I left you hanging.  I’m sorry.  Because I know you wait eagerly every Monday and Friday morning at 5:00 a.m. to hop out of bed and read my new posts.  But I didn’t post.

Really, though, I’m not so sorry

See one of my twin nephews contracted some sort of infection and was sent over to Cardinal Glennon in St. Louis.  It was actually a pretty emotional week.  But they’re home.  He seems to be doing well.  We were playing in his living room just a few hours ago, and he was smiling.  They both were.  Man, I love those faces.

This past week was my birthday.  I always make a big deal of my birthday and give stuff away, but I couldn’t be here and be with my family all at the same time, so just know I’m always going to choose them.  I’m sorry, but that’s just going to be the way it goes.  But I did something cool a few months ago for my birthday.  I read about a site called Future Me.  Basically, what you do is you go in and write an email to yourself and then set the date to email you sometime in the future.  I chose to send it to myself on my birthday.  However, it’s Sunday night and I just sat down to read it.  I thought instead of our regular birthday bash here on the blog, I’d just let you read what I wrote to myself.  I promise we’ll do a giveaway sometime, but right now I’m mentally drained.

Hope you enjoy my birthday email to myself!

Dear FutureMe,

Just so you know, it’s your Jesus Year. You’re 33 this year. Jesus saved all mankind when he was 33. He wasn’t around too long. His grace was too radical for people to accept, so they killed Him. And more than likely you’re not going to be crucified on a cross, but I want you to focus this year on grace.

Grace so crazy and love so deep that people think you’ve lost it. I want you to really try to figure out this love thing. The unconditional part is going to be the hardest thing you’ll probably ever do, but I want you to dig deep and try.

I want you to show grace above and beyond what you’ve ever done before. You’re going to feel like some people don’t deserve it, but then neither do you. And you’ve been forgiven. So you must forgive. Always forgive.

But I also want you to remember that Paul felt the hurt when someone offended him. Don’t ignore your hurts, but always forgive. And there are times it’s going to really suck, but I believe you can do it. So do it.

You’re changing your life. You’re living an incredible story. I believe that this year may be the key for your journey for the rest of your life. Get ready to hustle. I know you’ve been working hard for a while, but that’s just working hard. Hustle is working hard with a purpose. And this is your Jesus Year. I think Jesus hustled, so you’re gonna, too.

Your life is going to change dramatically this year. I can feel it.
Whenever you get knocked down, get back up. Whenever you feel like you can’t go on, take one more step. Whenever the hurt is too much for you to handle, gather your friends and ask them to help you.

And speaking of your friends, they’re awesome. Don’t take them for granted. Love deeply.

And your family? They’re pretty incredible. Choose grace and love in every situation.

And don’t forget to love yourself. You give grace easily to a lot of people. Give it to yourself, too. You’ve been forgiven and you are loved. Don’t ever think differently.

You’re going to get out of debt this year. You’re going to hustle to do it. Your future is going to hinge on your ability to go and do, and if you’re in debt, you’re not going to be able to go and do. Hustle, hustle, hustle. Work with a purpose. Work hard with a purpose.

You are doing a great work and cannot come down. Don’t be distracted.

So I guess that’s it. Unconditional grace and unconditional love. They’re going to change the world. And you’re going to play a big part in it. Get yo hustle on, girl.

Cheesy?  Yep.  I’m okay with it.

If you had a chance to tell yourself something in the future, what would it be?

This past weekend was the 5K I’ve hosted the last two years through my other blog.  When I set out to help some friends raise money last year, no one told me that it would work.  But no one told me that it wouldn’t work either.  Although my thoughts were if I could raise a few hundred dollars to help out my friends, I could help them facilitate this change in their lives.

So this year when I decided to do it again, I still wasn’t sure how it would go.  I guess I was feeling that after such an over-the-top successful first event, that there was no way the second year could ever measure up.

Boy was I wrong!

We didn’t have as many entrants overall running the race, but through donations and the like, I believe that we’re going to be a little bit above the total we raised last year, which was just over $3,100!  Being that this family was local this year, we decided to get together to run it again and 45 people showed up to run!  I was and am still so completely beyond amazed.

But no one told me that we couldn’t make a difference in my community.  No one told me we couldn’t changes peoples’ lives a little bit at a time.

So I started.  Because no one told me I couldn’t do really cool things.

And the only thing I regret?

Not starting sooner.

Go do what you’ve been wanting to do.

I’m going to go for another year…because no one told me I couldn’t.

Actually, there are more than 10 things that I think are crazy, but since I had to limit this, there are just 10.  And by the way, crazy in my head means ridiculous as well as incredible.  I’ll let you try to figure out which ones are which.

