come.
  8. Worms: They make the robins fat and beautiful…and they help us catch the best fish.
  9. Butterflies: Seeing them reminds me that there is a special beauty in admitting ones own fragile nature.
  10. Guinea pigs: For anyone who has every known one, no special reason is needed! 🙂

Which animals from my list are you also thankful for? Which animals, if any, would you add to this list? Feel free to comment!

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Our culture of consumerism has evolved so highly that most businesses and many average people barely give Thanksgiving a passing thought as they move right from Halloween to Christmas. It struck me this past week – when I heard yet another ad for a then-to-be-aired Christmas special on TV (??) – how sad that is.

After all, while I believe that gratitude should be a daily choice and a year-long attitude to which we aspire, at least those who pause to count their blessings and offer a thought on that one day a year are moving in the right direction of refocusing amid life’s craziness.

And life feels crazier than ever.

I thought things would calm down after Election Day ended and all of the political ads stopped entering my home by mail and by screen.

The ads may have stopped, but the angst and anger haven’t missed a beat. 

I thought the past week would be a normal one. But what started as “normal” for many across the country started as hellish for many in California.

The shooter may have stopped, but the fearful ripple effect from the boulder he dropped in that pond has spread from sea to shining sea.

I got to thinking: many people celebrate a season of advent to prepare their hearts and minds for Christmas, so why not celebrate a shorter, similar season leading up to Thanksgiving, as a way to prime the pump of observation?

After all, while it is important to be aware of grim realities, a thankful heart is far more likely to seek and hold hope than a fearful heart is. And a heart that looks for the good and the peaceful will help to usher the good and the peaceful into the swirling chaos.

So, starting with this post, I’m going to write a new post every day until Thanksgiving. (The following ones will generally be much shorter than this one!) In each of these Thanksgiving Advent posts, I’m going to list ten to twelve reasons why I am thankful for some thing or topic, or ten to twelve reasons I would say thank you to a person or a group of people.

Today, in honor of the additional holiday, I will start with:

Ten “Thank Yous” to Our Veterans

  1. Thank you for sticking with it during basic training in those moments when it would have been so easy to give up.
  2. Thank you for putting up with MREs and other barely edible rations…and perhaps for pressing on with no food at all…while I have been safe at home, warm and well-fed.
  3. Thank you for working some gruelingly long-shifts and going without (preferred) leave days.
  4. Thank you for taking the night watch in foreign countries so that I could sleep snugly and dreamlessly in my own soft bed.
  5. Thank you for taking orders from some commanders who were power-hungry jerks because you believed duty and love of country are far greater than any leader’s ego.
  6. Thank you for putting yourself in harm’s way to spare the lives of your compatriots, your fellow countrymen, and even the innocent citizens of other countries.
  7. Thank you for enduring enormous mental and emotional stress – things that often lead to the deepest wounds – so that I might have peace of mind.
  8. Thank you for waking up at sunrise or long before – whenever the bugle sounded, the siren wailed, or the alarm rang – to go about vital tasks that no one on the outside will ever know you have done for us.
  9. Thank you for taking bullets, shrapnel, and every other physical infliction or pain you’ve ever experienced…to make those around you safer for one more day. 
  10. Thank you for doing all this and more – and going for days, weeks, months, or years without being thanked for it. It was not in vain.

Will you agree to join me in this shorter advent journey by doing one or more of the following?

  • Read each new post and stop to ponder what you personally have to feel grateful for in relation to that day’s topic?
  • Leave a comment for myself and other readers to consider – things on that day’s list that are most important to you or other things you’d add to that day’s list?
  • Carry those thoughts of thankfulness and goodness with you throughout your day, inviting them to radiate from you to improve your living and working environments?
  • Share (links to) posts you feel are timely with your friends via social media, email, text, or word-of-mouth?

Thank YOU! 🙂

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So what about the foundation of a person’s life and how it serves to guide his or her identity?

