The winners and other stuff
June 14, 2012 by
Once upon a time I threw the biggest birthday party known to mankind. That’s only barely an exaggeration. When Sloan turned five, I threw a fire fighter birthday party and fell prey to fear, which led to me inviting every single person we knew and their entire families.
I have deep seeded people-pleaser issues.
I was so afraid of someone feeling left out that I just invited everyone I could think of assuming that with it being summertime many would be out of town and unable to attend, but at least they would know I thought of them, right?
Almost every single person RSVP’ed. Twenty-nine (or more, I lost track) kids, 16 adults and a sprinkler. I have never done that again.
All that to say, I can’t choose just one winner from the Name that Photo contest. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings and plus you guys flipping made me laugh so hard. I wouldn’t know how to start. I laughed out loud (I did NOT LOL…ugh) so much, then I went and reread the comments and laughed again. Out. Loud.
My readers are funny...and apparently know me too well.
Sloan mooning us? Nutella locked in the van? Draining noodles? Timmy trapped in a well? Fat tourists in thongs? 1-800-CONTACTS? Smokey Bones? Oh heavens…you guys are the best. So funny.
Well done all of you. VIRTUAL HIGH FIVE’S ALL AROUND. Hold your hand up…wait just a sec…
There! High five. BOOM!
And here’s your side hug.
Now the super-duper feelings of awesomeness and glory will take a few days to get to you. You should all receive those by Monday at the latest. Be on the lookout…
In other news…
– Today I am guest posting at Bohemian Bowmans on the impact Tanzania has had on my writing. Hop on by and check out the Bohemian blog – they’re Canadians now, dontcha know…
– In order to retain my Mom-Blogger card, I am required to post a recipe now and again. Otherwise my membership may be revoked and then I’ll be relegated to writing about, I dunno, politics or something.
*shudder*
I’ve made these eggs twice this week and both times my first born, he who gags like he’s dying when I serve him eggs, has gobbled them up. So what’s in this magic eggs concoction?
– 1 leek, thinly sliced (leeks are like big, fat green onions – I had no idea…I’m not what you’d call a cook.) Sautee the leek in 2 T of butter and add one garlic clove chopped.
– 4 cups of Kale. Add the Kale to the Pan and pour in 3 T of white wine (you read that right), cover and let simmer until Kale is melted. Salt and Pepper to taste.
– Crack four eggs on top of the greens, put a lid on the pot and let cook on low until eggs have hardened and set. Serve hot and watch in amazement as your kids eat so much good stuff without complaining.
*This is not an original recipe. I got it out of Men’s Health magazine, which, naturally, I was only reading for the recipes… *nervous laugh*
– I want to Hulk Smash the alarm system in our house. I hate it. Every time the power trips, the alarm goes off. Last night the power tripped three times. When that alarm goes off in the middle of the night I wake up prepared to kill. It explains why today I am drinking this, which I only drink in the most dire of situations.
My hands are trembling uncontrollably right now.
– I downloaded all three Ingrid Michaelson albums today. I’ve loved her since “The Way I Am” came out, but lately we have been listening to the Over the Rhine station on Pandora and every time she popped up on the screen I got goosebumps. She’s freaky good.
– I signed all three kids up this week for gymnastics camp. I’ve had about three hours a day to myself. At home. ALONE. I had kind of forgotten what this felt like. It’s a little boring at times, but for the most part it has been entirely enjoyable.
Empty Minivans are HAWT!
Okay, I’ve talked enough. Now it’s your turn. Tell me something funny, or sad, or happy. What are you doing this weekend. Do you have a vacation coming up? Did your kid say something funny to you this week?
Who’s gonna make me laugh? Come on, help a sister out. I didn’t sleep much last night and you guys demonstrated yesterday that you are plenty funny so lay it on me.
Happy Thursday, friends.
Name that Photo
June 12, 2012 by
I’m wicked tired today and so distracted. I don’t feel funny, or deep or contemplative – I just feel…blah. So I’m offering up a giveaway to end all giveaways. Seriously, you’re glad you stopped by here today.
Some of you have already seen this on Facebook, but you can still play the game. Jenni from Avodah Images snapped this candid shot of us when she did our family shots. At some point during that evening, Landon stepped on a sand spur and I thought this picture was taken during that time, but Lee reminded me that that happened later in the evening on a different part of the beach.
So I have no idea why our faces look like this:
So, who wants to play a rousing game of Name That Photo?
