in the past 12 hours I've...

One never really knows what is going to happen before walking onto a shift at Starbucks, today was a prime example.  

• I walk in and before any words are exchanged I receive the "It's been CRAZY today" look from Josh
• Boxes are stacked to the ceiling - it's our weekly order from Seattle...coffee, straws, cups, the important things
• The brand spanking new software on our registers is broken.  Everyone is cranky because of this.
• There is a new (never been told about) buy one get one 1/2 off special on all Holiday drinks (make note, get coffee with a friend this week...only till Sunday).
• We are short-staffed.  A new-hire decided to quit this week.  Sure, do the training, then quit!
• Yet in the midst of all of this it is this night I decide it necessary to go to Subway for dinner and pick up sandwiches for us all from a fellow Starbucks barista, who also has a successful career at Subway in the evenings. (Mine was meatball, hadn't had it in awhile.  Extra olives and that spicy stuff)
• The IDENTICAL ..." twin" of a good friend who just moved away walked in.  Making me feel happy and sad, and finally just warm and sentimental for the rest of the evening.
• After a very slow close, Josh and I decide to unpack all the boxes that are stacked to the ceiling
• It is in this moment a small desire to run a coffee shop someday rises with in...
• At 2:06am (three hours before our openers come open the store) I am in my car on my way home.
• On a whim of spontaneity and adrenaline, I decide to stop at the 24 hours Walgreen's, just because.  
• Unfortunately, most of the store was closed due to floor waxing. :(  So I just looked at make-up.  
• I drove home with no purchase from Walgreen's.  Made my bed.  And sat to write this post.  :)

I feel like brother Andrew who talks of how he is more of a nocturnal creature.  Tonight.  I am too.  

    

Autumn

I have loved Autumn this year.  It has been unusually warm, and slow to leave.  There has been a certain amount of relishing in the season this year.  Friends have come and gone, my heart has been in a steady movement towards hope.  The newest opportunity of a move has resulted in loving the present even more.  At this time last year I was in the midst of frantically trying to keep control of my life in the face of the unknown.  This year, I am faced again with the unknown, but this time I am daily letting go of control and resting in the hope I have in Jesus Christ.  As I read 1 Peter Paul talks how our hope is not in perishable things, but our hope is in an inheritance that will never fade!  That inheritance being salvation- salvation from fear, control, and self.  The more I wrestle with fear, contentment, faith, and the unknown the more I am reminded that I really can't put my hope in things here.  They leave, fade away, disappear.  The only place I can put my hope is in God.  He is the only one who does not leave, fade away, or disappear.

So be encouraged, friends.  Though the leaves are falling and the weather is changing, there is still a beauty in it all.  There is a beauty because our hope is in the Lord, not on things that will change.

 

Fall Retreat 2010

Autum has always been one of my very favorite seasons.  The colors, clothes, and food!  Most years I'm involved in some type of ministry that goes on a "Fall Retreat".  This year, my friend Mandy hosted her own "Fall Retreat" by inviting some of her friends to a lake house.  It was so lovely and fallish.