Created to Create

After 19 days of moving, loading, unloading, driving, sanding, painting, measuring, cutting, drilling, planning, thinking, sticking, folding, washing, scrubbing, hanging and sweating the second walk in love. store is officially open for business.  I am pretty exhausted.  My legs, feet, shoulders, back and neck are all aching.  It's hard to describe my feelings as I stand in the store and type this post but I wanted to try and write this now while the thoughts are fresh, or as fresh as they can be after 19 days. The other day I told Brooke to think of all the verbs that we had completed in the past few weeks, a few of which are typed above .  It's truly an amazing feeling to see something you've created completed.  The Bible says that humans were created in God's image.  That thought can be overwhelming because God is so big, unimaginable and well...God.  I can't handle it all at once so instead of thinking about it all I try think of different aspects about God.  A great place to start is the beginning and the first words used to describe Him.  "In the beginning God created..."  It's the first verb in the Bible - - Created.  So as I stand here reflecting on my creation and all the work and sweat that went into it by our team, friends, family, Brooke and myself I keep coming back to one tiny phrase - Created to Create.  If you ever come to one of our stores you will see shirts, jewelry, accessories, books, gifts, etc. but what you wont see is this.

You won't see Mike, Jeff and Tess unloading all the wood from the van to put on the walls.  You won't see Mike and I measuring, cutting and hanging boards.  You won't see Brooke planning out and building displays to make them both beautiful and functional.  You won't see my parents folding mountains of shirts.  You won't see Joyce and Leah hanging tank tops.  You won't see Brooke and I discussing the customer experience and what we can do to make it as good as it possibly can.  You won't see Tess. Brooke and Mike on their hands and knees scrubbing the floor.  You won't see me electrocuting myself while trying to move an outlet.  You won't see the million little creations it took to create the store.

In this day and age of instant satisfaction I think it's easy to just expect things to be completed and not ever think why or how it came to be.  We don't build our own houses, shops, sandwiches or furniture anymore.  Everything comes pre-packaged, built, created and even delivered to us.  I think we need to add some of those creating verbs back into our lives.  We need to create and realize the importance of every little job that it takes to build something.  I so often find myself annoyed by the lack of instant gratification, like I am the center of the universe but as I stand in my shop seeing all that my team and I built I can honestly say that there is not a feeling like it.  So I challenge you to create something with your hands, brain and a little sweat because we were created to create.

Love Favors

About a year ago Brooke and I were sitting on the couch watching Netflix and I looked up to her and said, "Will you do me a love favor and get me a drink?"  She said, "Yes." I don't know why I called the favor a "love favor" but I did and out of that one drink request "love favors" were born in the Mousetis house.

A love favor is simple. It's saying yes without any hesitation. It's serving the one you love.

Here are the rules for love favors in our house. 1. You have one love favor a day (from the time you wake up until you go to sleep). 2. A love favor can be anything. It can be a simple request to get a drink or get your phone from the other room or something big like running to the store for a forgotten grocery. 3. When you are asked to do a love favor you have to say "yes" and then respond immediately. There is no "I'll get to it later." It's a yes and then action.

The amazing thing about love is that it produces more love. Since Brooke and I started love favors we've said yes to each other at least 365 times this past year and saying yes to your spouse just once a day will create a better marriage and a loving environment for the two of you to grow together. We've gotten so use to saying yes that when one of us sits down and takes a frustrated breathe because they forgot something in the kitchen the other one will jump up and get it without the question even being asked.

Marriage has a bad reputation. Marriage is always looked at like it's suppose to be a miserable, uncreative and boring aspect of your life, but it shouldn't! Marriage should be the pinacle of joy in your life where the best parts of you come out in full bloom. Where creativity, passion and vision meet to produce lives of purpose and joy. Saying yes to Brooke more this past year and having her say yes to me has helped create and maintain that environment and I encourage all the married couples out there to add some love favors to your lives and say yes more!

I'm deleting my facebook....

How many of you have heard one of your friends say, "I am deleting my facebook."? How many of you have had friends delete their facebook?

How many of you have seen those same friends come back time and time again?

If you are like me or have friends like mine all of these things have happened. I have seen friends delete and undelete their facebook over and over again. Every time I hear someone is deleting it I casually say, "You'll be back" and I have yet to be wrong. They always come back.

