I def­i­nitely did bet­ter this year than I did last year in my NaBloPoMo posts.  I think I stopped mid­way through the month last year.  I didn’t do quite as well as I did in 2007.  That is still the NaBloPoMo to which all oth­ers are com­pared at this point.    This year, I felt so busy in the month of Novem­ber.  I’m not sure if I was that busy or if I just felt like it.  I felt like every day was a chal­lenge to find time to blog.  A friend pointed out that nearly all my posts are pub­lished at 10:30 or later!  Whoops.

I have sev­eral posts in my draft folder.  I also have a few that are going pretty well.  Unfor­tu­nately, I’ve lacked either the words, the tone, or the time to get them to a point where they are ready to be pub­lished.  Hope­fully in Decem­ber with­out the pres­sure to pub­lish every day, I’ll be able to get some of those ready to publish.

How does every­one else feel about this?  Do you go through the writ­ing process with drafts, edit­ing, and pub­lish­ing?  Do you set aside time every day (or on cer­tain days) for writing?

I’m down another day in my NaBloPoMo goal. I missed post­ing yes­ter­day. I think I was over­con­fi­dent in my sta­tus as a return­ing NaBloPoMo’er. Hav­ing doen it last year, it didn’t seem as over­whelm­ing or daunt­ing. Maybe I should have wor­ried more. Oh, well. I also missed Novem­ber 1st. Maybe I’ll do another month some time in 2009.

Have you ever heard about Com­pas­sion Inter­na­tional? If you have attended many Chris­t­ian music con­certs, there’s a good chance, you have. There’s also a good chance that I’ve talked a lit­tle about Com­pas­sion to you if I talk to you on a reg­u­lar basis.

Our fam­ily spon­sors a child through Com­pas­sion. Her name is Daniela, and she lives in Hon­duras. She is 13, and she and I share the same birth­day. That’s actu­ally how I decided which child to pick at that Bebo Nor­man con­cert in 2004. Choos­ing to spon­sor a child had been some­thing I had been think­ing about doing for a while. In Octo­ber of 2004, Jason and I went to a Bebo Nor­man con­cert as part of my birth­day present. Dur­ing the inter­mis­sion, I decided to go look at the Com­pas­sion table. I told Jason, “How about this? If I see one and one of the kids shares my birth­day, that’s how we’ll decide if we spon­sor some­one or not.” Very nice, huh? So, we walked back to the tables where they dis­play the pro­files of the chil­dren who need spon­sors. I looked down, and what do you think hap­pened? The very first pro­file I looked at was Daniela’s. She and I share a birth­day, too! My deci­sion was pretty easy.

Since then, we’ve been sup­port­ing her with a monthly con­tri­bu­tion. We also try to send a lit­tle some­thing extra for birth­days and Christ­mas. When I can get my act together, I also send her pic­tures. She writes to us. She usu­ally sends a pic­ture that she has drawn or col­ored for the boys (and me, too, I sup­pose). We share prayer requests, and we get to know each other. It’s easy for me to become com­pla­cent about my spon­sor­ship. I just put it on the Amer­i­can Express and let the auto with­drawl take care of itself, right?

That’s sort of how things were going. Then, I started read­ing, yes, you guessed it 5 Min­utes for Mom. One of their edi­tors, Jen­nifer, is on a Com­pas­sion trip right now. She is in the Domini­can Repub­lic, and she has been blog­ging about her expe­ri­ences along with a few other blog­gers. Read­ing her expe­ri­ences and the expe­ri­ences of the other blog­gers has reminded me what a respon­si­bil­ity I have. Yes, my $32/month is good. Yes, it does help Daniela in a way that is so vitally impor­tant, but I need to do more than that. I need to be reg­u­larly pray­ing for her and her fam­ily. I also need to be an active par­tic­i­pant in our cor­re­spon­dence. I’m pretty sure that God didn’t want me to spon­sor Daniela solely for the money. He could have found that money from a few dif­fer­ent places if that had been the goal. I’m more than a lit­tle sure that there’s some­thing to be learned from this expe­ri­ence both for Daniela and myself.

Hav­ing read some of these per­sonal expe­ri­ences this week has brought back to me the bless­ings I have been giv­ing, and it has also pointed out to me the respon­si­bil­ity I have cho­sen to take upon myself. Maybe you are in the same place I was 4 years ago. Have you thought about it but never done it? Lately in the car, I’ve been hear­ing this com­mer­cial on the radio. It says some­thing like, “You saw a home­less fam­ily on the street today. You almost stopped to see if they needed some help. You got a let­ter in the mail today from a local char­ity. You almost sent them a dona­tion…” There’s more, but I can’t remem­ber it. Then, at the end, it says, “Don’t almost give.” That line always gets me. There are so many times when I almost. I almost call some­one when I think they might be down. I almost give the last cash I have when I see some­one who might need it. I almost send a card. I almost say some­thing. I almost do it. Don’t stop there. Do it! Make some­one else’s life a lit­tle better.

So, I decided I’m going to be attempt­ing to blog every day for a month with NaBloPoMo. Unfor­tu­nately, I missed yes­ter­day! I have a good excuse though. K’s 3rd birth­day party was yes­ter­day. My par­ents are stay­ing with us. I made and dec­o­rated a cake. We had Jason’s mom and his sis­ter and sister’s fam­ily over, too. I made two lasag­nas, cookie salad, and some gar­lic bread. It was a busy day.

So, here’s the start of my attempt at blog­ging daily for a month minus one.