September Inventory

I am currently reading
"The Last Jihad" by Joel Rosenberg. It's actually a big deal to me that I am reading anything OTHER than some sort of "self-help" book.

My plans for the week
include working at Cardiac Rehab (of course) and speaking at our State conference on Friday.
I also get to assist my in-laws close on a piece of property directly across the road from us. This is God's provisional gift to us all. It became available approx 1 week before my in-laws home burned.
In their price range.
Coincidence?
Not hardly.

My latest frustration
was definitely this blog. Did you notice the template change? I messed the other one up with one simple click of my mouse. Last night around 11:00 pm, I lost everything I had done for almost 8 months. I'm tellin' ya,..I almost heaved this 'puter right out the front door! Instead, I put myself into a coma with two Benadryl. This afternoon, as I sat down to begin re-creating some of my additions,...I decided to play around with various templates.
TA-DAAA!! All of what I had lost just re-appeared in my preview of this template.
I kept it.
I'm scared to try anything new.
You may see this layout for the rest of my life.

My prayer concerns for the week
are my children. Trying to encourage a young person's spiritual life in this culture is full-time and exasperating. I am oft tempted to nag which is discouraging for all of us.
I also am praying for my life to be useful in God's Kingdom. To desire excellence in all I do. To see His big picture and not get bogged down in the details of my schedule.
I also am praying for my church to do the same thing.

I am procrastinating
writing for publication. My friend Wayne encouraged me last night to write. I need to get that off the back burner. I have no illusions about this,..I am well aware that I possess no formal writing education OR experience. I still want to try it.
If Christie Brinkley can write a best seller about the serious meaning of her dreams, surely there's a chance for me.

I am eagerly anticipating
watching Abby in a play tonight.
I'm also looking forward to breakfast Tuesday with some friends.

I am stressed about
very little at the moment.
All of my stress and worries descend on me around 10:00 or 11:00 pm.

The last song that captured my thoughts is
the old hymn, "Face to Face"
The 3rd and 4th verse go like this:
What rejoicing in His presence, when are banished grief and pain;
When the crooked way is straightened, and the dark things shall be plain.

Face to face! O blissful moment! Face to face to see and know;
Face to face with my Redeemer, Jesus Christ who loves me so!

The last scripture that captured my thoughts is
the end of Psalms 147. It used a list of various weather patterns as symbols of Praise. In these days of hurricanes and storms, I always think of them in a negative sense rather than as an outlet for His glory. (Bangladesh, for instance, gets wiped off the face of the Earth by a cyclone every other year.)
I am going to try to think of "big" weather events as a form of God expressing His power,..but I still doubt that I'll be praising Him the next time I am hunkered down in my closet trying to outlive a tornado.

A thought for the day
is from the late Mike Yaconelli:
Mike wrote in his book Messy Spirituality
"I want desperately to know God better. I want to be consistent. Right now the only consistent thing in my life is inconsistency.....But Spirituality is not about being fixed. It's about God being present in the mess of our inconsistent life."