Keeping it going

These past few days went quick...here's a quick recap of my "thanksgiving" for the past few days.
11/4/08: Even if you're not very political (like myself), it is still pretty exciting to see the enthusiasm surrounded by our new president elect. We live in a great country...definitely something to give thanks for.
11/5/08: CAM girls first bonding moment when they decided to go to the upcoming dance together.
11/6/08: Hot yoga, Romans 8, Old Chicago with friends
11/7/08: great Friday morning clinic, The River Food pantry www.theriver-madison.org
11/8/08: A great spinning class, good TAWG, and Bluegrass and a beer
11/9/08: Sweet time with my roommate while I taught her how to make lasagna, taking Heejung with me to church, Blackhawk, PinkHat Ladies Life Group

Thanksgiving: Day Three

I'm really thankful for dinner tonight with a close friend in Madison. It was really nice and an answered prayer to have someone be interested in my story (as selfish as that sounds). I just feel that lately I have running around constantly trying to reach out to others. It was nice to experience that in return. I'm thankful that through Christ, I had the courage to be real and take down my mask, which usually allows me to be content in "my sins and stupidities" as C.S. Lewis puts it.

Thanksgiving: Day Two

Today I'm thankful for being able to sleep in. I teach spinning at 8:00 AM on Saturdays and every other day of the week, I'm at work no later than 8:00 AM. So all week I have been looking forward to Sunday morning...especially since we got an extra hour.

Also, today at church we sang this old hymn which was really powerful. Apparently, the first two verses were written by Frederick Lehman and, according to our pastor, the third verse is based on a Jewish poem. This third verse was not added until it was found sketched in the wall of an insane asylum. Here is a website for a more detailed history of the song. http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/l/o/loveofgo.htm

The love of God is greater farThan tongue or pen can ever tell;It goes beyond the highest star,And reaches to the lowest hell;The guilty pair, bowed down with care,God gave His Son to win;His erring child He reconciled,And pardoned from his sin.
Refrain
O love of God, how rich and pure!How measureless and strong!It shall forevermore endureThe saints’ and angels’ song.
When years of time shall pass away,And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,When men, who here refuse to pray,On rocks and hills and mountains call,God’s love so sure, shall still endure,All measureless and strong;Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—The saints’ and angels’ song.
Refrain
Could we with ink the ocean fill,And were the skies of parchment made,Were every stalk on earth a quill,And every man a scribe by trade,To write the love of God above,Would drain the ocean dry.Nor could the scroll contain the whole,Though stretched from sky to sky.
Refrain

Thanksgiving: Day One

So I have decided to give thanks out loud (or via blog) about at least one thing I am thankful for each day of November. Lately, I have just been blah...nothing too good, nothing too bad. I hope this will be a way to remind me that life is really good, even when it doesn't work out the way I think it should. Also, I want it to be a reminder that God is good.





"Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of Lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. In the exercise of His will Hebrought us forth by the works of truth so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures."


James 1:17-18

Today, I am thankful for one more beautiful Fall day up here in Madison. It was perfect. Sun shining. Cool, but a light jacket was not even needed. Due to the awesome weather. Lisa and I worked finished closing down the garden plot. On a side note, my friend Mary came by and shared with us while we were there about this women's conference she went to a couple weeks ago. My ears perked up when she said that John Piper gave a talk on True Womanhood. Check out the website http://www.truewoman.com/ and I encourage you to listen at least to Piper's talk from Thursday, October 9th. Be prepared to be challenged on how you have been living your calling as a woman. Anyways, back to the beautiful Autumn day. Then I went to the park just a few more blocks down from my apartment. I just laid in the grass and caught up on some much needed journaling. Just getting my thoughts out on paper really helped clear up some of the thoughts that have been going about 90 mph in my brain. It was a great day...until the game, but I am also still thankful to be a Dawg!

Garden closes for the year

So the community garden has closed for the year. Here a few pictures to end the year with. I didn't take these because they showed my gardening skills. As the season comes to a close, these last pictures will serve to be a good reminder to me of my first summer as a gardener.
When the season started last spring, my one desire was to grow something and to grow personally. As you can see, the leaves on this tomato plant are dying...but there is still fruit...look closely and you see the red tomatoes! So even in death their is life. Actually, that's just the way Jesus planned it...


Even in our death He is bringing new life. At times I really doubt this, because I don't like death to myself or to my own interests and desires. In C.S. Lewis's book, "The problem with Pain," Lewis discusses that "love may cause pain to its object, but only on the supposition that that object needs alteration to become fully lovable." Not that I think Christ will love me any more after I go through trials, change, and other forms of pain. Lewis explains this concept using the metaphor of an artist and his masterpiece. "We are in very truth, a Divine work of art something that God is making and therefore somthing with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character." God being who He is cannot fully love us and leave us the way we are for that would be less love, not more love. And "it is not that we loved God but that He loved us" (1 John 4:10).

Blast from the past

So I got a chance to re-connect with my college freshman orientation leader this weekend. So fun! Well, Blair actually became a friend and a 'sister'. But we had not seen each other in years! Neither one of us could decide or remember the last time we actually saw each other. Blair lives in Chicago and came to Madison with a few friends to see Ryan Adams at the Overture Center this weekend. It was so good catching either up to speed on life and pretty crazy to see how God got us to where we are today. This re-connection too me back a bit. Eight years later, here I am.

Knowshon for Prez

A friend sent me this picture today. It is from the Central Michigan vs. UGA game. Listening to the game via the internet, I didn't quite get the full idea of what exactly was involved when Moreno hurdled the defender for the touchdown.

Road Trip Out West: Yellowstone and the Tetons

So here is a tale of 7 friends taking a massive road trip out West...on their way the did encounter wild moose at their campsites (watchout...they do charge) and bear blocks (be aware if a bear is near the road in Yellowstone you will also meet long lines of cars due to the crazy people that get out of their cars to take pictures...who would do something like that?!?).

Around 6 o'clock in the evening one buggy June night 7 of us piled in 2 cars to take our road trip that accumulated over 4000 miles in 10 days. We saw great sights, had many laughs and ate a lot of PB and J sandwiches. We drove straight through that first night and made it to the gates of Yellowstone around 4 pm the next day (note how awake Kelly and I look in the above picture).This was our first sightseeing stop in Montana overlooking the Bear Tooth Mountains...looking a little sleepy, but we are excited to be getting somewhere.

We slept in some really rustic cabins at Lake Yellowstone. It was nice to have a bed none of us had seen one in about 36 hours. One of the funnier moments at Lake Yellowstone was Sunday morning when Amy and I were having some quiet time down by the water. Suddenly out of nowhere this bus full of Asian tourists pulled up creating such a rustic. Instead of getting up and leaving the fuss of picture taking and Asian jokes, Amy and I both stayed to witness the madness. So funny...and it made me miss Heejung back in Madison!

We Made it to Old Faithful the next morning. We walked all the way to the Morning Glory Hot Spring. Then we got back in the car and headed down to the Tetons. We had a great dinner at Signal Mountain Lodge and then I purposefully ran into some UGA buddies at the Jackson Hole grocery store. That night we camped out in the Gros Ventre camping site. It got really chilly. All of us were ready for a full day of hiking and white water rafting.

Above are some of the sights we encountered on our hike around Jenny Lake. It was so great to have Granger join us for the hike and the rafting later that day. She was in training for her upcoming Colorado backpacking trip.

Rafting was so much fun. We were pushing it getting there because we had to make it to the top of Inspiration Point. However, we got to the outpost before the bus left. Many of us will never forget the look on Nate's face when he was told that he would start off "riding the bull" on the front of the raft. The politician of the group took to the front well and managed to stay in the raft.

The water was running pretty fast that day. So the trip down the river took about 2 hours. It was a big raft so everyone from the trip was able to fit in one raft. We also had a nice family of four from California and our guide. It was a beautiful day out on the water...nothing like being on a river in the middle of the mountains.

After everyone was done rafting, we were all hungry. We went with Megan and Granger and a few other Jackson transplants to Merry Pigglets for a hearty mexican meal. We also got to watch a little bit of the Dawgs play in some of the college world series baseball finals while we waited for our food.

Megan was nice enough to let us "campout" in her place that night. We got up before 7 the next morning to get on the road up to Glacier National Park.

First Fruits

I got so freakin' excited the day I saw my first tomato growing on the plant. I had seen some blooms a few weeks earlier and I knew that that was a good sign. However, it was mid-June and I needed to see some fruits. I remember looking over to my neighbors garden and seeing that they had some tomatoes on their plants. So I looked a little closer at mine and lo and behold there was a little green tomatoe forming on one of the plants. I was so excited I ran home and grabbed my camera to take a picture. After all the work, some produce was forming.





Last night in the message at church James 1:17-18 was quoted. It says:





"Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures."





When I heard the end of this verse, for a second there I think I got a small glimpse at how excited God must be when he sees fruit in our lives. He planted it; He knew it was there; He has been watering it. But when it shows up among His creation and displays His character for all the world to see...He might just want to go grab his camera and take a picture!

Pulling out the weeds

My latest hobby up here in Madison has been gardening. No I haven't skipped a decade or two of my life and entered the golden years!! I heard about these community gardens all around town and I got on the waiting list for a 1/2 plot in a garden which is right down the street from me. Well, I got in and have been working my 15 ft x 20 ft of land for a good month now. When my gardening partner and I first saw the plot we both thought..."this will take some work..." because it was covered with weeds. So we got the shovel and began pulling the weeds. Pat, the garden coordinator who is a very seasoned gardener probably in her 70s, pointed out the weeds that would need to be pulled out from their roots. She explained they will just continue to grow if they are not pulled out from the root. So we worked for about an hour and thought we had done a good job.



Well, life happenned and it was still too cold to plant anything so we didn't get back out to the garden for two weeks. I didn't recognize the plot when I had come back because a majority of the weeds had grown back. Imagine that, completely leave the garden for two weeks and you find you need to start over again!! So I got the shovel again and began to do the work of weeding.



So the garden has become the Spring/Summer 2008 metaphor for my life. Somehow, someway God has gotten me to this point in my life where I just want to grow. And that has become the theme for my garden. Through the weeding process God is teaching me that is where it starts. I really want to pull out the weeds in my life, but don't really know how.

The funny thing is...I really don't know anything about gardening...and I really don't have time to sit down and read any gardening books. So it's a learning process. Really all I know how to do is pull weeds. Not so true in my own life. There are weeds that have been hanging around for years. That I might pull from the stem every now and then, but the root is still there.

Hmmmm....I guess this one will have to be continued....

"So do you think that I can't take care of you?"

These words really hit me this weekend. In Numbers 11, Moses is standing in the middle of the desert with 600,000 men who are starting to get tired of manna. Moses is worn out. God promises them meat for a month and Moses wonders if God sees all these people, even if God killed all the livestock they had it would give them enough for food for maybe a day. So according to the words of the Message, God said "So do you think that I can't take care of you? You'll see soon enough whether what I say happens for you or not."
I see myself looking over Wisconsin, Madison, the hospital, the clinic, etc. desperately gripping them and trying to survive by my own means when God is looking at me saying, "So do you think that I can't take care of you?" Thankfully, He never leaves us. I cannot move too far away from Him. Even in a land where it snows on Easter, He is still here and working out ALL things. May it be all for Him.

American Birkebeiner 2008

The American Birkebeiner is a cross-country ski race that has been held in the North Woods of Wisconsin for thirty-five years. It is the largest cross-country ski race in North America. It attracts over 9,000 racers and 15,000 spectators each year. That is a pretty good number considering the town where the race finishes has a population of around 2000 people. The course spans 50 Km from Cable to Hayward Wisconsin through the woods and across a frozen lake.

After my first attempt at cross-country skiing in December, I thought it would be a good idea to sign up for the Birkie. Well, actually the shorter version which is a 12Km race still ending at the same finish line as the Birkie. So Dea and I signed up. She actually talked me in to it because she was planning to come up and visit some of her family in the North Woods of Wisconsin.

