Non Stop Day

Today is a non stop day. One with meetings from morning till night! It includes a trip to the High School the twins will be attending, one to the lawyer’s office down town, three one on one meetings and a production team meeting (a team that helps coordinate info and style stuff like slides and backgrounds for the message Sunday mornings), then dinner with friends! It is great to get so much done in a day, but I will probably be wiped by the end of it!

Transplanting

A family that ours is very close to is back in town… almost 2 years ago they moved with Compassion International to Thailand.  It was a big loss for us, as a few months before they moved they were one of three couples that were sitting around on the living room floor talking about starting a church with us.  We have been very encouraged by them over the years, and it is great to catch up with them…

I want to highlight her most recent post, (click here) because it is a true picture of community, friendship, hope, and passion.  (Sunday we talked about how anything we are passionate about can also bring us the greatest suffering…)

More Rain, Mud, and Flooding

This is getting really old.  We have had issues with our General Contractor, one of which is an incorrect grade of the property.  We are at a standstill with moving forward on landscaping and fixing some of these problems until we have resolved responsibility issues, so every time it rains, and yesterday it rained like a hurricane, we have problems!  Besides three rooms flooding inside the building, here is what it looked like outside this morning!

Running & Ice Cream

Many of you know my obsession with ice cream, but you know it is bad when you are thinking about ice cream while you are out on your 3 mile run…  and I did just that this morning….

Actually I was thinking about my talk for this Sunday and the illustration may or may not have something to do with ice cream, you will have to come Sunday or listen on line next week to see!  Sometimes I get my best ideas in the weirdest places, and have found that while running many really good ideas or thoughts come to me, like today, although since it was about ice cream it could have been just one of those things:)

Where do you get your best ideas?

Growing Pains

I feel like we are experiencing some serious growing pains right now.  I look around and see fantastic things happening, but also see how far we have to go yet.  We want to be big, grown up, able to do the things that a grown up organization can do.  When I was a kid I couldn’t wait to be an adult.  My kids now cannot wait to be adults.  We rush and rush and try and try to be that thing we think is good, cool or “has arrived.” Yet we need those experiences that happen along the way.  We need time to develop. Too much too quickly can lead to disastrous results.  No matter how grown up and mature I hope this church is, we need this time of stretching, experiencing, trial and error.  We haven’t arrived yet, and that is okay.  We have some more growing to do, and although it is hard to wait, I am excited to see what we will develop into!

Running, AKA “Pushing A Boulder Uphill On Wobbly Legs”

I didn’t realize how long it had been since my last run.  Not until I made it home (barely moving) and plugged the data from my iPhone into Runkeeper;  19 days.  Ouch.  Literally.  The last mile was like trying to push a boulder uphill on really wobbly legs…  not good.  But with the completion of the grueling battle of mind over legs came the satisfaction of achievement, stress reduction, and time well spent in my head.  It wasn’t pretty, no records were set, but the habit was re-established and I feel better.

You may think I am going to encourage you to get back to your abandoned workout routine, or start one if you don’t have one already, but no – I don’t care if you work out or not.  What I do care about is what you are going to do about your future.  So many of us have started out reading a Bible, or spending time praying and have gotten off track with it.  You may try to start but it feels like you are pushing a boulder uphill on wobbly legs.  I know the feeling!  Don’t stop though.  Those wobbly legs will get stronger.  Your body, mind and soul will get used to reaching out to God, and He will respond to your attempts.  Unlike working out, God meets you and helps you get there. Working out is all you, and sometimes a lonely struggle, but He develops you and mentors you.  He sends people into your life to help you with your questions and concerns.  Look around, He is there…  Trust me, I wouldn’t have made it here if He had not mentored, molded, grown, stretched and encouraged me.  And the results are definitely worth it.

Back At It

I love vacations; getting away, resting, recharging, all of it.  I spent the past few days in a river in the Rocky Mountains.  It was spectacular.  Usually though, I get to a point where I am excited to come back to work.  If you love what you do it is hard to stay away too long.  But this time, not so much.

Not that I don’t like what I am doing, it is just that lately there is so much stress involved.  Starting a church is hard enough – it takes a lot of energy to get things kicked off and going the way they need to, and I feel like we still have a ways to go, although we have incredible and fantastic people involved in it!  But the things that are hard to get excited about are the managing people, dealing with complaints, and working through some left over building issues.

Yes, left over building issues.  We had hoped that it would all be over and done, but it isn’t…  We are having to go to mediation with our contractor – not fun…  We also have a weed problem.  The landscaping around the building is not done, and the weeds are growing like, well, weeds.  Several neighbors have complained, as well as Code Enforcement, and I just read and responded to an email from the City Council Member that is over the area our church is in.  Yep, stress.  Nope, didn’t want to come back to this part of the job!

Too bad we can’t pick and choose which part of our jobs we want to do and which parts we don’t want to do…  Just like life, we have to take the good with the bad, and know that the difficulties help build character and make us look forward to a time when things are better.

Break

I am going to take a short break from the blogosphere, (I know you probably feel like I already have since my posts have been so sporadic!!), Twitter and Facebook. I have hit a wall on the blog, and need a fresh perspective and some recharging!

See ya on the flip side. (don’t really know what that means, but it kinda sounds cool.)

Made With Age

One thing I wonder about when it comes to listening to people talk about creation and evolution and how old the world is…

If there was no sunrise and sunset until the first day, how would you tell time?

If you were creating a rock, would you create it with no age?

If you were populating a forrest would you populate it with seeds and let them grow, or create full grown trees?

Was the first frog a tadpole? the first butterfly a caterpillar? The first fly a larvae?  The first bird an egg?

Was the first Human a baby?

Or maybe God created all of these things with age…  Was the first man 30 years old or 20?  Was the first goat 10 years old or 2?  was the first rock 100 million years old or 2 days?  If you can create it, I imagine you can create it in completeness so it doesn’t have to “grow up” it already is…

I wasn’t there so I cannot be sure, but what if age was as much a part of the created’s characteristics as weight, color, texture, content?  I believe God could do that… do you?  I always wondered…

Baseball – A Perfect Game

Last night our church went to our local minor league baseball game.  The pitcher threw a perfect game, (I am still unclear on the difference between a perfect game and a no hitter, but whatever), but  I think I may have seen three pitches the whole night.  There were about 95 people there from our church or friends of people in our church, and I talked to most of them throughout the night.  That was the whole reason I went… to talk to people…

At one point I was sitting next to a grandpa that had one grandson on his lap, and the other sitting super close next to him as they were sharing a snow-cone in a cup type thing… I said something like, “this is the best part of the game,” and he said, “I wish I could do this more often,” or something like that, and it was for sure a perfect game for that grandpa!

It was a very satisfying time as I reflect on it today.  We did the same thing last year and had 15 people there or so…  Most of us want bigger, more, better from life, and as I think about these things, and how far we have come, I am reminded again and again, that God cares more about my relationship with Him than how many people come to our church.  There may be a game on the field, but like that grandpa, He is way more interested in hanging out with me than anything else going on… what an amazing God…  What a great reminder.