Give this photo a clever title, or tell me what you think is happening in this picture to make us look so, um…scary.
The rules of this game are easy: Leave a comment with your suggested photo name or scenario. At the end of the day I will choose my favorite Name and will award the lucky winner two virtual high fives, one telepathic side hug and super-duper thoughts of awesomeness and glory.
This prize package is nothing short of stellar, friends. I mean, this is big time…
So what are you waiting for? What’s happening in this photo (because for the life of me, I don’t know why we look like that)? Don’t hesitate to enter – this is a prize you don’t want to miss out on.
Disclaimer: I am not being compensated for this post…sadly. The virtual high fives, telepathic side hug and super-duper thoughts of awesomeness and glory are my own and have not been provided to me by any third party.
50 Years
June 10, 2012 by
Fifty years ago today, the course of our family history stepped onto a new and exciting path. Really, the journey toward this future began some time before June 10, 1962, but it is today that we remember and commemorate my grandfather, grandmother and the legacy that they left behind. Today is the anniversary of the church they started so many years ago.
It was scary. It was hard. It was beautiful and ugly and delicious all rolled together.
Legacy.
Lee and I have thought a lot about the legacy we want to leave to our children. Walking across the plains of Africa has shifted the course of that vision a bit, though, and once again we find ourselves reestablishing this idea of legacy. What are we doing now that will shape the futures of our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren?
We must not take lightly this responsibility we have to create a legacy for our kids. It’s daunting, really, to think that how we guide them doesn’t impact the short term. I don’t know if my grandparents realized the ultimate and forever impact they would have on future generations when they stepped onto the white sands of South Caicos in 1961 with their four young children. Did they know that fifty years later the Carribbean would still remember the family name?
Did they know that fifty years after that first dedication on June 10, 1962 there would be a service at Calvary Baptist Church to honor and remember their faithfulness and sacrifice?
Did they know that fifty years after leaving the United States their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren would have traveled the world with the Gospel?
Did they understand the legacy they were creating by the faithful acting of leaving?
My grandfather did not get to see the long-term fruits of his labor. He died in 1973 at the age of 44. But his legacy did not end and it will not because his hands, his feet and his love continues to spread through the Carribbean and the world.
My grandfather wasn’t trying to be faithful to a future he would never see when he left with his family and established a lasting ministry in the Turks and Caicos islands and in the Bahamas. He was being faithful to the present he lived in and he took his family on the journey with him.
Is this how we create legacy? Is it as simple as being faithful to those things that stand before us – the messy, the beautiful, the ugly and the delicious? Is it living fully in the present that allows us to create a legacy for the future?
My grandparent’s journey wasn’t without trial or hardship and not every memory from those years is met with fondness and yearning. But the seed that was planted all those years ago continues to grow and I am so, so grateful and honored to be a part of that heritage – that legacy. I’m proud of my family and the legacy in which we all share.
Messy. Beautiful. Ugly and Delicious. It is our legacy and it continues to grow, not to our glory but to His.
All to His.
The steeple and bell at Calvary Baptist Church, South Caicos
So what about you? What kind of legacy do you hope to leave for your children and the generations that follow?
*Three years ago this month, I had the privilege of traveling to the Caicos islands with my mom to see and feel the legacy that was left for us first hand. Here are a couple of the posts from that trip:
– Another Story from the Mission Field
– A Journey through the Sands of Time
Sing it out with Nicole Nordeman’s Legacy…
I want to Carpe Diem
June 7, 2012 by
A blog post written by an excellent blogger went viral a few months ago. In many ways, I agree with what she writes about releasing ourselves as parents of the pressure to enjoy every single moment of this parenting journey.
But part of me wonders why we get so upset when older women come up to us in the store and urge us to enjoy the minutes. Why are we so quick to lash out when strangers want to offer a bit of encouragement – even if it’s misguided? I don’t say this accusingly, because I, too, have found myself defensive when people make comments that I perceive to be insensitive, ignorant or laced with pressure.
But if I step back and take a deep breath, most of the time it’s really evident that whoever made the commen
t is not speaking out of judgement or malice, but simply from a place that’s different from mine.
Take the older gentleman in Sam’s a few months back – the one who tsked at me when the kids were acting like rabid baboons while we waited in line. At first, I was annoyed at his impatience. My initial reaction was to either lash out at him, or to encourage the kids to act out more simply out of spite.
