I had coffee with a girl in my small group this morning, and it was an amazing time just to hear what's going on in her life, with school, friends, her relationship with the Lord, etc.. Amidst all this time of listening, I was overwhelmed with SO many ideas for ministry with my church! As we all know, I get super excited about tons of new and different ideas, and then...somehow...they fall apart. Whether because of circumstances, my own personal laziness, or it just not working out for some random reason. I figured if I wrote them all down in a blog, I"ll remember them all, and I"ll be more likely not to allow my own personal laziness and lack of initiative to be at fault. So here goes:
*A knitting/crocheting group for the women in my church- we'll meet at a local coffee shop every other week through the fall and winter months, to talk, laugh, listen, and work on all our wintry stitching projects.
*Coffee chats weekly with girls in my small group
*Ballroom dance lessons for girls in college/high school, maybe monthly? I'm not sure of this idea, or when I would start it, but it's something I've been asked about in the past, and is very much a sought-after activity by women in these age groups.
*Yoga classes for women in my church? Maybe? Just because I love it SO much, and I want other people to love it, too. Not sure how well this will go over, though...
*Meditation Workshops for local churches, specifically my own church. To teach people how to control their thoughts and emotions, so their prayers aren't one big run-on sentence that slowly drifts in and out of focus. Someone once said prayer is the act of talking to God, and meditation is the act of listening to God. Even the Bible tells us to "Meditate daily."
*Get involved in high school youth group ministry, particularly with the girls. Maybe teach a high school girl bible study?
*Continue leading college women small groups through my church.
*Get my masters in psychology and counseling, so I can become a family and marriage counselor, hopefully full-time with a church, as well as becoming a Girls' Minister. (This is my favorite, favorite one)
These are all I have for now, but be looking for updates and additions. I'm so excited about the powerful plans the Lord has for us!!
Monday, September 19, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Thirst and Counseling
Wow! A lot has happened in the days since I last posted. My bestie Sarah and I have begun leading a small group for our church. Since the Bible study we're doing currently is entitled "Thirst," during our first meeting we decorated big wine goblets with our names and pretty designs- we plan on featuring a different beverage for the girls to enjoy every week. Our first beverage was this yummy raspberry sherbert wedding punch- mm mmmm!!
Also, I had a meeting with my awesome pastor and his wife (who, have I mentioned, are AWESOME) this morning about where my life is headed and how to attack these goals. As you know, I want to get my masters in counseling, and they believe in that for me, which is an incredible show of support and faith for me. They brought to my attention how much cheaper getting my degree at a state school would be, and how it would open more doors than going to seminary would. Especially because I don't want to be a "biblical counselor," I want to be a counselor who knows Truth and draws FROM the Bible. Also, if I go to seminary, it only opens doors to Christian counseling which, while that is, indeed, the kind of counseling I want to do, until I find a church that can pay a full-time counselor on staff, I'll need to work in different places. This seems like one big run-on thought... but I'm slowly working through all these things. Maybe I'll stay here and go back to my alma mater? They do have a grad program in psychology/counseling. AND last night in my Power Yoga class, an old friend showed up whom I haven't seen in almost a year- she was suddenly back to school to pursue HER masters in psychology and counseling AT our alma mater! CRAZY! So...I'm still not quite sure what I'm going to do, but I am finally at the point where I know I have to do something. Pastor Joe said this morning that he hears so often from people that they're waiting for the "rock from heaven" to fall and show them where to go or what to do. He said I needed to move... to walk....to just get started, and the Lord would nudge me in the right direction. It's much easier to steer a rolling stone than get it started. So I suppose it's time to start...rolling.
Something else very...coincidental...happened recently. High School Girls Ministry has been something laid on my heart for a very, very long time. Not getting involved in the youth group is the one great regret I have from my last church. I was told very recently that while our church is now looking for a full-time Youth Minister, they have college-aged students- leaders- who hang out with the youth group, go on trips with them, and hang with them during the Wednesday service, etc... but right now they only have male students helping out. They have absolutely no female help. Calling my name, maybe?! The problem is that I teach yoga Wednesday nights from 4:30-9, and their youth group meets at 7 pm. Well, I thought this was strangely coincidental, so I talked to my boss about it, told her everything I felt for so long, and how strange all these coincidental things seem...and her FIRST response was, "Then we'll work it out, babe. If this is your path, we'll make it work." How lovely is she!!
