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Speak the truth

Orga­nize tribes

Commu­ni­cate, don’t just regurgitate

Insights are meant to be shared

Answer ques­tions quickly

Listen

Manage your time

Engage

Develop strate­gies

Involve oth­ers

Act above reproach

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Be sure to check out the other blog­gers of 31 Days of Min­istry Online:

Karin — 31 Days of Inten­tional Par­ent­ing

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Scene: Wednes­day, 5:00 pm.
4 loads of laun­dry on the couch,
3 sippy cups on the floor,
2 hun­gry kids, and 1 lost mind

Spouse walks in from work:

*snort* Honey! *gaw­faw* I just saw the most hilar­i­ous bumper sticker ever! It said, “My wife is the rea­son why Waldo is hid­ing” …get it?!?! ROFL!!

<insert I-will-stab-you look>

Tim­ing is every­thing when it comes to humor. Now if ‘the spouse’ would have told that joke at the end of the night…after putting the kids to bed, while the wife was tak­ing a bub­ble bath…then he might have got­ten a least a lit­tle cour­tesy chuckle. Ok, prob­a­bly not, but maybe.

As vir­tual real­ity mim­ics life,  there will be times where peo­ple will attempt their lame humor on you and if the tim­ing isn’t right…don’t respond.  I’ve seen a Face­book post go seri­ously wacko because of bad tim­ing.

As impor­tant as tim­ing is, there’s some­thing even more impor­tant. Free­dom. You have to expe­ri­ence free­dom to truly embrace humor through the ups and downs of your day. Noth­ing is funny as long as you’re up to your ears in debt, fam­ily drama or online drama. I’m a firm believer that Jesus had a sense of humor. The peo­ple loved him and he was invited to all the coolest shin-digs… peo­ple won’t do that if you’re a bore (or a Phar­isee!).  If you’re hav­ing a hard time find­ing humor lately, maybe you need to expe­ri­ence some free­dom. I hap­pen to know this real funny guy that helps in that department:

Cast all your anx­i­ety on him because he cares for you.
–I Peter 5:7

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Be sure to check out the other blog­gers of 31 Days of Min­istry Online:

Karin — 31 Days of Inten­tional Par­ent­ing

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Happy Mon­day Ya’ll!  Tomor­row I fly out to Nashville, TN for the Bliss­Dom Con­fer­ence. Last year’s con­fer­ence was a life changer for me. This year, I’m going to net­work and recruit. One thing they are doing dif­fer­ent this year, that I love, is imple­ment­ing tribe chiefs. If you blog about home dec­o­ra­tions they have sev­eral gals that will be your men­tors through­out the con­fer­ence. I’ll be hang­ing out with the #Blis­sTech tribe which is lead by some fab­u­lous gals.

As with most peo­ple in the world, I was sucked in com­pletely by Seth Godin’s book, Tribes. I love the idea of hav­ing a “tribe” or a group that is full of your kind of peo­ple — my peeps! That’s what I love the most about social media plat­forms. I get to meet a lot of peo­ple I wouldn’t nor­mally con­nect with and I get to find a great group of peo­ple that dig the same things that I do.

Find­ing that kind of sup­port con­nec­tion, that you can bounce ideas around with each other is a rich, rich tool in social media as well as in life. Con­nect with oth­ers, love life and share your pas­sion. Tribes are a great thing!

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Be sure to check out the other blog­gers of 31 Days of Min­istry Online:

Karin — 31 Days of Inten­tional Par­ent­ing

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It’s Sun­day again and if you’ve been read­ing this series, you know what today is…SUNDAY UNPLUGGED.

See ya tomorrow!

(Ok, of you just need to read something…check out this Sun­day Con­fes­sion.)

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Be sure to check out the other blog­gers of 31 Days of Min­istry Online:

Karin — 31 Days of Inten­tional Par­ent­ing

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I know…what the heck hap­pened to Day 18 — Day 21?

