30 at 30

In honor of my 30^th birthday, I decided to jump on the bandwagon and come up with a list of 30 things to do before May 7 of next year! Off we go!

1.       See more live music. I might have stolen this one from Greg. It was part of his new year's resolution, but I like the idea. There are so many opportunities to see some good music that I really should join him in this effort.
2.       Explore my area. There are so many cool things to do within a day's drive of my house and I rarely do any of them!
3.       Try new foods! I am definitely not one to shy away from trying foods that are different. Hello, one of my favorite desserts is the chocolate habanero deliciousness known as the Azteca Gelato from Coolato Gelato. That being said, when I go out to restaurants I tend to order the similar things everywhere I go.
4.       Establish a regular game night. We used to be so good at this! Amy and I would hang out and play Clue or Wii games, Greg and I would go over to friends' houses for Settlers of Catan... I would like to set up at least a quarterly game night. Soon!
5.       Relax. I would never call myself high strung, but I will admit that sometimes I get a little overwhelmed. Even if I know things are out of my control and there's nothing I can do, I still get stressed out. I just need to caaalm dooown.
6.       Get a new job. Ok, this one's cheating because I start my new job tomorrow! The job interview I mentioned before went really well and I go in to fill out paperwork tomorrow morning. My first full day will be May 16!
7.       Re-establish my quiet time. This will help me do #5. I used to have a regularly scheduled time alone with God and it was great! These days I feel like I'm just blowing through my bible reading and I wait so late to pray that I end up falling asleep before I'm done. God made time to make the universe, I think I can make time to be with Him!
8.       Get crafty! Obviously I love my crafts, but they have fallen to the wayside lately. I need to get back at my creative outlets!
9.       Do more things Greg wants to do. I have the most wonderful guy ever, but I will admit that we do what I want to do a lot of the time. We do what he wants to do when it's also something I want to do. Eek! I need to be more open to doing things that he's interested in. *cough*DragonCon*cough*
10.   Try new restaurants. Similar yet different from #3, I need to branch out in my eating habits. When I go out to eat, I probably eat at the same few places over and over. I practically have some of their menus memorized. Which is a shame because Knoxville has a lot of fun places that I've been interested in but never tried. How sad.
11.   Reorganize and downsize. I have too much crap.
12.   Get back into a regular exercise routine. Yeah, yeah, I know. I've been down this path before. But I also know I feel better when I workout. Hopefully not working in a gym will help me be more inclined to visit it.
13.   Get a tan. Hee hee hee, ok so if you've seen my pictures you know I basically have a year-round tan [shout out to the mixed kids!]. But if I have a better tan, that means I actually spent some time outside this summer!
14.   Have more “little” dates with G. Greg and I have had some big, fancy dates like a casino party at Club LeConte and dinner at Brazeiros, but I have just as much fun (if not more) doing silly little things with him. We need more of that.
15.   Read more! I have gone through a drought of reading and it saddens me. Books are like free vacations! What am I waiting for?
16.   Go somewhere I’ve never been. I did this in February, and now it's bugging me that I need to do it again. And again. And again. It doesn't have to be as dramatic as going to the Bahamas, but just to visit a place I've never been and see something new. It can be tied in with #2 and #10. :-)
17.   Be joyful. Back in January, I asked my small group to pick a word or theme for the year. My word was joy. I feel I do great with it some days and absolutely terrible other days. I can do better.
18.   More random acts of kindness. I've done this a few times, but I need to get more mindful about my randomness.
19.   Clean regularly. This kind of goes with #11. Once I pare down, hopefully it will be easier to keep stuff clean.
20.   Do something with my hair. I'm in a mode where all I do is wear my hair in a bun, which is usually a signal that I need a haircut. And then I just wear it in a ponytail or a braid. I need to get more adventurous.
21.   Say thank you more. I have been blessed with some really great people in my life. I need to let them know I appreciate them.
22.   Take a trip with G. We haven't gone on a trip together since August 2012. That needs to be remedied.  
23.   Fix my fridge. I bought a beautiful new fridge, but when they installed it we realized there was a tiny pinhole in the tube to our house tubing. It's a simple fix, I just need to go to Home Depot to get the part.
24.   Swim. As in laps. I used to be on a swim team when I was in middle school and I've always loved to swim. Plus it's such a great all over workout.
25.   Go to the chiropractor. I went for a free consultation a few weeks ago and we discovered I have a twist in my back causing a lean in my neck and pain in my shoulders. There's also a line where a curve should be in the back of my neck. My new health insurance will cover chiropractic visits, so there's nothing really stopping me.
26.   Try a new activity. I'm noticing a theme here. I want to do new things.
27.   Cook from my Pinterest boards. Like every person with a Pinterest account, I have all these delicious looking recipes I've done nothing but look at. I need to try a few!
28.   Meal plan. My life runs more smoothly when I do this, but I get so wrapped up in nonsense I forget to do it. Or I get distracted.
29.   Update my wardrobe. For all the clothes I have, I don't have a lot to wear. Once I do #11, I'll need to purchase some better pieces. But not too many! 
30.   Blog more! If you look at my post history, I think this one speaks for itself.

