First Week of Acts of Beauty

Here's a recap of my first week of acts of beauty:

Day 1: Feb. 22 

I had a little bit of a rough afternoon and my patience ran out.  My patience usually doesn’t run out so quickly (although there was certainly plenty of good reasons that my patience got used up).  I was in a pretty bad mood, and so I knew that my first act of beauty in Lent would have to be something to make my mood and spirit more beautiful.  So I came home and did some yoga, something I love to do but haven’t had much time to do lately.  My yoga left me feeling refreshed physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Day 2: Feb. 23

I posted this video on Facebook: Indescribable

Day 3: Feb. 24

I woke up to a beautiful snow covered world.  I didn’t think that I could do any acts of beauty today because it seemed that God had created all the beauty that was needed for the day.  But then I figured I would capture that beauty.  So I went to the forest preserve to walk around, soak in the beauty, and take some photos.  I finished up a roll of film that I started to use back in September (yep, every once in a while I break out the old fashioned camera and film).  I’m excited to see what beauty is on that roll of film.

Day 4: Feb. 25

My act of beauty for toady was being a part of packing enough food to feed about 185 kids for an entire year.  We have been trying to pack as much food as possible lately at FMSC.  I spent most of the afternoon and evening encouraging the volunteers to pack as fast as they could.  I love to see the volunteers get excited about packing a lot of boxes of food.  They have fun seeing how much they can pack and it just makes them feel good to leave knowing they made a significant difference for as many children as possible.  We have five packing sessions on Saturdays and our goal was to pack over 100 boxes each session.  Most of the sessions had no problem getting to 100 boxes.  The last group of volunteers was a great group, but they struggled to get to 100 boxes.  We let them pack a few extra minutes and they made it to 100!   

Day 5: Feb. 26

My act of beauty for the day was spending part of the afternoon reading in bed and then taking a little nap. 

Day 6: Feb. 27

I was a part of making a beautiful and fulfilling experience for special needs students who came to volunteer at FMSC.  The volunteer group of was a group of students with varying degrees of physical and mental abilities.  These students had an incredible time.  They got to make a contribution to something really important and meaningful- something they don’t get to do often enough. 

Day 7: Feb. 28

My act of beauty for today was making a delicious chocolate dessert for my family.  It’s called “slutty brownies”.  Basically you put a layer of chocolate chip cookie dough, a layer of Oreos, and a layer of brownie batter all in a baking dish and bake it in the oven.  There is something about chocolate that makes everything more beautiful.