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Gindi Vincent

The Dish on Career, Fashion, Faith, and Family

new year

2023 New Year Resolutions/Word: LESS

January 1, 2023 by Gindi 2 Comments

I haven’t done a New Year’s Resolution or New Year’s “word” in a while. I’ve done them on and off again. But this year’s smacked me upside the head.

It started a few weeks ago.

I turn 50 in September. And I’m super heavy. Overweight heavy. The heaviest I’ve ever been except for pregnancy. You know, with triplets.

So I’d already planned to do weight loss as a New Year ‘resolution.’ No extreme diet or plan. I have to lose 32 pounds in 8 months. That feels reasonable. Four pounds a month, or one a week. Cleaner eating. Walking every morning. And then whatever else I can work up to. Modest goal.

At the same time, I’m watching the kids spend more time on their phones. They have now had them for a year. We have plenty of controls. No app downloads without permission. Screen limits. Downtime. We check their texts every other day or so. They know these are our phones and breaking phone rules means they lose them. But I’ve seen the addiction creeping it and it concerns me.

This week at dinner, I said we’d try a family resolution. No use of the phones Monday – Wednesday except for calling/texting or if a work/school email had to be returned. No social media (for mom). No games or You Tube (for anyone). No use of the phone except for how you’d use an old school Blackberry.

As these resolutions started bubbling up, a word bubbled up too.

LESS.

It was more than just too much food. Or wine. Or cell phone. It was too much of everything.

Bray went up in our attic to put away our boxes of Christmas décor this week and was apoplectic. “WHAT IS ALL THIS STUFF? This is insane!” He said that we’re decluttering and we’d start with his office, but we would hit every space in our house.

LESS.

I’ve started spending without discipline again. Periodically I go on a spending diet. I notice with three kids in middle school, the spending sneaks up on you. Athletic gear and new clothes and presents and parties to attend and school activities and donations. Nothing bad. But the amount of money I’ve spent in 2022 has passed previous records.

LESS.

Then, as I’m crafting this blog post, I heard THREE (that’s right, not one, not two but THREE) reinforcements of the power of less. God calling me, and our family, to less. So I wouldn’t miss it.

First, I’m listening to a book called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer which a friend recommended. Dr. Kimmerer is a Native American and shares wisdom about the importance of the care and reciprocity of our land which came from her Native American heritage. In a chapter called Windigo Footprints, she talks about the Windigo monster in traditional tales that was designed to strengthen self-discipline and to build resistance against the insidious germ of taking too much. “The Windigo nature is in each of us. So the monster was created in stories that we might learn why we should recoil from that greedy part of ourselves. This is why elders remind us to always acknowledge the two faces – the light and the dark side of life. In order to understand ourselves, see the dark, recognize it’s power, but do not feed it.” The insidious germ of taking too much – boy if that doesn’t characterize me and everything around us in our country.

Next, I’m listening to a podcast by Annie F. Downs called Let’s Read the Gospels. Every day for a month, she reads three chapters from Matthew, Mark, Luke or John and at the end of the month you’ve listened to the entire gospels. Each month she’ll read them in a different translation. She is starting in John. In John 3:30, John the Baptist says “He must become greater; I must become LESS!!!” (Exclamation points added. Like the Bible just went and SAID THE WORD right when I was supposed to be learning it.)  Then, right after that, in John 6, Jesus shows the power of “less” when he feeds thousands with five small loaves and two small fish.

Less isn’t for us. Less doesn’t diminish what can be done. Less is so God can show up and be God.

Finally, I’m listening to Present over Perfect by Shauna Niequist (having already read it a couple of years back), and she’s sharing how she moved to a simpler life. She said, just tonight!, “Pride, for years, has told me I’m strong enough to drink from a fire hose and gluttony tells me it will be so delicious. But those voices are liars.”

Ouch.

Pride. Gluttony.

I feel those words like arrows to the deepest part of me.

Because of having a childhood of less because of necessity and lack, I’m ever prone as an adult to “more” in the worst sense. I overdo it all. For parties, I’ll prepare like there’s 40 even if there’s only 10. I want “nicer” things. Remodel parts of the house. Remodel parts of me.

Those deep needs for more are from the unhealthier parts of me.