1.  Open heart surgery.  My grandmother had double bypass surgery on May 24.  May 26 she was up and walking.  May 29th she was discharged from the hospital and could have gone home, but chose to go to a skilled care unit in our hometown for therapy.  Today she is heading home.  Two weeks ago they cut her in half basically, stopped her heart, put it on a bypass machine and did the surgery.  From start to end, including prep time the whole procedure took about four hours.  And now two weeks later she’s home.  Still sore, but home.  Crazy.

2.  Skydiving.  If you get me up in a plane, you can bet the last thing I want to do is jump out of it.  I don’t care if there’s a parachute or not.  It may malfunction.  Crazy.

3.  Mud runs.  Seriously, if I wanted to go run a 5k in the mud with obstacles, all I’d have to do is go out in the field behind my house after a good rain.  Especially like the ones we’ve been having lately.  There is no reason for me to pay good money to do something I can do at home.  Crazy.

4.  Lake Hillier in Australia.  It’s a pink lake.  Pink.  The water never changes color.  If you take it out and put it in a separate container, it’s still pink.  Australia is on my bucket list of places to visit, and now I think I’ve added another stop to the tour.  Crazy.

5.  Lake McDonald and Flathead Lake in Glacier National Park.  My friends have been there.  They’re crystal clear and you can see to the bottom.  Looks like you can walk all the way across without ever going under water.  However, Flathead is 370 feet deep and Lake McDonald is over 400 feet deep.  Crazy.  

6.  Birds that constantly keep flying into windows.  I know they can’t really comprehend what they’re doing, but one would think if you try something once and run into something hard and knock yourself silly for a couple of seconds, then you may not want to try it again.  When I was living at home, my bedroom for a few months was in the basement.  Every morning for about two weeks we had a bird that tried to get into our closed window about 20 times each morning.  He’d hit the window, get knocked silly and then try again.  For two weeks.  Finally I think he did it so often he ended up killing himself.  I only bring this up ’cause one just flew into my window.  Sad, but crazy.

7.  Abandoned amusement parks.  It’s like they close and people just walk away never to come back again.  You need to do a Google image search for abandoned amusement parks.  Guliver’s Kingdom in Japan is creepy.  They do make for some cool pictures, though.  It reminds me of some of the scenes in Revolution.  Crazy.

8.  My allergies this year.  I’ve never had trouble with allergies.  This year every time I mow I get sick.  Horrible headaches.  This week I started taking some allergy meds for the first time ever, and I feel so much better.  Like I can breathe and I haven’t had a headache in days.  Crazy.

9.  My new cell phone case.  It’s called mophie.  You plug in the case every night.  It charges the phone AND the case.  You can turn the case on or off.  If my phone battery gets low, I flip on the case, and it starts charging the phone with the battery power that it stored up during charging.  So far I’m in love.  Crazy.

10.  The fast-food infatuation in our town.  It’s crazy.  You can’t go to a restaurant at the noon hour that isn’t ridiculously full and backed up.  Especially the drive-throughs.  Not only are we (and I’m including myself some days) too lazy or tired to cook our own meals, we don’t even want to get out of the car to pick it up.  Especially after my grandmother going through her surgery, I’m just frustrated with our society and how we think and what we think is appropriate and okay.  It’s not.  We’re settling.  It’s crazy.

What do you think?

I started a new small group last night at my house.  I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t nervous about it. What’s ridiculous is that this isn’t the first time I’ve started a small group.  In fact, the only reason I’m starting another one is because the first one was too big to really accomplish the main goal of small groups (no credit to me.  God and good people!).  Once you get too big, it’s hard to really fully engage everyone at the group and hard to give everyone an opportunity to speak up.

But I was definitely nervous.

On the other hand, my house was mostly clean.  I hadn’t been home in a week, so I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to pull it off, but it’s actually cleaner than it has been in a really long time.  So that’s definitely a bonus.

I guess the main reason for being nervous is that I think I was just scared that no one would want to drive 10 miles out of town just to come to my house to meet.  It’s not a horrible drive, but when you’re running short of time, like most people are these days, it can seem like a chore just to make that drive.

And, I guess if I were being completely honest, I didn’t have a plan.  We were going to watch a video and then talk about what we wanted to study, but I like to have things in order before I jump into something new.

But fear is a liar.

The reason that some of us don’t do incredible things?  Fear.  I’m tired of letting fear dictate parts of my life.

I know that starting a small group isn’t huge on people’s fears, and it’s definitely not on the top of mine, but it’s just one of those things where it would be so much easier just to sit back and let someone else take the risks.  But a life without great risks is a life without great rewards.  I think the rewards are going to be quite a bit of fun, so I’m diving in.

