Thursday, August 14, 2008

Routines

Someone should have warned me that leaving behind your workout routine for the summer can be dangerous. This week my children went back to school and so I started going back to my local Curves. Mercy, isn't there a warning label required for this stuff? My whole body aches!

The first day I was there, two ladies came in behind me. They're the Olympic kind of exercise Mommas...you know the ones that are not just going for gold, but the world record too. So in order to catch up on how our summers had been, they got on the circuit right behind me.
Thus I had to keep pace with them. It was not pretty people; it was painful and I sweated more than I ever did laying by the pool. My red face wasn't a sunburn, but all the blood in my body wondering what was I thinking.

Surely this will all get better next week. Stay tuned.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Uno Attack

Uno Attack has become a family game for us over the past few months. The goal in the game is to be the first person out of cards. Recently while playing, my son got a card that allowed him to exchange hands with someone else. The strategy is usually to exchange hands with the person holding the least amount of cards. He suprised us and exchanged cards with his Dad, who had most of the deck! Joshua had decided that he and his Dad were on a team. And it was his responsibility to help him out.


This morning I saw something on tv that reminded me of how Joshua thought of the game. I was watching the GMA interview with Steven Curtis Chapman and his family. One of his sons, Caleb, said that when you see someone hurting, someone with a burden, you want to take that away. You'd rather endure the pain than watch them go through it. That is a huge life lesson from such a young man.

I don't know that Joshua, at six years old, thought through his decision. He just definitely wanted to help his Dad out. This kind of sacrificial love, coming from two completely different places in life, baffles me. One from a simple card game, the other from a life altering tragedy.


This is how I want to live my life. To recognize the needs of others and spend time everyday helping to lift them. It's not at all how I play Uno Attack.

Uno Attack is indeed a game, and let's just say the Turner girls are competitive. Hannah and I spent most of the game trying to cause each other to get more cards, skip a turn or changing the colors. It's not pretty, but we're a work in progress; every day in need of God's grace!


(If you'd like to see the GMA interview with the Chapmans, click here.)