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The Road to Emmaus is 55 MPH
I made a wonderful friend at camp while counseling. The bad news was we lived four hours away from each other. The good news is calling is easy. So for over a year we’ve been calling and texting. Plus, this past summer I was happy to get to her wedding. We had been trying to find other times to hang out and now its finally happened. So here’s to a wonderful weekend with my favorite Iowa native So what’s Emmaus you ask? Emmaus Bible College is the Plymouth brethren school in the town of Dubuque where my friend now lives with her husband. It’s named after a verse in the…
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What’s Required for a Flower to Thrive
I heard a song the other day that inspired me to think about the trials we go through in life in a new way. Sometimes we may think all we want in life is sunshine, but we really need to rain to be complete people. Allow me to explain. Flowers look beautiful in the sunshine, you can stop and smell the roses for as long as you like when it’s sunny. But it’s almost obvious to remember that while that flower was growing it needed to be stuck out in the rain to thrive. It had to be around for the gloomy days. If a flower only knows sunshine it will…
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I Like Facebook Best for Social Media
I know, I know, I sound old when I say this but please hear me out, I have some good reasons. I have enjoyed using Facebook since the summer before 8th grade. Facebook was the site most of my family was connected on already, and that my friends were getting introduced to as well at the time. It became a fun website where I could post fun, and funny pictures and text, simply “friend” friends and message friends for free, because texting wasn’t unlimited at the time. Facebook gets disliked by some younger people because the older generations are also interacting with it, but this is one of my favorite…
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Read and Be Okay with Relearning
I got a new temp job this week, and while talking with one of my coworkers, I realized I had mentioned something twice and he replied with something that actually struck me as very valuable, even if it’s sometimes obvious – you should always be ready to relearn good lessons and read more. Relearning things can give us a new perspective on what we may already know something about. Relearning something you previously found valuable means your willing to invest more time into improving your knowledge on the subject and I believe that’s wise. Relearning can help us better understand what we thought we may have known. I think the best example…
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The Holiday Season
I love Christmas, but I tend to say my favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, I’m probably biased because fall is my favorite season and November is my birthday month. Every November 1st the same question comes up, is it the start of the “holiday season today or not?”. I would usually argue no. I think the gift of Christmas, that is Christ’s birth, should be celebrated and appreciated all year long. But the holiday can be something celebrated mostly after Thanksgiving has passed. I believe there’s too much to be celebrated at Thanksgiving for us to call it part of the “holiday” season. And by the way, it’s in quotes because…
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Style Counts
I admittedly have a lot of clothes and shoes. I had my biggest growth spurt sophomore year of high school, so I haven’t grown out of much since. I believe that if you see value in a piece and the potential of wearing it, and that you have reason to believe you’ll actually wear it you can keep it, but there are exceptions. I have a lot of shoes, and I keep them nice, but I like getting new styles, so I don’t see a reason to get rid of them unless I don’t want to wear them anymore. That being said I have a shoe for every Minnesota season,…
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The Hardware Behind the Scenes
Most everyone nowadays has a small computer. There’s hardly any tube monitors or even towers unless you’re a gamer or developer. But often there is still a lot of hardware to consider in our computer-driven world. In a digital world, the hardware is also important. Even with my skinny little MacBook Air, I have computer cords, and I like connecting a second screen, which in my case is my TV. I also need my external hard drive and my USB sticks. Beyond that, I have my tablet phone and smartwatch. They all function together but they have very different hardware and casing. Even with my digital music collection, there’s either…
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Musically Speaking
I’ve always had music to be listening to, whether it was in my movies and tv shows, and my parents CDs when I was little. As I grew up I started buying CDs my friends recommended and a portable CD player to go with it. Come middle school I was just discovering pop music at school dances. Then in college, I started listening to a far more diverse set of tunes such as rock, alternative, and soundtracks, plus big band entered my listening world. So what does this music mean to me? Listen in quick. Growing up kids tunes and contemporary Christian music are at the forefront of my memory with…
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The Last Time
Last night I drove past a hotel that my grandparents have stayed in for a while visiting my family and my cousins/aunts/uncles. It reminded me of the tradition we had of hanging out as a family at the hotel pool because my aunt worked there. It sounds funny, but we all really enjoyed hanging out there on various weekend evenings. We’d play pool games, race each other, and then jump in the hot tub when we got too cold. But then I was reminded that one time we left for the evening and haven’t returned since, and it might not work out to happen again. It made me think of…
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I Voted.
Check. Donezo. Got ‘er done. Complete. I already voted a couple of weeks ago. Politics are important to me, it’s the science of influence after all. I voted early because I knew who I wanted to vote for, and I didn’t want to worry about a line on election day, because that’s youth group night. Voting is something I grew up being a part of. As a homeschooler my mom would take her with us when she went. Plus I got a sticker anyway. In addition, during lunch prep she would turn on talk radio, so that was something else I was aware of. Lastly, she got us involved with…
