That's why it's called a PRESENT!

I want to talk this morning about your holiday spending.

Not your money. In fact, if your money sitch is anything at all like mine, you probably don't have much to spend.

I want to talk about a different kind of spending...the 24/7 kind.

Yeah, that's right. The hours in your day. Your.Time.

Why?

Cuz it's about time!...(guffaws and slaps knee)

Okay...(sighs), here's the deal. At Christmastime, I go into countdown mode. Now, I'm not sure if it comes from the Peppermint Candy Advent Calendars that I ate candy from daily as a child or if it's the day limits on sales (Thurs, Fri., and Sat at Kohl's!), or simply because it's the last month of the year...but I'm very aware in December of how little/much time I have.

See, I have time problems. I can hyper-focus on one thing and spend hours messing with it (like computer time...or rearranging my record albums as a teen, or reading an entire book in a day)...or I can become easily distracted by other projects as I try to focus on one....so that nothing really gets accomplished.

To help keep me 'in the here and now' I use a timer. The timer comes in handy. If I get easily distracted and want to 'move on' to something else, I have to wait until the timer goes off. If, on the other hand, I am deeply engrossed in something...the timer goes off and reminds me to move on to the next thing now.

My focus is improving. I'm finding myself staying in the moment. Which is good, because I also have a problem with procrastination.

But we're not gonna deal with that problem right this minute. :)

There's another timing issue that I also deal with on a regular basis. I float easily from the past to the future to the past again and suddenly the whole day is gone!

I thought I was the only one, but as I watched A Christmas Carol the other night, I realized (like Scrooge did), how important it is for us to spend our time mostly in the present.

We cannot change the past. What happened has happened. And regardless of whether you're focusing on good times or bad; you cannot spend too much of your precious time in the past.

Scrooge also got an eye-opener of a future. But it was only one possibility. And so often we too can 'stare' at one possibility of the future and fret and worry and lament about it when it's not even happened! Again, you should consider the possibilities of how your future might be...set goals, etc., but you cannot spend all your time there either!

In the book, after the last Spirit (of Christmas Future) has gone, Scrooge says this:

"I don't know what day of the month it is," said Scrooge. "I don't know how long I have been among the Spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care..."


Scrooge found out how much time he'd 'wasted', and also how much time he had left! He found out that he didn't know much about time at all.

Most importantly, he found out that it was the day he'd been given that had all the opportunity in it! He could 'fix' the past by dealing with the present day...and he could 'change' the future the same way!! How? By making choices on Christmas Day.

You really only have this day. How are you going to spend the next 24 hours?

Set your timer and change your past and your future today! Perhaps you need to apologize to someone, and you've been putting it off. Perhaps there's a habit you need to stop...because it could hurt your future.

Christmas is the time of year when it seems we can easily overload ourselves with projects and get togethers and suddenly our schedules are all messed up with Christmas breaks and snow days and shopping sprees and parties and...well, you get the picture. We can find ourselves whining, "I don't have time for that!"

But here's the funny part: we all have the same amount of time in the day...

We didn't start the fire

Rankin: circa 1977.

I thought I smelled something 'unusual' that fateful day. Something like roasting hot dogs. Or leaves burning...

But...I didn't think too much about it at that time. After all, I was like, 9 years old. My sister and I had other things to do that day. So we continued with our playing...and I forgot about the smell.

Until later that night...

BUM BUM BUMMMMMMMM!

More about that in a minute.

Flash forward to present day: You wanna know something? My husband is quite the firestarter. He fancies himself after Charles Ingalls, I think. He could probably win on Survivor, I swear! Because when he builds a fire...it's big. It's hot. And it will not go out.

Unlike the namby-pamby fires I'm liable to try and build in the fireplace. I just don't seem to have the knack for it. I have to constantly feed my fire. Move the logs around. Keep the flame glowing. Sometimes I get really frustrated. In fact, I am so lousy at building a fire, that once I just threw in the towel.

AND BOY HOWDY!!! THAT THING BURNED FOR THREE DAYS!

(well...it WAS a beach towel, after all.)

Back to Rankin.

I was in bed. And awakened to the sound of banging on our front door. There were some guys driving past our house in the country who noticed something a 'little unusual'. So they stopped to tell us about it.

It was our barn. Our huge ol' barn where Dad kept a bunch of his farming equipment and boat and other items...was on fire!


It was amazing! It was (actually!) a blazing! We had fire departments from all sorts of towns and surrounding counties working on putting that inferno out. And while no one was seriously injured...one fireman was actually blown out of his boots when the gas tank exploded.

And that...that was quite a sight to see...

They're still not exactly sure what started the fire. Some speculation was on the old hay in the hay mow. That it oxidized or spontaneously combusted or something.

I didn't care. What I knew was that our barn was gone. Our boat was gone. And things on the farm would never look or be quite the same...

Flash forward back to present day: Steve brought home three truckloads of wood the other day. You see, they're building a Walgreen's in Mahomet, and cleared out a bunch of brush and trees...and let Steve take as much of the wood as he wanted. Nice.

We use our fireplace quite a bit in the winter. We are trying to save some energy money that way. Our furnace is not the most economical item in our home, we know...plus, we like the looks of the crackling fire in the fireplace on a chilly evening.

And the smell of S'mores. Yummmmmm.

Our fireplace helps keep us warm and cozy. It's a good fire to have around.


The barn fire, on the other hand, only destroyed. It didn't seem to care about us or our things.

Fire....is dangerous.

(well there's a completely Captain Obvious moment for you! Go ahead, I'll say it with you: DUH, C!!)

Fire is dangerous because it causes change.

A boat that was there, in the barn one day...became, in a matter of minutes...nothing but a chunk of metal. And a small chunk at that.

A fireplace fire warmed cold feet, dried out damp gloves...and gave us a roasted marshmallow to eat.

Fires can feed us...or feed upon us.

What's your fire look like, my friends? Are you on fire for something? Is there a passionate flame burning inside you for a purpose?

"A light shines in the darkness...but the darkness has not understood it..."