Ice Breaker – Oldest Thing In Your Wallet

Each week on The Stretched Blog, I ask an ice breaker question. The questions are designed to help us get to know each other here in The Stretched Community. I’ll provide my answer to the question here in the post, and then you can leave your response in the comments. While you’re in the comments section, see how others answered the ice breaker question.

(I’m always looking for Ice Breaker question ideas.  If you have an idea, send me an email at jon@jonstolpe.com.  If I use your question, I’ll give you credit and share your links.)

Question:  Take a look in your wallet or purse.  What is this oldest thing you can find in there?

My Answer:  My social security card is probably the oldest thing in my wallet.

Answer this week’s ice breaker question by leaving a comment. I look forward to reading your response! (As always, feel free to share links.) And keep Stretching!

5 Ways To Replace Our Negative Labels For Positive Ones

Loser.  Waste.  Creep.  Lunatic.

Fat.  Chunky.  Ugly.  Gross.

Stupid.  Dumb.  Nerd.  Geek.

Pathetic.  Lame.  Dork.  Weird.

Slow.  Clumsy.  Awful.  Lazy.

Unwanted.  Unloved.  Worthless.

Labels.

What label do you wear?  Are you letting a negative label define you?

Our family went to the local pool Sunday afternoon to relax and enjoy each others company.  The pool was crowded.  Some kids were running around.  Some kids were screaming.  Some adults were sitting under their umbrellas.  And some adults were sitting out in the sun in their best poolside attire.

I couldn’t help doing a little people watching while we were sitting in our chairs under our umbrella.

I’m especially curious when I see people who have tattoos, and the pool is a great place to observe the various ink designs that permanently cover the epidermis of the sunbathers.

At one point, I noticed a man walking near us who had tattoos across his shoulders and down his arms.  And I couldn’t help but notice the tattoo across the man’s belly.  The tattoo was three letters which were about five inches tall.  Here were the letters:

F A T

I don’t know what this man was thinking.  It seems he was embracing a label he was given sometime in his life.  Someone called him “FAT” and it stuck.

I wonder if he likes being fat.  I wonder if he likes this label.  Or I wonder if he has chosen to simply accept the label.

If we’re honest, I think we have all struggled with negative labels.  Some of our negative labels have been thrust on us by inconsiderate parents, peers, and other people.  And some of the negative labels are the result of unreasonable self talk.

When we accept these labels, we are doing ourselves a huge disservice.  We are more than these negative labels.  We are God’s children, and He loves us.  It’s time we learn to replace the negative labels with labels more representative of who we are and who we were meant to be.

Try these labels on for size:

Beautiful.  Winner.  Smart.  Loved.

Desired.  Blessed.  Wonderful.  Worthwhile.

Friend.  Funny.  Fantastic.  Splendid.

Special.  Precious.  Unique.  Redeemed.

Child of the King.

If we want to shed the negative labels that have crept into our lives, we have to be intentional.  Here are some tips for getting rid of the labels in our lives that tear us down:

5 Ways To Replace Our Negative Labels For Positive Ones

1. Remove the negative influences in your life.  Who or what is feeding your mind with lies?  Get rid of the people or things that are leading you to believe you aren’t good enough.  In some cases, this may mean the end of relationships.  In other cases, you may need to stop watching certain television shows or reading certain material.  Shed the negative.
2. Feed your life with positive influences.  Connect with people who will build you up.  Fill your mind with truth.  Focus on the positive.
3. Put the past in the past, and recognize the gift of today.  We all have junk in our trunk.  We have baggage that will weigh us down if we let it.  Let today be a new day.  When you woke up this morning, you were given a fresh start.  Make the most of a chance to begin again.
4. Look in the mirror with corrective lenses.  When I was a young kid, I had to wear corrective glasses to overcome my vision problems.  Now I have to wear them again to help me read.  Without my glasses, my vision is distorted.  I’m not seeing the appropriate representation of what is in front of me.  Sometimes our self-image becomes distorted.  We need to learn to look at ourselves with new eyes.
5. Let God label you.  If you read the Bible, there is an overarching theme of grace, mercy, and love.  God loves you, and He did not make you to carry around the weight of negative labels.  The next time you feel the negative labels creeping in, read Psalm 139.  It’s all about you!

