Two weeks from today I will be in Lima, Peru.

Right I know.

Chad and I are traveling with Compassion International to visit Compassion’s child poverty relief projects in some of the poorest parts of Peru. We will be leaving on Sunday, January 29 and returning that Friday the third of February.

I have no context for this at all. No reference point. No solid spot to stare at and breathe: I can do this. I can do this. We can do this.

So I don’t know what to say about it all yet. Bear with me as I fumble for words (now and in the future).

I’m traveling, not on a blogging trip like we are all accustomed to watching or participating in on the Internet, but on a speakers’/sponsors’ trip. We will be visiting several of Compassion’s projects near Lima including a Child Survival Center (that works with mothers and babies up to age three).

The purpose of our trip is to allow people to get a first hand, on the ground, full sensory view of the needs in this area of the world.

I’m planning on blogging through the week if possible and I’d love a couple things from this beautiful community:

1 – I’d love for you to follow us through the week by reading and sharing my posts. Please come with us on our journey by clicking back here once or twice during that week and watching our trip on twitter and Facebook. We will have a chance to to meet our sponsor child so words can’t express my nervousness and excitement at the same time.

2 – Please pray for us. We need your prayers: for grace and for protection. Pray that we will “see” the people, their stories, their beauty, their grace in the way that God wants us too. Pray that we will be affected for action in appropriate ways and that we can carry a bit of this trip around with us for the rest of our lives.

3 – And last, I know this is so much to ask, but can you ask yourself if this is the catalyst for you and your family to support a child in abject poverty in Peru. Don’t click through if you don’t want to. And I know your money is precious, but if it is something that has been tickling at your heart and this blog post is just part of the drawing of you to do this, please consider it.  Click here to sponsor a child through Compassion.

Links:

Compassion International

In depth Peru Ministry Focus post on the Compassion blog. (Excellent post on exactly what Compassion is doing in Peru or simply click the Compassion box in my sidebar to be taken right to a child in Peru.)

Sponsor a child in Peru (on right side, search “Peru” under “where in the world.”)

My twitter, Facebook and Facebook community links.

Chad’s twitter and Facebook.

(If you are interested in booking me for a speaking engagement in the future, email booking @ sarahmarkley dot com.)

Photo source

Reading Genesis goes hand in hand with January. At least in my life. So in reading about creation this week, I had an idea. And I’m writing about it on A Deeper Story.

Emotional Nudists

They were naked and unashamed.

Naked. Unashamed.

The two words don’t seem to go together. Our worst nightmares aren’t monsters or serial killers {or tornadoes or tsunamis if you are me} but they are the ones when we wake up in 11^th grade American History with our bottom halves unclothed. Naked is the stuff of bad dreams for most of us.

I can’t remember the last time I felt good naked, or further, unashamed.

Our clothes cover unshaven legs, doughy middles after the holiday free-for-all, and the parts of us that all of us have but none of us show in a modest, civilized society.

After He created Adam, God created the woman and pronounced them all “good.” The writer of Genesis goes on to say that they were naked and unashamed.

And by doing so, God also created the first community. The first naked community.

To read the rest, click here.

The kid who made me a mother was born today ten years ago. 2002 seems like yesterday sometimes but also like another world.

Hope is funky, she’s daring and she marches to her own drum beat. I love it. Here are ten things I’ve learned in the last ten years of mothering.

1. You’ll never have as much time as when your babies are little {or I imagine, as when they are grown}. Diapers and high chairs SEEM busy, but honestly, the older they get the more dance classes and school parties there are. Embrace the busy, whatever stage you are at, and learn to function despite the chaos.

2. Get up off of the couch {and down on to the floor, or over to the playground slide} because you’ll learn the most about your kids from that vantage point. Your laundry/blog/dishes/Pinterest/Bible study can wait.

3. Choose your battles. Make a big deal about the moral stuff, a little deal about the preference stuff.

4. Don’t be afraid of hard questions: welcome them and try to find an age appropriate answer. Try to create a no-question-is-stupid environment.

