Shaking Out The Notebook

My friend Katherine told me about a t-shirt that reads, "I am blogging all of this." Sometimes as I'm simply living my life I feel that way...and often, I scribble movie lines on napkins, funny things I overheard on old envelopes, observations in a pocket-sized notebook, etc. Yesterday was one of those days where I had a lot of those little moments but not necessarily one big blog.

Here's some snippets:

I stopped by the church yesterday to see how the deck for our student ministry's coffee shop was coming along. It'll be a nice hang out for students (even nicer knowing a company, unknowing accomplices to the handiwork of God, dontated the materials). It was really only a few dads & students digging post-holes for the foundation, with strings going everywhere and tape measures and such. But, I'm taken aback by the reality that this might be the place a student has the light bulb go off...all because God's people cared enough to dig a post-hole. Sometimes the sublime is where the work of the Father is found.

Despite much to do, I took my oldest daughter to the local minor league baseball team's fan day. It was free, and make no mistake, they were all about selling the 7- or 18-game ticket packages, but still. You got to walk in the baseball park on a 60 degree sunny day. There were former minor-leaguers now major-leaguers giving free autographs. My daughter was in the big-time donor suite that overlooks the field from behind home plate. "Oh, man! I miss baseball season," she says. I was thinking the exact same thing. She got her picture made with the Rangers' new 2nd baseman (hoping anyway, that he's major-league ready after 3 minor league seasons) who smiled and seemed happy to be signing autographs. It really was a small (and hardly altruistic) gesture, but they've got my business. Little things mean a lot.

Shelby came home and opened her birthday presents. She chose the restaurant, a local place called Pazzo's Pizza (they wood-fire it, whatever that means) so a small break in the new year's diet was mandatory...as was the gelatto afterward...so I guess you could say her theme was Italian yesterday. Anyway, the restaurant had paper tablecloths & crayons and we had a fun family moment where my oldest daughter was using those tools to describe "levels of friendships." She drew herself and some concentric circles with little dots and then she put names to them to help us understand the "levels" and then she scribbled outside all the circles and said, "This is everybody who isn't a friend yet." I drew two dots together, "This is me and your mom. *1st circle, with two dots* "This is you two." *in between the circles I drew a stick-figure dog* "This is Lloyd." Immediately they were playfully upset with their rating behind the dog, and Tracy made a joke that he was trying to get in between our dots. I then scribbled after my one circle and said, "These are all the people who aren't friends yet." They laughed, knowing I have very few close friendships besides my wife. Again, it may not be much, but it was little.

I was awakened this morning by thunder. 1st time in 31 days it's rained in DFW. Even then that was only a quarter-inch...and the last time was got an inch was 80 days ago. In fact, 161 days--nearly half a year--we've only had an inch and half of rain. I didn't mind at all being awakened by thunder.

As I sit here and think about how these little things added up to make one very pleasant day, I think I'll try to be a little more sensitive to the little nuances today. Seems like God is found in those life moments.