Straighten Up and Fly Right

Ahhhh, leaning back in my cushy chair, I stretch my arms out in front of me, my fingers linked and wiggle them…..it’s Sunday night.  The night of panic.  “ARGH!  Tomorrow is Monday and I don’t have a good handle on my week!!!”  Then the yelling, mean and wigging-out Mom appears and takes over.  It’s an ugly, ugly event.  One that has been happening too often in the past few months.  BUT….

(Isn’t that a delicious sounding word?!!!)  BUT…not this week.  What made the difference?  My time with Mary Jo.  I’m serious, it was powerful for me.  She armed me with this really cool little tool – a piece of paper with 3 columns.

No, I am not making paper airplanes, nor am I snorting coke out of it!!  (Come on, admit it – someone out there has seen me on Sunday nights and was thinking that it was for that very purpose….come on.  Okay, *I* admit it!!) 

This little tool requires the use of a writing utensil and some time alone with it….  At the top of one section write “Personal” the next section is for “Family” and the third section is “Business.”

Then, into each column write the things that are on the docket for the week.  Whooooo – Hey look at that, I have 49 things listed in business, 3 in family and 1 in personal.  Hmmm, my life looks a little outta balance, eh?

SO, now I can discern, do I remove some business or is this one of those weeks where business MUST have top billing, with the knowledge that I’m going to have to make some adjustments next week to minister to my family?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  (Funny how that business stuff can become an issue of pride, in very short order….uh, for SOME people, of course, not necessarily me, certainly.)  (CHOKE)

Either way, seeing, with me own wee little green (hazel, actually) eyes where my time is scheduled to go for the week is very helpful.  Try it.  If you don’t like it, you can always turn it into a paper airplane! 

You Must Clear Your Plate!

There are starving children in Africa, don’t ya know?! (At least that was the rhetoric we were fed – no pun intended – when we didn’t clear our plates.) I will choose to not go into a discussion about the importance of NOT clearing your plate, because that isn’t a blog for this place. 

Instead, I want to tell you about my conversation with Mary Jo Tate. Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, if you are a mother, a homeschooling mother or just a woman who has a life that requires living, you will want to pay attention. Mary Jo is doing more than just serving entrepreneurs.

Let me tell you a few things about Mary Jo. By day she is a mild mannered, editor extraordinaire, but by night – I’m telling you: WATCH OUT! That girl puts on her Chaos Fighting Suit (which of course does NOT have a cape!) and charges into the fray. She races to and fro doing battle with too much busyness and too little discipline. She treads where angels will not, but she’s no fool! She’s one tough cookie!      (Well, that’s pretty close to being the truth of the situation.)

Prior to meeting with me for a consultation, she posed some really hard questions for me to consider ahead of time. (They don’t compare with the ones Jeff and I have asked since the call, but I won’t blame her for that.)  

A few examples of those questions were: How often are you out of the house each week, other than basic errands? What are your main obligations? Jeff’s? What about work – what work are you involved in?  Give me a glimpse into a typical or “representative” day. And several other equally easy questions.  

When we started the call, Mary Jo was kind, but all business. She wanted to make certain that I felt like I had received real value from our call, so she focused her laser eyes on our life and began to burn away the chaff. (No really, I’m sure that’s what she did. I KNOW I felt the heat while we were talking.)  

She then explained her Rule of Three to me. In our lives, there are 3 aspects that we must keep in mind, when we’re trying to “do it all.” (Just for the record,”doing it all” is a lie. I wanted to mention that, just in case you hadn’t come face to face with that fact yet. Hope I didn’t just burst anyone’s bubble with that knowledge. I’d hate to cause any of you emotional trauma.)

The Rule of Three divides our lives into 3 types of activities: Irrefutable facts,  Non-negotiables and Preferences.  She suggested that I take all the things on my plate, scrape them onto the table and put them back onto my plate, putting each activity into one of the three different divisions.  Then (drum roll please because this is incredibly obvious and incredibly brilliant all in one fell swoop!) accept the gap between the real and the ideal.

