July in photographs

July has been one crazy month, I'll tell you what. First, 108 degrees. Not once. Not twice. Multiple times. However, we managed to cram a whole lot of doing stuff in one short month. Our July through photos: 

At the Youth Pool Party

Indoor Rock climbing!

Liesl, Rachel, and Rachel's friend rock climbing with us

Me and Mckenzie

Us and Mckenzie

In the youth room on ice cream/movie night.

Camping!! :)

Us @ "The Cove" aka Dad & Lisa's house

Us out taking beautiful sunset photographs

Pretty packed, that's for sure. Lots of swimming and working and hanging out with the youth kids and with friends. Now onto August!

Prayers

We went to Overland Regional yesterday. Had the day off so we met up with Mom and Sam. Aunt Erin was there. Guess the whole family's coming in town. Grandpa Dan was in ICU (mom's dad). Brain bleed. Jered and I put in these backwards blue robes with sleeves that end with holes for your thumbs. Silly, I thought, since they make you put gloves on too. They only wanted two people in at a time. Can I admit that I really didn't want to go in? I had an image of my grandfather in my head and it was of big, bushy eyebrows and bright blue eyes and a easy laugh. That image did not fit my grandfather in the hospital. I mean, I know, right? Of course it's not going to fit. But I am just saying that I didn't want that image to change.

It's my one thing about funerals. I get why people don't go.

And I get why we need to. And why we need to visit people even if they're not doing so well in the ICU. And that's why I put on that silly blue robe and those rubber gloves and we went into that chilly room.

I know enough to know how these things end but I'm still praying for a miracle. I cannot yet accept that I won't open an inbox completely jammed full of every Fwd on the planet all sent by Grandpa Dan. Not too long ago, he sent out copies of a business plan he'd written up. I think he thought it would help with Artistic Imagery.

Anyway, I'm still praying he'll come back.

If you're the praying kind, I'll ask you to include him in yours as well.

Thanks.

Calm Tuesday evening

The above photos were taken at the wedding we worked on the fourth of July. We're wearing hats because the bride requested that everyone wear hats. Of course, it was so hot outside nobody really went out there until the sun went down. We took our own hats off not too long after these photos were taken.

Went running today for the first time in several weeks. It's been a goal of mine lately to try and do one thing each day that really brings me a some real joy or peace or sense of accomplishment. Sunday, it was having a really great conversation with Jered when we both got home from a very long day. Yesterday, it was making a point to sit and chat with the new interns at work. They were eating lunch and usually I try to avoid most conversations during my break at work. It's kinda my "chill" time when I can just zone out. But yesterday, after a moment deliberation, I sat in front of them and proceeded to get to know them. Today, I was lucky to have several times of peacefulness and the sense of fulfillment it brings. We had lunch with Mom and my brother even joined us. He was bummed out because he'd just found out his living plans (he was moving tomorrow to Olathe) had fallen through. But it was still good to see him. Jered and he joined in a few jokes and that's always fun to see. Back at home, we lay in the cool of the air conditioning and watched the extras to We Bought A Zoo. It's the newest Cameron Crowe film we've watched and it was good in that almost-schmaltzy-yet-full-of-heart sort of way that Crowe does his movies. The music was done by the lead guy of Sigur Ros-- that Icelandic band I blogged about last February you might recall-- so that's all good.

Then this evening, after picking up our CSA, I got to go running at the park and it was oh so good. Okay, so I went two miles and it wasn't all running because I've been eating lots of really great wedding food and not running for several weeks. . . but it was enough to get me out of breath and really really thirsty so I call it perfect. On the way home I snacked on the cherry tomatoes from our CSA (yellow ones!) and listened to Laura Marling. Okay, Summer, you have reached your potential. I am satisfied. Everything beyond this is icing on the cake.

Jered doesn't like for me to brag on him, but I'm going to take a moment to do just that. I missed his sermon Sunday because I was at work (of course) but he had it taped and I got to see it. He did so good! It was on being "fishers of men" and he pulled all this scripture out of the old testament and out of Hebrews. I was very impressed. And he would read off his pretyped "talk sheet" but then sometimes he would just look out into the congregation and just *talk*. You could hear the people laughing or "Amen"-ing in the background. I so wish I could've been there. It's hard to feel that work is getting in the way of all the true and organic Life that happens. I try not to let it get to me.

