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I love hedgehogs.

Last week, my amazing friend Andi Cumbo made me this super-cute hedgehog. You can get one too, handmade just for you, from her Etsy shop, and support her dream for “God’s Whisper,” a retreat for artists in the Virginia mountains.

This started me thinking about *why* I love hedgehogs so much, and what we can learn from them…

A hedgehog is a solitary creature. I can relate. She is perfectly happy to cuddle up all alone in a warm little fleece bag. She won’t come out voluntarily unless you’re holding a mealworm in front of her nose. But once she’s out, she discovers a few fun things. I need friends to dump me out of the comfort of my blankie and PJs every now and then, too.

A hedgehog hustles when no one else is looking. In the wild, a hedgehog is an ultra-marathoner–some say she can run to up six miles a night. She doesn’t pack a lunchbag, or eat a big meal before she goes; instead, she finds the resources she needs along the way. I’m learning to hustle, to start running toward my dreams instead of sitting around and waiting to be “ready.”

A hedgehog knows when to face her fears. When a hedgehog is threatened, she curls up into a tight, prickly, impenetrable ball. But put her in shallow bathwater? She unrolls right away. Still scared, sure. But she knows she needs to unroll to survive, and she learns to trust that I won’t let her drown. I need friends who will challenge me to step into things that are scary but necessary. And who will wrap a warm fluffy towel around me after it’s all over and I survived.

A hedgehog knows how to play. Most hedgehogs love toilet paper tubes. (Really. Google it.) The lesson? Keep it simple. I don’t need all kinds of expensive, fancy toys to find joy.

Do you have a favorite quirky animal? Leave a comment…

I recently saw a list of the top five most popular posts on a productivity app’s blog.

The posts themselves weren’t really anything stunning…what struck me was the story that the collection of them told.

The five posts were titled:

• The big list of 100 tools, tips and tricks to work more efficiently online
• What multitasking does to our brains
• What happens to our brains when we exercise and how it makes us happier
• How much sleep do we really need to work productively?
• The science behind how your productivity is affected by what, how, and when you eat

Individually, all interesting but unremarkable. Collectively?  They say that we’re freaking fried. This shows that we’re ALL trying to do too much, and looking for ways to do more.

What’s wrong with this picture, people?

Is this how we want to live?

I look back on the day last spring when I broke.

I had been working a lot, plus getting up really early to write, plus helping the girls with homework, and on and on.

I hit my limit.

I lost it.

I curled up in a chair, under a blanket, with my Bible and opened it to Ecclesiastes…because that’s a great read when you’re crying already.  Real pick-me-up, Ecclesiastes.  

And as I read, something in the fourth chapter jumped out at me:

Better one hand full with tranquility than two hands full with toil and chasing after the wind.

Y’all, we are CHASING AFTER THE WIND.

We are running harder and faster to run after something that can never be caught.

We are chasing the wrong thing.

We chase efficiency and productivity.  We forget to take care of ourselves to the point where we seek out permission to sleep and exercise, and we validate doing them solely for the sake of more productivity.

How messed up is that?

Chasing after the wind, so we can have two hands full.  More stuff. More stuff that doesn’t fill the gaping hole in our souls that screams for more glory and more stuff.

I know this because I have been living it–I’m currently detoxing from it.

And it’s really freaking hard.

I still overcommit.

I still value busy a little too much.

I have given up chasing the tornado; I am now just chasing a strong breeze.  But I’m still learning how to find that tranquility. I’m trying to let go of the need to control it all.

Because if I stay in charge of it, I’ll be back on the internet reading those top 5 posts telling me to go get some sleep so I can be get more done when i’m awake.

I’ll find tranquility, but only if I let God take it all over and tell me where to put my foot as I take each step. And He is telling me to relax.

So…  Go get some sleep.

What wind are you chasing? Leave a comment…

Tomorrow is Election Day in the United States.

Tomorrow, for the very first time, Masha will cast her vote for President, for Governor, and for several other local races.

You may have noticed that I stay pretty far away from politics here. That’s not a result of any strategy of appeasement, or any effort to passive-aggressively imply support for one side or the other based on certain beliefs I’ve shared or not shared here. It’s not from any failed effort to show direct support or opposition to any particular single issue.

Honestly, the reason is that I’m conflicted.

I have friends and family who hold strong opinions on both sides of the fence. I sit on the fence and dangle my legs over both edges. And friends, this makes my butt hurt. (Yes.  I just said that.)

It hurts to sit on the fence.

But it also hurts to jump down on either side.

