The bunk bed blessing

I moved into my husband's office. I've been using my computer upstairs and doing all the paper work stuff up there in an extra bedroom, but this weekend we moved me downstairs. He built me a work area and it's directly over the heater- perfect for me. We now both work and do the family paper work in a shared space. I love it. I can hear the clicking of the keyboard behind me when he types. It's fun, I love sharing the office with him. 

Since I cleaned out one of the extra bedrooms upstairs (by moving my office stuff) I had been thinking about what I was going to do with that room. I've been waiting to move almost all summer, so I've been thinking during that time that I want to put some bunk beds in there but we were in no hurry to get them. I kept my ears open and if we found a good deal, we were going to get them. I was cleaning out my bosses storage unit and found three beautiful bunk beds from his old house. He told me to get rid of them and I offered to buy them at which he gave them to me. So, next week we'll have 4 sets of bunk beds for our house (we already had one set)!! Can you believe it? I feel that God heard this request and just blasted us with a larger answer than we dreamed. I am totally stoked to have both of our extra bedrooms have 2 sets of bunk beds that can sleep 8, and with the guest room bed, that gives us 10 beds besides our own.  

The night that turned out different than expected but good all the same.

Serving others is super important to me. Serving with my new husband is equally important, which is why Michael and I signed up (actually I signed us up and hoped he would oblige) for serving at cityfest. Which in all honestly wasn't why I signed up. I really wanted the free t-shirt and was willing to serve to get it. 

I had signed us up for serving at the Merchandise Counter. Yes, I now realize that Chris Tomlin wouldn't actually be at the counter selling his own merchandise which I was really hopeful about, but none the less, I wanted to sell some cool stuff and maybe, just maybe, out of my great duty I would get to meet the artist, or at least a free t-shirt, hopefully, maybe, probably signed by them. 

So my mom and Michael met me at my office today around 4:30. Somehow I had managed to talk my co-worker Kami to go with us to the cityfest. My mom wasn't registered to serve and she needed a friend and her & Kami were buddies. So Kami went; continually shouting "Praise Jesus" (a phrase I had never heard her say before in the two years I have worked with her) about every 10 minutes. She started to debate whether or not we could ride the streetcar without paying for a ticket because if we were approached by an authority, she would simply shout "Praise Jesus" and jump off of the car. We ended up deciding against that and set off on foot the mile down the Willamette River to the cityfest. 

At some point we decided we needed to eat dinner and although all of us were thinking Chinese and we were in China Town, we ended up at Old Town Pizza. Now if you have not been to Old Town Pizza it is an experience in itself. The writing on the bathroom wall is absurd and can cause a smile out of the grumpiest person just by the craziness of the sayings. But our pizza was tasty and our antipasti was yummy. After finishing our gossip about everything we each knew, we started toward the festival again. 

When we got to the festival, Michael and I went to the volunteer check-in counter where we went to the E-I list and let them know Graves was here. The woman behind the list was in her mid forty's, had short hair, and small frames around her eyes that looked like glasses but not quite big enough that they would actually be effective. She looked up at us and saw that we were in merchandise and promptly said, "They're overstaffed but you can stay and take care of the garage at the end of the festival." I smiled and started to comment about how well the place was staffed because there were no lines anywhere and everything seemed to be running smoothly at which she must have been offended because she said, "It'll get busier later." Michael and I took our t-shirts and knew immediately that neither one of us wanted to stick around for 4 hours to take out garbage just because they didn't have anything else for us to do. 

So, after saying a brief prayer that we wouldn't immediately go to hell for signing up to serve at a Luis Palau event and then taking the free shirt and not serving, we decided to hear Luis talk about salvation. Luis got on the stage and gave a message to the crowd on God being a father to the fatherless. It was a good message and had a lot of truth to it. Even though at this time I don't feel like I have an earthly father, I have never felt fatherless. God has always been my father and it was nice to hear Luis talk about that. 

Michael and I walked around and his phone rang. It was my mom. Apparently her and kami had skipped out on the message and were baskin and robins when kami realized that neither of us had the access code to get into our office building after hours where our purses were. So, we headed back. We eventually got into the building and got our purses. Kami was especially relieved because her purse contained her car and house key which would have made a long weekend if she couldn't get into either of those. 

After kami and my mom left, Michael and I drove around downtown with the top of the mustang down, enjoying the late night. We stopped at Alotto Gelato on 23rd. We each got some gelato and remembered our time spent in Italy a few months ago. As I was sitting there I realized how happy I was to be with my husband on a beautiful night, enjoying ice cream, and imagining our future together.

Our night had turned out so differently than it's original plan to serve at a festival and ended up with the two of us sitting at a table serving each other in life. It was an awesome night. 

