i never would have thought

I'm procrastinating. I should be cleaning my room. It's cold and rainy outside. I just want to sit on the loveseat by my front window with a book and a cup of hot chocolate. And I don't quit thinking about it then my room will never get clean!

I went to a girls' convention this weekend. It was really, really amazing. There was so much hard work put into it. I was super impressed. I was asked to teach a breakout workshop. I talked about worship and music. It was a real learning experience for me. At one point I was encouraging one girl in particular to write songs and share them. I kind of stood back and listened to myself...I was thinking, "Tonya, you really need to listen to yourself." I just had one of those moments where I was challenging myself and didn't realize it until later. I've written several songs. Over the last several years, I just stopped though. I don't know why. Maybe getting married, family,...or maybe fear. Whatever the reason, I'm really trying to get back to myself, get back to my gifts. I wrote a song a week ago. I'm still polishing it up. I don't know how God wants to use me through music. But, I'm trying to find out. All of a sudden, I'm also teaching two girls piano. I've been spending a couple hours a week working on my piano skills and working with my voice...trying to stretch my range and get it back to where it was several years ago. So, this is all kind of new. Not really overwhelming...but I'm just going into all this very interested and watchful of what God wants to do and how He would want to use me.

We had a really, really good LIFE Group last night. I truly enjoyed it. The video we watched was good. The discussion we had was good. The people there are amazing! I don't know if anyone from my church reads my blog, so I have to be careful saying this...we had a lot of fun talking about our theme for our church's chili cook off coming up this weekend. I like it when people are laughing. It means they're not sad. It's fun to laugh with others. We did a lot of laughing last night. Good times. Good times.

Back to the girls' convention. I won a dance contest. All the leaders had to go up and do this Zombie Dance. I had been wanting a free t-shirt. They were giving all kinds of stuff away all weekend. I hadn't won anything. So, I decided this was my chance. And you know, in a dance contest...it doesn't matter if you're good. The one who is the goofiest and the craziest always wins. So, I had to do what I had to do. I got crazy. BUT, I got my free shirt, a Starbucks tumbler, and a poster! Woot! Woot!