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  Psalm 139:14

What labels are you carrying?  How have you replaced your negative labels for positive ones?  Share your responses in the comments and join the conversation.

Stretch Quote – Comfort Zone (Les Brown)

What are you doing to push the boundaries of your comfort zone?

On The Eve Of Celebration

Tomorrow is a special day!

Do you know what day it is and why it is so special?

August 5th is a holiday in Santo Domingo Xenacoj.  Tomorrow, people in a small village in Guatemala will be taking the day off of work to spend time with friends and family.  There will be a parade in town featuring marching bands from all the local schools.  Fireworks will shoot up in the air throughout the day and night making loud echoing noises across the village.  Villagers will walk the streets in friendly conversation with their neighbors.  And hundreds of people will gather in the central park to play carnival games, ride the rides, purchase food from street vendors, and watch as performers dance in the streets.  It is a day that villagers look forward to every year, and it’s a day I will be celebrating despite being thousands of miles away.

I am looking forward to returning to Xenacoj next year with my family, and I’m praying others may join us on our journey to reunite with our Guatemalan friends, to lend a helping hand, and to show God’s love in a practical way with specific attention to widows and orphans.

If you’ve been reading along for any length of time, you know the people of Xenacoj hold a very special place in my heart.

Take time tomorrow to say a prayer for the people of Xenacoj and celebrate what God is doing in Xenacoj.

Does your town have its own holiday?  If so, how do you celebrate?  If not, how would your town celebrate its own holiday?

The Discipline Of Less

I remember doing everything I could to get more baseball cards.  I bought bubblegum packs at the local 7-Eleven store at the edge of my neighborhood in Lumberton, NJ.  I bought triple packs at Woolworth’s in Mt. Holly, NJ.  I traded cards with friends, and I worked hard to accumulate more and more cards to complete the set of cards for the year.

An annual Topps baseball card set consisted of 792 cards when I was growing up.  I opened each pack, and looked at each card hoping to find a star player or a card I needed to complete my set.  I turned over the card and read the information about the baseball player pictured on the front of the card.  Then I sorted the cards.  First, I’d sort the cards into hundreds.  Then I would take each stack of hundreds and sort them into piles of tens.  I would insert the cards I still needed into my set, and I’d add any doubles into another box which I would use to trade with my friends.

My obsession with gathering more and more baseball cards for my collection grew and grew through high school.  In college, this obsession began to shift as I focused more on my studies and the next stage of my life.

I stopped gathering baseball cards, and I started gathering CDs (these are the round metal things that used to contain music for playing in a compact disc player).  I wanted to keep up with my brother, my college friends, and others who were also collecting CDs.  For a while, I couldn’t get enough CDs.  I had to have the latest album from U2, R.E.M., Billy Joel, They Might Be Giants, DC Talk, Stephen Curtis Chapman, The Kry, and others.  I remember visiting the local music store with my friend, John Kosydar, as we both searched for the next set of CDs to add to our collections.  One CD was not enough.  I had to have more.

Eventually, I outgrew this obsession, and I switched to bigger, more expensive pursuits like cars, houses, and vacations.

More!  More!  More!

After pursuing these things, I have come to realize these things don’t really satisfy.  In fact, they leave me feeling empty.  My baseball cards sit in my house gathering dust.  My CDs are filed away rarely getting played.  My cars and house wear out.

My pursuit of more is clearly misdirected.  And I’m sure I’m not alone.

What are you pursing?  What obsession has your attention?

In considering disciplines worth following, I think it’s time we start looking at the discipline of less.

My friend, Dan Erickson, writes about the simple life on his blog – hipdiggs.com.  After his own failed efforts to find happiness by pursuing stuff, he has made a shift.  Dan has decided to simplify his life by becoming a minimalist.  Instead of accumulating stuff, Dan is accumulating relationships with his daughter, with his students, with his neighbors, and with his friends in the blog world.  Dan seems to be practicing the discipline of less, and I think we could all learn a thing or two by taking a page out of his book.

The discipline of less actually provides more time, energy, and resources for the things that matter.

They say “Less is more.”  There’s only one way to find out if it’s true.  I challenge you to find out for yourself by taking up the discipline of less starting TODAY!

What are you holding onto that needs to go?

