Monthly Archives: August 2010

Would You Rather…?

Posted on
26

Drew and I had a fun lazy summer afternoon convo a few weeks ago. Here’s a snippet:

  1. Would you rather have no ears OR no thumbs?
  2. Would you rather live off of Chicken Noodle Soup and water but be able to read for the rest of your life, OR spend the rest of your life eating/drinking whatever you want but remain illiterate forever?
  3. Would you rather have endless money but no traveling out of state, OR unlimited traveling while living off $40,000 a year?
  4. Would you rather have 4 inch long fingernails or toenails?

So… Go on. Feel free to answer the questions. :)

Sometimes we need more than emoticons…

Posted on
15

Hi.

My name is Mandy.

And I spend a lot of time in social media. (There’s a confession in and of itself.)

And sometimes words on a screen can be misunderstood.

By you.

And by me.

I know that I’m not the only one who sometimes struggles to say things clearly. To find words that carry the tone and emotions of what I’m saying. But sometimes there aren’t enough words, and not enough :) s and ;) s and :D s to make things come across the way we intend.

Earlier this month, a good friend of mine left a really thoughtful comment on my blog, and I think I may have misread his intentions. I may have missed the tone; and, as you would expect, I responded based on that misunderstanding. (No, I’m not gonna tell you who or when. You’ll just have to wonder.)

It happens sometimes, as hard as we try to be clear and friendly and warm and all that. It still happens. There aren’t enough emoticons to overcome limitations of typing expression-less words in a text-box.

I’d love to learn from your experiences… So, how do you compensate? How do you make up for those limitations?

my posts are about to get shorter…

Posted on
37

“Lets have a typing speed contest,” he mocks as he hops up from the couch. He’d just waited out my painfully long hunt-and-peck session to type out the title of this post.

[I start a timer.]

Why is he mocking me? Because I am about fifty words into using the Dvorak keyboard layout. It is designed for more efficient and healthy computer typing. (Apparently, the traditional design was for typewriters.) I figured that, as much as I use my hands, I need to take good care of them.

The “A” and numbers are the only symbol keys that haven’t moved; and I am having a really hard time remembering where the “K” is.

[Entering the Dvorak link in the post up there.]

124 words so far plus the link in 11 mins, 54 secs = 10+ words per minute.

I used to type 62 wpm… 72 on a good day.

How fast can you type? Test it HERE.

5. Two More Days

Posted on
5

It just occurred to me that there are two more days in this week – this week of quiet and nothingness… We’ve done a lot of reflecting, thinking, and listening. We’ve done a lot of evaluating, clarifying, and maybe even some deciding.

I’ve been thinking about spiritual breathing this week – thinking about how God is the giver of life, by giving us breath. By lowering Himself to a very intimate degree of presence, and breathing life into us. Maybe that’s why the infant cries the most important cry of his life in that first breath- maybe it’s because his baby lungs have just been filled with a God-sized inhalation. Maybe it’s more than he can take in. And so he cries.

I think life does that to us sometimes. In order to truly live, we are taken through different God-sized moments. These moments usually come with intense emotion and discovery. And, well, sometimes the only way to react is to cry – to exhale with the deepest intensity of emotion.

So, in the last two days of this Selah – this pause to take a deep breath – I think the proper ending is a moment of exhale. Release what is in there. Journal it out. Talk it out. Blog it out. Cry it out. Whatever it takes for you to process the God-sized inhalation we’ve experienced this week.

Selah, friends.

4. Listen

Posted on
11
  1. The click click click click of the ceiling fan
  2. The air-conditioner fighting to cool down the summer-day’s heat
  3. The swish swish swish of bare feet on carpet
  4. The faint as a mouse high-pitch squeak of the door opening
  5. Tap tap tap of each letter I type
  6. My breathing
  7. My mind wondering if God’s voice is somewhere down inside me
  8. The silence – the anticipatory silence of my soul

What do you hear when you really stop to listen?

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