Attitude of Gratitude

Thanksgiving. It mostly represents the beginning of the Christmas season for me. But I do love the food, the Macy's day parade and spending time with some of my favorite people. To help myself reflect I decided to write about things I am thankful for today, in list/picture form.

0) God. He is inherently a part of and the cause for all of these.

1) My husband. I'm thankful we're married. I'm also thankful he'll spend all Saturday cleaning with me, then yell at me for wearing my dirty socks on our clean floors. I'm thankful for the ways he challenges me and cares for me and loves me. I'm one lucky girl.
2) My family. Particularly my nephew, who is awesome. I'm thankful for my parents who are more adventurous than I am and show me you should always go for your dreams. And my sister and brother in law who love me deeply and give generously. You cannot get any better. 2b) My new family! I am beyond blessed with such fantastic in-laws, from super fun new sibs, to amazing grandparents and a lovely mother and father-in-law. God is good.
3) Friends, new and old. It is so good to know you have the best friends in the world, who despite thousands of miles, still respond to my ridiculous emails about Ryan Gosling, know what to say when I'm in spiritual crisis, and are in general amazing people.
And new friends who do crazy stuff with you, including braving harsh winds, sleeping in the same tent and playing Tiddlywinks.
4) Traveling. I love that I'm a plane ride away from new experiences and I was blessed to get to go to some sweet places this past year (including AZ, Cancun, and more places in TX)!

5) My house. Which means a place to cook, do crafts, sleep, spend time with friends and laze around. This rental will always be the first place I lived with my husband and I genuinely love it. And now, things that don't need explanation/pictures
6) Good books
7) That I have a job
8) My health
9) Shows like Parks & Rec and Modern Family
10) My mattress. I love it.
11) Pictures
12) Camping
13) Online banking
14) Cranberry Banana bread
15) New clothes
16) Laughter.
17) you!

Bottom line here, I'm crazy blessed.

Good Morning

Amen.

Pathways to joy in work

One of my classes this semester is Leadership and Management in Nursing (or something like that). As I studied a lecture on Motivation for my midterm I found a slide about Pathways to Joy in work. Our book covered Manion's work on personal pathways that individuals used to find joy in work.

Three of these pathways to joy (the love of work pathway, the achievement pathway and the recognition pathway) were pretty average. People find joy from loving their job, people find joy from praise, blah blah blah. But my favorite pathway was the connections pathway. It identifies that relationships were the primary source of joy for all participants in the study. The relationships were with colleagues, patients or families and involved caring for, talking with, relating to, or helping others. All these aspects exemplified the pathway of connections that leads to joy.

I've always known this. I've grown up hearing my dad say "relationships are everything" and have firmly believed in cultivating friendships over dedicating hours to working. Jesus talks about this too, after all He tells us to love one another. And to hear this verified by legitimate study in my textbook is pretty exciting. You can find joy in any job because of relationships. One more thing to look forward to in starting in the real world: finding more joy.

photo link: http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh253/SUZIEPEREZ/jumping-for-joy-6-1.jpg

avoiding

I'm obsessed with staying connected. I text more than I should. I check my e-mail more than I should. I'm on Twitter just to follow people I will never meet just because I like to know about them. My homepage is set to MSNBC so I stay current on news.

Yes, a tragedy just happened and I know so little about it. No, not because information about the earthquake in Haiti is not available, but because I avoid it. I don't even wait for the homepage to load before I click to check my e-mail or facebook just so I can stay ignorant and self-centered. Deep down I think it's because I would rather stay emotionally distant from sad situations or situations which may require action on my part. It's easier.

One problem with this - my God is not the God of "easier." He never claims to be.

This should stimulate me. I should stop avoiding, be willing to become burdened for a situation and be moved to action.

Blown Away

I am constantly blown away by God. The stuff He does for me, or in spite of me, is incredible.

This year, my junior year of college, I am a social coordinator for InterVarsity at the UA. Part of this job includes putting on events for the beginning of school. We had 50 and 75 people are our first two events. Which is pretty out of control, considering that half of them were new. And at a BBQ we hosted yesterday we gave out like 180 hamburgers. I met so many awesome new people that I decided I want to be friends with, whether or not they want to be my friend is another matter...haha

But yeah, God's awesome and I'm stoked for what he's going to do for the rest of the year!