But when I stepped back (as in left the store and thought about it a bit), I realized this: he’s old. Also, I have no idea what his background is. Maybe he never had kids and simply doesn’t understand. Likely, if he did have kids, his wife did the majority of the errands with them when they were small, simply because that’s how older generations operated.
The point is, I don’t know, so why get so upset about it? Why not just smile politely, try to quiet the kids and realize that once we leave the store we will probably never see him again?
Problem solved.
The fact of the matter is, our time with our children is short. It will go by quickly. And before we know it, we will be the older women in the check out line watching a young mom wrangle in her children, frazzled and tired, and we will probably miss those moments – yes, even the moments that are “helluva hard.”
So even in the crazy, when the kids are running rampant in the store, try to take a deep breath and remind yourself of two things:
– This will not last forever and you’ve got hundreds of solo shopping trips ahead of you in life so don’t waste time getting embarrassed over the small stuff.
– These days really will fly by fast, so seize every moment you can and laugh as often as possible.
I don’t say these things as someone who’s got this down. I scowl more than I laugh some days and I look forward to bedtime as much as the next person – it’s the nature of the beast. But I’m not for a second wishing this time away.
Just because I don’t always Carpe Diem doesn’t mean I shouldn’t at least try.
In fact, with the realization that my “baby” is going to be five at the end of the year, I find myself a little sad and wistful. I watch the new moms around me with a faint smile and I find myself whispering softly, “Enjoy every minute of this time because it goes by so fast.”
Yes, I remember the sleepless nights, the endless crying and the non-stop work of having an infant. And I miss it. I actually do miss it. I didn’t think I would when I had an infant, but I do now. I would take a hundred sleepless nights all over again if I could. If I feel that way, then it’s quite possible that the older women in the store feel the same about the harried state of life I’m currently in.
So the next time you’re at the store with your kids and they’re wreaking havoc, try to take a minute to sit back, laugh and be present in the moment. And when the older woman smiles and urges you to seize the day, or asks you if you are going to “try for a girl/boy” or wonders why they’re not in school, smile politely and thank her for any encouragement she has to offer.
I think the old women at Target have a lot to teach us, if we’re willing to listen…
And now I’m back
June 6, 2012 by
Oh hi there! How are you? Me? Oh, I’m fine, thanks. Now that I’ve finally finished all three books in The Hunger Games Trilogy. I read them on my iPad. I don’t know how many pages the books were, but on the iPad, all three books totaled 15, 215 pages. I swiped my iPad screen 15, 215 times in the last four days.
My eyes hurt.
Yep. I took the plunge. I started The Hunger Games Saturday night and I finished the third book, Mockingjay, last night around midnight. I have done absolutely nothing in between those times. Except turn thirty-four, which I largely ignored anyway, so no big deal.
So my take on the books: I was skeptical when I went in to the series. I didn’t want to like it but, alas, I did like it. I had to fight through the first five chapters of the first book, which I found to be painfully boring. I almost gave it all up, but once the story finally picked up, I was hooked.
From a story standpoint, the books were great. There was a love triangle, lots of action and fantastic descriptions that pulled me right into the world of Panem. I could see it and smell it and feel the terror of it all.
That is great storytelling.
My suspicions that it isn’t the most grammatically sound piece of literature were correct, but I see the freedom that the author took with creative license and I could appreciate it. There were a few paragraphs that were overly fragmented in my opinion and a couple of times I laughed out loud at the, perhaps, overly judicious use of creative license, but overall I understood why she wrote the book the way she did and why an editor didn’t change it.
About half-way through the book I started to feel a bit squicky about the idea of watching the movie. There was this nagging idea that the author was making a pretty braod social statement, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. But all I could think was that The Hunger Games were meant to be a thing of entertainment. People from the Capitol watched children killing each other as a means to entertain themselves.
Doesn’t it seem odd that we would want to watch the movie in that context?
By the end of the series, though, I got it – I saw exactly where the author wanted to lead us, which made watching the movie version of the book less offensive to me (though I still don’t know if I’ll see it). The Hunger Games is supposed to be an allegory of war. It’s a loose allegory and I think it’s meant to be an extreme picture on purpose.
We send young people into battle and they have to fight to the death with the knowledge that really, there can only be one victor. But in the battle, the good guys and the bad guys get muddied and soon, everyone kind of looks alike, because the battle for survival makes us all act in desperation.