5. Children move in seasons of equilibrium and disequilibrium. With my kids its usually six months on and six months off; learning to function within that and expect it is key.

6. Don’t ask more of your children than you are willing to give yourself. Keep things tidy? I need to keep my room tidy too. I teach by example in the simplest of ways. You can’t expect your kids to be happy/calm/loving if you aren’t happy/calm/loving. Mothers set the tone for the whole household.

7. It’s okay to take time for yourself. Or for you and your husband. Not just okay, but vital. Don’t feel guilty or selfish because taking care of you means taking care of them. And it really is okay to lock yourself in the downstairs bathroom from time to time.

8. Do your best to teach them to be unafraid. Take them on adventures, let them fall down a couple times, do courageous things yourself.

9. Kids adjust to change better than I do. Moving, changing churches, etc is sometimes harder for parents than it is for kids. I’ve learned not to center family decisions based on keeping their worlds void of change.

10. Nothing lasts forever: braces, the diaper stage, car seats. Don’t you dare wish for the next stage because it will come quicker than you think, and when you look back, quicker than you would wish.

There is more, so much more. Like give too many hugs and pick them up whenever they ask {because it will be too soon that they are too big to pick up.}

Because time really does speed by.

What have you learned about parenting? What can you add to this list?

 “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates

The holidays do something to one’s sense of self discipline. Something terrible.

Anything {and I mean just about anything} that is set on a shiny holiday plate, dressed up with a candy bow, sliced delicately with sugared and chocolate anything and placed in front of me will be devoured directly. Without thought or examination of the facts, the sweetened goodness will be eaten. Or the savory delicacies too! Turkey with gravy, potatoes with cream, meatballs with spices: all of it is there to be taken in and loved.

December is a month of eating without thinking; eating is simply a reaction to platters full of food. It smells divine, it looks amazing, so grab a fork.

But January is different. It is for examining the habits and routines that have led to the unsightly newish dough around one’s middle. It is for making plans and making better choices. January is for action, not reaction.

Not only my eating habits should be on the chopping block, but I should live my life in an examined way too.

Living an examined life isn’t a simple road. It is thinking about ourselves, our actions, and our reactions. It is pondering the “why’s” of our lives, wondering about how we can do things better, fixing and forgiving and not just running past difficulty.

In honesty, we are meant to live like this: we are thinking creatures made with strong minds. Growing up dissolves the sharpened sense of living and we ask less and less questions the more adult responsibilities get heaped upon our shoulders. When we pay rent and work 10 hours a day we don’t have time to examine our lives in art journals, in therapy sessions and in long discussions with the friends who know us the best.  We simply don’t have time and when we do, we’d rather fall asleep to “30 Rock” in the background. These are all reactions to the lives we choose to live.

I’m suggesting that we live lives that are full of action and examination rather than only reactions to the fatigue and stimuli that attack us each day. For me, at least, it is becoming less and less worth it to live life in reaction only. I want to live an examined life.

Why should we do this?

Because we will be alive.

{Living in any other way makes us more numb and eventually becomes our death.}

So let’s stop in the middles of moments. Why do I feel this? Why am I doing this? Why am I angry? What am I scared of? And then let’s make choices based on the real answers to these.

Let’s ask forgiveness if we need to. Let’s change our habits before we get too old and tired to do so. Let’s allow life to shape us and help us grow for the better. Let’s allow God to change our ways of thinking even if they are so close to the “who” of who we are. Let’s journal and think and ask questions. Let’s spill our hearts to friends and therapists and let’s not let the sun set on arguments.

And let us NOT “eat” our lives without thinking, but live with intention, with action and with a heart fully examined.

Do you live an “examined life?” What are things that help you do that?

A double-date on a Tuesday night is a luxury and something I might only do on vacation. Even so, when trying to coordinate our busy holiday schedules, a friend and I decided to collect the husbands and get together in the week after Christmas.

“This is for you.” She said as she put something down on the table next to me. A box. Ribbon. “Your birthday is Saturday, right?”

