Life | Jason Vana

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Dealing with Stress

February 15, 2012 in Life with 16 Appreciated Comments

Photo Credit: Stuart Pilbrow (Creative Commons)

Last week at our Ignite Monmouth gathering, one of our student leaders posed a question that challenged me:

What do you do when you’re stressed?

Answers ranged from playing video games, reading, eating chocolate to running, going for a walk, or curling up on your bed with a stuffed dog and crying (no, that one was not me). Some students punch their pillows. Others talk to friends. Some take time away and try to relax. Others listen to music. Some like to freak out, scream, and vent. Others, take a calmer approach.

We all have our methods of dealing with stress.

Taking Time to Dream

February 6, 2012 in Leadership, Life, Your Dream with 21 Appreciated Comments

Photo Credit: Indieridley.i.ph

Every so often, I need a visioning day: a day where I gather others around me and we start visioning and dreaming about the future of Ignite. It’s a day that refreshes me, recharges me and gives me focus for the next few months.

Friday was that day.

I had a Skype call to start planning and throwing out ideas about our Romania 2012 mission trip. I went out for coffee with one of my students and talked about how to improve the Ignite group at Monmouth. I went to dinner with our Student Representative to the Ignite Board, and dreamed about what Ignite could look like 5, 10, even 20 years down the road.

We dreamed about future trips to Romania.
We talked about monthly community service projects.
We thought about training programs, a school of ministry, and mapped out some new resources we hope to have available in the next few months.
We looked over logistics, came up with some strategic plans and set some deadlines to see these dreams become reality.

It was a refreshing day.

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Tearing Apart

January 20, 2012 in Life, Living our Faith with 22 Appreciated Comments

Photo Credit: Marcel Oosterwijk (Creative Commons)

I’m a pretty sarcastic kind of guy.

Follow me on Twitter, watch my Facebook comments, interact with me in person and you’ll see how true that statement is. I’m always cracking jokes, always giving an ornery response, always teasing, over-exaggerating and trying to get a laugh. I make up nicknames based on something funny a friend said or did. I’ll tease about something that happened months ago. I joke around, give as much as I take and hand out empty, funny threats (like shaving off your eyebrows while you sleep).

It’s how I show I care.
In fact, it’s only when I stop teasing you that you have to worry.

My sarcasm is usually returned with the same level of teasing, sarcasm and joking around. It’s kind of how I got the nickname, grandpa. Those boys love to tease me.

But over the past few days, God has been challenging my use of sarcasm.

Humbled by Favor

January 6, 2012 in Life with 7 Appreciated Comments

Photo Credit: Christian Globe (christianglobe.com)

Back on Wednesday, I wrote that my One Word for 2012 is Favor.
It’s a word I wrestled with for a while.

The idea behind One Word is to choose a word that sums up who you want to be or how you want to live or what you want to achieve by the end of 2012 and favor didn’t really seem to fit the bill.

Favor isn’t something you can work on.

You can’t manufacture favor. You can’t change your attitude to receive more favor. You can’t develop more favor, build favor or choose having favor over not having favor.

Favor is received.

And I have a hard time receiving.

But when I finally settled on Favor, when I put aside my hesitation and fears and concerns and made Favor my One Word for 2012, something amazing happened.

God confirmed it.
In a big way.
Twice.

The Year of Favor

January 4, 2012 in Life, Living our Faith with 29 Appreciated Comments

Last year, I took part in One Word 2011- a movement among bloggers to forego coming up with resolutions or goals, and find one word that sums up who we wanted to be or how we wanted to live or what we wanted to achieve by the end of the year.

It was a pretty powerful experience.
One I wanted to repeat for 2012.

As I began asking God what that word for this year would be, I wrestled with some ideas. I wanted a word like expansion, or move, or growth. I was hoping for something powerful, something that would “wow” me and others, something that would require a massive to-do list I could accomplish throughout the year.

Instead, a different word showed up.

FAVOR

Certain of the Uncertainty

January 2, 2012 in Life with 14 Appreciated Comments

Photo Credit: Kevin Dooley (Creative Commons)

A few weeks back, I took a break from writing.

I had a number of reasons for the break, everything from taking care of year-end duties for Ignite and wrapping up some graphic design projects, to traveling for Christmas and spending time with family and friends. I knew I couldn’t keep up with posting regularly, and wanted to give my family and friends a better Christmas present this year: being present.

I didn’t want my time off to be filled with writing. I didn’t want my time with family and friends to be tainted by the constant nagging in the back of my head that I had to find inspiration.

There was another reason for the break, one I didn’t make public: I needed direction.