I just spent some time looking up a really great camera/lens rental place online. Thinking about subscribing to the try-before-I-buy mentality. . . at least on some of this stuff that are thousands of dollars.

I guess that's all on this calm Tuesday evening. Thanks for reading.

Wasting Time

What good conversations I've been having lately. It's been marvelous to discover something that's been quite life-altering and an unimaginable blessing: fellowship. No kidding, right? But just as everyone goes through periods in their life, we'd been going through a bit of a dry one in the friend-ship category this past year or so. Perhaps it was a busyness of life. Perhaps it was that people move and get married and have kids and what we've had in common with some people dissipates. . . either way, these past few weeks, it's been so nice to reconnect with some older friends and hang out with some newer ones and even forge some fledgling ones. I think it all began with a conversation I was having with a friend one evening. It went something to the effect of: "Hey, do you ever watch [insert name of some TV show here. . . not sure which one. Storage Wars perhaps]?" -Friend "No." -Me "Why not? It's such a great show!" -Friend "I dont' really watch much TV." -Me


Okay, so this is a fairly common thread of conversation and has been these past 8-10 years or so (since going to college, really). I'm just not a big TV watcher. It made me wonder to myself why this was and why didn't I regularly watch any other TV than the 5:00 news? The answer came to me quite quickly, really: It's A Waste Of My Time. Not to judge. I know plenty of people who watch gobbs of TV and I'm not implying that this is worse than not watching at all. I spend my time in other ways, often not much more productive. Sometimes I surf the Internet (wikipedia is a time-sucker. . . as is ehow.com). I edit photos. Okay, that's not a waste of time. I read books. Some times this is a waste of time (like now. I'm reading Pride & Prejudice and Zombies. I think Aimee asked me the other day something to the effect of how could I live with myself that I am reading it. . . I told her I wasn't sure.)

Okay, so you might ask, what Isn't A Waste Of Time? I have a simple answer to this question. To me, I judge something as Not A Waste Of Time if it benefits me/my spirit/my body in some way or if it benefits somebody else. Next month, Jered and I are going down to Joplin to help with the ongoing relief. I didn't even know they still had quite a massive effort going down there but they do. Jered and I were getting quite tired of Wasting Our Time on such frivolities and niceties and vanities of life and Jered set us up to go help some people out for three days of our summer. It's not too long-- we had to fit it in with our work and weddings. But I'm looking forward to getting out of myself for a while.


Jered and I had the chance to visit some old friends when we drove out to Emporia last week. We probably wouldn't have left if we didn't have to work the next day, we had such a good time. Then I had the chance to hang out with some gal pals from work while we "watched the Olympic Trials" (the quotes are b/c we didn't really *watch* much). Last night I had the great blessing of hanging out with some ladies from church and then go out to DQ with a wonderful young lady from our youth group. There was not a moment yesterday that was wasted. Today I wasted 2 1/2 hours of my life watching "The Doors" by Oliver Stone. Not really in the mind frame lately to watch a movie about someone who lived a life entirely devoted to selfishness and ended up destroying himself with drugs and alcohol. Yeah, little too close to home, thankyouverymuch.

Although, on a positive note, we spent a very lovely 2 1/2 hours at Dad & Lisa's house. We swam and talked with Lisa and even got a chance to say Hey to Dad. Not a waste of time. Quite the opposite.

Life is too short. I'm tired of wasting it. I'm tired of letting these days and moments slip by though my fingers and not making them count for something. I'm tired of not sharing life and hope and taking in wisdom and love when I can. Why do we spend time and effort on those who only drain us and leave us feeling more parched? Why do we do the things that destroy us over and over and over? They don't fulfill us. They don't grow us. They're garbage and they need to be taken to the curb. We need to open the windows of our soul and fling open the doors of our consciousness and take each moment and thought captive and create our own destiny. We know what's right. We know what fills us with Light. We know what gives us hope and joy and peace. Why do we spend so much time and money on what doesn't?

Silly us.