Words to Live By

We go to a pretty amazing church. It is relevant, social justice focused, and fully inclusive of all people. Each year on Easter we participate in the "Easter Egg Challenge." Each attendee gets to pick an Easter Egg from a basket. In each egg is a piece of chocolate and a challenge. In past years the challenges have been specific ideas about things to do to make yourself a better person, or to grow more deeply.

For example:

• Clean out your closets, and give the contents to someone who needs it.
• Talk to a stranger
• Volunteer at the soup kitchen
• Start a gratitude journal
• Visit a church in a different tradition
• Read a spiritual book

This year we spent time on Easter talking about how what we think about and talk about can change our behaviors. We talked about how that is one of the benefits of being a part of a community of faith, the more we think and talk about hope, love, courage, balance, forgiveness etc. the better we will get at embodying these things.

So this year our eggs contained 1 of 28 words (and chocolate) with simple directions to pray about these words, and look for ways to live them out in our lives.

We are on the brink of our first IUI (as in, it could be this week). My wife tends to be anxious and worry about things (though in her defense she seems quite calm), and I am so excited about the prospect of having a baby that I don't understand why it hasn't already happened. Can you guess what words we picked from the basket?

For the wife: Peace
For me: Patience

Seriously.

I'm not sure I believe in divine intervention but I'm pretty sure these are the exact words that we need to focus us in the coming weeks.