Journey –
1. a trip somewhere: A trip or expedition from one place to another
2. Process of development: a gradual passing from one state to another regarded as more advanced, e.g. from innocence to mature awareness
• A spiritual journey
This morning I felt the need to look up this word in the Encarta dictionary. As I speak of our lives these days, this word comes to mind. I love what it says to me. While it may say something different to you, what I see is the difficulties in this life are moving me to a “mature awareness.” As a kid, I couldn’t wait to grow up. All I ever wanted to be was a grown up. I had my life perfectly planned out. I would become an English teacher with summers off, a big wedding to the man of my dreams, 2.5 kids, a dog, a house with a white picket fence, sipping lemonade on my front porch in my rocking chair listening to the crickets chirp. This was my idea of maturity. Sounds perfect right? Well perfection in my immature mind.

So it leaves me with the question, what does maturity look like to me now? I’m not sure; I’ll let you know when I get there. "Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." ~ James 1:4 In the meantime, we are moving forward in our journey.

While Robert was unable to go back to Australia this year, God blessed us with an amazing opportunity to go to Canada. Though it was not in our plans, it was obviously in Gods. The church in Canada I visited with our church in May, asked Robert to come and perform magic at their annual kids camp. We prayed. They were looking for volunteers, and we simply did not have the means to work it out, we said we truly appreciated the offer but needed to say no. Several people who had heard this started offering money for us to go, even though we had turned the church down. Robert was offered some random side jobs to help friends with work, to perform magic at my work, various offers for money we didn’t count on. A few days later, the church asked again with a small offer of pay. We listened.
Friday we leave for Canada. Robert is performing at the camp and we are getting a couple of days away by ourselves. God always amazes me, I love that moment. I did not believe we could work this trip out, and I was right…we couldn’t.
Please pray for our time in Canada with our friends at Churchill Meadows Christian Church and the kids coming to camp, and the time we get to reconnect, rest and rejuvenate.

Serving Him,

Liz

What's it worth?

I watched a video of a guy tying his shoe in 1 second. He actually showed how to do it. Of course he had to do that over under thing we all do to start it. That didn't count in his time.

So I tried to tie my shoe as fast as I could and I did it in just under 2 seconds. I'm actually pretty good at it. I would put my shoe tying skills up against anyone. I'm that good at it.

Anyway, I did the math and I think I would have saved something like 14 hours. Now that assumes an average of 2 shoe ties a day for 45 years per foot. I'll put the first 5 years on my mom. Also I'm not counting the times I tied my kid's shoes. I'll let Liz take those. So that's 2(avg.times per day) times 365(days in a year) times 45(years) divided by 60(number of seconds in a minute) divided by 60(number of minutes in an hour) = 9.125 hours divided by (actually you have to multiply) .75 = 6.8 hours times 2 (number of feet) and the grand total is 13.6 hours I would have saved if I had learned how to tie my shoes in a second.

What would I do with an extra 13.6 hours? What would I do with an extra 13.6 hours?

Probably just sleep. Oh well I guess I will just keep tying my shoes the same old way. Because after all it's my 13.6 hours and I will spend it any way I want.

If you had my day today, you would understand this so much more.

Have a good day,

Robert