One of the Best Pranks Ever

Pranks, it's whats for dinner. It's what makes summer camp even that more amazing.....until it happens to you. Except in my case. You see, I went to Texas for a few days and saw the family, ate some delicious College Station cuisine, watched some Fightin Texas Aggie Football Practice, and relaxed to a point where I almost felt bored. Upon my return to Okieland, something just didn't seem right when I walked into my house. My walls, furniture, appliances, cabinets, knick knacks, etc. You get the point. EVERYTHING was covered. But covered in what you ask?

Post It Notes.

It literally took me about 3 minutes of just walking around my house to really take in the fact that everything I was looking at was covered in 3x3 inch Post It Notes. Just try and take that in for a second. After not saying a word for about 5 minutes, my phone rang and the culprits were laughing and reveling in their accomplishment. The culprits being Deborah Lovejoy and Taylor Self. Here are some numbers they gave me. It took them 3 days to post 10,000 Post It Notes around my house along with about 130 pictures that they hid around my house. The photos are the most random arrangement I have ever seen in my life and I must confess that I have looked hard and have only found about 93 so far, which means I will be finding these things for weeks to come. The last one I found was tucked in a pocket in my jeans at the bottom of my drawer. So they went all out. And it was truly amazing. I mean seriously, I am still blown away and this happened over a week ago. I haven't even made a dent in taking them down either. I started taking down the ones where I needed. For example, in order for me to sit down, I had to de-Post It Note my recliner. When I was hungry and wanted to cook, I had to de-Post It Note my stove and microwave. Ridiculous. And amazing at the same time.

So here's to you Deb and Taylor and all the other peeps that had a hand in this: Y'all got me good and it will literally stick with me for a while.

Here's some pics-

My Kitchen

My Living Room

My Coffee Table

Deborah doing her thingTaylor doing her thing

Love & Hate

I love God.  A whole lot.  He shows himself in the craziest ways and craves my attention and passion and obedience.  But gosh, I suck at doing that full time.

As sure as the sun rises and the seasons change, my attention and focus shift from God to useless stupid things.  I'm guilty of being a habitual person.  Literally, when I find something I like, I just continue to do it, regardless of how old it gets.  I do it with food, music, clothes, routines, etc.  The only time I'll change it is when I'm either forced to or someone shows me a new cool thing to shift my focus.  So I love my habits, but then I also hate them.  Dumb, I know.

Let me give you an example of what I'm currently pushing through:  This whole summer I've been on fire for our ministry up here at Cave Springs.  Getting up was never a problem, starting my day with prayer and coffee, and then heading in to greet people and serve like a mad man til later that night.  And then get up and do it all over again.  It was beautiful.  Nothing broke, not too many hiccups, I got to work with amazing people, and Churches were having amazing times.

But this week has absolutely sucked.  It's been one of those weeks where things just don't happen like they normally do.  And I promise I'm not naive enough to think everything should be constant.  But things just started breaking, I tore open my knee on a rock, activities didn't run like they should, I had no amazing staff by my side, and worst of all, I just became more and more frustrated with each little thing.  Today, I just stopped what I was doing because I was about to punch a hole in the wall.  I sat and just vented to the wall about what I was pissed about.  Pretty pathetic, I know.  But it's even more pathetic that a week ago I was singing praises and now I'm yelling at the top of my lungs  because things aren't the way I'm used to.

I realize this is part of life.  I get that.  We live in a broken world and I'm a sinner which don't really go well together.

This may have made no sense to you.  Maybe I just needed to vent to something other than a wall.  On a side note, I'm not pissed anymore.  I will be again one day, but not tomorrow.  Weird.

Seasons

There are Seasons for everything.

Solomon mapped out virtually everything a person can go through over the course of their lives when he wrote Ecclesiastes. And he is still spot on to this day.

I happen to live through some seasons myself. Granted, the seasons I go through are pretty planned out in terms of what I expect. There's the Fall, Winter, and Springs Retreat Seasons.

And then there's the Summer Season. For the last 4 years of my life, I feel like most of my time is spent prepping for the Summer Season. Obviously, I work in a ministry dominated by kids craving the summer experience and churches seeking to unleash a week of fun and small group discussions. But then it ends. Just like that. Yesterday, it ended for me. For anyone who has ever worked at a summer camp, you know what I'm talking about. Reality hits when you drive away from camp. The reality that you won't have to eat the same food every week, clean the same dorms, work the same activity, lifeguard, share one bathroom for 10 people, etc. The list goes on and on.

But I can't just sit here and try and relive all memories I had. Of course I will keep up with everyone. But more importantly, this new season is an opportunity for me to try something new with my life. Here are some things I want to do in this Fall Season:

Build a deck for my house
Finally learn to play the guitar (already started this one, thanks to Taylor)
Run 5 miles on a consistent basis
Cook

So there it is. As somber as this time of the year is for me, I've got to recharge for the next Season of my life. If you have any suggestions for something else I can try and do, send them my way. I'm up for almost anything.