What really matters...

I feel like a part of me is an adult, but only a part of me. I have an adult job (well sort of - I work with teenagers). I work full time. Most of the people I interact with are adults who I interact with as contemporaries or youth who I interact with as "students" for lack of a better word. They are my youth group. And yet, I am 28. I am single. And sometimes I feel like that part of me gets lost in the mix. How do I honor that part of me? I mean, I think about this week. Other than Friday night when I went to dinner with a friend, I was home every evening except Monday when I went to a middle school volleyball game and Wednesday when I was filling it at the children's afterschool program. And even those nights I was home by 8. My friends are growing up. They are dating. They are moving on. And I don't know where that part of me fits. And it's not that I don't love my job. I do. It's amazing. But I don't know where I fit, as Katy. N...

So yesterday's sermon was about the difference between expectancy and expectation. The basic point was that an attitude of expectancy is believing that God is at work, and good things are to come, whereas expectation is more like a sense of entitlement as to what we deserve. As my pastor was talking about this, I realized that I had expectations. I set expectations about what my life should be like, and I feel upset, disappointed, even a little angry that my expectations aren't being met. And while I still think my feelings are legitimate, I also realize that I can't tell God how my life should go. But I need to move from having expectations about what should have happened, or what should be having, to having a sense of expectancy that God will do great things in my life if I allow it. So there is my goal. It's really what I started working on this weekend, though not in so many words, while on retreat. But it is still what I am working on. This weekend was good...

so i skipped yesterday on accident... today... today there are simply no words...

how important is routine? When I think about what to write, I am forcing myself to come up with something simply because I committed to doing this, and I committed to this because I feel like I need to include greater reflection in my routine. But how important is that routine? Is this really helpful? I'm just not sure. So far I don't really feel like I am really getting anything out of this experience. Not that we have to get something out of everything, but the point of this was to deepen the spiritual reflection in my life. So the question remains, for that to happen, is routine necessary?

One of my favorite Bible verses is found in 1 John 4 (I don't remember which verse exactly and I am too lazy to look it up) where it says "perfect love casts out fear." The idea of overcoming fear seems to be a theme in my life today. I don't really know why - just the things that I have been watching and the things I have been thinking about seem to follow along these lines. Overcoming fear. Being ok with making mistakes. It's a hard thing. But it's life. In life we make mistakes. Again, I return to the theme of the Olympic games. As I watch the Olympics, the announcers talk about all the ways that these athletes overcome their fear. Tonight, the ice dancers left it all out there on the ice. They did their best, and that made them capable of accepting whatever the results were. In life, we can do that too. If we put our best out there, we then can be accepting of whatever the results are. But in order to put our best out there, we need to overcome...

Yesterday a girl died. She was a senior in high school. And while I don't know the details, from what I've heard, she was a beautiful girl full of life, but at some point was told she had cellulite... Like I said, I don't know the details, but apparently she became anorexic. I didn't know this girl, but the pictures I have seen - she was beautiful. And it's such a tragic reason to die. Why do we do this to each other? Why do we say such harsh words? Why do we make these comments that hurt for so long? And most of the time we don't even think about what we're saying - we don't even realize the damage our words are doing. We say things affectionately, or as a joke, and the damage we do has lasting consequences - consequences that even the people dealing with them may not see for years. So today my goal is to be uplifting, to remind people how beautiful and wonderful and amazing they are, just as the people they are. TWLOHA

Today I was shopping at a local Christian bookstore and I heard a woman say to her friend something along the lines of... "I don't want to judge her; I just hope the holy spirit will convict her about what she's doing." They were talking about the clothing choice of someone who attends her Bible study. Now I don't know this woman, but my mind went immediately to the speck and plank - you know - trying to remove the speck in someone else's eye when we have a plank in our own. We always seem to want the spirit to convict someone else, but we definitely don't like it when we are the one being convicted. In fact, I have frequently felt convicted about being judgmental about judgmental people - gotta love the irony :-P