Today was a good day for me, but there was nothing really big to stand out as making it such. Just a lot of little things I guess. Good conversations. Good classes. After struggling to find a personal story or case study to present for my turn to lead my small group class (the topic is racism) I came up with a good one and I found I was anticipating leading the class a great deal. It went very well and everyone was quite engaged in it. I'm rather pleased with how well it went, given that last night I had no idea what I was going to do that wouldn't sound trite, trivial, or demeaning.

My confession is tomorrow morning. I worked on the self-examination part a lot this morning and it feels weird. It feels odd to prepare for this, but I've gotten some very helpful advice from some books specifically geared towards preparing an Episcopalian for a first confession. In a way, I feel like I've been walking around with an open wound the past few days and every so often I poke at it. I don't know that looking forward to tomorrow is the right expression, but there is definitely something I feel about it, just don't know what. I started writing down things I wanted to confess in a journal, so that I could have a record of it. Then I came across the line in the book that specifically said, "don't write them in a journal." You're suppossed to write them down as a memory aid, just on a single sheet(s) of paper which can then be burned or otherwise discarded. The point is you don't hang on to them in any way, spiritually, emotionally, or physically. God wipes them away. Period. I find it funny in retrospect that I wanted a record of them. But I guess that's one of the powers of sin; we want to hold on to them. The power of God is the power for us to turn them over to Him and then He eliminates them. That's a better power.

-R