Category: gratitude (Page 2 of 7)

Love, Starbucks & the Incarnation

December 2, 2015 / Michele Minehart

When I followed the ambulance down to Columbus, it carrying one of my life’s treasures, I didn’t cry. I called a friend, made lists and recited mantras (strong body, soft heart). But you know what brought me to tears? An inbox full of Starbucks gift cards.

Please, don’t think me too materialistic. I love coffee, but that’s not the point.

This past week we’ve been surrounded, carried and lifted. Family gathered our children, friends fed them, parents ferried them to where they needed to be next. My sister filled my freezer with healthyish survival food. My mom is doing laundry and vacuuming up our dogs’ attempts to not be forgotten. And people have flooded me with notes telling me they are praying.

These things. They are so very helpful. They make us feel better and they make life even a teensy bit easier. But it’s not just the actual thing – the help, the card, the word – which lifts up our hearts. It’s the intention. I see through the thing and see people who earnestly want to enter into this place with us. They want to “be there” in any way possible. Some will sit by our sides, others fill our cups, but it’s really the same to me. They say, “I see you. I love you. I’m with you.”

Which is the spirit of the season. I love the time leading up to Christmas because I’m in love with incarnation. For several years I’ve been weepy every Sunday of Advent. Behind it all is this God who said to all of humanity, “I see you, I love you, I’m with you.”

This week we’ve been waist-deep in our people’s versions of incarnation. Friends, you have not simply been nice or thoughtful or helpful. You have embodied the spirit of God-with-Us.

Do I mean that Jesus coming to earth is like when people give me a SBX giftcard? No. I’m saying that those gift cards and meals and words from afar – those are our attempts to live out that sense of Incarnation set within us. I mean to say, when you love others, you are like God. You are shining God’s image. When you love like that, you evoke the presence of God in our lives.

Thank you.

Thankful for Enough

November 24, 2015 / Michele Minehart

This time of year we usually sit down to a table abundantly filled with all the trimmings and gorge, a way of celebrating the many things for which we are thankful. So not to be too materialistic, “family and friends” usually tops the list of our thankful list, followed by the many things we have that keep us safe and warm and protected. Good stuff – nothing wrong with that.

This November, after having spent nearly an entire year with my view flipped upside down by Brene Brown exposing me to the way we live in a culture dominated by theoretical scarcity, it changes Thanksgiving. Scarcity tells us that we have what others do not, so we ought to be thankful. That line of reasoning ignites a fear in us that, perhaps, the tables could be turned. We could be the ones living without these things. So we should be thankful for what we have.

That’s not gratitude. That’s fear.

“Show an appreciation or risk loosing it.” That’s the dominant mindset of our typical American Thanksgiving. (And, oh, how often have I used that mentality in dealing with my children?! I hate when my writing means I have to start living my values.)

We sit at our tables on Thanksgiving day, often holding with tight fists the things we love most, declaring our thanks to them and holding them up for display. We have this. And we may not have that, but we do have this. And this.

Take out scarcity, and what do we have? If we believed in the concept of Enough – that the world is big enough to hold us all, that God and the universe can supply all our needs, that life is not a Zero Sum game – how would our posture change?

I think we would begin to realize we don’t have a corner of the market and we don’t have to mark of our territory. We don’t even have to fear loosing our blessings, that if we’re not thankful enough God will pry them from our fingers and hand them off to the next guy.

I think we would share more. I think we would open our tables and our hearts. I think we would live with a sense of humility, that what we have isn’t always a direct result from our hard work. I think we would celebrate a shared victory and even root on those around us – perhaps even those different from us.

Isn’t that what the Pilgrims and the Indians thing is all about? Two groups of people who lived as if the land could support both of them? These folks decided, instead of killing off another group to have what they have, to believe there was enough for everyone at the table. The original Thanksgiving was a day when Scarcity Theory didn’t win. They sat down to their turkey and stuffing (not completely true) and saw they had enough. They didn’t have to fight. They could choose harmony over hatred, and collaboration over competition.

Perhaps this Thanksgiving we can approach the table with open hands. Not with eyes on what others do or don’t have, but with what lies in front of us. This year I’m thankful for enough. There hasn’t been a day this year that we have run out of what we needed. Money in the checkbook, energy at the end of the day, love in our hearts, even health in our bodies (said the same time that pneumonia is ravaging one of us in this house). We still have enough.

We don’t have it all. But we don’t need it all. We only need enough.

Where’s Terri?

August 11, 2015 / Michele Minehart

Terri saved me more than once already. We’ve been in our new/old town for just over a month, but the number of times I’ve left her office full of gratitude is greater than the number of times I’ve went to Walmart. (I think both Terri and I can all consider this an all-around success.)

The most recent occasion for my visit to Terri’s corner office was my upcoming mortgage payment. These new houses – well, they need paid for. Which required me knowing the amount of my monthly payment, along with finding a way to get money into and out of the checking account that would pay it. And if we could make all this happen in a way that repeated itself without so much effort, double word score. So I slumped into Terri’s office to admit I had indeed lost the passwords to make my online banking come alive AND I couldn’t find the payment books the bank had just sent. (Banking is hard. And so is moving.)

And then, she fixed it. Zim, zam, zoom, everything worked. I signed my name. She picked up the phone. Magically, all things banking-related worked again. How do real people do this? I wondered aloud.

How do real adults keep passwords and mortgages and school registrations and apply to see new doctors and salvage hearing aids left in the rain and read aloud to their children and potty train? And some of them – they even WORK. ALL YEAR ‘ROUND. How do they do this and not loose their ever-loving minds?

It turns out that not just banking is hard. Or moving. Adulting, my friends, is terrible. Terrible! I’m not sure why this is a thing. Who decided we all needed to “become responsible” and “take care of ourselves” and “become productive members of society”? I’d like to talk to that person. I’d like to hire them to keep my calendar straight. And also, potty train the baby. This is going terribly as well.

Sometimes I look around and try to find the Terri’s of the rest of my life. Who around here is going to make this easier for me? People like Terri have spoiled me. Now I’m put off by people who aren’t trying to make my life easier. Like the woman at our former doctor’s office who wouldn’t let me email a form to the office but instead insisted I mail the hard copy with a stamp. (Add “buying stamps” to the list of hard things adults do. This task derails me every time.) And don’t tell me the office “doesn’t use email.” They do all their doctoring on ipads and laptops.

And where is The Terri at the school? If I suddenly go missing – after checking the laundry room – it would be best to look under the pile of 37 pink and green forms that the school requires. Per child. I could be buried alive. One person was so kind to point out that this is going to be my August activity for the next 14 years of my life. Times four. Can we please get a Terri in this office who will make things work electronically, so that all 62 people who need my cell phone number “in case of emergency” can simply pull it off the database?

I need a Terri everywhere. Someone who makes the day work just an eensy bit better. People who love their job, no matter what it is, enough – or so much – that it makes life better for others: these are my people. Like last week: I drove through Starbucks. The barista cheered for me when I made my selection. This. This needs to happen more. Cheers and helpfulness. Not forms and stamps.

Go, my friends. Be a Terri. Make some magic happen for someone. Make life a little better. Cheer, help and encourage.

(And just so you know that I practice what I preach, I just woke up my husband so HE could go be an adult. I didn’t even wake him with loud noises or a smack on the leg. We can do this, friends! We can be helpful to one another! And kind! It’s not as hard as we might think!)

Category: gratitude (Page 2 of 7)

Love, Starbucks & the Incarnation

Thankful for Enough

Where’s Terri?

Subscribe By Email

Recent Posts

Read more, in your inbox

Tell your friends!