bekahcubed

Categories Following Christ

Litany for Life

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Every finished venture, and every new adventure begun, calls for a time of reflection, of preparation, of prioritization. As I have just completed my internship and am returning to graduate school, this time for my first semester as a teaching assistant, I have been reflecting, preparing, setting things in order.

I have set a few SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achieveable, Relevant, Timely) goals for myself–some more frivolous than others. But beyond that, I have spent some time reflecting and praying over my next step, using a little tool the Navigators sent me at the beginning of the year. The tool is called “PREP for a New Year” and is intended as a sort of New Year’s reflection. The “PREP” stands for Praise, Reflect, Evaluate, and Pray and Plan.

When I got to the “Pray and Plan” segment, I found myself crying out to God that this year would be different than the last. My internship experience was great, but I felt like it was one of the few things that was great about the past 7 months. I experienced great professional and educational growth–but my growth in other areas has been stunted or non-existant.

When I look at what I REALLY want in life, apart from my professional goals, very little has been accomplished in 2009. I have not grown in my relationship with God like I would have liked. I have not grown in relationship with the body as I would have liked. I have not lived with the lost as I would have liked.

My life vision is to glorify God by growing in daily relationship with Him, being conformed to the image of Christ; by growing in relationship with others, taking time to live life together; and by growing personally, always learning and practicing what I’ve learned. Yet little I’ve done in the past seven months has moved me towards that vision.

So I was crying out, asking God for priorities for this upcoming semester, begging that it be more than the previous semester–and God directed me to three simple words. Listen. Love. Learn.

With a hundred things jockeying for my time, my attention, my heart. Listen. Love. Learn. Listen for the voice of God; Love Him with all that is within me; Learn to do His will.

Faced with a deep discontent with the status of my friendships. Listen. Love. Learn. Listen to what others are saying; Love them as Christ loved me; Learn how to serve them.

It goes against my instincts, against my fallen nature. I prefer to talk, to be proud, to teach. But God would have me Listen, Love, Learn.

It would have been easier if God had given me good SMART objectives (or at least something I could DO). You know, thing like:

  • Read a chapter of the Bible every day at least six days a week
  • Spend at least 15 minutes in prayer daily
  • Limit blog-reading to one half an hour per day
  • Don’t listen to secular music
  • No “R” rated movies
  • Memorize a verse a day

Those are all nice, good, EXTERNAL things. Things that only change what I do, but not who I am. They are the easy changes to make, the legalistic changes that can let me feel good about what a great Christian I am.

But God did not give me rules to follow. He did not tell me to do these five steps daily and everything will be just fine. He did not tell me to give up these five items and I’ll be a better Christian.

Instead, He gave me a litany to live each moment of my life by. Listen. Love. Learn.

Lord, may I keep Your word ever before me as I begin the next small chapter in this adventure You are taking me on. Help me to ever be mindful to listen, to love, and to learn.

Categories Simple Sunday

Simple Sunday: A Clean Room

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Simple Sunday icon

~Thankful for a clean room. I haven’t had one in ages, partly due to the always expanding stack of papers I was bringing home from my internship. But now, with my internship done, I can make a clean sweep–and I did. There are now about 8 reams worth of paper in my garage awaiting recycling. (The rest is carefully filed for future reference.)

A Clean Bedroom

Visit Davene at Life on Sylvan Drive for more Simple Sunday posts.

Categories Books

My Inner Geek

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Because I clearly do not have enough to do at work, and because I spend much too little time in front of the computer, and because today is almost a landmark for my read every book project, I have spent several hours today analyzing my reading data.

Below, you can see the results of my analysis.

Line Graph of Reading over time

In the above chart you can see my cumulative and non-cumulative daily statistics. The dark green line indicates the cumulative items completed per day. The lime green line indicates the the items completed per day over the reporting period (based on my irregularly scheduled self-reports). The dark blue and light blue lines exclude DVDs, videos, CDs, and tapes from the report–thus reporting only cumulative books per day and books per day over the reporting period. The red and pink lines further exclude all childrens and young adult materials from the report and only report adult fiction and nonfiction.

I can see some interesting trends in my results. While my cumulative total items has remained relatively stable around 1.3, my individual total items has bounced up and down–getting as high as 3.8 items per day and as low as .72 items per day. However, the total books per day and total adult books per day have remained much more steady–both cummulatively and from reporting period to reporting period. This indicates to me that much of the variance in my library consumption from reporting period to reporting period is related to variance in multimedia consumption. (Of course, this inference is not foolproof, as I do not have individual breakdowns by media at each reporting period through the second year–thus it is equally likely that I just had up and down reading periods on a regular basis throughout year 2.)

Pie Chart of Library Consumption by Type

The above pie chart breaks down my library consumption a little more clearly. As you can see, in the past 1050 days, about 76% of my library consumption has been of print media. 61% of total consumption is composed of books of decent size. (I am considering the following categories to include books of “decent size” adult fiction and non-fiction, young adult fiction, and juvenile fiction. Since most of the youth non-fiction, chapter books, first readers, and picture books fall under 40 pages, I am not considering them to be “decently sized” books.)