How would your life change if you practiced the discipline of less?  What is one thing you can do TODAY to shed the weight of things that don’t matter in the end?

What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

Matthew 16:26

The Inside Counts

I wonder if the homeowners knew how unhealthy this tree really was.  The green leaves and the bark on the outside of the trunk left travelers like myself the impression that the tree was healthy.  In reality, the tree was rotting from the inside out.

The fallen tree had me thinking the rest of the way up to the job site.

Am I taking care of my insides?  Or am I just faking it hoping everyone thinks I’m doing fine?

Many people dress to impress.  We wine and dine.  We spend like there is no tomorrow.  And we put on a shell that doesn’t give bystanders a real picture of what is on the inside.

Self-examination and transparency with a few close confidants is required to give an honest assessment of what is really going on inside our skin.  Are we filling our minds with things that honor God?  Or are we filling our heads with trash?  Are we feeding our hearts and souls with “nutrition”?  Or are we consuming “junk food”?

These aren’t questions you can answer in the comments of a blog post.  These are questions you must intentionally ponder.

When you arrive at your answer, you have a decision to make:  What do you need to start doing to build a healthy inside?  What do you need to stop doing to prevent further rotting inside?  And what do you need to keep doing to stay on track and to build a life that honors God from the inside out?

These are the questions I leave you with today.  Truly dwelling on these questions and your answers should keep you stretching.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.  Philippians 4:8

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

Stretch Quote – People (Bryant H. McGill)

There are amazingly wonderful people in all walks of life; some familiar to us and others not.  Stretch yourself and really get to know people.  People are in many ways one of our greatest treasures.

Bryant H. McGill

How would your world change if you really got to know someone?  Tell me about a person you have come to treasure.  Leave your responses in the comments.

4 Ways To Handle The Sacred Moments Of Parenting

I remember watching my Dad shave in our upstairs bathroom.  He gently rubbed shaving cream under his chin, above his lip, and around his cheeks.  Then he carefully ran the blade of his disposable razor across his face removing the shaving cream and the stubble on his face.  I learned a lot in these moments of observation.  The method I use to shave my own face today is a reflection of the lessons I learned while watching my Dad shave his face.

When my own facial hair began to emerge, my Dad took time to show me how to shave.  I don’t remember the particulars, but I remember it being a milestone in my development.  At first, I only needed to shave every couple of weeks.  Then I had to shave once a week.  And eventually, I had to shave on a daily basis.

Sunday night, I experienced another shaving milestone in my life.  My son, Isaac, turned fifteen in May, and he is turning into a man before my eyes.  I noticed the past few weeks that he has had hair above and below his lip.  Blond hair has also been extending from his sideburns down his cheeks.  It was time for Isaac to shave for this first time.

At ten o’clock in the evening, I called Isaac into my bathroom where I grabbed a razor out of the linen closet.  We stood in front of the mirror where I gave brief instructions on how to shave.  Isaac applied shaving cream, and he took his first few razor strokes down the side of his face.  He rinsed the razor removing the shaving cream, and he proceeded to take a few more strokes under his lip.  Before I knew it, Isaac and I stood in front of the mirror.  We didn’t share many words, but I think we realized the magnitude of this moment.  It was a sacred moment.

As parents, we have the honor, privilege, and responsibility of ushering our children through the milestones of life.  Whether it’s taking their first steps, boarding the school bus for the first time, driving a car for the first time, or shaving for the first time, we must learn to embrace these sacred moments of parenting.  They are holy moments, and they come and go quickly.

4 Ways To Handle The Sacred Moments Of Parenting

1. Keep your eyes open.  Sacred moments of parenting are easily missed if we aren’t awake.  As we parent our children, we must learn to be present, so we don’t miss out.
2. Record these moments.  Take pictures.  Write notes in a journal.  Make a video recording.  Store up these memories in your mind.  By recording these moments, you will provide a place for future reflection and reminiscing.  You will provide a record for your children and their children.  We learn through our parents, and our children will learn through us.
3. Celebrate.  Don’t be afraid to have ceremonies to commemorate the sacred parenting moments.  Take time to acknowledge the milestones and transitions your children are experiencing as they move from youth to adulthood.
4. Share.  Your parenting experiences – good and bad – can be used to teach others.  Your parenting stories could provide the inspiration to other parents who need help navigating the challenges of parenting.

