Blessings Blog

Today I'm thankful for a weekend filled with a few late nights and enough energy to spend time with friends, draw more energy from them, and somehow still function well on a few nights of less sleep. So much dancing, so much balance restored with spending time with groups of lovely ladies and my solid, stand-up guy friends. I'm thankful for friends to dance the night away with and to relax the worries away with, and I'm thankful for both those you can count on to look out for you and those who pleasantly surprise you.

I'm thankful for multiple light and fluffy snowfalls, the kind of inches that can be shoveled in five minutes and swiped off the car in thirty seconds.

I'm thankful for the light my housemates bring when we all do interact, and I'm especially thankful to see more and more the way my housemate and her boyfriend are so good to each other. Every couple is not perfect, but God's love is on display by how they bring out the best in each other in the simplest ways of baking bagels and giving each other sass in cribbage. They are delightful.

I'm thankful I was able to drive up to the Cities this morning in time for church and make it back down for my double Zumba afternoon. It was our youth pastor's final day and final sermon at St. Luke, and an especially emotional day because he was requesting, after months of prayer, discernment, and meetings with various groups and bodies within the church, to be released from his call in order that he may set us free and himself free to pursue where God would call him next, hopefully as an associate or lead pastor of a new congregation that would be the ideal fit for his incredible creativity. I'm thankful to have been asked when I walked in the door if I'd join in on electric guitar with a couple others backing up the choir for the service's last song, "Let it Be," as Pastor Don's request for our congregation's support of this decision. I'm thankful for our congregation's and our lead pastor Gwin's incredible ability to vocalize how much we will miss Don and his family and how we sorted through the various stages of emotions, grief, and understanding with as much grace as possible. I'm thankful we could celebrate their time here with us, and even though I was in college and therefore not well-connected into much of the work Pastor Don poured into St. Luke in his time, the way he has revitalized our congregation and has drawn numerous youth and young families to get connected in has been incredible, and I dearly hope we can continue to cultivate the seeds he has planted in our children and youth programs for the future.

I'm thankful that the though one of my Faith Partners at church who has been progressively going downhill with Alzheimer's these last few years that I have not been around St. Luke much, she still remembers me and lights up with a hug every time I see her. (Just a note, Faith Partners is a program where a person under 18 is paired with someone the same gender over 18 to bond with for a year, and I have had a number of really incredible women mentors through this program that have now seen me grow up and are still instrumental figures in my life). It is sad to see that all she can really formulate verbally at this point is my name and "lovely, just lovely," but while some people as they age and develop dementia may lose their once-joyous personality to quick anger or paranoia, this woman is just joyful and smiling every second. I'm thankful for the years of her coming to my tennis matches even after we were no longer technically faith partners, and I'm thankful that in her time of brain deterioration, she is well-supported by friends in this community and she still continues to bring light to our lives. 

And I'm thankful for how my Zumba classes that I taught today got me through the day. My mind was not ready to quiet down when I needed it to at 2:30am last night, and despite having to get up at 8:30 to drive up for church, it also decided to wake me up and keep churning at 5:30am. I know I have been blessed by energizing friend time as well as Zumba endorphins, though, as well as the time I apparently just needed to be awoken for God to speak to me in the middle of the night. Sometimes it feels as though there are things that need to be sorted through in my life and I am not at a point yet where I can automatically take them to God. I procrastinate, I try to distract myself in basically anything other than facing my problems, and I realize when I am in that state, I am trying to keep the door closed in my own little box. God patiently knocks at that door until my heart is ready to open that door with a fresh face, or if I keep ignoring or putting off whatever matter it is, that door is going to get knocked down with tough love. Sometimes that tough love shakes me out of my sleep because that is when I am called to sort through things and I need to let God in. Sometimes it feels like God is the entire force outside my little box, but I want God to fill my box, to fill me. I put up walls because I am afraid of getting hurt, but by human beings. That does not mean I can wall off God. I need to make my walls more permeable.

I am but a lowly servant, but I want every day to be a vessel for God's love. If I do not let God's love be the very foundation, the very essence of my action and non-action, what am I here for? In a final note, I'm thankful that today's scripture was one of my favorite verses and informed Pastor Don's final sermon, "Called to Love." 1 Corinthians 13: 1-3: "If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."