Graduation Gift Ideas

It is that time of year! The most wonderful month of a high school senior's life - graduation!

The projects are turned in, senior trips are enjoyed, the finals are complete, the cap and gown is pinned into place, and the graduation gifts start rolling in! Let me tell you, the entire month of May the year that I graduated from high school was BY FAR the BEST month of my entire high school career. 

Great for the graduate. Less great for the person who has to come up with a creative gift idea on the cheap.

Here are six different gift ideas. Everyone is going to either give them a 2013 graduation frame/photo album or money. Since everyone has those covered, why not get them something useful? 

1. Mattress pad - Those college mattresses are tough, like miserable tough. Like wake up with a kink in your neck every day tough. While the typical college student gets "used to it," it would really go a long way to get a good night's sleep every night. 
2. Blanket - Think of those cheap seasonal flannel blankets that you can get at Kohls for $5 by the end of the Christmas season. They are great for cold nights when you can't control the thermostat, quick naps, comfort studying on the floor on you bed in your friend's room. Pair with a bag of candy and you have a great (and affordable) gift.
3. Electric Hot pot - Not all colleges or dorms offer the convenience of a kitchen, or they do not come with appliances. A hot pot is great because it heats liquid in about two minutes flat. Many meals of ramen noodles, Mac & cheese, soups of all varieties, even tea and hot chocolate were made in that hot pot. It was easy to clean and store. You can usually find these for about $10 at Walmart or Target, but they can be hard to find because they are rarely in stock (usually sold out or called by other names by region). 
4. Flatware & Utensils - this is my go-to gift every year. Think plates, bowls, cups, plastic or metal utensils. I have bought this for almost every graduate since I graduated from college. At the end of the summer season, stock up on plastic picnic items when they go on clearance. If you buy them during graduation season, this would cost a fortune, but stores all but give the picnic-ware away at the end of the season. They usually come in packs of four in fun colors, so you can purchase gifts for four people for $10-15. Give each graduate one (even two) of each item. I like to throw in a package of coordinating party napkins and a small bottle of dish soap (CVS often has this for $0.99, combined with a $0.99 coupon = FREE!). And know you now why this is my favorite gift. :) 
5. Carry-on suitcase or overnight bag - These kids are going to have a lot of overnight trips in
   
   their near future. Traveling home for the weekend, visiting friends, going on a college trip. They will already have the big suitcases, but not always the smaller bags for shorter trips. I personally like the oversized beach bags (not the mesh or light-weight kind though). It's so easy to toss all of your overnight things into the beach bag and you are ready to go. They also store easily. Again this would be an easy end-of-season clearance item to get really cheap. Bonus ideas: luggage tags. For girls, a nice makeup case set. They will have to tote that stuff around, you know. 
6. Gift cards - this will always make my list of gifts because they are so wonderful. Walmart & Target are obvious choices because they carry almost everything. But Amazon would be a good option as well. Your graduate will probably end up buying some used books for many of their classes from Amazon. Another good option is Shutterfly. The books are fun to make and awesome to have, but the price tag can be daunting when the alternative is store photos on your hard drive. But a gift card coupled with Shutterfly's never ending sales would make a photo book an amazing graduation gift. 

Quick note from a graduate, there are a few gifts you want to avoid. Journals, photo albums, frames, and anything graduation related. Why? Because when July rolls around, you no longer think of yourself as a graduate but as a freshman. And everybody else, who isn't creative with their gifts, is going to buy the standard dated graduation gift. 

Oh... And money is always a great gift! 

Have fun shopping! 

Wonderful Woman Day - A Mother's Day Alternative

Mother's Day is great! I wish we as a group of people would celebrate and honor our mothers more than one day a year. They work so hard and give so much.

Before I go further, I am in no way downing Mother's Day. I don't want to do away with Mother's Day. I am not trying to steal the limelight from Mother's Day. I am not suggesting we downplay Mother's Day. None of that.

It's just that Mother's Day is very personal.

On Mother's Day, I love seeing all of the kids dressed up and hugging mom. The endless pictures. The flowers. The gifts, the recognition. Families huddled around their dear mother. A young husband lovingly holding his newly pregnant wife. New mothers snuggling with their precious newborn baby. The almost telling smile of a lady with a secret. It's precious.

For Mother's Day my church recognizes every type of mother. If you are a birth mother, adopted mother, foster mother, pregnant mother, grandmother, former mother, or the mother of a child who never lived, you get lumped in as a mother. You have the joyous privilege of recognition and love and admiration. Special blessings are heaped on you on Mother's Day. And that is all right. It is all good. It is all necessary.

But again, it's just that Mother's Day is very personal.

