Shopping with Sluss

I spent my Friday evening shopping. Want to know what it was like? Let's just say I am not completely over my homesickness yet. Here's a summary of the night out in the Sluss brain:

• I miss Joanna--I was in Family Christian Store buying my Christmas cards, using my coupon from the mailer. We did that together last year.
• I miss Holly--I see all the teacher presents in Family Christian and think of her.
  
• I miss Mom--Family Christian Store is next to a Paper Cottage scrapbooking store.
• I miss Michael--I pass an REI on my way to Target.
• I miss Dad--As I pump gas next to the REI, I smell the Macaroni Grill, Olive Garden and other restaurants up and down the road. Daddy would take me out to dinner.
• I miss Liann--She would be going into Target with me, saying, "Sluss, do we really need to stop here? Can't we just go home?"
• I miss Denver, Poncho and Born Dancin'--there's Halloween candy all over Target, and I'll miss Halloween with them this year.
  

Fill in the remainder of the evening with many other "misses" and you pretty much have it. So, big fun for Sluss on a Friday night out. It was actually fine. It's just that, for me, even running errands and buying stuff is more fun with someone or if you are going home to someone.

Church today was good. This was church number four or five I have tried, and I really enjoyed the teaching. I wish the worship time would have been a little more serious, but I hack on people all the time for being hung up about worship styles, so I think I will pipe down and take me own advice. I sat with a family from MAF that I only know moderately well, so that was fun.

The pastor spoke about the kind of leadership outlined by Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:7-18. It led into a bit about comparison, and what a waste it is to compare any of our abilities or habits or skills or disciplines horizontally, one person to another. We should only be comparing ourselves vertically, to Jesus. I was thinking about us as a crowd of friends, because we seem to do a fair amount of horizontal comparison, in the nice way of course, by saying things like, "I so wish I had as much energy as Holly," or, "Why can't I write like Elizabeth?" or, "If only I were as patient as Joanna."

The only comparison should be vertical, to Jesus, and we will always come up short. Isnt that the best news? I am totally serious--that brings the most amazing peace to my soul and puts my striving to rest in a way that makes no logical sense, and is absolutely not self-defeatist. It blows me away that the one who made me knows I can never in this fallen form live up to all I dream of, but He says I am wothy of running after Him and He will give me the strength to do it. I love it.

And an interesting tidbit for the day: If you have a Fat Tire Ale with dinner and then take an Ambien, you are pretty tired. Not so tired to forget to do things like blow out any lit candles, but perhaps too tired to remember to turn off your electric mattress pad warmer that gets your bed all nice and toasty before you slide in. You wake up in the middle of the night a couple of times trying to figure out why you are boiling alive from the feet up. Eventually you figure out that something other than your own body temperature is at work and you slam the controls to off.

Roll over, drool some more.

Life is good.