I made this soup last night. It’s a Lemon Dill Rice and Chicken Soup that is a classic Greek soup. There are several nationalities/cultures that have a version of it…and a completely different name. Really fascinating if you research it.

But this is the one I’ve been making. It’s a soup that’s thickened with eggs, loaded with lots of rice, and flavored with lemon and dill. I’ve made it several times and it’s always a yummy soup…for winter OR summer. I highly recommend it. It’s really rather simple. Just a few extra steps…but worth it! 🙂

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Ingredients

1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 small onion, finely diced
2 stalks celery, finely diced
2 small carrots, finely diced
4-6 cups chicken broth (homemade really makes a difference)
2 cups cooked rice, warmed
Salt and freshly-ground pepper
2 large egg yolks
1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons of lemon juice (fresh is best)
1 rotisserie chicken, meat coarsely shredded
1/8 cup fresh or dried dill (again, fresh is best)

Heat the olive oil in a pot. Add the diced onions, celery and carrots. Saute until the onions are translucent (about 5 minutes). Add chicken broth and bring to a boil . Add salt and pepper to taste.

Add 1/2 cup of the cooked rice, the eggs yolks, the lemon juice into a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. Slowly add a ladle of the broth to the egg mixture and blend well. Stir the puree you have just made into the stock, along with the chicken and the remaining 1-1/2 cups of rice. Simmer until thickened slightly, approximately 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in the dill and serve.

This really is a good soup. Definitely worth your time.
And your family will thank you for it!

 

This is mainly for the ladies…but it applies to men, too.

Have you ever looked at someone older than you…especially a senior-aged woman…and seen something in her that you admire?

When David and I first married, we went on a couple of road trips with his parents and his maternal grandmother, Lillian, who I’ve written about before. When we asked for her opinion on the temperature in the car, or where would she like to eat, or what would she like to do or see, or if she was getting tired, she almost always said, “Everything is just so fine.” The temperature was fine, she was willing to eat wherever we decided, to do whatever we decided, to see whatever we decided, and she was ready to keep going as long as we went. Such an easy travel companion, who was just happy and content to be with her family and to be doing something adventurous.

I told David in those early years, “I hope when I get to be Grandmother’s age, I’m as happy and content and easy to be around as she is” to which David replied, “Well, it doesn’t just happen overnight. You gotta start being that way right now.”

As a new wife, I kinda-sorta took offense to that at the time…I thought he was telling me that I was opinionated, never satisfied, wanting my own way and always wanting the temperature adjusted. Of course, later on, I realized that he was just encouraging me to start practicing and building the habits now that I want to become second-nature to me as a older, senior lady.

Even as a now-older woman (older than 35 years ago) I often see other older women who are active, healthy, still so beautiful, feisty, happy, positive, women of God and I still feel the same way. I then have to ask myself, “Am I practicing any of those characteristics right now?” and if I answer honestly, yes, I am practicing SOME of them, but there are many that I still have so much work to do.

When we lived in Nashville in the mid 80’s, there was an older woman that went to our church (older to me then…she was probably in her late 60’s, maybe early 70’s at that time) that got up early every morning and walked 4 miles. Every. Single. Morning. No. Matter. What. She was fit and active and fun and happy and I thought to myself, “Gosh, I hope I can be that way when I’m her age.”

I’m closer to that style of living than I have been in recent years, but I still have a lot of work to do there.

There’s a beautiful older (and by older, I mean about 15 years older than me) lady in our church right now that is a gentle soul, who has a sweet sense of humor and she and her husband are best friends and they are active and adventurous and they travel and they take their two youngest grand children on long road trips to Disneyland. They are so loving and encouraging and a JOY to be around. David and I are very close to them, and we both look at them and say to each other, “Please, let’s be like that when we get to be their age.”

But as I mentioned, we have to start NOW. If we are waiting for that magic day to come when, all of a sudden, we are “that way,” it ain’t gonna happen.

I was just reminded of this truth again after watching a video about the real-life Miss Clara, Molly Bruno,  from the movie The War Room. I haven’t seen the movie yet (don’t judge) but I do know the basics. The real Miss Clara is an AMAZING prayer warrior. At 91 years of age, she is a power-house pray-er. But I guarantee, she didn’t become that overnight. She’s had years and years of experience with her relationship with Jesus and praying to Him and talking to Him as her best friend.

So ladies, if you want to be an older woman who is healthy, active, fun, funny, gentle-spirited, adventurous, content, happy, energetic, Godly, prayer-warrior, change-maker, good friend, servant-minded, etc. etc. …you have to start now…wherever you are. If things need to change between what is and what you want to be, then start right now.

BE NOW WHAT YOU WANT TO BE THEN.

Don’t say “someday I’ll”…because “Someday Isle” doesn’t exist (nods to you, Bethany). Say, “Today I’ll”…and then do it. Practice those things every single chance you get. Yes, you will mess up…a lot. You won’t get it right every time. But it’s like walking into a strong, cold wind…it may be difficult, but it’s worth every step when you finally get to the warmth.

Disclaimer (aren’t you tired of these?): If you haven’t watched much or any of the show, “Stranger Things” on Netflix, and don’t want spoilers or details you haven’t reached yet, STOP NOW! Or forever hold your tongue!

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David and I got totes hooked on a Netflix original this last fall called “Stranger Things”. Take the 80’s, mix it with a bit of The Goonies and ET and Independence Day…take the feel of a Spielberg movie, fill it with the horror and suspense of a Stephen King novel, and then edit it with 30 years (give or take) worth of hindsight…and you’ve got “Stranger Things”.

We fell in love with it, hated it desperately when the season came to an end, and are equally desperate for Season 2, whenever that comes about.

In this show (here’s where the disclaimer applies…), a couple of characters go missing and the doggedly (there’s that word again) pursuant friends and family members that are NOT missing, find out that these missing people are in what is called “the upside down.” It’s their world, but their world…you guessed it…”upside down.”

It’s a fascinating concept for a tv show. And very much worth watching if you haven’t already and don’t mind that I basically just told you the main plot-line.

Last night, I was watching a documentary on Netflix entitled “Minimalism”…rather boring, really, but very informative…and inspiring, in that it makes me want to completely and literally minimize my life and stuff.

A lady was talking about that, in today’s day and age, if we don’t want certain clothes, we can give them away or consign them or sell them. But the bottom line is this…that used clothes are worth practically nothing. That a pound of beans or rice are asking a higher price than a pair of designer jeans at the local thrift store. She said it like this…”Used apparel has become worthless…rice and beans cost more than used apparel. In historical terms, that’s the world upside down.”

Hey, I’ve heard that phrase before.

This is true, but isn’t that actually the kind of world we have become? Where things that ought to be valuable are not…and things that are not important are highly valued?

Enough about that though…this is the point of why I’m writing this.

The world we live in is a broken world. When Adam and Eve sinned, and kicked the door stop away and prohibited us from experiencing a perfect world where we walk and talk with God on the daily…and we live in peace and harmony with nature, and sin doesn’t exist, and women don’t hurt when babies come out, and men don’t have to work their butts off to provide for their families…and terrorists don’t attack us, and lions lick our faces…and the bill collector hasn’t even been invented yet (neither have bills, for that matter), and evil people don’t run amok (“Amok, amok, amok!”) and children don’t die and accidents don’t happen and marriages don’t break up and friends don’t stab us in the back and the air is completely safe to breathe and we don’t get headaches and we don’t get our feelings hurt…

BEFORE ALL THIS…God had THAT in mind.

But we blew it. And just face it; if Adam and Eve hadn’t done it, you or I would have. It was inevitable.

So with this idea of “the upside down”…in the story of minimalism and the show Stranger Things, the upside down is the bad part of how life is supposed to be…its the opposite of life as we know it.

And if life as we know it is full of evil and hurt and pain and strife and war and work and death and separation and sin…then what is “the upside down” for us?

It’s living this life out of the norm…opposite of the way most people live their life…it’s responding to bad things in an “upside down” way…

Let me explain….

When Jesus was born, he began a process of turning this broken world upside down. We didn’t know it at the time, because He was just a wee one and hadn’t started his ministry. But at the age of 30, he started it. He started at a wedding (which is another whole blog, so I’m not going there yet.)