So my resolution, to the extent there is one, and my word, to the extent I have one, is LESS.

Less food.

Less activity.

Less spending.

Less time on the phone.

Less clutter.

Because.

Less opens the door to more.

More peace.

More clarity.

More health.

More rest.

More time with those I love most.

More.

The only way to get to the healthy more is with a concentrated effort on less.

That’s what I pray 2023 will hold for me. Less.

What will it hold for you?   

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: new year

The 2021 New Year Post

January 2, 2021 by Gindi Leave a Comment

I feel like I’m supposed to write a new year post this weekend. Obligated. Hoorah 2021 is here and all that jazz.

I’ve done it before. Probably every year for the ten years I’ve been writing here.

I’ve had word of the year posts – with things that meant something at the time, like brave. I’ve written resolutions. Which I did not keep, for long (spending, decluttering, forming better habits). There were verses for the year (ironically Hebrews 11:1, which could have been this year’s).

There were honest writing years too. Years I was coming off of ER visits with littles and there wasn’t a decent photo of me from the whole season. Last year, I wrote because I felt a need but was still heartbroken after returning from my best friend’s son’s funeral. I even wrote during hard marriage seasons, which hit during the holidays when the kids were little.

With all that’s going on, and all that we have to look forward to in the year ahead, I don’t have anything to say.

I really tried to come up with a word. I almost landed on release. But then I decided there wasn’t a word that worked.

Then I thought about having a verse. More words, right? I’ve spent a fair amount of time with Hebrews 12:1 lately, but that was definitely not it. And since there have been so many different passages I’ve been sinking into, a lot of John and Psalms, I couldn’t single one out.

Resolutions? I’m not even trying. I mean Bray and I thought we’d do dry January again and then, as we sat sipping on our vodka tonic this weekend, we realized it was January and we’d already thrown a big miss (we are still doing a version of it, it’s just clearly not going to cover the whole month).

This is what I’ll do for 2021.

I’ll write about how happy I am that it’s a new year. Of course turning the calendar doesn’t change all that’s going on in our home and in the world around us but it FEELS FRESH. And just psychologically, that helps!

I got to introduce our new transition pastor to our church this morning which is another huge answer to prayer. Our church has been in between pastors and it was such an incredible honor to get to help lead the team to call this breath of fresh air for a church that means so much to me.

I’m done with genetic testing, which is a total miracle, because they didn’t think they’d be able to get me in. Then they had a cancelation because of course!!!

It’s an exciting year for my work project and it’s a year full of life milestones. Bray’s 50th, the kids entry to junior high and turning twelve, and our little marriage turning FIFTEEN!

Actually, as I am WRITING this post, a word came to me.

PROMISE.

It’s not my word of the year or anything, but it settled in my bones.

The promise of 2021. The promise of all that lies ahead. And the promise, the promises, God has given.

Because the Lord your God fights for you, just as He promised. Joshua 23:10

My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life. Psalm 119:5

I will bring health and healing to it, I will heal my people and will let them enjoy abundant peace and security. The days are coming when I will fulfill the good promise I made. Jeremiah 33:6, 14

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God. 2 Corinthians 1:20

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:23

So whether you’ve got a page long of resolutions or whether, like me, you didn’t even know how to pick up the pen, hold on to the promise of 2021. Hope. Faith. Love. We all know what comes after that…

Filed Under: Random Tagged With: new year

2020 – The Ellipsis

January 1, 2020 by Gindi 2 Comments

Today, it is 2020.

As my brother in law said this morning, welcome to the roaring ’20s.

For me, this new decade didn’t come in roaring. It came in in a fog.

I’m in a fog.

I left on the 26th for Minnesota to spend a few days with my best friend, Kristin, and attend her son’s funeral, and returned on the 30th. A quick turn around of my carry on bag at the house, and then I left with my family for the farm. As is our New Year’s Eve tradition.

Two of Bray’s siblings and families were there, along with his parents, and the kids popped fireworks last night and laughed and ran and drank too much soda. I posted photos on social media, as I do, and my daughter and I even snapped a photo of us with me smiling.

It felt fake.