Old Friends

I've been catching up with old friends. It fun and with things like myspace, people find you from all walks of life. Here's two old friends that I have loved getting to know again.

Jodi Davis. This picture is from Mexico '95. We had gone down with our church to work on a second story of a building in Obregon Mexico. I think this picture is from the back of the 15 passenger van that we were driving down it. We were 17. O- that was sooo fun. I loved those trips. Jodi and I had lunch today. We both work in Portland and I saw a picture of her in a magazine at work and got her email. She is getting married next summer and doing great.

Rhiannon Anderson (now Gullickson). Rhiannon and were in dance together and did several duets. This particular picture is from a dance we did to 'O, Yea' - remember the chick, chickachicka? It was in awesome movies like the secret of my success and ferris bueller. Rhiannon and I spent most of our years when we were between the ages of 9-13 beating super mario brothers and reciting lines from beetle juice. Now Rhiannon has 3 kids of he own! They awesome kids and she is a great mom. Her and I had dinner a couple of weeks ago and talked about everything. 

I love getting together with friends I had when I was younger. It seems really important. Talking about things that you both remember and remembering new things is great. I've so enjoyed hanging out with these girls and becoming new friends with them again. 

The why question.

Since Monday, I’ve been thinking about the plane crash at Gearhart. Maybe because the house is three blocks from my bosses. Maybe because I’ve been to Gearhart so many times for an enjoyable, relaxing weekend. Maybe it’s because I can’t understand why this happened. 

A small plane crashed into a home with two families staying in it. The plane seemed to be having trouble and crashed around 6:30 am Monday morning. It exploded shortly after it crashed. A mother with 5 children were inside the house. 3 children died along with the pilot and passenger of the plane. The mother and 2 of the children were sent to Emanuel Burn Center. 

Last October someone accidently rear ended my beautiful Focus and totaled it. I had just a few weeks before that told Michael I was going to keep the car for 10 more years. The accident really shocked me and I couldn’t believe I didn’t have my car anymore. The man who hit me felt horrible. He had a daughter my age and just couldn’t believe that he had hit me. He offered me anything on the scene and called me several times since the accident to check up on me. He was wonderful and I am grateful to have met him. The insurance claimed the accident was his fault and he admitted that in the beginning. He wasn’t an evil man. He was the opposite. It was just one of those things that happened.

My story ends well because I lost something that I could replace. But the people at the beach weren’t as lucky and I am sad for them.

In my wonderings around the why question I have found hope and permission. Hope that there is a good God in this world of chaos and suffering. Permission to grieve and be sad for this family and other families who go thru such incredible sufferings. The Bible talks about a man being born blind not because of any sin but so that the Kingdom of God will be revealed in him. I must admit that if God is taking volunteers for the display of His glory through incidents like this, I am not raising my hand. However, it is the stories that are so tragic that touch us the most. Steven Curtis Chapman is going to be on Good Morning American Wednesday morning. He’s going to be on Larry King on Thursday, August 7^th. He is on the PEOPLE magazine coming to Newstands on August 13^th. I am recording both his interviews. I know they’ll  touch my faith at the core of who I am.

I don’t want these awful things to happen ever again.  The touching stories behind tragedy doesn’t justify the pain that people go thru that are in the middle of it. This is where my thoughts stop (or circle back to the beginning). I just don’t want these things to happen to families, but it just does. I don’t have any conclusion to my thoughts and when I try to find conclusion my mind goes straight to ‘why?’ We have few things in our lives that we’re in control over. Our attitudes. Our faith. Our hope. Our love. But beyond that, it’s complete chaos mixed with so much suffering in the world. So instead of trying to conclude my thoughts, I'm just going to be grateful for today, love my husband, enjoy each moment, and live. 

My Month of Grace

We have a major busy month this August. I had to schedule out everything because if I hadn't I knew I'd end up frustrated. Our church is serving this month, so we're signed up for a few activities there. My boss' housekeeper is on vacation this month, so I am helping out there too. (There's a Wedding next weekend I am working.) Our church also has evening activities for a whole week, so we're going to try to go to that too. I take jazzercise 3 times a week. Michael and I do our devotional three times a week. I like to keep the house clean and I prepare all the meals. We're serving with Luis Palau at Cityfest. We're going to see the opening of the Vancouver bridge that the Confluence Project is doing. I hope that we get to have lunch with David this month. We try to make the Saturday evenings young adult group at our church. We go to church on Sunday evening. We have my family reunion one of the weekends in there. We both have full time jobs and I drive 2 hours a day in traffic. 

So this is my month of grace. I am going to do what I can and rely on grace from myself for everything else that I miss. I am going to give grace to Michael and others who can't possible get everything they need to get done, done. It hasn't started out too bad. I already have found time to blog, so hopefully working together we can have a fantastic month, busy, but full of grace.