In a recent writing assignment, a student of mine observed that when a political leader tries to lead people without possessing certain fundamental moral qualities such as honesty and others-centered responsibility, that leader’s life is a little bit like a shirt with buttons in mismatched button holes, all the way from the bottom of the shirt to the top.  

It was an apt thought as I further pondered this topic of identity and the foundation/applied side of it. Thinking about not only political leaders – but all types of people in general – a life without a solid moral compass is a little like a house with a slanted foundation or a dress shirt with an askew buttoning job. 

The main difference, perhaps, is that many political leaders and other celebrities live lives that are far more often on wide public display. The rest of us generally display our flaws and weaknesses to a considerably smaller crowd.

Having a solid foundation gives us a level place on which to build all of the other applications of our identity: the choices we will make; the things we will decide to invest money, time, and energy into; the direction we will veer at each fork in life’s road. But if our shirt gets buttoned in the wrong hole from the very beginning, we are far more likely to get off on the wrong foot or set off in the wrong direction – and stay there for most of our subsequent days.

And yet…analogies are rarely perfect…

In this case, though some things can’t be undone, learning how to lay a new foundation and rebutton the shirt correctly some years down the road gives us a chance to start fresh. In other words, by some miraculous grace and much discipline, the mind can be transformed. Renewed.

…Thank God for that.

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How would you answer that question? Would you simply rattle off your name, date of birth, address, etc. to the person who needed to know?

Or would you automatically list your identity in terms of relationships (“I’m a spouse, sibling, child, parent, grandparent, friend, etc.”) Or perhaps turn to your career field or current job for an easy answer?

If you were to, instead, answer according to, say, some aspect of your personality or a skill, talent, or hobby that’s prominent in your life, would that provide a clearer picture of you as a person?

When someone “steals” our identity, what does that mean? Supposedly they “become” us, at least in terms of having access to our money and credit, buying things in our name and making off with what we have worked hard to earn. 

But are any of these things, in the truest sense, a real picture of our identity? 

I firmly believe that our identity goes far beyond what can be listed on a small plastic card or even in a social media profile. Instead, in the deepest sense, it is the very origin of our soul mixed with the elements of our material heart, mind, and body while we walk the earth AND it is, springing from that origin, the foundation upon which the rest of our life (our actions, decisions, and sense of personal direction) is built. 

While reflecting quietly on the depths of my own identity this weekend, I wrote a poem that demonstrates what the first part of the above statement means in my life at its most important level. Please allow me to share it with you here. 

Identity 101

I come from a God

Who has never produced a single flaw,

Who knits supremely with needles finer than fishbones,

Who will always see me as His priceless handiwork.

I turn from a God

Who was weeping at my absence long before I left,

Who wants only my best – while I chase slippery perfection,

Who will always do His utmost to show me His door stands wide open.

I pray to a God

Who created time for our finite minds alone,

Who holds its limited, counted sand grains in His capable hands,

Who will always hear my cry – no matter its volume.

I cling to a God

Who swaddled me in arms supremely meek,

Who offers me unlimited time in the spot at His side,

Who will always grant a feast for the soul in the touch of His hand.

I learn from a God

Who was planning my courses with precision long before I breathed,

Who scaffolds the lessons in all my days – reviewing as necessary,

Who will always give the wisdom I need to complete each application.

I love from a God

Who has modeled the only way to care completely,

Who restores a broken world through clay vessels like me,

Who will always know what we were is what we are and what we will be.


Next week, I’ll reflect a bit further on the second part, about the foundation.

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Cold weather is teasing us…and my car’s tire pressure sensors apparently don’t like to be teased. While I struggled to add air today at a gas station I don’t usually frequent, a kind stranger informed me that Firestone Tires gives a complementary pressure reading and air refill when needed.

I made a beeline for the nearest location. And I came back from my lunch break to inform several (grateful) co-workers who had no idea about the availability of that simple but wonderful service. I felt a little sheepish in doing so, having to admit in the process that I’d learned the hard way after wrestling with an air pump that had a less-than-familiar nozzle type, spending far more time than I would have liked struggling on my own — when that free service was just down the street.

