Only Wonder Grasps Anything

a powerful point

I always knew there was something I didn't like about most of the PowerPoint presentations I've seen. (click on image to see full size)

stress and slowing down

Saturday morning began with drizzle, but cleared to partly sunny by the 8:30 start of the 15k race, and since the rain kept the pollen down, we had beautiful weather for a run. I enjoyed the race until I hit mile eight, and then my left foot started hurting. I slowed to jogging at a walking-pace, and didn't feel the pain, so I continued to mile nine, and then ran the final three-tenths of a mile, feeling no pain.

However, as soon as I crossed the finish line and began to cool down, I felt pain in my left foot. As it turns out, I'm pretty sure that I've got a stress fracture in the arch of my foot, which means no running for a good while while it heals. Also, for the first few weeks I'll be trying to minimize weight-bearing on my left foot, so no long walks. In retrospect, I increased the distances I was running way too fast prior to the 15k, and should have just run the 5k. Hindsight is always 20/20.

So now I have to slow down for a few weeks. Please pray that I'll give my foot appropriate rest so that it can heal, and if you've got suggestions for any books or movies that I ought to watch, let me know.

update

Thanks to everyone who prayed for me as I studied for and took the Professional Engineering exam last Friday. I felt pretty good about how it went. Most of the problems I either knew how to solve them or what book to look in to find appropriate equations and methods to approach them. However, they said that it can take up to 12 weeks before receiving the exam results, so I won't know if I passed or not until sometime in July.

So now thinks are pretty much back to normal for me: working at the engineering company, serving my church as the Sunday pianist, Wednesday night songleader/musician/teacher with a couple kids classes, leading our world missions committee, hanging out with friends, running, reading, and visiting my favorite downtown Chattanooga haunts (Greyfriars, Rock Point Books, and Lupi's top the list).

My first race of this season is the Chickamauga Chase, a 15km (9.3 miles) event this Saturday morning. I enjoyed the Chase in years past because Chickamauga Battlefield is such a beautiful place to run.

I'm organizing and leading a short-term trip from my church to east Berlin at the end of the summer, and have to get a bunch of things moving on that now that the PE exam is behind me. We're going to participate in a week-long English camp in the Pankow district of Berlin. Please pray that qualified people would volunteer to serve or will be willing to serve if asked to go, and pray that the Lord will give us unity of purpose as we will probably be working with people from a number of different churches. Pray also for the kids we'll work with, that their English abilities will improve during the English club, and that they'll see Jesus' love in our interaction with them and with our team.