I did a quick calculation and came up with 868 books of decent size read since September 5, 2006–which comes out to about .83 per day. So my standard statement (that I read 1.25 books per day) is not technically true. Since September 5, 2006, I have consumed 1.25 library items per day. However, it would be most accurate for me to state that I read around .8 books per day–which is still nothing to sneeze at.

So, having done this analysis, I can rest easy tonight. I did not induce Dr. K to lie about how much I read at our internship graduation. I still qualify for groundhog status (digga, digga, digga). ;-)

Categories Everyday Life

Top 10 Reasons to Work at Home (Single Woman Edition)

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Why I’m more efficient when I’m working from home:

  1. I don’t count potty breaks as work time.
  2. I can take breaks when my brain takes breaks–and pick up the task again when I’m fresh
  3. Don’t have to worry about leaving my water bottle at home and getting dehydrated
  4. Access to much needed snacks to boost my brain glucose mid-day
  5. Access to my personal reference works (tons nicer than relying on the internet alone)
  6. No default home page set to company intranet (how many minutes have I wasted typing in www.google.com?)
  7. No phone with an annoying jingle in the cubicle nearby
  8. No interruptions by coworkers wanting me to “look through these files”
  9. No cubicle-mates who type their letters out loud, including long hisses on every “s”
  10. Don’t have to listen as a woman in a nearby cubicle micro-manages her adult children’s lives

Which is why I’m taking every opportunity this week to bring my work home. I log my minutes and make sure I get my time in–but I don’t have to deal with the minor (or major?) disruptions that add stress to my already massively stressful last week.

Categories Everyday Life

Quasi-Medical Conditions

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Senioritis

A quasi-medical condition characterized by lack of motivation. Generally occurs during the final years of high school or college, but has been noted in other situations (for example, in the last weeks of a dietetics internship.)

See Wikipedia’s article on senioritis

Burnout

A psychological (aka quasi-medical) condition characterized by lack of interest and long-term exhaustion. Generally related to long-term work stress, but occasionally brought on by having only three weeks in which to complete a three year project.

See Wikipedia’s article on burnout

Last Week’s Panic

An overwhelming and crippling terror brought on by the realization that one has only one week to finish everything that must be done. Often results in restlessness, lack of of focus, overeating, and hours of wasted time.

Categories Everyday Life

Local Bounty

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My first job, more than a dozen years ago, was washing dishes for a woman who sold her produce and baked goods at a local farmer’s market. I went to her house across the street every Friday morning and worked all day washing dishes, saran wrapping cakes, and mixing sticky roll dough. She’d get up first thing Saturday morning and pick all the vegetables she’d be taking to the Saturday morning market.

Now, my job once again includes a Farmer’s Market; but this time, I have a completely different role. As a favor to the UNL dietetics student who manages the State Office Building (SOB, lol!) Farmer’s Market, the interns at the health department are helping out with the market. Which means standing in the sun (actually, under a canopy) for a few hours and talking to people about cooking and local food and nutrition. What could be better? I’m not sure. I love it.

And today I remembered to bring my grocery bag and some cash. So I brought home a bounty.

Produce from Farmer's Market

When Anna announced that she wouldn’t have time to make dinner tonight, I ended up with a nice surprise: a chance to make dinner on the fly. So, I put together a quick corn, tomato, and avocado salad (recipe compliments of Megan, the market manager) and tried to think of something to do with the hamburger Anna bought this afternoon.

Here’s what I came up with.

Meat-Wrapped Onions

They look like some sort of weird meat with the bone in–but they’re actually meat-wrapped onions. I washed off some of those beautiful long red onions you saw in the first picture, and wrapped them with meat and then grilled them over a low flame until they were cooked through. They tasted DELISH!

A little trick for whenever you’re trying to wrap something with hamburger: Add some salt to the hamburger and then mash it around with your hands really good. The salt causes the meat to stick together better.

Finished Meal: Meat-wrapped onions and fresh corn, avocado, and tomato salad

Categories Everyday Life, Health

5-4-3-2-Are you serious?

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The 5-4-3-2-1-GO! project is a social marketing campaign aimed at preventing childhood obesity by promoting healthy eating and physical activity. The five main messages of 5-4-3-2-1-GO! are:
5 servings of Fruits and Vegetables every day
4 servings of Water every day
3 servings of Low-Fat Dairy every day
2 or fewer hours of Screen Time every day
1 or more hours of Physical Activity every day.

These are pretty simple, commonplace action steps for kids to take. That is, all of them but one–or more specifically “2”.

Two or fewer hours of screen time means two or fewer hours spent in front of a TV, a computer, or a video game console of any type. It means being intentional with screen time. It means practically impossible.

