Thankful Thursdays

I want to copy Becca and start posting weekly "Thankful Thursdays" - just listing a few things I'm thankful for every Thursday.  I've enjoyed reading these lists on her blog and others, and it always reminds me to live my life in constant gratitude.

Also, we've been working through Colossians lately at church and Col. 3: 15-17 jumped out at me.  I'm posting it here from The Message.  I'm not usually a huge Message fan, but lately I've enjoyed reading it as a variation.  It's nice to hear Bible passages that you hear often -- that become almost rote -- in different words.  Makes it sink in differently.

"Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way."

I'm thankful for:
1. My wonderful husband, who made me a peanut butter and honey sandwich foldover this morning as I was running late and trying to get out the door.
2.  The laugh that I had when I realized (in the work parking lot) that somehow I had gotten sticky honey on the arm of my sunglasses and, hence, down the side of my face!  Don't really know how that happened unless I was holding my sunglasses and my foldover in the same hand as I left the house...
3. A job.  I'd be thankful for any work in this economy, but I'm especially thankful to be working with encouraging co-workers.
4. The start of the summer.  I'm so thankful that John's P2 year is finished.  Of course, now he's working 32-40 hour weeks at Walgreens, but that's nothing compared to the hours he put into his spring term.  At least when he leaves the WAG he doesn't have to come home and do tons of studying!  By the way - he would never brag for himself so I'll brag for him -- he made all A's this past semester- the hardest semester he's ever had (20 semester hours of grad classes) and he made all A's!!
5. My family.  I'm going to get to see at least my mom and dad over this Memorial Day weekend and hopefully more relatives.  I have the best family in the world.
6.  A car that works.  My Honda has 224,519 miles on it -- I'm not exaggerating, that is the true and accurate odometer reading -- and ole' Betsy is still going strong *knock on wood*!  Although I do need an oil change so we won't be taking my car to SC this time.
7.  A great local public library!

Finally Friday!

This weekend I am:

Working out today with Starr
 Attending this performance tonight - SO excited!
Working at the sad ole' Swooz
John will be working at the WAG
Cleaning my apartment!
Going to church

Attending this concert Sunday at the Ryman

Hopefully posting a few pic from Aug 2, 2009 - now

What are you doing this weekend?

August 2, 2008 - August 2, 2009 in Pictures

 

Wedding Service

Walking to Reception down Main St.

Lake Lure, NC

John's White Coat Ceremony

Wilson County Fair

Christmas in our apartment

Music City Bowl -- Freezing!!  First time in a pro stadium too.

Chattanooga, TN

Seeing Ashley & Vance at Ben & Carrie Beth's wedding

Sounds game!  (I think we had on hats before we took this shot.)

Greenville, SC

Anniversary -- it took us a whole year to print out any wedding photos!

Even when the rain falls...Even when the flood starts rising....

This is what a flood can do to a home.

I'm sure y'all have all heard of the recent devastating floods in Nashville.  Our county and all of the surrounding counties have been declared federal disaster areas.  I didn't mention anything about the floods in my last post...simply because I didn't know what to say.  Even though I saw the images on TV and donated items to a Red Cross shelter that was set up across the street from us, it still seemed surreal.

John and I were out of town weekend before last, so we didn't experience the 48 hours straight of driving rain -- 15" I believe.  We saw some reports in our hotel in NC that Nashville was getting hit hard and experiencing some flooding, but we had no idea what we would be coming home to.  Our friends were amazing at calling and texting updates of what was going on as we were on the road -- 1 friend lives on our street and we were checking with him to make sure our road would be open.  His response:  "Belmont's ok.  Everywhere else is horrible.  All you can hear is thunder and sirens."  After driving through some INTENSE rains Sunday evening as the storm system moved east out of Nashville, we finally made it home to our apartment -- dry, undamaged, and with power.  If I had not seen the TV footage, I would've thought we were just getting a hard spring thunderstorm.

Despite the Governor and Mayor's pleas for folks to stay home and off the roads on Monday, my job required all staff to come in because it was finals week/graduation week for the students [they gave the students the day off and re-arranged their exams!].  My trek to work was a little scary, but nothing like the images on TV.  At work, I discovered that several co-workers had experienced water damage in their finished basements or some lower rooms in split level homes, but one co-worker, Darla, had lost everything.  Everyone in Nashville probably knows at least 1 person who lost it all or sustained great damage.  

On Tuesday of last week, we went to help a co-worker, Candis, whose lower family room had been ruined.  They had already ripped out the flooring and lower drywall, so we mainly helped by pulling debris out of her yard. 

On Friday of last week, some co-workers and I finally got to go help Darla.  The picture at the top of the page is of her living room.  She and her husband had to evacuate their home Sunday morning, and grabbed only the bare essentials as the water was rising.  Her high school daughter, Abby, was spending the night on a youth group so she had an overnight bag with her.  Darla saved Abby's prom dress and her scrapbook, and then grabbed their family Bibles, some Bible study materials that she has worked through over the past year, and her knitting.  Her husband (a studio musician) was able to save some of his instruments, but had to abandon his keyboard.  Darla, being the sweet soul that she is, immediately went to help her neighbors get out as well.

