A new challenge

Fifteen days ago, my mom and I were in the kitchen at my parents house talking when my dad came in. He was coughing and looking for some cold medicine. My mom told him he was starting to sound like my aunt, who has been a smoker for years and has a horrible smoker's cough. (She probably has emphysema.) So anyway, my dad said it was just a cold, but my mom and I told him it was from his smoking. (For a long time, he's done this weird clearing his throat thing, but has never really had a "smoker's cough." This is new for him.) I'm not sure how long he has smoked, but he is 60 years old, so it's probably been close to 45 years. That day he decided to quit. It's been 15 days and he hasn't had so much as one cigarrette. Cold turkey. My mom told him she would go get him the patch or gum or that new medicine chantix, but he said no. He's been sucking on Werther's candies to help him get thru. I'm so proud of him. I never thought he would do it. I hope and pray that he keeps going strong.

And if he can do it, I can do it. I'm not a smoker but I could stand to lose a few pounds. Ok, maybe more than a few. So I'm gonna do it. I took my first spin class ever today. And although I couldn't totally keep up with the rest of the people in the class, I did complete it. All 50 minutes. I may not have stood up all the times they did, but I never stopped pedaling.

Tomorrow I'm gonna make my dad oatmeal raisin cookies. They're his favorite, and now that his taste buds and sense of smell should be coming back, I'm sure they'll be tastier than ever. (I don't like raisins, so no worries about me eating them, and failing on my end!)
I'm proud of my dad, and hopefully one day, I'll be proud of myself for losing a bunch of weight. Here's hoping we both keep going strong.

Points to ponder...

At church on Sunday we had a guest speaker and he spoke on an intersting subject....Why is it so hard to witness to non Christians? He posed an interesting question...if you got a thousand dollars for everytime you witnessed to someone, regardless of the outcome, would you share your faith more often? And if you can overcome that fear for love of money, why can't you overcome it for love of God?
It's totally true, too. I know that if I got money everytime I shared I would be passing out tracts, evangelizing like crazy. But I don't do that now. I know for me sharing my faith is hard. I don't do it out of fear of rejection, and also fear of not being able to answer someone's questions. The fear of rejection thing is a biggie for me, it permeates most of my life. I have not done somethings, and probably missed out on some good things, because of this fear. I'm just gonna have to pray for the Lord to give me strength and work that issue out. The other fear I am gonna have to work on myself, perhaps spend more time studying God's Word, maybe do a study on sharing my faith.
Either way, I'd better get over those fears, cuz I've heard the message, and now am going to be accountable for living it out. And so are you.....

Flicker Doodles

So I have a new project. Well its sort of a project, more like a compilation of projects. I really like to be creative in my own way. Meaning I'm not good at art or drawing or stuff like that, but I really get creative with decorating or cooking or party planning and stuff like that. And I really enjoy doing it. I've been told that I should be a party planner or some other such career, and really, if I knew how to go about it and thought I could be a success at it, I would probably try. But thats probably not gonna happen, so I thought I'd try the next best thing and share some projects I'm working on online. So check them out at flicker-doodles.blogspot.com and let me know what you think.

My Life List

I had originally posted this on myspace a few years ago, but this year I'm really trying to work on these goals, so I decided to post it here too....

So I read an article in last months Cosmo about this woman who died in the WTC on Sept 11th. Last year her mom found this list she had made of things she hoped to accomplish in her life. So I decided to make my own. Some of the things on here are silly and trivial, some of them are going to take awhile. There are obviously other goals that I have (like getting married and having kids) but I have no control over those. These I can do on my own. So here it is, in no particular order...

1. Be more self confident
2. Be more careful with who I trust
3. Learn to knit
4. Tell my family I love them more often
5. Be a better friend
6. Europe
7. Workout more
8. Learn to say no without feeling guilty
9. Go back to school
10. Learn to speak Spanish
11. Be more educated about politics
12. Shop less and save more money
13. Australia
14. Be a better listener
15. Fear rejection less
16. Be more independent
17. Take a trip by myself
18. Volunteer with a charity
19. Read and study the Bible
20. Become more tolerant of other people
21. Worry less what other people think of me
22. Be less judgemental
23. Ski more
24. Be more assertive
25. Go to the beach more
26. Gossip less
27. Read everyday
28. Trust the Lord's plan in my life more
29. Learn to scuba dive
30. South America
31. Always keep improving
32. Be more forgiving
33. Don't be so hard on myself when I make a mistake
34. Ride my bike
35. Drink more water
36. Try new foods
37. Go see Elvis
38. Go back to DC and spend some time there
39. Appreciate the simple things in life
40. Be more thankful
41. Learn to play tennis
42. Go sailing
43. Costa Rica
44. Never be ashamed of who I am
45. Live a life to be proud of

So it's a work in progress. I am sure that I will be adding things to it as time goes on. But at least now I know what I striving for...