Living an Intentional life

When I ask how you are I promise I care enough to listen even if you aren't good, great or fine. I think the idea of friendship and church family is very skewed if we don't truly care about listening to people when they aren't okay and life has beaten them down...even if it's hard or awkward and we feel like we couldn't possibly come up with eloquent enough words for them. Scary enough I also think it becomes even easier to intentionally not ask how people are when we are already fully aware that they are NOT okay. Are we being intentional when we walk into school, church, work or even the Wal-mart check out line? Or are we just going through the motions and the routine of the same faces, same schedule, same stuff that we are completely looking over people that are dying to just be listened to,cared about and loved? I think we all daily come in contact with at least one person who is deeply hurting and walking through a low time. If we actually took the time out of our selfish busy lives to just listen to them then I think we'd see life in a whole new light.

I read an article recently that sort of walked through answering the questions "What does it mean to live intentionally?" and they made a few great points that I thought i'd share..

Intentional living is about knowing why you do what you do and why you don’t do what you don’t do.

Intentional living is being willing to take a step back and evaluate the things you’re doing.

Intentional living is about doing the things that are important to you even when they’re not easy.

Intentional living is about evaluating the advice and example of other people and taking from it what works for you.

Intentional living helps you set a course for your life rather than just wandering aimlessly through life. It gives you the freedom to make time for the things that are truly important and to discard the rest. 

With that being said, it's my personal belief that being intentional with people in our lives and that we come in contact with is extremely important. One thing I've learned recently is that sometimes there are no red alerts to how deep people's pain might be. Sadly enough, we have all gotten really good at hiding or suppressing the bad stuff and putting on a happy smiling face for those around us when in actuality our worlds are caving in around us and no one even knows. Being open and willing to come alongside our friends and family should be something we are pursuing with passion.  It's what we're called to do... to LOVE people well. I can't count the number of times someone has said, "how are you?" only to quickly move on to another topic before I can answer or jump into a conversation with someone else while I was mid sentence in my response. I don't know about you, but in this situation I always sort of think...what was the point in asking if you didn't really care? It's because "how are you?" has become a polite social norm, a way of filling in the conversation gap when we don't know what else to say and even though I'm guilty of doing it too... I really dislike it. 

It is my goal to be more intentional in this area and I hope you will too. How different would life look if we REALLY came alongside people in our life and GENUINELY cared deeply about what is going on in their world?