Tuesday Tea Time!

 Hello Tuesday Tea Timers!!!

Happy July! I hope y'all had a great holiday weekend. Even if you found yourself outside the USA, I hope you're enjoying this beautiful time of the year.

This week is a very busy week with the National Cherry Festival going on near by. I give thanks to all who have helped with the parking lot youth ministry fundraiser & look forward to the days of service in our community coming up later this week. We'll be helping Habitat for Humanity one day & participating in an area clean up another day.

While I'm in the throes of summer work busyness, I still take my time for tea on Tuesdays. I love this photo by Britta Gene Art for this month. It makes me want to be relaxing in that chair with a good cup of tea. This rocking chair is buried deep in some of the woods outside my hometown. It's a quiet & peaceful place. It is a lovely place made by lovely people.

Enjoy you're tea time today & if you're as active as me this week, be sure to stop & savor the tea time today & whenever you need it.

Sunday Snippits:good, bad, & awesome!

GOOD: Time has been filled with so much good stuff lately that it seems to be flying by & it's hard to recap what happened a week ago because often it feels just like yesterday. On the other hand it often feels like it was much longer than a week ago because so much life has been lived since. That's where we are today with Sunday Snippits! A dose of good Spring Cleaning seems to be the medicine for Spring Fever. Piece by piece we've been working on a little cleaning at home, a little cleaning at work, a little cleaning metaphorically & a little cleaning literally. Just after feeling as if we hadn't left town much at all lately for anything, this past week we were both hopping around the state for one work related thing or another. We're moving through life remembering that while it is good to plan ahead & we often do just that, it is also good to sit in the moment at hand. Plus life is often MUCH easier lived day-by-day with a pinch of forward thinking & planning.

BAD: Jumping into one project it is easy to find more project & more project & more project. While we could get grumpy about why people have left so much stuff laying around & made a trail, we all do it. The trick is to take a set amount of time on a set day with company of other people &/or music & work at picking up these trails little-by-little. The bad part is, if we're all leaving our trail then we're constantly not only cleaning up after one another, but expecting others to clean up after us! So maybe this a goofy bad, but that's what you get this week.

AWESOME: I mentioned in Friday Favorites it's the little things. I realized recently my joy for reading for pleasure is returning! I knew it was there, somewhere. For Pete's sake I took part in a reading lock-in & loved it in elementary school. It's a matter of pacing oneself & balancing heavy topic books with light topic books & books that are most obviously continuing education with books that are simple fiction & imagination. It's a piece of me that has been missing & as many friends will be delighted to know - especially after all the books they've gifted me throughout the years - I am a reader. Don't be ambitious in the book giving though, this may only be a phase for now.

WORD: If you haven't guessed by AWESOME that I finished both I am Malala & Stitches this past week. I've now moved on to Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? for a piece of humor & I plan to start Children of Divorce this week. SO much to look to forward to! PLUS my good friend wrote an awesome piece about Grace, not Works.

coming up: More Spring Cleaning! Last Fall we had all of the bushes in the front of our house taken out. They were old & ugly. Now it's figuring out what to put in their place. This is totally not our thang so a little research will be in order... happy days till next time!

Sunday Snippits: good, bad, & awesome!

GOOD: Last Sunday kicked off a very busy week with a going away pot-luck meal for one colleague, a bridal shower for friend, & prep to move into that one colleague's office. The move started Tuesday with only a few boxes. I was eager, but doing my best to keep some boundaries of not officially starting till Wednesday. Wednesday I spent all day cleaning. Thursday was a day "off" and Friday was another full day of adventures on the new job.

BAD: Last week I mentioned I hadn't heard of much lately so I felt like there were some things hiding in the shadows. I was right! Hong Kong has been up in arms & to watch the videos is alarming & frightening (especially if you are certain you know people that are there & that I am). Not to mention the continued news on the Ebola Virus.

AWESOME: Conviction that comes from deep within one's being is awesome. It's so deep within oneself that you know it's not of you, but you can't separate it from yourself. Watching this, breathing this, living with this conviction is awesome.

WORD: Working Preacher is where I spent most of my week reading & listening.

coming up: a full week of work as Coordinator of Youth & Family Ministries!

Friday Favorites!

Tuesday Tea Time!

Happy Tuesday Tea Time!

Last week we talked about the World Tea Expo & my love for travel & new things. Well 'new things' is a bit broad. Really it's my love for education. Yes, I, the girl who knew I'd go to college, but didn't know if I'd do the traditional 4 year plan & then for sure was not going on to do any sort of further education that required me to take the GRE. Well I found that master's program that spoke to my heart & my being that was not connected to the GRE & went to seminary to continue my studies in World Religions & be trained deeper in my Christian - more specifically Lutheran - roots as a leader for & with the Church in the World.

Being in between jobs right now after being in a specific education program most of my life is a unique place to be. So I thought to myself aside from dreaming about potential future trips to things like the World Tea Expo, that I should decide what I can learn more about right now. Being a blogger who writes something about what's going in life while drinking tea on Tuesdays, I was led to Tea 101 with the Republic of Tea.

The 6 day e-mail series is short & filled with quality information for a better cup of tea. While it is only 6 days & very nice that it's e-mail form so that you can come back to it whenever you want, I am no high class tea drinker. The one habit I don't want to break is having more than 6oz of water to make my tea. Thus I figure means steeping the tea leaves longer, but I did not see this information in the e-course.

Daydreaming is great, but doing something with those dreams is even better.

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!