I know you can be overwhelmed and I know you can be underwhelmed but can you just be whelmed?

I am definitely overwhelmed. Since getting back to MS on Saturday night I feel like I have done nothing but stress over what I missed. I couldn't sleep last night thinking about everything so I spent the hour from 1 to 2am writing everything down. That helped. I've made some stupid mistakes though in the past few days that don't help the anxiety level. For instance I left my phone charger at home and I realized upon arriving at the airport on Sat. that I had booked my ticket for the wrong date and had to pay another $150 to switch it. I truly hated myself at that moment.

I am in general enjoying being back although still worried about things at home. This is probably the homiest someplace has felt outside of home in a while, which is weird since it took so long to get to that point.

And, its sooooo warm and delightful here.

Also, this happened in the row in front of me on the plane:

Man A: (to Man B who he doesn't know) Wow so we're going to fly right over Gulfport and see all the Katrina damage huh?

Man B: Yeah, we lost our house in the storm and had to move to Michigan.

Man A: Oh.

So apparently the outside world is starting to see this as some sort of tourist attraction, like flying over the great wall or the pyramids or something. This hurts my feelings.

My home church has really outdone themselves. They are supporting my ministries left and right and supporting my family as well. Keep it up guys!

I felt really good about one thing this weekend. I schooled our Oscar pool/ballot/vote/competition thing last night. And for my efforts, I am now the proud owner of an owl stuffie. What is an owl stuffie I hear you ask. I'll leave it to your imagination. All you need to know is that its awesome.

In theology land, I've been thinking alot about offerings and how I can relate old school Bible sacrifices to my own life and incorporate that into the pieces of the service I'm working on for upcoming weeks. I used to think of Old Testament offerings, like goats, sort of wasteful and cruel. This may be something that's obvious to everyone else, but as I'm in the middle of alot of OT study, it occurs to me how big a gift animals were. They provided food, clothing and more animals, and yet were given freely. I feel like those sacrifices were equivalent to a farmer burning some of his land or anyone burning money. There is so much trust in that offering- a belief that God will take care of us with or without our earthly possessions. Furthermore, in the spirit of Lent, i think I want to try to really focus on giving gifts and sacrifices which are hard to be without and which maybe took some doing to get in the first place.

God's grace and peace