Snow Day!

Today it began snowing downtown around 8ish. At 9:30 Allison and I decided to head home. We went and picked up Cooper at daycare (which was closing at 11:00) and headed toward Smyrna. At the time, the roads were much worse in Nashville than in Smyrna. The traffic was terrible, but as the roads got better the farther south we went, the traffic got better as well.

After getting home and eating lunch, I called our neighbor to see if he and his daughter wanted to go sledding. He did and we met at a middle school near our neighborhood with a pretty good hill in front. We spent 2 hours sledding and there were about 10 people there when we got there, but about 20 when we left. Cooper absolutely loved it! He was a little apprehensive at first, but by the end he was sliding down, head first, by himself. We had a lot of fun and will definitely go back tomorrow. Hopefully we can get 2-4 more inches tonight, which will make for a great time.

Encouragement

Yesterday, while getting ready to go for a run I thought about running five miles. After I got started I quickly decided that today was going to be a 3 mile kind of day. I often fall into this trap. As I am getting ready, I think to myself, "I am going to run somewhere between three and five miles today. I will decide when I get out there." Bad idea. Almost inevitably I am going to start getting tired after about a mile and decide, "three miles it is!" Many times, however, I can push myself on through and "practice not quitting."

I don't think yesterday was going to be one of those days. I started off and felt really strong after about one mile. The difference was, I started thinking about all of the things that we needed to do. Take a shower, birthday party, grocery store, Target. Thinking about these things, I quickly decided that I was only running 3 miles. As I finished about 1.5 miles I could see a guy running toward me up ahead. When we crossed paths, he held out his arm, gave me a high five, and said "have a great day." I don't know if I appeared to be struggling, but that's what I needed to get going, a little encouragement. It wasn't anything huge, just a quick high five that, to me, said "keep going, you don't need to stop at 3 miles," so I continued on and finished a 4 mile run.

A little bit of encouragement goes a long way. Whether it's at our job, toward a friend, toward our spouse, or just another runner on the street. As I finished my run I began thinking about some of the ways that I can do a better job of encouraging people. Hopefully I can offer a little to someone.

What are some of the ways that you encourage others or like to be encouraged?

Disaster in Haiti

As all of you know by now there was an earthquake that registered 7.0 that stuck Haiti a few days ago. From what I have read, there are probably tens of thousands of deaths. There is widespread destruction in what is one of the poorest countries on earth. One of the descriptions I read today was "take all of the destruction from the tsunami a few years ago and put that all in an area the size of Dallas/Ft. Worth. Unfortunately, there are many scams going around. I have not heard of any specifically, just that if you are able to give, you should only do so to organizations that you know are legit. One organization that I know is legit is Compassion International.

Compassion sponsors and donors serve more than 65,000 children in Haiti. At least a third of them live in the areas that were hardest hit. You can click here to give to Compassion's Haiti Earthquake Disaster Relief. For more information on how you can help those affected by the Haiti Earthquake you can check out this blog. And for bloggers, there is a lot of information there that you can use to post to your site in order to try to help Compassion raise as much money and awareness as possible for the people of Haiti.

Goals for 2010 - part 2

In my last post, I mentioned that I would be posting my goals for 2010. What I didn't mention was that Allison and I are continuing a tradition that we started doing last year, creating goals for the upcoming year. We have been friends with the Tidwells for a long time. For the past several years at dinner around the first of the year Nick would ask us, "So, what are your goals for this year?" Each year I would say something to the effect of, "I don't know, what are yours?" Well, last year Allison and I decided to come up with some goals of our own. We are doing that again this year, and maybe, by posting them here, I will be more accountable to stay on top of them.

I was planning to post my goals on my blog, but after reading a blog post from Michael Smith, the worship past at our church, and Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson, I am even more convinced that it will help me be motivated to achieve these goals throughout the year. One thing that both of these posts made clear is that it is good to get your goals out there. Whether it's telling those you lead or your peers, or posting them on your blog for all to see, getting your goals out there gives you another layer of accountability.

I have a list of several goals. As I said in my earlier post, some of these were on the list last year but didn't get completed.

So, here they are - my goals for 2010.

• More meaingful and consistent prayer time
• More meaingful and consistent quiet time
• Read through the Bible by 12/31/10
• Memorize at least one verse every week
• Consistent posting to my blog (at least 2 times per week)
• Become a better writer
• Become more organized
• Complete a triathlon
• Finish a 5k in fewer than 24 minutes

Goals for 2010

I have never really been a resolution guy. I don't know if it was just laziness or realizing that I probably wouldn't stick to some unrealistic thing to do. Well, last year I decided that I would make a list of goals for 2009. I think I listed about 10 goals and actually achieved about half of them. I am doing the same thing for 2010. Part of my issue with not reaching all of my 2009 goals was that I didn't go back to my list often enough. A few of my goals were to be completed throughout the year, and once I got away from them, I got too far behind and couldn't get back on track. This year, however, I am going to keep the list somewhere that I will be able review it often. I have not totally settled on my list, but I know of several that are going on there. Some of the goals that will go on the 2010 list are the unreached goals of 2009, but most of them are new goals. I am breaking my list down into three categories: physical, mental, & spiritual. I think I will have 3-4 goals in each category and hopefully this time next year I will have a blog post that reports that I have completed all goals for 2010.

What about you, do you set goals for each year? Do you have a hard time reaching your goals each year?