I’ve been going through the 5-4-3-2-1-GO! program with the kids from a couple of community centers, and sharing similar messages with kids at other schools. And I’ve never felt more hypocritical than when I’m sharing the “2” message.

A quick review of my screen time today:

0603-0646
Wake up to music on computer, get ready for work with the computer as a backdrop

0646-0700
Check e-mail, do SparkPeople.com,Score a couple MyPoints

0728-0745
Read blogs while brushing teeth, short break to clean bathroom sink and toilet

0800-1130
Check e-mails at work, e-mail 5-4-3-2-1-Go! partners, adjust lesson plans for 5-4-3-2-1-Go!, read grant requirements, create 5-4-3-2-1-Go! blurb for church bulletins, check grades, brainstorm 5-4-3-2-1-Go! stuff (all on the computer)

1225-1238
Check e-mail again, turn off work computer

1734-1814
Download some scrapbook freebies, look up some health related sites, catch up on home e-mail, catch up on blog reading (all while reading a flesh-and-blood/made-of-paper book)

1916-1934
Read blogs while changing into my swimming suit for a quick dip in the pool

2103-Present
Writing my blog

Which totals to 5.72 hours and counting. (And that’s excluding the computer being on while I was getting ready this morning.)

And I was TRYING to be good today. After all, I only talked to 4 different groups today about limiting screen time. So I intentionally DIDN’T turn on the computer as soon as I got home from work.

Now, why is so much screen time not a good idea?

For starters, check out your posture right now. I’m guessing it probably isn’t good. I know mine isn’t. Then there’s the fact that you’re sitting like a lump instead of moving around burning energy. And did you know that you blink less frequently than normal when you’re sitting in front of a screen? This contributes to dry eyes. And since you’re focused on a screen always at the same distance from your face, you are more susceptible to eyestrain. Screen time is negatively correlated with sleep quality and academic achievement in children; and is positively correlated with body image issues, violence, anxiety, and fearfulness.

So it’s definitely worthwhile to limit screen time. The question is, how?

Do you have any ideas? I could sure use them.

Categories Everyday Life

A Missed Opportunity?

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“You can just move into that cubicle back there,” my boss/preceptor told me after she’d finished proofing a letter I was preparing to send off to one of the area priests regarding our 5-4-3-2-1-GO! program. “You can run this program.”

I didn’t know quite how to respond. ‘Cause my first thought is to jump on it–“Absolutely! There’s nothing I’d like better.” I’m excited about this project. I think it has a great concept. I like the experience that I’m getting while working on this project. The project appears to allow me to perfectly blend my visionary giftings with my administrative giftings. I love this project. And there’s nothing I’d like better than to see it to completion.

At the same time, I’m currently working for free. I’ve read a bit of this grant and I’m pretty sure they didn’t write in for an extra employee. I’m not going to work for free forever. ‘Cause my bills have to be paid, my tuition taken care of, and I need a little left over to save for a house. That I know of, the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department doesn’t have the funds to pay me what I need.

Besides which, I have a graduate assistantship for this fall that is covering tuition and paying me a stipend. I’ve already agreed to that. And that means I’ve agreed to work no more than twenty hours a week at all jobs (including my assistantship, a 20 hour position). Even if Charlotte could pay me, she probably couldn’t pay me what tuition remission comes to.

So I said nothing.

And now I’m second guessing myself.

What if she took my silence as “I don’t want to work for you”? What if she took it as “I hate this project”? What if instead of being the “I don’t know how to respond” that I meant, she took my silence as a “I don’t know how to say it without being rude, but NO WAY!”

Words come to me after the moment in which to say them has passed: “I’d love to stay with this project, but I’ve already committed to a graduate assistantship for the fall. But if you ever find yourself wanting to hire on a community dietitian, keep me in mind.”

Ah, well. Such is life. So I missed that opportunity; there’ll be more. For now, I’m practicing that response so that it’ll flow off my tongue the next time an opportunity arises. Because I’d really LOVE to work for Charlotte in community health.

Categories Books

Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge Wrap Up

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A month ago, I wrote that I was going to be participating in Carrie’s Chronicles of Narnia reading challenge. I was going to explore the meaning behind the Chronicles. I was going to go deep.

But, I was in the midst of a frantic 5-week summer class and finishing up my last few weeks of clinical rotations, and I didn’t end up getting as much read as I wanted to. I didn’t read the whole series. I just read one book: The Magician’s Nephew. But I went deeper into the Magician’s Nephew than I ever have before.

I wrote up my thoughts separately, on a page in my “books” section. I’d love for you to take a look at what I learned from The Magician’s Nephew:

**Addendum added June 25, 2011: I am in the process of moving all my reviews on to the blog proper on the WordPress platform, so these are no longer listed separately in the “books” section–although they can be found linked to from the books page.**

For more great posts from others who participated in the Chronicles of Narnia reading challenge visit Carrie’s blog by clicking on the icon below.

Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge