Thanks for all the well wishes and flu sympathy for Caroline. The good news is that the Flu Mist may have helped a little because she was much better yesterday.
I knew she was feeling better when she magically transformed from poor little sick girl to demanding couch princess asking me to please hurry up with those pancakes and while I was at it could I call the T.V. station and let them know she’d like to watch “Ice Age 2”. Maybe introducing her to the concept of Pay-per-view television wasn’t such a good move.
The other indication that she was beginning to feel like herself was when I got dressed in some old camo pants and an ancient Abercrombie sweatshirt and she told me she was embarrassed by how I looked. At that point I told her that unless she wanted to take care of her own flu-infested self and play Candyland alone, she better show some respect to the woman who has been her constant on-call nurse for the last three days.
Anyway, I feel like I need to retract part of my letter to Flu Mist. Perhaps it’s not dead to me after all, but rather on probation.
In other good news, I feel fine so far. Which is kind of important because I’m flying to North Carolina on Friday morning to spend the weekend speaking at a womens’ retreat for Lee Park Baptist Church in Monroe, North Carolina.
What? What’s that? You didn’t know I was a speaker?
Yeah, neither did I.
Last June, a sweet reader named Becky emailed me to ask if I’d be interested in speaking at her church’s womens’ retreat the following Spring. She said that she didn’t know if that was something I would do, but just felt led to ask. My initial reaction was to email her back and asked if she’d actually ever read my blog and, if so, could I assume that the topic of the retreat was “Bad Hairstyles of the 1980’s”?
But instead I prayed about it and knew without a doubt that I was supposed to accept her invitation to speak to this group of women.
I also figured that it was June of 2008 and the retreat wasn’t until February of 2009, which I took as an indicator that God planned to fill me with vast amounts of spiritual wisdom and maturity over the next six months. Now here we are, two days away, and I’m still waiting on the wisdom and maturity part to show up.
The good news is that I can always teach them how to tie a scarf.
I can’t tell you how many times over the last few months I’ve asked God if I heard him right on this. I don’t know if I have anything worthwhile to say. Doubt creeps in and I think He may have the wrong girl.
But God keeps reminding me that I am me. He knows my weaknesses and flaws better than I know them myself and loves me in spite of them.
And so here I go, stepping out of my comfort zone.
The point of all this is that I wanted to share it with y’all. I had my week so carefully planned out so that I would have plenty of time to focus on preparing the messages for the weekend, so it’s made me laugh (and cry) that Caroline came down with the flu and has been home all week. I’ve had almost no time to myself and unless those women want a detailed re-telling of “Horton Hears A Who”, I need to spend some time being still before God, listening for His voice.
I’m not going to do Fashion Friday this week because I just have too much on my plate and would like to sleep at some point between now and Friday. I’ll check in over the weekend if I get a chance, which I probably will because airports are all about the free wi-fi these days. Maybe I’ll even find a rocking chair to sit in.
And if you think about it, I’d love your prayers for the weekend. Specifically, that I don’t say something stupid that I can’t edit and that God would show up in a big way.
Y’all are the best.