What I don't love about Mother's Day is seeing the lady in the corner, happily watching, but struggling to hold back the tears. What I don't love is missing friends at church because the pain is too hard to bear. What I don't love is knowing that while we honor mothers for the privilege of baring children, we effectively drudge up the pain of a woman who for one reason or another does not have children.

For a woman, the pain of not having children is tragic. I know that not everyone understands that. Some people don't understand that adoption is unattainable. Infertility treatments are unaffordable. The world's best husband might not be interested. Or some physical something prevents any children from coming and all hope is gone. Many women might have come to peace with the reality that they will never hold their own little one in their arms. Others might be angry, or numb, or relieved. But you can't tell me that when Mother's Day rolls around, they don't mourn. Mourn for the children they will never have.

We are not mothers. We don't claim to be. But we are still women. Women who work hard every day. Women who care for someone or something. We don't really want recognized, especially not with the mothers. We don't want called out in church like the mothers. We just don't want forgotten. Acknowledge our pain, that's all we ask.

Maybe next year at church you could help us out. Quietly, privately acknowledge that we are wonderful women too.

This whole experience of Mother's Day inspired an idea. Have a "Wonderful Woman Day." Right around Mother's Day, simply acknowledge the lady with the private pain.

Maybe leave a bright, happy potted daisy in her hands as she leaves church - just because, or up the challenge - drop it off where she works... "just because."

Send a "thinking of you" card.

Host a private dinner or fellowship right before Mother's Day that is specifically for the childless women of your church. Something bright, light, and fun. Something where they don't have to think about what they don't have but can celebrate all of the good that God has done for them. Maybe one of the greatest benefits of this unannounced event is that you have now connected several hurting women who can reach out to each other, grieve together, connect together, and grow. Sometimes this very private struggle seems to born alone. Simply having someone to share the pain with helps heal.

All I ask is that come Mother's Day next year, you prayerfully consider quietly acknowledging all of these special and wonderful women. 

Mother's Day Gift Ideas

My least favorite task is to come up with cheap gift ideas for special events like Mothers Day, Fathers Day, and Veterans Day. There are only so many unique ideas for that specific occasion before you become mundain. And to make it worse, to get something Mothers Day-specific costs an arm and a leg. My one dollar per person budget only goes so far. Like how many years in a row does that mom want a carnation? Is she really going to use that cheap bookmark? Another pen?

Now give me the assignment to come up with great gifts for the entire church family and I am going to have a blast. We recently bought these cool magnetic clips and they turned out beautifully! There are so many great ideas and so many cheap options, when you are doing something that simply has the church logo. Otherwise, good luck! 

I love pens and notepads, but I really like the nice generic ones, not cheap ones trying to be fancy with strange notes on them. Ergghhh....

So here are some ideas that I have come up with. Hopefully it will help you...

• A single flower - carnation, daisy, rose, tulip
• A chocolate covered strawberry in a pretty packaging, homemade
• A nail polish & nail file in cellophane bag with pretty ribbon
• A gardening tool or kitchen tool (check your local dollar store)
• Handmade jewelry by the children's or youth ministry
• Gift bag with items that each have a special meaning to the ladies in your church (maybe related to a recent ladies event or Bible study)

After working on some ideas periodically over the last few weeks, I realized something. If I get a really good selection of gifts, I can just rotate them. That way there might be a repeat of gifts over the years, but it really wouldn't be so bad to get a flower once every five years. Would it? I think not. And if you did a carnation one year, you could do a daisy on the repeat year - five years later. 

As you start rotating items, keep looking for items to add to the list. Eventually you could be rotating the favorite items once every ten years instead. That is really a ptty good deal. 

If you still want to honor the mothers in a special way instead of a generic gift for each mother, you could honor specifically the women who became new or 1st time mothers or the 1st time grandmothers. I would avoid honoring women for things like oldest grandmother, or woman with the most children, or youngest mother, simply because some women might find those types of things embarrassing. Be attentive of this, especially if you are in a larger congregation and might not know everyone's "story." Everyone's budget differs and the number of women who would qualify for this type if gift will differ from church to church. 

• Devotional book specifically for mothers or grandmothers
• A specially imprinted, fancy mug or water bottle 
• Gift certificate to a nice salon for a manicure or spa treatment
• A nice purse or tote bag (the ladies in my church obsess over Coach and Vera Bradley because we have outlets near our property and can score name brands at deep discounts. They would love a gift like this even if they only had a small chance of receiving it!)
• Voucher for a discount to an upcoming ladies retreat or Bible study hosted by your church

No matter how many ways you look at it, selecting giveaways for any event is difficult. I hope that this gives you a few ideas for Mothers day. Oh... Above all, make sure that this Mothers Day gift is something useful and valuable to the mother. Something that lets her know that you thought about her! 

