An Unusual Week

Recently I've been listening to my dad's sermons regularly. I know I'm biased, but he's done two incredible sermon series in a row. The first was on Spiritual Formation in a Material World and the second on Forgiveness. If you want to listen, either go to www.campbellchurch.org or look up the Campbell Church of Christ podacast on iTunes.

Anyway, God really has a sense of humor. The series on materialism focused on "holding on to things loosely." Not just money and posessions, but anything that's temporary. Holding on to things too tightly is like making a fist - the stress and tension travel all the way up your arm into your neck and shoulders, whereas living with an open hand is much more relaxing. That resonated with me considering I had a reputation in high school for saying "Don't touch my stuff." Sure I've matured, but I'm still pretty posessive of "my stuff." As I said, God has a sense of humor because while I was being inspired to start holding on to things loosely, He was plotting to see if I really meant it.

Now, it really wasn't a bad week. But it was unusual. On Wednesday, our water shut off during my shower. I wasn't really clean and had to improvise by rinsing the shampoo out of my hair with water bottles. I still felt pretty spoiled since the running water I take for granted shut off so I pulled the case of clean water out of the kitchen pantry. After spending the weekend with FCC high schoolers ministering to the homeless in San Francisco, I couldn't complain about my water situation.

Then Thursday, while I was hurrying out of garage to get to a meeting, I took off the side mirror of my car. I'm pretty proud of (and OCD about) my car, so I was pleased with myself for not panicking, throwing the mirror in the trunk, and continuing cautiously to my meeting. I stopped by the Honda shop on my way to work, and miraculously they had a spare mirror in the right model and color! So my car was broken for less than 8 hours and I had a chance to experience that material things are just....things.



Then on Saturday our electricity was off all day (PG&E was working on the neighborhood). It wasn't easy to put on makeup by candlelight, but it was way better than having no shower by regular light. Also on Saturday we discovered that there is a wasp nest in our satellite dish on our balcony! We've found a few wasps near the balcony door but had no idea where they were coming from until it was so hot Saturday that they were buzzing around like crazy. Ewwww! (By the way, it was 80 degrees here all weekend, a record for mid-November. Those not living in California feel free to be jealous.)



So that has been my week of holding on to things loosely. All is well in the Fitelson home and we have a lot to be thankful for! We're especially thankful that in a week we get to meet our niece and spend Thanksgiving in New York with Danny's family! We're also thankful the Cowboys' season might still be alive after beating a division rival yesterday! What a great week.