Wow - no entries since Monday?

It's been that long? Wow...I guess it's been a busy week. But it's been good, though.

Tuesday was a good, productive day at work with very few people around. Tuesday night I finished my prep for Wednesday's talk. Wednesday I left work around 2:00 and got to church about 5:00 for the concert. And the concert was awesome! My brief talk went well, and had a couple of nice comments afterwards. I took off Thursday, which means I'm off until Jan 7! YAY! So, I spent Thursday finishing some shopping and just generally hanging out. Thursday night we went to dinner with C&M and then went to see American Gangster. It was pretty good: I'd give it 3.5 out of 5 stars. This was our traditional New Year's Eve dinner with C&M, but since we're going to be gone on New Year's Eve, we decided Dec 20 would suffice!

Yesterday's highlight was taking the concert donations to the Community Food Bank. Wow, what an amazing operation and service they provide. The director was floored that we had collected that much money ($632) from just a handful of people. She said everyday she is overwhelmed by people's generosity. What a great thing to be able to help them...and we need to find ways to do more.

Last night, we had a dinner party at our house with three other families (plus Don Julio from Mexico). It was such a fun night - we should make that a tradition!

And today, I'm working on Christmas presents and awaiting the arrival of my sister from Texas.

And even through the busyness of the past few days, I have not felt rushed or hurried at all. So much of that is an internal attitude and approach to life. I think all of the intentional slowing of the past several weeks has been really good for me. I feel relaxed, and I've even been sleeping better. I have a little bit of anxiety over our trip next week, but not very much. And most of that is just about getting there. I'll have to write about that in the next day or two...

So as the season of Advent draws to a close and we begin the season of Christmas, I'm thankful and grateful for the true gifts in my life - my family and friends. Thank you, God, thank you.