Dance While You Can

Dance While You Can

My heart aches when I read that someone” forgot to live” yet I fear they express is all too common for many people today. Caught up in the business of living, we rarely have time to take close look and consider our personal lives. The urgent needs of the moment, weather at our workplace or within our families or with our friends, surround us and scream for our constant attention. We are so caught up in the race to keep up what we tend to lose track of where we really are with our lives…. and who we are becoming. For some people, the lost is devastating.

I recently spoke with a woman who described her husband, very successful in business as a “soulless man.” Everything about his life – his time, energies, and loyalties – was focused on his work, and when he came home, he had nothing left to give her or their children or anyone else. In her own haunting words, she said that “somewhere in his chase to get to the top, he lost his soul.”

None of us want to look back on our lives and wonder where the years have gone, especially with regrets that we never discovered what it means to live. But if we never stop and question where we are in our lives, this might be our experience.

Thank goodness, we don’t have to go this way. We can learn to really live our lives to the fullest. We’ve all known people who do so, people who have discovered their own life songs and make a fulfilling dance of their lives, even if they never dance with their feet. There are steps they have learned to make their dance possible. The beauty is that they can dance anywhere and all the time.

Dance While You Can is meant to help you slow down and consider your life’s dance. You may discover that you need to redirect your focus. It may be something as simple and yet profound as telling someone you love them or as complex as reconsidering your career and how you are using the gifts and talents God has given you.

It is said that Socrates learned to dance when he was seventy because he felt that was essential part of himself had been neglected. No matter what stage you are in life, it’s never too late to examine your inner life and make certain that, as Socrates said, it’s worth dancing.

Follow Your Dreams

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau

Christian Quote of the Day

Christian Quote of the Day
Topic for Today: Free Will

The phrase - free will - is only used by the Bible in the context of stewardship. It is never used in the context of coming to Christ in faith.

Ferguson, Sinclair

Christian Quote of the Day.

Christian Quote of the Day
Topic for Today: Adoption

We can only begin an upright course of life when God, of his good pleasure, adopts us into his family.

Calvin, John

Christian Quote of the Day

Christian Quote of the Day
Topic for Today: Happiness

Seek for happiness and you will never find it. Seek righteousness and you will discover you are happy. It will be there without your knowing it, without your seeking it.

Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn

Dance While You Can

I will quite my soul.......
slience the noise in my head and heart
and ask myself
what I really want out of life.

Organizing Children’s Rooms

Organizing Children’s Rooms



A child’s room can be one of the most challenging rooms in the house when it comes to getting organized and staying organized. With some training though, the children will actually be able to learn a system for keeping up with it themselves. That will make your job much easier.

Start by taking inventory of the room and, if they are old enough, have the children help. Get some boxes and label them for clothes (too small, out of season, keepers) and toys (favorites, too old for, missing pieces/broken) and make a game out of it. Give everyone a box and see who can fill their box up the quickest. Keep going until everything is sorted.

Next you can move on to actually sorting the toys. Go through the missing and broken box first. See if any of the toys are worth saving until you find the missing pieces. If not pitch them. Also decide if the broken toys can be fixed, or not.

Then go through the toys that the child is too old for, and decide together what should be done with them. If there is a younger sibling or cousin, maybe they would like to pass them on to them. If not, see if the child wants to donate the toys in good shape to charity. You’ll be surprised at how generous kids can really be if given the opportunity.

Last, go through the favorite toy box. These are the ones that need to find a home either in the bedroom or a playroom (if you have one).

When sorting the favorite toys, determine if you have enough storage in the room for all of them. Plastic storage bins are great for kids’ rooms, especially the stackable ones with drawers. Some come with wheels, and can be easily stored in a closet and brought out when the child wants to play. Try to establish a new habit of only getting out one toy at a time, to help keep the room from getting cluttered again.

Finally, it’s time to tackle the clothes. With children growing so quickly, it’s a good idea to go through their closets and dressers at the beginning of each season. As with the toys, decide together what to do with any clothes that are too small, but still in good shape. Many charities are very glad to receive children’s clothing.

Under the bed storage boxes are great for out of season clothing. Then as the weather changes, swap what’s in the dresser for what’s under the bed. When you swap out the clothes, again check for things they’ve outgrown. It’s also good to have a designated place for the kids to put the clothes that are too small, so when they try something on, they don’t just put it back in the drawer.

Once the room has been organized, teach the child to keep up with it on their own, with a routine every day of putting things where they belong.