PennyDaisy

I’ve been reading a book called The Servant, and pondering the differences between leadership authority and power authority.  Basically, one gets people you lead to do something because they want to do it for you, and the other is forcing obedience.  While power may get the job done (for a while), ultimately, it damages relationships. 

I think I tend to use the power method a little too often.

I had a good weekend in Dallas.  I was babysitting a one-year-old girl during a business conference, and she cried most of the time.  I think she wasn’t feeling good, but I also thing she is going to have to get over her parents being gone for a couple of hours.  It was, in a way, exhausting, but also character building.  The fire alarm was character building, too.  It’s amazing how quickly you narrow down what’s important in life when you aren’t sure your room will still be there when you get back.  Let’s see…baby, phone, room key (in case you do come back), driver’s license and money…oh! shoes!  Yes, but I had to carry them because I didn’t want to take the time to sit down and tie them.  So down four flights of dirty stairs  in socks and then by the time we got to the lobby, they were telling us everything was fine.  I was grateful that there was no real fire (just someone smoking on the 7th floor) and that there were lots of people going down the stairs with me.  I felt sure the baby and I would be taken care of if there was an emergency. 

I did have a very interesting conversation with a cousin about relationships…particularly the romantic kind.  It kind of freaked me out because he’s so much younger than me and I wasn’t prepared for him to grow up and start thinking about girls.  And I just found out today that anther guy I’ve known for years is getting married at the end of the month.  I think it finally hit me that people my age (and younger) are very likely to fall in love and get married.  What happened to bemoaning the fact that someone was turning twenty–“the first one of us to leave the teens (Brack)?”

Whoops…my baby sister is trying to help with this.  While her kissable cheeks are very distracting, her chubby fingers are very naughty and I nearly misspelled everything in the last paragraph.  *laughing*  Now she’s trying to chew on my arm.  I’d better go…  (I’m glad she doesn’t have teeth yet!)