So, again, I'm not totally positive what's going to happen, or where I'm going to go...or stay... but I am SO excited to get the ball rolling...no pun intended... and see what awesome plans the Lord is very clearly pursuing me to show me!
Currently watching: a Friends marathon!
Also, I had a meeting with my awesome pastor and his wife (who, have I mentioned, are AWESOME) this morning about where my life is headed and how to attack these goals. As you know, I want to get my masters in counseling, and they believe in that for me, which is an incredible show of support and faith for me. They brought to my attention how much cheaper getting my degree at a state school would be, and how it would open more doors than going to seminary would. Especially because I don't want to be a "biblical counselor," I want to be a counselor who knows Truth and draws FROM the Bible. Also, if I go to seminary, it only opens doors to Christian counseling which, while that is, indeed, the kind of counseling I want to do, until I find a church that can pay a full-time counselor on staff, I'll need to work in different places. This seems like one big run-on thought... but I'm slowly working through all these things. Maybe I'll stay here and go back to my alma mater? They do have a grad program in psychology/counseling. AND last night in my Power Yoga class, an old friend showed up whom I haven't seen in almost a year- she was suddenly back to school to pursue HER masters in psychology and counseling AT our alma mater! CRAZY! So...I'm still not quite sure what I'm going to do, but I am finally at the point where I know I have to do something. Pastor Joe said this morning that he hears so often from people that they're waiting for the "rock from heaven" to fall and show them where to go or what to do. He said I needed to move... to walk....to just get started, and the Lord would nudge me in the right direction. It's much easier to steer a rolling stone than get it started. So I suppose it's time to start...rolling.
Something else very...coincidental...happened recently. High School Girls Ministry has been something laid on my heart for a very, very long time. Not getting involved in the youth group is the one great regret I have from my last church. I was told very recently that while our church is now looking for a full-time Youth Minister, they have college-aged students- leaders- who hang out with the youth group, go on trips with them, and hang with them during the Wednesday service, etc... but right now they only have male students helping out. They have absolutely no female help. Calling my name, maybe?! The problem is that I teach yoga Wednesday nights from 4:30-9, and their youth group meets at 7 pm. Well, I thought this was strangely coincidental, so I talked to my boss about it, told her everything I felt for so long, and how strange all these coincidental things seem...and her FIRST response was, "Then we'll work it out, babe. If this is your path, we'll make it work." How lovely is she!!
So, again, I'm not totally positive what's going to happen, or where I'm going to go...or stay... but I am SO excited to get the ball rolling...no pun intended... and see what awesome plans the Lord is very clearly pursuing me to show me!
Currently watching: a Friends marathon!
Friday, September 9, 2011
Sick.
I've been sick for only 3 days...and they've been the longest 3 days of this year. It started with a really sore throat, dizziness, and lymph nodes so swollen I was acutely aware of how they hated me. It then became a full-on attack from my sinus cavities, attempting to see which side could get more gloomy and agitated. I've slept 23 hours in the last 2 days, thanks to my SWEET medicine that only cost $4, but every day I wake up feeling foggy and sluggish. Not the best way to wake up, but at least I have been able to sleep through most of the fevers. I've also been SUPER faithful to my neti pot, a kriya I swear by. My dear friend Megan brought me Wellness Tea with echinacea last night, and it both warmed my throat and my soul.
I'm hoping to nip this sickness in the bud in the next day or two. In the past when I have been sick, it's lasted months. I don't often get sick, but when I do it's terrible. I haven't practiced many healthy lifestyle behaviors in my past, so I'm hoping that with all my new-found wellness techniques I can take care of this sickness much quicker than in the past. Not only because sickness, in general, sucks, but because my Ayurvedic fall detox begins next Monday and I'd like to be healthy while I practice this. Further, I've been teaching my best friend how to ballroom dance so she can go out with me on weekends. I know how very much she's been looking forward to going dancing, and I know how much I enjoy it myself, so I really need to be feeling great soon so we can go.
Here's to health and happiness!
Currently listening to: The Civil Wars, Pandora Radio Station
I'm hoping to nip this sickness in the bud in the next day or two. In the past when I have been sick, it's lasted months. I don't often get sick, but when I do it's terrible. I haven't practiced many healthy lifestyle behaviors in my past, so I'm hoping that with all my new-found wellness techniques I can take care of this sickness much quicker than in the past. Not only because sickness, in general, sucks, but because my Ayurvedic fall detox begins next Monday and I'd like to be healthy while I practice this. Further, I've been teaching my best friend how to ballroom dance so she can go out with me on weekends. I know how very much she's been looking forward to going dancing, and I know how much I enjoy it myself, so I really need to be feeling great soon so we can go.
