who doesn't love DIRT?

This morning I have been thinking about how much girls love having info (AKA DIRT).. on other people's lives, situations, secrets, etc. Why oh why do we crave information that is altogether unrelated to our own lives? I am not exempt from this quality- I mean really. Someone explain to me why a friend of a friend's prego photos are online and I care to see them! Wow! I don't even know that person! With the onslaught of social media like Facebook and Twitter, we now feel involved in other people's business that we would never know about if it wasn't for the web. But we continue to gather information- pointless information- about people, like their grocery shopping experience, their reaction to a fight, their opinion on the Bachelor. It is such a waste of time to gather this information about people we don't even know, when we have dozens of people directly connected to us that we could be getting closer to in person!

I recently read a blog by a woman in ministry, and she ended her post with:

"I hope today you will take a second to love the little things about the people closest to you."

And it dawned on me- It's okay to be interested in other people and their situations!

IF....

I'm interested in the healthy and thriving parts of a person's life, and if I really know them.

And that is a quick and cutting dividing line. But take a second and look- what stories/tweets/posts are you drawn to? Does a sign of drama cause you to investigate? Does someone's crazy predicament have you gathering any available information and wondering about all the variables in the story? And even worse... do you get a teensy bit of satisfaction when you are RIGHT about your suspicions?

So this is my new mission. In conversations and online, I am going to seek out the positive conversations and celebrations of the people I know and care about. I am not going to look for the dirt because that is just sad. Plus, it is way more fun and interesting to learn exciting and special things about people anyway. Weddings, Babies, Engagements, Birthdays, Parties, Graduations- those are wonderful and happy and worth knowing about. And beyond that- there is nothing more fun than learning something new about someone you love. The small, the silly, the insignificant-those qualities are what endears us to our friends and family. So dig up something sweet or special about someone today that you think you know like the back of your hand.

Here are a few small things about a few people I love:

1. My mom knows every single flower's name and how it takes sun, water, everything. I really love this about her.

2. My hubby got voted Most Mischievous in middle school. This is absolutely no shock to me.

3. My cousin Cath is the most creative person I know & wants to one day open a taco shop on the beach called the Rusty Bucket. Noone steal that.

4. My dad was pre-law and a paralegal when he first married my mom. When he told me this when I was little, I thought this meant he used to have no legs and that amazed me. He still amazes me all the time!

5. My sis Meg almost ALWAYS changes her original order in a restaurant. 90% of the time. It's always funny and expected to the rest of us.

6. My bro-in-law used to keep pet lizards and snakes in kitchen cabinets.

7. My little bro was a huge baby- over 10lbs! They had to break his collar bone to deliver him.

8. Late at night my sister and I get the sleepy sillies together and alternate between laughing and crying from minute to minute. Ask our brother- I think he is still learning how to handle it.

9. My sister, brother & I had a make-believe pet sheepdog for several years and would talk to him (Philip) like he was in our house. Parents never got us a sheepdog- fail.

10. We called our niece Cupcake before she was born, and now at 2 years old, her favorite food hands-down: Cupcakes.