Random Dots of Thursday Night

• Today was my last day of working 10 days without a break. I know you hardcore pastor chicks do that all that time, but honey, I am tired. Note to self: Don't do that again anytime soon.
  
  
• Ended this long day with a service of remembrance in acknowledgment of suicide prevention week which I attended at another church. There was a time for sharing. As usual, I was astonished at the depth to which people are willing to go after only a short time.
  
  
• As usual, I was also reminded how for extroverts A Time For Sharing is. I sure would like to hear more from the introverts. Is there a way to set that up to make it possible?
  
  
• And I was also reminded of how much I love the song "Just As I Am" even though "and that his blood was shed for me" is so not my theology. Probably worth exploring how much atonement theology is actually in there after all. Yeah. I'll put that on my list.
  
  
• I was also reminded of a dear friend who answered the phone when I was feeling close to the bone coming off some bad medicine last summer. Since this was a Serious Event, I did not share during sharing time.
  Me: (wailing) I'm so overwhelmed I feel like I want to die! I've never felt like this and I'm so freaked out.
  Her: Do you have a plan?
  Me: Are you kidding me? If I had a plan, I wouldn't want to die!
  Her: (pause and then offstage, as if to the rest of her suicide hotline coworkers) Uh, we got a newbie on the line here.
  Aw C, I love you so much!
  
  
• If you usually dont ingest any caffeine, a trick learned in Defense Against the Head Aches, and then you go have tea and giggles at a very sweet lady's house at 4:00 in the afternoon, you will still be kind of wired 4 hours later.
  
  
• I was so wired, in fact, that came home from the church tonight using a different route, a thing that, had I done it in Seattle would have ended in tears for sure, even after we lived there all those years. Here, I just figured it out and drove right home. That reminds of what my friend who knows him says about Peter Sagal. Evidently his superpower is being able to find his way around any city, but Seattle is his kryptonite. So it's not just me.
  
  
  
• While I've been working all the time, Jeff has been being super dad (Elijah will TALK to him. Me, not so much. Just a little bit of hostility there) and listening to those New Testament lectures by Bart Ehrman that I got for my commute time. Which has gotten him all psyched to study something but he has so many interests that there's no way he could decide what. What he wants to know is, can you apply to grad school with an undeclared major?