Daily 5 - Day 273

Today's Daily 5:

1. Seeing the trees start to bud
2. Wearing flip flops for the first time this year
3. needing to wear sunglasses in the morning because the sun was out and bright
4. finding a yoga video taught by the instructor I'd been liking, that is only ten minutes long.  I don't have the energy for the longer one these days with all the extra walking, and I don't need the workout as much, but my body has been missing the stretching.
5. The sermon series that Mars Hill church has been doing surrounding the idea of water.  Particularly the one titled "Salt in the Water"
6. This was my Friday.  I'm off work now for the weekend, and diving into wedding stuff.
7. Humming a favorite worship song as I walked this morning, and then having it be sung tonight at house church unexpectedly
8. First time ever having Vietnamese Subs for dinner.  Very tasty.
9. Being at house church
10. Laughter

Ascension Day

Today is Ascension Day.

Christ rising to the heavens.

The day we remember the waiting. 

The promise again of return.

It struck me today.

That waiting.

As I wait for so many things.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Worth Checking Out

In today's edition:

Today's post from Donald Miller on knowing your work style seemed timely, since I'm definitely in the middle of a period of frustration with my job again.

I loved this post:  We are the Morning People

The recent knife attacks against Chinese school children, that are raising the issue of mental health in China continue to both sadden and fascinate me as they unfold.

Seeing Myself

This was today's Garfield cartoon.  It made me smile, and then pause to reflect just a little.  Because I haven't always been a big fan of myself.  In fact, it's something I still struggle with.  Just before I turned 25, a dear friend and I were talking about self care, and self image, and seeing oneself as the creation of God, and she assigned a task to me.  She asked me to make a list of 25 Things I Love About Myself.  Not things that connected to other people, but things that were actually about me.  The very idea made me cringe.  I finally sat down one Sunday afternoon a few months before my 26th birthday to complete the task she'd been strategically reminding me of all year.  If I'm being totally honest, I completed it partly because she told me I owed her an extra item for each birthday that passed before I completed the list, and the idea of needing even one more item when 25 was so hard was daunting.

I won't share the list here, as it's rather personal, but the excercise forced me to look at myself just a little bit differently.  To celebrate little things that are unique to the way God created me.  It's an ongoing process, and I was reminded of that process, of the progress that's been made, and the distance left to come as I read this cartoon this morning.  I think I'm going to print the cartoon out and stick it up on my wall at work, and at home, as an ongoing reminder that the quest to see differently includes seeing myself differently.

A few from Henri

I'm running around this morning and don't have time to write my usual early morning rambling sort of post.  I'll be back later in the day with some of my own thoughts.  In the meantime, here are the first of many great throughts from Henri Nouwen that have backlogged in my email inbox over the last few months.

The Healing Touch


Touch, yes, touch, speaks the wordless words of love. We receive so much touch when we are babies and so little when we are adults. Still, in friendship touch often gives more life than words. A friend's hand stroking our back, a friend's arms resting on our shoulder, a friend's fingers wiping our tears away, a friend's lips kissing our forehead --- these are true consolation. These moments of touch are truly sacred. They restore, they reconcile, they reassure, they forgive, they heal.

Everyone who touched Jesus and everyone whom Jesus touched were healed. God's love and power went out from him (see Luke 6:19). When a friend touches us with free, nonpossessive love, it is God's incarnate love that touches us and God's power that heals us.

Travelling With the Eyes of God


Travelling - seeing new sights, hearing new music, and meeting new people - is exciting and exhilarating. But when we have no home to return to where someone will ask us, "How was your trip?" we might be less eager to go. Travelling is joyful when we travel with the eyes and ears of those who love us, who want to see our slides and hear our stories.

This is what life is about. It is being sent on a trip by a loving God, who is waiting at home for our return and is eager to watch the slides we took and hear about the friends we made. When we travel with the eyes and ears of the God who sent us, we will see wonderful sights, hear wonderful sounds, meet wonderful people ... and be happy to return home.