basilisk.

word of the day: basilisk \ˈba-sə-ˌlisk\ a legendary reptile with fatal breath and glance 

Every time I see the word "bask" (see previous post), I think of the word basilisk.  Why?  Probably because I'm a Harry Potter freak.  That and because they contain similar letters, albeit very different meanings.

My week went from basking to basilisk real fast.  So here I sit, with a bag of frozen peas cooling the sinus headache that has overtaken my forehead, thinking about all that remains unchecked on my to do list. 

But I write.  And you should know that Jake is holding the bag of peas to my forehead so that I can write. 

I suppose I could bemoan my long week and tell you about everything I have to do, but 1.) that would be super over-dramatic because it wasn't even that bad and 2.) nobody wants to read a blog full of complaints.  I don't like to be a Debbie Downer.

I will however tell you that one of my classes accused me of making up a word on Tuesday.  Honestly. I was trying to encourage them to memorize a list of indefinite pronouns so I said, "It would behoove you to commit this list to memory."  Come on.  Who wouldn't say 'behoove' instead of 'it would be a good idea'? 

Well apparently 'behoove' didn't sound like a real word, so they made me look it up and read them the definition.  I obliged and then asked them to never again insult my intelligence.

It was a basilisk of a week though because everything happened at once.  Remember those weeks in college?  Three tests, two papers, and one all nighter?*

I blame the sinus headache on the basilisk week.   But alas, everything got done and those unchecked boxes will be checked off before the end of the weekend.  I'll take the sinus headache over irrational stress any day.

I finished Forgotten God by Francis Chan last week and should probably devote an entire post to my thoughts, but in reflection of my week last week, I'll just leave you with this:

Would you be willing to take thirty seconds right now just to dwell on the fact that God is in you?  Astonished? This is not a distant, loose connection.  This is the spirit of God choosing you and me to be His dwelling place.  That means that as I write, the Spirit of the living God is inside me.  I might wake up on a particular day feeling physically tired or stressed or impatient, and humanly speaking, those things would probably define my day.  But the reality is that I am indwelt by the Holy Spirit.  And because of this reality, stress and tiredness and impatience don't have to define my day.

I'm not always a very calm person.  I can easily become consumed by time and deadlines. I can panic at the thought of being ten minutest late to a meeting.  I can throw myself into a tizzy even at the thought of not getting something done.  But it always gets done.  And because of that, the basilisk weeks of life have no power over me.  

It took all that was in me not to insert a really tacky Harry Potter analogy there.

*I never actually pulled an all nighter in college.

Chan, Francis, and Danae Yankoski. Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit. Waterville, Me.: Christian Large Print, 2010. Print.