Thursday, August 19, 2010

Birthday Week

We have a couple birthday traditions in the Hambelton home. First, the whole week leading up to the birthday is celebrated in little ways. During birthday week the birthday guy/gal gets to make the choices on where to eat or what to watch, etc. It is also acceptable to spend a little bit more money than usual on small treats (ordering the fancier drink, going out for ice cream...). But mostly birthday week is celebrated with a lot of high fives and exclamations of, "IT'S BIRTHDAY WEEK!" The second tradition will be explained in a later post.

This past week was my birthday week and I loved it! We did so many fun things that I can't consolidate them all into one blog so I will post a blog about each exciting thing we did.

To start out, last Thursday we had a couple of new friends over for dinner. Casey and Jennifer Bedell go to church at Hope with us. Casey is the pastoral intern and is in seminary. Jennifer is a physicians assistant at OHSU. We felt like we had a connection with them because Casey has studied Theology like Bryce and Jennifer is in the medical field as I soon will be. We really enjoyed their company. They are very kind and easy to talk to. They also brought over a pricey bottle of Pinot Noir. It was delicious! I am so happy that we made this connection and I hope that we hang out with the Bedells a lot more soon.

We are slowly but surely getting to know the people in our "new" church better. I put new in quotes because we have been there a year, but have taken our time getting connected. It is hard to form deep, genuine friendships and takes a lot of time. As I was talking to Jennifer about this on Thursday she said, "We should strive to have such deep community that we need to be forgiving each other of things." That really struck a cord with me as far as how often I really let my guard down and invest myself in other people. To have depth in relationship, there needs to be vulnerability. This is something I am going to strive for more in this next year of my life. Welcome in 22!

Tune in tomorrow for the highlight of the Friday of my birthday week.

2 comments:

  1. hope your birthday was wonderful! she's so right about community, and so are you... it takes time and effort. but it is so worth it. thanks for the reminder!

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  2. that's funny that you posted this because I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a true part of a church family.

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