Now, let me put some feet to that concept.  (And this is one that Mary Jo shared as well.)  Ideally, we would read aloud to our children 2 hrs every day, as all good homeschooling mothers do.  (Of course they do, what do you mean, “Huh?”)  During a season when we don’t have 2 hours free to do much of anything, reading aloud to the children, regardless how much it is desired, simply isn’t reality.

THEREFORE, I must find a way to create an option that I can accept, that will fill the gap between the real and ideal.  In other words, I rent books on tape for the children to listen to.  OR I plan for us to have one afternoon during the week that becomes a Family Read Aloud time.  OR I plan on reading while one of the children are making lunch.  OR…

Are you seeing the brilliance here?  It’s the willingness to accept whatever is used to fill that gap between the real and ideal that is genius.   I knew this – but I didn’t KNOW this.  As soon as these pearls of wisdom dropped into my ears, I knew that I was finally coming face to face with my own version of Jeeves.  (Spot on!)

By focusing on a) my own heart’s willingness to accept the gap-filler and b) filling the gap, I’m no longer staring gape-mouthed at the list of things I’m not getting done.  Instead, Mary Jo’s words were just the boot in the backside I needed to stop being wonky and wobbling about, and putting things into motion, instead.

Think about the simplistic elegance of this wisdom.  Let me know if/how this has impacted you.   I have more to share, but I’ll wait until tomorrow, as this is plenty long enough already.

If you want to read more about/from Mary Jo, please visit her blog.  If you do that, be certain to leave your biggest issue in trying to “do it all” in her comment section and for your efforts, you will receive a special report from her – her Top Ten Tips for “doing it all.”

Just think, you too could stop walking wonky.    (Now, I just have to hope once I get this stuff under control she doesn’t tell me I have to start wearing a Chaos Fighting Suit.  Now THAT would be enough to clear a plate – and the room!!)

Walking Wonky

I have gotten motion sickness all my life.  Some of my earliest memories are of lying in the back of our station wagon, sick to BITS from riding.  I don’t remember Pearl Harbor as anything more than a great place to lose one’s breakfast.  Once, I even threw up on a date who took me out for a sailboat ride ..meaning he uh, only took me once….meaning he was only my date once.  Wonder why?    I certainly don’t take my kids on the carousel, because it makes me sick as a dog to do so.  I get motion sickness really badly!!!!!

So, why my siblings and I had an affinity to playing “Blindman’s Bluff” I do not know.  I think it was because my siblings could cover my face and then roll on the floor laughing themselves silly, watching me wobble to and fro throughout the house.  (It was the spinning that occurred right after the blindfolding that always did me in.)

There is not a time that I EVER remember playing this game that I didn’t bump into furniture and end up in strange places – not at all where I thought I should have ended up.

One time in particular I remember being spun and starting to wander about.  I was just getting ready to step into the kitchen when my brother knocked me onto the floor.  I pulled my blindfold off, ready to chew him out, when I realized  when I thought I was walking to my left, I really had been walking to what would have been behind me (??don’t ask, I still can’t figure out how!) and I was getting ready to plunge down the basement stairs.  I judiciously decided to forgo the chewing out. 

Recently, with all the work that we have had, and trying to adjust to Jeff being home and trying to adjust to not receiving a weekly paycheck and trying to adjust to this race-like-a-maniac-then-wait way of life that we’ve entered and and and….I have been finding myself feeling very Blindman’s Bluffish.

There have been mornings in the recent past that I have gotten out of bed, only to sit there and not have any clue what day of the week it was, nor what I needed most to accomplish that day in our home or family.

The ridiculous thing about that is that the Lord prepared me for this BEFORE Jeff came home.  Yet, STILL I ended up getting  myself all wobbly and wonky feeling.  (Okay, so YES, that would make me one of those stiff-necked folks that Scripture speaks of.)

This morning, a dear Sister in the Lord met with me and helped me take the blindfold off – and she helped me right my wonky feet.  It feels good – nah, it feels WONDERFUL!  For the first time in a few months, I feel like I’m getting a  really good grip on how to accomplish all that is on my plate.

Want to know how she did it?  She scraped my plate for me and helped me refill it.  Granted, it was bathed in prayer and facilitated by a DEEELIIISSSHUSSS conversation between Jeff and I, but she was the tool the Lord used to start the unwonkifying.  (Hey, if you’ve never been unwonkified, you can’t know what you’re missing!)

