My Soundtrack Right Now

Read Ann Voskamp's Sanity Manifesto the other day and one idea was about choosing a soundtrack for your life.  Loved that idea.  I think mine is constantly changing, so I thought it might be fun to chronicle this over the year.

Andrew Peterson's Day by Day is one that I have on my mind today.  Go listen to it.  (Don't listen to it when you are driving because it might land you a ticket.  It is in the category of super fun songs that makes your foot press down harder on the accelerator as you are jamming!)

It talks about growing older and how we think it is good to be young, but really we just long to go on and on and on.

It quotes the great scripture:

Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. II Corinthians 4:16 NASB

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  II Corinthians 4:16 NIV

We are growing old on the outside, but on the inside we are being renewed, day by day. This is truth.  A promise.  Thank you, Lord for this truth.

I think it is a great thought about how we can  grow old gracefully and really are we not all doing that? Growing old, I mean.  Our work and the work of the Holy Spirit in us, is how to do that gracefully.  This is  a SURSEE worth knowing, for sure.

Do you have a song that is your life soundtrack right now?

What my mentor gives me

She gives me real life.  Up close and personal.

Humor.  We laugh and laugh together.  About funny things and sometimes about serious things.

She makes me want to know Jesus more because she knows Jesus more.  I want to spend more time with Him after I spend time with her.

She gives me wisdom. Wisdom from His word that she has gleaned from walking with Him for many years.  Wisdom that she gathered from her time with Him that morning! New and old.  Both coming out.

Courage.  To do the right things.  The hard things.  To say no.  To say Yes, Yes!  To love.  To forgive.  To be real.  To not give up.

She reminds me of what I know is true.  And reminds me to go back to that truth.  Over and over.

She doesn't try to change me.  But she does change me in that I want to pursue Jesus more after I spend time with her.

The Sursee I see in her is to be real.  To love Jesus and to spend time with Him.  Simple, yes.  And easy to pass on...

Are you a mentor to someone?  Are you passing simple Sursees on to someone?  Can you start today?

Have You Ever...

Put your pennies in a Coin Star machine?

I had not.  Until January 2nd, 2013. In the spirit of cleaning out and up and organizing, I decided to take all of our penny jars to our local grocery store Coin Star machine and get some Dollars for my change.

The Bear has jars back in our closet where each night he deposits the pennies from his pockets.  The jars are big and take a long time to fill.  But full they were.  Three of them.  I couldn't even lift the one big pickle jar.  I had been wanting to trade these in for awhile but was held back because I knew the machine charged you to count your money.  But it was time.  Time to clean out and up.

  I had to ask Bonti X to help me carry them.

We loaded up our jars and drove to Albertsons.  We read the instructions on the machine and started dumping pennies into the hinged tray.  Fill the tray, lift it up and soon the machine is rattling and clacking as it counts.   Quickly full of pennies, the machine told us, "My you have a lot of change.  Please wait a minute."

So we waited then dumped some more pennies in the tray.  It took a long time and the machine was rattling and clackety clacking as pennies were being stacked and counted inside.  Bonti X and I wondered if we would fill up the Coin Star machine with our offering.  How many pennies were already in there?

How many pennies does it hold?  It was rather loud as the machine clanked and groaned as it counted our coins.  A tab in the window kept telling us the new amount.  Bonti X and I tried to guess how many pennies we had as we watched the ticker counting off the coins.

I envisioned little gnomes inside the machine counting and stacking the pennies or rolling them into little paper cocoons.

After a loooong time the machine stopped whirring and clanking and spit out a receipt for our cold hard cash.









  What a treat, a sursee, to take home money for pennies.  What started out as worthless pennies ended up as money we were going to use to help a friend.








Empty jars.

Full pockets!

 We took home the empty jars excited about doing something new.  Have you ever used a Coin Star Machine?

Happy New Year!

Here it is 2013, and here I am thinking about resolutions and plans and schemes.

Boxed up Christmas today.  Felt good and it looks great.  Something about the year changing makes me want to get Christmas down and put up.  Did it, check.

Started my new Ann Voskamp devotional.

Started my Chronological Bible again.  Genesis 1:1.  Love it.  Love reading through the Bible like a novel. More about that later.

Bear and I are starting a project that I gave to him for a Christmas present.  The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  Starting today.  Has 12 chapters and each chapter has an overall theme with smaller goals in it.  We each have a journal and will read the book and then discuss and try to work on the goals for the month together.  I am excited.  More on this project later. (Imagine a picture of the book here.  Can't get my Iphoto to work.  Ugh.)

Just had to check in and write- another goal for this year.  Plus, Number 2 son is blogging, too.  And he said he wrote something today.  So, I decided I needed to write, also.

Looking forward to 2013 and all that the Lord has for me.


Thanking Him for the gift of writing and the sursees waiting to be discovered this year.