Somewhere on the way to the meeting my brain fell out

Have you seen my brain?

Or maybe I was in a manic phase. At any rate, it happened like this. Thursday I woke up with my brain in my head, and by the time I went to bed that night, it was gone. The reason I know this is that I have now become the co-President, along with John Dillard, of Proud Dragon Parents, and our job is to throw a $35 - 40,000 party for our seniors on graduation night: Round Rock High School Project Graduation 2008. This party is designed to keep our kids safe on graduation night and it is designed to be tons of fun.

Well, we are off and running - the new executive council and committee chairs of Proud Dragon Parents. We have a website under construction: www.rrhspdp.org. We have committee chairs for about 15 committees. Our secretary already produced and distributed the minutes for the first meeting, and the fundraising has begun. We are recruiting parents of RRHS seniors to join us! It is going to be a busy year, a fun year. Maybe sometime during this year my brain will come back home to me.

Chicago!

Lauren is taking the SAT right now, and this afternoon we are getting on a plane to Chicago to visit North Park University. We are so excited. My cousin Marsha is meeting us in the city tomorrow with Stephanie and Scott, her kids who are not kids anymore. We are going to share Chicago tomorrow with thousands of Chicago marathon runners and supporters and possibly Cubs fans if they have a playoff game Sunday.

We're going to Giordano's to get Chicago style pizza. We may eat at one of Rick Bayless' restaurants. We plan to go up in the Sears tower and hope the sky is clear so we can see forever. We hope to see Lake Michigan and ride the El.

We will spend a full 24 hours at North Park University checking it out.


Blogging

I started this blog talking about clearing the clutter. As I was sitting in that Project Graduation meeting Thursday night, and all eyes were on me as someone asked me to be President, a number of things flashed through my brain. I thought about clutter, because, of course, one of the ways to clear the clutter, particularly in my soul, is to say "no" to good things. I have learned that, and I know that I have to have space for quiet in my life. But I also had a profound sense that this was the right thing to do.

One image that flashed before my eyes was myself with the largest staff in the history of the Reveille Echo, the student newspaper at my alma mater, Bethany Nazarene College. I was mortified when they actually chose me to be editor - oh yes, I applied, and I worked hard on the application, but I really did not for one minute consider that I might be the editor. I didn't realize it until I saw our staff photo in the yearbook at the end of that amazing and sometimes overwhelming year of being editor, that the way I had managed this huge task was to gather around me a rather large staff. Now I haven't done the fact checking, but I'm pretty sure it was the largest staff to that point. Perhaps it still is. But I realized something about myself then. I am not necessarily the best at doing things, but I can certainly gather people who are good at doing things. How much fun is that?? I'm here to tell you it is a whole lot of fun.

Here I am, busier than ever, so this will be a great challenge for me as I continue to seek to clear the clutter, to make space for God, to have times of silence so that I can recognize the voice of God when God speaks.

And those of us who have embarked on Project Graduation 2008 will have a wonderfully rewarding year as we give our seniors the gift of a huge, wonderful, alcohol and drug-free party on their graduation night. That will be worth it all!

Blessings and peace!
Jan