I am working my way through a series of posts called Life Realignment (see also Routines). It’s a series of thoughts about finding our new rhythm which is necessary since bringing Ethan home and moving to new ministries in recent months. So far, I’ve written about Nutrition. Now, I want to write about exercise.

Joleen and I have always tried to be active. We used to list hiking and biking as hobbies but we haven’t done those since Ethan has been with us. We will eventually get back to doing some hiking and biking sometime, though.

We also were pretty consistent in lifting weights a couple days per week at home. For the last few years, we followed a strategy outline in Body by God by Ben Lerner (BTW, the book also deals with nutrition, stress management, and even time management).

Virtually all of our exercise since February, though, has been walking with Ethan in a stroller. In Mooresville, we mostly walked in the neighboring Mooresville Cemetery. In Clearfield, we have more options — anywhere in town as well as the local rails-to-trails walking/biking trail.

Beyond regular exercise, we also try to be conscious about other things. For example, I almost always park near the back of parking lots (just ask joleen!), taking the stairs instead of elevator (at the Altoona Hospital where we used to make visits, that usually meant climbing ten or more floors). We climb a lot of stairs at home — to and from the basement where Ethan plays, sometimes while we work, and taking Ethan to his room for diaper changes, etc.

Actually, Ethan has added a lot of activity to our lives. Ethan weight 22 pounds when we received him. That was a big adjustment, in itself!

As we find our new rhythm, we hope to continue walking, and to start hiking and/or biking again. We’ll have to be especially intentional once winter hits. We also want to start lifting weights again, at some point, as well.

We’ve always found exercise, especially walking, hiking, and biking to have a calming effect on us. There’s something about getting outdoors, breathing fresh air, and enjoying God’s creation.

Without question, Ethan’s most used words are in the phrase, “What’s that?” He asks that question over and over when we first see him each morning (and throughout the day).

Earlier this week, I thought I should try to count how many times he says it in the morning. So on Friday, I tried to keep up, but I lost count somewhere in the 30s. And that was in the first couple minutes!

Wanting to encourage curiosity, I often asked Ethan, “What’s that?” in our earliest days together. It was intentional. More than two months before we received Ethan, we wrote about the kind of culture we wanted to create in our home.

The second part of that series was on shaping a learning culture. In that post, we talked about curiosity, hunger for learning, and asking questions.

Watching Ethan observe the world around him is quite an amazing thing to experience!

Ever since the movie, The Great Debaters, was released, we’ve wanted to see it. We finally got a chance to watch it on DVD this past week. And we’re glad we did.

“The Great Debaters” is about a debate team from Wiley College, an historically African-American United Methodist college, located in Marshall, Texas. The college was founded eight years after the end of the Civil War (1873). The movie is set in 1935.

Wiley College debated larger African-American schools and, when possible, white colleges and universities, and ultimately won the national championship. It’s an inspirational story from a painful time in American history.

For more on the movie, check out the movie reviews from HollywoodJesus.com and UMC.org.

See also Denzel Washington’s video message to United Methodists. Denzel Washington plays Melvin B. Tolson, a professor and coach of the debate team. See also this list of news stories at UMC.org.

Let us know if you’ve seen the movie and what you thought about it. If you rent the DVD, be sure to check out the bonus feature that tells the true story behind the movie; it includes interviews of people connected to the story.

We thought the courage and determination shown by the characters (and the real-life people behind the story) was very inspiring!

We just added a new page to the navigation menu above called Ethan’s Adoption. It’s an attempt to summarize the story of our adoption journey and to point to some of the key posts written along the way.

We hope it will be helpful to those who are getting to know us in Clearfield as well as be a reminder for those who have followed our journey from the start. We also hope it will be a resource for others who find their way here in their quest to learn more about adoption, particularly international adoption.

If you have questions, or if there is anything we need to clarify and/or improve, please post a comment here to let us know. We will make adjustments to the page as necessary and/or as the story continues to unfold.

Thanks for journeying with us!

I recently started a series of posts called Life Realignment, reflecting on 4 key areas we need to work on as we get settled as new parents in a new home, a new community, and new churches.

First on the list is nutrition. I’ve always been interested in nutrition, including the latest information and reports of how some foods have been to shown to have certain benefits. (It gets interesting, though, when some studies seem to contradict other studies.)

As we’ve written before, many of our routines have been shaken up with all of the transition we’ve experienced this year, including how/what we eat. Joleen sometimes says that she doesn’t really know what she eats because we’re usually focused on feeding Ethan.

Speaking of Ethan, he gives us motivation to eat well. We want him to eat well, and in order for that to happen, we have to model that for him.

While I’ve always been interested in nutrition, I have not always eaten as well as I should. Because weight gain has not been a problem for me (I’ve spent most of my life trying to gain weight!), I’ve been sloppy at times with my nutrition.

It’s not so much that my nutrition is poor as much as I need it to be better. While I have not struggled with weight gain, I have struggled with high cholesterol for all of my adult life. Up to this point, I’ve been able to control it with nutrition and exercise, but there are certain things I need to do more consistently to keep it in check.

