Apartment #11

So the grilling bachelor in Apt. 11 is natures way of telling me true summer is almost over. You know how seeing a Robin in spring is the first sign of spring? Well, the grilling bachelor is telling me summer is almost over...how? He grills every day now and there was something smoldering under his grill the other day.

We did our laundry on Saturday and while walking back up to our third floor apartment, there he stood, outside the door, helpless against its force like a stranger trying to get in. He forgot his key up in the apartment. Happens to everyone...even me once and a while! So I let him in. His outdoor activities included grilling and while waiting for his meat to cook, he was working on his car. Interesting combination of time-occupying activities.

One day last week, my husband and I came home and there he was, grilling or working on his car, and we walked out of our garage and there he was, with a business card sized promo thing for his church...asking us to come and visit this Sunday (I have already mentioned we're members of the church I grew up in and felt it unnecessary to repeat this information). Then he commented on how handy those little cards were.

They are...and what would happen to the world if it were truly that easy to ask someone to go to church? It acutally is. This church that he attends not only has those handy little cards, they also have custom water bottles they hand out to people. Its very non-confrontational I think and sometimes people go just because they've been asked. To tell you the truth, I would have gone to his church just becuase he asked me the first time...that is, if I didn't already have a church that I had been attending.

My challenge to you is this: Go with the weird guy in Apartment 11. He's got it right in so many different ways: He realizes that the temperature of the grill kills bacteria from cleaning his car. He finds a way to recline and put his feet up while being productive (the cheap reclining lawn chair next to his grill). He is persistant in getting people to find TRUE joy. He's willing to step out of the norm in order to make others feel welcome, respected, and noticed. What's wrong with a world when all of this is out of the norm?

Just one of those Blessed days...

Okay so obviously yesterday was one of those kind of days...you know where nothing goes right but by the time you go to bed, everything turned out better. If you read my blog, you know how my day started. This is how it finished:

I left the office shortly after 4 to meet one of my girls...the one who was "pissed off" about camping being canceled (which was the main reason I was so mad and angry). I was praying all day about this because I didn't want to come off angry, bitter, mad, etc... because I 'had to be the strong one...the adult' here. I also reminded myself that anger isn't sin, what you do with anger could be sin...which is also why I had to pray, I had to set a good example.

So I pick her up and she starts telling me about this dream she had. This was the sort of dream where you re live a real situation you go thru and then theres an alternative ending. Yeah...so it ended (in her dream-version of reality) by her telling people off for judging her about not being a Christian.

*Important info: she thinks being a christian is about doing AND believing to get saved.

She was telling them off for believing and not doing. When she was finished I just said, "Well, your wrong there..." and I went into this whole Gospel Presentation.

I droped her off an hour or so later with a devotional in her hand and drove off. God made me speechless! I couldn't believe what had just happened!! I had been waiting for the right time to have that conversation for so long and lately I've been sensing it getting closer and closer! I didn't present it as a decision thing, just as a truth thing...an FYI because I knew she wasn't going to make a decision to follow Christ and I never want to push anyone into that. She's a thinker. If she does, it won't be for a few weeks yet...at least!

It was just one of those blessed days...

Apartment 8

Oh yeah, so I showed my mom the flowers on the porch of Apt 8 and she was impressed. Her response was, "Kelly, you could have flowers like that too." Yeah right, I don't have that much time, money, or beer! ...And I would have to start with a cute little table more likely seen at her house:) with a matching chair.

Just one of those "Blessed" days...

This would appear on my other blog, but I try to make that one up-beat and not so much like today.

Its just one of those days I think the world and God are just against me. I feel like I fail all the time. All the things I've attempted to plan have fallen flat in the mud (quite literally because today is rainy). I am just hopefully hopeless.

Like, I know God is there and is faithful and he does things for a reason and all that...but see, today I have that 18 inch problem where I know it but if you asked me if I believed it I would have to pause for a long time.

The serve trip went down the toilet because no one on the other end ever replied to my emails.

The camping trip went down the toilet because God decided that this week would be the perfect opportunity for the 'one week of rain during summer'.

