Thoughts from the week

It has been a busy week, but a good week for me. Here are a few random thoughts that I've had throughout the week that I wanted to share. Hope you enjoy your 3 day weekend. I'm looking forward to sleeping in on a couple of those days and having a relatively free weekend.

• I like when people leave comments on the things that I write here. It makes it feel more like an on-going conversation than a totally random rant on my part. I like to hear what thoughts it prompts for you. (Thanks Jamie for making it feel more that way than it ever has before. Love the insights! Keep them coming.)
• Working with high school students, I often wonder if they "get it" before they graduate and leave to go do their thing. It was refreshing to hear a couple of our former students talk this last Wednesday night about their first year of college and how they have grown during it. Fits nicely with the discussions about the vision statement that the youth ministry team has been working on.
• Have had a busy week hanging out with several of the college students who are back in town. Love reconnecting and hearing about what is going on in their lives. I don't get to stay in touch with most of them to the degree I would like, but it is good to hang out with them and have some fun while they are briefly back in town.
• Received the following statement in an e-mail this week - "Pretty much anything worth doing sucks at times." This was encouraging for me. There are things that mean a lot to me, but that can also be really tough at the same time. Is it worth fighting through the garbage? Yeah, most of the time it is worth it, even thought it may suck to get through parts of it. Big picture is what I need to focus on, not the details of the moment.
• Looking forward to some fun coming up in the next several weeks. Chris and Andrea and the fam will be here for a couple of days. Get to go and party with an awesome one year old. Going to start meeting with a couple of different groups of guys for the summer. Move conference in Colorado is only about a month away. Then we get to head the other direction for some beach time in Florida. Lots of good things coming in the next couple of months. Woo hoo!
• Got the chance to visit with my friend who lives in Vegas for awhile this week. Always good to touch base with him as I have looked up to him for a long time. Also a good reminder of the high quality friends that we are surround by. In Hebrews it talks about being surround by a great cloud of witnesses, those who accomplished great things through their faith. I see that same faith lived out in our friends. Our own personal cloud of witnesses. (I don't know if that is theologically sound, but it makes sense in my head.)

Enjoy the long weekend and take the chance to reflect on the good things that have been going on in your life.