Stay tuned for some ideas for Father's Day and other fun gift occasions. 

Getting Out of the Sunday School Mindset

For those who you who teach classes teenagers through adults...

Too many times we teach a lesson with the memories of our childhood Sunday school classes in mind. Let me explain - as a kid, most of us were taught the most basic information about a Bible story. The main characters, what they did, and a lesson. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because it was instilling the facts into the heart of a child. It is on their level.

Side note: I have to warn though, from over-simplifying. Sometimes a story is so simplified that it is no longer accurate. A couple of weeks ago, an upper-elementary child was retelling me the story of Job - what they had just learned in Sunday school, but this version was so simplified and so dramatic, it was completely inaccurate. Other stories that come to mind are Hosea and the passage about the tower of Babel. (Rehash the stories in your own mind as you would tell them to a child, then go and read the passages in the Bible. A little different, huh?)

Now I totally understand that the way we teach children and the way we teach those who are more mature adults, is different. But it is our responsibility to teach a "story" Biblically and accurately - not in accordance with the traditional Sunday school lesson that we have heard our entire lives.

Here is an example: the Tower of Babel.

This is the story we hear and teach - Nimrod and his men built a tower to reach to heaven, to get to God, so they could be like God or overtake God. God got angry at their sinfulness and mixed up the languages, forcing the people to spread out.

But let's take a look at what the verses say.

Genesis 11:1-4

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

When I am reading the Bible, I like to reiterate what I just read, so that I can understand in layman's terms. Basically what we just read in this passage was that everyone on the earth spoke the same language. A group of them were traveling together, and decided to settle in the land of Shinar - which we know historically to be a very fertile and fruitful land. A good choice for a permanent home. Then they got together and decided to build a city and tower. This tower would be very tall, distinguished tower that would stand out as a landmark on the plain. (Like the Sears tower in Chicago and the Empire State Building in NY) Why? They wanted to be remembered for their unique and unsurpassable feat, because they were concerned that they would be scattered across the planet. 

Don't take my word for it! You just read it in the verses above. So moving on...

Genesis 11:5-9

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

While they were building, God can down from heaven to check it. But He noticed a problem - the people were unified in a central location. This was in disobedience to His command to populate the earth, not just the plain of Shinar. As a punishment for their disobedience, God confused their language, creating multiple languages, so that those who were once unified could no longer understand each other, and they now had to scatter. 

The sin in this act was not the building of a tremendously tall building. The sin was in their failure to populate the whole earth as God had commanded. This is evidenced in their reason for building in verse 4 and in God's reason for punishment in verses 8-9. 

God doesn't reprimand or punish them for trying to access Him through man's ways or for establishing a new religion or worshipping inappropriately. 

Surely there is an argument for prideful behavior, and it is likely that Nimrod was not a godly man. But the fact is what we traditionally teach is not what actually occurred in this passage. 

The moral of the story here is to teach the Bible biblically. Use the Bible as your source, not your memory, not someone else's material. Be careful to keep the truth in all that you teach. 

Fellowship Required

"No man is an island."

We have heard that before, and we know that is the truth. But how many times does it feel like we are an island - totally alone, surrounded by a sea of people??

Far too often.

For a painfully long period of time in my life, I went to a church where the people all thought that they were their own little islands. Fellowship was not a necessary part of their lives. They didn't need friends. The lifestyle that resulted was very foreign to me, and I really struggled with it. Keep in mind I am the friendly girl from Big City, Northeast, settling into the vastly different culture of Small Town, South.

I felt like I was alone in life, in my spiritual life, even at church. It was painful and lonely. In fact that isolation that I felt was what inspired me to write a blog. I just wanted to fellowship with someone.

After many months of that lonely, isolated lifestyle, our situation has changed a little, and let me tell you...

Fellowship is required!!!

It's a necessary part of life. Now I know that some people require less fellowship than others, but it is still important. There needs to be people in your life whom you can speak with about serious matters, about fun matters, and about spiritual matters.

In the last two weeks, I have had more fellowship with such precious fellow Christians, than I have had in the last year. It has been so refreshing!

An older lady and spiritual mentor simply encouraged me to stay faithful to the Lord and shared some of her life experiences and how God has worked in her life. I was able to laugh a friend, catch up with another. Share burdens and trials, what I have learned and how I have grown, with another friend.

I have been spiritually encouraged and challenged. The fellowship has made an impact on my life in a way that I have not experienced for months. If there is anything that I have learned...

Fellowship is required.