Tomorrow, I will share more of how incredibly helpful she was and what a wonderful person she is.  I can’t wait.  I know you’re going to love her, if you don’t already.  

Until then!   ~Dawn

P.S. I’m going to assume that you’re spending some time writing out the things that you are finding hidden in your heart – things that might/could be indicative of the quest that the Lord has for you.  Please don’t forget to pay attention to the things that other people tell you are gifts that you operate in.

Listen for those, “You are so good at…..” type comments from friends.  They are usually pretty good indicators of some of those hiding gifts.

Windmills of My Mind

Growing up, my parents had a HUGE collection of music.  Now that I’m married to a music geek, I know that they had a LITTLE collection – but at the time, we were the only people I knew that would stack 5 albums on the turn table at once!  (I won’t even mention what that information does to my music geek.  Picture Daffy Duck bouncing up and down, from his feet to his head….yep…he looks a lot like that.)

Music at our house was quite varied.  We had The Inkspots, The Kingston Trio, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, something that had kettle drums (I don’t remember the name, but I can still see the album cover), classical music, Classical Gas, Henry Mancini and the list goes on and on…..but one of my favorites was a compilation of many “elevator” hits. 

On this album, I could listen to “Wichita Lineman” and “Windmills of Your Mind” over and over again.

Being from Kansas, I figured that I was required, by law, to listen to and enjoy “Wichita Lineman.”

But, “Windmills of Your Mind” just plain fascinated me.  Around and around the music would chase itself.  It seemed like the perfect music to listen to while studying or writing in my diary about boys.  (Boys DEFINITELY made my mind go round and round – seemed OH SO right to make that song my boy-writing song.)

Many times in this new journey into entrepreneurialism, my brain would chase itself around and around.  The questions going faster and faster…

“Who are you to think that anyone should consider themselves important enough to have a destiny?”  (Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel…) “Who are you to try and figure out what YOUR destiny is?” (Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning wheel…) “You are a bondservant of the Most High God.  Your job is to sit down, shut up and do what you’re told.  There ain’t nothin’ in that job description that says you need to know what your destiny is.”  (Like the circles that you find, in the windmills of your mind…)

Day after day I chased the tail of my own thoughts, trying to decide what was truth, what was legalism and what was just plain “tradition”  (Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head….)  Are God’s children given a quest to complete or are we simply to keep walking the path that we are on, never stopping to ask questions?  (Like a door that keeps revolving and a half-forgotten dream….)

As you are recording the secret hidden quests in your heart, I would encourage you to take the time to write out the windmills that are revolving in your mind. (Like a snowball down a mountain or a carnival balloon, like a carousel that’s turning running rings around the moon…..)  I found that in order to proceed beyond this step, I had to face the questions that raged in my own head – on paper, matching each question with Scripture (Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own….) trying to make sense of them all.
Until I could face all those crazy thoughts/ideas/questions, I was left with nothing but the circles that you find, in the windmills of one’s mind….

I hope that you will find the same thing.  As you’ve might have heard me mention,  ; )  this change is much more mental than anything else and to abandon this part of the process is to short change yourself….and leave yourself on an ever-spinning wheel, like the ones in my mind.

(The Windmills of Your Mind words and music by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman and Michel Legrand, performed by Noel Harrison, 1968) (And NO, I wasn’t writing about boys in my diary in 1968….just in case you’re wondering.) 

Do Not Be Alarmed Arthur Dent…or Anyone Else

I’m back up and on the move again, having shaken off some funky bug. 

Having announced that, consider yourself fairly warned that tomorrow (Friday) my fingers will begin blogging anew!  Do you know how many blogs have been brewing in them these last days?!!!  SO, do not be alarmed, my friend, be very very afraid! 

Sucker!

I love fall. I love the crispness of the air. I love the sound of fallen leaves under foot. I love the smell of fall. I love the flavors of fall – squash and apples and I especially love raking leaves.

