Some of you may (or may not) have noticed that my blog has been a lit­tle quiet for the past week. This is pri­mar­ily due to the fact that I was not around from Thurs­day to Sun­day. I had the oppor­tu­nity to attend the MOPS Inter­na­tional 2008 Con­ven­tion.

The week­end was filled with speak­ers, authors, artists, and time to get to know oth­ers from my local group. Because our local group has helped us with fundrais­ing for lead­er­ship train­ing like this, one of the other women who attended and I are going to be giv­ing a lit­tle recap of our week­end tomor­row at our meet­ing. When I got to think­ing about what I wanted to say, I had a list that was far too long for the time I’ll be given. I am try­ing to whit­tle down two and a half days of infor­ma­tion into about two and a half minutes.

The final gen­eral ses­sion that we attended was where it all came together for me. All week­end, we had been asked to wear but­tons that said SDWSC on them. Peo­ple had all sorts of guesses what that could mean, and on Sat­ur­day after­noon, we finally learned. It meant, “she did what she could.” Elisa Mor­gan, the CEO of MOPS, was speak­ing that after­noon. She talked about Mary bring­ing per­fume to Jesus and seem­ingly wast­ing it in an elab­o­rate ges­ture of pour­ing it over his head (Mark 14). Then, she elab­o­rated on the sen­tence “She did what she could.” Mary gave what she had. She did what God had asked of her. She didn’t look around to see what oth­ers were doing. She didn’t trade her per­fume for some­thing more use­ful. She didn’t sit around wish­ing that she knew how to sing a beau­ti­ful song or write a breath­tak­ing poem. She did what she could. That right there was the Big Idea for me.

In addi­tion to our gen­eral ses­sions, we also had smaller ses­sions through­out the day on Fri­day. My first ses­sion was geared toward rais­ing chil­dren with a con­cern about the world, the envi­ron­ment, and how our actions affect oth­ers. The speaker, Tracey Bianchi, talked about teach­ing your chil­dren to love some­thing and become pas­sion­ate about it. Then, once they love it, what­ever that it is, they will be more likely to pro­tect it and try to save it. The “it” might be a cer­tain pop­u­la­tion of peo­ple, a type of ani­mal, an aspect of the envi­ron­ment, or some­thing else entirely. Although she gave many ideas, I didn’t leave her ses­sion feel­ing over­whelmed, I felt moti­vated. I want my kids and my fam­ily to be socially aware. I want us to make a pos­i­tive impact on the world. This includes the envi­ron­ment and, as much as pos­si­ble, peo­ple on the other side of the world, too. I also had two other great ses­sions. I have a cou­ple many new books on my to be read list. There is so much I could say tomor­row about this con­fer­ence, but what really sticks out is that she did what she could. That’s what God expects of me. That’s what I should expect of myself. I don’t need to do every­thing, but I do need to do what I can when I can.