Tuesday a.m.

Good morning! Tuesday. Already. How the time flies by! I am hoping today will be filled with meaning and productivity. I really hope to dive into my preaching text for Sunday, 1 Peter 2:13-25. That's the first thing I am going to do today -- study. I enjoy that. A lot.

On Sunday I challenged our church family to intentionally and specifically encourage 10 people this week. I'm going to continue doing that today. I've made a long list of people that I hope to encourage in one way or another. Everyone needs encouragement, and it doesn't cost anything to give. Why don't we do more of it?

Yesterday we had an early morning appointment at Riley Hospital for Ben. That's a wonderful place of caring, and it's so packed with emotion. The employees are all so nice; you can tell they really do care about helping people. I always feel emotional there. All it takes is for me to look around and see the concerned parents carrying around children who have health problems. So many stories!

Ben has been having all kinds of stomach pain for quite a while. He's had several doctor visits locally and no good results. They finally referred him to Riley. The visit went well, and he now has a couple of tests lined up, some time in the next month. In the meantime, the doc increased his meds, hoping that will take some of the pain away.

We got back from Indy in time for Ben to go to school the last 2 periods of the day, which meant that he could play in the JV football game last night. We traveled to North Daviess for the game. Ben played well. He had several good tackles. His football season has not been what he hoped it would be so far, but he played well Friday on special teams in the varsity game and had a great game last night.

The highlight for me yesterday was receiving my official acceptance into the Boston Marathon. I knew I qualified last November, but from that moment on, there had been a nagging doubt about whether I would actually get to go. Not everyone who qualifies makes it in. After I qualified, Boston changed the way registration worked, and that simply increased my doubts. The fastest qualifiers got to register first, which is fair.

I am thankful that I beat my qualifying standard by more than 3 minutes. Those who did not beat their standard by more than a minute did not get in! I can't imagine the frustration of qualifying and not getting in, although I was preparing for that possibility.

There are several runners from Lawrence County who made it in, many in the group I run with. They are the reason I made it in. They push me and make me work hard. We are going to have quite a party in Boston in April!