Oh, and last night went great.  People actually showed up.  I think we’re going to have a good time.

I enjoy reading.  It’s much more convenient with the Kindle on my phone, my iPad and my Kindle itself.  No more lugging around a couple of books.  I’ve got a hundred in my Kindle library either already read, or waiting to be read.  Here are 10 I’d like to read over the summer.

I’m an impulse buyer at times.  Sometimes it takes me over a year to make a purchase.  Sometimes I salivate over a certain item before finally just breaking down and buying it.  Unfortunately a lot of times these purchases are just ridiculous.   If I had unlimited funds, here are 10 things I would purchase and then maybe never use.

1.  iPhone projector.  No real reason I want this, other than it would be something cool to say I had.  Hey let’s sit around my phone and watch funny YouTube videos.  Wait!  I’ve got a projector.  Now we can all see it rather than pass the phone around the room!

2.  A record player.  I love music, so this seems like it would be something I should have.  I loved sitting and listening to records at my grandparents’ homes.  Mom and dad even had one for a while, I believe.  Nowadays, artists are putting out vinyls again.  Yes.  I should have this.

3.  Nike+ FuelBand.  Even after typing for years and dealing with carpal tunnel symptoms since I got out of college, so much so that it bothers me to wear something on my wrist for long periods of time, I still want this.  I think it would be pretty cool.  That is all.

4.  RML-3 Rogue Monster Lite Power Rack.  I’m a huge dork.  I want this because I think I would use it.  It would enable me to do just about all my lifting and working out at home on my off days.  But I don’t have any place to put it until I buy some land and build a garage or a house or something.  Until then, I’ll just look and salivate…

5.  Bumper Plates and Bar.  I can’t use #4 to its fullest until I have these to go along with it.

6.  Gibson Custom Paul Kossoff 1959 Les Paul Aged Electric Guitar.  It’s so beautiful.  I probably wouldn’t play it much, but just hang it for people to see.

7.  Taylor Limited Edition Builders Reserve Acoustic Guitar.  I’d play this one more than the electric because I just love the sound of an acoustic guitar.  Especially a well-made acoustic.  And Taylor guitars are among the best!

8.  A 15-Inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display….and all the additions.  I don’t need all the additions, but it would be awesome.  Until I had to upgrade again in the next four of five years.

9.  iPhone 5.  My 4 is getting slow and acting up.  The lock button doesn’t work, and I’m completely eligible for an upgrade.  I just haven’t done it yet.  I’m trying to be conservative, but may possibly end up with one before the end of the year.

10.  Roku.  I guess I should preface this with I first want Internet fast enough and with no GB limits to be able to stream video, but then once I got that, this would be my next purchase.  I’d go this route, spend the up-front cash and get rid of my ridiculously expensive satellite TV.  To me it’s a no-brainer unless you watch live sports all the time.  Other than that, do it.

What is something that you want really bad that you know if you got it, you might not use it?

Yesterday and today I’m at the hospital with my friend.  Her C-section was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. CST today.  Due to some warning signs, they took the baby yesterday.  She’s been in the hospital for five weeks now.  One of the most energetic and motivated people I know laying still in a hospital bed on bed rest for five weeks.  She has gotten to get up every hour to use the restroom, and the last couple weeks they’ve allowed her a 30-minute wheelchair ride every day as long as she’s not having contractions.

I enjoy sleep tremendously.  I enjoy my mattresses and my comforter probably more than I should.  But the though of laying in bed for five weeks seems terrifying to me.  I’d get tired of reading.  I’d get tired of TV.  I’d get tired of nurses coming in every other day to change my IVs and every two hours to check all my vitals.  I’d probably get all grouchy and a little testy with the people I loved that come to see me.

But she’s not.

She’s been pretty darn incredible through it all.  Her outlook on it is that if this is what she has to do to get Baby Jules here healthy, then it’s what she’s going to do.

Whatever it takes.

I’m lucky to have people in my life to set this kind of example for me.  And it’s not just with this situation, but if they see a need, a lot of the time my friends’ attitudes are just that, whatever it takes.

So I’m here at the hospital today.  The procedure has some risks.  You couldn’t have kept me away.  What I’m learning through this season of interruption is that life is good.  But it seems that life is better if you allow yourself to be interrupted.  This isn’t a real stretch.  My friend is in need, so I’m going.  No questions.  It’s not convenient, but it’s totally worth it.

Because I’m planning on laying eyes on a beautiful baby girl today.

You can interrupt me any time for that.

I’m a real estate agent.  I see a lot of really cool things in houses.  I’m interested in housing and what increases value and what doesn’t.  Here is a pictorial of things I want in my dream home.  Also, I’d probably have to win the lottery to have even one of these things.  That’s why it’s called a “dream” home.  Enjoy!

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I texted my friend the other day.  It wasn’t a good day.  It wasn’t a bad day.  It was just a regular day, but my mood wasn’t quite there.  I had my headphones in because there are just some times during the day when I need to concentrate and just type.  And then there are days when I don’t feel particularly sociable.  I think I was typing that day, but either way my headphones were in and the music was playing.  Here’s what I texted her:

“I sometimes wonder if God sits and orchestrates the songs that come through my phone.”

It’s not that I was doubting that God was there that day.  I think it was more that I was wondering where He was. But, seriously.  Every song held true to the theme that, Hey, it’s me.  I’m still here.  I may be silent, but I’m here.

I sometimes get tired of waiting for things to start happening and just want to jump-start them myself.  I don’t want to have to worry about things that I currently have to worry about.  I don’t want to wait.

I hate waiting.

I’m not good at it.  At all.

But that day it was in the music I was hearing.  The texts from my friends.  I think I’m just expecting that God will speak or move in these incredible ways that I miss out on the ways He really wants to speak to me.  I want the grand gesture.  I expect it sometimes.  But all the while He’s there in the little things.

I don’t know.  Maybe He is sitting up there saying, I think Julie needs to hear this song right now.  Or maybe it’s all chance when it comes to iTunes.  Who knows.  And ultimately it doesn’t really matter to anyone else except that that day I felt like God had created my playlist for those few hours.  And because of that I felt Him near.

I guess some of the most important things we’re ever going to notice or see or hear will be in the little things.

We’ve just got to keep our eyes open so we don’t miss them.

If you don’t have a Twitter account, you’re just being ridiculous.  I’ve heard it said when comparing social media to schooling, Facebook is like the high school of social media with too much information, too much drama and people are mainly there because they feel like they have to be.  So that would make Twitter the college of social media.  Most of the people who are there want to be there.  While there is drama, it’s less.  And if you don’t want to deal with someone ranting about something, you just unfollow them.  It seems a lot less harsh than unfriending someone.

I agree with the above statements.

And I love Twitter.  So here are 10 people I think you should follow!

1.  Jamie Wright.  Also known as Jamie The Very Worst Missionary.  She’s a fantastic writer when she’s got infinite space to fill on her blog.  And she’s a fantastic writer at 140 characters.  If you’re on Twitter, this one is a must-follow.

2.  Joy Eggerichs.  Whether you’re looking for relationship advice or wanting to know what the latest fashion in Unicorns is, Joy is your girl.   Her answers are honest.  Her answers are usually peppered with a little humor.  Actually, she’s one of the most entertaining blogs I read.  It’s also one of the best in terms of honest, straightforward advice.  Check her out!

3.  Christine Caine.  I’ve written about her a lot lately.  If you haven’t gotten the hint yet, you should be aware of this woman and what she is doing.  Check her out.

4.  Jon Acuff.  His latest book, Start, has been on the New York Times Best Seller List for two weeks now.  He’s funny.  He’s completely random, which really works with my attention span.  There are always lots and lots of pictures…of alarm clocks.  He gets up super early.  But he is super funny and a pretty intelligent and motivational guy.

5.  John Crist.  This guy is a comedian.  And he’s actually funny.

6.  Ellen Degeneres.  I doubt she does her own tweeting, but still worth the follow.  Funny stuff there.

7.  Jamie Golden.  She has great affection for Cheetos and Bradley Cooper (but really who doesn’t?).  She is an ADHD survivor.  She loves adoption AND she’s a fantastic photographer.  Plus I got to meet her for real a couple years ago.  She’s the real deal.  And you need to read her blog.  She gives stuff away and recommends all kinds of stuff I’ve never heard of.

8.  Herschel French.  He’s my friend, and if I didn’t put him on here, I’d be hearing about it later.

9.  Bianca Olthoff.  One of my favorite bloggers.  Fun pictures.  Works for The A21 Campaign as chief storyteller.  Oh, did I mention she’s a pretty fantastic speaker?  This girl is going places.

10.  Me.  Because it would be ridiculous to write about who I think you should follow and not put myself on the list.  And it’s last, so maybe you’ll remember it and click on me.  You’ll see a lot of pictures of my nieces and nephews.  Actually, I’m not that exciting.  You should really follow everyone else on here, though!

Give me some recommendations.  Who should I follow?  Who is entertaining?  Who is motivational?  Who is ridiculous?  What’s your handle?