365.164: Four-and-a-Half!

Holden is four and a half years old today! My baby turned into a toddler, then that toddler turned into a kid. I love this kid!

365.163: How I Get My Kicks

So, as free and unscheduled and (let's face the facts) messy as I can be in my life and my home, I just love to organize. It feels so good to take everything out of a cabinet, clean it really well, then put it back in all organized. Today I attacked the cabinet under the kitchen sink. It started because it was stinky under there, which, I discovered, was from a leak. So there is currently a little bucket under there to catch the drips and stop the soggy stinkiness!
Oh how I wish I had taken a "before" shot. Let me just say that the baskets and liner I put on the bottom made a huge difference!

365.162: Who I Am

ENFP

That's who I am. An ENFP.
Tonight at Elevate we went through the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. This is so important, especially for people who intend to work in team settings, like, say on a missionary team! The more you can understand about others around you, the better your communication can be and more effective your ministry can be!
ENFP stands for Extroversion Intuition Feeling Perceiving.
Here are some descriptions of an ENFP:

• Curious, creative, and imaginative
• Energetic, enthusiastic, and spontaneous
• Keenly perceptive of people and of the world around them
• Want a lot of affirmation from others; readily express appreciation and give support to others
• Likely to value harmony and goodwill
• Likely to make decisions based on personal values and empathy with others
• Usually seen by others as personable, perceptive, persuasive, and versatile

What do you think? Is it accurate to me?
If any of you friends have taken the Myers-Briggs, what are you? I just love to know this sort of thing (which is part of my "Intuition")!

365.160: Joy

Did you ever consider that seriousness is not a fruit of the Spirit?
Or that joy is not an option?

People will say, "That's just not my personality. I'm just not a happy, bubbly person." But for Christians, the Bible says that the fruit of the Spirit (which means the inevitable result of living in relationship with Jesus) is love, joy, peace, patience, and self-control. So what if you heard someone say that loving others "just wasn't their personality?" You would laugh, right?
Tonight at Elevate, Steve Backlund spoke to us about joy. It was so good that I just wanted to share a few of the key points with y'all. (Some of these don't deal with joy specifically, but are great thoughts, nonetheless.)

• The Kingdom of God is not moved forward by good conduct, but by right beliefs. Stop asking God, "What should I do?" and start asking, "What do I need a revelation about to believe?"
• Research has shown that children laugh 400 times a day; adults laugh 15 times a day. That is not a good progression. Laugh more! Possessing joy is the secret to strength and longevity.
• A lack of joy does not come as a result of bad circumstances, but of bad perspective. We are not called to be realistic, but supernatural. Faith is not being in denial. There are giants in the land; but we can beat them because God is on our side. Faith isn't blind, it's visionary. And faith and hope must be attached to a source (like the Almighty God); in and of themselves they're fake and worthless.
• Every area of your life that isn't glistening with hope means you're believing a lie.

Man, that is so much for me to think and pray about!

365.159: Problem

I have a problem. A shoe problem. Unlike most girls, my shoe problem is not that I love them so much that I can't stop buying them, but that I cannot keep the shoes that I do have in the closet!

This has been as problem as far back as I can remember. I have these clear memories of my carpool ride to elementary school waiting in the driveway while I frantically ran around the house searching for my other lost shoe.

Really, the root of the problem is that I don't in fact like wearing shoes, so I'm always taking them off. And then I end up taking them off wherever I happen to be at that moment. When I take a pile back to the closet every few days, one half or a pair will have inevitably slipped under the couch or something, so the pairs are always separated.

Take below for instance. There are currently 11 shoes on the floor of my living room. This was not set up, but actually the current, natural state. Apparently I fell in love with another shoe-loser and gave birth to two more.

365.158: In My Head

On those perfect days,
in those perfect moments,
this is what is going on in my head
during a simple walk through the park.