Fore!

Well, I'm sort of just in the mood to write, so I figured we'd take a shot at round two of this. I had a topic that I really wanted to write on, but it's a tough one to do and today gave me a different idea as well. So, even though I was hoping to devote this second post to the topic of regrets and past decisions, I think I'll just save that for later. Part of the reason is that I think most of what I want to say about regrets has been told to nearly everyone for almost their whole entire life (or at least since they've reached the point that they might have made some poor decisions).
Anyway, I've had a pretty good weekend. I had a great bunch of friends over yesterday for burgers, swimming, games and movies, and I really just had a great day. This morning we had a guest preacher, Rev. Mary Hulst, the chaplain at Calvin College. She had a very interesting sermon about all the different religions and how each has their own ways of being "made righteous", but the main point was how Christianity is different in that it's only through God's grace that we are saved. That it's His gift that brings us into righteousness. And I'm not entirely sure if it was just that I've heard the message so many times, or if it was just her style of delivering the message, but I honestly was having a difficult time paying attention. I still heard everything she had to say, and understood the meaning behind her message, but my focus wasn't really where it ought to have been. And I really don't like that.
Well, I might come back to that, but moving on... After a wonderful lunch and a few hours of reading/passing out in the sun out back, I ended up spending the night playing a total of 23 holes of disc golf with Dan and Zac. Now, I've only gone a few times, and I'll admit that it shows, but I feel like overall today wasn't a bad day for me. Then after disc golf, with a TBell break for supper, Dan and I ended up back at his house, where we played a nice game of Settlers with Greg. And after a good couple hours of that and an interesting chat, I headed home. That is why I started writing this at 1 A.M. (and I apologize if that causes it to be a little incoherent).
But on my way home, I was thinking over the happenings of the day and I sort of realized something. It may be that I'm just tired, but in a way disc golf can actually be a pretty good analogy for life. Now you're probably thinking, "Hey, wait a minute. Where exactly are you going with this??", but hear me out , this sort of makes sense. At least to me it does. When your discing - or even regular old golfing for that matter - there's a bunch of "holes" you try to reach, in as few throws as possible. Well, I see this as sort of like how in life we have a list of goals for ourselves that we try to accomplish in the most efficient way possible. But sometimes things just don't go as planned... Your throw doesn't go quite as far as you wanted it to, or maybe it even goes in completely the wrong direction. Sometimes you blame it on other things - I mean, it can't be your fault, right? - It would have been the perfect throw, but the disc just slipped a little early or if only that tree wasn't there you'd have a perfect lie. And we do this in our lives, too. So often, we try to pin our own shortcomings off on some other factor or person. We want to just start over, or sometimes just skip the hole completely. But in disc, you don't do that (with the exception of the occasional mulligan). You just shrug it off, go find your disc, and try extra hard on your next throw to make up for lost distance.
Alright, maybe that wasn't such a great analogy. To be honest, I really just wanted to make a semi-philosophical  post involving disc golf. But hey, it kind of worked and maybe you'll actually get something out of it.
Well, it's late, this post is getting long, and I kind of agreed to help Cari with landscaping at her grandmother's house tomorrow. So, I'm off to bed, but I'll leave you with one last thing. I've kind of gotten caught up with watching the show How I Met Your Mother lately and I've actually been getting quite a lot out of it. So, look forward to a possible future post about one or more episodes. And I may also throw in some random references from here on out, too.

Ta ta for now and may you all have a blessed evening (all 3.5 of you).