Friday Five Reflection

This week's Friday Five:


1. What has encouraged you? 
Over the weekend, I began reading Jane Redmont's When In Doubt, Sing where chapter-by-chapter she talks about different forms of prayer. The short readable text and the way it engages me with Scripture and prayer has been a real gift to my mornings.

2. What has inspired you?
Watching my youngest daughter work throughout this week to try out for middle school cheerleading. She has gone into something completely unknown to her (and me!) and is having fun while she is learning and practicing. Her excitement about what she is doing is contagious. It all wraps up this afternoon with the tryouts.

3. What has challenged you?
Nothing extraordinary this week. There was the ever-present challenge of balancing work, school, family and self and the give-and-take it requires. Both time and money feel scarce sometimes but at the very same time, I hear from others stories of loss and grief and realize how much I have to be grateful for.

4. What has made you smile? 
On Sunday,two friends told me I looked relaxed. That doesn't happen often! It was my last day of a four-day sabbatical that I gave myself and my family after finishing spring exams. I have two more courses this summer and then I begin a full-time internship at St. Mark's Lutheran in downtown Asheville in August. While I still have a lot of unknowns awaiting, it is wonderful to begin to make this transition into public Christian leadership and full-time ministry.

 5. What has brought a lump to your throat or a tear to you eye in a good way? 
 On Sunday, the boarding school where I live and work celebrated graduation and the boys who arrived with us in 2008 graduated and left for college. This is one of the places along the way where I have discovered how much you can learn from the young(er) people around you and I am grateful for them even when they make lug-headed decisions as teenage boys sometimes do. They also have insatiable curiosity, compassion for one another and fire for the things they hold dear.

What about you?

p.s. I could have written a much shorter answer. One event this week generated all five of these responses: On Sunday, many members of the first cohort of Distributed Learning MDiv candidates  at Luther Seminary graduated with their MDiv degrees at Central Lutheran Church in St. Paul. Congratulations to all the graduates but especially to the men and women who began this pilot program in 2007!