I didn’t smile much the rest of the time. Isaac wasn’t even my son but I have been heartbroken. I can’t focus or function for very long. I’m completely sleep deprived. Last week, I slept with the phone in my hand in case Kristin needed anything in the middle of the night. She never did, but somehow me not sleeping felt like I was helping. Then I never get any sleep at the farm, and little bit got sick, so I’m bleary in my fog.

I just didn’t have a bright and shiny New Year’s post to offer.

Last year I wrote about resolutions and hopes. And this year, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to work this week. I’ve left a part of myself in Minnesota and I just want to get back. (It’s actually a miracle I got out – thank you all for praying. I ran from the snow in Marshall and got out 6 hours in advance, and then my plane just beat the snow in Minneapolis by hours too.)

At the same time, I don’t want to let go of my kids. I kept hugging and kissing them once I got back until they finally pushed me off.

As I plowed through emails today, a GetAbstract book title caught my attention, You are Awesome, by Neil Pasricha. The book professes to help you through change and failure and be more intentional. So I started reading.

His first point is what struck me and finally enabled me to write something. Like I’ve meant to for weeks.

He writes to see changes with an ellipsis instead of a period. It moves your thinking from “finality” to “future” – the gap in the sentence marks a transition. He wrote about a woman who saw a change through the lens of an ellipsis instead of a period. Seeing changes as beginnings instead of endings helped her to press forward and remain stronger internally.

This ‘door opening’ perspective, according to the author and his research, gives you the ability to say “yet” at the end of your sentence.

So, I don’t have any catchy resolutions. I don’t have any grand bargains or promises, which I most certainly will fail to execute.

I have an ellipsis for this year. A ‘yet.’

I don’t understand God, yet. (That yet may never be fulfilled this side of heaven.)

I can’t focus on my work, yet. (I’ll get there. It will be far easier for me than for Isaac’s family.)

I don’t know what’s next, yet. (Maybe I won’t know until the next happens, and so I wait.)

This fog won’t lift, yet. (It will lift. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. – John 1)

As a Type A planner, this is the most unplanned I’ve ever been. Darn near unraveling.

But maybe it takes unraveling to pull together what God has planned instead of what I planned. The dictionary says unraveling means to undo twisted, knitted or woven threads. And Colossians 2 says:
I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. (The Msg)

So I don’t know, yet, what to expect or want from 2020. Maybe simply to expect or want this unraveling to result in a new tapestry that is woven by the hand of God.

Rejoicing after weeping.
Clothes of joy after grief in sackcloth. (Psalm 30)

Peace through tribulation. (John 16)

Beauty from ashes.
Hope from despair.
Rebuilt and restored ruins after devastation.(Isaiah 61)

Filed Under: Women Tagged With: new year

New Year, New Habits

December 31, 2017 by Gindi Leave a Comment

Happy New Year!

Remember the famous New Year’s Resolutions we all used to make?  Yes?  You still do?  Congratulations.  I’ve long since thrown in the towel.

However, I’m going to try to cultivate some new habits.

New Year? New Habits!

As you likely know, the research shows it takes 21 days to form a new habit.  Particularly hard habit?  Maybe longer.  You want it to become a strong habit?  Probably longer.

So I’m going with six weeks.

I’m not going on Whole 30.  (I’d die.)

I’m not going to try to kick carbs or lose 30 pounds or stop drinking or never scream again.

Always and never, I’ve found, don’t work great in my life.  I fail, beat myself up, and then utterly fall off the wagon.

So instead, I picked a few self-improvement habits I’d like to grow, regrow, or strengthen.

