Monday night

It's 7:20 on a Monday night. I'm home, enjoying re-runs of "Grey's Anatomy". Why is it that I get addicted to shows AFTER they start the re-run circuit on Lifetime or TBS? I digress. It's a Monday night at 7:20 and I am home. This is unusual. Monday's are Worship Team Rehearsal Night. I'm never home before 8:15pm. But tonight someone else is leading the team because I'm going to Mississippi on Thursday and won't be here for worship on Sunday!!!!

I started my initial gathering of items over the weekend. Took my freshly laundered clothes and piled them in the spare room for packing. Tonight I pulled the roller bag off the rafters of the garage and then remembered my work boots. My poor $20 work boots that have seen me through 8 trips. They are showing the wear and tear, especially from the sticky floor at one of the houses in December. The soles are now coming loose. The toes are already wearing away, showing the metal underneath. Oh the power of those steel toes...I have sung many a refrain of "I am woman, hear me roar" while clomping around the Mississippi mud with those steel toed work boots. I've replaced my work gloves three or four times, but my boots...*sigh*.

Today my allergies came back with a series of sneezes and a raw throat. I took allergy meds for the first time in months and also decided to take the opportunity to enjoy some time alone before being surrounded with people (whom I love and am honored to spend time with, but really, this introvert doesn't get energized by people and I know it!) for 8 days. So I didn't go to work, stayed in and did...nothing. No preparing, no packing, no nothing. Just read a book, watched TV, browsed the Internet, played games and did...nothing. Feeling a little guilty about that? Check. Know that the next two and half days will be packed with things both stress-releasing (bumper cars, baby! lunch with songfriend and todd t.! a cut and a color, hallelujah!) and stress inducing (final preparations for being gone from church the week before Easter, packing, possible interview with local paper)? Check. Taking the day off worth it. Oh yeah!

And I didn't even mention last night where 7 women gathered around a table for good food, great margaritas, yummy chocolate, a little poker and a lot, a lot, a lot of laughter...and that's all you get to hear about that! What is said at the poker table, stays at the poker table. ;)

When did I move to the zoo?

Friday evening I arrived home after a couple of glorious days away. So good to just be. Be quiet. Be serious. Be silly. Be contemplative. Be aware. Be sad. Be happy. Be shopping. Be listening. Be watchful. Be me. Just be.

Arriving home I pulled into the garage, opened the trunk and began to pull out the many items I collected when I heard a bird crying. Nothing unusual around this house, but this bird cry was different. I'd heard it before but not at home. Huh.

Took my stuff inside and went upstairs to visit. That's when I heard the bird again and Yo Momma says "It's a peacock". THAT'S IT! I knew I'd heard that sound before...at the zoo! Turns out there's a white peacock roaming around the neighborhood. Guess it spent the day in our neighborhood and then moved across the gully to another neighborhood. I never caught a glimpse of it, but I've heard it several times in the last couple of days. Yo Momma did some research and turns out the tail feathers can be sold for up to $500. Yikes! Me thinks someone in the area is without a very valuable pet.Edited to add:
No joke. I pushed publish and the peacock started talking again from the neighbors tree. Crazy.

Out of pocket

Yo Momma goes on a bike ride every year with her friends in Iowa. They get on their bikes and ride 62 miles whichever way the wind is blowing. For five days they ride, staying in motels at night and just having a grand time. At the end of the week they call one of the husbands back in Davenport, IA and say "come get us!". Sometimes they wind up 300+ miles away, sometimes they circle back to where they started. Yo Momma then stays a few days afterwards to visit with the family we have back there.

About 2 months ago, Papa Bear came up with an idea. Why don't we (Papa Bear and I) fly to Iowa the day that the ride is done and surprise Yo Momma. In fact why not surprise everyone back there and just show up. The plan was set in motion, tickets were bought and the fun began. I was so good at keeping the secret that I didn't tell some people who really needed to know! Sorry!

Anyway, the time came and we flew away (arms flapping all the way, Meggie, hee-hee). We arrived at 6pm Chicago time, rented a car and drove into Davenport. We had a time crunch though because our favorite ice cream shop was closing and we really needed to get there. The idea was that we would send Yo Momma a text pic with us eating ice cream and ask "Where are we?". We arrived 5 minutes before closing and gleefully had ice cream before dinner! Yo Momma, though, had turned off her phone so the surprise had to wait.

Next morning, after a night in a local hotel, we hopped into the car and headed to our friends house for the surprise. A ring of the door bell, the opening of a door and the exclamations began. What are you doing here!?! I can't believe it! It was a good surprise...I saw the tears in Yo Momma's eyes.

So, for the last few days I've been *out of pocket* as my friend Ben T. likes to say and it's been fun. I love traveling back to Iowa and being with the family there but also love driving through the countryside, looking at corn fields, going to the Isabel Bloom store and spending money, admiring farm houses and just being a little slower than life in CA tends to be. Not to mention the nightly ice cream stops (lose weight on this trip? naaaahhhh). BTW, If you are ever in Naperville, Illinois stop in downtown at the Egg Harbor Cafe...oh my goodness that food is good! They have multiple locations. I highly recommend the Cinnamon Bun French Toast. Drooling as I write this!

My time away is not yet done, though I am back to the hurried-ness of CA. This time though, it's me and God and no one else. I'm looking forward to the time to be quiet and pray.

Vacation

Tomorrow is my first day of vacation. I will be away from my office for 12 days (counting the weekends). I will miss 2 Sundays, 2 youth group meetings, 1 staff meeting, 1 worship team rehearsal, 2 bible studies, 2 on campus visits and 1 ministry team meeting. While that may not seem like much to some, that's a whole lot to me! It has also means finding people to lead worship, making sure my volunteers have things covered for youth group, preparing as much Media stuff for three weeks as possible, choosing songs for the worship team rehearsal that happens hours after I get home, getting invitations together to send while I'm gone and so on and so forth. Seriously, it's a lot of work to get ready to be away!


After Lil' Bro's wedding on Saturday I have no commitments until the following Friday. That feels weird. My only goal that whole time is to write, relax and read. Then I head to the Youth Workers Convention to be recharged in a different way. Three different events in two different places means I'm going to have a really big suitcase!


I am the queen of procrastinating. I put clothes in the washer this morning because I forgot to do it last night (I still have two loads that need to be done before I leave) and haven't even started to pick out clothes for my time away. Just remembered that I need to stop at the Post Office and pay bills tonight and my car still needs to be cleaned out. Work today has been one thing after another and I'm not sure that everything is done for the time while I'm gone but I'm determined to leave it alone, to walk away...though I know that at some point next week I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night remembering all the things that I forgot to do today. That's just the way I am.

Oh yes, I'm looking forward to being away...just wish it didn't take so much work to actually go away!

Away

I sat overlooking LT last week watching the clouds, talking with God and listening to the silence. I sat on a rock and dared the crashing waves of lake to reach me all along aware of the cresendo of noise they made hitting the rocks. I stood on a hill looking over the lake listening to the wind rushing through the trees. I sat beneath trees, my legs resting on a log listening to the sound of the snow hitting the open journal in my lap (which maybe means that it was more like snow/hail than just regular snow...but there was definitely a sound). I stood on a log in a lake listening to the sound of others throwing rocks into the lake. I woke up listening to the waves crashing, rain hitting the roof and silly little birds chirping "cheese-burger".

I sat in a circle of people listening to their stories, their experiences with God, hearing their heartache, pain and joy. I heard myself saying words that I didn't know I had been thinking. I heard my own voice crack with pain, realization, fear and hope. I listened to the noise in my own head, the sounds of my own heart, the hope and pain in my own soul and realized...not my plans, God's plans. Not my hopes, God's hopes. Not my dreams, God's dreams. Not my life, God's life.


Whoever said that silence is golden, really needs to be kicked in the shins. It's messy, it's complicated and allows God way too much space to actually start talking. I'm just sayin'.

Surfacing

It's been a few pretty heavy spiritual days. I'm nowhere near able to express what God and I have been talking about the last couple of days and honestly might not be able to for awhile. I do have to say that those snow storm predictions were right on. Yesterday (Thursday) we woke up to snow and it snowed off and on until 2 or 3pm. Nothing major, just like a light rain only in snow form. That didn't stop us from spending the whole day up by Fallen Leaf. It was a little surreal to be sitting by a lake talking with God and having snow fall on my notebook. Strange stuff. The snow wasn't sticking though and the sun shined through at intervals so I stayed pretty warm and dry.

