2010 is just around the corner and it’s that time of year when it just feels good to clean up, clear out, and start something new. This year it’s even more exciting as we’re entering a new decade.

Have you made your New Year’s resolutions, yet? This year you can make your pledges for an entire decade, rather than just one lousy year. Think big and think positive. It’s time to change your life.

If you are not sure what to do with your life or how to pursue your goals, look around. There are plenty of things to give you inspiration. They can support you in making meaningful New Year’s resolutions. But try not to cram everything into a single year. Take your time and focus on what’s most important now.

Start with Yourself

You have probably seen this illustration before. It’s been going around in chain letters for many years. The story is a little different each time, but the essence remains the same: Your life is like a jar. You have a limited capacity, so use it wisely.

Large stones first. They represent the important things in your life: family, health, friends, passions. If everything was lost and only these remained, your life would still be complete.

Pebbles fit into the holes between. These are all other things that matter: your job, possessions, responsibilities.

Sand fills up the remaining space. It’s the small stuff, which mainly fits into two categories: errands and maintenance. Imagine you started with the sand, there would be no room left for the things that matter.

The essence is to pick the right priorities. Life is about joy and happiness. What does that mean for you? Is your jar full of sand and pebbles? Is there room for improvements?

Finally, you’ll find that no matter how full your jar is, there is always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.

Turn to People

The best way to find inspiration is to watch people. Who do you admire, why do you admire them, what can you learn from them? The internet is a fantastic resource. People all over willingly share their success stories or what matters to them. This is where you can learn and find ideas for your own life. Here are some examples:

TED – Ideas worth spreading

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. These three fields were the subject of a conference, which gave rise to many more conferences around the world and the TED website, which features videos talks from people with great ideas.

You will find talks from Richard St. John about success, Daniel Libeskind about architecture, Stephen Hawking about the universe, Al Gore about the climate crisis, and many more.

World of Inspiration

Nothing expresses universal truths and human wisdom better than a good quote. At World of Inspiration you can browse quotations by category. Discover wise thoughts that have been made long before your time.

Return to Yourself

Having gathered inspiration and ideas, it’s time to imagine the life you would love to live. And then change your life. ONE. STEP. AT. A. TIME.

I’m Starting With The Man In The Mirror
I’m Asking Him To Change His Ways
And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place
Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change

Man In The Mirror (1988)
Written by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard
Interpreted by Michael Jackson

What do you anticipate for your jar in 2010? Will you be doing something exciting, something challenging, something entirely new? Please share your comments!

Once before he married mommy, he was bitten by a deer tick. Then it gave him his
Lyme disease.  Then when he married mommy, after 9 weeks and I was a baby, He
played with me.  And now he tries to do great stuff.

He walks with me, and we went to the secret garden.  When we were in the secret
garden, we saw a statue, and me and Anna climbed on it.  It was a dragon with a man
standing on top of it.  It was just a statue, and me and Anna knew that.  Dad
wondered who could tell about it, and we saw a rock with words on it, so we read it.
Then we saw a bridge.  There was no river, but it was a bridge anyway.  I went on it,
and then we left.  Before we went to the secret garden, we played pretend tennis and
then baseball.  Then we went mini-golfing.

And when he does great stuff with me, I feel so good with him that I feel he is without
his Lyme disease.  But he is still having a painful day today and I know that.  And
Daddy talks to his friends when he meets them at lunch.  If he stays home and gets a
rest, he’ll get better and better, and his prescription will help him get better. God will
help Daddy and he preached so people would know more and more about Jesus.  I
love Dad.

When Zach wrote this, he was in first grade and his favorite subjects (that week)
were history and math.  This was his first composition, and he chose the subject.  He
liked Rescue Heroes, wrestling with his sister, and being read to.

Mom’s note–Zach was born 8 years after we were married, not nine weeks!  Zach is
a wonderful reminder that the most important things we do are those we do together.

It all began the summer Jillian was 16, looking at colleges in the northeast, and
vacationing in Nantucket.  A huge ugly bite appeared on the back of her leg ….
high near the crease.  Because Lyme Disease was so “new”, the druggist in
Nantucket said, “put cortisone cream on it.”

A few days later she began having headaches and vomiting.   By December she
was in the ER dehydrated, having had every infection known to man, projectile
vomiting, hardly able to walk or talk.  It took nine more months for her to be
diagnosed because when the docs couldn’t find anything, they blamed it on her.
She was either emotionally unstable(because she was a teenage female), hooked
on the drugs they gave her for pain (head and abdomen), or even went so far as to
say psychogenic.

