Kindness

Today in Sunday school we taught the kids about kindness. The focus however, was not just on being kind to others, but recognizing when others are kind to you. The big idea was that many times God provides what you need though the kindness of others. That was just the perfect lesson for today, because I have the perfect example of it this morning.

I have about a million and one stressors on my plate right now. And I'm not talking about little "What am I going to wear today" type stressors. I'm talking major life altering stressors. This past week I just basically hit the wall and like a roly poly I just curled up into myself to escape. I panicked. I froze. I've just been completely overwhelmed. A lot of these stressors are big things over the next few months, but, I did have one current pretty major worry.

With the school being renovated, I have to take home EVERYTHING that belongs to me in a month. As I found out this week, I have a TON of stuff! So, my current worry has been "where the heck am I going to store all this stuff over the summer?". I live on the third story in a one bedroom apartment. Sure I could keep it in my living room, but that would fill the entire space thus putting half my home out of commission for the summer. Not exactly an ideal living situation. Plus that would involve lugging it all up 3 flights of stairs then back down in a few months. Not one part of that seems reasonable or logical at all. It was looking like I was going to just have to get a storage unit for a few months, but that costs a lot of money. It's not that I couldn't afford to pay for it if I had to, but there are a lot of unknowns coming up and I sort of need to save as much money as I can. So I was pretty worried about what I was going to do about this situation.

Here's where I get to the part about God taking care of me. This morning I made it to my ABF class for the first time in months. I've been so bad about getting there early enough for anything other than sunday school. I was sitting next to this lady and she was asking if I was ready for the end of the year. I started to tell her about how I already have one foot out the door even though there are 22 1/2 days left. I was explaining the renovation and packing situation to explain why I all of a sudden felt like it should be summer and have just checked out. She asked me where I was planning to keep all my stuff over the summer and I sighed and said I thought I was going to just have to get a storage unit. She immediately offered to house all my stuff in her garage for me free of charge. She said she has a two car garage, but it's only her so she only uses half. She said up until recently her son and daughter in law had been storing a lot of stuff on the other side but had recently moved it all out so she had the space open. She offered to give me her garage code so that I can come and go as I need to in order to get it all in there.

Pure and simple kindness. This isn't someone I am great friends with, it's not someone I know incredibly well, it's someone I sit next to each week and engage in friendly conversation with. It's someone who wanted to do something nice for someone just to help them out. That's exactly what we were trying to teach the kids today. kindness. Isn't it wonderful?

One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, God is taking care of me today, and will do the same tomorrow. Somehow, I'll make it to August ...

Snow Day!

Today, at church, we had a snow day for the kids. My church does it every year, and it's such a blast! They rope off large areas, bring in all this snow, and the kids get to go outside and play during Sunday school. This is no small amount of snow either; it's enough to make snow angels, build snowmen, and have snowball fights. I took a TON of pictures, but I haven't really gotten around to editing them yet. Here's a few though:

No mittens? No worries, we have SOCKS. The kids got a kick out of this!

Snowball fight!

Cuties :)

One of my favorite 5 year olds, right before she smacked me with that snowball haha :)

With Us

With Christmas coming up, at church we have been talking about the reason we celebrate (imagine that, a church talking about the birth of Jesus around Christmas lol). In my ABF, Kathy had a really great message yesterday that sort of sunk in a little deeper than what I had heard or thought about before.
We've all heard the story of the star, the three wise men, and the baby born in the manger. Every year we celebrate His birth on Christmas, but why? It's not that I haven't thought about it before, but I always thought about it in the sense that I love Jesus, and He is my Savior, so I'm going to celebrate the day He was born. Nothing wrong with that, it's all true, it's just there's more.
What really sunk in to me this weekend was the reason I am celebrating Jesus' birth is that this is the day He came to be with me. God, who placed every star in the sky and knows them each by name (Psalm 147:4), left Heaven (would you ever want to leave there, I sure wouldn't!), and came to this world to physically be with us. He left his perfect home to come to an imperfect world, be mocked, tormented, laughed at, hurt, and abused ... all to be with us. Let that sink in. He knows what the world is like, He lived it! He understands what we are going through, because He lived it. The God of the world walked here on this earth because He loved us so much He wanted to physically be with us. And when it was time for Him to leave, He didn't leave us alone. He left us with a piece of him. He left us with the Holy Spirit, who is still, to this day, physically with us. God is with us. Got that?
So on Christmas we celebrate the day our Savior was born. We celebrate the day he came to be with us. We celebrate, for because of Him, we are NEVER alone. NEVER!
Kathy made a really good point I want to share here: We are celebrating a day that our Savior came into this world to be with us so we are never alone, so feeling lonely around the holiday sort of defeats the whole purpose of the celebration.
This year I am spending Christmas with two people in my life who I love dearly. But, there are others who I am so used to spending the holiday with that won't be able to be here this year. For one reason or another they can't make it and aren't coming. I've spent a good deal of time moping around about this. I told my mom it seems depressing, it seems lonely. Feeling lonely defeats the purpose, so I'm done with that. I am celebrating that I am NEVER alone by choosing not to feel lonely. And, I know am blessed to have my mom and brother to spend the holiday with, even if it is just the three of us.
We listened to this song in my ABF. It is mesmerizingly beautiful... if you have a few minutes to sit still and let it sink in, please do. It really is beautiful, and is exactly the message we need to remember at Christmas.

