Blah. I hate having a case of the Mondays:(. Nothing particularly bad happened…I was just in a weird mood this morning at work (not because of anything at work) and never managed to shake it. I had these great plans of baking bread and making some mock-tuna casserole (recipe found at Chile Chews, which, by the way, is an excellent blog chock-full of great recipes, tips, and insights that got me through my Monday today!!), but I think I’m going to have to put it off until tomorrow or Wednesday.

I think that part of my feeling weird is because I think God’s really working on something, and the “growing-into-it” phase always hurts and feels weird. I wish I would hear back from ECU already. I wish that God would give me a clearer vision than “just pray a lot and work on being more consistent.” I know that I need to stop asking questions and just do what I’m being told, but I don’t work very well that way, truth be told.

Joey and I were discussing the idea of consistency yesterday. After an excellent experience at our church’s “modern worship”service, The Lift, we were thinking about our generation and what needs to be done to effectively reach them. I broke down a little yesterday because I’m still struggling with meshing my views on environmentalism and conservation and my faith which calls us to be primarily people-focused (although I do hold that, while we all are called to evangelism, some are called to care for Creation also). Anyway, Joey brought up the point that we spend so much time compartmentalizing our lives that I naturally get worried about the whole..”this is what I believe about religion,” and “this is what I believe about the environment.” He suggested that I focus on the whole, on being consistently the same wherever I am, that the “work” me should be the same as “church” me and “home” me, and naturally those views would probably gel a little more. I think that we all feel like we have to fit in exactly with what our church thinks (or what the prevailing view of our denomination is) and it causes us a good bit of grief when we come upon an issue wherein our natural leaning differs with our traditional “institutional belief structure.”

I apologize if this all sounds like nonsensical rambling. Honestly, I’m trying to work this all out myself. So, what I’ve settled on for now is that God wants me to work on my consistency, on having the very same level of personal holiness at work that I display outwardly at church. I figure that once I get that in order a little better, maybe I’ll be able to see what’s coming or at least what the next step is.

I finished Prisoner of Azkaban last night, and I plan on finishing A Complaint Free World tonight. I was going to finish it today at lunch, but I had the opportunity to go to the Dollar Tree, which is hard to refuse;). Tomorrow at lunch, I plan to start Blue Like Jazz, which I’ve been wanting to read for a while but Joey hasn’t finished it yet. At this point, I think his reading list is pretty full with everything he’s doing for the PhD.

No blog should be without a Shelli pic, so I leave you with her first experience with “El Gato Muy Loco” catnip…

She’s winking at you….