Friday, September 30, 2016

Five Minute Friday: Collect

START

When I saw the word "collect" earlier today I thought of all of the things that we collect around here: books, papers, legos, games, legos, nerf guns, socks, legos, pens, cameras, flip flops, legos, bikes, light sabers, legos... you get the idea. We have a lot of collections. In the upcoming months we need to purge a lot of collections.

As I wrote the subject for this blog though the first thing I thought of was collect calls. Kids don't know what those are any more. A few weeks ago I tried to explain to them what a collect call was but they didn't really get it. There was a day when everyone didn't have a cell phone and when you needed to call home you hit "0" and asked the operator if you could make a collect call.

I haven't made a collect call in years. When I made them they were always to home. That 315 number forever ingrained in my mind that connected me to my mom and dad no matter where I was. I don't know who has that dear old number now. If I tried to call that 315 number collect today they would not accept the charges from "Sonja." Oh, how I miss calling that 315 number. I didn't do it nearly often enough.

STOP

Friday, September 23, 2016

Five Minute Friday: Five

And for the real prompt for this week.... 5

Yesterday at our Thursday school we were reminded once again to sign up for a performance that a couple of the students from the school are performing in late in October. The tickets are only $5, the kids are friends of our kids, and I live the closest of anyone to the place where the performance is being held so I put down my name and contact information and the number 5.

When I had a free minute later in the day I texted Glenn asking what his schedule was going to be the day of the performance to make sure that he didn't randomly have the day off. He texted back, "Probably not. Clinic all day." I told him, "OK. I just put 5 anyway." Then he replied, "So you are saying we have met before?"

Yes. We've met before. I love the random days when we get to be 6 but, during residency, more often than not we are 5.

Five Minute Friday: Listen (Take 2)

We're finishing up week 4 of school for the year. School is going pretty well this year. There are still the sinful people reacting sinful when sinned against issues that come with living and learning with sinners but... overall things are going pretty well.

One of my favorite things that I've added to our school year this year is Friday one-on-ones with mom. They came out of a suggestion from a friend who meets with each of her kids on Fridays to talk over what their goals are for the next week.

I schedule appointments with them and they report to the back room and sit on the couch, eat a piece of chocolate, and tell me about what is going well, what isn't going to well, and what they would like to change. It has been such a privilege to just listen to them one-on-one with no interruptions and get a glimpse into their hearts.

The number of Friday afternoons I have left that to spend with these precious ones in my home is getting smaller and smaller and I'm so thankful for the encouragement to just sit with them and listen.

Five Minute Friday: Listen

Hannah, a few other teens from church, and I have started volunteering leading Kids' Praise (the opening 15 minutes of SS). This fall the kids in Sunday school at our church are studying 1 Peter for the months of September and October. I love the book of 1Peter and I have given the kids a "First Peter Challenge" to read or listen through 1 Peter every week for the whole two months. I told them if they read or listened to or had their parents read them one chapter of 1Peter every day Monday through Friday they would get to read through 1 Peter 8 or more times and it will help to get more out of what they are learning in Sunday School. The first week I had 2 participants, last week there were 10-15 (I'm rewarding them with candy...).

Since I gave the challenge I decided to take the challenge as well, even though we're in the OT in my class. I have loved listening to 1 Peter through the Bible app. It's a book I've always wanted to memorize and I'm starting to be able to quote more and more of it along with the reader.

I usually listen to sermons while I run so that I can do something I enjoy while I am doing something I have to do. I think that God wants me to work through 1Peter even more because something happened to my podcast app one day and it jumped me ahead a couple of weeks ago to the first sermon of a series on 1 Peter. I figured it was appropriate so I've been listening to it as I run and I've loved hearing about a proper response and perspective on suffering and the reminder that we are strangers here and need to live on mission because we are not home yet.

(This is actually last week's prompt but, on my run today,  I was thinking about how much I am loving listening to 1Peter and this series that I needed to write about it.)

Monday, September 05, 2016

Five Minute Friday: Path

On Sunday at the end of the service we sang the song, "I Surrender All." That song always makes me think of a young man from Nigeria who was a student with us in college. He told us he didn't ever sing that song (though it was often the song that closed the church services at that time) because he didn't want to lie.

We don't sing it often but I think of him whenever I do and I sing it as a prayer asking for help to surrender more.

Our path has had many detours along the way but all along the way there has been a call to surrender our goals, our plans, our timing, our independence, our self-reliance, our pride and so much more. It's not easy to surrender those things but He has been faithful and I'm so thankful that He continues to invite us to be a part of His story.