Praying Together

     My roommate and I have been friends for a long time. We met in the summer of 2003 at a christian girl's summer camp. We were counselors together and made instant friends. We shared a love for that place, the spiritual lessons we'd learned there as kids and the excitment of getting to be the "leaders" as other young girls shared the experience we'd grown to love.

     The next summer we were not in the same cabin, but we remained good friends encouraging each other all summer long. That fall semester she moved to Stillwater to go to OSU while I finished my Sr. year in high school and we've been the best of friends ever since. We usually have attended the same church, served on a church staff together for about 2 years, and often go to the same bible studies/retreats/spiritual things of that nature.

     We've often talked about spiritual things together. We've seen each other in good times, bad times and just down right ugly moments of our own lives. As this school year began we decided to take some time each night to pray together.

     I'm not gonna lie, at first it was WAY awkward. Prayers were short and well thought-out, almost mechanical. I feel like we both dreaded it a little bit so we mentally prepared, "Ok, tonight I'm gonna pray for this, this and that." Spit it out and say amen so it's over. But as we are coming up on a month of spending some time praying together, we are much more comfortable praying out loud in front of each other.

     Last night we had one of the most sweet times in prayer I've ever experienced. We've both been reading/thinking/hoping/wanting/asking about a specific area of our life. And last night it was almost like we weren't even aware of the other one being in the room as we poured our hearts out to God. There were both chuckles and tears last night as we prayer for one another and even confessed our own secret shortfallings infront of one another.

     I was so encouraged to hear her heart as she talked with her saivor, and humbled to hear her pray over me so specifically. I'm so thankful God has given me a friend who will both lift me up and hold me accountable!

WANTED: Irresponsible man with a serious lack in confidence!

WANTED: An irresponsible guy who has zero confidence in himself. This confidence lack should be evident in his speech as well as in the way he carries himself from day to day. It would be nice if he would flirt with my friends occasionally so I can always feel in competition with them. Under no circumstances should we be on the same page spiritually. He must either believe in something slightly different than I or at least be way under my own spiritual maturity level.

Guess what? I'm reading yet another, "Use your singleness to prepare yourself for marriage," type of book. This one's starting out pretty fun though, so I'm holding out some hope it'll be pretty good. The first exercise was to create a want ad for your husband that was all wrong. Thus, the want ad above. There were some steps to go through before creating the ad to help me pinpoint some of the "best" bad qualities I should highlight. The point was to be funny and I literally laughed out loud while I was composing my ad.

The next serious of journal exercises were to help me identify and articulate what good qualities were extra important to me individually. Even though I've spent a lot of time dreaming about who God might have for me, the book actually asked several very specific questions that I really had to think about before I could answer. 10 pages later, (no joke) I'm really glad I decided to get a notebook and actually follow along with the journal activities it suggests. (I'm not normally one to do that. I'll highlight, underline and write in the margins of my books like no body's business, but when they actually encourage you to "take some time to write out ________." I rarely ever do it.)

The last part of the journaling had me read back over everything I had just written and sum up what I was looking for in a quick, "I'm looking for a man who is ______." statement. The author said that when she was single her statement was, "I'm looking for a man who is single, sexy, successful, saved and sane." Then she explained in a little bit of detail what each one of those descriptors meant to her. I decided to go with the alliteration and came up with the following.

"I am looking for a man who is looking, loving, learning and who is not lazy."

Looking- He is looking for/open to being with someone in a dating relationship. If I hear, "I think God might be calling to be single" from one more guy that I am interested in then we're gonna add another "L" word to the list because I am going to Loose it!

Loving- He is generally loving in his interactions with others. No guys with chips on their shoulders, or who are constantly putting other down please.

Learning- He is seeking after an active relationship with Christ, continuing to learn more about Him through the bible, books about faith and others who are more mature than he is. He is also interested in learning new things in general, just has an excitement for life and new experiences.

Not Lazy- He has goals for himself and he works towards accomplishing those goals in his day to day life. I'm okay if his goal is, "To serve Christ, and I don't really know exactly what that looks like yet," as long as his attitude toward life is not, "Whatever, I guess."


So that's my "Statement." If you know anyone who fits these... lol. ;-) I might add a post here or there from this book's journal, we'll just have to wait and see.

To Do List

I am the type of person that is very motivated by goals. I live my business-life by a to-do list. Being self-employed I've learned that it is VITAL to my paycheck that I mange my time wisely. If I don't then "Well, I can work on it this afternoon" turns into, "I can do it tomorrow." And that becomes, "I'll just stay up late tonight to get it done." And before I know it the client is expecting a project to be deliver tomorrow and I haven't even started!

I have a To Do List saved in my phone and each night before I go to sleep I pick out the most important things to accomplish in the next day. Bring them to the top and section them off from the other tasks. When I come to the end of a day and I have checked off everything I get a real sense of accomplishment/satisfaction with myself and allow myself to relax for the evening. (Watch a movie, play Dr. Mario, etc.) When I haven't checked everything off... I usually keep working, and I just feel like I'm behind schedule.

The past two days I have virtually checked nothing off my list!! It's been driving me crazy! This or that will pop up and although I've spent the days doing productive tasks, I haven't checked much off my list, thus I don't feel like I can allow myself to relax.

Yesterday I had added "workout" to the list, because the day before was so busy and I didn't want to skip it again. We had an evening shoot with some tiny football players and even though I was hot and tired when I got home I put on my running shorts told my roommate I'd be back in a 1/2 hour and headed to the clubhouse to check at least one item off my list.

I punched in the combination to the workout room opened the door and headed inside. Somehow my pointer finger on my left hand got caught on something. (The door latch, the locking device, I really don't know what.) But I was already headed full force into the room. My hand got caught between my body and the door and jammed my finger from the knuckle back into the door.

Boy did it hurt! I am not someone who cusses and I literally had cuss words forming on my tongue! It tore a gash of skin off my finger and left some blood on door handle. I went straight to the bathroom to clean my hand up and survey the damage. Then took a wet paper towel back to clean up the door handle.

After I was satisfied that my finger was not, in fact, going to fall off I had a choice to make. Workout or no? My throbbing hand wanted to quit. I had set a goal of running 2 miles in 30 mins for that evening and I knew that running, getting my heart pumping would only make it bleed more and increase the swelling in my finger that had already begun.

Stubbornness more than anything pulled me up onto the treadmill. I was going to get something crossed off my list that day if it killed me! Ha! I ended up running very well for myself, 2 miles in 28 mins and I actually RAN a full mile, one half at a time. When I got back to the apartment I showered and crashed early, happy to have at least gotten one thing from my list accomplished in that day!