Indeed, it is April. Already. In fact, it is nearing May by now. Clinic concluded in the Speech and Hearing Center at Montevallo last week (thank everything). This was a wonderful!! semester of clinic, but these few weeks of "down time" (yeah, right!) before exams are sooo needed. Time to tie up the loose ends of the treatment reports and take home tests and move into exam week. It went by so fast. Supposedly, this semester is the hardest of them all in my program. I would not say it has been such a struggle. It was a little harder to manage the coursework, but no major difficulties (this statement is to be either retracted or confirmed following the coming week's aphasia and ABI finals...)! Really, I am pleased with it overall. It was such a great experience to go off campus for clinic this semester (to Inverness Elementary School) and do some group therapy for phonological awareness. Loved it. Loved it. Could not stress how much I love being in the school environment more than that! Always knew in the back of my mind that I'd end up working in a school! Still hopeful to do some off-campus clinic next fall in an outpatient clinic setting, but have begun looking into the reality of a school system job. Can't believe I will start applying for those next winter. Yikes. Hope I feel ready for it by then! Definitely looking into opportunities out of state (Hello, Georgia), as well as here in Shelby County. If Abby and I have the opportunity to stay here, I will keep us here. Love our house and the area. If a job across the state line presents itself, I'd be just as excited to take that chance. Have I made it clear how grateful I am to be able to move freely and independently at this point in my life? If not, let this be that statement. Yesss.
Exam week (May 3-7) will conclude at 6pm on the 7th with the termination of the ABI final, which I fully intend on whooping. At 6pm, I will be free and Amanda and I will venture directly to the beach! It'll be time for our annual Gulf Shores trip. Hello, LuLu's!! Can't wait to lounge for a few days. Upon returning, I will be having a very large cleanin' out of this house! Who knows what is in this house! When I moved in, I stacked a lot of boxes of clothes and books (mainly old college texts and such) into a spare walk-in closet. The time has come for those items, among others, to be dispersed out into the world. It's gonna be a huge tossin' out! I'm also aiming to do some more painting in the house. Maybe gonna do some neutrals upstairs and in the hallway. Who knows, I could get crazy like I did one weekend last summer and paint another room green...(this is in reference to my dining room...). The green has grown on me, but I still think about painting over that mess!
The following comes from a message by Pastor John Piper, referenced in several recent sermons at my own church (The Church at Brook Hills) by our senior pastor, Dr. David Platt. Hearing Pastor David preach on this verse from Galatians has made a difference in how I see myself contributing to this world, or rather, I should say consuming from this world when I should be doing the opposite. Stay in the mindset of glorifying the Lord and devote yourself to acting from that mindset, not transient, frivolous selfish desires. I'm going to put a long quote on here for you (the two of your that regularly read this generally worthless blog!).
Galatians 6:14
"But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."
"You don't have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by a few great things. If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on for centuries and into eternity, you don't have to have a high IQ or EQ; you don't have to have to have good looks or riches; you don't have to come from a fine family or a fine school. You have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things, and be set on fire by them.
But I know that not everybody in this crowd wants your life to make a difference. There are hundreds of you - you don't care whether you make a lasting difference for something great, you just want people to like you. If people would just like you, you'd be satisfied. Of if you could just have good job with a good wife and a couple good kids and a nice car and long weekends and a few good friends, a fun retirement, and quick and easy death and no hell - if you could have that (minus God) - you'd be satisfied. THAT is a tragedy in the making.
Three weeks ago we got word at our church that Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards had both been killed in Cameroon. Ruby was over 80. Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: To make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing 80 years old, and serving at Ruby's side in Cameroon. The brakes failed, the car went over the cliff, and they were both killed instantly. And I asked my people: was that a tragedy? Two lives, driven by one great vision, spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ—two decades after almost all their American counterparts have retired to throw their lives away on trifles in Florida or New Mexico. No. That is not a tragedy. That is a glory.
I tell you what a tragedy is. I'll read to you from Reader's Digest (Feb. 2000, p. 98) what a tragedy is: "Bob and Penny... took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells." The American Dream: come to the end of your life - your one and only life - and let the last great work before you give an account to your Creator, be "I collected shells. See my shells." THAT is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. And I get forty minutes to plead with you: don't buy it. "
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/ConferenceMessages/ByDate/1483_Boasting_Only_in_the_Cross/
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment