What Everyone in Your Life Wants for Christmas This Year
Dave Ramsey turned me onto this guy. Without further comment, I present timely wisdom from Jon Acuff —
I know exactly what everyone in your life wants for Christmas this year – your presence.
Your husband? He wants your presence.
Your wife? She wants your presence.
Your kids? They want your presence.
Your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your father, your mother, your friend, your neighbor? They all want your presence.
Every day this gift becomes rarer and rarer. Can you remember the last time you had a full conversation with someone’s face, not just their forehead as they stared at their phone? Can you remember the last time someone was “all there” not just partially there because interacting with you wasn’t enough to hold their full attention? I have to leave my phone in the car when we go to dinner parties or I will be physically present but absent in every other way possible as I engage with the phone instead of anyone else.
Don’t miss Christmas because you’re working or you’re lost in your phone.
This year, give someone that rarest gift of all, your presence. No one else can give them that.
It costs nothing, but it’s worth everything.
– See more at: http://acuff.me/2014/12/gift-everyone-wants-christmas/#sthash.bPuiG9QP.dpuf
joescheets 
Wow what a message! It is so hard to do. I remember my daughter pulling my face out of a book when she was a young child and saying, talk to me, mommy! And now I tell my granddaughter she has to put her phone down when I’m talking to her! The gift of presence is a difficult but loving one.
Thanks Joe, I’ll try harder to give that this year!
LikeLike
I always hate going to lunch with my daughter and having her totally devoted to her phone. Maybe the reason we haven’t hooked up for lunch in a while. In grief and bereavement training and education, we learn to be present with someone who needs us. It is the same with the Chaplain’s training at the hospital. I heard an Air Force Chaplain speak at a prayer breakfast one year in town. He was a Baptist minister, but he said that has to be something that doesn’t figure in to being a Chaplain to men and women of all faiths. He said that had been what, in over 20 years in the job, that he loved the most, that no matter what faith, you are present with them before God. I love that analogy and carry it with me. I love this entry. Merry Christmas to you and yours!
LikeLike