Pity Party 101

Ever wonder how to have a good pity party? Take a hint from Psalm 142:4 "I looked for someone to come and help me, but no one gave me a passing thought. No one will help me. No one cares what happens to me." Hah! I think this is pretty funny. This was my memory verse today and all I could think of, "someone having a bad day?" Funny!

The sermon yesterday was great! Pastor Ron spoke about how we play the blame game. As I listened to the sermon, I thought to myself, "wow, I've totally heard this kind of thing before and have practically mastered the art of not shifting blame to others." But as the sermon went on, I realized I've been blaming some big things (maybe I've been better with the small ones) on those who aren't responsible. However, I was very pleased to realized that there is one area that I recently took responsibility for and just this past Friday had a small victory. It went something like this:

In this little story, 'BLANK' will represent the THING that floated through my head.

Setting: At dinner with Mark at Macaroni Grill, our favorite place. We had just been seated at a nice, dimly lit, table near the back where it wasn't too noisy. Our drink order had just been taken and we had already made our dinner selections and set the menus aside.

Mark took my hand from across the table, looked lovingly into my eyes and this floated through my brain, "I can't believe BLANK! I should totally express to him my frustration about BLANK." That was me talking.

This is what I heard from God, "Care, if you give life to that thought, you could mess up a really nice dinner and evening with your best friend and the man you love. You know that if you do this, I will still love you and Mark will still love you. But instead, will you trust me with BLANK and choose to put it aside, without bitterness or resentment, and enjoy your evening?"

God won!! He gave me the patience and strength to set it aside. Yippee for God victories! It may seem cheesy but I seriously have to celebrate all the little ones I get ;)

We had a really nice evening and I was thrilled on Sunday to realize that the work I have been doing has paid off in some real tangible ways. It seems that in the same way it gets easier to do the wrong thing the more you choose it, it's also easier to do the right thing the more you choose it. Although this is absolutely a work in progress.

Highlights from right now:
- Elmers ROCKS at speedy service on Saturday mornings!
- Weekend long runs with my running partner are a highlight!
- I'm enjoying my consistent and successful workouts for the past 7 weeks, but am looking forward to changing things up with infrequent shorter runs outside in Europe ;)
- The first day of our trip (March 14th) has finally shown up on the 10 day forecast. Ya!!
- The weather in some of the places we will visit looks like it will be similar to Portland today ;)
- I got to put the top down on the Mustang today!
- My car is a super awesome speedy ride!! If I smash the pedal to the floor at the right point in first gear, the tires don't quite squeal, but she acts like she can't go fast enough to keep up with the monster engine and I'm up to 50+ before I know it!
- I feel highly privileged to be able to drive my beauty of a car every day! And hope to enjoy this element of my life right now as much as possible.
- I really like the turbo kick boxing class at the gym on Monday nights. I still get tired and feel like I don't know what I'm doing, but it's really fun and makes time go by fast!
- I'm doing better at flossing on a more regular basis.
- We are eating dinner soon and food is always a highlight ;)
- I get to see Mark soon and HE is my FAVORITE highlight!
- I'm SO thankful I decided to renew my passport for no reason last August.
- I get to spend 2 weeks wandering around Europe with my dad!
- My friend Raychel is coming over after the gym on Thursday, we're picking up Baja Fresh for dinner and watching the week's American Idol's in one sitting ;)
- Mark just got here!