Taken from a friend’s Facebook post: You are holding a cup of coffee when someone comes along and bumps into you or shakes your arm, making you spill your coffee everywhere. Why did you spill the coffee? "Because someone bumped into me!!!" Wrong answer. You spilled the coffee because there was coffee in your cup. Had there been tea in the cup, you would have spilled tea. *Whatever is inside the cup is what will spill out.* Therefore, when life comes along and shakes you (which WILL happen), whatever is inside you will come out. It's easy to fake it, until you get rattled. *So we have to ask ourselves... “what's in my cup?"* When life gets tough, what spills over? Joy, gratefulness, peace and humility? Anger, bitterness, harsh words and reactions? Life provides the cup, YOU choose how to fill it. Today let's work towards filling our cups with gratitude, forgiveness, joy, words of affirmation
12, 17
Remember the hymn we used to sing at bedtime when you were little? “What Does the Lord Require of You?” To seek justice. To love kindness. To walk humbly with your God. (Walk humbly means to remember God is so very good. That he loves you and is for you and wants you to talk to him, listen for him, love him, serve him.) No matter what religion you practice (or don’t practice) I hope you’ll remember that.
17
“How we learn to hold what hurts shapes so much of who we are. What we choose to do with our pain defines us more than most things.“ -Chani Nicholas
11, 14, 17
“There’s a hole in the side of a boat. It can’t be fixed, it’s never going away, and you can’t get a new boat. This is your boat. What u have to do is bail water out faster than it’s coming in.” -Aaron Sorkin (Newsroom season 3 episode 6.)
17, 21
Listen to books of love letters. I forget the title but one of the Bush twins wrote a book about her grandparents (George and Barbara). Stories about real love, real life. Fiction is great too but having a real world examples of happy partnerships is gold.
18
Ask “Is your belly full?” Instead of saying “Clean your plate!” Have them stay in touch with hunger/food connection.
3
Actions have consequences- so does inaction. Avoiding a problem or decision is not an effective solution.
18
My dad was a Marine. He enlisted at 18 with his buddies during he Korean War. He was never a "typical" Marine, always a gentle spirit and rarely spoke about his days in Korea. One carry-over was kind of a little inside joke he had with his buddies in the war: They used the expression "Semper Fi" sarcastically, in the opposite way it's meant. When they said it to each other it meant "I got mine, you're on your own. Fend for yourself." We always used to joke about it too when little things happened like there was no more milk for the cereal, "Semper Fi." Of course the irony is that my dad and his Marine buddies were the very definition of faithful when it came to the big stuff. They just liked to joke about the little stuff. Still use it jokingly that way to this day.
18
Don’t offer them advice until you ask questions: What does a good outcome here look like for you? How much energy are you willing to put into this? Do you feel like you’re being asked to sacrifice a part of who you are if you do this? Is the fear you’re feeling maybe just that initial reaction we all get when something is new and unfamiliar? Stuff like that. Mostly they just need help understanding themselves and encouragement to stay true to themselves.
4, 7, 12, 15, 18, 21
You an learn just about anything on Google or YouTube! Spend some time exploring together and caution about how to search safely.
9
Summer Olympics for neighborhood kids. Create events in all kinds of sports, games and skills. Mix it up so the littler ones and the less athletically inclined have something they can succeed at too.
8-12
Conflict resolution tip: Are we talking about how we got here, or how we get out of here? Because those are two entirely different conversations.
14, 16, 20
Promise me you’ll never intentionally hurt anyone (including yourself.) There’s no need to suffer in silence, I will help you or get you to someone who can help you no matter what, no matter when, no matter why.
13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18
Be sound. Keep fit. Act silly. Enjoy nature. Read books. Love freely. Find purpose. Hate Everton Travel often. Cook passionately Feel content. Antagonise dickheads. Ignore anxieties. Value mates. Celebrate life Be you. Saw his on social media and couldn’t have said it better. Apparently Everton is a soccer team.
15, 19
Summers in Ireland and UK Drama camps? I could work from there while he did his thing.
12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
If you don’t know what to do ask yourself how you want to feel. Once you have a good idea of that you can find lots of paths to get you there.
16, 21
Most times there isn’t a “right decision.” You make a decision and then it’s up to you to *make* it right.
12, 16, 19, 21