Because we live in town, it is important that we keep our sidewalks cleared from leaves, so it is not uncommon for us to rake our yard several times a week during the peak of fall. At our old house, this was all the more needful, as we had several very old and very large maple trees right out front. These trees were old pros at dumping all their leaves in copious amounts.  True skill.

One cool fall day stands out in my mind with great clarity.  They were forecasting days of rain and we had a yard FULL of leaves.  I knew that I had to take my, then little, helpers out to the front yard and get busy raking.  At that point, our crew of 3 ranged in ages from 3 mo to 5.  I had the baby in the stroller, all bundled up, which required great attention on my part, since the 2 yr old was male.

Now, perhaps at some of your homes that might not mean quite as much as it did at our home, but our son was born a Testosterosaurus.  All things taller than he were prime for climbing and all things on wheels were made for the express purpose of pushing.  Hence, a stroller was nearly a temptation too great to be ignored.

Because it took so much effort to keep his busy hands off the stroller and keep the stroller on safe ground, when he and our oldest got involved in playing in the leaves, I was grateful.  They were intensely involved in whatever new thing they had found to play.  At one point, I walked over and asked what they were doing.  “We’re playing we found a treasure!”  Cool.

Since the baby was sleeping now, blissfully unaware of how closely she had come to being pushed down the hill on the side of the house by the Testosterosaurus, I worked ferociously to complete my task.  Finally, leaves all gathered up, I wandered over to see how the treasure was going.

Just before I got up to them, my two little pirates looked up at me, with leaves stuck all around the outside of their mouths.  ???WHAT IN THE WORLD???  “Hey guys, what’s on your face?”  “Our TREASURE” they replied with joy and delight.  At that point, they showed me the sucker that they had found under the leaves on the side of our house.  (I don’t want to even consider what might have been stuck on it….) and enjoyed abundantly.

I was sick to my stomach, at the mere thought of the treasure that they had enjoyed. All afternoon I was concerned about what they might have gotten a hold of – whose sucker were they slurping away at?  I worked myself into a frenzy at the mere thought.

At nearly dinner time, one of our elderly neighbors came over and said, “I sure hope it wasn’t a problem that I gave the children a sucker earlier.  They were working so hard and I thought they would enjoy it.”

All that fear, all that concern because I didn’t ask the children the right questions.  I let my imagination run WILD without even asking a few questions.  I’m CERTAIN that they would have told me that the sucker was a gift from Mrs Quinn.

I have found that, for me, this process was a lot the same.  I spent a lot of time fussing and fretting, when all I had to do was ask.

So, today’s project is to set aside some time with the Lord and ask Him to show you – to help you see the things that He has gifted you for, in this life. Don’t allow yourself ANY time to fret, don’t allow yourself any time to be concerned that you might be in over your head or that this is going to take too long or any other vain imagining that your mind might be able to conceive. (With MY mind, the number of things was VAST, so nothing you can think of will shock me.)  

Keep writing down the memories of things that you loved to do once.  Start thinking in terms of, “If money weren’t an issue, what would I be doing?  Is there anything that I would LOVE to be doing, that I’m not?” “What one thing do I miss doing more than any other?”

Moms, this is an issue that is HUGE for us – especially if we’re homeschooling.  There are many times that I’ve heard moms say that there is something that they just LOVE to do, but they no longer have time for it.  I fear that when we make that decision, without asking Father if that is the best option, we risk taking gifts that He has placed in us and keep them from our children.  It’s quite possible that He, in fact, gave those gifts and those children to us, specifically for us to teach them to our children – and we’re blowing them off, all in the name of time.

For the King and the Kingdom ~ Dawn

Ugly Duckling Doing Swimmingly

Remember our friend, Paul Potts, from the YouTube video a few weeks ago?  (Simon Says)
In June, he won the “Britain’s Got Talent” show.  His album “One Chance” will be available – albeit an import – next week. 

Already there are so many people pre-ordering his album that Chuck Gorman, VP of music for Barnes & Noble said, “It’s something we haven’t seen in quite some time.”

I LOVE it when someone finds their destiny!!

Keep on swimming Paul!   Keep on calling him, Lord!!

(Info from The Wall Street Journal, Friday July 27, 2007)

What is Your Name? What is Your Quest? What is Your Favorite Color?