Devils Food Cupcakes with Raspberry Buttercream Icing

I am incredibly stressed. Actually, stressed does not even begin to describe how I feel, but I can't think of any other words for it. Today I found myself so overwhelmed that I was literally in a trance staring at the wall because I didn't even know where to begin with the millions of things I have to do. So, to try and keep myself from freaking out (didn't work, just held the total meltdown at bay for a few hours) I decided to do some baking.

Today's treat? Devils food cupcakes with raspberry buttercream frosting, topped with a raspberry filled with chocolate ganache. Um, can I just say YUM! I need to bake more often, because each cupcake I make seems to be far better than the last. These are quite delicious! Chocolate and raspberry were made for each other, I swear!

So, without further ado, here is today's final product:

Now that school has started back up I can do a lot more baking! It's wonderful having a place to take all the extra cupcakes. I want to bake them because I enjoy the actual baking part; I only really want to eat one or two cupcakes. Drop these off in the lounge tomorrow morning though, and I bet they'll be gone by 9am haha.

In completely unrelated news, today during Sunday school I was holding the elevator door open waiting for all the kids to get in, and one little girl looked up at me and asked if I was an Aggie. I said yes, and asked her how she knew (thinking maybe I had said it). She pointed to my ring and told me her dad is an Aggie and so is she. LOVE that a 5 year old can already pick out an aggie ring haha! Those parents sure are raising her right ;-)

"family movie night"

I had such a wonderful time this evening. Sometimes I think I should really be 10 years older with a husband and kids because I would so much rather spend an evening doing relaxing family things than going out to bars and such haha.  Anyway, this evening I went to dinner with A (remember? The student I went swimming last week), her parents, and her brother, at Berryhill.  After dinner the five of us went to the church for "family movie night".  They had a big screen set up in the common area and we all brought camping chairs and lounged around and watched Kung Fu Panda. Super cute movie by the way!

Completely unrelated to my evening, I have recently challenged myself to take at least one photo every day.  It hasn't happened EVERY day thus far, but I'm getting better at it. Some days I've taken pictures but not found anything worth posting; but, the ultimate goal is to take, edit, and post, at least one picture each day.  So, here is today's:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. (Matt 7:7)

And finally, in more unrelated news, I have officially decided to teach a kindergarten Sunday School class at my church every week.  I've been thinking about it, and praying about it, and I am really excited about the opportunity! I think it is going to be a lot of fun, and also quite a blessing. I won't be starting for another few weeks so I have some time to observe a class and figure out exactly how this is going to go. I'll keep you posted. And, if you feel so inclined, maybe you can say a little prayer for me and this new venture. :)

Vacation Bible School

I've been sitting here contemplating how I can put into words just how amazing this week of VBS was, and I have come to the conclusion that I just can't.  You had to be there. I'll explain as best I can, but my words just won't really do the week justice.

I cannot even begin to tell you what a blessing this week has been!  I had the opportunity to meet some wonderful women, and work closely with one really fantastic woman.  Me and this one other lady ran the 4 year old Bible Learning Activities room.  Each day we had five groups of 8-15 kids rotate through our room.  When they came in we had a mini lesson over different aspects of the Lord's prayer (God forgives, God provides, Praise God, God listens) and then the kids rotated through different centers to reinforce their learning.  We had an art center, discovery center, blocks center, and dramatic play center we had to set up each day (all safari themed).  You know how I am about making lists and being on top of things so as not to be too stressed?  The lady I worked with was the same way, which was SUCH a blessing because the week ended up being completely stress free! I wish you could have heard these kids articulate some of their thoughts on God.  It blew me away more than once! These 4 year olds seemed to have it more figured out than many adults I know. Each day was a wonderful opportunity to spend time with, as Mrs. Pat so wonderfully put it, some of God's perfect little lambs. Those children were quite a blessing to me! It seems the week went just as well for all grade levels. In fact, over the course of 4 days, 36+ children gave their hearts to Jesus. I think that's pretty awesome!

It seems I made an impression on the people around me, because at the end of the 4 days I was approached by one of the ladies heading up VBS, and our director of early childhood programs, and asked how I would feel about giving some of my time on Sunday mornings during the year.  Apparently they had been discussing this proposition they wanted to give to me since first thing Monday morning after seeing how I interacted with the kids in my room.  I'll be in contact with the director in the next few days to work out specifics, but it seems I may be teaching a 4 or 5 year old bible study class on Sundays.  After this week, I feel like that could be a really good fit for me, and I am really excited about the opportunity!

If I had gone to Australia I would have missed all this!  Sounds crazy, but I'm glad I didn't get to go.  In my life, right now, this is better.  Everything happens for a reason; sometimes you just have to wait a bit to find out what the reason is. It's all part of God's plan.