I'm not one to let a Mulan reference pass me by. Remember that scene when our young hero is devastated that she can't live up to her family's expectations and sings out, "When will my reflection show who I am inside?" Usually when I see myself in mirrors these days, it's only the shoulders up, but on those rare fully body glimpses, there's always some mobility device around or in front of me. The only time I've seen myself upright in the last five years has been holding onto something - usually with a look of terror in my eyes.[...]

I got my first church key when I started volunteering at Westport ages ago. I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a small thrill from the importance, but all my best friends had church keys too. One time, Shannon and John and I all used our privileged position to host a private viewing of High School Musical 2 in the sanctuary on the projector because none of us had a TV in our respective living places. We all had a way to get into the church, so it was a no brainer to move a couch from a pastor's office into the front of the sanctuary and settle in. Most of the time I was using my key, though, it was related to serious ministry stuff. Well, "serious" might be an overstatement because I volunteered with the youth ministry for most of those years. [...]

During this past week, I've been trying to convince three of my former students to find paid internships in Portland. Obviously, I'm willing to be their reference, help them with cover letters, and find them housing if they secure a job. I'm delighted to have the opportunity to advocate for these brilliant, hard working young people. I don't always have the same confidence in advocating for myself, however.[...]

I've had the blessing of several really talented physios over the past five years, and one of the gifts of working with Anja for over four years of that time is that she learned how to target specific weaknesses and help me to improve them. Now that I've got a new physio, Mike is having to figure out some of the capabilities and see how muscles work so that he can offer suggestions and work with me based on his expertise. We talked through what I've been doing with Anja, but she's got the "sniper" ability to zero in on stuff because of the long time we've spent working together. Occasionally, she'd try something completely new to see if there was improvement, and we'd discover some new development to target, but it's incredibly focused work. [...]

People keep asking me what I've done through the week, and my response is always an embarrassed, "nothing much," but, honestly, I'm in the rest phase of my sabbatical, and I'm sleeping in as often as possible, going to bed early, and not feeling guilty about catching up on my reading list.[...]

This week was full of new adventures and new people yet again. I'm so blown away by how incredible my life is sometimes, and occasionally other people are shocked by it too.[...]

When I made the decision to move to Germany, I sold nearly all of my 250+ books in my personal library. This past week, I discovered one of them made its way all the way to Texas. A local pastor with a habit of buying copies of Fee and Stuart's text to give to students interested in reading the Bible purchased a copy on Amazon and noticed my name in the front of the text. He messaged me on Wednesday to ask if it was mine, curious about the insightful marginalia. (Full disclosure, my friend Margaux was the one who wrote smart comments before I inherited the text from her library downsizing.) The guy even offered to mail it back to me for free - before I told him I lived overseas.[...]

In a lot of ways, it's been a weird week, but I read two whole books which is just delightful to me. My goal is four this coming week. 

One of the books was titled Isolation: A Place of Transformation in the Life of a Leader. Great title, right? Well, it was super helpful in preparing for my sabbatical time because since I don't have a regular full time ministry role, I've had a weird sensation of not doing enough. I get to spend all this wonderful time being with Jesus though. The book was an encouragement to embrace that.[...]

This past week I read John Mark Comer's book Garden City as a launch into my sabbatical. (Then I started A. J. Swoboda's Subversive Sabbatical because Portland theologians writing on sabbath rest is the greatest thing.) Just a couple chapters in, I was being toured around Christchurch and learned that the nickname of this city is the Garden City. For completely different reasons than the New Jerusalem, but what a great discovery.[...]

I feel like in nearly five years, I've likely referenced this Hillsong song I used for today's post title before, but it's got more relevant lyrics than the single Reliant K line running through my head as I watched the non-proverbial sunrise come up over the Pacific end Friday morning. I did include a picture of my several thousand foot high view of the sunrise, and you might think I'm losing my mind, but I'm about to delve into the specifics (and switch song references). [...]