HHRM is no longer going because well, it changed so often that I couldn't depend on anything...going there was a constant state of "maybe".

That Bible Study? Yeah, three meetings later and it disbanded because one girl (half the group) moved.

Today I wish that I could have woken up on a perpetual state of Aug 10...the dawn of the weekend, full of pure unhindered anticipation, bright sunny days, and no problems or disappointments.

Today I no amount of anything could make it better.

Our Castle

As you can imagine in todays world, I don't know anyone who lives in the appartments around me. That doesn't stop me from having fun with them. In my head they all have interesting lives based on the frequency that I see them, what I see them doing, how they've decorated the outside of their appartment, and all the other odd facts I know about them. For instance...

Appartment 8 is a 30 something male (I always thought there were two people occupying that appartment but I think I'm going to change my mind). He casually sips his beer while reading the GR Press on his porch. His porch by the way, is beautifully decorated with an arrangement of potted plants and off the ledge there are three or four hanging plants. I think he's gay. Our porches are only 5 foot square or something like that and his has a cute little table, one I'd more likely see at my mom's house, and its quite cozy. His garage is always closed.

Appartment 1 has two little girls. They speak mostly spanish. They drive a small SUV so they're the typical 'American Family.' The Computer is constantly on in that appartment but that doesn't stop them from valuing the out doors. The advantage of being Apt 1-4 is that your slider doesn't open up to a porch, it opens up to the ground. They have a cute little picnic table and basketball hoop for their girls. They have been known to grill from the tail gate of their car parked outside. Dad, in this appartment is a family guy...he assembles furnature, keeps his kids in sight all the time, and grills.

Appartment 7 is friendly. I think there is more than one person in that one but I only ever see one. She's a 30 something female who I only ever see doing the laundry.

Appartment 4 is the with all the outgoing mail. We don't have a blue drop-box for out going mail so appartment 4 puts it in her inbox with a note. Interesting...

Then there is Appartment 10. Two people...married...fight occassionally...and when they fight, she gets loud. They must leave rediculously early in the morning because we only ever hear them at night. Most of the time its quiet. She's relatively irregular in her schedule but if you follower her closely, I'm sure there is a method to the maddness. The guy...he's a hottie.

I just recently met Appartment 11. Again, I thought he lived with someone, a wife or girlfriend or somethign like that, but I recently changed my mind on that...I think he's alone. He goes to church, Grand Rapids First. He also spends his time on his car (he drives a Ford Taurus). He - I think is the ultimate bachelor - He has a cheap reclining lawn chair in his garage and uses it only when he grills. He's got a great sound system in the Garage and has it rigged up with lights, and everything else. He spends a good amount of time in there. Nice guy, continually appologizes for making too much noise and according to his neighbors, they hardly hear him (tho in the beginning they heard a lot of banging...and he wasn't apologizing then). I figure he must be a new Christian cause he's all about making sure people go to Church and know the Lord. Not that old Chrsitians don't want that...old Christians are usually not as energetic.

Anyway, I must go.

Four pieces of white Chocolate and one dark Chocolate

So mom and dad took the family out to dinner Saturday night because my dad is going out of town tomorrow for the rest of the month. Don, my husband, said to me as we were walking out, "There wre two older ladies looking at us thru dinner." I told him that our family must be quite a sight to see. Granted there are a variety of minorities in the area, sometimes it's a little odd (not in a bad way necessarily) to see a mixed marriage...or in our case, four white fake-baked Dutchmen and one really baked non-Dutchman. I was interviewed a few months ago by a college student doing a paper or whatever on multi-cultural relationships...so thats what Prompts me today: multi-culturalism (-ism being my marriage).

What is it like to be in a multicultural marriage? As hard as I hate to admit it, Nicole Richie said something really profound when asked what it was like being the daughter of a rock star..."I don't really know, I mean I have nothing to compare it with so I don't know any different."

I don't know any different either. But what I do know is this: the most difference that is between us has nothing to do with our skin color or heritage/traditions, it has more to do with the fact that I as woman, and he as man, are created different. We think different. We behave different. We view things different. We are different.

