Dust

In honor of remembering that I am dust and to dust I shall return/Lent I give you the first blog of 2012.

It has been a bit of a weird frenzy my friends! In early January we traveled to St. Paul to have a belated Christmas with Z's parents. Then we were both participating in helping with the first wedding of 2012 for our good friends who both helped with our wedding day. After that fun event our car alarm went bazerk & died & Z left me in the cities for two weeks of J-term intensive. Dr. Malcolm puts the intense in the word intensive! 9,011 words later I can tell you a few ways to answer Jesus' question to Peter when he asks, "Who do you say that I am?" The day I finished writing that - after spending at least 10 hours on my computer - we went to take our recycling to the center before getting dinner & while still in the car I saw a wolf along the fence line. Z was outside of the car getting the recycling from the trunk & very quickly was back in the car after I told him to do so - he may have been sitting in my lap. Then we went to get dinner & met the CEO of minute clinic. Let me not forget the week after J-term course ended & the week before writing the paper we traveled to IN to visit my parents & have a belated Christmas. It was great to get away for a while & we got to venture to the home of former president of the USA Benjamin Harrison. Visiting his home makes me wonder if I would appreciate my current history course more if I was sitting in a church with lots of history....

February bled out of January & Spring semester started without a blink of the eye. I also traveled to NOLA for the Youth Ministry Network Extravaganza. This was a great chance to see the city - I had never been before - & prepare for the youth going to the ELCA Nat'l Gathering this summer. I got to catch up with some college friends that I had not seen in several years & made some new. As I was sitting in the airport waiting to board my plane to head back North I received a text message saying that my cousin was engaged! Then the next day I received another message saying that the wedding date was over the time that I was supposed to be at the Nat'l Gathering. After some prayer & discussion I opted to attend the wedding in CA & have another adult lead the trip with the Synod. Aside from that fun news school is happening full steam ahead. It's crazy to think that we only have a little over a year left. I definitely did not ever think that I would be in school for this many years.

Aside from those fun stories of life things are pretty good & chaotic like usual for us. We're both plugging away trying to be progressive in our work with our current context & towards returning to the seminary in August. It's a little crazy to think that we will have to move most likely two times in the next year and a half, so we just try not to think about it & will do what we need to do when we need to do it.

Places I've seen God working lately are through the coming warmer Spring weather, through the goofiness of my husband, in the petitions of prayers during Sunday service, & the joys of life exuded by one three year old from church.

God is good, life is crazy, & I want Spring! Happy Daylights Savings weekend!