Thankful Thursday [2]
8th November 2012 | 101, friendlies, the thrift store | 8 comments
Linking up with Meghan and Sarah again.
*Be forewarned: today I am GUSHING about the things I am thankful for.*
My new sweater.
This past weekend was one ugly day after the other. See… my face is really sensitive to changes in the weather, and at the thought of a new season, it gets chapped. Not just dry, mind you. Chapped, according to the internet, is to cause the skin to roughen, redden and crack. ON MY FACE, PEOPLE. As if having chapped hands isn’t enough. It’s just foul… and did I mention that it is ITCHY? My face itches. It’s a nightmare.
Okay. Now that you understand the severity of this problem, perhaps you can understand why my ugly days felt so ugly. I’d not been prepared for it, it just happened. So I threw on this sweater and a pair of jeans and went to the mall… where I received one compliment after another. Not one but TWO girls from Forever 21 gushed about my sweater. Ask me how many times people at Forever 21 have EVER – in my YEARS of frequenting that store – complimented me on what I’m wearing. Never. It has NEVER happened. And TWO in one night!
Then one of the girls at Nordstrom stopped to talk to me about my sweater. She’d assumed I got it at Urban Outfitters for upwards of a hundred dollars. But really it was just $2.50 at The Salvation Army on 1/2 off day. She told me she was tempted to get her phone and take a picture. ! ?
There is a slight chill in the air and I hadn’t planned out what I should wear, and I remembered this sweater.
I am INCREDIBLY thankful for my sweater. It keeps me warm… in spirit, too.
[2]
Lunch with my dad.
I’ll write more about this later, since it’s part of my 101 in 1001 thing. But on Monday my dad and I got lunch together at Bushel and Peck. I am so thankful to live close to my father again. He loves me so much.
[3]
My free tall skinny peppermint mocha.
Today we went to Starbucks after I got Micah. The lady in the drive thru wasn’t used to being at the drive thru. I re-loaded $10 onto my card. She scanned my card, then my debit card. Handed me my drink, and said that was it. Now.. I always do the “I’m going to put $10 on my card before I pay for my drink” thing, and I know for a fact that they need to scan my Starbucks card twice. So I said, “are you sure that I got charged for my drink?” She looked back at the screen and said “Oh, yes definitely.”
But when I looked at my Starbucks card balance, it was obvious that she hadn’t charged me for it.
and the best part is that I had noticed and tried to pay. The truth will get you free drinks. I mean, I guess the verse says “The truth will set you free” but it’s close enough, right?
[4]
Andrew Smith.
Of anybody I have ever met, few people make me feel more at peace with myself than Andrew. He inspires me to be both a better person and yet remain wholly myself. He recently moved to Germany. I almost wrote that he “went” to Germany, but he’ll be in Germany for longer than I was in California, and I always said I moved. Thanks to the sometimes slow process of The Salvation Army, Andrew’s flight over kept getting pushed back and pushed back until he flew out of San Francisco the day after I did. Which meant that I got to soak up every moment I could. Every conversation, every random song he burst into. The joking way he says “you’re not down.”
We threw him a going away party, and as we played Andrew trivia and stood around celebrating the party that Andrew brings along with him wherever he goes, I found myself looking at him and admiring him and wondering how it is that I should know someone as brave and faithful and understanding as he is.
He has been, in my darkest moments, not just a light in the darkness.. but a discoball in the darkness, spinning and creating a movement of light and color into my life.
I put his picture up by my soap dispenser in my bathroom. At first I did it because I’m weird, and then God kind of stepped in and said “I’ll help you not look completely idiotic..” and every time I wash my hands, I pray for Andrew and sing this song:
Give us clean hands, give us pure hearts.
Let us not lift our souls to another
O God let us be a generation that seeks
that seeks your face, O God of Jacob
I sing those words in my heart as a prayer for and with Andrew. So Andrew crosses my mind often. He messaged me today, from Germany, and told me that he’s shared conversations we’ve had with people in Germany, in German. I am almost paralyzed with appreciation for Andrew and his impact on my life.
february 26th, 2012 – sabbath
26th February 2012 | faith. | 1 comment
when i was in california, i had a sunday afternoon tradition. after {or sometimes in place of} church, i would go to starbucks with my computer and Bible, i’d order a caramel iced coffee with milk and i’d read/write/free refill sometimes until the store closed. sundays were a day of complete rest and relaxation, with nowhere to go and nothing really to do.
so today, for the first time since returning home in may, i have found myself at starbucks, shivering and drinking a caramel iced coffee with milk, and writing.
it feels so good to be doing nothing, because i’ve been doing so much running. i’ve been going from point A immediately to point B to C and D, E and F… and i’m starting to get sick and tired. not of anything, but just sick and tired.
but it’s Lent. and Lent is a period of fasting. and fasting is stopping. so i am stopping the running, stopping the excessive busyness. i am just sitting at starbucks and thinking and just being.
did you know that the observing of Lent comes with a weekly reading plan? it does! every sunday, there is an element of Christ’s ministry to study and reflect on. and today’s is about Christ in the desert.
in high school my friend randy told me something his youth pastor said, and it’s stuck with me:
if satan can’t tempt you, he’ll make you busy.
wow. because really, when i’m busy, what are the first things that go? time with God. prayer. meditating on him. i exchange on-my-knees time for in-the-car time, and if i hear a bible verse on the christian radio station, i tell myself i’ve encountered Scripture and therefore i’m alright. i substitute being around God for being with God.
donald miller {WHO I MET THIS PAST WEEK ABSOLUTELY NO BIG DEAL BUT MORE ON THAT LATER} once wrote,
“It occurs to me it is not so much the aim of the devil to lure me with evil as it is to preoccupy me with the meaningless. ”
time is important and valuable and expires at a rate of every single second. and satan does a fantastic job at convincing me that any second spent alone or not with someone or going somewhere is a waste of a second. but God says to rest. God rested, not because he needed to but because he knew i would need to and he wanted me to know that i could see it as a way to commune with God, to rejoice in my like-him-ness.
and i forgot how great this feels, to look around at the ceiling and the walls and the bags of coffee, and asking God to reveal himself to me in it all, to provide and heal and comfort me as i sit and essentially do nothing. asking him to prove to me that i don’t have to DO anything for the Spirit to restore me and refresh me.
isn’t Lent about countering what donald miller suggested? isn’t it about giving up the meaningless?
i gave up facebook. but for the first time in my lent practices, i’m celebrating feast days by responding to facebook messages, because there are plenty of meaningful things that quickly become meaningless when they become excessive.
but i really am shivering.
the long road home.
19th May 2011 | everyday life, travels | 5 comments
This is a few days overdue, but I am home in the Pacific Northwest. Pulled in on Saturday night. I held my cat and walked around the house, relearning all of the little details.
En route to home, I stayed with the Birks for a few days. Next week I will go back because that girl in the picture is graduating from high school. Seems like just yesterday she was 10 years old. But no, next week she is graduating from high school. We will spend the summer working at Camp Arnold… and then she’ll be a college freshman at Seattle Pacific. CRAZY. Back to the plans: I’ll get to be around for Graham’s birthday, Memorial Day/my birthday, and will stay to play at the Birks house concert. So making it home was slightly anticlimatic. I’ll be in San Francisco for almost two weeks.
But speaking of San Francisco. Like I said, I stayed there for a few days.
I arrived on Mother’s Day. We made Stacy a cake. You can’t see the cake, but we really did make it.
One day I went to pick Emily up at school. I texted her and said “What time do you get out of school, again?” she replied, “12:12.” It was 11:10, and I thought she was out at 11:11, so I sat in the parking lot and started reading Redeeming Love. At about the same time, Andrew texted me to tell me that he was at Starbucks doing homework if I wanted to hang out. After Em got out of school, we went and hung out. My friend Nicole was working, so when she got off she came and sat with us.
Six months ago, only 1 of those people lived in Pacifica. Now 3 do. and then there’s me.
Remember Frappucino happy hour last week? Took advantage of it often. Brought her back one, but it made her cold. so that was solved with a Snuggie.
On Saturday I got breakfast with Caleb and Jen in Sacramento. My GPS took me over the Golden Gate Bridge. My 12th trip to San Francisco and I finally saw it! 
Yesterday something really cool happened. Justin Bieber tweeted his cover of my friend Ernie’s song. I wrote about Ernie on my old blog. A few days ago, someone shared a video of Justin singing the song live, and that was exciting… but then Justin Bieber himself tweeted a recording! Ernie Halter was blowing up on Twitter last night.
This morning I woke up and had an insane amount of mail, which was odd because I’d checked it fairly late and had cleaned it all out. This is what I saw when I looked in my inbox:
That’s a bunch of notifications of new followers from Twitter. I was really confused, until I saw the one at the very bottom. See that? Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) is now following you on Twitter! Including Justin Bieber, I’ve gained 103 new followers so far today. one hundred. What the heck. {that image is appropriately titled “what the heck.png}
Here’s Bieber’s cover of Ernie’s song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmTqVXXjhQ
Speaking of videos and my friends. I’m glad to be back in the northwest for many, many reasons. Here’s one of them… Justin Klump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivu4Kd9FrYg
Today I woke up and made a mental list of things to do. Things like “clean out my desk” and “go to the store” and “write letters” and “go on a walk.” However, it is 4:30 and all I have done is prepare dinner, play the piano, start catching up on Criminal Minds.. oh, and make these.
and I had the best days with you.
25th March 2011 | uncategorized | 6 comments
It’s been a good week here in Pacifica. Just what I needed: a break; a rest; a time with people I love; a time with people who love me.
Not everything is captured in this blog, in the same way that a lot of the best things that happen to us cannot be retold but instead just become a part of us.
We went to Mitchell’s with our friend Andrew. There is a boy that works there who I think is the cutest boy in the world. He was there, and we were trying to read his name tag. Lauren stood on this bench for optimum viewing. Then he came and was stocking things right in front of her, by the window.
Emily and I went to Starbucks one day, but it was too busy… so we ended up in Denny’s, which is not where this picture is from. We walked past Payless on our way to the car and decided to go try shoes on. Then we each bought a pair of these lovely black velcro shoes. That’s a lie. They were UGLY.
We all went to “The Burrito Shop.” and got burritos. I waited all day for it.
I discovered that Rite Aid has an entire section of my beloved Taylor Swift cards – ones I had NEVER, EVER seen. I can’t believe I walked out without purchasing one. But don’t worry, I have plans to return and stock up. Have you seen the Taylor Swift cards? They are so lovely!
It was a terribly stormy day, so I went to Starbucks to redeem my free drink. The barista there helped me get an offensively expensive drink. Do you see that? $5.95, free! The first picture is what my cup looked like. I have no idea what it means, but I drank it!
While I was at Starbucks, I saw a familiar face. A completely out-of-place familiar face….
My friend Nicole, from Portland! She just moved to Pacifica 3 weeks ago and now works at this Starbucks I frequent when I am here. Elijah once told me that I know someone everywhere I go – when things like this happen, I think about him. and then I miss him.
After picking up Lauren on the stormiest day in the world, we went to a cafe down the street from Emily & Graham’s school to wait for them. Marveled at this beautiful display of pastries…
This cafe has books you can read, so I picked up a poetry book while Lauren read a book about two people named Jon and Kate and their 8 children.
Lauren declared for the fourth or fifth time how much she likes my sunglasses. So I gave them to her. So I have officially given 2 things away this year. 9 more to go.
So I am happy, content & full of love right now.
