Week Beginning

Sometimes, what I need to right was is wrong in my life is to sit down with my Bible study girls and talk through my “issues.” This was the perfect medicine this weekend, once again. I feel much better, refreshed, and more confident. However, I would like to thank the two men who offered to “beat down” the people that had insulted Reagan and I. I appreciate that, really I do. Your “kind” offerings have not gone unnoticed.

The weekend was, for the most part, quite pleasant. Saturday morning, as mentioned, I enjoyed my Bible study. Its amazing to me how much that little get-together means to me. We’ve been meeting about twice a month for somewhere around almost 3 years and truly, I can’t imagine what I would do without those girls. They are certainly some of my closest friends and have helped me get through so many chapters of my life.

Saturday evening we attended Hubby’s work Christmas party. I will admit, I normally get outrageously nervous for these parties. I don’t know anyone that he works with and most of the time I attempt to find a way to make myself blend in with the wall. But this year I gave myself a bit of a pep talk and refused to succumb to the nervous you-don’t-fit-in fear floating around in my head. I was pleasantly surprised to find that a couple of our friends from church were also at this party. It was a huge relief to be able to have a nice conversation with someone I knew, and meet a few new people as well. We had a good time and got home at a nice hour to find Reagan had been good for the babysitter and was sleeping peacefully.

Sunday morning, Reagan woke up crying which is not normal for her. We got her up and attempted to feed her breakfast, but she wanted nothing of our cinnamon roll offerings. After other attempts at playing and rocking, we put her back in bed where she sighed with relief and lounged comfortably. After we had gotten dressed, we got her back up and ready for church. She was perfectly happy the rest of the day, until she woke up screaming from her afternoon nap and we noticed she had a fever. With a little medicine she calmed right down and spent the rest of the day and evening playing very nicely and smiling and laughing. She also slept beautifully last night and this morning her fever was almost completely gone. So we don’t know what it was (or is), but we gave her a little medicine and sent her to daycare with instructions to call us if she seems the least bit uncomfortable.

Sunday night was an opportunity to lead worship at church. For some reason, I got horribly nervous. This has been happening to me again lately which totally confuses me. I thought I had beaten down the whole nervous-in-front-of-people thing and I’m not really sure why it is coming back. I think I hide it reasonably well, but its definitely still there. Maybe, a little nervousness is a good thing. Not sure yet. I have a tendency to “evaluate” worship as being powerful for me based on the music. I certainly never mean to imply that the only way to evaluate worship for a church is to evaluate the music alone. Certainly, music is only one part of a worship service. But for me, God speaks most clearly to me in songs and I feel I communicate best to him through music. So I tend to focus on that when I reflect on a service. At any rate, last night’s service was a blessing to me - a good reminder that it is by God’s grace only that He considers me His beloved. I have found many times that when I should be loving God with my whole heart, mind, soul, strength, instead I am indifferent. As though I am just waiting to see what He will do next for me. What a challenge it is to keep our hearts focused on our Creator. But what a blessing we receive when we are able to do that, however infrequent or often, and we find ourselves in the presence of our King!

Here’s hoping you have a blessed week, and that you find some time to connect with your Heavenly Father!