(Hey, it’s Friday, I couldn’t help myself.)

Silly as it seems to quote Monty Python, it presents quite a picture for us to ponder on, doesn’t it?

“One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was. Then the LORD called Samuel.
Samuel answered, “Here I am.”  And he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

Does it amaze you that when the Lord called Samuel, He didn’t just call out in the night, “Psst…HEY!  YOU – the kid lying there on the floor in My temple…” ? He called him by NAME.  The King of the Universe took the time to call Samuel by name.  Why?  He didn’t need to.  He could have called him any number of things, but he used a specific name – his name – something considered to be a reflection of the person “wearing” it.

I love how intimate Revelation is – “I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.”  Biblically, a name has such huge import.  I am eager to see what name my Lord, He who knows me best and most, He who has knitted my inner being, has for me. My Lord and King has chosen a name for me, based on who He has made me to be.  WOW!  Doesn’t that just make you curl your toes in excitement??

He has chosen a name for us, a specific personally given name – we’re talking like a personal nick name…you know, a name shared between a Bride and her Groom.  (sigh)  Nothing you can say will convince me, that a Lord who gives each of His children a nick name, a name known only to Him, a name that He has chosen, a name that He will write on stone, just like He did with The Ten Commandments – you can NOT convince me that THAT GOD doesn’t have a specific and personal and joyous plan for each of us.  C.A.N.  N.O.T.

We have a friend (waving Hi!) that LOVES to fly.  He loves to fly!!!!!  We can be standing with him somewhere and he hears a plane fly over and he will say, “There goes a Lear.” He is filled with more knowledge of planes and flying and things associated with flying than Jet Blue’s entire employee base! 

I remember him wrestling deeply with this aching desire in his heart to fly – that he had been squelching, over and over, because it wasn’t “right.”  I also remember the look on his face when we said to him, “Do you really think that God would place this GREAT desire in your heart and deny it to you for all your born days?”

In that moment, our friend did some flying – we saw it on his face – the idea that this desire was placed in him by the Most High God was so freeing.  (Now, I know his wife had been telling him this for some time, but sometimes we all just need a good kick off the fence.  LOL  We just happened to be the feet that Father used.)  Since that time, he has given himself the freedom to begin to believe that really is what God wants him doing.  Suddenly, this Brother has a quest…and soon, I have no doubt, he’ll have a plane, too.

Man was born needing a quest.  Something has taken it from them/us.  We, as the Bride and Body of Christ have a responsibility to help set people free to pursue the quest that the Lord has for them.  We are the only ones who can do that, because without the Quest Giver, there is no quest to pursue.  Only those who truly know the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings can understand being called by the King to attend to a quest for Him.  What a freeing and weighted thought that is.

If indeed, our Lord has a quest for us – and we are, in fact, not pursuing it, where is the problem?  Is it because of our fear?  Is it because of “the system”?  Is it because we’re too busy to allow ourselves to dream of our quest?  You know, I don’t know all the dynamics of it, but I do know that we have been lied to long enough.  The Lord is beginning, what we believe is a new wave of releasing a sense of “destiny” to His children.

I am NOT talking about some hocus-pocus garbage laden term here.  I’m talking about a quest – appointed unto you, from before the first beat of time – by the God of the Universe, for the purpose of His glory, that you might be His hands, feet, mind – whatever your destiny is – on Earth.  THAT destiny is far greater than any new age mind can conceive.  It has far greater implications than any deception could even try to portend.  It is a calling from the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, Himself.  Who can compete with THAT?!!!

If indeed Father is releasing a new call to follow the quest He has placed in us, we daren’t miss it due to fear, the system or any other reason.  So, today, your assignment is….ask for your assignment.  I doubt you will hear it immediately – but be brave enough to ask.  Father, do You have a quest for me?  For our family?

For the King and His Kingdom~ From one who is destined to serve it!  Dawn

PS Oh – and uh, what IS your favorite color?  Do you know the air speed velocity of a flying swallow? 

Be Careful, There’s Some Stuff Inside

My Dad and I both have birthdays in the same month.  (My Dad and I both have birthdays in the same week, actually.)  Because of this, we got into the habit of baking/obtaining (you might be able to guess who did which) the cake for their birthday buddy.

