Sunday Snippets: good, bad, & awesome!

GOOD: Oh what a week! That doesn't even capture the cray cray, but such is life as of late. One of the good things is the amazing news about same sex marriage rights. Not only am I in favor of this, I also know that the world has so many other things worth worrying about that aren't anti-love rights. Another great piece of this last week that totally worth sharing with all who love a feel-good movie is Paddington. Check it out!

BAD: Feelings of disbelief & people saying the world is coming to an end because of recent governmental & other happenings. Really people? I believe there'll be other happenings that'll be the end of the world. But do we really want to go there?

AWESOME: All the heart finds that have popped up out of everything amidst the chaos.

WORD: Lamentations 3:22-33 is one of my favorite pieces of scripture. Everything about it is poignant. As the commentator says, this is not the end of the laments for this poet & it isn't the end of our laments. But have hope that Easter comes & comes again.

coming up: work & meetings & gorgeous Pure MI summer weather & a celebration of 4 years as JZ. Love, Life, Spirit, & Sparkle to all!

Sunday Snippits: good, bad, & awesome!

GOOD: Any week with a free ice cream cone is a good week, right? While many places had free cone day on Monday or Tuesday, we had to wait till Friday to have our free cone. It was well worth the wait as the week was not without treats & the weather was not any warmer at the end of the week than the beginning of the week. Ice cream was only a piece of this goodness though as the week was filled with great conversations, my first official yoga class in many years, more good food, a clean house (mostly), & naturally more really great food. We waited all week to make our Irish meal in honor of St Patrick's day & man alive, it was delicious! Iowa girl eats & I could be friends no doubt! Check out the Wine-Braised Beef Shepherd's Pie recipe, definitely worth your time!

BAD: While there plenty of eye catching & head tilting news pieces out there to report on, they've already been reported on. My idea of bad is when life is so heavy, you can't seem to take one more step. This past week a colleague posted about one event after another after another of heavy life pieces mostly, if not entirely, out of her control. Despite it all, with the help of others, she continued to put one foot in front of the other & be there for those pieces  of her life that needed her AND she was still able to celebrate another piece of life. Way to turn bad into...

AWESOME: Watching an old favorite of a movie, still being able to quote along with the lines, & still thinking it's pretty much one of the best movies ever. 10 Things I Hate About You is that movie for me.

WORD: Reading pieces of Mark & essays from Mindy.

coming up: Love, Life, Spirit, & Sparkle!

Sunday Snippits:good, bad, & awesome!

GOOD: Watching a movie you enjoy the day after watching a movie that horrified you. There are certain movies that you see the previews for & think along the lines of 'if I watch that it will need to be in my home so that I can turn it off or walk away when I want.' Then you find yourself renting the movie & so enthralled by the story line that is horrifying you that you don't turn it off or walk away. I followed Gravity with two episodes of How I Met Your Mother's final season that I'm still working on finishing. Then the next day I chose to watch the movie The Hundred Foot Journey. This second movie was much more my speed! The love for food, travel, adventure & connection to life struggle is beautifully woven into reality throughout the story.

BAD: The desire so many of us who love living in the great north have for Spring to appear soon this time of year. It would be scary - in my opinion - if it came earlier than March. However, we pull out all the tricks to endure the gray winter months & are very thankful for the days with cloudless skies & sunshine. Some people just cannot be shook of the grump that sets in & those of us that can even everything out. All in all making us all a bit mad, bonkers, & off our heads!

AWESOME: Days of unexplainable sunshine in Pure Michigan in January! Go with the flow sorta work days, friends reaching out for prayers & sharing in life near & far.

WORD: While I have yet to finish I Am Malala - & maybe I never will - I have been enjoying The Paraclete Book of Hospitality. This is one of several books that I thought I would use for my graduate studies capstone project & simply did not get around to until the last week or so. A short easy ready & being based in Benedictine thought it gives some great Biblical & other references.

coming up: This is a very exciting week filled with many reunions & many gatherings of new friends at the Extravaganza!

