Last Saturday for the first time in my life, I ran an entire 5K event . Five weeks prior I could barely sustain a run for a full minute. In between, I trained, grew hopeful, grew discouraged, and grew hopeful again.
A week before the event was Mother’s Day. Investigating the course together as a family seemed like a great way to celebrate. Continue reading I Ran 5K — Twice!
Call me Tortoise.
Three and a half weeks ago, I decided it was time to re-acquaint myself with my almost-forgotten goal of becoming a runner. I looked up the Couch to 5k plan (5k = 5 kilometers = 3.1 miles) on the Internet and reminded myself that I bought those bright pink shoes because they are RUNNING shoes.
My online friend, Bronwyn Lea, invited me to write for her Words That Changed My World series. When I read her invitation, I knew exactly what to write about.
I have generally been a mediocre student. Clever, but… my teachers would often say looking perplexed at me. But… the motivation was often difficult to find, I might have supplied had I known myself better.
My parents were each the first generation of their respective families to go on to and graduate from a university. My mother is now a retired pharmacist and my late father was an electrical engineer for Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Northrup Corporation in Southern California. The FACT that each of their five children WOULD acquire a university education was in the air we breathed and the water we drank. It was an of course in my mind. Life without a university degree was inconceivable. Being the youngest of five, I watched as each of my two sisters and two brothers graduated from high school and went on to area California State Universities.
I somehow squeaked through my senior year of high school and graduated low in the class. Finished with high school, poor grades in hand, and no driving career ambition led me to enroll at the local City College. There I merely took some acting classes my first year.
“The beauty is that loving relationship becomes both the means and the end of personal identity. It is both how we exist and the goal for which we exist.”
—Hannah Anderson in Made For More
I know the way of the hermit. It has surprised me to learn that to be a hermit, one need not live alone. I am a wife and a mother of two, and yet, I am also a hermit. I interact with people face to face or over the phone only when it is necessary. And sometimes not even then.
Continue reading The Way of the Hermit — When Pursuits Become Idols
Think your skills and talents aren’t of the spiritual persuasion? Au contraire! Whatever God has blessed you with can be used to build His kingdom.
Moses told the Israelites, “See, GOD has selected Bezalel … . He’s filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill ability, and know-how for making all sorts of things, to design and work in gold, silver, and bronze; to carve stones and set them; to carve wood, working in every kind of skilled craft. And he’s also made him a teacher, he and Oholiab … . He’s gifted them with the know-how needed for carving, designing, weaving, and embroidering in blue, purple, and scarlet fabrics, and in fine linen. They can make anything and design anything.
“Bezalel and Oholiab, along with everyone whom GOD has given the skill and know-how for making everything involved in the worship of the Sanctuary as commanded by GOD, are to start work.”
The Daily Message Exodus 35:30 – 36:1
Twenty-nine years ago today I survived a car crash that could have taken my life. Rather than perish, I managed to, basically, walk away from it with merely cuts and bruises. Never mind that there was an immobilizing backboard, an ambulance ride, and an emergency room visit in between. Never mind that the subsequent police report read, “Car damage: Total, all sides and top.” In spite of those truths, I managed to hobble through my front door on my own two feet that evening.