One year, my Dad said that for his birthday, he wanted a 7 layer cake.  Wow, seven layers, huh?  I figured I’d need 4 mixes and 8 pans.  (I thought I would just eat the “extra” layer, while I was frosting and working on all the others.)  And off I went.

Things seemed fine until I got to layer number 4.  I noticed as I was working along, that it started to slide.  Number five became down right dangerous, but I wasn’t going to quit!  Goodness NO.  My Dad wanted a 7 layer cake and a 7 layer cake, he was going to get.  So, I did what every creative cook would do.  I stuck spaghetti in it to keep it in place.  (WHAT?!!  You can’t tell me you never thought of that.)

By the time we got to layer number 7, I had stress-eaten a quarter of layer eight and had given up on spaghetti and moved to pulling and washing strands from our “corn” broom.  (I only put them on the outer edges, just in case they held the taste of the soap I was soaking them in.  I’m just grateful I didn’t think of soaking them in bleach!!  Whew, good thing a 12 yr old mind can only come up with so many creative ideas at once.)  

The plan was that before the cake was served, I’d pull the spaghetti out.  The problem with this plan was, I forgot to let the cakes cool completely (T.W.E.L.V.E. remember?). The spaghetti, having come in contact with warm, moist cake had….well, suffice it to say they were a tad al dente.  The most unfortunate part of the spaghetti losing their super cake holding powers (which slightly cooked spaghetti is wont to do) is that the cake then began to slide….and not all the layers went sliding in the same direction.

After Dad blew all the candles out, I went searching, across the top of the cake for the pieces of spaghetti that I had left up near the top….they weren’t there.  So, taking a deep breath, I went ahead and cut caught the pieces of his sliding cake, with the caution “Um, be careful, there’s some stuff inside.”  It’s truly a good thing I made a 7 layer cake, because by the time we scraped the cake off the partially cooked spaghetti and threw out the cake that was around the broom straws, there wasn’t much left.

While I laugh at this now, when I was in the midst of it, it didn’t seem all that funny.  (My Mother on the other hand, had no trouble finding it hilarious even at the time!)   That’s kind of how I look back over the last year.  It was very disheartening at times, but now it’s rather comforting and at times, amusing.

I would suggest, as we start into this, that you find yourself a notebook, one that you can record whatever Scriptures, thoughts/ideas or notes to discuss, that the Holy Spirit will bring to mind. Remember this is a process – so don’t expect to have answers tomorrow.  (Although, you may well be more pliable in the hands of the Lord than we were and maybe you WILL hear tons tomorrow.)

Today, your assignment is to write down every memory you have of something you did as a child that brought you sheer joy and delight.  Ask the Lord to help you think of them, cause sometimes they’ve gotten hidden under the clutter of “life.”  Sometimes someone has just convinced you that it was/is a useless interest.

Write down the things that you used to do, or do now, that people offer you praise for.  Obviously for me, cake baking didn’t come high on the list of things that my family felt I did well.  This event is only one of several cake debacles my family endured at my hand.

But – remember that flair for the dramatic that I was talking about yesterday?  THAT did receive familial accolades.  Both for my own private dramatic creations and those that I participated in publicly.  (Even to the point of managing to eat peanut butter sandwiches on stage – with cardboard hidden in them….DAD.)  So did my interest in science – particularly as it related to health.  (We won’t even DISCUSS sewing!)

Jeff won state awards for his public speaking and debate skills.  (All this means now, is he’s a riot to argue with…and don’t even DREAM of trying to convince a hard headed Clark that they’re wrong.)  He is incredibly gifted in drama.  Had we not gotten married, I have no doubt he’d have had a stint on Broadway.  (He really is THAT good.)  He is also a math genius.  He wouldn’t agree with that, but too bad, he isn’t here and it’s my blog anyway.  (pplgh)      The things he does with words and numbers amaze me!

My son has an incredible gift for food presentation.  He was dinner helper last week and we had chicken and rice.  No big deal – but each plate had a twist of lemon and some fresh parsley served with the rice and some nuts sprinkled over the top of the chicken.  (??  You KNOW he didn’t learn that from me.  There wasn’t a hint of slightly cooked spaghetti or broomstraws anywhere!)

