It's the end of the world as we know it...

And I feel fine.

Ahhh... Thank you REM for such a perfect tune. But seriously...

I was watching the news last night (on accident- I hate watching it unless it's local or documentary type stuff on world issues- otherwise they talk too fast and use all their vocabulary words at once and give me a headache.) and they were discussing what this 200-something decade would be called. The auts? The nauts? The naughties? (yikes). No one really has made this decision yet and so, although it is a small issue, it goes un-resolved. But despite the fact that no one know what to call this last decade, it's fairly unanimous as to what this decade will be remembered for.

Things like the Y2K scare, 9/11, the iPod, Blogging, the GPS craze, social networking sites (mainly Facebook!- shout out), the economic crisis, the 70's & 80's Fashion Revival, the War on Terrorism, the Starbucks trend, the first minority President of the United States, texting, skinny jeans (for boys and girls!), Googling, the rise and fall of Reality TV shows, Wiis, (the development of our kindergarten-sounding vocabulary: googling, blogging, etc) and the death of pop culture icons like Heath Ledger, Anna Nichole Smith, Bernie Mac, Natasha Richardson, Michael Jackson, and Britney Murphey.

The top 10 Baby Names of the past decade are said to be:
10: Oliva & Andrew
9: Hailey & Ryan
8: Hannah & Michael
7: Kaitlyn & Joshua
6: Sophia & Jack
5: Ava & Nicholas
4: Isabella & Matthew
3: Madison & Ethan
2: Emily & Jacob
1: Emma & Aiden

I could gather all the statistics and random lists of information about this past decade, but for me... this decade has been... in a word, rough. Not bad! Just rough.

The turn of the century found me in high school struggling for an identity and wrestling with my discomfort with typical femininity. I tried a new "look"- rocking the Gyncos and velcro sneakers with band T-shirts and 8thousand plastic accessories. That didn't fit. I knew I wasn't typical, but I wasn't sure if I was still supposed to pretend to be or not. I graduated high school in 2003, still unsure of who I was but a bit more confident as to who I was to become. I went to college and excelled socially for the first time in my life, to my detriment. Through several moves home and back to school, I finally settled in back in my hometown to finish school and attempt to live the life I knew I wanted. I was crap at it to be honest. I wanted to have a life with healthy and open relationships with my parents and sister (and now sister's family!), and I wanted to develop healthy relationships outside my household. I wanted to love appropriately and to have friends and leaders who actually cared about me. It was a rocky start back in the homestate but eventually we (my life and I) got a rhythm all our own and started taking steps toward some semblance of a destiny.

As the decade closes tonight, I look back and realize that I'm still there. I'm still dodging flying objects and jumping hurdles in an effort to finish college (August 2010 Baby!) and keep moving forward. One of the things I've learned this decade (though I'm not sure where it would've fallen in my summary of my journey through the Aughts), is that life is not about me. It's not about having a prestigous job or making lots of money. It's not about positioning or tradition. It's not about art for art's sake either. There is so much more.

To me, life seems to be about loving. And as my dear pastor always says, loving and giving go hand in hand. You cannot love without giving. So while I believe concern for the world, both at the cubicle across from us and oceans apart from us, was stirred somewhere between 2000 and now, I'm not sure that real love has been.

'When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.' Matthew 9:36-38

Love is what moved Jesus to action. I'm grateful that organizations like Compassion International and World Vision and Toms Shoes have gained popularity. We like having those stickers on our cars, don't we? But how much are we REALLY giving, and for what cause?

"But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you." Matthew 6:17-18

Don't give as a publicity stunt. If you do, that is all the reward you will recieve. Give out of genuine love, a compassion that compells to action. Let's make THAT our New Year's Resolution.