I started the leg endurance/strengthening exercises, tried skiing another time and then invested in some cc skis of my own. Lisa, a friend from my life group, joined the 12Km race as well. The Prince Haakon 12 Km race was name after the Norwegian prince who was rescued by his father. His father ended up skiing approximately 50 Km on wooden cross country skis with his son strapped to him. They actually re-enact this every year at the beginning of the race.

So the time crept up on us and before we knew it, it was race weekend. The forecast called for a beautiful weekend...with a high of 26 degrees F....that is warmer than we had seen in a while. However, the low for the morning was -1 degrees F. Thankfully, our race started at 1:30pm. Lisa and I found some other people from church who were planning on doing the race so we rode up together, approximately a 5 hour drive from Madison. This is the faithful crew of "Birkie '08".

We did encounter several bumps along the road. My friend was nice enough to offer us a bed in his cabin. However, once we opened the cabin we shortly realized that the pipes were frozen....so no running water!

Karl, Lisa, Jill and I set off the next morning to get Karl to his race, the 23Km race. Karl was the guy who had been training hard for three months, had taken several lessons, had his heartrate monitor and GPS system strapped on to track everything during the race. However, he did forget one crucial part, his ski boots. We still had time to make it back to the cabin before the race. So we set off. However, we were slowed down by a cop that decided we were following too close behind the car in front of us. We were beginning to push the limit of getting Karl back for the start of his race. Next, we're on the road to the cabin and the road is blocked due to the race. Karl thought maybe he could rent skis from the ski store; unfortunately, the ski store was closed on the biggest race of the year. So Karl's hopes for getting to the race were crushed.



Lisa and I met up with Dea and we loaded the bus to the drop off for our race. I was starting to get a little nervous at this point. I just didn't want to get in someone's way , since during my training I had taken some spills. Dea had no fear, even though her first time on cc skis was the day before.

We took off. There were people dressed as Vikings and in other costumes. It was a pleasant race. I did take a few splills on some of the downhills. One time I was going much faster than the guy in front of me and all I could think to yell was..."track!" To let him know that I was fast approaching him. He didn't budge. So I jumped off and fell to the side since my best attempts at slowing myself down included falling.

One technical difficulty involved me taking off my skis (because I thought that would be a better idea than falling all the way down, and it wasn't against the rules...I saw others doing it as well). I ran down the hill and started to put my skis back on, but they wouldn't clip in to the binding. Apparently, ice was stuck in the binding and it took me a good 15 minutes to dislodge the ice. Thankfully, Dea came to my rescue. She came up and asked the first person she saw to help us. Joe, my good Samaritan, stopped and helped me get the last bit of ice out of my binding. Dea went on her way as I finished up getting the skis on with Joe. I got on my way relieved I would not have to carry my skis across the finish line. I quickly came up on Dea as we were both going down a low-grade hill. I began to realize that I was going to hit Dea, so I shouted the first thing that came to my mind, "Dea, Track!" Dea fearful tried to jump out of the tracks but it was too late, my skis had already ran over her skis. We had a good laugh at our tumble.

So we made it the whole 12Km. We finished up the race at the warming tent with a fresh Wisconsin Ale and a brat..hey, that's a normal way too finish a race according to the Norwegians.



After we recovered, I said my "good-byes" and we loaded up in the car again. We took off to another friend's cabin. There we ate and danced the night away. Lisa and I had to see an official Wisconsin townie bar before we left. We hit the dance floor there for a bit, but we were all starting to hit the wall.

The next morning Karl got the water running so we cleaned the cabin and made our way back home. We were all on a "high" from the weekend. About an hour away from Madison I got a call from my mom letting me know my dad was in the hospital. It's crazy how quickly the rug can be pulled out from underneath your feet. Thankfully, he is ok. He has struggled with swallowing problems since his radiation treatment to his throat about 10 years ago. We're still taking it one day at a time. It's really hard being so far away.