She drives . . .she works . . .she cleans . . .

Well, yesterday I woke at the crack of dawn and finished packing my stuff and loaded it into my car. I sure did miss Mark. He is such a good packer and loader. It took two trips to get my stuff down to the car but I was smart and borrowed the cart from the hotel and loaded my heavy suitcase on it and rolled it to the car. I took enough clothes for two weeks . . .why? because I packed all my insecurities in that stupid suitcase. I read someone's post on She Speaks 2013. She said that she was going to take clothes to change throughout the day. Well, I thought I needed to do the same. Did I ever do that? Heck no!!! It was nice today. I had clean and ironed clothes all ready to wear to work!! I actually passed a girl in the lobby yesterday and there was that giant suitcase on the cart and I said, "all my insecurities are packed in that suitcase!" She actually seemed to understand! I grabbed a banana and a piece of sausage from the breakfast buffet and was on the road by 6:30 Birmingham time. I drove through some pretty intense fog in North Carolina and some rain in South Carolina but the weather was pretty good for driving. I stopped three times for the bathroom and one of those times I also bought gas . . .and I didn't realize it until I went into the little gas station portion but I was not in a nice neighborhood at all but it was ok. I smiled at folks and they smiled back and I remembered that we were all created by God and I decided I would not have any preconceived notions about other people. I went to the bathroom, got a diet pepsi and got back in the car and headed on my way. At some point, I stopped and loaded a sermon from my home church onto my phone and listened to the sermon from the contemporary service from last Sunday . . .while my husband was worshipping in the early traditional service at home. It was kind of nice to know that I was connected in that way. If you want to hear an incredible sermon, listen to this: http://www.trinitybirmingham.com/sermons/july-21-2013-you-me-we-committed/ So . . .made it home in a little under 7 hours. Actually, I called Mark and he said they were all at his mom's house eating Sunday lunch (our family tradition). I knew there was NO food in our house so I went to her house for lunch before heading home. I planned to go to the store and do all sorts of stuff in the afternoon but I couldn't do a thing. I just sat in a chair with my feet propped up on the stool. . . and then I went to bed and slept . . .like a log . . . and then went to work . . .and now I'm supposed to be cleaning to get ready for young adult study tomorrow night. Several people have asked me to share my talk that I gave in the critique session. I'll post it tomorrow. We are going on our staff retreat in the morning down to Horses Horses. I'm looking forward to the day. We will be doing our planning for the fall. I keep thinking about the comment from the weekend. I just want to serve Jesus. I need to remember that tomorrow. I just want to serve Jesus. Yes, I drive. I work. I clean. I want to serve Jesus.