Thoughts from this weekend...

I just had an extremely event/fun/emotional weekend but have a lot of thoughts from it.

I had a sleepover for my elementary small group girls on Friday night at my house. It was so much fun..definitely got a little crazy but that's ok. I'm so grateful that the Lord has entrusted me to so many different types of children. Around 1:00 in the morning they decided that it would be appropriate to have a worship time. They were awesome during it and afterwards we talked about things going on in our lives. One girl told the story of how she was adopted, which is a huge testimony of God's amazing power to save. But so many of the girls told little snippets of things that they are going through personally and it was so interesting because they were things that I didn't start dealing with until I was almost in high school. There is so much pressure on our girls right now because of media and such and it makes me so sad but I'm so grateful that I can relate and encourage young girls in the right direction.

As soon as the last girl left on Saturday I immediately left for Carmel where one of my best friends lives. The timing of going down there was amazing because there was so much on both of our hearts that we wanted to talk about. We did lots and lots of fun things but perhaps my favorite was sitting in Panera once I got down there and just processing through some of the things going on in our lives right now. I love how women always get each other and how we don't really need to tell the whole story because they already know. I love how the Lord helps give us accountability to other people in our lives for so many different areas of our lives. We did lots of fun things though like going to her church's holiday craft bazaar and took care of some Christmas shopping, went to see the movie "The Secret Life of Bees", went to Zionsville to visit her sister, brother-in-law, and their baby, frequented Starbucks, church, the mall, and Cheesecake Factory....but perhaps the best of all is that we figured out what we are going to do for spring break! We have traveled on spring break together for the past 6 years and every year we do something amazing because we both really want to look back on this season of our lives and have no regrets and know that we took advantage of every moment of it! So we are going on a cruise to the Bahamas! :) I am SO excited!! We found a good deal and instead to Orlando we are going to drive because it is going to save us a ton of money! It will be a 4 day cruise and will get back just in time for us to celebrate Easter with our families. Yay!

I went to Rochester after leaving Indy to visit Grandma and did her grocery shopping, ran all her errands, and sat with her for a while. I didn't spend the night tonight but probably will for about half this week...I'm still trying to recover my sleep from last week. I have always been one to try to invest into others/love others the best that I possibly can and watching someone go through stuff like this reminds me of how important that is. I am glad that I have a passion for serving others and trying to remain as selfless as possible.

My friend's mom was reminding me of her favorite saying this weekend that she instilled in all her kids and I think it may become my new favorite saying:

Use it up
Wear it out
Make Due
Do without

I'm definitely trying to live like that more than ever right now and not get caught up in 'stuff' because ultimately it doesn't matter at all but loving others is what really matters.