We suffered immeasurably not just from her illness; but from having to be our own
doctors, doing all the research, being with her constantly the 55 times she was
hospitalized in five years, and protecting her from the medical profession that was
so contemptuous toward her.  She was flown by helicopter one December night to
Hershey Medical Center from our local hospital because they said she had 24
hours to live.  HMC had put her PICC line in wrong and the fluids were drowning
her … our local hospital didn’t want her dying on them and having to deal with a
possible law suit. Things got worse from there but perhaps this isn’t the place for
horror stories.

Those are just a few examples of our life over those five years.  It all ended when
we left the medical model.

Jillian, age 21, home from college yet again having to withdraw because of being in
the hospital more often than in class, was lying on the sofa just staring into space
saying, “no more doctors, I just want to die.”  She had given up.

I refused to let her, even though she had gone through enough to kill an elephant.
On line in a Lyme chat room,totally frustrated and desperate, I met someone who
had the same symptoms as Jillian but was “cured”.  I asked her how.  We had been
writing for a few months, so she finally trusted me enough to tell me but said I was
only the second person she had ever told. People wouldn’t believe her.

She told me about an Applied Kinesiologist Chiropractor who has her immensely
improved.  Jesse and I had already gone all over the east coast looking for help, so
I was prepared to take her to the west coast where I was sure this man was
located.  I asked where she was from and where he was located.  They were both
just an hour away!  I called him immediately!

That Friday Jesse was leaving for a golfing weekend and said goodbye to her as
she lay on the sofa in a daze.  At noon I physically dragged her into the car
because she kept saying, “no more, no more” and we headed for yet another
doctor.

He listened to our story like no one ever had.  I was even allowed to add things
without getting dirty looks.  He spent two and one half hours with her.  At one
point he did a treatment that I thought killed her, however, when she could breath
again, she smiled for the first time in years.  He did as much as he could on one
visit, and we left with an appointment to return on Monday.  She managed to get to
the car and then was out;  into a sleep of the dead which lasted all that day and
night and into Saturday.

When she reappeared that Saturday evening, she was hungry for the first time in
years and she enjoyed a meal.  Sunday evening Jesse came home.  He walked into
the family room and Jillian, with color in her cheeks, sitting up watching TV said,
“Hi Dad!”  He began to cry.

Monday we all went back and the new doctor began peeling the onion of her
disease while simultaneously building up her own immune system.  She saw him
three times a week for a while then two then one and so on.   She was never again
in the hospital for Lyme Disease.

Jillian was well on her wedding day and for her entire honeymoon seven years ago.
She was well for her college graduation  four years ago, and well enough to be
more than half way through her Masters Degree in Interdisciplinary Humanities with
a 4.0 GPA.  This is a young woman who at one time had no short term memory.

Jillian was recently hospitalized, but came home with a healthy baby boy, Robbie
… Of course he is the new love of our lives, as well as she and her wonderful
husband Matt’s, and appears to be non the worse for wear.

Jillian was reinfected with Lyme once and had to go on oral ABX, which usually
sets her into a tailspin, but this time her body handled it beautifully. Her own
immune system kicks in when needed for normal colds and flu as well.  She sees
her Applied Kinesiologist Chiropractor as needed, usually once every few months,
but only for normal adjustments.

He admitted to us recently that he would never have treated a patient as
aggressively as he did that day, except he knew she wasn’t going to last much
longer.  We are so grateful he had the courage to do what it took and Jillian had
the courage to let him.  Finding him was the answer to many prayers and a strong
faith that she was NOT going to die.

We took turns being strong.

“Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”-Emily Dickinson

When you are diagnosed with cancer, you go through a myriad of feelings, am I going to live, how long will I live, how bad is it and the list goes on and on. A year before I was diagnosed my mother-in-law had succumbed to breast cancer after battling it for a year. My aunt on my mother’s side had been diagnosed a few years before but suffered no ill effects and succumbed from Parkinson’s disease and not cancer.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993, then my mother’s other sister was diagnosed and then my brother’s wife was diagnosed. It was like breast cancer had invaded every aspect of my life. So many thoughts went through my head. I also wondered how could this be, was there any more of it in our family that I did not know about.

Yes, there was, I found out as I began talking with my mother. My maternal great-grandmother had died of breast cancer in the late 1800′s before there was much known about cancer at all, much less breast cancer. I found out about other cousins on my mother’s side of the family that had also been through the breast cancer experience, one of which was 16 years old at the time but it did not defeat her as she is in her seventies now. But there is one cousin whose story has brought me more hope and inspiration than I can ever imagine for hers is truly what I call a “story of hope”. Emma was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 33 years old. The cancer was in one of her lymph glands, which resulted in a very radical mastectomy. “There was no chemotherapy back then, only the knife,” she said. Talking about her cancer is not something that comes easily for her.

“A long time ago people were ashamed,” she says. Which is why she said most people died because they “waited too late.” Emma said, “I can remember when I went into surgery, there were so many young doctors there to watch the operation.” The doctors told her that she was cut so terribly that she was in the hospital for six weeks.

After she had the surgery, there were no follow-up treatments, only a few x-rays. “I didn’t heal for eight months and I finally had to go to New Orleans. I could not do anything with my arm. I had it strapped down to my side but it didn’t bother me,” she says. Emma would not believe the doctors when they told her she would not be able to use her arm again,so she began to exercise the arm herself (and this was long before we had Reach to Recovery volunteers to tell us to exercise our arms).

Her husband helped her to raise her arm every day and she eventually regained use of it. After Emma had the first cancer, another cancer was found in her remaining breast, and she had to have a second mastectomy. So then she had to go through all the fears of cancer again. Some years later her husband died and she was left to raise their sons all alone. Emma has done a little bit of everything from working in the fields, helping run the dairy farm that they owned and finally teaching 4th grade for 40 years. Cancer never got in her way. Emma says that she had an aunt die of cancer and credits that for saving her own life. The aunt that she speaks of is my great-grandmother whom I spoke of earlier in this article. There have been other cancer survivors in her immediate family since. Her granddaughter was a survivor of over 20 years and also two great-granddaughters who have survived melanoma and Hodgkins disease. I am sure her story has given them much hope too. “I know science will find a cure someday” she has said.

Emma is the one that keeps me hopeful year after year since my diagnosis. For what I have saved till now is truly the best part of the story for Emma was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 33 in 1928 and today in 2001, Emma is 106 years of age and a 73-year Breast Cancer Survivor.

A story of hope? Yes, I would say so, wouldn’t you?

UPDATE TO MY STORY OF HOPE: On September 17, 2001, Emma died at the age of 106 and 4 1/2 months. She was ready to go and did not suffer, she just slipped quietly away. Yes, Emma is gone now, but she will continue to be my hope for the future for all my days. Emma has now become an Angel of Hope for all breast cancer survivors. May she rest in eternal peace.

I sit in my windowsill
bright yellow-orange maple leaves
wafting off the nearby tree.
A few sparrows dive out of this tree
pretending they too are falling
for winter.

Their weight gives them ‘way,
these rock-like sky-divers
strut-stuttering after a claw-screetched landing.
Bursts of leaf-pillows
echo in rustle-whispers to God
and blanket their feather heads.

He smiles

A breeze
carries leftover exhaust,
that stale air
unrelenting now in my nostrils.
Tires squeal again
tires—
my ears fearing the metal against metal crunching
through a shattered windshield—

I wait
watching matchbox cars below
ignore the almost impact,
headlights crying frozen tears
against the cement—
chink
chink

How far is it between you and me?

We wait
while our schedules box boxes between us,
hard, calendar boxes
longing
to be filled with sparrow-scratches—

I want the life of a sparrow
sky-diving with jet-pointed wings
speed
wind-whipping my hair,
my soul breathing rustle-whispers to God
full air,
the air He breathed into my nostrils
when I was young—

Come sky-diving with me
and then you and I
can breathe our rustle-whispers to God in unity
leaf-pillows bursting oranges and yellows
above our numbered hairs—

He smiles

The most fascinating thing about Munoz’s story is the way that he interprets charity. While many religions stress the spiritual value of helping others, the religious concept of charity is often narrowly focused on those who share — or are at least willing to entertain — their religious beliefs. In many ways, this idea flies directly in the face of Christian concepts of sharing. Throughout the New Testament, Jesus repeatedly breaks bread with tax collectors, prostitutes, foreigners, and other people considered untouchable within his society. But today, few consider the larger significance of these episodes: in Jesus’s time, there were few acts more intimate than eating, and his eagerness to share his table with the dregs of humanity spoke volumes about his perspective on social equality. In many ways, the same can be said of contemporary American society. After all, while tolerance and love are regarded as key societal virtues, the idea of inviting a prostitute, an IRS agent, and an al-Qaeda foot soldier to the family’s Thanksgiving dinner would strike many as a way to get disinherited. So it’s worth noting that Munoz’s charity is not based in proselytizing or preaching. He’s not attempting to convert Queens’s many unfortunates; he simply seeks to feed them.

On a basic level, Munoz’s decision to make dinner for 120 derelict strangers every night is not just kind; it constitutes an almost radical belief in shared humanity. Munoz doesn’t make one meal for his family and another meal for charity. Instead, he makes 125-145 dinners every night, and serves 120 of them to people outside his household. In a very real way, he brings dozens of strangers into his home on a daily basis. In fact, he still speaks with regret of the one night in which bad weather made it impossible for him to share his food with others. For the more cynical among us, Munoz’s meals suggest some sort of atonement for sin or creative tax write off. In truth, however, his nightly cooking frenzy speaks to something far more revolutionary: the recognition that his fellow diners are, on a fundamental level, also human. From Munoz’s perspective, the homeless in Queens deserve the same food, respect, and care that he deserves. And the fact that he intimately enlists his family in caring for all these people draws them still further into his personal circle.

Munoz effectively has drawn his family closer together by projecting their love and energies outward. As the recession swells the ranks of Queens’s homeless, and ever-increasing numbers of people find themselves wondering where the next meal will come from, many people may be inspired to recoil from people in need. Whether out of fear that their bad luck may be contagious, or a subliminal recognition that the distance between success and homelessness may be only a couple of paychecks, it’s all too easy to turn away from the needs of others. As Jorge Munoz demonstrates, however, the distance between the ability to help and the need to receive help may be no broader and deeper than a plate of food.

“Letting God in your life is like a sunrise…giving us new life.”

“It means that I can get closer to God.”

“Confirmation is like a newly-opened seed. “

“It’s great that all different types of people come together to learn God’s word.”

Gillian -

Easter Day:
I had to wake at 5:00
“It’s okay” I said I am still awake.
My family drove to church
but everything was still a blur.
We were finally there
and the sun had just rose.
I listened to the sermon
while still trying to stand fully up.
By the time it was over
the sun had rose
and was the beginning
of Easter Day.

MoJo -

One Easter Morning

One morning I woke up remembering that today was Easter. So I got on an old pair of jeans and a nice shirt. Acorn (my sister) and I got on our bikes and told our mother that we will be at one of our neighbor’s houses. Mrs. Costello told us that we were to help with hiding the Easter eggs. Once everyone was there we all played with the bunnies the Costello’s owned, a white bunny named snow; a brown bunny named Marshmallow; and a black bunny named Lickerish. Then Mrs. Costello told everyone to get in a line for the Easter egg hunt. All the little ones first then the big kids last all who hid the eggs. Once all the eggs were gone the son of one couple dressed up as the Easter bunny, but all the younger kids were afraid of him. The rest of the day we just played and had a great time.

Mr. B-

Growing up in Indiana (yes, people actually DO live there) I was used to my father being away on Easter.  He was a minister and would get called to go places for special services and often times we did not go with him.  However, one year he got a call to a very small church in Logansport, Indiana – which was about 90 minutes from my hometown of Fort Wayne.  My family decided to go on Saturday and stay a night in a hotel in Logansport and then go to the Easter service together early Sunday morning.  That was one of the nicest times I can remember – my parents even bought me a rubber snake at a store on Saturday!  You can imagine how much fun was had with that.  And on the way home, what else?  We got to eat McDonalds….which is now an Easter tradition for me.

HAPPY EASTER!

Mr. B – McDonald’s (AUUGGHH!!!!) and Starbucks
Jacob – Smarties candy
Lillian – All desserts
Julia – McDonald’s toys
Daniel – Eating school lunch
Gillian – All candy
Kameron – All desserts
Karling – Not giving up – but putting a ‘tax’ on each hour spent listening to music
Zach – McDonald’s

This should be a good test for all of us. Remember – Lent is a time of rejuvenation and preparing for the ultimate sacrifice. Our small sacrifice of giving up one thing should remind us constantly of what God gave up for us.

Good luck!

Mr. B

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves children with learning disabilities, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question:

‘When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does, is done with perfection.

Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do.

Where is the natural order of things in my son?’

The audience was stilled by the query…

The father continued. ‘I believe that when a child like Shay, who was mentally and physically disabled comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.’

Then he told the following story:

Shay and I had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, ‘Do you think they’ll let me play?’ I knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but as a father I also understood that if my son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.

I approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, ‘We’re losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.’

Shay struggled over to the team’s bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt. I watched with a small tear in my eye and warmth in my heart. The boys saw my joy at my son being accepted.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three.

In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as I waved to him from the stands.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again.

Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat.
At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball.

However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay’s life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact.

The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed.

The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay.

As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher.

The game would now be over.

The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman.

Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.

Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman’s head, out of reach of all teammates.

Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, ‘Shay, run to first! Run to first!’

Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base.

He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.

Everyone yelled, ‘Run to second, run to second!’

Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base.

By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball – the smallest guy on their team who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team.

He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher’s intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman’s head.

Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.

All were screaming, ‘Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay’

Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, ‘Run to third!

Shay, run to third!’

As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, ‘Shay, run home! Run home!’

Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team

‘That day’, said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, ‘the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world’.

Shay didn’t make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making me so happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!

AND NOW A LITTLE FOOT NOTE TO THIS STORY:

We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people hesitate.

The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and workplaces.

If you’re thinking about telling others about this message, chances are that you’re probably sorting out the people in your address book who aren’t the ‘appropriate’ ones to receive this type of message. Well, I believe that we all can make a difference.

We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize the ‘natural order of things.’

So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a choice:

Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up those opportunities and leave the world a little bit colder in the process?

A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats it’s least fortunate amongst them.

May your day be a Shay Day.