Write My Life

I got to take a break from the usual stuff last week and go to Malibu, California. Several of us from our church went to the Pepperdine Bible Lectures for 4 days. I attended lectures, classes, hung out in the dorms with my friends, enjoyed the A capella singing of 5,000 + people, and stayed up way too late (1 a.m. one night) into the night. I even found an old friend there and we had lunch together. It was tiring on one hand, but totally refreshing on the other hand…spiritually refreshing - a reminder of Jesus’ centrality in my life.

I did discover one advantage of digital scrapbooking while there - I could actually work while on vacation. I did the following two layouts while on vacation. I did the Long Weekend layout between classes and I did the Snow Play layout while riding in the car on the way home!

Here’s some views from my backyard. The plum and apricot trees are beautifully in bloom and the bulbs are making their grand appearances. What an inspiration to get outside and enjoy the beautiful of all that God has created!

Amen.

Variety is the spice of life. In the butterfly house at Marine World, we saw a wide array of butterflies. It was fun and amazing.

Praise God for creating the beauty and variety all around us!

Prayer is an important part of our dinnertime routine. One member of our family will always say a prayer before we start eating our dinner. Most of the time it is Mike, but sometimes the girls or I will volunteer.

Jennifer recently volunteered. It had been a happy day and she was feeling good. Earlier she had been looking at my scrapbooks and commenting on the pages. Most of the pages she enjoyed but some she did not. On one page she said, “Why did you have to write that?” It was about a time she didn’t get along with a friend. In the end, they had become good friends so I wrote about how they overcame their problems. She couldn’t see that. She just saw the conflicts and she didn’t want to remember those early problems.

I have always tried to be honest in my scrapbooks. Not only in the topics and events but, also, to include some moments that aren’t the best. Believe it or not, we do not live in a perfect world. Not all our stories are peaches and cream. On the other hand, I don’t excessively dwell on the hard times because our scrapbooks should also be fun. I try to be honest and balanced.

The evening of all of this Jennifer showed her own sense of honesty. When she volunteered to lead the prayer her mind still remained on those scrapbooks. She prayed, “Thank you that my mom scrapbooks even if some of the things make me sad or angry.”

How’s that for honesty?

“We are so blessed,” Mike and I repeated to each other over and over during our Monterey weekend trip. The very fact God revealed to us again and again. It came to an climax when we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Weekends at the aquarium can be brutal. With hundreds of visitors crowded inside the aquarium, it can be hard to enjoy. The spaciousness of the aquarium makes it hard to experience all the exhibits in one day.

We had a plan, though. Since this was an overnight trip, not just a day trip, we decided to break up the aquarium visit between two days. Through the years, we have been blessed to have a family membership. With the membership we visited on Saturday, then returned on Sunday. Not only did our membership get us in free, but it also got us into the aquarium a 1/2 hour earlier than general admission.

On Sunday’s return we arrived to an almost bare aquarium. We stood in front of the sea otter tanks, watching them frolic, without a single other person there. It was so peaceful. Mike and I looked at each other and said, “We are so blessed.”