The theme I've heard from many survivors is: the water came SO FAST.  Her street was rapidly filled with water and her house flooded all the way to it's roofline, and they were not able to get back on their street by car to acess the damage until that Thursday.  Her husband and the headmaster of a nearby school were able to travel in by boat and take the video below.  Darla's house was red brick with a black roof (2nd shot of the video).  So the water moved through or sat in their house for almost 5 days.  The whole home was ruined.   

Amazing, eerie video of their house under water: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75zADehgc4Q

These shots show us working on Darla's house.  My main job was to cart items to the street as they were removed from the house.  The local government arranged a trash pick-up for flood items, but it had to be divided into 4 piles and placed on the street (debris, appliances, household items, etc.).  It was so sobering to see all the things, all the 'security' that this family had worked for dragged out to the street and put in 4 muddy piles.  Really gives you some perspective on the "stuff" in our lives.  It's humbling to hear these flood survivors say, "it's only stuff."  Would I be like that or am I too tied to my things?

Darla came in to work yesterday and we all went to lunch to hear her relay her experiences.  It has been amazing to hear the stories of people just pouring love over this family and other flood survivors.  I have been so impressed with middle Tennessee overall.  When we were at her house last Friday, volunteers, city employees, policemen, firemen, youth leaders, church members, her high school friends, her former students -- pretty much everyone in Hendersonville-- stopped by to help or drop off food and supplies.  And it sounds like that kind of community involvement is happening everywhere.  People are just coming out of the woodwork to help.

One thing I've been thinking about a lot since this happened is: 

what would I grab if I had 1 minute to get out of my house?  

Lyrics courtesy of Needtobreathe, Photos from Candis Thornton, Starr (perryplayground.blogspot.com), and Jenn (togocup.wordpress.com).

And 475 Days Later....

I've decided to come back to my blog. 

John has been getting on to me about not blogging, and every excuse I have been using is now void.  Hopefully as I explain my excuses and the reasons that they are now worthless, I will also be catching everyone up on some of the things that have been going on for the past year.  Warning:  this will be long.

"Oh, I don't have any time" - well, I (mainly) only work 1 job now.  Whoo-hooo!
If you know me, you may know that in the past 1 year and 9 months that I have been married and living in TN, I have been unemployed and then worked 4 different jobs.  For almost 2 months, I couldn't find a job.  Job searching is very hard for me because I don't have a career "field" or really know what I want to do with the rest of my life.  So, it's hard to narrow down which jobs to research, what to apply for, what to pass over, etc.  It can be completely overwhelming!  It was also terrible timing for job-hunting in the fields I thought I might be interested in.  At first I thought I might want to work in public health/city planning, and that I would try to find an entry level or assistant type job in a real estate office or for a non-profit....right as the recession really hit.  Who was hit first?  Real estate.  Who cut jobs next?  Non-profits and local or city goverments.  So it was back to the drawing board. 
I eventually found the medical marketing job that was mentioned below and we mutually agreed that I would work 3 months as a full-time 'contract' employee before going full-time for real.  Well, after just over 3 months I was ready to move on to something different.  Amazing surgeon, but not the best office environment.  During this time, I had picked up some evening seasonal retail work at a cute gift store named Swoozie's.  I thought Swoozie's probably wouldn't need me after Christmas, so I lined up part-time work at the local YMCA to work during their big season:  New Year's Resolution time.  Somehow, for short time (maybe a month and a half?), I ended up working all 3 jobs: full-time office job in the day, gift store in the evening, and YMCA on weekends.  John and I decided it would be safe for me to quit a full-time job since I had 2 part-time jobs to fall back on, so I took the leap and quit -- exhilarating!  Amazingly, Swoozie's was able to bring me on full-time after that, so I worked full-time there and a couple of mornings a week at the Y.  I liked what I was doing, but that was a fairly hard time to keep in touch with anyone because I was pretty much working at one job or the other mornings/days/nights/weekends/holidays...you name it.  So at one point I did have a fairly valid excuse of no time.  In February of this year I started a new full-time job at a small Christian university.  I have a real, grown-up job again!  Sadly Swoozie's is going out of business, so lately I have been going back to work a few weekends with them as they go through the liquidation process but that won't last for much longer.
 
"Oh, I don't have a computer" - well, that was quite a debacle, but it's solved now. 
Shortly after we moved to TN my laptop died and we started saving up for a new laptop for me.  Well, around last October or November we were finally able to get me a new laptop -- a beautiful Mac!  Unfortunately, on the night of the Super Bowl, John's laptop was stolen out of his car, so he now uses my laptop for school and we attempt to share it in the evenings.  But, since I do sit for hours staring at a computer screen at work now... 

"Oh, I don't know what to say" or "Oh, there's nothing new to talk about" - well, I'm sure I've done or thought SOMETHING worth mentioning in the last 475 days!  But this blog post will be long enough already.

"Oh, maybe we should start a new blog together" - well, we tried that here and discovered that John has no personal interest in blogging, he just wants to encourage me to write my thoughts in my own venue.  Which is another reason I came back to this blog instead of the one we started together.  [Besides, I felt bad about stealing Needtobreathe lyrics.]  This was a blog that I successfully updated for quite a while, and it was a great outlet for me.  Hopefully I'll be able to get back into the routine of updating, and maybe make a few changes - like updating the blogroll (many of those links aren't good right now!) or giving it a blog face-lift.  But I don't think I'll change the name or start a new blog for now.  Even though Glad Oaks is no more, where I'm from is still a big part of who I am. 

So we'll see where this goes!