Sunday Snippits: good, bad, & ugly!

  

GOOD: Epiphany is upon us! We continue to celebrate the birth of Jesus - the Savior - with the coming of 3 'Wise Men.' A curious addition on to the story indeed! With a deep breath I take in the new air of 2015. 'Head Up. Heart Out. Move to the Beat.' Being a new year & a few months into my new job each week has been a little different, yet a swing of ministry happenings have started to take hold on my calendar & mind each month. With a bit of a break from work this past week I experienced a little bit of cabin fever, a little bit of nostalgia, & a touch of excitement for the future that is this new year. The family enjoyed the fresh snow fall, the continuation of holiday music, a couple of fires, & many movies. We even ventured out to the movie theater for the first time since Valentine's Day 2014 to see the third installment of The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. I do believe Cate Blanchett was phenomenal even if her part was minimal & I'm already looking forward to it's release for purchase so we can have true movie marathons with the Hobbit series & Lord of the Rings Trilogy. With the quiet of January already upon us & the often grey skies above us I'm honestly inspired to read many fictional books this month. Though I know that it'll have to be time intentionally taken from each day to make this happen without falling asleep (like I usually do at the end of a day).

BAD: This past week I saw many colleagues commenting on this article not simply about teen suicide, but about transgender teen suicide. These comments were wonderings of why this is still happening & why people don't intervene more heavily. Nobody is invisible, though we've all allowed ourselves to feel that way at one point or another due to others actions. Yes, we have all experienced this, so why don't we all do more to step up & take care of one another even with a simple "hi" & stop to hear how somebody is actually doing now & then rather than the fleeting "Hi, how ya doin?" as you walk by each other. No, we can't expect people to always give a full answer or maybe even a totally truthful answer, but we can give them a few minutes of acknowledging them in that moment.

AWESOME: This past week was just a lazy, low key week. 2014 ended with retirement, over a million dollars, 3 kids, & a few trips around the world (thanks to the game of Life).

WORD: Addiction & the Church

coming up: Diving into January with my 'Head up, Heart out, & (ready to) Move to the Beat!'

Sunday Snippits: good, bad, & ugly

GOOD: This past week was a good week to watch movies & do some house work & catch up on a few other things. I started the week with Zumba class on Sunday afternoon & then went into recovery mode for my head cold. Let me tell ya, intense physical exertion with a severe soar throat is not a good idea! My favorite movie that Z & I watched was Miss Potter about the life of Beatrix Potter. It is one of those movies I remember seeing advertised possibly before it came out & I couldn't believe that it came out in 2006. Renting mainly from a Redbox in the last couple of years has greatly changed the availability of what we rented. Now living in a town with a Family Video & no Redbox, there's a different variety of movies to rent. There's also something nostalgic of actually going into a video store & browsing for the right movie for that day. The other exciting peace of my week is taking on more work that will use my skill sets & allow me to work out of my strengths. More about that to come later!

BAD: Feeling cooped up so much of the time. Lucky for our fur ball, it has been warm enough to take her on several walks lately. Not so lucky for her is that she usually needs rinsed off afterwords from all the mud & dirt that has flung up on her underbelly. These pictures are the state of our back patio & yard to date. This was yesterday evening. I'd been wanting to walk out into the huge snow drift for quite some time & Z hit a point that he wanted to try & shovel it. Well, as you can see it is SO solid that I'm as tall as the house standing on the drift. We may need a heat lamp at this point to use our patio any time soon.

UGLY: All the back & forth about World Vision & their hiring policy. They made a well thought & I'm assuming prayed out written decision that upset the fruit basket & quickly took it all back. Talk about whiplash! Then there was something going on with Hobby Lobby, but I'll be honest, I was so tired of all the controversy over World Vision & things going on around the world that are less than uplifting that I didn't even read up on any of the Hobby Lobby information.

