Soft

A soft landing to a hard week. Hard in the sense that it took some patience to push through when I felt run down, but otherwise, not so bad.

A big huge virtual hug to the wonderful ladies at the luncheon today! The organizers made absolutely gorgeous bouquets. My cousin was the first to draw a name from the basket. The winners got to take a bouquet home and she drew mine!! Thanks cuz!

I had the privilege of sharing some thoughts as the speaker for today's luncheon, a group of ladies from my church and some delightful guests! As it turns out for me, preparing to speak is sort of like a mechanic who finds that there are parts left over after the car is all put together. I have been jotting down thoughts, insights and what not for about 3 or 4 weeks now, and had lots of them left over when everything was said and done. Hmph. Spare parts, what to do?

The primary focus ended up being on the first line of the 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want..." A few weeks ago, I told Mariner (GERT) that I wanted a poster of this blip which reminded me of this passage. He kindly sent me the file and I placed an order for the poster. As it turned out, I spoke a bit today about being exactly who we are each day, each of us unique, each of us at our best when we follow the leading of the Good Shepherd (Jesus) and only try to be and do what we were made to. The Shepherd has already gone out each day and prepared the pasture and will lead us to everything we need and protect us from things that will come at us.

As an illustration of what can happen if we try to become bigger than we were made to be, I unrolled the poster sized photo which I had made from the file Gert sent, and there it was, sheep with no nose! It seems that if you push "buy now" before you push the button that instructs it to crop it and fit it to the page, some of the image is lost! Kind of like what happens when we try to be something we're not.

I was going to send the photo back and have them reprint it, which they said they were happy to do, but I think I will keep it as a reminder to do my very best to be as authentic as possible and resist the temptations that come and go to be bigger than what I was made to be.