Tell me about a sacred moment in your own parenting journey.  Or tell me about a sacred moment you experienced at the hands of your parents.  Leave your response in the comments.

Lessons Learned On My Vacation

I’m still here!

Last week, I took a vacation with my wife’s family to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

The vacation gave me the opportunity to enjoy time with my family, to enjoy relaxing on the beach and at the pool, and to enjoy being unplugged.

The WiFi where we were staying was terrible.  At first, I was kind of bummed.  I had hoped to do some writing while we were on vacation, and I planned to post on the blog (at least a few times) during the week.  Instead, I went an entire week without posting a thing on my blog.  I checked Facebook a few times, and I read a few of the blogs I follow.  Besides this, I took a vacation from the blog world.

Some would say this isn’t a smart idea.  In the past, I’ve scheduled posts or had people guest post in my absence.  This was an option I decided not to pursue this time around.  I’m not sure how it will impact my traffic.  In the short term, I’m sure it will have a negative impact.  In the long term, I think it may actually make a positive difference.

Without question, I believe it will improve the quality of my posts.  Blog experts say consistency is queen – meaning I should have posted through my vacation.  And they also say content is king.  If this is true, I’m excited to see how my week away will impact my blog.

We live in a day and age when most people struggle to disconnect from the world.  We have smart phones at our finger tips.  With a WiFi connection, we can connect with our laptops and tablets to the rest of the world.  All this connectivity has some positive perks:

1. I can connect with almost anyone from around the world.  This means I have friends in Tennessee, Washington, Ukraine, Canada, Guatemala, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and many other places.  From this standpoint, the world has decreased in size.  I’m thankful for these friends.
2. I can access information within seconds.  Google is a company, and it is also a verb.  If I want to know who won the Tour de France, I can google it, and I’ll have the information in seconds.  This provides a powerful learning tool for the curious.
3. I can build my own platform.  Last year, I wrote and published my first book.  I hired an editor on-line.  I received help with my cover design.  And I launched the book following instructions I found on-line.  This time of connectivity provides all kinds of opportunities we probably couldn’t experience before the birth of the Internet (thanks Al Gore).

Unfortunately, it’s not all positive.  In this world of instant information access, we are faced with some major challenges:

1. Our attention span is decreasing.  If you made it to this point in the post, you’ve already defied the odds.  I’ve heard on many podcasts that we are losing our ability to focus on things for a significant length of time.  Books are becoming shorter in an effort to keep the attention of readers.  Newspaper articles and on-line magazine articles are shrinking their average word count to keep up with popular blogs with average 300-600 words per post.  Headlines are not considered to be successful unless they can nicely fit into the 140 character Twitter limitation.
2. Our ability to verbally connect face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) is being challenged.  My kids haven’t had to answer the “house phone”, because we don’t have a land line phone.  Kids are getting used to communicating through text messages, Instagram, and Snap Chat.  I interviewed several engineering candidates over the last year, and I am amazed by how few of these candidates are comfortable looking me in the eye and having a conversation.
3. Our immediate relationships are being put on the back burner in exchange for face time with our cell phones and other technological gadgets.  We have a “No Phone At The Table” Rule to combat this problem in our house.  If you are talking to someone or spending time with someone, put your phone away and engage with the other people in your presence.

Vacation provided many great reminders for me.  I’m thankful for the chance to take a break.  I’m thankful for my family.  And I’m thankful for my friends (off-line and on-line).  As I head back into my “normal” routine this morning, I look forward to capitalizing on the connection I experienced while I was away, and I look forward to connecting with those I know on-line.

What are your vacation plans for the rest of the year?  How will you connect while you are away?  How has your connectivity positively and negatively impacted your life?

Guatemala Photo Of The Day – Beautiful Indeed!

This picture was taken right down the street from where we lived last year while we were in Xenacoj.  On our way back from Zully’s house, I had the perfect opportunity to get a picture.

The colors in Xenacoj are amazing.  And the combination of the sky, the flowers, and the yellow house were a perfect match.

The weather in the Philadelphia area yesterday was reminiscent of the weather we experienced nearly every day in Xenacoj – low humidity, moderate temperatures, and sunny skies.

Beautiful indeed!