Recently, I’ve been reading a lot about how our personal growth (spiritual and otherwise) – if it is to be called true growth – often involves things getting harder before they can get easier, darker before they can get lighter, and more fragmented before they can become fully mended.

In addition, a person will rarely be set free from an addiction or overcome a long-time area of weakness unless they personally recognize their need for such freedom and decide that they will do whatever it takes (or give up whatever they must) in order to find that desired freedom.

What we most often crave and need is love. God’s love.

The only kind of truth-bound love that will really set us free.

The only kind of love that will keep us going on the journey toward meaningful growth.

The only kind of love that struggles with us until we stop struggling and cooperate with it, trust it, to find what we’ve been looking for all along – the only One who can meet our every need.

And that – far and away above the kindness of Firestone – is something to tell others about.

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I’ve left Mr. Whiskers in the care of some kind neighbors for the weekend while I attend the annual MIDTESOL conference (for English language educators) in another state. And as I sit in session after session of informative presentations today, I’m struck by the common thread between both animals and all kinds of people: this desire to be both free and loved – and how the two are inter-related.

It may seem like an elementary thing, but I have to stop and remind myself that we can never truly believe we are free (and thus feel and act like it) until we understand that we can be or are truly loved… AND when we are truly loved and we know it, trusting that love (or learning to trust it again when the time is right) will lead us to live all the more freely in a good way.

It will lead to any or all of the following: more contentment, greater clarity, decreased fear, resounding (positive) impact, indescribable peace. And I think those are the marks of true freedom…much more than just the wide bounds to do whatever one feels like doing.

I see this not only on a basic level in the behavior of my guinea pig but also in the way at-risk folks I quietly advocate for open up to a sense of community when they know they are safe with me and in the way my students overcome their anxiety to develop more fluency whey they see they will not be punished for their honest, learning-driven errors.

Hard to believe I’ve had Mr. Whiskers for over a year and a half now. And equally hard to believe how far he’s come in expressing himself more freely and learning to trust again after being treated poorly by his previous owners.

One day last weekend, he curled up in a ball in the sunlight and slept like a rock while I worked busily very nearby.

And the next day, while I played a certain song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxO5rLV9pWU), when I leaned close, I could hear him squeaking along softly and sweetly with the music.

Fitting…and, oh, so true.

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It’s that time of year again for those of us who live in certain climate zones: the season of heavy dew that can border on frost and the time when early morning drives may require use of defrost for a moment, to keep that film of mist on the inside of the windshield from temporarily blocking our view of the road.

While I thought about that this morning, I began to imagine that mist as a representation of all that holds us back and burdens us in life. For the person who only has him/herself to rely upon, internal angst over the areas where we feel afraid or inadequate can certainly and understandably be daunting. But if a person believes that Providence will provide needed strength, protection, and life-foundation, what’s there to truly worry over or be lacking in? 

In this society of ours, it seems: a great many things, areas, reasons.

That’s because we dwell in a world where imperfection, fear, selfishness, and pain temporarily have the upper hand. And while we live here, we will always have to wrestle, to grow and learn repeatedly how to lean if we want to find and maintain a true sense of security.

And finding that true sense of security means the foundation of my soul-house must be on the rock of God’s faithfulness. And the framework of my soul-house must be nailed together with the iron of His unchanging truth.

If that’s the case, the windy days will certainly come, and hurricanes are bound to hit in their season, but though a window may crack or some shingles come loose, the soul-house will still be left standing in the end. In other words, the temporary circumstances that lead me to question my identity and sense of security will eventually clear away, repairs will be made, and peace will flow from the center of the soul-house again.

Through all of these musings, I ultimately came to this conclusive prayer: “Blown upon by the security of my Father’s-child identity, may my morning-mist insecurities evaporate day by day.”

