God loves a cheerful Giver

The last 4 days have been an eye opener for me.

Last time I was in the funeral industry, I wasn't too impressed with some of the caliber of people.  Seemed the higher up the food chain you went, the lesser amount of integrity.  Sad, but true.

I wasn't happy to go to this YEAR END extravaganza at my parent company.  I wasn't happy to NOT work the last week I could possibly sell something in the year 2012.  I didn't want to leave the lovelies and Hallie.  I didn't want to stress Lacey out by having to have her keep them.  I didn't want to have to drive 5 hours (when I firmly believe it you can't be there in under 3 you better be flying).   When I got there, I didn't have a room booked, my butt was numb, and there was so much dust in the air I was choking.

Pretty pumped.

I've been to Houston, Las Vegas, Chicago, Atlanta, for sales meetings.  They all basically are the same old tired thing.

Even though my manager, Kristen, told me I would LOVE it....I was oh, so very, oh so, skeptical.

Man, I'm a dummy.

Wednesday we had a motivational speaker named John Miller, QBQ guy, for those of you that have ever heard him or read his stuff, he is just phenomenal.  He is huge on accountability and he was just terrific.  I can't sit still for over an hour, and I listened to him almost 3 hours, and never even checked my phone.  That's saying something. That afternoon, we got a new leather portfolio and listened to our CEO tell us about the company.  During his talk with us, I started paying attention.  This CEO, the LEADER of the company, was so real, and genuine, and God-fearing, loving Jesus Freak, he got my attention.   I've only known one or two more managers like that (not owners, either, managers) and ironically, it was one of those managers that got me this gig.   The CEO had sent an email out to the funeral homes asking people to think through their thinking tanks and think of people they might recommend.  My friend, Brent, emailed them back and recommended me.

I am forever, to the bottom of my heart, thankful.

This Jesus Freak, sat there, literally with my mouth hanging open, listening to a fellow Jesus freak quote SCRIPTURE about his vision for this company, and I felt hope.  It just continued to grow and grow throughout the next 24 hours.

But this is where it gets SOOOO good.

Thursday night, at the Christmas program, we had an honest to goodness, preacher from his church come and speak to the crowd of over 200 employees.  We sang Silent Night with our candles we lit together and it was a surreal moment for me.

Then it got better.  Kris stood in front of the group and said he wanted us to be radically generous, and to get us jumpstarted, he was gifting each of $250 cash, in an envelope with our name on it, and all he asked is that we project it out in the world, and blog back to him about the experience.

He told us to pray over the envelope and really think about what to do with it.  It took me less than 5 seconds to know EXACTLY what I would do with mine, and I am, seriously, soooooo excited, I need to pee my pants.  I haven't even had my normal portion of sweet tea today, because I'm pretty sure I could just blow anytime!!!!!

It's that serious.

I'm not going to tell you who I am going to give it to, until after Sunday (That's when it's going down), but I do want to tell you a bit about the enormousness of the SPIRIT of GIVING and how it followed me all over the place today.

I got up early to leave.  I wasn't particularly happy about driving home, but I was pumped to get here and see my kiddos.  I decided to stop by Sonic and get me some sweet tea to have some road caffeine in my system.  I even found myself perturbed at the dude that rushed to get in front of me with his big loud diesel that smelled up my car interior.

I was still feeling surly, when I drove to the window, went to hand my money and the young girl smiled at me and said, "That man that just drove away paid for your order".

Well slap my face and call me Santa.

"WHAT? are you kidding?"    "No, seriously, it's been the coolest thing, some guy started it a couple of hours ago, and it's been going non stop for a while now!"

Well, of course, no one is behind me now.  Not a car in sight.  I look at the smiling girl and some dude behind her smiling like a possum eating doo doo and I tell the girl, "Well, here's you $5, and $5 to give away, to keep the good will going."  She instantly turns, and hands it to Mr. Smily, and you would have thought I had given them a Gold medal.  It's times like these that I was made of money, how cool would it have been to give them both a $20?   Next year, baby, Next year, I'm giving $20's.

So, I, of course, do, what I always do when a rock solid thought or action hits my brain....I facebooked about it.

And I had over 100 "likes".  I urged everyone to "LIVE and GIVE" today, and do something extraordinarily generous.

And 3 hours later, when the Lawton police was whistling because he caught me in his speed zone, and I implored him to find his Santa Claus mentality for this tired, hardworking mom....he totally gave me a warning.  I was going 20 miles over the speed limit.   That could have been really bad!   But, Santa/God/good mojo/generosity won again.

Life is made up of ONE chance.  The mark we choose to leave is up to us.

As for me, I haven't been this excited about a Christmas in YEARS.  The generosity of my friends, making sure I had enough money to buy presents for my kids, coupled with the feeling of joy that is pouring out of every pore of my body these days...

Well, it's pretty much amazing.

The best way to get out of a bad mood is to do something unexpected for someone else.

It will ROCK your socks off.