  1. Read more.  This is crazy.  I love to read.  I love words – heck, I’m a writer who’s not reading, what the what?!?!?  But the reality is, time’s just gotten away from me.  It’s why I’m blogging less.  I’m managing my time poorly.  I used to read before bed.  I’ve turned to other things – iPad, tv, just crashing altogether.  But I have a stack of books I’m dying to read and I’m going to return to my habit of reading every night.  The blog will be a heck of a lot more lively when I do that too because it’s where I find my greatest inspiration.
  2. Actually exercise.  Ahh.  The holy grail.  Here’s the thing, I have a buddy.  My buddy and I have both gained a few pounds (me more than her) and want to be better.  She’s my neighbor.  So I’m going to walk down to her house three times a week.  We’re going to work out.  And we’re going to do a little six week challenge that involves eating better too.  No drastic diets.  Just smarter choices.  Which leads me to…
  3. Don’t drink at home.  Except on Saturdays.  I’m drinking a glass of wine at night.  Not only does it dehydrate me and add calories, it’s not a great habit.  I’m not going to say no wine ever on a weeknight because I do attend cocktail receptions for business.  But I’m going to keep it corked on Tuesday nights in the living room – or any other night for that matter unless it’s the weekend.
  4. Count to ten.  Silly?  Well, the kids and I are still struggling with patience.  For the hundredth time I’ll mention age seven, and now eight, presents lots of parenting “opportunities” for me.  I lose my patience.  I’m not going to say I’ll never raise my voice again, but I can count to ten. Aloud. In their face.  It gives me a chance to pause and think before reacting.  And it gives them a chance to consider their next options.  Which will likely bring better results.

That’s it.  Four small changes.  They’d each yield a better year.  I’ll mess up.  But I’ll try.  Six weeks.  New habits.

Filed Under: Random Tagged With: new year

Discipline and Daring

January 1, 2016 by Gindi Leave a Comment

I wrote this time last year about this concept of choosing “a word” for the year.  Lots of bloggers do and last year I very nearly did.

Brave would have been my word had I picked one, I said.

I’ve seen friends select their words with great care, focusing in on an element where they want to strengthen their life.  Either focusing on an area of spiritual growth or physical improvement or emotional well being.

Then they get hammered in that area of their life.

Yikes!  Well, I know I did this year even with my not quite selection of “brave.”  I suffered from more extreme fear this year than I ever have in my life.

I’d given no thought to selecting a word for this year.

Mainly because I have no earthly idea what 2016 will hold, or even what it should hold.

After spending a life planning the next step or stage or career move, I have no idea what is supposed to come next.

You may have picked up on the fact that I’m a smidge of an ambitious, Type A, control, planner chick.

I’m totally on board with doing what God wants me to do if it fits in with the notion of where I believe I’m supposed to head next.  Lately, after having a good laugh I imagine, He’s turned that way of living on end.

If I look back, my life was a series of running after a college or a law school or a law firm or a boyfriend or a husband or a new job or a pay raise or a board election or having children or visibility or a publication or a speaking portfolio.

I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with ambition and drive and goal setting, but it can become a treadmill which runs you instead of you running it.

So…I have no idea what is next.  I don’t want to know.

I loved the idea of brave and bold choices.  I hope I continue to be willing to step out in action instead of words (more on that next week).  That’s why daring greatly is still an aspiration of mine.

This is what has been missing:  DISCIPLINE. 

I won’t select it as my word of the year because in addition to not generally picking a word, that particular word totally freaks me out.

What does discipline look like?

Be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. Titus 2:1

Discipline to say no.  No to that scoop of ice cream of glass of wine.  No to the speaking engagement which might raise my profile but pull me away from my family for too long.  No to that opportunity which sounds good and looks good but isn’t where God is calling me to go.  No to chasing titles over substance.

It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior. Titus 2:12

Discipline to shut my mouth.  To bite my tongue when it comes to spreading gossip.  To shut my mouth when it comes to trying to prove I’m right.  To count to 10 instead of losing my temper when the kids get under my skin.  Discipline to speak life not criticism or negativity.

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.  James 3

From the fruit of their mouth a person’s stomach is filled;
    with the harvest of their lips they are satisfied.
The tongue has the power of life and death,

    and those who love it will eat its fruit. Proverbs 18

Discipline to wait.  We are a culture of immediacy.  We post and tweet and instagram each moment.  We email in an instant and text our first reaction.  I am a fast moving person in a fast moving culture, and I have lost the discipline of waiting.  Of patience.  Of pausing.  I want to be capable of waiting, expectantly, for what is to come rather than trying to create a result which is less than what could have been if I had practiced some discipline.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed… We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently... And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  Romans 8

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Psalm 37:7

I’m a work in progress.  I’m making no fancy New Year’s Resolution.  Instead, I will try to put on discipline a little more each day, and wait to see what His hand brings in the year to come.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.  II Corinthians 4:18

Filed Under: Faith, Women Tagged With: discipline, new year

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