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Last week, students in my Business English course were required to come to my office for one-on-one conferences. Since it was just the second week of the semester and nearly all of them only recently arrived in the States, this was my first time to really talk with most of them extensively. To a person, I was struck by how sweet and thoughtful they are…and by how unique each of them is.

I thought I would be worn out by the long day of intensive communication, but it didn’t drain me nearly as much as I’d expected. At first I thought this was because we’d found lots of areas for connection: similar hobbies or interests, places we had both traveled to or places we both dreamed of visiting, special needs or questions they had that I felt very comfortable in discussing…

Later, however, I realized it was more than that. There came a moment in each meeting when I looked into a student’s eyes and the beauty – the gift – of their most basic being hit me. 

I’d like to call this a “heartbeat moment”: the instant (whether we grasp it consciously or not) when we look at a person near us and we acknowledge that they are a person, that they are living, breathing, feeling, and deserving of basic respect and in need of love.

I reflected further on those encounters and smiled at the thought of how meaningful our next class session will likely feel for me. It may not be that much different for the students, but when I look out at their faces, I will see individual marvels with individual stories that I now know more of.

This thought also comes with a challenge: to keep that heartbeat moment alive through the term and remember the humanity of these students when making various planning and grading decisions later. And it comes with a jolt of responsibility: to keep tender eyes open so that I am primed for more “heartbeat moments” with those I encounter daily – especially those I am more likely to overlook when life gets busy and distractions (and prejudices) might cloud my heart vision.

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This Labor Day, I pause to reflect for a few moments. And if I’m honest, I will confess that I struggle to maintain a balance between two extremes: working my heart to the bone to try please those I work for or with versus not really caring about work and wanting to somehow escape its responsibilities.

The first extreme springs from a fear that the work I’ve done and all the work I’ve yet to do will somehow never really be good enough. The second has roots in the over-exhaustion that comes when I find myself trying to recover from the backlash of the first.

And somehow, I have a feeling I’m not the only one out there who has found him/herself in this boat, caught in this cycle.

So my mind floats to those old, wise words telling me not to worry, not to fear. “Look at the birds and the flowers – they don’t worry and all is provided for them…” And yet, I see members of the natural world also doing their “work” and receiving the gifts provided for them, gathering and storing for the winter ahead. Noticing one of my bushy-tailed little neighbors yesterday inspired me to write this poem:

Instincts sharp

and shiny

eyes vigilant

enough to

steer clear

of my

careening tires–

even though

that mouthful

surely outweighs

your head.

Bounding gracefully

over blades,

launching expertly

onto bark…

I instinctively

want to

hear if

you fear

the knowns–

and unknowns–

of winter?

Then I ask myself – what’s the difference between worry and fear? And how are humans different than animals with our given ability to make choices — choices that include one to trust the Creator when fear or worry (or both) would threaten to drain the joy from work that we should be reaping along with a salary (as Solomon suggested in Ecclesiastes 3:12-13)?

My head tells me that the contented and peaceful trusting-middle is the place where I should dwell, and my heart cries with the need to comply. But every day, as I face the winter of the world, I, the human, must make a very real choice: to be a little bit more like the lily, the sparrow, the squirrel.

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While reflecting a lot recently on the life of an ancient prophet named Elijah, I found I could identify with him closely – a nearly-impossible success finally achieved…but coming down off the “high” to find an exhausted body and soul in a desert (of sorts). 

After reading Psalm 9:9-10 and chewing more on the aforementioned thoughts, I crafted the following short poem. If you or someone you care about is going through a trying or dry time right now, I hope the words might bring some comfort to your heart, and that you might find (or rediscover) the water that will truly fill you up again.

See how a river, mighty once, now runs: a fragile stream instead,

Enough to feed a single tree — to shade my drooping, sun-brunt head,

Inviting, careless: death, sleep, end — this sandy shelf becomes a bed.

Now comes a hand to pierce my dreams, a voice to rouse my weary soul,

Coals near my face releasing smoke, burned for the bread to make me whole, 

And water sweet to quench this thirst, to make both gut and spirit full.

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