Here's to health and happiness!
Currently listening to: The Civil Wars, Pandora Radio Station
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Memorandum 9/11
Leap, by Brian Doyle
Jennifer Brickhouse saw them falling, hand in hand.
Many people jumped. Perhaps hundreds. No one knows. They struck the pavement with such force that there was a pink mist in the air.
The mayor reported the mist.
A kindergarten boy who saw people falling in flames told his teacher that the birds were on fire. She ran with him on her shoulders out of the ashes.
Tiffany Keeling saw fireballs falling that she later realized were people. Jennifer Griffin saw people falling and wept as she told the story. Niko Winstral saw people free-falling backwards with their hands out, like they were parachuting. Joe Duncan on his roof on Duane Street looked up and saw people jumping. Henry Weintraub saw people "leaping as they flew out." John Carson saw six people fall, "falling over themselves, falling, they were somersaulting." Steve Miller saw people jumping from a thousand feet in the air. Kirk Kjeldsen saw people flailing on the way down, people lining up and jumping, "too many people falling." Jane Tedder saw people leaping and the sight haunts her at night. Steve Tamas counted fourteen people jumping and then he stopped counting. Stuart DeHann saw one woman's dress billowing as she fell, and he saw a shirtless man falling end over end, and he too saw the couple leaping hand in hand.
Several pedestrians were killed by people falling from the sky. A fireman was killed by a body falling from the sky.
But he reached for her hand and she reached for his hand and they leaped out the window holding hands.
I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers but I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.
Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here.
No one knows who they were: husband and wife, lovers, dear friends, colleagues, strangers thrown together at the window there at the lip of hell. Maybe they didn't even reach for each other consciously, maybe it was instinctive, a reflex, as they both decided at the same time to take two running steps and jump out the shattered window, but they did reach for each other, and they held on tight, and leaped, and fell endlessly into the smoking canyon, at two hundred miles an hour, falling so far and so fast that they would have blacked out before they hit the pavement near Liberty Street so hard that there was a pink mist in the air.
Jennifer Brickhouse saw them holding hands, and Stuart DeHann saw them holding hands, and I hold onto that.
Jennifer Brickhouse saw them falling, hand in hand.
Many people jumped. Perhaps hundreds. No one knows. They struck the pavement with such force that there was a pink mist in the air.
The mayor reported the mist.
A kindergarten boy who saw people falling in flames told his teacher that the birds were on fire. She ran with him on her shoulders out of the ashes.
Tiffany Keeling saw fireballs falling that she later realized were people. Jennifer Griffin saw people falling and wept as she told the story. Niko Winstral saw people free-falling backwards with their hands out, like they were parachuting. Joe Duncan on his roof on Duane Street looked up and saw people jumping. Henry Weintraub saw people "leaping as they flew out." John Carson saw six people fall, "falling over themselves, falling, they were somersaulting." Steve Miller saw people jumping from a thousand feet in the air. Kirk Kjeldsen saw people flailing on the way down, people lining up and jumping, "too many people falling." Jane Tedder saw people leaping and the sight haunts her at night. Steve Tamas counted fourteen people jumping and then he stopped counting. Stuart DeHann saw one woman's dress billowing as she fell, and he saw a shirtless man falling end over end, and he too saw the couple leaping hand in hand.
 | ||
But he reached for her hand and she reached for his hand and they leaped out the window holding hands.
I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers but I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.
Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here.
No one knows who they were: husband and wife, lovers, dear friends, colleagues, strangers thrown together at the window there at the lip of hell. Maybe they didn't even reach for each other consciously, maybe it was instinctive, a reflex, as they both decided at the same time to take two running steps and jump out the shattered window, but they did reach for each other, and they held on tight, and leaped, and fell endlessly into the smoking canyon, at two hundred miles an hour, falling so far and so fast that they would have blacked out before they hit the pavement near Liberty Street so hard that there was a pink mist in the air.
Jennifer Brickhouse saw them holding hands, and Stuart DeHann saw them holding hands, and I hold onto that.
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