But when Jesus started teaching His disciples how to live a different life than the life they were used to…how to react and love and respond and act TOTALLY OPPOSITE of how their world/society reacted and loved and responded and acted…He was teaching us, His followers, how to live in “the upside down.”

Here are some examples.

We are born wanting to be first. We are born wanting to win. We are born wanting to get higher grades, run faster, jump higher then the next person. Nothing really wrong with wanting to be and do the best that we can, to be excellent at things, unless it becomes the whole focus of our being and we crawl all over others or shove them to the ground to do it.

When Jesus started teaching, here is what he taught on the subject.

In Matthew 20:16, He said, “…the last will be first and the first will be last.” That doesn’t sound fair, does it? We want to be FIRST…BEST…TOP. But Jesus teaches the upside-down way.

In Mark 10:43, Jesus taught us, “…whoever wants to become great among you must be a servant.” What? Ok, still totally unfair.

Jesus taught that the one who humbles himself or herself, who takes the last spot, who lets everyone else go first at the family dinner buffet, who parks farthest away from the church building so others can park close to the door, who lets someone else get in front of them in line at WalMart, who takes what’s left so others can get the first and best…THOSE are the ones who are living the upside down. And He blesses that!

All of Matthew 5 is full of upside-down teachings, beginning with the first 12 verses…The Beatitudes. I won’t go through each one individually because that’s like a whole other blog post.

But allow me to give you verses 38-48 in The Message paraphrase. Watch for all the upside downs in just these 10 verses alone.

38-42 “Here’s another old saying that deserves a second look: ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ Is that going to get us anywhere? Here’s what I propose: ‘Don’t hit back at all.’ If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.

43-47 “You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.

48 “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

And here’s the kicker. We are to do all of these upside down things without want or need of applause or recognition. Which goes completely against our culture. If we’re honest with ourselves, we all want credit for doing the right thing, even Christians who do what Jesus tells them to do. After all, it’s what we humans do, right? Yes…it is. And that’s why Jesus said, do it the upside-down way.

In 413 AD, Augustine wrote in “City of God” that Christians were vilified by society because they were so different from what the culture “expected”. You can go back and read for yourself how the earliest Christians were criticized by the culture: Christians are bad citizens; Christians don’t march; they don’t fight; they don’t build; they don’t help govern; Christians are mixing the classes and races at common meals in common living quarters; they’re destroying the social structures of the society; they’re not patriotic; they’re not loyal to the Empire; they say we are to serve one God instead of the State; they advocate forgiveness toward our nation’s enemies.

Those are the teachings of Jesus. And those teachings and that way of life is completely upside down to the ways of this world. It got Christians in trouble back then. And it still gets Christians in trouble today.

So here’s my question to you today?

How upside-down are you living?

Are you blending in so much to the culture and expectations around you that no one knows you actually live in The Upside Down? Because if you DO live the upside down way, people will notice.

 

For some reason, I really had my two sweet grandmothers on my mind today. Not exactly sure why, except that…well, I just thought of them. On the same day. This day.

The only way I can explain it was based on two simple activities..I was putting away dishes from the dishwasher and putting away a candy dish with Christmas candy in it.

Ok, I know that’s vague…but let me explain.

My grandmothers, Edna Elizabeth Butler Ballew and Essie Isabell Hodge Greenup, are no longer with us…and I miss them terribly. I really do. In this year of 2017, they would have been 101 and 105 years old, respectively, and I cannot EVEN fathom it.

David and I have been married for 34-1/2 years. And I have, in my possession still, items that both my grandmothers gave to us before we married or early in our marriage.

As I was putting away dishes from our dishwasher tonight, I paid special attention to our silverware…silverware that my Mammaw Ballew (my maternal grandmother) gave me before I married. Bless her heart. In the early 80’s, you could order one place setting of nice quality silverware at a time through a magazine ad. Every time a new ad came in a magazine, my Mammaw Ballew would order a place setting, which consisted of a regular knife, a steak/serrated knife, a dinner fork, a salad fork, a soup spoon, a dessert spoon, and a tea spoon. She would tear the ad out of the magazine, write a check, and put it in the mail (LLLOOOOONNNGGGG before Amazon or Apple Pay).

