So it was back to practice today for me. We have 4 of our players that left our team to report to their National Teams for training for the next 2 weeks so we are left with 6 or 7 girls who are here since we aren't reporting for National Team training. All of the teams in Turkey will not be playing games for the next 2 weeks. Most teams were given at least 5 days off, but our coach has decided to just give us yesterday off. We will practice the rest of the week and then we will get the weekend off which will be nice. We had lifting today and then I did cardio on my own and then got quite a few shots up. Tomorrow will be more of the same but an emphasis on speed and agility tomorrow.
Tomorrow is the last day with my sisters. I am not looking forward to saying goodbye to them, but what a blessing it has been to have them be able to come over here and be apart of my world. I am so thankful they took a few vacation days and came over here.
My sisters and I had a good day today. We slept in after watching Liberty Women's Basketball Team play against Elon. After sleeping in I headed to lifting and basketball and my sisters followed shortly after to get their own workout in at the fitness center. We were able to relax some this afternoon and then this evening we went to dinner with 2 of my Turkish teammates. It was a nice time of conversation and good food.
Tomorrow it is back to the practice floor for me. I wanted to share some quotes with you from a book I just finished reading. One thing about being overseas, is I am able to read a lot of great books which I am thankful for.
Check out the quotes below:
The End of Me: Where Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins by Kyle Idleman
Book Quotes:
“Reaching the end of me is a daily journey I must make because it’s where Jesus shows up and my real life in him begins.”
“Embrace the paradox: brokenness is the way to wholeness.”
“The end of me often comes when my dreams come to an end.”
“In the midst of loss and deep disappointment, when it feels like we are coming to the end of ourselves, he turns the page and shows us a new story of hope and redemption.”
“If the Beatitudes were describing how we view blessing from a cultural perspective, we would read something like, “Blessed are you when everything goes your way.” Or, “Blessed are you when all your dreams come true.” A blessed life, as any normal person would define it, would be a life free from mourning, not a life marked by it! We can’t spin this one, parse this one, or twist this one around without Jesus twisting it right back. He says that when we mourn—when life gets extremely difficult, when we experience the deepest suffering we’ve ever encountered, when we come to the end of ourselves—then we are blessed.”
“In surprising ways, suffering makes room in our spirit for us to know and experience the blessing of God’s peace and presence. Without suffering, we simply can’t know his comfort. In mourning, we experience the blessing of God’s presence.”
“At the end of yourself, you have an opportunity to experience the presence of God in a way you never have before. Maybe you’ve embraced some wonderful things and lost them. But there’s no embrace like the divine one.”
“They prayed for change on the outside. God cared more about change on the inside. They prayed for their desires and realized more and more that God answered in terms of their needs.”
“Everyone experiences loss. Everyone mourns. But those who follow Jesus find that their pain is not wasted. There is a blessing that seems totally illogical. It requires climbing to the bottom of the deepest pit, without a flashlight, venturing far into the darkness. But the blessing is there, and it’s worth everything.”
“Sin is a laughing matter today, a matter for mockery. If mourning is a path to take, then laughter moves precisely in the opposite direction on the spiritual compass. And as I’ve studied this material, I’ve been struck—the word is convicted—by this insight. I like to laugh, like most people. But how often do I laugh at the very things that should cause me to mourn?”
“You’ll walk through the valley of the shadow, but I promise you this: you’ll never walk alone. The blessing awaits.”
“Jesus says the way up is down. Greatness is humility.”
“That’s a big issue with pride versus humility. Fake humility expresses itself in a pride that is obvious to everyone but the speaker. The Bible says, “The mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Matt. 12:34). Ultimately our words betray us, no matter how much we guard them.”
“One of the central themes of Jesus’s sermon is that God looks on the heart, the true measure of who we are. Performance is too easy to fake.”
“Pride is best buddies with insecurity.”
“Pride: you can run, but you cannot hide.”
“The greatest danger in life is anything other than Jesus that becomes a foundation for our confidence.”
“There is no substitute for humbling yourself before God. The humble heart pleases God. The humble cry invites him to demonstrate his power.”
“To humble myself, I treat others better than myself.”
“Everywhere you look, every situation you’re in, is a laboratory for self-humbling, an opportunity to exalt Christ and put pride on the cross. You can boldly—or humbly—go where no one has gone before.”
“Getting to the end of me means I’m not worried about performing for others anymore. Getting to the end of me means I’m no longer interested in faking it, because I understand that God is looking for the real me.”
“When we close the public theater, drop the curtains, shut off the lights, and play to an audience of one, not caring about the reviews of the critics or anyone else, that’s when we come to the end of ourselves and experience God’s blessing.”
“Jesus wants a no-makeup relationship with you. He wants you to be pure in heart—unmixed and soul-sincere.”
“God loves to fill empty things—whether it’s a jar or a measure of hope. Jars are made for filling. They don’t fill themselves, but they receive what is poured into them. All jars begin with emptiness.”
“Jesus doesn’t just fill emptiness; he fills it with joy and abundance.”
“Pharisees sat with Jesus and saw heaven come to earth.”
“The spiritual poverty of the Western world is much greater than the physical poverty of our people in Calcutta. You in the West have millions of people who suffer such terrible loneliness and emptiness. These people are not hungry in the physical sense, but they are in another way. They know they need something more than money, yet they don’t know what it is. What they are missing really is a living relationship with God.”
“Busyness is a hedge against emptiness.”
“Stuff. Activity. Romance. And there could be others. What would be your most likely reason for walking away? What takes up the space in your life that is meant for God?”
“Before we pray that God will fill us, I believe we ought to pray that He would empty us. There must be an emptying before there can be a filling. And when the heart is turned upside-down and everything that is contrary to God is turned out, then the Spirit will come.”
“We accept a lot of things that we know could be better. We say, “Well, that’s just my life,” as if it’s engraved in stone. We decide God must want us to be here, because if he didn’t, he’d make something else happen. In other words, we blame God. And if it’s God’s fault that we are in the situation we are in, then why would we ask him for help? After a while we get used to things, and a limited life is less frightening than the thought of change. Resignation is better than disappointment.”
“Fear of change can be highly motivating—and ultimately limiting.”
“We’re not asked to audition for the help of Jesus. All we need to bring him is our helplessness, and he meets us there at the end of ourselves.”
“It sounds downright prudent and sensible, doesn’t it? Over the years, I’ve seen people with kingdom success written all over them. I knew it was only a matter of time before God did something extraordinary through them. I watched them over time as they got ready, got ready—then got ready some more. They never seemed to graduate from the school of getting ready. One more Bible study group. A little more time praying for God’s will. It’s a little like the guy who keeps walking out on the high dive, looking down, and saying, “I need to work a little more on my form.” Just jump! Jump before you’re ready to jump.”
“When God chooses you, he equips you. Every time.”
“The biggest reason you can’t get it done is the precise reason he can—maybe the precise setting he wants to use.”
“Get to the end of yourself and you’ll find you are in the right place to be used significantly by God.”
“Getting to the end of me means coming to the end of my strength. As we will discover in this chapter, our weaknesses create a space that God wants to fill with strength.”
“The best stuff in life is buried. You have to go after it. You have to figure out where to dig, and then you have to go lay claim to it.”
“There are two different paths. One path is narrow, difficult, and marked “death,” but it leads to life. The other path is broad, crowded, and marked “life,” but it leads to death. In Matthew 16, Jesus tells us what we can expect when we follow him down the narrower road: Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. (vv. 24–25)”
“The healthiest thing you can do in rugged waters is to serve someone else.”
I hope you enjoy the quotes above.
God bless,
Megan