Laugh

flotsam and jetsam

  • In a moment of creativity (or strangeness), I decided to change the name of my "weekly download" to "flotsam and jetsam". I'm intrigued by that phrase, and smile at the idea of being able to use it!
  • The week started off with a "Girls' Night" for all the Thrive staff and intern women. It was a fun night of face masks (not on me!), laughing (yep, I did a lot of that!), talking (some great conversations), and snacking (my favorite pastime).
  • The last piglet count I heard was 110! That just makes me shake my head in amazement (and slight grossness)...
  • Some great (yet challenging) things I heard/read in the past few days:
  • "Many times God will send you what you need in a package you don't want." -John Bevere
  • "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." -Aristotle
  • "The truth is good enough." -Charles Martin
  • "The only thing harder than waiting on God, is wishing you had." -Steven Furtick
  • Natalie and I have had a lot of fun together this week. One of the highlights for me was coming home to a cooked dinner. The name of the dish? "You-Won't-Be-Single-For-Long Vodka Cream Pasta". Yum-my!
  • We went out four-wheeling this weekend (enjoying our new-found 80-degree weather). It was fun to show Natalie around the base, (try to) get up close and personal with some animals, and bounce around so much that we've been achy and sore ever since. Although we've been friends for a decade, we don't have many pictures together. So we were excited to take a self-portrait of ourselves while we were out in the far back corner of the property. The sun was really bright, and we ingeniously figured out a way to block it from our eyes so that we wouldn't be squinty in the picture. This is what we ended up with:

so they say

"Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Set God-sized goals. Pursue God-ordained passions. Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention. Keep asking questions. Keep making mistakes. Keep seeking God. Stop pointing out problems and become part of the solution. Stop repeating the past and start creating the future. Stop playing it safe and start taking risks. Expand your horizons. Accumulate experiences. Consider the lilies. Enjoy the journey. Find every excuse you can to celebrate everything you can. Live like today is the first day and last day of your life. Don't let what's wrong with you keep you from worshipping what's right with God. Burn sinful bridges. Blaze a new trail. Criticize by creating. Worry less about what people think and more about what God thinks. Don't try to be who you're not. Be yourself. Laugh at yourself. Quit holding out. Quit holding back. Quit running away."
-Mark Batterson

Every bit of that resonates with me.

weekly download

My week's comings and goings...

Coming
My friend Natalie arrived for a two-month visit. It is so great having her here; I smile at the thought of having many more weeks of this goodness.

Going
Niel left for the States on Tuesday. He's gone for a month on a whirlwind trip (please keep him in your prayers!). I miss him a lot.

Coming
There is so much I want to learn -- so many books to read, teachings to listen to, people to spend time with -- but not nearly enough time to do it all. I wish I could soak it all in via osmosis. But I can't. So I'm learning one book at a time. One teaching at a time. One engaging encounter with someone at a time. Progress, I've realized again, comes one step at a time.

Going
We are on week 3 of demolition of our conference room and eating hall. We've gone from this:


to this: