Life Today

Right now I am sitting at my grandmas house in Illinois.  Grandma Baurer (the one I'm staying with this summer) left yesterday.  She went back with my aunt and cousins to Wisconsin to stay with them for about 10 days.  I plan to head up there later on next week for my younger cousin's play, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader  and then drive my grandma home the next day.   I am spending my time here going through all my stuff, all thats left that is.  I got rid of most of my smaller things last year at the big garage sale and then most of my bigger things I gave away over the past year.  However I still have lots of stuff and papers here.  So I pulled out all my stuff that I've stored here in my grandma's basement the past year and a half and am going through it.  I am also going through all the stuff I brought back from Canada that I had while I was up there.  I haven't gone through it all, but I've already thrown out over 2.5 big tubs of garbage - mostly papers.   -- I don't like throwing things out, but when I learn the why I need to throw things out it's a lot easier.   I still want to dwindle down my total amount of things.  

One of the things I am going through is the remaining coins from my coin collection.  Not having the extensive amount of coin collections from everyday coins in Canada, I have not done much collecting at all over the past two years.  Last summer when God had me go through all my stuff then, He has me sell/get rid of most of my collection.  Boy was that hard, but it really helped cover a lot of my expenses - for example, just selling all of my silver (about $2,500 USD) paid for a car that I really needed.   Plus the other hundreds of dollars in coins that I had to get rid of helped cover the cost of living up there - as I didn't have a job or anything - I haven't had a job since the summer of 2015 - two years ago.   But God provides.  Last summer, in going through my coins God started me on a journey to teach me to learn to let go of my things and invest my time and money in that which is eternal.  I still have a decent size collection, though it is only a percentage of what I had a year ago.   But, as I am going through my coins I am thinking and praying about if God wants me to keep them or sell them.  (Or I suppose give them away?)   I'm not sure what His plan is yet.  I will need money to survive and I would like to keep a small coin collection, but I don't want to invest as much time and money that I had previously - I have found much more . . .  eternal investments to spend my resources on.    That is one of the big debates right now.  

Lately I have been struggling to stay in the Word daily.  I find that I become tired or fall asleep if I read the Bible for more than 10-15 minutes.   So in the desperate desire to sit in and listen to what God has to say in His word, I am using an audio bible as a transition.  I have most of the New Testament (with sound effects) on audio on my laptop.  So as I was cleaning and doing stuff today I played the Bible.    I found it very refreshing and relaxing.  I heard new things that got me thinking as I worked.  I didn't feel that it was like a study, but it was just filling my mind and heart and ears with His word - which is very important.   It's a start.  

I also have been getting into a little turmoil with myself (I'm kind of joking).  I am always searching for ways to excitingly engage and test and build my creativity.  That is one reason why I love art and painting, drawing and pottery so much is because I get to have fun with my creativity!  I don't get to do that all that often, and it really energizes me.   Well I found something that kind of does it, but it's a temptive addiction.     Minecraft.   I stopped using Minecraft a while ago because I spent too much time on it and it became boring and was way too hard to build anything big and cool - and I didn't have the patience.  Well I decided to play it while I had a bit of spare time, and I found it to be exciting again.  1) I have a lot more patience - that is one of the really BIG things God has been working with me on over the past 14 months.  2) Minecraft has a new mode of the worlds called "Amplified".  It makes the landscape so much more exiting and unique and amazing!   So I've been spending a lot of time on Minecraft lately, though I think I may be on it a bit too much - I need to work on that.  I'm torn with (A) I want to spend as much time as I can building, exercising and encouraging my creativity and (B) I don't want to make this an addiction nor do I want to encourage using my computer as an addiction.