“Of course it is, but you didn’t have to do this.” I was humbled. I had not expected anything from her. We are close but we are new friends, never exchanging gifts before.

“I know.” She smiled. “I hope you like it.”

A beautiful bangle from one of her trips to Africa, it was unique and different and remarkable.

I was so thankful for her care and her concern to bring me something so special. What made it even more precious was that it was unexpected.

Like Erin’s unanticipated birthday gift to me, I’m beginning to learn that a person’s time is also a gift. It is expensive and perhaps the most important kind of gift they can give.

I’ve been remiss in this last year: I’ve expected time from people in ways that they cannot give.

And I didn’t know I was doing it.

We haven’t hung out in awhile; I guess we aren’t very close anymore.

The last time I talked to her was _____.

I can’t call HER because she hasn’t called ME.

I’ve been EXPECTING a gift of time. And when someone didn’t bring me a gift to the table, when someone didn’t set down a pretty package all wrapped up with a perfect ribbon

I whined

And cried

And said

“Why didn’t you bring me something?!”

How foolish I’ve been.

Time is a gift. It is a beautiful gift. And by nature a gift is something that is freely given, not demanded.

So I am recently resolved to remember that a person’s time is their gift to me and I must treat it that way. When someone does give it to me, I will be gracious. I will not be late. I will not waste it because it is precious. And I when it is not I will not expect it. I will love and I will grace and I will forgive lost months. I will try to treat others as I want to be treated, essentially.

Do you, like me, expect or demand time of others? Do you have trouble reframing your thinking about this? How have you seen time given as a beautiful, unexpected gift?

People think I’m super organized. People who have never been to my house that is.

Compared to my husband I am organized, but in general I’m a person who is comfortable with a little disorganization, a little dishevelment and a little disorder. I don’t need to have any ducklings in a row; not really.

I guess I come across as a Type A, but I never plan my cooking for the week, I never plan my shopping list and we often are out of such things like toothpaste and milk. {Unsweetened almond milk doesn’t really make great mac and cheese in case you were wondering}.

But it works: my comfort with a little disorder and an unplanned life far in advance.

Unfortunately I found myself in a bit of a black hole yesterday. I’m going to be launching a new website soon complete with new copy, new organization and a whole new look. {Side note: I’m super excited about that.}

I’m trying to write the content for the pages right now which means calling upon every ounce of creativity I have left after the dark chocolate binge of the holidays. There isn’t much left.

Tuesday morning between 10:49 to 11:17 went a little like this:

I need to find some creative titles for pages for my new site.

That means figuring out new and fresh ways to say the same old thing.

So, what’s my theme?

Crap.

Oh no, maybe I should have a monthly or quarterly theme on my blog.

Why stop with a month, let’s plan out a whole year!

What are people REALLY going to want to hear from me in 2012?

I’ve never done this before, but if I was a really committed blogger, I would at least have a goal.

And if I was a committed writer I’d have that e-book done by now.

OH, the e-book.

I really failed in 2011, didn’t I?

Maybe if I plan my life out, I won’t fail.

In the space of less than a half hour my thinking traveled from simply writing new website copy to feeling like an utter and complete failure for the lack of ambition and all the failed attempts of 2011.

I threw my disorganized notebook down at 12:18 and decided to put it away for a couple hours. And even in that was a little bit of

freedom.

This year is the year of freedom. Freedom from self-deprecating inner voices. Freedom from comparing myself to others. Freedom from feeling like I MUST get something, that certain thing, done in order to be worth something. Freedom from feeling so chained to succeeding. Freedom from labels (organized) others have put on me.

I wonder…

If I let loose of the reins a bit; If I let that horse {that is the next 12 months} just do what its supposed to do and run free, to live with intentional adventure, to write my heart and to step away from fear and toward courage and freedom, I wonder if some of those things that I have felt like a failure at will be reborn into success. I wonder if I let go of the idea that only with PLANNING comes SUCCESS then my very perspective of succeeding might shift.

And I wonder if this year is the year I finally feel like “me”.

