Heather Holleman's Blog, page 189

Traveling: My Top 10 Tips

I’m an expert traveler now! For those of you beginning your travel life or for those wanting to prepare for a new season of travel, here are my favorite travel tips:

Wear a scarf or sweater for chilly planes.
Use a drop of lavender or cinnamon oil on your scarf or sweater to calm you and allow you to enjoy wonderful scents. You’ll use these same scents in your hotel room and on your pillow in the hotel.
Carry a ziplock bag with assorted nuts and bags of your favorite tea.
Bring a pair of warm socks for a long plane ride and a chilly hotel room.
Try, as hard as you can, to never check a bag.
Hydrate! Instead of coffee all day long, drink water that you buy once you’ve made it through security.
Go ahead and apply for the TSA pre-check option. This will save you so much time.
Always bring a book.
Use the bathroom before you board the plane.
Be cheerful and helpful to those around you in airports. Be on the lookout for folks who might need assistance.

Enjoy your travels!

 

“You are a delight.”

In honor of my birthday today (43!!), I think about how wonderful it feels to have others delight in you. Perhaps it’s such a treasured experience because it reflects something beautiful and often overlooked about God: He delights in us. 

Consider Deuteronomy 30:5 and God’s declaration that He will delight in His people, or Psalm 18 and how God rescues us because He delights in us. Consider, too, how God delights to show us mercy (Micah 7:18). Finally, I think about this today from Zephaniah 3:17.

“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

Yesterday in our professor Bible study, we talked about how one way we might represent the love of God to our students and colleagues is to delight in them. What would it mean to live the kind of life that celebrates others, that declares to them how happy they make us, and to honor their lives? We might say, like a mentor once told me, “You are a delight.”

(This kind of statement buoys the heart. It fills up the discouraged, defeated soul who forgets she is a delight. I remember those words.)

Imagine running around this ordinary day and delighting in everyone you see. What a different day this now becomes!

I’ll take you by the hand, look into your beautiful face, and I’ll declare the truth: You are a delight.

Maybe someone needs to hear this today. Maybe someone in your life never had anyone delight in them. And now, you’re that someone who reflects the Someone who delights in us.

And the Boo Platter Continues

Back in 2015, I posted my last Boo Platter delivery to the elementary school. But this end of an era never stopped me. So today, I build another one:

I know it’s not my best work, but over the years, I’ve become more authentic and less worried about perfection.

Here’s a look at some of finest written work from years past: 

Pennsylvania Golden Autumn

Some New Verbs: Stultify and Promulgate

As you know, I love verbs. I love precise verbs that sound like what they mean. Two students use two new verbs in their essays that I love: stultify and promulgate.

One writes that the repetitive and restrictive practice of standardized testing in elementary school stultifies and exhausts students. Stultify means to stifle, bore, suppress, and drain of enthusiasm.

Stultify even sounds stifling. It’s an oppressive, boring kind of verb. When I speak it, it makes my mouth pinch up like I’m bored of it already.

Another student wrote that he wishes to promulgate a certain policy change in the healthcare field. Promulgate means to announce widely, to promote, to broadcast, and spread far.

Promulgate even sounds like some important thing spreading out as you make that “o” and “u” sound. It a wide, formal sound.

At the risk of stultifying you, I’ll cease promulgating my obsession with vivid verbs.

Book Love

This morning in church, my older friend–the one who gives me books she believes I must read for my own development–hands me a gift.

The Lemon Tree Grows

As you know, I love watching things grow from seed. On this rainy and cold Saturday morning, I see the Lemon Tree growing, and it brings a bit of spring sunshine into the room. Those little leaves that stretch upward to the light remind me that, even in the brittle autumn season, I shall still stretch and grow.

Little By Little: Incorporating New, Healthier Foods

At times in my life, I’ve insisted my family immediately change everything about the way we eat, and it creates too much stress. People have actually protested, like the time I switched all the meat to tofu and my husband said, “If this keeps happening, I’m going to call my mama.”

And my changes never stuck. But little by little, I’ve learned to add in some healthy meals and practices that everyone loves. Nobody seems to notice my incremental changes. So, if you’re reading this as the main chef in your household, let me encourage you. If would want to try one vegetarian or vegan meal a week, nobody will stomp their feet. If you want to add in kale and broccoli sprouts to your caesar salad, nobody will start crying at the table. And nobody will care if you occasionally serve quinoa instead of rice or if you’ve sprinkled flaxseed into the soup you’re serving.

It’s always little changes that stick. Add a bowl of nuts to the selection of after school snacks, along with popcorn and sliced oranges. Make a green smoothie every once in a while. Make Tex-Mex Quinoa Bowls, loaded with veggies, for the tailgate this weekend (it’s so good that people won’t know it’s healthy.)

Remember the little changes–the avocado oil you spritz on popcorn instead of lathering it in butter, the green tea you steep in the morning instead of a second cup of coffee that’s mostly creamer, and the salmon you’re serving instead of fried chicken.

Soon, folks around your table will feel better, sleep better, and even look better. As someone who finally made my lifetime goal at Weight Watchers, I’m learning how to make healthy eating part of everyone’s day without shocking the family system.

So let the little changes begin, the ones nobody may notice but you.

 

Asking Students What They’ve Been Thinking About

I loved the Name Game today. We went around the classroom to answer this question:

“What have you been thinking about lately?”

I talked about watching the Parenthood television series and how these characters have captured my imagination. I think about them during the day. That’s what I’ve been thinking about.

Students shared the most revealing and wonderful things they’ve been considering lately ranging from how to fight racism to how to make a decision about what to do over the weekend. One student was thinking about her study abroad plans and securing a visa; another student mulled over how terrible her last paper turned out. Others were thinking things like missing their pets back home, how much they hate the rain, or how to get more sleep tonight.

Several students said they were thinking of naps. Naps. That’s it: naps. (I remember thinking the same thing as a college student).

One student said she’s been thinking all morning about why the men in her life don’t take better care of their mental health.

Asking someone what they’ve been thinking about opened up a whole world of knowledge of one another in our writing community.

I’m headed home to ask my teens and my husband what they’ve been thinking about today.

A Devotional on the YouVersion Bible App

Good news! A Chosen for Christ devotional now appears in your Bible app (if you have one!) You can find the 7 day devotional here:

Chosen for Christ Devotional. 

Enjoy!!