Some will definitely be easier than others, but I’m looking forward to trying it!

What a Month!

Oof! February was one roller coaster of a month! I went from the highs of going on vacation to the lows of... well, a lot of stuff, and a lot of craziness in between! And today was a day to beat them all. I can't even pinpoint what exactly went wrong today. It was a lot of little things that just had me feeling in a low mood, but I had plans for tonight that I was really excited about until the day started pecking at that, too.

I was supposed to be going to a worship CD recording at one of our church campuses. Originally it was going to be an outing for our small group. One by one people started backing out until it was just going to be me and Amy. Not that I have a problem with that. Amy and I have had an adventure or two on our own and it's high time we through some Jesus adventures in there, too. Until she got a last minute notice that she needed to drive her stepson halfway across the state this evening. If you're unaware, Tennessee is kind of a long state. Needless to say, she was out. At that point I was almost ready to throw in the towel and decide not to go, but I had invited a girl who was interested in joining our small group and she seemed really excited about going. Plus I had already asked Greg about going and he has really been wanting to go see more live music. Okay, okay, we're going!

Oh em gee oh es aytch (OMGOSH), I am so glad I didn't talk myself out of going! I had a fabulous time singing my heart out and worshiping with a few hundred other believers. It. Was. Awesome. I sang, I cried, I danced, I prayed... I feel refreshed! The feeling of being with so many other believers singing and praising together was just amazing. I can't wait til the CD is ready for purchase. I couldn't even tell you my favorite song we sang because I loved them all. Although, they did a mix of one with Can't Hold Us by Macklemore and I was quite excited. And the girl interested in joining our small group got to see what is probably the closest rendition of the "real" me that anyone has seen in a long time. God bless her if she decides to come to group!

Anyway, since I didn't even try to record any of tonight's concert, I will leave you with a song that all ways makes me happy. They play this on Air1 on Monday afternoons, saying that it's impossible to be mad and listen to this song. Well, I don't know if it's impossible, but it does always make me dance... and I don't typically like this type of music! Have a great day!

Lucky 13

I have always said that 13 is one of my lucky numbers (along with 3, 7, and occasionally 87), and that is also true for Friday the 13th. I'm not saying that every Friday the 13th is rainbows and unicorns, but generally they turn out to be a good day overall. I'm (sort of) happy to say that today was no different. But I'm also happy that I got a reminder that luck and good fortune don't always look the way we might expect.

Today, my car sounded it's death rattle. It was kind of sudden actually. I went to work without a problem, and even went on a coffee run with no issues. But when I tried to go on my lunch break a few hours later the engine wouldn't turn over. Now, I've left my lights on more times than I care to admit, so I knew it wasn't a dead battery, but it definitely was not starting. I waited a few minutes and tried again to no avail. So I called Amy. (Not that I thought she could physically help me, but I needed to freak out to my bff, yanno?) While I was on the phone with her, I got the car to start, but it was shuddering really badly and made me nervous to drive. Needless to say I turned it back off. Amy kindly agreed to meet me after work and follow me home to make sure I got there safely.

Then I called Greg and cried. I know, emotional manipulation, but I couldn't help it. (Did I mention I woke up at 4:30 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep? My nerves were already fried). He talked me down, then started looking at cars online and calling around. After a bit of back and forth, we decided to go car shopping tomorrow.

The whole drive home I was incredibly nervous. The car shuddered and jerked and jumped. When I finally got home, Amy told me my car was sparking the whole way. Actually, she said something along the lines of  "it looked like you were chain smoking and throwing them out the window." Awesome. God bless her, she's coming to take me to work at 5:30 tomorrow morning, and Greg is picking me up after my shift. I truly am blessed in my friends.