Other specialty ‘silverware’ sets included serving utensils, grapefruit spoons, pickle forks, a scalloped sugar spoon (that’s what I call it.) Mammaw Ballew got them ALL. When David and I married, I think we had like 20 full sets of utensils. I can’t remember the “brand” of these, but they’re very nice.

Sometimes I look at my silverware, and I think, “It’s been a LONG time since I got these. Maybe I should get something new…more up-to-date…more ‘today’.”

But why? They are still beautiful and useable and very, very special to me. Because my grandmother spent time and money to get them for me.

My other grandmother, Mammaw Greenup, gave me and David a piece of fine crystal (candy dishes and a vase and a napkin holder), in a specific pattern picked just for us, for our wedding and subsequent anniversaries and Christmases. Every year, I use one or more of these candy dishes for season-appropriate candies. Today, I put away the one dish I used this year to store peppermints during the Christmas season…and I thought of her.

There have been times that I’ve thought, “This is just too fancy for me. I don’t use a lot of fine crystal for anything…except just a couple of times a year. Maybe I should sell them or give them to someone else.” But why? They are still beautiful and useable and very, very special to me. Because my grandmother spent time and money to get them for me.

Whenever I use my silverware or my crystal dishes, it’s like a piece of my grandmothers still lives on through my life. It’s like I’m continuing a legacy, as it were, of the generations before.

EVERY DANG YEAR, dadgummit, I commit to scaling down…simplifying…getting rid. I know it’s important to scale down…I definitely need to lessen my load of “stuff” in my house and in my life. But I’ve learned through the years to “keep the important things the important things.” Besides the people in my life…family and friends…the things that were given to me by special people in my life are the important “things.” Does that make sense?

So often we become attached to things that we THINK are important: electronics and gadgets and jeans that don’t fit and jewelry and vehicles and tools and report cards and Christmas letters and postcards and yarn and school pictures and doilies and cake plates and dvd’s and games and Sephora samples and wicker baskets and random recipes and Matchbox cars and ‘nearly-burned-out candles’ and cheap vases that our husband put flowers in and cookbooks I’ve never cooked from and dishes I’ve never used…get the picture? I could go ON AND ON.

But when we finally decide to look at our life from 30,000 feet…when we see the over-arching BIG picture of our life…we realize that, a lot of the things we think are important…ARE TOTALLY NOT. Of course there are things that are cute and fun and entertaining and convenient and “time-saving”…but not “necessary” or “life-giving.” These are not “bad” things, and it’s totally ok to keep them, unless they clutter your life or house or time or mind…and take up the space that could/should belong to the “important things.”

What are the most important “things” in my life? besides my family and friends? I could make a pretty long list, but let me just say that, of all I own and that clutter my home, and if I’m brutally honest with myself, very little would I consider “important”…things that I would never want to lose or leave behind if I needed to leave suddenly.

So much of what I have could be lost in a fire or stolen by thieves…and really, in a week or so, I would never miss it.

So why do we keep things like that? If I ever figure that out, I’ll let you know.

But here’s the purpose of this post: “Keep the important things the important things.” 
Get rid of the rest.
GET. RID. OF. THE. REST.

Granted, easier said than done.

George Carlin once said, “Trying to be happy by accumulating stuff is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body.”

Ridiculous. Hilarious, but ridiculous!

So, in 2017 (I know…I say it every STINKIN’ year)…I am finally and doggedly (love that word) DETERMINED to rid my home and life…and even my heart and mind and attention…of the clutter…the stuff that I look at every day that doesn’t make me happy…(that becomes part of the ‘landscape’, that I have to dust, or put in a drawer or on a shelf or in another stack)…but rather makes me either wish I had a bigger house or less stuff.

Believe me, I’m not getting a bigger house any time soon, so the only other alternative is less stuff.

What is it in your life that you just can’t get rid of because it is very special to you and brings you much joy?

And what is it in your life that you THINK is important or valuable, but you wouldn’t miss if it disappeared this very instant? THAT, my friend, needs to “gee-oh”…GO!

Join me in 2017 to simplify, simplify, simplify…and toss, toss, toss…and decrease, decrease, decrease…and have no regrets about doing so.

