Tracy's Blog

Hi Everyone, I think of you every Monday - whether I post a blog or not - and wanted to let you know that I'm on vacation right now and am not sure when I will get back to regular posts.  We've been having a great summer.  We just visited the Black Hills of South Dakota and now have visitors staying with us.   While we were in South Dakota, we went to Wind Cave National Park .  When we got there, we hurried to the ticket booth to purchase our tickets for a cave tour.  In line, I heard a park ranger say that the temperature in the caves was 52 degrees.  What was that in celsius?  I soon found out: 11 degrees.  "Oh no!" I thought as I realized that we didn't have sweatshirts or hoodies to wear on our tour.  The weather outside had been hot day after day and we hadn't even thought about needing jackets.  Well, that wasn't quite true - I did have a fleeting thought about it when we were hurrying to get into the car but it seemed like...

I had a memory the other day of Grade 5 or 6 that got me thinking about God's redemptive work in us.  My friends and I had been reading Judy Blume books and in one of them (maybe it was "Tale of a Fourth Grade Nothing"?), the characters wrote lists of things they liked and disliked about their friends.  So, my group of friends decided to try this.  What do I remember of this experience?  Surprisingly, not the list of things others wrote about me but rather the comment that someone made, "You wrote lots of negative things for each of us but only one positive thing."  It was true!  I found it easy to list specific negative things about my friends but when it came to the positives I wrote something generic like, "You are nice."  It seems that my critical skills were sharper than my affirming or encouraging skills. Fast forward to today.... and here is where I want to give thanks to God for His redemption in my life.  When I think of the ways t...