April 20, 1994. Paige Combs Is Born.

Twenty-one years ago ...

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Ephesians 4:7-16                                                     April 20
25 days                                                                    15, intern!
exams today, work tonight!                                     9404.20

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. 15

Lord, I ask for you to enter my life, to show Yourself in my life and in my teaching. I remember barging into Wesley House last night and simply letting off some steam about my performance -- what I felt was wrong. My sleeping spells, I felt, were not my fault or really my doing -- they were being imposed by you, Jesus, why I have no idea. It's a tendency a lot of people have, that I have especially have, to confuse God with life. Making provisions to satisfy what I can control will lead me not to desire what I can't control -- Lord, help me to attain this height and overcome myself.

And over this weekend ...

Today's entry was going to start with an account set just after the Battles of Lexington and Concord (fought the day before this in 1775, the opening salvos of the American Revolutionary War often grouped together because the British retreated from Lexington to Concord, but more about that another day) but after I'd brought the kids to school and caught up on my sleep before getting ready for work myself, I came across this post on Facebook that my niece Paige in Illinois is twenty-one today! So I went upstairs and dug out my journal entry from that day -- I was in the final days of my teaching internship  my senior year at Stetson University, hence some of the references. I often think it would be a good idea to make copies of my journal entries and give them to my children and nieces and nephews as they come of age, but chalk that down on my list of things to do, books to read, and works of my own to finish.

This weekend I had one of Martha's family -- her aunt Della's husband Grady -- ask me how I was doing with books of my own! We were all at a family reunion hosted by Martha's cousin Bryce who owns and operates a home health care business in Mandan about two hours southeast of us. The food was plentiful and grilled, there was a country karaoke singer performing on a trailer, and inside the warehouse itself Bryce had several aquariums as well as two tabletop video games set up that let you choose to play any one of four hundred sixty or so games! I can almost forgive him for decorating the downstairs tabletop in Minnesota Viking colors ... anyhoo, Bryce is married with a fourth kid on the way and I walked around trying to get snippets of every conversation going on, even got to toss the pigskin around with some of the kids there (I do not have a map of who's related to who that I did not already know, sorry) and I don't mind Martha driving both ways!

Nor do I mind that Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Robert -- by the way, Saturday was also HIS 69th birthday -- offered to watch our kids Friday night after the Family Fun Night at Longfellow Elementary and we and Martha's sister Mary met them in Mandan the following afternoon. (Though we did word it wrong when the kids rode with us on the way back to Minot and we said that Friday night/Saturday morning it was ... um, quiet and we got some things done. The kids don't make all the chaos in the house, believe me!) I didn't mind the day off from Marketplace either to go to Mandan; I haven't been out of town since last June, I think, when Martha and I were our church's delegates to the Western North Dakota Synod which met in Bismarck. This year we're also synod delegates, and the two-day meeting is in Minot itself! Yeah, it happens ...

(From here as I was typing this my day was a bit of a whammy ... talk to you later, David)