A couple of times I've asked various defectors why they were deleting their facebook and usually the answers look something like this: I spend too much time on it. It's a huge waste of my time. I don't want people to know what I am doing all the time. I feel like God is telling me to give it up. I want real relationship, not the fake world of facebook.

There are a ton of other reasons but they usually look something like that.

To the people who are wasting too much time:

Stop. One of the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) is self-control. If we are really living through the spirit that God gave us shouldn't we be able to practice self-control and know when enough is enough, and by giving it up are we really showing that we have self-control? My guess is that when you give up your facebook because it's a waste of time you start doing something else more. It's not a cure to the problem of wasting time it's just displacing the problem onto something else. The problem is that we've decided that we can't control the amount of time we spend doing something and that's pathetic. Whether it's facebook, watching tv or eating we've decided to tell God that even though we have his spirit we can only use it on loving others but not on self-control.

To the people who don't want others to know what they are doing all the time:

Stop posting what you are doing all the time!

To the people who believe that God has told you to give up facebook or that it's not real:

Jesus lived on earth. He walked, talked and ate. He taught, laughed and lived his life in the community around him, with his friends, strangers and enemies. He didn't run from them or give them up because they were annoying. He lived with them daily.

I work from home and spend most of the time with my beautiful wife Brooke in our office. I don't get to see a lot of people during the week but community isn't just Sunday and Wednesday night church. Facebook is becoming our community - a place where we can talk with people, see peoples lives, ask for prayer, get encouraged, laugh, cry and live life together. By giving up your facebook you aren't living a more real life, I would argue the opposite. I would say you are missing out on another way to connect with people and be with people to show them the love of Christ.

There wasn't a lot of technology when Jesus walked the earth but I know he wasn't against it. He used a boat and donkey to travel when he didn't feel like walking on water or flying - both would be considered technology of the day. I am sure that if megaphones existed he probably would have used one so more people could have heard his life-giving words. His #1 fan Paul used letter writing technology of the day to spread the word and I am guessing that Paul only dreamed and hoped that he could reach people instantly and in such volume as the internt has provided.

So my challenge to you is to stop deleting your facebook or complaining about it and start using it for good and noble things. Make a plan, be purposeful with what you post and stop complaining about everything in your statuses. If you want to represent Christ to people who may not know him you better believe that they are aware of your facebook posts. Stop acting like it's not a real part of life and start treating it like Jesus treated the community he lived in.

2013

The world didn't end in 2012. I know have another 3 hours or so before that statement is totally true but I think it's safe to say that at midnight tonight we will be ushering in a new year full of hope, promise and intrigue. With every new year comes a long list of resolutions usually abandoned by mid-February. I am in the same boat though, my resolutions usually last a little longer but it's rare they make it till the end of the year. So here is a little story about a resolution to encourage you as you start 2013.

Last year I wanted my resolution to be based on the idea of just adding something good everyday. I had been having conversations with friends at the time on how they didn't know how to start exercising or eating right. I kept saying to them, "Just start." If you can only run for 30 seconds then do that until you can do more. After thinking about this for a while I thought I would try this theory myself so I decided that I would do push-ups all of 2012.

Here was my plan: 1. Do 1 push-up on January 1st 2. Add one push-up a day for the entire year. 3. Do the amount of push-ups for that day before the day ends (not all in one shot)

Midnight hit on New Years and I dropped down and did my first push-up, no problem. At the beginning of the year if I really tried I could probably do 30 push-ups before I felt like my arms were going to fall off and if I tried to do 30 a day it would have probably been a bit more challenging, but I believed that adding one a day would be a good pace and it would help me grow at a rate to keep up with the new challenges. So January 2nd came and I did 2 and on the 3rd I did 3. I did that for 256 days until I finally stopped due to a mild neck injury. I used an app to track the push-ups I did and give or take a few based on human error I did about 34,782 pushups in the first 256 days of 2012. I am no body-builder and if you saw me in person you probably wouldn't think anything of me as an athletic specimen, but 34,782 push-ups is a lot of freaking push-ups.