Here’s to a simpler, less-cluttered, less-complicated, less-guilt-inflicting year!

We can do this!!! ❤

“There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

A statement of humility…a statement that recognizes our own weaknesses…a statement that defines the very life we live day by day by day.

Simply put (and as the Cambridge Dictionary defines it), “something said when something bad that has happened to someone else could have happened to you.”

I got really bad news today. Disturbing news. Heart-breaking news. News that I “never-in-a-million-years” thought would happen. But the thing is, the mistakes/failures/sins this person committed could have just as easily been ME.  All of us are capable of so much personal and relational destruction if given the chance. We are no different. This is why it is so important to keep our judgmental attitudes at bay…and remember that God’s grace is as powerful to pull us out of the gutter as it is to keep us from falling into the gutter in the first place. No difference!!!

We, all of every one of us, have weaknesses…we have “soft spots” that are easily damaged and cause us to make the most unwisest decisions we could ever make. I’ve been there…done that…bought the t-shirt.

And so have YOU.

So instead of being quick to judge (“How could they DO that??”…” What in God’s name were they thinking?”…”Didn’t they know the risk they were taking and the damage they were going to cause?”) we need to be quick to realize that, it could have happened to any and every one of us. None of us are immune to making decisions that could ruin our life and the lives of the ones we love.

So, let’s all be diligent to keep our minds and hearts and actions as pure as we possibly can,…NOT because we may get caught, but because the One that knows us best and loves us most is watching…is doing His best to guide us into wise decisions and actions…and is in our corner when we face temptations that seem to be almost impossible to resist.

I wrote a blog many years ago (iWeb days) entitled “The Lost Art of Letter Writing”, but for some reason, the desire to get back to the basics of “old-school” communication, is stronger right now than ever before. To say I’m tired of Facebook and emails and texts to communicate important, sensitive words…is an understatement. Those just don’t do it.

So, ok, I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, because I either, don’t keep them, or…don’t start them at all, or get completely side-tracked along the way. I believe that resolutions should happen on the daily….because we none-of-us are perfect…so failure at a resolution just intensifies the fact that we’re flawed.

So this is a decision; and a goal for 2017.

“Write with a pen or pencil or marker or Crayon on a piece of paper and put it in an actual envelope, address it,  put a stamp on it and mail it.” 

So this is my challenge to anyone reading this blog: WRITE WITH YOUR OWN HAND ON PAPER!!

Here’s another challenge: As soon as you can, take a piece of paper…fancy stationery or a piece of college-ruled notebook paper…and hand-write a letter/note to your parents, your grandparents, your caregivers, to  someone/anyone who has played a special part of your life. I did this several years ago with David and with my parents. There’s nothing like getting a note in the mail written in the actual handwriting of the person who sent it. Believe me…it makes an amazing difference to the receiver.

Our children and grandchildren are missing out on the value of seeing the hand-written words of their “ancestors”…so let’s restart this thing. This tradition. This old-school writing on a piece of paper.

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(original post)

Disclaimer: I have nothing against modern technology. I am using it as I type these words. It’s a wonderful benefit in today’s time of getting a message to someone when time is of the essence.

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I am addicted to Jane Austen: her life, her writings, her times, her stories, her viewpoints, and the movies that have been subsequently made of her books. I am fascinated by the time and effort it took to write and deliver letters. The painstaking time of having to write letters on parchment, dipping the tip of a feather in ink, sealing it with wax, etc.

I have several boxes full of letters that I have received through the years: letters from David from when we were dating and notes he has left me through these 25+ years of marriage; letters from dear friends and family who live far away; notes from CD that still bring a giggle to my heart. I even have the letters that David’s grandfather wrote his grandmother when they were just newly married. I have copies of letters that my mother wrote to her mother when I was very young.

There’s just something about being able to pull out a card or letter or note and look at it and relive the moment you received it. There’s an emotion attached to it. There’s something about a friend’s or family member’s handwriting that makes us feel something. Printing out an email you receive just doesn’t have quite the same feeling.