Just as in a war, the end results of The Hunger Games are devastating. The victor is never the same, having seen and done things that are unspeakable. The families of the victims are forever left without their child and every community is ultimately affected with the horror of it all.
But who is the Capitol supposed to represent? This is something I had a hard time figuring out. Maybe it’s not a representation of any one thing or group of people, but on occasion I got a vague sense that maybe the Capitol was supposed to represent America and it felt a bit underhanded.
Other times, however, that didn’t seem to be the case at all.
In the end, it was one more story that leads us to believe that the only answer is a sort of Utopian society, where a new race of peace loving people is the only hope for the world. A nice thought, I suppose.
But in the end it’s all just fiction, isn’t it?
So what do you think? I realize I’m roughly two years late to this conversation. I’m edgy like that.
*eye roll*
In all honestly, though, before I read the books I truly had no idea what they were about so I’ve read nothing on the subject. What message did you take from The Hunger Games?
Thirty-four
June 4, 2012 by
I’m not one of those people who is embracing age with verve and gusto. Forget all the wisdom and knowledge and experience that comes with each passing year. All I see are wrinkles and blah, blah, blah…
It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.
There are fun things about getting older, but most of them center around the fun ages of my children and where we are as a family. But just the plain old process of getting older? Meh. I’m not a fan. So…in honor of me growing one year wiser older, I present you with my very own….
Top Ten List of Signs You’re Getting Old
*drumroll please*
10.) Your left hip pops every time you walk up a flight of staris. Only if you turn your foot out *just so* and walk up the stairs at a sort of sideways angle, the popping stops. Then you just look weird and your eight year old asks loudly why you’re walking so funny so that everyone looks at you and you have to walk up like a normal, not-getting-old person and deal with the popping. Obviously this is just hypothetical…
Ahem.
9.) You get excited by things like Crock Pots and Foreman Grills. Let me repeat that – CROCK POTS EXCITE YOU!
*If someone would please just pass me my cane*
8.) You visit the eye doctor and he prescribes readers, which causes you to envision punching him in the teeth, but you don’t because you’re older and responsible and your children are watching.
Plus, you know, it’s not nice to punch people in the teeth, which in general is a pretty good rule of thumb to live by no matter what age you are, don’t you think?
7.) You call anyone between the ages of 18 and 25 “kids.”
Really? REALLY?! Weren’t you just one of them?
(The answer to that is a resounding NO.)
6.) You see the aforementioned “kids” and feel like you could easily merge right into a group of them and be accepted, and mistaken for, one of them. Then you look in the mirror and realize that, indeed, you could not. Nope. Nuh-uh. No way. Not gonna happen, Grandma!
5.) You find a new wrinkle every day and no matter how much silicone is inside your jar of face cream, they don’t seem to be fading.
4.) You train everyone in your house to automatically mute all commercials because Oh my heavens the noise. You also find yourself muttering more than once about the general decline of society thanks to television and you reminisce about when you were little and there were only a few stations, which meant you didn’t spend all day sitting in front of the TV because there really wasn’t anything to watch anyway.
3.) You are always quick to join any conversation that involves current gas prices or the economy.
2.) It physically pains you to type “LOL” on anything and “ROFL,” “LMBO,” “LMFAO” and other such acronyms nearly send you into spasms from the sheer ridiculousness of it all. And for heavens sake don’t even get you started on “text talk.” Is it really that hard to hit two more letters to spell the word “you?”
*seriously – forget calling me Grandma. Just jump right in to calling me Mamaw*
(For some reason, though, OMG does not bother you, but instead gives you the giggles. Especially when you hear a little girl, who has obviously been trained well not to take the Lord’s name in vain, utter loudly and proudly, “O-M-Goodness.” )
Bless her sweet heart.
1.) You spend the morning cleaning out the floorboards of your minivan…and you’re actually excited about it.
And there you have it – my Top Ten List of Signs You’re Growing Old.
I know, I know. 34 is not that old. Age is just a number.
Whatever. I’ll believe you tomorrow.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got anti-aging cream to apply and a minivan to clean.
Any of you have anything to add to that list?
Smokey Bones Not Included
May 31, 2012 by
Photo by Avodah Images
He came home and called my name.
“I’m back here,” I yelled from our bedroom and he rushed back, his eyes lit. He had a plastic bag in his hands and a huge smile on his face. “I got you something,” he said with a lopsided smirk. I know that smile – it’s pride and mischief all rolled into one goofy grin.
