He is Greater.....John 3:30 says He must become greater, I must become less"

 We spent the past weekend in Kansas City for a volleyball tournament with Precious and a club team she is playing with this winter/spring.  Kansas City is such a beautiful city with so much ethnic and cultural diversity. I told Precious I don't think we have ever spent time like this with so many different races and ethnicities that were all together for a common reason.....girls volleyball.  She fit right in...and so did we.  It was amazing and inspiring.  I'm so grateful.       Sunday morning we went down for breakfast at the hotel.  A woman stopped me in the breakfast lounge because she wanted to ask me about my t-shirt.  It was a Live Healthy Iowa t-shirt from a few years ago.  She asked if I was from Iowa...she has a daughter who goes to college at Iowa State....we chatted a bit.  She was sitting with her son and I commented that I really liked his hair.  I had noticed his braids and was impressed with the style.  She thanked me and said she had braided it this morning...

 There is a trend going that involves choosing a "word" to focus on for the year.  I didn't do it for awhile because it seemed silly to me, and because I love words.....all of them....and did not want to feel inhibited or restricted by just one.  Last year I asked God if He had a word for me.  He did.  The word was "mountain".  I knew when I received and accepted that word, that it meant He was telling me it was going to be a challenging year.  I wasn't wrong.  2022 was a mountain of a year.  There were really good parts that felt like mountaintop moments, and there were really hard parts that felt like climbing a mountain that was really steep and I was walking up backwards on slippery gravel....I look at the year and can appreciate the mountain of all of it.  I'm grateful that God partnered with me in the foreshadowing of it and the journey through it.   Roger struggled with his job, then tore his achilles tendon and was virtually incapacitated for mon