Life as I see it

Well, the past couple of months have been good! Just wanted to catch up on all that's been going on.

• Refuge Community Church will be having our first service very soon! Still no building yet, but we do have an AWESOME music minister and of course pastor! ;) Chris had been making connections with some people to help with the building process and I feel completely confident that we will have a meeting place by Palm Sunday, which is when we kick off! Chris has been losing sleep over it, but I know that God is faithful.
• I've been working out! Yes, it is true. I HATE working out, HATE it! But, it occurred to me that I was spending most of my time on the couch watching TV. And that is just not a life. So I've been walking/running with Rufus almost everyday after work or on the weekends. Granted I don't go very far, but I'm getting there.
• I just finished reading Donald Miller's new book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and it was seriously the best book I've read in a long time. It has changed me. As all good books should. It's all about the kind of story you are living and the character you are in your own story. It has made really think about the story I building with my life. Buy it and Read it! You won't regret it. Truly.
• I've become kinda obsessed with party planning. I found a couple of blogs one night and was hooked. I'm definitely the kind of person that says "I can do that!", and then never does. So, now I am actually doing it. It doesn't seem hard, just time consuming and lots of attention to detail. Which I can commit myself to. I am having my "launch party" in a couple of weeks for one of the guys in our church. He is graduating from the Mission and so I wanted to throw him a party. It's a Green bay Packer theme, so green and gold. I'll put up pictures of how it turns out. I'm really excited.
  
• Chris and I are planning a Taste of Texas trip this summer, because we miss all our favorite restaurants from all our favorite cities. So, hopefully we will be seeing many of our Texas friends!

I think that about wraps it up!

Words of the Wise Wednesday

"I gave in, and admitted that God was God"
C.S. Lewis

Something Borrowed

I don't know if anyone ever ventures over to Chris's blog or not, BUT I am posting his recent post for all to read. Chris works at a homeless shelter here in Denver, one of the largest homeless shelters in the nation. He does a job, that I could never do. A job that not many could do. I was just really touched when I read this and hope you will be too.

2.20.2010

Stench

As I work at a homeless shelter, I am often overwhelmed with stench. There are various types, and since I have a very capable nose, I tend to smell them all. I smell the typical "I've been wearing these shoes for years and they have literally been through it all" stench of shoes. I smell the discarded garbage from rotting veggies donated at the last minute. I smell armpits and body odor, I smell dirty clothes and an over abundance of hand sanitizer. I smell booze breath and cigarette breath and just plain stank breath. To me, all these things smell disgusting, but to God, I know they smell like love.

It's funny how much the sense of smell is linked to particular memories. All it takes is a whiff of a certain smell to take me back to my house during middle school. Or a certain smell to take me back to Buchanan Elementary. Sometimes I will smell something and almost be transported to my summers at Sky Ranch, or my summer playing basketball in Australia.

So when I walk through the dorms of the shelter at night, and smell feet and farts, bad breath and cigarette smoke, I wonder how that all smells to God. And I think it is a bittersweet smell to him. Bitter because our weakness has led us to embrace the disgusting smells of the world. The smell of alcoholism and drug addiction, pornography and materialism, bitterness and greed, gluttony and hatred, fear and violence, ultimately death. But it is sweet because it is the smell of a long lost love. The smell of lost sons and daughters. The smell of a people so close to greatness that if they would but close their hand on it they might hold it. God smells the potential and the problem.

And I think it takes him back, back before anyone could possibly remember, to the day he began creating. It reminds him of the smell of an untainted garden. The smell of people in harmony with their world, rather than destroying it. The smell of victory. And in that sense, I think it also takes him forward. The smell anticipates the day it will all be over, but the day that it will start anew.

Those are the things that the smell of homelessness reminds me of. Because those of us who belong to the kingdom of God are homeless. We are exiles here in a world that does not understand us, or our smell. Our world smells only our defeat, but our Lord smells our surrender. Our world smells our deaths, but we can smell our new life from our deaths. That's what I smell when I smell stinky shoes and unwashed underwear.

Words of the Wise Wednesday

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein

I Heart Jeans

I do. I just love them! I think it goes back to the 6th grade when I got made fun of for my dorky jeans. But then I went to college and I was introduced to Designer Jeans. And from then on, I've been a sucker. And probably the real reason I haven't bought any jeans for over a year, is because I didn't want to spend my hard earned fun money on jeans. But today was the day.
I bought them. I love them. I can't wait to wear them!

Words of the Wise Wednesday

"People are always telling me that change is good. But all they're really saying is that something you didn't want to happen at all.... has happened."
Kathleen Kelly
"You've Got Mail"

Words of the Wise Wednesday

"Believing in God is as much like falling in love as it is making a decision. Love is both something that happens to you and something you decide upon."

Donald Miller