Banquet

Tonight is the Bible Studies By Mail banquet. Since I volunteer there, they want me to be a hostess for one of the tables, and during dinner that means I get to share what volunteering for them is like. I'm not a great public speaker but it shouldn't be too bad if there are only 8 people at my table. One day a couple weeks ago one of the managers was videotaping me as I graded lessons, narrating what I was doing, and then asked me why I like volunteering there and all I could think to say was, "Because it's fun." BECAUSE IT'S FUN?!?! Oy. Anyway, he told me he was going to splice together all the little interviews with the volunteers and play it at the banquet. Oh goody, I thought. Mortified, I went home and my husband told me even as a professional DJ he has had those brain freeze moments. Like one time they interviewed him on TV after he and his co-host had broadcast from on top of a billboard during one of the coldest days on record, and the reporter asked him what it was like being up there, and my husband kept blurting out, "It was cold!" My mother-in-law taped the newscast too, so it was funny seeing my husband all bundled up like an eskimo, hee! I think I can handle my five seconds of shame at the banquet after he told me that.

Did you ever kind of notice that the enemy tries to put junk in your heart when you're excited about something God has blessed you with? I've been all excited about this banquet for a month! Yesterday I was going through one of my files to find a phone number of a friend I wanted to ask if they were attending the banquet, and I found a letter I wrote to my baby (as a counseling assignment seven months ago). Reading it HURT. I have no idea why it was in that folder. So here's me -- "wait, wait, you're exited about the banquet, remember?" Then last night on Facebook my friend kept updating her status about her sister being in labor and it just seemed like I was being taunted.

"Wait, wait, you're excited about the banquet, remember?" I prayed, remembering that if I tell God how much I miss Claudia then the enemy won't have that access to my heart. And I listened to a video from Diana Ross called "Missing You" and gave myself permission to cry, and now I'm doing better.

I am excited about the banquet tonight!