So, how do I consider it  a lucky day? Well, I don't normally leave work during my break. If I had stuck to my usual routine, I wouldn't have known anything was wrong with my car until close to 6pm. At that point Greg wouldn't have been available to call dealerships for me (he had plans to see The Hobbit tonight), and Amy might not have been able to follow me home. Finding out early gave me time to mentally prepare for the idea of buying a car, making car payments, and so on.

It also gave me time to remember to trust God. He has been calling me to trust Him for a while now, and I just haven't been able to do it. No, I have trusted God. I haven't trusted that I was accurately listening to what He was telling me to do. This is a pretty blatant sign that He wants me to trust in His provision. Yesterday, I was sending verses to one of the girls in my small group, and today I was reading them myself. I'll leave you with one that is echoing around my heart today.

Ha... as I posted this, I realized the verse number is 13... Told you it was a good number. 

A Thankful Heart

Around this time of year people are always more open to thinking about the things they are thankful for. This is actually something that I have been thinking about quite a bit lately, so I decided to make it my theme for this month. Kind of like the September Photo Challenge, I will post a different thing that I am thankful for every day between now and Thanksgiving. That's 28 days of having a thankful heart. So without further ado:

My Savior, who loves me more than I can possibly imagine or deserve. It has taken me a long time to come to the realization that God loves me all the time. Even in the midst of my sin, even when I don't talk with Him like I should, He still loves me just as much. He has loved me in my worst possible moments, moments that I felt I didn't deserve to be loved by anyone. He was right there, waiting for me to talk to Him. 

It's such a hard concept for Christians to understand! I've been a Christian since I was 10, and I can't say I fully get it. And, amazingly enough, it doesn't make me feel like I have license to behave badly. It actually makes me want to show that same love to those around me. Why would I not want to share something so amazing? 

Anyway, that's Day 1! I doubt these will all be this deep, but God had to be my number one! Have a great Friday! 

Weary

Weary? That's me. Carrying a heavy burden? One or two. Generally, I try not to complain about my life; not because I don't have problems, but because complaining doesn't fix anything. When I whine about something it just reminds me of the negatives without focusing on any of the positives. But like I said, that doesn't mean I don't have problems.

I have been under a lot of stress  lately, and it has manifested itself as muscle pain. I tend to store all of my stress in my shoulder; my right shoulder if we're being specific. I don't know why, but that's where it likes to live. The tension got so bad on Thursday that it was spreading down around my ribs. I don't know it's you've ever had a muscle spasm/cramp around your ribs, but it was not fun! By the time I laid down for bed that night my shoulder hurt so bad I was in tears. I couldn't think of anything to do to ease the pain.

Since I was awake, I started looking through my tablet. I launched my Bible app, and Matthew 11:28 was the verse of the day. Coincidence? I think not. If you read the rest of that passage you see that Jesus was asking us to give up our heavy burdens and take his light one.

Then Jesus said,  “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30, NLT

So I shut down my tablet and started praying. I told God that I was weary of being weary. I asked him to take my burdens. I told Him I was giving Him the stress, the pain, the borderline anger I was carrying. I asked Him to help me rest, both spiritually and physically. He did. I kept praying that passage until I drifted off to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, my shoulder felt much better. I also felt calmer about the mountains that are in front of me. 

All this to say, isn't God good? He gave me the verse I needed, when I needed it, and helped me remember that I don't have to take it all on myself. I don't have to carry everything. Maybe I need to paint that on my wall.

How to Fight Fair

For the past few days I have really felt pulled to share something with you all and today I finally decided to do it. My church is currently doing an alignment series called Normal, which is all about the family; how the world sees the family vs. how God sees the family. This past Sunday the message was entitled Rules of Engagement, and boy oh boy did it hit home. 

One of the things I really like about Faith Promise is that we have an internet campus and they upload the audio and the video for the sermons each week. So if I'm out of town, like I was this weekend, I can watch or listen to the message when I get a chance. 

Since I wasn't able to make it to services on Sunday, I decided to listen to the sermon while I straightened my room. That lasted all of about 5 minutes before I realized I needed to sit down and take notes. Pastor preached from Ephesians 4:25-32 and gave us 7 Rules of Engagement to follow when we fight or argue with people. I felt like I needed to type it up and print it out so I could see it on a regular basis. And then I felt like I should share it with you. 

I highly recommend watching or listening to the sermon. Pastor explains more fully how the verses relate to each rule. I also appreciate the fact that he told us we're going to fight with people. We're human! No one is perfect and we're going to argue. But we can do it with a Biblical perspective and heart.

