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Showing posts from September, 2013

Strength Training

  There aren’t many things more beautiful and awe-inspiring than sitting in the Veteran’s Memorial at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery, feeling the warm sun on my head, blue sky above me scattered with white clouds, listening to the water cascading in the fountains and the chimes echoing “Have Thine Own Way, Lord” out over the cemetery. “Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way.”  How hard that is to pray.  Sometimes I think we sing these words so easily, never imagining what those words might actually mean for our own lives.  As we discussed in Bible Study on Sunday, following God’s direction for our lives does not promise an easy and smooth path.  A rough and challenging path does not mean we aren’t following God or hearing Him correctly.  It may mean we need to hold onto His hand more tightly and rely on Him more fully.  If the path God called us to was easy, we wouldn’t need God.  I’m not saying that God is sadistic and manipulative, making things challenging for us simply so

Finding Hidden Treasures

  I spent this evening, with my parent’s help, sorting through what probably amounted to about four filing cabinet’s worth of notebooks, papers, bank statements, financial records, and keepsakes that have been stored in our garage for years.  Most of the paperwork was dated prior to Jaelyn’s birth, so that gives you an idea of what kind of pack rats that Scott and I were – mostly Scott, although I had my share of stuff too.  I don’t think Scott ever threw away a pay stub, bank statement, notebook, or scrap of paper.  I learned that oil was $1.49 a gallon in 2004 when Jaelyn was born – contrast that with over $3/gallon now.  I found  what appears to be every single paper I ever wrote in college – I’m sure that there are a few missing, but probably not too many.  There were stacks upon stacks of genealogy information from my family and Scott’s family too.  Old photos stuck in here and there, when we both looked much younger – I was much thinner and Scott had a lot of hair!  It was like