I'm coming up to another milestone... well not a significant one. I am still in my mid 20s, but it feels like a quirky age and I feel older than I am. Maybe it's not so much the age, but the life stage I'm at compared with the people I'm surrounded by.
I was sitting on the streetcar one day coming home from work when just suddenly I felt like an adult. I don't know how it happened or why I suddenly thought about it just going through my everyday routine....but I felt it.
I'm an adult....an adult who has a career, a husband, pays bills, has a place of my own, a mortgage and a dog.
The reason that it stood out is because I suddenly felt a responsibility to set some actions in motions based on the values I hold.
In the midst of this life stage, I'm still finding my medium. I am of course married, but I am still learning about the twists and turns of what it means to be married. More acurately... the twists and turns I speak of now are not about new experiences, they are learning to deal with the ordinary and everyday. This is a little difficult to grasp sometimes, because I like experiencing new things and I like excitement. However, being married or even living with someone means that things inevitably turn into routine. And routine can creep up on you without you noticing it whereby it can feel like a cozy blanket of accepting things as the way they are.
I need a balance....of wanting to be comfortable with the everyday....be satisfied and happy with it, but at the same time not let it blanket the need to re-evaluate and challenge myself.

And I need to remind myself to re-adjust what I find my happiness in. This goes with my perspective on success. There IS a lot of richness found in routine. The little everyday stuff that makes up life.
When I think about the things I do have, I feel really blessed. But everything around me tries to make me feel dissatisfied with it. Negative people, media, our culture's values...it's impossible to escape people telling you that you're missing out on something.

Now that I'm an adult no one is watching the choices I make. So that realization however obvious it should have been in the first place just hit me as an urge to get back to my root values and start living my values in a more practical way.
I used to be influenced by someone who who was obsessed with introspection and figuring things out. I admired that this person could think this deeply about herself and thought that I should probably do more of that...

But life is not supposed to be about me. God specifically says and teaches in all of his examples that life is to be about serving others. So if I know this and I'm thinking about it...what am I doing about it?
I've been encouraged by the Meeting House's challenge for the next 3 years and the encouragement to give radically.
Now I know that people who do not understand the church feel that the church is always trying to make money.
I'm over thinking like that because I trust that God has a hand in our church's vision to do good.

The point is not really about the money. It's the shift in my view of how I give....I don't want to just to give x amount to charity out of guilt or pressure or routine. I want to give in a way where I feel like I'm giving...which means feel like I'm actually 'missing' something from my life in order to give. It's a big challenge, because when it comes down to it, I live a really over spoilt life and sometimes I feel like I deserve to spend the money I make in ways I want to make myself feel better. Anyway...I guess the point of writing this all down is to encourage and remind myself of my challenge to be radically generous. I want my inward feelings to be reflected outward.
And ultimately, I hope that by the outward actions I will be also transformed on the inside.