Wow'd.

If I could sit down over a pot of coffee and share with each of you all the Lord has been teaching me this year, I would.  Each year since I graduated college and moved to Florida (over four years now), I’ve thought ‘next year will be easy compared to this one’ and I have been oh so wrong.  It’s not that I haven’t loved each of these years, I have.  Each in its own way has been the most precious year yet.  And 2012 continues not to disappoint.

As I shared on Wednesday this week has been busy for me in preparation for a weekend of working in Indiana starting Friday, the buzz of work has started when I walk through the door and kept me making notes in a book at home til the wee hours of morning some nights.  As I purpose to be organized and perform my duties with excellence I admit my heads been almost entirely dominated with the work realm this week.  But I committed to my best friend on Monday morning that I my verses for this week would be these:

‘I will bless the Lord at all times; His praises shall continually be in my mouth.  My soul shall make her boast in the Lord: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad.  O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together’ – Psalm 34:1-3

It was a tall order, I know.  If you’re like me than busyness and ‘stress’ don’t always cast your most flattering light.  But purposing to remember these (and reading this verse over and over as it’s posted on my computer at work this week) it has continued to stay close to my heart.

I woke up Wednesday morning to a voicemail from my Dad.  I’ve shared before that my Dad, being in football, has a crazy schedule.  Of all the people I’ve ever known, he works longer and harder.  But I cannot remember a time in my twenty-six years of life that I’ve ever heard him complain about it.  A statistic was released a few years back that said the average NFL football coach works 120 hours per week.  That is 3x’s the hours of a 9-5 fulltimer.  So I played his voicemail on my drive to work and I teared up.  He said he’s been going in ‘extra early’ and staying ‘extra late’ this week because of their ‘short week’ from having a night game Sunday.  I’m not positive but for a guy who’s in the office by 6am and there til at least 10pm NORMALLY, I’m assume this week has been pretty brutal schedule wise.

Do you know what the message was about though?  Me.  He said he was sorry that we hadn’t gotten to talk much.  He said he couldn’t wait to see me this weekend (he will fly into Indy in the middle of the night Saturday and will have a little time with me before he goes into the office Sunday).  He said he checked to make sure the car was there for me when I arrived on Friday so I could get where I needed to go.  In the midst of a busy, crazy, stressful week for him – he left me a sweet, encouraging message about ME.

More and more I admire him. 

I am thankful for his example as I learn what it looks like to bless the Lord at all times and to put other people above myself. May I be someone who in the midst of my crazy life never forgets to value what’s going on in the lives of those around me.  May I be the kind of friend, sister, daughter, and leader who calls to check on the people I love even if it has to be before 6am or after midnight.  And may it be said, someday, that I never complain about hardwork.

I look forward with great joy to a cup coffee with my main man  this weekend in my high school home after a sleepover with my favorite people – my best friend, her husband, and my sweet, sweet Dad.

God is good.

Love,

B