Here is what I learned and I hope it encourages you as you start your new year's resolutions tomorrow. 1. Start small. - I think sometimes we have these huge goals that we start with and it can seem overwhelming and unreachable. Normally goals that seem like that yield results like that. If I started with the goal of doing 34,782 push-ups through out the year I probably would have puked at the idea. 2. Add small. - Adding one a day was the perfect amount for me to grasp and be able to reach for. It definitely got a lot harder throughout the year because doing 1 and then 2 is pretty easy, but doing 201 and then 202 is a tad bit harder. When I had to do 202 though I remembered the day before and that I did 201 and survived. 3. Track yourself. -The iphone is amazing and I downloaded this great app called trakr and everyday when I added my new push-ups to the app it energized me because I saw them being added to the total. 4. Celebrate achievements. -The end of the first month was a big deal so I treated myself to a buffalo chicken sub (my favorite food). Day 100 was pretty cool and so was June 1st, which was halfway. I enjoyed and usually treated myself to something special on those big days.  Don't be afraid to treat yourself. 5. Tell people about it. -I like telling people about everything I do and when I started telling people about the push-ups they thought it was such a cool idea and started asking me about them every-time they saw me. Your friends asking you if you are keeping up with something is probably one of the most motivating things in your life, because, if you are like me, you never want to let your friends down. 6. Don't be afraid to stop or readjust. -I didn't realize how hard it would be to do 200 push-ups consecutive days and I didn't even get to 300. I had to stop due to a mild neck injury.   I was a little embarrassed by it and I almost didn't write this post, but Brooke encouraged me to. It was hard on day 257 when I didn't do any push-ups but at that point my neck was hurting and I was having trouble sleeping so I had to stop. It was hard to tell friends when they asked how the push-ups were going and I had to explain that I stopped. They weren't disapproving though but proud of my achievement and how far I was able to go. 7. No one will do it for you. -I was the only one that could do the push-ups. No one could do them for me. 8. You will do weird things to achieve goals and that's okay. -I did pushups in airports, malls, music festivals, wedding receptions and just about anywhere you could think of. There were times when I forgot to do them on a certain day and as I laid in bed to fall asleep I exhaled with frustration got out of bed and dropped to the floor to do push-ups as Brooke laughed at me in the dark. It was certainly odd at points and I got some strange looks as I did push-ups while my gas tank was filling up, but who cares. Life is meant for living and I was living.

I have a few goals this year and I hope you do to, but if you don't I will share some of mine with you in hopes that it inspires you to find your own.

- Love wildly. - Live a life of adventure. - Be brave. - Try something new. - Dance to have fun or to make people laugh (same goes for singing) - Be present with loved ones - Do good and honorable things - Trust people - Read more - Eat healthier - Exercise - Let go of the garbage that happened in 2012

I hope your upcoming year is better than your last and that you start to live the life you've always dreamed of living.

Make It Beatuiful

I have the great privilege of watching someone who is a master of their craft do it often. I get to watch my wife shoot photos all the time because it's my job to assist her most weekends. I get to see her look for the perfect location, in the perfect light and position people in that light beautifully. She is amazing at her job (If you need the proof just look here: Brooke Courtney Photography). Over the years of assisting and learning from my wife, I've learned that her job isn't just about taking a great, artistic photo, but about making something beautiful. There is a lot of ugly in our world. There is a lot of anger, hate and bitterness. I know because sometimes it is coming from me. There is also a lot of beauty in this world. Sometimes we see it in a great photograph that was taken at just the perfect time. Sometimes we see it in an amazing video, read it in an eloquently written book or witness it in a moment between two people who love each other. It's out there and sometimes we find ourselves lucky enough to actually witness it.

In our lives we have a lot of choices we get to make. One of those choices is to make it ugly or make it beautiful. This doesn't really have to do specifically with art or photography, but with life and the way we treat people. In our world where reality stars are praised for being obnoxious, and sports stars are idolized for being divas, it's hard to make it beautiful. We want to just follow in the steps of those we see in lights and be nasty, cruel and mean. It's almost easier to be that way.