I know I have read Ephesians 4 multiple times, but sometimes it amazes me how many times you can read something and still find something new. I'm doing that quite a bit lately, especially with Ephesians. Maybe I should do a study on Ephesians soon.

Respond with Love

I promise... at some point I will get back to my regularly schedule blog. But tonight, I wanted to talk about something that's been on my mind lately; loving people when you don't want to love them.

This is something that I struggle with all the time. I'm not talking about loving G when he's grating my nerves or loving my brother when he's being a brat. No, I'm talking about loving the people that were put in my life to challenge me. My inclination has always been to lash out and break them. I've not always been the best of people. :-/ But as I challenge myself to be more loving, I'm also learning how to respond.

Yesterday on the way home, I was listening to Air1 and the DJ was talking about how even when we argue with someone, we need to do it with love. He sited 1 Corinthians 11:1-3.

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing. (NLT) 

Several instances have come up recently, and I'm ashamed to admit that I did not handle them all with the grace and love they deserved. And another one happened today, but God had prepared me with this verse. I knew I needed to respond in love, but I could not figure out how. After a lot of meditation on those verses, I realized that the most loving thing for me to do is to not respond at all. 

Well, that's one day down. Now to remember it all tomorrow.

The final straw

Words cannot describe how upset I was just a mere hour ago. I couldn't find my fitbit. I knew I had it on earlier when I was running errands with mom, but I couldn't find it in my pocket when we were at church. I figured I accidentally left it in the jeans I was wearing earlier since I changed pants before we left. Nope, not there when I got home. Not in my chair, my purse, my computer bag. Not in my car, the key basket, or on my bed. I tore my room apart looking for it. Then I decided to go look in the car one more time.... and I found it. 

A moment of silence, please...

It must have fallen out of my pocket when we left for church and I backed over it. I barely made it into my bedroom before I started sobbing uncontrollably. See, I had already convinced myself Greg was going to be mad at me for losing it. Which, if you know G, you also know how ridiculous that is. He doesn't get mad at me. Frustrated? Yes. Annoyed? Of course! But mad? No. But I had already convinced myself that he was going to be MAD at me. Yelling and all kinds of bad things. So when I found it so completely busted, I just lost it. 

In the midst of my hysterics, I started questioning what was actually going on. Yes, I was upset over breaking my beloved fitbit, but it's just a toy, really. And I knew G wasn't actually going to be mad at me. It was an honest accident. So I prayed that God would help me calm down and figure out what was really going on. 

When I could breathe again, I finally realized that this was just the final straw in a long line of things that have been breaking my heart lately. None of them to do with Greg, Amy, or any other loved one. But still, my heart has been slowly cracking for the past 3 months and today was the day it finally fell apart. So I'm praying for God to help me find the road to putting things back together. 

There are some changes coming. I think for the better, and mostly I'm excited, but I think life is about to be different... hopefully soon. 

***As I logged on to my laptop to post this, I discovered that while the display is broken, my fitbit is still tracking my steps and syncing to the computer. That means I can still use it, I won't know how many steps I've taken til the end of the day. Whew! A bright spot!

Family Resemblance

Yesterday was an interesting day. Father's Day has never really been a big deal in my house. My dad left when I was little, and I never had stepfather or anyone else that filled that role. Occasionally I would celebrate with Mom, but it's a hard day for her since her dad passed away when she was so young. Most years it comes and goes without much notice. But this year I had a bit of a shocking realization. I look like my dad.

That may seem like an odd thing to suddenly realize, but I never knew it before yesterday. See, my father left when I was 2, so I don't really remember him. I had never so much as seen a picture of him until my half brother posted a throwback photo of him and my dad from when he was little. It was weird and a little unsettling. I posted the picture of the two of them on Instagram and immediately got comments about how much I look like my father.  Here's a comparison...

Me being silly at Hobby Lobby

My brother Jeremy and our father, circa 1983?

Ok, maybe not the best picture of me, but it is the most recent. It's strange to know you look like someone who doesn't want anything to do with you. But before you start trying to make me feel better, you should know I had another realization, too.

I think (or I hope) that I also favor my Dad. You know, my Father, the Creator of all things. That Guy. In Psalm 65:8 it says that God is a Father to the fatherless, and I am finally to a point where I get that and believe it to be true in my own situation. And I hope I look like Him, too. A few weeks ago, an agnostic co-worker and I were talking and he said he knew something was different about me because I "just have a light inside," and I knew he meant the Holy Spirit. That was probably the best compliment I have ever gotten. Despite the physical appearance a few strands of DNA gave me, I want to know that people I look like my Dad.