How do you measure success? Do you have any goals for this year? Are you and organized person? If you blog, do you plan out your schedule? How do you plan on living in freedom this year?

Instead of allowing this year to take from me, I’m going to preemptively give to it. Even today, as the year barely begins to get its feet underneath itself to take off on another sprint toward December, I will give it something it usually does not get from me:

Myself.

I’m determining to not allow the months to race by me, but to cherish moments in ways that I have forgotten. I’m going to give back to the hours and minutes before they are taken from me.

My time. My attention. It is unique and it is mine only to give. To waste it is to pour diamonds down a drain. No one else can give it in the way I can.

Money is easy to come by. Words, even well crafted ones, are common and many. But time, attention and listening: those are rare. One day my ears will be dulled and my time will be gone so this year, I want to give to the year with intention before it steals these things from me.

And you. You have these same things to give. The beauty of the kind of love that is special to you. The style of grace that is only yours to bestow. The hours that you have: you can give these like no other.

So let’s each take the distinctives of who we each are share them boldly and generously with others.

It is time and it is love that are important this year.

It is holding close those that we love. It is being with friends. It is making adventure intentional. It is putting down the things that grab us and running outside with the children. It is loving, it is gracing, it is holding and it is laughing.

It is you.

How will you give yourself to the year? How will you give yourself to others? Have you made any resolutions this January?

This is not a year in review. In fact, this is barely the last couple months of Instagram photos in a hand-worked collage. {This is the types of things I do when I’m procrastinating returning emails or cleaning my kitchen sink.}

I laughed as I went through these and had forgotten a lot of it {so much of even November and December has already slipped into last year}.

But I began to think: If we could snapshot our life, not in the way we want to PRESENT it to the world {case in point: Instagram}, but in random representations of our daily lives, what would it tell about us?

Would my yelling-face at my daughters be revealed? Or my Christmas cookie binge of a few days ago? What about the arrogant thing I said during an argument with my husband? Or the face I made as I answered the phone when I didn’t feel like it.

We do well as we present ourselves to the world, even the small world that our social media tendrils reach to, but do we do well to the people around us? To ourselves?

As I think back on this year, I DO want to remember the Wiltern on a Saturday night and the cup of coffee with a friend. And I want to remember the cupcake and the sky and the Girl Scout and the go karts. But, God help me, I need to remember what I have not photographed: the hurt and the pain I’ve caused others, the anger and the bitterness, the disappointment.

These are not the memories I necessarily WANT but the ones I need.

I must make a memory so that as I seek to change, I know what it is I must work on.

What are your best memories from this year? What do you wish to change in the New Year?

I’m sure there are much easier ways to collage, but I worked this out in the iPhone app, Diptic.

My three-year-old cousin raced around our downstairs yesterday. All joy and determination, he desperately wanted to go as fast as he possibly could around and around the center fireplace in our home.

He sped past stone corners un-childproofed, near wooden beams not padded to protect little heads, and by shelves that wouldn’t budge. The mom in me winced at every circuit. But he laughed and he ran and in all honesty, I don’t think it occurred to him he might fall.

At three you don’t worry about the stone hearth you might crack your head open on, you just worry about going fast and the fun you will have while doing it.  You aren’t scared or stuck or stopped. At three, you don’t count the risks, weigh them and wonder if you will survive. You just run.

At three, you are free.

The opposite of fear isn’t courage. The opposite of fear is freedom.

The past year was a difficult one for me.

I got stopped and stuck and at times I wondered if I really was going to survive. I did not live a year that felt free. Instead it felt heavy and hard and bogged down.

I’m pretty sure I’m ready to run again. I’m ready to speed around the fireplace and not worry about the sharp corners. The sharp corners will always be there and I’m stupid to think I can avoid them and still live a life that is free and full of adventure.

So let’s ALL begin to run again. Let’s jump up and take a step forward and another one. And let’s take another one until the moving forward turns from a creep into a walk into a run. Let’s move with joy and with determination in the hope that this year is full of promise and of freedom.

I’m ready. Are you?