Blessings in Friends

What a fantastic weekend it was! Even with the crazy dad happenings, it really was wonderful. 
This past weekend I found myself continually surrounded by great company and good fellowship and I would count it as a decently ideal weekend. 
As some of you know, I'm a people person. I like to be around people as much as possible. At least... I've always considered myself that way. Over the summer I found myself constantly seeking solitude from people and I was rather worried that my people liking days were over. BUT! To my wonderful surprise, it was really just exhaustion and negativity that drove me to hide from people and now that I have been away from that and have gotten to spend many a good hour alone in my apartment, I am most certain that I do draw my energy from people. 


So my weekend! I don't have class on Fridays and thus after spending my morning with Jesus and afternoon on homework I was thinking I would simply find myself a book and sit on the floor in my unfurnished living room for the evening. Thankfully my good friend, Kira, was also bored on that fateful Friday and so we met up at the library, got us some movies to watch and we kept each other company as we sat on the floor in my unfurnished living room in front of the TV. While the movies were rather lame, it was a wonderful time. 
Then Saturday came and it was cloudy and overcast. I was very excited about this as I feel it is an essential part of fall to have overcast rainy days. But I actually didn't really have any food to eat in the apt and so Kira and I walked the mile back to the Burge dining hall. As we started our walk, it began to rain.. and then pour and we were SOAKED. I generally LOVE walking in the rain and getting soaked. But I had expected it to be rather hot out that day and thus had dressed accordingly and once we got our sopping wet selves to Burge we discovered that some fool had set the A/C to some crazy cold setting and it was a little unpleasant. But we drank coffee and it was wonderful. But after the time in burge drying off ever so slightly, I found myself walking back to my apt in another down pour and thus being more cold and soaked than before. But it made my dry clothes and hot tea back at my apt even more enjoyable than ever and so it was quite alright. 


Then! My sisters invited me to go to a thrift store with them and it was absolutely delightful, especially with the rain still going on outside. We tried on old hats, found ourselves amongst old books and antiques, playing with toy light sabers and wondering at how a little plastic army man could be priced at $1 when we had shot them with bb guns by the 20s and 30s when we were children. Had we known they would be such valuable heirlooms in a thrift store years later, maybe we would have thought twice before lining them up for execution. A second thought is all it would have been though, I'm sure. 


After that little adventure I was dropped back off at my apt where I got to watch the football game with one of my roommates before leaving again to go see David Crowder and Charlie Hall in Davenport with Josh and his family and a lovely lady named Christy. It was raining all up until the concerts and we got allllll wet but it was SO worth it and SO wonderful fun. I LOVE praising Jesus with lots of other people! Truly my very favoritest way to spend a saturday evening. 


I probably didn't fall asleep til somewhere around midnight and I slept fairly soundly til 7am the next day where I woke up to find a text from my mom saying dad had had 2 seizures during the night and was in the hospital. It's not the first time news like this has been how I started my day but it certainly isn't very pleasant. Later that morning Dad was moved to ICU and given some meds for the siezures.  Since mom was home alone with 3 children under the age of 12 and unable to be at both the hospital and home, my sister Pearl and I decided to make a trip home after church.
 Kira, being present for most of the drama unfolding as Pearl and I had communicated home about our visiting, decided she wished to join us on our adventure and thus the three of us found ourselves driving back to Storm Lake on Sunday afternoon whilst singing opera sounding hymns along with the radio and taking turns singing like a man. I laughed *so* hard that my sides ached and I developed a terribly bad case of the hiccups that seemed to act like a punctuation mark at the end of my operatic sentences. I'd be in the middle of holding out some glorious man-opera sounding note and then all the sudden *hiccup*. Ruined. 


Also, with all the stuff going on with dad I received loads of encouragement from friends via text messages saying they were praying and asking for ways they could help. Even from friends whom I hadn't told directly of what was going on and I found all to be so wonderfully encouraging. 


Time at home was wonderful too! Especially since i hadn't expect to have the opportunity to go home. We fed the children when we arrived home and watched Tangled and just relaxed a little while mom visited dad. Kira and I found it to be rather cold outside and amused ourselves by running laps back and forth in the front yard but that did absolutely nothing to warm us up and so we drank cappuccino in the kitchen and it worked great. Around 10pm the majority of us were quite drowsy and resolved to go to sleep. I went searching for Kira and Eva to inform them of such plans and found them star-gazing out on the roof. This looked all too exciting and so I joined them for a little while. But, I was falling asleep so I gave up on that and went to find a bed for sleeping in. I often play musical beds when I'm home for a visit and since my bed was unmade because I haven't been home and sleeping in it for the last few weeks, I decided to find a bed that was made since making a bed for one night seemed pointless. With some seeking and a little finding, I opted for Kit's bed on the third floor as it had sheets AND blankets and no bodies in it.. which was more than the other beds I found. So, that's what I did. 
In the morning I found out that Kit had actually come home at 3 in the morning and had spent the night sleeping on his clean laundry in the corner when he had discovered his bed was occupied. My bad. 


Anyways, Dad came home from the hospital midmorning and apart from his tongue being all mangled from biting it during his seizures, he seemed pretty fine. He was tired tho, so he took a nap. I got to spend my day with my little siblings and rounding up needed objects that I hadn't been able to bring with me to school originally on account of only having the van and having 5 people in the van along with all of my life's possessions. Well.. not all, obviously, cuz some had to be left behind. 
So! Before we left that afternoon, Kit stocked me with all the watermelons my little heart could desire, dad gave me some fresh honey and we had a lovely drive back to IC.  :)