A couple of years ago on our local news, they had a piece entitled “Email Etiquette.” Some of their advice was “Don’t use all caps; it makes you seem angry,” “Avoid lengthy sentences and/or paragraphs; the receiver probably won’t take the time to read it,” “Remember that your tone is rarely expressed in an email,” “Limit use of abbreviations (ie. ROFL, IOW, TMI, TTYL, etc.), “Forget about a salutation (of a serious nature.”)

I keep a journal…and now and then I’ll take it and enter it into a file on my computer…just an ongoing “life-story” that literally goes back to when David and I first married. I was tempted to throw away the paper versions, simply to declutter my life, and David was adamant that I not do that. He said, “One day, when you’re dead and gone [thanks Davo!], someone may want to look at my actual words written in my own handwriting.” He reminded me how important it is to see “what” and “how” I wrote at any given time in the past. I still handwrite all my journal entries, and keep every single page in notebooks on my bookshelf.

When you think of the Declaration Of Independence, for example: it’s one thing to pull it up on the internet and read through the words. It’s quite another to go to the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C. and walk right up to that glass case and read the original document with your own eyes. Something in the handwriting seems to be living and breathing.

This week, as I was cleaning a closet, a found a basket chock full of blank note cards, postcards & stationery. So I’m going to be doing more letter-writing with my very own hand. Watch your mail boxes. And I challenge all of us to do the same. I’ll watch my mail box, too. :O)

I. LOVE. MY. SON.

There…I said it. No shame.

He’s my only child. No regrets.

I love to hear from him. He’s busy, so I know that when I do hear from him, it’s a pretty darn big deal…he’s taking time out of his busyness to contact his momma. I can’t begin to tell you the joy and heartbeat-skipping effect that seeing his name pop up on a text or phone call has on my being.

Guess what? God feels the EXACT same about us…His kids…those of us who have laid down our own agendas and gotten in with Him.

No, God may not have the latest iPhone 7plus…or the latest operating system on his computer…(or does he?)…but I can almost for sure guarantee you that as soon as your name pops up…as soon as you whisper His name, he feels a joy and a heartbeat-skipping effect as we do when we hear from our children. But even more so.

God LONGS to hear from you…just like you and I LONG to hear from our kids.

Sometimes my son calls and we only talk for a few minutes, but the rest of my day is MADE!!! Especially when he just calls to tell me he’s thinking about me and to find out what I’m up to and that he loves me. He doesn’t necessarily want or need anything…he just wants to connect.

As a parent, this is prime real estate, y’all!!

And for God, especially at this time of year…when we celebrate His gift to us as a baby boy who would eventually save the world from itself…save us from our own pitiful selves…

I can only imagine what it must feel like to have His children reach out to Him…not only to ask for advice or blessing or money or healing…but to just tell Him “thank you”…and that we’re thinking about Him…that we love Him…and to ask “Hey, God, what are You up to?”

This is gonna be short, but I hope sweet…and helpful.

Tonight, David and I went to Date Night at church. And I took one big thing away from it…

”One less thing”…

The “one big thing”

The dude on the video said that a way to stay connected as a couple is to think of the “one less thing” thing.

What can you do for your spouse that will give them “one less thing” to do or worry about or deal with, and ease up any stress on their mind/schedule?

The dude on the video said that, during the Christmas season, when his wife has so much to do and so many places to be, and way too much to think about, that he decided that he would make sure he filled her car with gas (cuz she hates getting gas) to give her “one less thing” to do or worry about in the midst of everything else she had to do or worry about.

She overheard him telling their kids that…and he said she got more emotional over that “one thing” than she did at the birth of any of the children.

That’s so awesome!

So this is my challenge and encouragement to you…whether it’s with your spouse or your child or your parents or your best friend or your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your mother-in-law or your neighbor…or WHOEVER…what is the one thing you can do for them that will leave them “one less thing” to do during this busy time of year…or ANY time of year.

Don’t stop with the Christmas season, because it’s only a season. Real ordinary every-day life will start again on January 1. Do it every single day…as much as you can…as often as it comes to mind. That’s how you stay connected with those you love…that’s how you serve them as Jesus serves us…that’s how you show pure, unadulterated, selfless, crazy, going-upstream love!

Do one more thing to give them one less thing!

That’s love.