Before my current roommate nails me at home tonight, I thought I’d make a short ammendment to my comment about her the other day.  She is not under 5 feet tall…she is 5 feet tall.

My apologies..:)

What a pain in the heart!  I bet you’ve never heard anyone say that before!  I’m surrounded by people that are experiencing what seems like non-stop pain in their hearts.  I have a few friends that have been experiencing quite a bit of pain in relationships lately.  There are a few more people that are facing cancer and enormous amounts of stress.  I’m a teacher and there’s always at least one kid who is experiencing an obvious amount of pain at any given time. 

This morning I met with a woman who is new to serving Jesus (I love new believers!).  Without telling her whole story, she’s going through more physically than my feeble mind can comprehend, so she couldn’t come to church.  And what do we do with people that can’t come to church?  The church goes to them.  So I had the opportunity to go visit with her.  This was a fantastic morning.  🙂

I arrived to an earthly amount of discouragement and weakness, and only due to the presence of the Holy Spirit, I dismissed our time together with a heavenly amount of encouragement and strength.  I have to admit my own worries about meeting with people that go through more life than I can handle.  Certainly there’s nothing that I can do for them and I often fear that I will fail them in our conversations.  I guess I feel like this guy, Agur in Proverbs 30

I am the most ignorant of men;

I do not have a man’s understanding.

I have not learned wisdom…

I know that walking through my life, God has given me His Holy Spirit to guide me.  And as in this verse, I continue to be ignorant of many things and there are many things that I do not understand.  But when I walk into situations like I did this morning, and like I have a number of times recently, I see the power of God working, despite my ignorance and lack of understanding.  After all, I am still a growing individual who doesn’t ‘get’ everything there is to know about God.  It’s such a strong reminder that "it is not by might, nor by power, but by His Spirit."

Life continues to be an adventurous journey that I sometimes get butterflies about, but that also gives me a rush of divine weightlessness as I step into battle, day after day, and come out more encouraged than when I started.

Last night we celebrated Katie’s birthday.  She’ll be officially a quarter century on Monday.  She’s now a year older than I was when she (at 22) told me that I should just wait to get new pots and pans for when I get married.  FYI, don’t tell a single, 24 year old woman to wait to buy anything domestic until she’s married.  Better yet, now that I’m 27, really, really don’t say that to me.  🙂  Life goes on as God plans it, regardless of whether I’m single or not.  She has acknowledged since then that she understands why that wasn’t a great thing to say to me, and yes, I own an entirely new set of pots and pans. 

Okay…off the soapbox. 

The night started off with bowling and then it moved back to her place.  Her parents were at the bowling alley, but they went home instead of going to the ‘afterparty’…because they wanted to watch the game.  I really enjoy talking about sports with Katie, just because she hates them so much-and it makes feel like I know what I’m talking about.  I wonder how she felt, knowing that her parents dissed her party to watch baseball.  We did make her put the game on at her house though.  It was really hard to play Mafia and watch the game at the same time, especially when I wasn’t the Mafia, so thankfully we stopped for the last couple minutes of the game…or should I say, ‘unfortunately’.

Last night’s game was not cool at all.  The Tigers were down by one and then up by one so quickly.  Surely they had a chance!  And then they just kept making so many mistakes, all over the place!  Even I could see that!  I prayed for a miracle in the 9th inning when they had 2 guys on the bases (I think it was 2) and then they walked someone…but then, the ultimate tragedy hit and they lost. 

When all was said and done I ended with a laugh, when a good friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, literally jumped up and down and squealed, "It’s snowing!!!!  I love snow!"  Then someone said, "No, I’m pretty sure that’s confetti from the celebration."  I’d like to go with snow…because we are definitely not celebrating the game.

Almost a year ago I was inspired enough to start blogging.  I chose a xanga site because it seemed pretty simple to set up…and it worked.  I feel the need to expand my horizons and join typepad (after all, as the typepad homepage says, Scott Adams, Dilbert’s creator, uses it!…that had me sold).  For my xanga fans that subscribe (you are fans, right?) you can still subscribe to my blog by joining www.bloglines.com.  It’s free and it works!

I have to admit that one of the reasons I wanted to switch sites is because I know that there are times that my dad is just dying to post a comment, but he can’t on xanga without an account.  Now, I’m not asking for compulsive commenting, or anything like that, but I definitely want to open up communication lines to non-xangan people.