WORD: Today I suggest reading The God Article

coming up: Hunkering down & figuring out the details of some my new work. Reading b/c I'm slow at reading stories that I already know & want to finish The Help before our Paris trip. And getting outside as much as possible because while it doesn't totally look like it, Spring is here!

Sunday Snippits:

Happy Sunday!

This past week is good, bad, & ugly - as usual. Life is an adventure!

GOOD: The week started with some slightly warmer temps & March is definitely proving to be more sun shine filled than February. Tuesday was a sad & joyful celebration of TE's life. Wednesday was busy preparing to drive to hoosierland for the weekend. While in hoosierland I was spoiled by my family & friends. I enjoyed surprising my life long best friend , BGEG, at the local coffee shop as she & family were carrying in her artwork to set up her show. The baby gender revealing party KZ-S & momma & papa E held was a delight to be at. The revealing came through popping balloons with confetti the "gender appropriate color" inside. It's a girl! Then today I learned another childhood good friend is also having a baby girl. 2014 truly is the year of many babies from my peers. And let me not forget getting to worship with my brother's "praise band" & then go back to a St. Patty's day celebration with family & close friends.

BAD: The further North I drove today the deeper the snow got. While I was gone it rained & snowed. Ah the life of living in the Great North! I'm too tired from travel to remember much of anything else right now.

UGLY: In lieu of the fact that we are currently watching 12 Years a Slave. Modern day slavery & discrimination. While the movie is based on a true story that is over 100 years old, the hatred for people who are different that oneself & a ridiculous sense of entitlement is all too common.

WORD: Last night I heard a version of the story of Paul on the road to Damascus like I've never heard. One thing that struck me was that Paul was never actually mentioned. While the speaker started with a focus on washing the mud from our eyes he turned the focus into shaving & the fact that "Jesus shaves & saves" & we need to put on the "aftershave of life." Yup!

coming up: Prepping for a few different job things, dancing, singing, enjoying the sunshine!

Sunday Snippits: good, bad, & ugly

GOOD: These boots! Not only are they a quality brand with good support they were a surprise, on sale, & oh the wonderful colors! I can't get enough :-) This last Tuesday I finished my phoning job which was a bit of a relief to finally be done with the list of people to call. It was a blessing to be able to work with YE again though & to continue to promote the ministries that God has them offering. I seemed to have beat the crud that I was feeling at the beginning of last week & move into the middle of the week figuring out how to spend my time with more than enough to do & figure out about life. By the end of the week I found myself sending e-mails pulling me out of one job application process & pushing forward with another for a summer gig at Michi-Lu-Ca with ELCA Living Waters Ministries. I'm very excited to know what God has in store for both Z & I this Summer & the months following. I will be serving in the position of Senior High Camp Director.

BAD: The sleep we lost due to our worry of our poor Michi puppy licking her scar & wound from the clamp. Our puppy likes to lick, so thankfully we came up with a quick fix & knew where to find the onesie that our family used 3.5 years ago for our niece's birth announcement. Yes, she's still wearing it & still sleeping a lot, but also playful. Also bad, the constant surprise of how cold it remains to be. This is not just me who's been living around the 45th parallel for the last 7 years, this is everybody that lives above the Mason Dixon line. Bring on the mud season!

UGLY: Last Sunday Z & I watched Zero Dark Thirty & while fascinating. I wonder what that woman is up to now & where those children in the home ended up & how the soldiers are doing. SO much war going on in the world & in people's personal lives. Also, it's ugly that it is a surprise when certain states are able to pass laws in favor of all people being allowed to be married. I wish there wasn't a reason to doubt those laws passing.

WORD: I finally started reading The Help after how many years? I'm a bit behind after college & seminary. Plus I'm not a big reader. Aside from this though I've also been using the app called Devotion for a morning & evening moment in the word. It's free, definitely recommend it!

coming up: More recovery for Michi (she's doing great), prepping for Summer Work, Zumba, & planning a few trips here or there.

& now to enjoy the Oscars!