A Monday In My Life

In order for this post to make sense, start out by reading yesterday's post entitled "A Lofty Ambition."

The day started out this morning as most others with the cheerful singing of my cell phone alarm. 6:00 a.m. seemed to come especially early!

I sleepily forced myself out of bed so I wouldn't accidentally fall back asleep (which I've been known to do a time or two!) and padded out to the kitchen for a drink of water to complete the waking-up process. :-)

The first hour of my day is spent with the Lord, and is a time I greatly treasure. I generally like to divide it in half between prayer and Bible reading.

Since I'm studying the book of Ezra for Bible college these days, I decided to dive into the minor prophets that lived at that same period. Haggai and Zechariah proved much easier to understand than I anticipated due to all the background knowledge I've been gleaning from Ezra. I also read a couple Psalms in my Spanish Bible for the sake of practicing Spanish. Then, I finished up with the book of Jude.

I found the whole book of Jude to be quite intruiging, but the last few verses are always favorites: "Of some have compassion, making a difference: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen."

Aren't those powerful words?

Following my quiet time, I spent the next hour going through the usual morning routine: shower, breakfast, personal grooming.

Next - "hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work I go!"

Monday mornings, I stop on my way to work to pick up free bread and baked goods from Kroger for the pregnancy center. Today, there were two shopping carts full, so I loaded up my trunk with the goodies!


Care Net Pregnancy Center, a Christ-centered crisis pregnancy center where I work as receptionist, is about a half-hour drive from home. I usually listen to Dr. Tony Evans on the radio while I drive. I've heard a lot of radio preachers over the years, but Dr. Tony Evans remains one of my favorites! His sermons are always full of energy, insight, humor, and great Bible teaching! This morning, he preached from the story about Jesus walking on the water, relating it to the storms that God sends into our lives to test/strengthen our faith while making His presence available in the midst of it all.

It was a timely message for me to hear considering that our family has been enduring several "storms" of late in regards to wedding preparations. It seems that we have hit one trial after another. Whether these difficulties are the result of enemy opposition towards the amazing marriage that's in the works or whether they come from God as testing points for our character/faith, I don't always know. But one thing is certain; God's presence is our refuge and it is to Him that we cling when the skies thunder and the waves roll.

Just as Dr. Evans wrapped up his message for today, I pulled into the parking lot at work.

Welcome to Care Net!

The first thing on my agenda today was to unload all the bread and arrange it nicely in the board room where clients could do a little "free shopping!"

Next, I vacuumed and tidied the lobby in preparation for a busy day.

Beyond that glass window is my desk.

This is my office. It may look quiet in the picture, but it is a regular beehive most of the time with copy machines humming, phones rining, and clients coming to the window all day long!

For the first hour before opening, in addition to a bit of housekeeping, I also checked voice mail and email, sent messages out to the staff, and spent time in prayer for the day with fellow staff/volunteers.

With the last "amen," it was 10:00 and time to open!

I spent the rest of the morning tending to all manner of responsibilities: answering phones, scheduling appointments, updating the appointment log with new counselor schedules, responding to emails, greeting clients who arrived for appointments, preparing ultrasound paperwork, and troubleshooting wherever needed.

The morning flew by, and before long it was time for my half-hour lunch break. Boy was I hungry!

I grabbed my laptop, retrieved lunch from the refrigerator, and headed back to the chapel room to work on school while I ate. I'm writing a paper right now with the assigned title, "He Retstores My Soul," and I have to quote from a multitude of verses. My whole lunch break was spent looking these verses up on an Internet Bible program and copying them over to a Word document. The original composition will have to come later!

With lunch finished, the rest of my work day was spent answering more phone calls (always!) and inputting client data into our computer database. With each client who comes for an appointment, we open a file under their name. In that file are numerous pieces of paper containing information about the client that their counselor gathered during the appointment. After the appointment is over and the paperwork has been completed, it comes to me for input into the computer. It's a time-consuming job and one that I'm always working on!

At 5:00 p.m., my work day was over. I went back to the board room to check on the bread status and found that nearly all the loaves had been taken by clients. This is always good to see! I handed out the remaining few to staff members, and then packed up for the day.

Since it's Monday, I drove to my grandparents' house where I spend every Monday night. Mema and Papa had a doctor's appointment today down at the Medical Center, so I actually arrived here a few minutes before them and let myself in with a key. Once they got home, we prepared and ate dinner together - tortellini and salad - yum! Following dinner, Papa went out to fill Mema's prescription at the drug store (she has a bad rash), while Mema and I visited at the table for a long while.

Then, I ordered them out of the kitchen while I did dishes. (Don't worry - I did the ordering nicely!) We ate dessert together while watching the final few innings of the Astro's baseball game. It was nice to see them win for a change!

I wish I had a picture of Mema and Papa to post here, but I didn't think they'd probably be up for having their picture taken after such a long day.

Now, I am sitting at the desk in their guest bedroom clicking out this post and hoping it doesn't sound too much like rambling! I don't anticipate all my posts this week being so long...but we'll see.

It's 10:30 p.m. now, and my body is longing for bed.

Thanks for joining me for a typical Monday in my life! I hope you all had a wonderful day as well. Good night!

(To see other posts in this series, "A Week in My Life," click here, here, here, here, and here!)