This morning we woke up to snow actually on the ground in spots. Very fun, kind of cold. Trin and I are heading out to buy sweatshirts cuz the weather forecast calls for more rain and cool weather throughout the weekend. I'm tired of the sweatshirt I brought!

The adventure continues!

Leaving...

I'm supposed to be meeting Trinity in a little over an hour to head to the Lake. Yes, my away time has arrived! I'm so ready to just be on the road and leaving some things behind, taking some things with me. It's time, time, time for a break!

Of course as I'm preparing for my time away there are always little things that crop up. I spent 3 1/2 hours yesterday doing last minute things so that I could leave. Like getting the summer calendar out for the youth groups and making sure all the notes are in place for my volunteers who are running group (thank you!), putting the songs in order next Sunday's worship team leader...because part of being away means I get a break from leading worship too! Oh and prepping stuff for R.A.W. last night. Throw in Church, a Staff Gathering, R.A.W. and the after-R.A.W. gathering and well, yesterday was busy.

Today I turned on my laptop to upload new songs onto my I-pod and most of the screen is well, just random lines in different colors. Pretty but not what I wanted to see. I managed to update my I-Pod despite this interference, but there is no way it's going to make it with me on my time away. Why do these things always happen when I want to take the laptop with me? So much for doing work on the laptop on study leave. Geesh.

One hour, 15 minutes before I'm officially away!

Hot

It's hot. Stinkin' hot. It shouldn't be this hot in here in May people. Really. At 5pm our outdoor thermometer read 102. The thermometer upstairs read 92, the one in the stairwell read 85 and the one downstairs read 80. I've opened all the windows and doors, turned on all the fans and have managed to get the indoor temps down about 12 degrees at 9:15pm. I will say after living in the Central Valley, I do appreciate that nights get cooler on the coast. Still it's just too hot!

The thing that is getting me through this hot spell, besides the fan I've dug out of the closet is the constant reminder that I am leaving town in less than 48 hours. In fact, if I did the math it's probably close to 38 hours. YES! Guaranteed that it's gonna be cooler at the Lake than it is here. Oh, yeah and there's the whole week away from normal work. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

I suddenly got a little nervous the other day, though, when I realized that I will be spending 3 days talking with God. It hit me that I am opening up myself to God in a way that I haven't in a very long time and that's a little nerve wracking. God tends to show up and start talking, which always leads to something that I never thought would happen and, well, I'm just a little nervous. I'll keep you posted!

Great, one of the neighborhood dogs just annoyed a skunk. So much for cooling off the house! 37 hours and I'm gone!

Edited to Add: I just checked the forcast for the Lake...they are predicting snow flurries for next Friday. I realize that's a week out but hello from 100 degree weather to snow flurries in a week. Can anyone say Global Warming?

4 days

4 more days until I will be away...why is it that when one is getting ready to go away the stack of things to-do before one leaves seems to just grow larger and larger and larger?? It's not fair, I say.

Away

Two weeks from today I will be away. Or maybe not quite away but in the packing stages for my time away. See, in two weeks I will begin my week of Study Leave, a glorious wonderful time that is not a vacation, yet is away from the everyday-ness of work, where I spend hour upon hour reading books, talking with God and all that away from my desk, the church and the people that I lovingly refer to as "my kids", though they aren't really my kids, they are other people's kids, they are God's kids and they hang out with me at least once a week, which makes them "my kids". Have I told you that I'm going away? I think from that last rambling sentence you may see the reason why.

It's been several months since I have had any serious time off to regenerate my soul. I knew that it was close to being my time away last week when I walked into the church building and said to myself "I don't want to do this. I don't want to be here." That, my friends, is not the way a church leader likes to start off on a Sunday morning and yet there I was. It was the honest reaction from my soul. I need some space from church, from the everyday-ness of work. I need some time to spend with God, to look up and say "Hey, what's the deal?" and actually sit and wait for the answer. Not hurry onto the next thing or answer my cellphone or email or any of the other things that distract me from listening to God's answer. I need time away. (Okay, see now it's just becoming really fun to italicize "away". I am in serious need of a break.)

Making my time away even more fabulous is that I will be on a prayer retreat for 4 days followed by three days with a fabulous friend who is also in ministry and who makes me think and this is beginning to sound like the best Study Leave time ever. Ohhh, and the best part is that all of this will occur in the beautiful mountains on the shores of one of the best lakes in California and you can see why I'm really ready for my time away.

Two weeks and counting.