Unconditional

A table, most are made from wood and are fairly simple but what really makes them special is the people sitting around them. This weekend tables were filled with food, board games, photographs, white elephant gifts and more importantly were surrounded by people.

Most of my family both mom and dad side live in Virginia, so seeing my extended family can be quite a haul but always worth it. On average I spend about two weeks with my extended family all year, so it is super exciting when I get to see them. It was the Johnson family reunion (my mother’s side) and with my mom having four other siblings with children and grandchildren, all coming together with memories getting passed back and forth and new photographs getting taken it was quite exciting.

Family is an amazing thing. The unconditional love that is expressed between people that are connected for life by blood, adoption or marriage is completely unique. Being an only child I often wonder what it will be like when I get older, and I hope that enough of extended family will be around to make up for my lack of siblings. I always want to have crazy difficult to open packages, water testing questions to be asked and enough food to be present to feed hundreds. Unconditional love + family = always a reason to be thankful.

Broken

Beverages are the way to my heart. I love drinks of all kinds, more than food. Wine, coffee, chai, grande two pump pumpkin spice two pump white chocolate non-fat no-whip latte (my fall favorite), I enjoy them all. Therefore the containers that they come in are super important. I have to align my Starbucks sleeve so that the siren lines up perfectly with the one on the cup, the white ceramic coffee mug that I use everyday and two complete sets of wine glasses from Crate and Barrel my mom got me two Christmases ago.

He broke it. He broke one of my wine glasses. How could he do that? I felt the stress build up inside my body and it spewed out of my mouth as all forms of negative. How am I going to replace it? It is a part of a set, and I don’t know the exact name of set. I don’t even know how to even start to find a replacement.  It just lay there shattered on the floor and I screamed at him, loudly that it is his fault and how could he do that to my wine glass. I was totally and completely pissed. He just stood there, in awe that I was so upset. He didn't know what to do.

Almost a year to the date, she broke it. She called me up while I was at work. She asked me how my day was going. I told her that that it was going well. Then she told me that she was putting up a wine glass and she broke it. She confessed her apologies and said she would replace the glass, even the whole set if I wanted her to. I told her not to worry about it, that it was fine and it truly was. She was relieved.

True the people were different, the back stories of my relationships with these two people are different, but the important thing is that I am now different.

Over the course of the past year I have learned how to not value things, but value people. Items can be replaced; emotional baggage that you could create is not worth any item. The people who are involved in your life and that you care about are always more important than anything.

Memory

I tumbled today at a gymnastic facility during a tour for Leadership Rome and it made me realize how much I missed it. Back when I was twelve, I was the first all around in the state of Georgia for gymnastics. I was a big deal! A lot of times when we reminisce about past experiences it can leave us with a sense of sorrow, but the opposite occurred today. They were talking about how an adult class is held at the facility, and I am seriously thinking about partaking in that. Also I could be an instructor for young gymnasts.

With anything in life it is important to look back on your once passions with great memories, but how can you get involved now? How can you satisfy one of your hearts desires? I am not a fan of just theoretically y thinking about a topic and it involving no action. If you miss something, do something to fulfill that once passion in a new way.

Thoughts are awesome, memories are awesome, but do something now that can bring you back to your glory days and makes your smile!

Done

Driving drives me to sin. The lack of consideration of other people on the road makes me want to scream, and well sometimes I do just that. I am currently on a road trip for my job that has taken me across four state lines in one week. The number of awesome (insert sarcasm) drivers I have seen is incredible. God seriously is testing me this week in more ways than one.

She just sat there, texting on her phone, in her yellow mustang tapping away with her long fake fingernails in the middle of the exit. I couldn’t get out of the parking lot. She was completely blocking the whole exit and she didn’t even notice. I slowly moved closer to her car almost to the point of hitting it before she looked up. She then moved about two feet forward so I could barely squeeze by, but my poor car hopped the curb in order to avoid her completely. The whole reason I was leaving the parking lot is because I couldn’t find a parking space but one opened up during the whole exit debacle. So I went around to the entrance of the parking lot again only to find that during the time I had to wait at the light, Ms. Mustang decided that she wanted to leave through the entrance. Really. First you block the exit and then you block the entrance so I can no longer get into the parking lot. I GIVE UP!

I was attempting to get into the visitors information parking lot at a large university and failed and this one lady was my road block into meeting a potential client. I didn’t know how to find the building that I wanted.  I gave up completely. I set my GPS towards the next destination. Once I did this, I was loaded with guilt that I had failed. I didn’t know what I would tell everybody at work why I couldn’t accomplish my task. Then two miles down the road, feeling sorry for myself I saw a sign. It was the building complex that I was looking for the whole time. It was set apart from the rest of the campus, so I pulled my car in the right parking lot, got my stuff together and walked in with confidence.

Crazy right? No, not really. Testing my patience is just one way that God gets my attention to let me know that He is in control. He has my back no matter what.

“In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.” Proverbs 16:9