It hurts because there’s so much that I disagree with on both sides. Because voting my conscience on one issue means voting against my conscience on another. Again and again.

We live in an incredibly complicated society. We are trying to find harmony between opposing forces. We are attempting to find justice in an unfair world. We disagree on what helps and what hurts. We disagree on who is capable of giving and who is worthy of receiving.

Opinions run the range of Ayn Rand to Karl Marx. With little bits of Jesus thrown in where He can help bolster our position.

But while our two-party system is very very imperfect, it’s still one of the best ones out there

Choose carefully and let your voice be heard in the cacophony — this is far more important than most people imagine. It sounds cliché, but it’s true.

Your vote counts.

Will you be voting tomorrow?  Leave a comment… (but please don’t tell us for whom.)

Photo credit: Theresa Thompson (Creative Commons)

Happy October y’all!

The leaves are beginning to turn, the air is crisp, and I’m coming down with my annual case of bronchitis.

All my former coworkers can now jump for joy at not having to hear me cough incessantly on conference calls for the next eight weeks.  Yay!

This month, I’m joining my friend, creative coach Jim Woods in Writers Unite, a movement of bloggers to stop focusing on numbers and statistics and renew the focus on writing that matters. I’m climbing up out of a “slumpy” time of discouragement, and I’m looking forward to Writers Unite to launch this new season of my life with a lot of intention.

This month, I’ll be working on sharpening my fiction skills and also on coming back to the heart of my passion, the children around the world who have lost the protection of their parents.

***

Also, I want to share a book I’ve been reading. This week marks the release of Kingdom Journeys by Seth Barnes.  Seth is the founder of Adventures in Missions (my new part time employer…), and he’s worked with thousands of people to help them understand the restless that so many of us feel.

Seth believes in the call to step out of our comfort zones and experience God through a physical journey…a mission trip, a pilgrimage, or even a trip into the areas of town that might feel uncomfortable to you.  If you have ever felt that sense of restlessness, a wanderlust that you can’t explain, please hop on over to Amazon and check this out.  It’s good.

***

Finally, thanks to everyone who entered to win the autographed copies of Quitter!

The winners (chosen at random from the folks who shared and commented on the giveaway post last week) are:

Teresa T, who wanted to be a teacher
And
Lauren, who wants to be an Organizer/Decorator

Lauren’s comment really struck me, too, because she is very much what the philosophy of Quitter is all about.  Lauren says:

I have always wanted to be a writer and some sort of organizer/interior decorator. While I do the later in our own home, I would love to do it for others. I’ve always been pushed into a more “meaningful” career path from others, but I find my dreams meaningful as well. The hardest part of not being able to fulfill my dream occupation/s is that I currently work with individuals with developmental disabilities and feel utterly like a terrible person for it not being my dream.

In Quitter, Jon Acuff talks about a job where he was working in marketing for a company that was known as a playground for engineers.  He likens this to trying to swim on a tennis court…both sports are completely legitimate, but totally different.  He wanted it to be a cool, hip, creative place. It was a highly technical “geek paradise.” He was miserable.

Everyone is wired up differently, and you can be doing the most noble thing in the world, but if it isn’t aligned with what is deep in your heart and what makes you come alive, then you’re trying to swim on a tennis court.

I’m happy to be blessing both Theresa and Lauren with autographed copies of Quitter…Both of you watch your emails for details!

What’s your goal for October?  Leave a comment…

*Photo Credits: Zest-pk (Creative Commons), Kaleidescope International, Jen Gabler Schwab

This weekend was amazing…but also exhausting.

For an introvert like me, that much social contact in that short a time just wears me out.  So today, I’m going to sit back, enjoy a whole pot of coffee and just chill with the critters in the back yard.

Oh, and work on drawing a bunch of visual notes from the Quitter Conference for Wednesday’s post.

In the meantime, thinking of coffee reminds me of an amusing list that a friend and I were putting together last week…

The worst coffee habits

(well, at least the worst ones we could think of during a limited time and without the benefit of enough coffee…and in no particular order)

• Using “seasoned” cups at work (for you stay-at-home folks, that’s code for “never washing your cup”)
• Reheating and drinking yesterday’s coffee
• Pouring “used” coffee back in the pot
• Running two cups from a single K-cup
• Breaking several k-cups open and dumping them into a regular drip coffee maker
• Running the burr-grinder at 5AM

Will you help add to the list?

What’s the worst thing you’ve seen people do to coffee?  Leave a comment…

…and don’t forget to enter the giveaway for an autographed copy of Quitter!