Tuesday, September 25, 2012

I heart libraries

This afternoon we took a quick trip to the public library.
Sometimes I forget that I'm back in the trusting country where free book-lending is available!  I can't even begin to tell you how happy a public library makes me.

Here's the book I can't wait to crack open:

Christopher Paul Curtis is right up there with Jerry Spinelli on my list of life-changing-I'll-read-anything-you-put-on-paper authors.

I'm going to go get started.

<3  Happy Tuesday.


Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Unexpected

Motivational thought of the day: Good things can come from the seemingly not-so-great.

Paint Truck Spill
(image from grist.com)

Sunday, September 16, 2012

My Power is Made Perfect in Weakness

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul starts talking about boasting, and then how he was given a "thorn in [his] flesh" to torment him.  He said,
"Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
Do you remember chain e-mails? They were so popular back when I was in high school it seems.  It's when you get an e-mail from someone you know, asking you to send something to someone at the top of the list of e-mail addresses, and then move the order of the names around and forward it on to a bunch of people you know.
Well I got a chain email, asking me to send my favorite verse to the person on the list.  If I had gotten the e-mail from anyone else but one of my very best friends, I would have probably deleted it and felt no remorse; what overworked teacher has time for chain emails?  But, I did get it from my bff, so I sent on a verse, and the instructions to ten friends and, yay!, got a verse in return.  It was the verse above.  2 Corinthians 12:9-10.
It came to me from a friend's mom.  She doesn't know me.
She doesn't know that the past four weeks of teaching has been more stressful than anything else I can remember facing.
She doesn't know that I lost 5 pounds after the school year started.
Or that stress gives me so much tension in my back that sometimes I can't sleep.
Or that many days I just come home and cry of exhaustion.
Or that weakness is basically all I seem to feel lately.  I am physically, emotionally, and spiritually weak.

So today I'm grateful for the times God works like invisible strings connecting the whole world together, bringing me exactly the right words from a mom who's not mine and who doesn't know what I'm doing.
I'm grateful for a friend who blogs about joy, and asks how often we've walked past opportunities for joy. (I wonder...)
I'm grateful for a list of ways to fight for joy, and for renewed strength to do so.
I'm grateful for friends who don't live too far away, who find the time to keep me sane.