I often forget that I am white, that I am Dutch, and that I grew up in America because nothinig in our relationship and/or marriage depends on this. It matters that I am a person, that I have thoughts, and that I have a personality. For Don too, he forgets that we are two different races. For him, I am his wife and he is my husband, that we share our lives together, that we have fun blaming things on the two fish and three gorillias in our appartment.

I love him. And I agree, seeing four white people and then one odd one sitting closely at a table built for six must be an odd sight and yes, old ladies look at us and watch us. But my grandma is over it...they should be too!

Don and I like to think of ourselves as sweet as chocolate: white chocolate or dark chocolate, its all chocolate and when you crave it, you don't think of its color.

I don't know if anyone wants to read this...

A few years ago I had a falling out with a friend...a good friend. And if I wrote a letter to her today, this is what I'd write...excluding the Salutation.



I've missed your laugh. It was so contagious and if you can believe it, I can still hear it. I've missed telling you stories and being happy for you and knowing whats gone on in your life these last few years. I've missed the bond of friendship and trust that we shared.



Things have been good with me. It's amazing to me because I think of you relatively often and I think you'd be proud of who I became as a result of all that's happened between us. I have changed so much, you have changed me so much. Of the people I've known, outside of my parents, there have only been a few people God has used in such a way. I praise the Lord for you in my life. It is true, what the Bible says in Proverbs (27:6) 'Wounds from a friend can be trusted, an enemy multiplies kisses.'



I wish we were friends because I want to learn so much from you...so much about your work, so much about your dreams, so much about everything because from the little I know and understand from when I knew you, our lives now have much in common.



You're in my prayers.

Kelly

Oh the Bliss of Change

So if you've been following my blogs, you've learned that I don't like change. Well, today I'm more than embracing it.

Last week sometime, our new ED, the wonderful man of change that he is, allowed my co-worker and I to redecorate the office. There were several 'secondary reasons' that he allowed us to do this...the one I remember clearly is that the sofa in the entry way of our building were ours and he believed they should be in our office and not so much for public use. So my co-worker and I started imagining all the grand possibilities.

I'm not that creative but my co-worker came up with a brilliant idea: walk through and condensed print-postage area in the middle of our office, separating the noise congestion so its not so distracting to everyone, opening up a reception area, adding room for addtional future staffers, getting us out of the office for lunch, adding a conference room, all of this, I believe will add productivity and reduce distractions and all that.

The best part, in my eyes, is what happened yesterday. After we presented this idea and drew up a little 'map' of our office, we presented it to all the other staffers that work in our office. One of them, who seems critical but is really just looking at it from every angle, asked why it was so necessary that we spend time doing it. Our wonderful ED said to him (in something like these words), "It just gives them the opportunity to 'destress' after all thats been going on in the office, its something fun for them to do, its a new start and I think it will be good." So really, it had nothing to do with productivity, adding addtional space and room for growth, altho some of the things were things he wanted to add (like the conference room, the added room for sofas, and getting rid of the break room and fridge), it was more about the fact that it was something my co-worker and I could do to just 'have fun, destress, and gain a new start' and possibly take a little ownership of this place.

Wow, who knew I'd be so impressed with all of this!

On a side note, those of you reading this know I'm pretty much terrified of lightning (but not thunder) and I just heard it thunder, in this building and over my radio...I'm so excited about that...as long as I'm not looking for the lightning. It has been so dry and now we're getting dumped on with rain...what a wonderful day! ...It almost makes up for the fact that it was still dark at 6:00am...

So much to say some days...but today is not one of them.

When I was in Fiji I realized why people sit and watch sunsets. When I would see it on the coast (which was like every day to tell you the truth) there is this flash of green RIGHT before the sun disappears for the day. Literally, if you blink, you'll miss it. I saw it only one time. What a shame! Its the most beautiful green you'll ever see and its so unexpected that you're taken back by the surprise...if you don't know its coming. Its such a brilliant light too. Oh my gosh, it is so amazing. Kinda like God. Just when you think know how its all going to end or work out or whatever the case may be, God just throws in a little unexpected beauty just to throw you off and surprise you. He fills you just that one more little bit. Thank you God!