Tag Archives: service

Using the 5 Love Languages to Save Families

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by Christie Perkins

I’m a nonfiction junkie. I love reading self help books and text books. Yep, I’m a full on geek. And I also like a light clean romance book. You know the kind, the kind where the discovery of real love is realized…not just that state of the twitterpation station of life.

using-the-5-love-languages-to-save-familiesSo with my atypical spectrum of book likes, my friend gave me the perfect book: The Five Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell. A perfect mix of knowledge and how to discover and express real love to your kids and family. Not just to be infatuated with our fabulous (and crazy driving destination) families but how to show them that we love them.

So geek it up with me.

Families need a little more love, a little more connections with one another, and a lot more work. So, no matter your situation: divorced, separated, happily married, existing in the same room with a legalized paper that indicates your married, single, with kids… or without, take a look at what Gary and Ross have to say. I’ll get to the details of that in a minute. But, I have tried a few of these simple techniques and have found a little more cohesion in our family. I liked the results.

Because no family is exempt from attack and every family is worth saving, no matter, no what! Continue reading →

Making Spirits Bright

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by Christie Perkins

Tis the season for making spirits bright. The message is simple: Love, Laugh, Lift.

howperkyworks.com (4)LOVE. See the non-obvious beauty in others. The things that we like about people are easy to see and love. Get to know someone’s true beauty. The best way to do that is to knock down our judgments of others by thinking good things. When I was in 4th grade we read a book about a boy who could read people’s thoughts. I was gullible enough to think that maybe someone really did have that special power.

And it had me on-guard every time I was around people (though I never cared if spiders could hear my thoughts, still don’t care). Continue reading →

6 Tips to Overcoming Overwhelming Tasks

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Crayon Peelings and Feelings

By Christie Perkins

All is quiet on the home front.2014 Blog 007

That concerns me.

So, I go looking for the reason for the silence.  I quickly scan each room.  Nothing.  Nothing. Nothing.  Then…

A pile of crayon peelings is staring me down.  We exchange glances- me and the pile of crayon peelings.  Actually, I’m glaring and it’s singing and dancing in cutesy little curls.  It’s oblivious to my frustrations.

It’s having a party after all. Continue reading →

Share the Gift

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Gifts that Lift

By Christie Perkins

A message of hopeToday I’m joining the #ShareTheGift movement through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints website.  I want to share a message about how I know that through the gift of Jesus Christ one of my most difficult moments were made light.  I want to bear my testimony of the atonement and it’s great power.

In Alma 7:12 it reads “…and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.” 

I felt as if I was carried in His hands through my cancer trial.  I could not have done it without the Savior taking upon Him my infirmities.

His is the gift that lifts.

 

My Most Difficult Day

Early one morning, just before sunrise I sat at the kitchen table, eating oatmeal that I couldn’t taste.  I didn’t feel well.  Big warm tears dropped from my cheeks.  It splashed on the table below me.

I couldn’t do this anymore.  I had only done 4 of the 8 chemo treatments (which I refer to lovingly as 5 hours of nuclear waste dumping) but each one was progressively worse.  And each treatment had a new complication I had to muddle through.

I was tired of feeling sick.  Nights were restless and my anxiety was escalated so that I couldn’t even crawl into bed for a good rest.  My legs were antsy.  I buzzed around, wearing circles in my carpet, which alleviated my anxiety but complicated my need for rest.

My chemo fog was extreme.  I couldn’t read or concentrate. I existed in a muffled brain state.  It’s as if someone had shoved a blanket in my head cutting off all circulation, numbing my brain and it’s functions.

I was ugly, bald, and cold.   My eyelashes and eyebrows were dropping.  And I felt like I was dropping out of everyone’s life… circumstances made it so.

My fast track moment in life began with diagnosis, total mastectomy, painful reconstruction, and now chemo.  My body had taken all it could.  Mentally, physically, and emotionally I was exhausted.

I couldn’t fight any more.

Continue reading →

Reach Up and Touch Someone’s Life

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Jelly Bean Hailstorms

by CHristie Perkins

Jelly Bean Hailstorms create smiles.

Send someone a Jellybean Hailstorm today. It’s so simple to let someone know that you care.

The bag of jelly beans slumps haphazardly on the top shelf.  I reach up on my tippy-top toes.  It’s about to fall.  A simple touch and it all comes cascading down in a rain of jelly beans.  It tinkles and clanks all over the shelves and floor like a marble hailstorm on a tin roof.

I groan.  Then, I smile a little.  What a mess!

My little guy come running in.  “What was that?” he asks before figuring it out on his own.  He catches me doing the reverse butterfly stroke in the jelly bean puddle.  His sense for candy is so fine-tuned it would have been a tragedy to miss the aftermath of the jelly bean hailstorm.

By now my other boys’ sensors have been activated and they are standing in the doorway begging me with tinsel eyes.  I only have to give a nod and they dive in.  It’s not the first time they’ve disregarded floor germs in the name of candy.

We are all smiles.

A simple touch creates this amazing, unexpected, result (and honestly a little complaining from the mess).  But, it’s not the first time a jellybean hailstorm ends up in sunshine.  A simple touch created a similar outcome for an incident that happened years and years ago.

Continue reading →