I thought about taking a shower, but I decided just to wash my face instead. I didn’t want to stay up that much longer.
I’m tired. I’m whipped. But at the same time, I’m just burning with life and energy. Because in retrospect, I just wrapped up one of the more amazing days I’ve had in a while–especially in light of the winter season I’ve been in.
The thing just kept building steam. I started off sleeping in longer than I wanted because I stayed up a bit too late–mostly because I did some net surfing and reading, before finishing off 1 Samuel, into the wee hours of the morning. But still, I got to work a bit earlier than I had been the past few weeks. I got to pray at staff meeting, but I didn’t exactly usher our team into the very throne room of God… but still, I talked to God on behalf of nine people, so that’s cool no matter how you look at it.
Anyway, the morning went pretty typical. Distractions were here and there. I got pulled for an hour from a due-tomorrow assignment to go and take pictures at a boring lecture… on Taoism of all things! Sherry, Kathy and I prayed during lunch as we usually do on Mondays–which was good, but not earth-shattering either. It didn’t feel like I connected with the Lord quite as well as I usually do.
After lunch, I started to get in the zone with my writing assignment, which as I previously shared is about SAU Katrina rebuilding efforts. 1000 words, due tomorrow. And all I had done was a mill-over in my head some and some light Web research.
About 3:00 p.m., I’m just purring along and this story is taking on a life of its own. And I’m actually getting a little worried about it because it’s not at all turning out how I thought it would. I was taking a slightly bold approach with it; I wasn’t writing the pat-ourselves-on-the-back story that usually fill our publications.
Yet, I keep going, making some subtle tweaks in the prose to tie some things together and make it sing. I get version 1 done just before 5:00–all 1,500 words of it. And I think it’s exactly what the Lord wanted me to write. It still remains to be seen if the decision-makers will give it the green light, but I think they will.
At this point, all I’ve eaten was a bowl of cereal, an apple and a stick of cheese. And a fat-free, sugar-free mocha from Sacred Grounds.
After chatting with a coworker and doing a final re-read of my article before submitting it to my supervisor, it’s about 6:00. I throw traditional workout-wisdom to the side, and head home to change, but don’t get anything to eat. I typically get pretty light-headed and nauseated if I don’t have something rather substantial about an hour before I work out. So, I plan to do something pretty low key–just shoot around.
Well, next-to-no rims were lowered in the gyms, so I ended up playing a couple rounds of full court pick-up with some decently-skilled students–not the low-key shoot around I wanted to do the day after my first Tae Bo experience. And pushing even more workout-wisdom aside, I promptly head to the fitness center to lift some weights and then shoot free throws.
I get home around 8:00, still running on that cereal, apple, cheese, mocha, water combination. I talk on the phone for 45 minutes and manage to squeeze in a yogurt/cottage cheese mix while doing so. Then Dan and I participated in a bizarre neighborhood “ghosting” game by picking up a holiday treat and door decoration and delivering it to another house.
So, now comes the best part: somehow, rather than watching the scary movie we had planned to, Dan and I delve into a 2.5-hour counseling session where he unloads all sorts of stuff he didn’t even know he was feeling about God, the supernatural, old relationships, freedom… whatever… all SORTS of stuff. I spent 90% of the time listening and then 10% of the time speaking truth. And then we prayed. And then we chatted a little more. And then we prayed again.
And now here I am.
All the while, I didn’t consider any of this very amazing. But then as I was washing my face and brushing my teeth, I looked back and thought about all I did on some cereal, an apple, a cheese stick, a skinny skinny mocha, some water and some yogurt mixed with cottage cheese. I think about all the energy I expended throughout the day–especially the full-court basketball and working out part–vs. the little I consumed. And I think about how alert and on I was for the long conversation I had.
And I think there was no way I should have been able to do that.
