What I learned in June

1.  June flies by faster than all other months, except perhaps July and August.  (I didn't really learn this particular fact this year, but I experienced it yet again with profound certainty.)

2.  Love, fear, faith, hope, dread and acceptance all live in my heart at once, and this is why I need Jesus every single moment of every single day.  Honestly.  I've been around a few years.  I've even read the Bible a few times.  But every day I have to die to my fears, my desire to control outcomes, my disappointment at my inability to control outcomes.  Sometimes I wonder why I can't get my spiritual act together, already.  But God is full of grace, and He loves me, and there are times when I think He is telling me, "This is right where I want you, just the way it should be.  You always need to remember that you can't do it without me. You need me, and your need for me is a good thing."  Yes.  He says, "Abide in me, for without me, you can do nothing."  Amen.

3.  Everybody, even I, can win something once in awhile.  I was chosen to be part of Emily Freeman's launch team for her new book, Simply Tuesday.  They sent me a book in the mail, a preview copy for "advance readers."  Yes, I have a title: Advance Reader.  I never win anything, but somehow I won this.  They gave me a book to read, and they want to hear what I think about it.  Did you get that?  They actually want to hear what I think.  This is a little scary, since I am jumping in with a bunch of people I don't know.  What if they find me offensive?  Stupid?  Boring?  (haha -- see #2 above)  Still, it is a special thing, and I am grateful and amazed to have been chosen.

4.  I really, really like making my bed, folding clean laundry and doing dishes.  This was a very encouraging realization to come to.  I do not like organizing anything, not closets or bookshelves or drawers or bills, and especially not the basement.  But I do like making my bed, folding laundry and washing dishes.  It's not that I simply don't mind doing these things (I don't mind cleaning toilets and sinks, or making dinner), but I actually get happy from doing them.  So I hope this means I am not utterly lazy, which--if it were so--would assuage some of the guilt I usually carry, although perhaps not in the healthiest way.

5.  Gmail has a lot of great features that I didn't know about.  I finally figured out how to add contacts so that they come up by their names rather than some of them coming up randomly by email address (and then being hard to locate if I can't remember the person's email address).

• In the upper left corner of your Gmail screen, under the Google logo, you click on the Gmail logo (it has a down arrow).
• From the menu that appears, you select "Contacts."
• In the Contacts screen, in the center, you can scroll through your contacts (from the box on the left you can select "all contacts" or a subgroup, but "all contacts" works pretty well most the time).
• When you put your cursor into the row of a specific contact, icons appear.  You can select the little pencil to edit your contact.
• By clicking on the little pencil, you will bring up a window for that contact.  In that window you can set the name (the name the contact is stored as), as well as the person's email.  You can also add additional contact information like phone numbers, street addresses and birthdays.
• Boooo Yaaaaaa.  You did it.  Organize that mail system, baby!

Another great Gmail feature that I learned is this:  you can print a Gmail very easily!

• Next to the "reply" arrow on the right, there is a down arrow.  I had often used it to forward an email, but I had never read on down the list.
• From the drop down menu off this down arrow, you can select "Print"!  Yes!  It's just that easy.
• Decide how you want to print: select the printer you would like to use, or save to a pdf and store in a file folder where you will someday be able to retrieve the gmail again when you need it.  I do not know why "save to pdf" is a print function, but it is.  That's also something I learned this month.

Well, probably everybody in the world except me knew all about Gmail already.  But I learned it this June, and I think it might even help me with some of my organizational angst (see #4 above).