But as we look through the lens of our life, lets try to find that perfect light, in the perfect location, and make it beautiful. Let's take our lives and make them beautiful with whatever we do. Last year, I played on a rec soccer team and we weren't very good. We lost a lot and our team wasn't much fun to play on. I became very frustrated with it and at times took my frustration out on the field. I made it ugly. This year I am playing rec soccer again and I have a great team. But before the season even started, I had to decide how I was going to play. Was I going to get frustrated when we lost and make it ugly? Or was I going to play my hardest, have some fun and make it beautiful? I hope my teammates can attest for me when I say that this year I have (with help from teammates) made it beautiful. There was one game where the ugly crept back up, and it always will, but I had to push it down and let the beauty overtake it.

I am amazed by my wife because she doesn't just make it beautiful with her photos, but also with her actions and deeds. I can be a real jack-a** sometimes - and instead of a ugly response, she reacts with grace and beauty. When we live our lives trying to find the good light, and then take it with us wherever we go, we have real power to do amazing things. We can remove the ugly, cynicism and hate from this world. And make it beautiful.

Here is another iPhone background if you want to be reminded daily:

Be Brave.

When I was 2 years old my family moved from southern California to Germany. My Dad felt called to be a missionary in Germany, so he told my Mom, and they moved with there 4 kids. At the time, we were 1, 2, 4 and 6. Yikes Spikes! I don't really have a lot of memories from living in Germany (considering I was only 2 and 3 years of age), but I do have a few select memories. They are the kind of memories that are foggy and feel almost like they happened to someone else. I remember bits of them, maybe not the whole memory... or maybe not exactly as it happened. So, here is a story, about a half-remembered memory... The neighborhood we lived in while in Germany was a safe one. I remember following my older brother and sister around without much parental guidance. We had lots of time to play and just be kids. There was a specific place that we use to play at a lot. It was a lightly wooded area near our house and my siblings and I, along with some neighborhood german friends and other missionary kids, decided to build a tree house there. Here is where my memory gets a little foggy and I am not totally sure what our actual tree house looked like.

As a three year old, I was probably too young to be hanging out in this area with my older siblings, but I remember wanting to be apart of what they were doing so badly. I think they just let me tag along out of pity. After living in Germany and traveling around Europe for two years, there is only one memory that I can recall with clarity. It happened after a rainy day at the "tree house." Upon approaching the tree house, I remember seeing my brother high in a tree and all I could think was, "I want to do that." The only problem was I was 3 years old! Not to mention, there was a giant puddle between me and the tree. Now when I say high in the tree I remember my brother being on the tallest branches that would sway with the wind. And when I say giant puddle I remember it being as large as one of the great lakes. As a three year old, whose head was way to large for my body, I decided that I would cross the great lake, climb the tree and sway in the wind high above the earth with my big brother. I took one step into the puddle, tripped, face-planted, stood-up, started balling my eyes out and ran back home, covered in mud-soaked tears, hearing laughter from some of the German kids as I ran home.

Every time I've told that story, I've always told it to get a laugh. And while you might be laughing because of it, I am telling it for a different reason today. In my life, since that point, I have fallen on my face more than a few times, both literally and figuratively. Most of the literal falls were based in stupidity - whether it was during my brief attempt to be a skater or trying to make Jackass audition tapes. The figurative face plants are the ones that I more closely relate to that little three-year-old mud-soaked version of myself. They are the type of faceplants that take guts and bravery. They require that one bold step with a mission, like a three year old trying to climb a tree. Yes, it was probably impossible for me to climb the tree, especially with my disproportioned head, but that didn't mean I wasn't going to try. In my young adult life I've been met with some of those same challenges. It did seem impossible for us to open a store and keep it open amidst the financial turmoil our country is in and the corporate competition at the mall, who have millions of dollars backing them. But we didn't let those giant puddles or tall branches scare us, we took that first step and then the second step - and then we took a bad one and fell, but unlike that three year old version of myself we kept walking even though we were covered, head to toe, in mud. I don't even think we are out of the giant puddle yet... and sometimes it feels like we won't ever be, but we keep pushing because we have a bigger, ultimate business goal.

We live in an instant world and we expect everything to work right away, but it doesn't. We expect people to just carry us over the puddle or for the puddle to just move for us, and if we end up covered in mud, we blame the puddle. It's time for you to be brave and push through your puddle, fall, get back up and climb to the tallest branch you can. It could be a business, a workout, or a relationship -- whatever it is, it will take time. And a fist full of three year old bravery.

Here is a desktop and iPhone background if you want to be reminded: