7 Challenge

The Haiti Hunger Diet and A Congo Fast

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Well. Eating rice for breakfast, a banana for lunch, and beans and rice for dinner is no picnic. That’s what I learned on Monday when I ate like a poor person from Haiti as part of my 7 Challenge. I think I kind of cheated on the banana-they grow wild in Haiti, but 94% of Haiti is deforested, so I’m not exactly sure where the “wild” is. I had planned to skip lunch, but at 12:30 in Target, I had a moment of weakness and bought a banana. I’m just proud it wasn’t a Snickers bar. I had 200 calories up until dinner when I had 300 calories.

Bottom line: aside from the adequate food supply around me, clean drinking water, a clean bathroom, a climate controlled habitat, and complete financial security, I was just like a Haitian on Monday. Oh, and I bought diapers and vitamins at Target. But aside from that: Haitian.

As you can imagine, I felt miserable most of the day. Refraining from popping a few of my kids’ Goldfish crackers in my mouth or eating the crusts from their toast made me realize just how easily I can access food whenever I feel the slightest bit hungry. After my Haiti Monday, I can see how people take desperate actions when food supply is in jeopardy. I know that even on that Haiti hunger diet, I still have never experienced true hunger. And I fervently, repeatedly thank the Lord for that, because Monday was not fun.

But if I thought eating like a Haitian was rough, eating like a Congolese is going to be nearly impossible. Why? Because they don’t eat. As reported in the NY Times, many families in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have taken to harsh food rationing they call Delestage: “Today we eat, tomorrow we don’t.” Some days the little ones eat, some days the big kids eat. The NY Times article is heartbreaking, sharing how at the end of a day with only a little bread in the morning, the little ones are weak and whining. Why are times so desperate in DRC? The people who are having to ration food have jobs as police officers, teachers, tennis coaches, etc. Still, they don’t have enough to feed their families. DRC has rich national resources, but their corrupt government and land owners keep most of the country in poverty. Civil War and violence has wrecked Congo. Atrocities upon atrocities have happened there. You know that issue of 60 Minutes featuring the child soldiers in Africa? Yeah, that was in DRC. I may have concerns with my government here in U.S., but I’m so thankful for my country and its government as I learn what corruption has done to Haiti, Congo, and other countries.

So today I’ll eat a piece of bread for breakfast, drink tea the rest of the day, and have a banana or a sweet potato (both native to Congo) for dinner. If I’m able to eat less than that without endangering my children, I will.

Why am I putting myself through this again? I know I’ll never reach any kind of kinship with the starving people in Haiti or Congo. However, feeling hungry through the day causes me realize how much food I have, how much food I waste, and how many people–valuable, precious human beings–need help. The hunger also reminds me to pray. I want to be moved to make a change. Hunger and the small degree of empathy it brings prods me from awareness into action.

Are you doing a 7 Challenge of your own? Tell me about it in the comments!

Children's Books, Reading, Top Ten Tuesday

Favorite Sequels: A Top Ten Tuesday Post

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Today is a Top Ten Tuesday on the blog. The great bloggers at The Broke and the Bookish give book bloggers a topic to run wild with each Tuesday. I haven’t had any idea what to write on the last few topics, but I’m jumping back in with Top Ten Sequels. Actually, it will be Top 7 Sequels, because there just aren’t that many sequels worthy of the first book.You know who did not write sequels? Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Mark Twain, and the list goes on and on of the great writers of classics who knew that a great book is best when it has an ending that is perfect in itself.

There are a few great writers who found a way to write great sequels. Many sequels turn into Book 2 in series (especially these days), so those count as sequels in this list as long as there is a plot that begins and ends in Book #2.

1. The sequels to Little Women: Little Men and Jo’s Boys

There are some characters you consider friends and just want more of their stories. Lousia May Alcott created those characters.

Skylark (Sarah, Plain and Tall, #2)2. Sky Lark, the sequel to Sarah, Plain and Tall

3. Prince Caspian, sequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

4. Belong to Me, the sequel to Love Walked In

These are books by Marisa de Los Santos I would put in the category of “Books I really liked for some reason I can’t entirely explain.” I wouldn’t expect most people to like them, but I really enjoyed the characters and the way they developed.

5. All sequels written by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Yes, I am an unabashed fan. If you’ve already read the Anne books, try Emily or Pat. Pat is a bit of a neurotic character, but I still love her.

6. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

I think the first three books in this series are marvelous. I like all of them, but the first three are the best. Also, I think they can stand alone as fun books without the rest of the series, though I wouldn’t recommend reading them that way.

7. The House at Pooh  Corner

That’s about all I can come up with! What are your favorite sequels?

7 Challenge

7 Challenge No. 1: Food

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You know what one of my least favorite foods is? Rice.

You know what most of the world eats every day? Rice.

It’s Day 1, Month 1 of my 7 Challenge, and I’m already struggling. When faced with the choice of rice or nothing, I usually choose nothing.

7: An Experimental Mutiny Against ExcessAs I laid out in my review of Jen Hatmaker’s book, 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess, I’ll be starting this challenge with a month to re-think food. I’ll take 7 different days scattered throughout the month and eat like the impoverished people in one of the 20 Most Impoverished Countries around the world.

I’m starting with Haiti. This country is in dire straits, people. It’s average caloric intake per day is 450 calories (the American average is 3,500). The average household income is less than $2 a day, which puts it at No. 19 in the 20 poorest countries list. However, food prices are sky high in Haiti, compared to other impoverished countries. One meal of rice and beans costs $1.50. That means only one person gets a decent meal per household per day. Half of all deaths in Haiti are caused by starvation. 15% of children don’t make it to age 5. I could go on and on with grim statistics, but I think we all get the picture. Haiti needs help.

So today I’ll be eating one meal of rice and beans. Besides having had plentiful food yesterday and being able to look forward to plentiful food tomorrow, I’ll also have the added bonus of clean water. 40% of Haitians do not have access to clean water, and an unknown number of those that could have access cannot afford it.

I’m feeling more than a little overwhelmed with all the problems in Haiti. So what can I do? Eating like a poor Haitian for one day hardly seems enough to make a difference. But the point isn’t to fix everything in one stroke–the point is to do something. I’m going to start out by praying for Haiti this week. Next, I’ll make a donation based on the money I didn’t spend on food for me today and hopefully a little extra to Hunger Relief International. HRI works in Haiti and Guatemala to ease the suffering of the hungry in these countries.

As I think (obsess) about what I’m not eating, feed my children cinnamon toast and milk, and sip my nice glass of cool, clean water, I try to put myself in the shoes of those parents who wake up with nothing to offer their children. It’s impossible for me to know that burden. But it’s also becoming impossible for me to sit back and do nothing, knowing that so many live in that situation every day.

If you want to help Haiti, check out Hunger Relief International, Compassion International, or Harvest Field Ministries.

 

Reading, Reviews

Me Before You: Why I Was Happier Before This Book

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Me Before YouWell, I seem to be a bit of a Negative Nancy this week. I didn’t particularly enjoy The Rules of Civility and now I am thoroughly disturbed by Me Before You.

Here’s the synopsis:

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn’t know is she’s about to lose her job or that knowing what’s coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he’s going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn’t know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they’re going to change the other for all time. -Goodreads.com

Liking or disliking a book varies so much from person to person, so I’m not usually surprised when a book with rave reviews leaves me cold. It happens to all readers sometime. This time, though, it’s more than just liking or disliking. I’m not looking to be the little boy exclaiming that the emperor has no clothes on, but I feel a burden to explain why I am appalled by the popularity of this book.

1. All the characters are flat out selfish. Yes, even the main character, Lou Clark. She does what she does because she wants to. On the surface, she can make it look like she’s being sacrificial for her family, but she admits that she likes working at the home town coffee shop. And don’t get me started on Will.

2. We are introduced to Lou as the narrator tells us that Lou knows exactly how many steps it takes to get home from work, whether she’s walking fast or slow. I have no patience for characters that count steps, stairs, wall tiles, etc. Unless you’re introducing a neurotic scientist or child prodigy who can’t help but notice all the numbers of the universe, don’t let your character count everything. (I’m sure this has nothing to do with my aversion to mathematics…). Okay, so this my weakest point for not liking this book, but there’s got to be a better way to tell readers that the main character’s life is tedious.

3. The plot is much like a tearjerker, Nicholas Sparks-like book, without the saving truth that love is noble. I’m not convinced that anyone actually understood what love is in this book. Maybe Lou’s parents. Maybe.

4. It is in support of euthanasia, an idea that is terribly controversial but always extremely sad, and selfish, at least on some level. I get that humans as a race are self-centered by default. But I also believe everyone has a soul, and this book ignores that fact entirely.

I need someone to show me the redeeming qualities of this book! If you’ve read it and enjoyed it, don’t leave me in the dark–please help me see why it is considered such a great book by so many.

7 Challenge, Nonfiction, Reading, Reviews

7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess, And My Own 7 Challenge

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I should have read this book a long time ago.

Any book with a number in the title scares me. I try not to be too limited in my thinking, but I must admit that math gives me a panicky feeling. I know this is illogical. I try to talk myself out of it: I got an A in Algebra 2, for crying out loud! Apparently, the 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excesseffort that A took left its scars. Big ones. I would rather give a speech to 2,000 Nobel Prize geniuses than repeat a single week of college Pre-calculus. Maybe it was due to my aversion to numbers that I hadn’t really considered reading Jen Hatmaker’s book 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess, though I’d heard a lot about it. Then some of my friends started sharing her blog posts on Facebook. I read them, and that was all it took for me to say, “Okay, I have got to read this woman’s book.” I’m really glad I did.

I love Jen Hatmaker for making a thought provoking, challenging book that is so hilarious. I laughed out loud right in the midst of my musings on how catastrophically out of whack consumerism and starvation is in the world. (Okay, to be honest, I would have laughed, but my heart has been heavy due to a tragic event in our church family. That I kind of laughed should be a testament to how funny Jen Hatmaker is, because I was having trouble reading through my swollen eyes, and that is not an exaggeration).

Note: From here on out, I’m going to call Jen Hatmaker just Jen, because she’s that personable and I don’t think she’d mind.

7 is a challenge that Jen gave herself to live with less in several different areas of life.  The challenge areas are: food, clothes, spending, media, possessions, waste, stress. Each challenge lasted for 4 weeks. Her main premise is that our culture as a whole is “trapped in the machine of excess.” Her desire was to “fight back against the modern-day diseases of greed, materialism, and overindulgence.” I’m in agreement with Jen. The American Dream has gone from a desire for freedom to a desire for way more than we need. And it happens to be sucking the life out of us, one overworked, overeaten, over stimulated hour at a time. What’s worse, it’s sucking the life out of entire nations who aren’t getting any relief from their suffering because we’re too fat and happy to notice them. I’m talking about me, not you. Or maybe that is you, too. Whatever the case, this book was life changing for me. So much so, that I am beyond thinking about this stuff and ready to take actions. For each of Jen’s challenges, I’ve come up with a version of my own.

Food

Jen’s challenge:  Limiting herself to 7 foods.

Yes, just 7. My first reaction to this was, “WHY?” I came to see that she wanted a concrete way to discard the burden and the blindness that her love of food was putting on her life. I was more drawn to the challenge that several of her friends gave themselves for the first month: to pick seven of the world’s most poverty stricken countries and eat like an average person from that country for three days. They picked Haiti, Ethiopia, Uganda, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Cambodia, and Sudan. Jen and her friends came to understand more about their misuse of the food abundance in America and came away from it with a desire to do more for those who don’t have enough. Jen also realized what an idol food can become.

My challenge: Pick my own impoverished countries that I feel particularly burdened for, research their average food intake, and eat like them for one day each. I wish I could do three days, but I’m a mom of littles, and I don’t want my family to suffer a grumpy, malnourished mother. (Who am I kidding, they suffer the grumpy mother regularly). I’m still working on fleshing out this challenge, because I’d like it to include a way to transfer my eating less to some hungry person eating more. Also, I’d like to add a book to my reading list about each impoverished country I choose. If you have any ideas, please tell me!

Clothing

Jen’s challenge: Wear 7 pieces of clothing for four weeks.  Her discoveries about how she views clothing and how she expects other women to view her clothing were enlightening. Her honest evaluation of her excess clothing made me think twice, for sure.

My challenge: Part 1 — Clean out my closet and give the excess to refugees. Part 2 — No clothes shopping for myself for 3 months. I think this will be an easy challenge, because I don’t really like to shop. I ignore clothes to a fault sometimes. You know, that moment when you realize you have nothing that fits the bill for the event you’re attending in, oh, less than half an hour. I don’t think about what clothes I need. Except for those new boots I promised myself last winter…. However, I think it will be an interesting challenge to share with my four-year-old daughter, who is a budding Fashionista. (Help.) I need to think through ways I can show her how abundant her clothing is and how some little girls have next to nothing.

Possessions

Jen’s challenge: give seven things away every day for a month. And not just to Goodwill, but to tangible people who will benefit from Jen’s entire family’s acknowledgement that they have way more than enough.

My challenge: Same as Jen’s this time. I’ll be honest–I’m a little worried. I keep our house at a minimum of stuff to begin with.  We get rid of things all the time. My husband hears “Hey, can we get rid of this?” on a regular basis. Still, our house feels cluttered. But the point isn’t to de-clutter the house. The point is to find good things we don’t truly need and give them to people who do really need them. I’m hoping to connect with a ministry that supplies refugees with basic household items for this month’s challenge and the clothing challenge.

Media

Jen’s challenge was a good old-fashioned media fast from everything not work related. I always think this type of challenge would be a no-brainer challenge for me. I don’t watch TV, what’s the big deal? But her challenge included blogs, Facebook, sports news, and everything else not work related. Yikes. No sports news! There would be troubles. However, I’m going to try it.

My challenge: Limit my media to certain times during the day. I will allow myself to read blog posts from 6-7am. I will check/post to Facebook at 10am, 2pm, 9pm, or not at all. No internet surfing at all until after the kids go to bed. Otherwise, my media will only involve work-related or research related usage. My e-mail will have to be a continuous thing because it’s my main form of communication, but I think I can limit it to checking it every hour to two hours. And it’s football season, so…sports can’t completely go unless I want to spend hours away from family and friends on the weekends. Football is king in South Carolina, people. But I do plan to seriously limit it.

Waste

Jen’s challenge: seven habits for a greener life.  I’m summarizing it as a serious cutback on waste and use of natural resources. Before you roll your eyes at the liberal tree hugger, please know that I happen to be a conservative tree hugger. I was totally convicted by this chapter. Give yourself a chance and you will be, too. It’s sad to me that people who believe God doesn’t exist are so often the only ones concerned about God’s creation. I can’t put it as well as Jen does, but I hope you read this part if no other part of 7.

My challenge: get Ella out of pull ups at night, buy less prepackaged food, recycle everything possible.

Spending

Jen only allowed herself and her family (her husband was on board for all of this, by the way)  to pay money out to seven vendors, two of which were online bill pay and her children’s school. This translates into no eating out, no shopping for fun, no family outings that cost money, etc.

My challenge: Don’t buy stuff.

No, seriously. I’m not shopping for anything outside of basic food and household needs like toilet paper. No home goods, no clothes, no potentially life changing organizational tools, no the-neighborhood-needs-my-flower-beds-to-be-beautiful plants. I’m going to have to choose this month wisely. We’re coming up on Christmas…this will have to be an after Christmas month. Which brings my grand total of months I’m not shopping for clothes in this challenge to four. This is going to be interesting…

Stress

Jen’s challenge: Keep Sunday as a true day of rest and pause seven times a day for prayer and reflection.

My challenge: Stop clothes shopping.

Oh, I kid. My challenge will be to (1) Become a planner and (2) Set daily goals for my gratitude journal.

Much of my stress is caused by not planning ahead for things. Just this morning, I totally stressed my kids out with trying to get to MOPS on time (didn’t happen). I didn’t have anything prepared. It’s no coincidence that all the moms got a nice little reminder email about labeling sippy cups and bags this afternoon from the childcare workers–see, I’m spreading stress to everyone by my lack of planning! Those poor childcare workers. Anyway, the goal is to plan for the next day the night before.

The other part of the stress challenge is based on Ann Voskamp’s Joy Dare. I have kept a gratitude journal for a long time, but I’m too sporadic for thankfulness to truly take root in my heart. Thankfulness isn’t thriving in me yet. I think stress would be obsolete if I could be grateful in my waking moments. I don’t consider myself to be a particularly stressed person, but then I think about the discontentment, the insomnia, the way I get fed up with the mess I live in, the inexplicable nightmares I’ve had since childhood, and I think there’s definitely proof of stress. The beauty is I truly believe it doesn’t have to be there. I’m going to strive during the Stress month of this challenge for peace that I know is attainable.

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So there are the challenges for the next seven months. I’m eagerly looking forward to tackling (most) of these challenges. My overarching desire is to find ways to positively help those who really need it. I don’t want to just simplify and clarify my life. I want to relieve pain in others’ lives, even oceans away. I hope you will cheer me on and give me ideas on how to do this when my brain is too consumed with the self control to not…buy…another…book!

If you have the wherewithal to read this droning dribble about my 7 Challenge, then I guarantee you will enjoy the book 7 so much more. It will make you laugh and remind you that you have the power to make a difference in this world. And if you want to join me on my own 7 journey, you’re more than welcome.