Each of us have gifts that are sometimes hidden and kept secret -things that we love to do, that most of us aren’t living out.  Write them out for today’s assignment, in your new journal. If you feel brave, come back and post them here.  I’d love to see what the Lord is beginning to bring to your mind, as you write.

For the King and His Kingdom ~ Dawn

I Wanna Hold Your Hand*

Museum of Science and Industry.  Chicago, IL, Summer 1976.

My Aunt Ethel and my Uncle Gene, a man worthy of an entire post himself – a man gravely concerned for the substandard level of education that everyone but him had received – determined that I ought to go with them to the museum to spend the day.

My uncle was a man of booming voice, usually a rawther sarcastic booming voice, and stiff of neck.  (I just don’t understand, he was such a stubborn man, and I didn’t inherit a bit of it.  How can that be?) So when we arrived, he stood in the middle of the lobby, surveying his temporary domain, declared that this was not just a “vacation” trip, but that I had to go find “information” – and he gave me his list.

It was somewhat like a scavenger hunt, meandering through the museum, trying to find all the information that had been assigned to me.  However, this was only my second trip to this museum, the first being with my parents who stayed by my side all day long.  I was old enough (you don’t think I’m REALLY going to tell you how old I was in 1976, do you?!!)       that I should have been comfortable wandering around, except for one tiny fact.   I got lost.

Now, for those of you who have never been to this museum (and I imagine that would encompass most of you) it is a huge old building.  My father worked with a group of men, back in the early 60’s on fine tuning carbon dating.  So, he had spent many days in the basement of this museum, pulling open drawers of bodies and verifying their ages with the results from the computer.  I had this knowledge (and more!) of what was in the bowels of this building and….I was lost.

You may not have noticed, but I have been known – on occasion – to demonstrate a…. gift for the dramatic.  We call it flair in our home. (But then again, we have enough other “weaknesses” that we like to focus on the positive aspects of this particular trait.)  That particular flair took over that day and the more lost I became, the more terrifying it became.

Long hallways suddenly had a macabre look to them….I was certain that they would end in large rooms, filled with dead bodies.  I could imagine the sounds of people following behind me – not certain if they were going to have to “knock me off” because I’d seen too much.  What should have been a grand day out at the museum turned into a truly frightening experience.

I am finding, in talking to people, that their ventures into the world of entrepreneurialism seem to resemble a grand day out at the museum.      I don’t know that they demonstrate the same level of flair that I did on that day, but they are finding it truly overwhelming to a) escape the long “halls” of information, with who knows what hiding behind the doors! and b) try and find the answers that they seek, so that they can get the heck out of the museum!  

I’d like to help with that process.  I know the questions that Jeff and I had when we started this, but they may or may not help you.  So, if you will bear with me, I’m going to try to take your hand and lead you through this labyrinthine process – to help you find daylight on the other side.

I’m going to assume that you are in the same basic position that Jeff and I were when we began this walk.  So, I’m going to offer you suggestions that will allow you to find the answers you need, with as little terror involved as possible.

BUT, in order to best serve you and not just ramble on giving information that might be useless – if you are someone desiring to take up this adventure, will you please tell me your most pressing issues, so that you don’t get lost in the bowels of information?  You never know what you will find behind closed doors!!!  
Tomorrow, I’m going to start a new series of discussing the basic steps that we took that – most of them free, and if not free, very inexpensive – and I’m going to hold your hand and walk you through the maze.  I am also going to ask some really hard questions, because (go ahead, say it with me) becoming an entrepreneur is tonstonstonstons more about the changes that take place in your thinking and heart, than they are about the changes that take place in your home.  Skipping those questions will not serve you.

Oh, one more thing – all those questions I was supposed to find answers to for my uncle?  When we met up at closing time, my uncle stood in the center of the entryway of the museum and said bellowed, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW?  HAVEN’T YOU EVEN LOOKED AROUND HERE TODAY?”   I wanted to hit him.  

For the King and His Kingdom ~  Dawn

*Apologies to The Beatles