Hanging in there....

This has been a weird week so far, but I think I'm managing to hang in there. My quick update:

Sunday was pretty normal. The morning church service was great. Then, our morning Bible study was very challenging. Our group is doing a unit on the church and challenging why we "do church" the way we do. Sunday's discussion was about diversity in the church. Well, first I had to exercise all the self control I had to keep from laughing out loud. Diversity itself isn't funny, but I am a fan of The Office, and all I could think about when the leader announced our topic for the day was an episode from the first season when Michael held his own very misguided Diversity seminar. Needless to say, this Sunday's discussion was much more focused and appropriate. It was also much more challenging. Where do we draw the line between accepting others as they are and standing firm in our own convictions? We certainly didn't draw any hard conclusions, but it was a good reminder of my need to rely on the Holy Spirit's guidance.

I knew Monday was going to be rough from the moment I woke up. Of course that moment was 10:24! I couldn't believe I slept that long. I had felt a little off on Sunday evening, and I had been up a few times during the night. I'm still not sure if it's just my allergies or something else, and I didn't ever feel all that bad. My body must have gone into self-protect mode, though. I didn't hear either of my alarms, and I had set two. I didn't hear my housemate get up and leave. I only panicked when I finally did wake up. I was really wondering why the school never called me, but apparently they tried and I didn't even hear that. The rest of the day went pretty well. The faculty and office staff teased me an awful lot, but I think it was well deserved.

Tuesday's big event was a storm. The day was normal enough. The weather at the beginning of the day was beautiful. That worked out well because that meant both of my first grade classes were able to go on their field trip, giving me loads of extra prep time. After school, though, the weather got dreary pretty quickly. We kept our eye on the news of the impending big storm. I've been on the east coast for a while, and I'm having a little trouble adjusting from hurricane news back to tornado alley news. Anyway, we normally have a ladies Bible study meeting at my house on Tuesday night. The lady who leads it called me around 5. She had heard predictions of large hail and vicious winds, so we decided it might be wisest to cancel. I should add that this Bible study has been cancelled almost as many times as we have met, and I'm a little bummed about that because I've really been looking forward to this study.

In this case, though, it was a good thing we cancelled. At around 5:45 our power went out. It stayed out for around six hours. It reminded me of how thankful I should be for electricity. I take it for granted until I have to spend six hours in the dark. Life is boring when I can't read, watch TV, listen to music, or clean. I did go back to school for a little while. The power there was on, so I was able to get some more schoolwork done. (Tuesday was a very productive day for me for school stuff.) Then, when the power still hadn't come back on at 9:30, I called my parents who very graciously agreed to let me stay at their house for the night. I could have slept in the house without electricity, but especially after Monday's incident, I wanted to make sure I could get up on time.

Wednesday was considerably better. My mom woke me up since I didn't have an alarm clock, and my dad had a pot of brewed coffee all ready when I was ready for breakfast. I told them they need to be careful or I'm going to consider moving back into their house.

Tonight I get to enjoy the meat that I started marinated last night but couldn't cook without power. I'm also looking forward to an evening of being able to see, clean, cook, read, listen to music, watch TV, or any combination of the above. Then, I'm looking forward to setting my alarm and waking up to tomorrow's adventures. Of course, I'll have to spend this next little chunk of time resetting all the clocks, but I'm glad the power (at least for now) is back on so I can do that.