An old passion still lives in me…

When I was in elementary school, we’d get to occasionally go to the high school pep rally’s during football season. I’d stare in awe at the “flag girls.” I wanted to be one of them when I got into high school.

And I was.

That’s me in the front. I was in flags for two years… could have been three years if I hadn’t over-stressed about how bad I wanted it (life was seriously GOING TO END if I didn’t make it) and pretty much sabotaged myself in tryouts as a freshman-going-into-sophomore-year. But, hey, HUGE lesson learned, and it made me appreciate being in flags my junior and senior year even more.

I. Loved. It. I literally felt SO alive when I was out there performing, flag in hand. And I was GOOD at it. I was even almost (ALMOST) recruited to go to Baylor University as a flag… but when I said they’d have to pay my way to go to Baylor, I never heard back from them. (Because, yeah, you’d literally have to pay me to go there. Sorry.) So after my last parade my senior year, I hung up my flag and never pulled it back out.

I confess, I kept a flag after graduation. I felt guilty about it until I heard the next year they got all new flags and poles. Then I wished I’d snagged a couple more as keepsakes. ;)

My flag has been in a box, and my poll… well… it made moving clothing from one place to another easy. Hang it from a couple bungee cords in the UHaul, and you have a make-shift rod for hanging clothes.

But still… when I see a parade, or if I got to a high school football game, my eyes continue to gravitate to the flags. In college, as people around me would poke fun at the twirlers and flags in the other band at half-time (since at TAMU we have a military band and, as such, no flags or twirlers… and Aggies can be kinda cruel to other bands because of that), I would still stare somewhat wistfully, remembering my days with a flag in my hand.

I hear a song on the radio that we did routines to, and I find myself trying to remember how our routine went. Or I hear a new release that is just ripe for a performance, and I find myself writing a routine in my head. I guess you can take the girl out of flags, but never take the passion for it out of the girl.

I’m on an extra-big health kick right now, spurred by my recent (and on-going) fight with sinuses. I force myself to work-out every day, and since its been cold outside, that exercise has been in my little office dancing around to music. Today, though, the sun was shining and the temperatures hit the mid-70s. I went outside, and I found myself digging around in the garage.

I found my flag poll. I found my flag. I couldn’t resist. I went outside to play.

It took a few minutes, but slowly my favorite moves came back to me. A few fundamentals I had to really think about. But before I knew it, though, my posture was straight. My eyes were up like they were looking at a press box. And I found myself pushing myself to be as graceful and fluid as possible in my moves, all with snapping the stops perfectly. I found I could even remember the tosses, though the catches were a LITTLE shakier than I like.

I literally laughed out loud at one point. I hadn’t done this is 12 years!! And I found myself loving it just as much as I did back then!

I foresee this becoming a regular thing in my exercise routine. It certainly works your upper body! And just the joy I pulled from it… that’s the best medicine of anything.

Do you have an old passion you’ve left behind? Have you considered picking it back up?

[Blogging for Books] — 31 Days of Power

It’s rare that I pick up a book that I have a hard time really getting into, especially when its a daily devotional that only asks I read a couple pages a day. However, 31 Days of Power was a book I just had a hard time getting into following.

31 Days of Power is subtitled “Learning to Live in Spiritual Victory.”  Perhaps it was my own fault for not following that the book would be focused so heavily on spiritual warfare against Satan. I expected the book to be more uplifting, and feeding my spirit in a positive and empowering manner. However, what I found was regular references to Satan and evil in the world. There was praise and thanks, but it general focused on thanks for being saved from “my enemies.”

The book is based around Scripture, however it is scripture versus that have been paraphrase and interpreted. It does make for easier reading — each one a prayer and devotional — however, I wish there had been more straightforward bible passages included. I like a book to be either an original devotional, or I like bible passages. This seems to be a hybrid of the two, and it just made it difficult for me to really get into it.

Now, as I have said, the book asks  you only read a page or two every day for 31 days. Its not asking too much out of your day, and as you read you find yourself going into a place of worship and reflection. And it is in that fact that I DID like the book. I also enjoyed that each chapter had lines for you to add in your own intercessions, making the book even more personalized.

I do not regret reading this book, and I will probably come back to it in the future in times of spiritual need. However, on a whole, I was left disappointed.

NOTICE: I received this book as part of WaterBrook Multnomah Publishers “Blogging for Books” program.