There are a number of things I try to do (occasionally eating/using, in moderation, things like walnuts, cinnamon, olive oil, dark chocolate, etc.), for me the big three things I need to do consistently include …

1. Avoid foods high in saturated fat as much as possible.
2. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed (which I grind in a coffee grinder, one used only for flaxseed) on cereal. I’ve been doing this (sometimes consistently, sometimes inconsistently) over the course of the last several years. Actually, I just got back to doing this last week for the first time since we went to Korea in early February!
3. Since November 2007 I have been drinking a glass of Minute Maid Heart Wise Orange Juice, which has plant sterols, two times a day. Studies have shown that drinking this juice twice a day reduces cholesterol (studies were conducted for 8-10 weeks, if I remember correctly). (I haven’t had my cholesterol checked since I started drinking this juice, so I can’t say it’s had an impact yet.)

We also want to eat well is to maximize our energy levels. Eating well should help us to have more energy, and, these days, we need all the energy we can get!

There are several organizations, or causes, that are close to our hearts. We’ve written about a few of them before (see posts categorized as causes).

One great cause is the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), a disaster response effort on behalf of the United Methodist Church.

UMCOR is an impressive organization, one that’s well-respected in the national/international community. In fact, UMCOR managed the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) program of distributing international aid for more than two years after Katrina (see Katrina Aid Today).

This is particularly a good time to learn more about UMCOR as they prepare to respond to Hurricane Gustav (see link for details and ways to help). Gustav made landfall in Louisiana yesterday, 3 years and a few days after Katrina.

Vacations provide an opportunity to catch our breath. Just about every time Joleen and I are on vacation we usually end up talking about adjustments we need to make in our lives to maintain a healthy way of living so that we don’t get so “out of breath” along life’s journey when we’re not on vacation.

Now, as we complete this vacation and move forward, there are four things that we need to focus on …

• Nutrition
• Exercise
• Rest
• Tank-Filling Activities (check out a brief summary of a sermon on “Filling Your Tank” in a post on A Resilient Life).

Watch for a post on each of these four areas over the next several days describing why we think each is important and how we plan to do develop each area in our lives.

Similar to what I wrote recently in my post on Routines, these areas have been thrown into a tailspin this year and are in need of revamping. We plan to work on these areas in the days ahead.

All four of these areas are important for our health. We have extra motivation, too, with Ethan. We want Ethan to learn these practices as he grows.

And we’re counting on one of the “side effects” of these practices (i.e., healthy living) — more energy!

Life is full of boundaries — moral, ethical, and legal boundaries. There are some things you cannot do. There are limits. When you cross a boundary, there are consequences.

Knowing the boundaries is important!

This lesson was driven home to us this week as we spent time at Joleen’s aunt and uncle’s house in New Jersey. Because it was a new place, Ethan didn’t know the boundaries — everything was in play.

We had to watch him constantly to keep him from getting into things he needed to stay out of — fragile things, the dog’s food dish, a large cactus plant, etc.

As Ethan matures it will become more and more important that he knows where the boundaries are. Hopefully, learning the boundaries now will prepare him for a strong, healthy life down the road.

This week at Jim and Wanda’s, Ethan learned to open a door for the first time, making knowing the boundaries now even more important!

We’re finally taking some much-needed, long-overdo vacation time. Our last vacation time, spent packing in Mooresville, moving, and unpacking in Clearfield, certainly wasn’t restful or renewing!

We’re in Woodbury, NJ (east of Philadelphia) visiting Joleen’s aunt and uncle, Jim and Wanda, whom Ethan is meeting for the first time.

This morning, Wanda, Joleen, and I played mini golf.

On the way to the mini golf course, Ethan fell asleep. We put him in his stroller where he slept through the first several holes. After he woke, he was content to watch us play from his stroller. The all-terrain stroller came in handy today as the golf course had a lot of hills and steps. It was fun.

Tomorrow, we’re planning to drive to the eastern side of the state where Ethan will see the Atlantic Ocean and play in the sand on the beach for the first time.

Few people have influenced and equipped me for leadership like John Maxwell — through his books, conferences, and monthly leadership audio lessons in the last 18 years.

One of the last Maxwell books I’ve read (it’s been a while since I read it) is Thinking for a Change. In the book, Maxwell discusses 11 thinking skills of great thinkers, including …

• Big-Picture Thinking
• Focused Thinking
• Creative Thinking
• Realistic Thinking
• Strategic Thinking
• Possibility Thinking
• Reflective Thinking
• Popular Thinking
• Shared Thinking
• Unselfish Thinking
• Bottom-Line Thinking

The book’s premise is …

Successful people think differently than unsuccessful people.

Maxwell contends that the biggest problem for many people is their thinking. Maxwell writes …

The greatest detriment to many people’s success tomorrow is their thinking today. If their thinking is limited, so is their potential. But if people can keep growing in their thinking, they will constantly outgrow what they’re doing. And their potential will always be off the charts.

Maxwell says that good thinking is a discipline, a discipline that “can be cultivated and refined.” Maxwell continues, “The more you engage in good thinking, the more good thoughts will come to you.”

Maxwell advises readers to “find a place to think your thoughts,” a place without interruptions, where you can “ask questions about your ideas.” Maxwell also talks about the importance of exposing yourself to good thoughts and good thinkers.

Of course, developing any discipline takes work.

Ninety-five percent of achieving anything is knowing what you want and paying the price to get it.