IN THE TRENCHES...

It occurred to me while recently working with my son on a trench leading to where their tiny house will be, that LIFE IS LIKE A TRENCH!  Sometimes it's clear cut and easy for a while.  Other times you get hung up on a root.  Sometimes storms come along and fill your trench with water and mud and you have to re-dig!  Thankfully, we have our family and friends to come along beside us and help us out!  

How's your trench right now?  Easy?  If it is, God calls us to help our brothers and sisters!  Are you hung up on a root?  Talk to someone and ask them to help you.  Maybe you need a counselor.  Has a storm muddied things up?  Get out that pump and try to do something to clean it out.  Find someone you can confide in and take a step towards a clean path.  

This verse in Galatians speaks plainly about what believers should do: Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due time we will reap a harvest, if we do not give up.  Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to the family of faith.  Gal. 6: 9-10. 

So thankful for these guys who aren't afraid of hard work and are such sweet brothers in Christ to my son and his Tiny House Project!

FRIENDSHIP BOOSTER SHOT...

Recently I have received some friendship booster shots, and I'm so grateful!  Sometimes we get so busy as adults (and especially leaders) and we get into so much of a routine rut that we don't take time for friendships!  I'm including The Hubs on this.  As a couple married for 35 years, we are comfortable with things as they are, plus so busy with our family, that we don't reach out often enough to make new or maintain friendships.  Then we get to thinking that no one else really cares or wants to be around us.  I know it's not true but in my mind I start to make these excuses when we think about reaching out to someone for a dinner or night out.

Both these ladies are friends of mine and they've given me a friendship booster shot!  Quite unplanned, we've gotten to do some fun things together lately!

My friend Amy is from Texas and we've been online friends from blogging since about 2009!  We graduated to Facebook and Instagram in our friendship.  We finally got to meet in person when her husband had some business near my city.  It was so great to get to know each other better and talk about all the things that we sometimes won't share online.  I'm happy to say she's my sister in Christ and we share so many similarities.  Looking forward to another time to get together and we'll bring our husbands along!

Patty and I are friends because our kids are friends!  She did the chalk work on this sign for me recently!  Both our sons were good friends in elementary through high school and all loved music.  They performed together and spent many a weekend night having fun together.  She's also a sister in Christ at a church across town, but we hadn't seen each other much since the boys graduated.  Recently we reconnected with my son's wedding, then she joined my exercise class, then her oldest son's band was here to perform and of course, like a Mama Bear, I had to go support him!  It's been great to spend more time with her and her husband recently.  

Does fear keep you from seeking friendship?  It's really the bottom line for me, I think.  Fear of rejection.  I hope I can remember how enjoyable these times have been recently and get out there and make some new friends and maintain the old ones.  :)

LET IT GO...

Not talking about the Disney song!😱

This week we had a Panel Discussion on Depression in our Women's Wednesday night Bible Class. 

What I found interesting was they (women counselors) talked briefly about the difference between discouragement, depression and clinical depression.  One of the helpful things mentioned was that when you have a discouraging thought, it is usually temporary.  You can move on and it doesn't really affect your behavior/life for too long.  Which is not true of depression.  One coping mechanism they suggested is that you acknowledge the problem and send it on it's way, like a train (from the book, Flourish, by Martin Seligman).

I associated that with a similar suggestion in Meditation.  Often when you are praying or meditating, random thoughts come into our heads that disrupt us.  What I've learned is that you should acknowledge it, then let it go - and don't beat yourself up for having the thought.  Or, if you're afraid you will forget the thought and need to act on it, jot it down quickly, then go right back to the Meditation.  

Since I'm pretty sure your brain acts like mine and it going 12 different directions at once, this is helpful to me!  Just LET. IT. GO.  Whether it is a discouraging thought or situation, or when you are actually trying to pray or meditate and you get interrupted by your own brain.  LET. IT. GO.

I'm reminded of a song by the same title written by Brianna Gaither.  She wrote hers long before Disney's Frozen came along.  Have a listen HERE, and have a beautiful week!

ESCAPE ROOM ENTERTAINMENT...

We just celebrated a couple of family birthdays by going out for dinner and going to an Escape room! It was a lot more fun than I expected (the birthday girl said the same)! We had a couple of funny things that happened that slowed us down, but we did escape in time.  One thing that happened was we did actually press the HINT button when we got stumped, and when they came to help us and we told them we had tried the numbers we found from the clues to open the combination lock, they discovered it had been reset and they had to cut the lock off with deadbolt cutters.  Then they gave us back 10 minutes on the clock.  Also, there was a purse on the table and we all thought it belonged to someone in the room, but it was actually one of the clues and had a key in it to another lock.  :)

I didn't contribute much to the solving of the puzzle but I did find the gun (a toy)! Mostly, I enjoyed just watching our kids interact with each other. There was Son #1 who was fiddling with the physical props in the room, Son #2 who went to work cracking codes with letters and numbers, and my daughter who was trying different combinations on a locked box.  Along with their spouses, it was fun watching them work.

Doing something different was kinda fun!  Good to get out of the norm every once in a while.  But that room definitely would've been a challenge for me on my own.  Grab some friends and try it!