“blah, blah, blah…paved with great intentions…”

Day 18 was my 39th birth­day. I wasn’t plan­ning on tak­ing that day off but I enjoyed the break all the same. Then life hap­pened. You know those days. Every­thing on your cal­en­dar gets bumped because of a sick child or a meet­ing that never ends or your boss drops the project from Hades on your lap.

I’ve seen so many blog­gers come across those times in their life back to back then get frus­trated that they can’t get to their blog. They ques­tion whether to close it because they can’t keep up.

Arti­cles that scream, “If you don’t blog every day, you’ll lose your read­er­ship!” do not help the mat­ter at all. I know that some of you have review oblig­a­tions and you must have those posts writ­ten. I get that.  But if you don’t enjoy it any­more, why are you still doing it? Any­time you are doing some­thing that bot­tle­necks with your fam­ily, orga­ni­za­tion or friends, it’s time to take a look at the sys­tems you have in place.

Do what you do, with a pur­pose. Par­ents, you put your baby down for bed at 7:30 pm (or when­ever) for a rea­son. If you don’t, s/he will be grouchy and inse­cure the next day. There’s a pur­pose behind why you do what you do.  That same idea needs to be imple­mented in every­thing else you do. When you have a sys­tem in place, you’ll find that things run so much smoother.

In all hon­esty, I feel like a heel for not post­ing dur­ing those days. I made a com­mit­ment to A Woman Inspired to do this entire 31 Days of Min­istry Online and I dropped the ball. How­ever, I know that the lead­ers of A Woman Inspired are won­der­fully grace­ful and for­giv­ing. I also know that my fam­ily needed me dur­ing those days and it was over­all a good deci­sion. What I won’t do is beat myself up and turn my back on the rest of some­thing great and beautiful.

Please take some time and sit down with your spouse or close friend and take a look at your sys­tems. Is there a place that could use some tweak­ing? I know for me, I need to take a hard, long look at how I han­dle get­ting gro­ceries and din­ner on the table. My pre­vi­ous sys­tem is not work­ing and I need to come up with a bet­ter plan.  What changes could you make?

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Be sure to check out the other blog­gers of 31 Days of Min­istry Online:

Karin — 31 Days of Inten­tional Par­ent­ing

If your vir­tual self met your IRL self, would they know each other?

Per­son­ally? I hate that ques­tion. I tend to show a much pret­tier pic­ture online than in real life (avatar and mood!). I’m not a fan of gripers so I tend to turn the other way. IRL, I’m held account­able for who I really am and what I look like.

Years ago, a friend of mine was doing the online dat­ing thing and had an unfor­tu­nate expe­ri­ence with a guy who mis­rep­re­sented him­self. She said, “He actu­ally seemed like a pretty nice guy but because he showed a pic­ture 10 years old and pre­sented him­self online as some­one he wasn’t,  I didn’t trust him or his motives.”

I’ve seen peo­ple take “if you don’t have any­thing nice to say, don’t say any­thing at all” to a whole new mean­ing. We’re human…we make mistakes…we fly off the handle…we deal with sadness…we even get nasty some­times. Obvi­ously it’s not healthy to stay in any of those pock­ets for too long, and spout­ing off behind the safety of our mon­i­tor is never a wise choice, but real is — is real does.

I’d like to share my chal­lenge with you. This week, try being as truth­ful online as you are IRL. Doing it con­sis­tently can be dif­fi­cult espe­cially if that habit has already been etched into place, but I still want to encour­age you. Maybe you can find some­one to part­ner up with and hold each other account­able for this new online per­sona.  What a great direc­tion to start heading!

I believe that unarmed truth and uncon­di­tional love will have the final word in real­ity. — Mar­tin Luther King Jr.

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Be sure to check out the other blog­gers of 31 Days of Min­istry Online:

Karin — 31 Days of Inten­tional Par­ent­ing