“Okaaaaayyyy,” I replied slowly and I held out my hand. Our seventh anniversary was just days away. Earlier he had asked me what I wanted to do for our special day and I told him I didn’t care as long as he planned it. I hoped this little package had something to do with the big day.
The bag said GOODWILL across the front. This didn’t bode well for him or for me. I reached inside the bag and pulled out…light blue leather pants in a snakeskin pattern.
“Uuummm…” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. Was he serious? WAS. HE. SERIOUS?! So I just stood there awkwardly and he burst into laughter.
“I’m just kidding,” he said, holding his sides. “I saw those today and thought they were hilarious and thought I’d give to you as a joke.”
My face probably looked something like this. Ha ha huh? Photo by Avodah Images.
“Oh,” I said, stuffing the world’s ugliest pants back into the bag. “Um…ha. ha. ha?”
He stood up and wrapped me in a hug and kissed me, still laughing at all his funny. “Seriously, though,” he said, grinning. “I thought of the perfect place to go for our anniversary this weekend.”
I smiled back and leaned into him. “Really?” I asked. Planning has never been his forte’ so the fact that he’d put thought into this was thrilling. “Where are we going to go?”
“There’s this awesome new restaurant that opened up in the Valley a few weeks ago. The food is amazing – I love eating there.”
“Cool!” I said. “What’s it called?”
“Smokey. Bones,” he replied, his eyes wide with excitement. “They have the BEST barbeque.”
*crickets*
I was waiting for him to say he was just kidding again.
He didn’t say it.
“Oh…” I let my voice trail off because seriously? He wanted to go to a barbeque joint called Smokey Bones? For our anniversary?!
He picked up on my disdain and quickly assured me we didn’t have to eat at Smokey Bones. “Where do you want to go?” he asked.
That’s when I tried to smother him with the leather pants.
The next day we went to our small group Bible Study. I was still a little angry at the Great Smokey Bones Debacle and may have been a bit cold on the ride over. We walked inside our friend’s home and as per usual, we all stood around chatting and visiting.
“Hey Lee,” our friend Brad said, walking up to us. “I’ve got some clients coming to town this week and I’d like to treat them to a nice dinner. Do you have any places you’d recommend?”
“Oh sure,” Lee said and proceeded to rattle off five or six really nice, fancy restaurants around town. And then my jaw fell to the floor.
“SERIOUSLY?!” I interrupted and the room grew quiet. “And Smokey Bones was the best you could come up with for our anniversary?” Lee stammered and shrugged as our friends all burst into laughter, gripping their sides.
I can assure you all that we did NOT, in fact, end up eating at Smokey Bones for our anniversary dinner. In fact, I don’t think I have ever eaten at a Smokey Bones. Truly…truly…I am okay with that.
Photo by Avodah Images
My sweet husband has improved in the romancing and dating department in recent years. He learned a valuable lesson from the Smokey Bones incident and that lesson is that my idea of a romantic evening out doesn’t include plastic table cloths or food delivered in a basket. This is something that every man should be aware of, really. I’m doing all of you a favor by letting you in on this little secret.
Are you taking notes, gentlemen?
My birthday is Monday, so my husband is whisking me away for the weekend to a fancy place (which has been preapproved) where I plan to sleep, read, soak up Florida sun and eat good food at fancy restaurants, none of which will require a bib or wet wipes to complete the meal.
In other words, no Smokey Bones.
Amen.
Do you have any funny dating stories? Do share. We can laugh our way through the weekend…
Photos used by permission by Avodah Images.
Morphing into summer
May 30, 2012 by
All three children are playing quietly in their rooms. Go ahead, you can be impressed if you want. I won’t tell you that they’re in there because they had a massive fight, went all WWF and I walked in to find them screaming and crying and swinging bags of chips at one another, crumbs flying all over my freshly vaccumed carpet.
I’ll just let you go on thinking I’m raising angels.
So hey – got this summer time thing going on. With the pressure of school off my shoulders I have found myself inhaling for the first time in…nine months. NINE MONTHS. And it’s glorious, food fights and all. But there’s got to be some structure or me?
Ima hafta lose my mind.
Our home school schedule consisted of lessons beginning around 9:00 and finishing around 2:00 every day. Just because we are officially on summer break doesn’t mean that all learning stops, though. Every summer, even when Sloan went to public school, I instituted a one hour long “learning time” each morning. I like to do this just to watch them whine and complain.
It’s super fun.
So learning time is back. From 9:00-10:00 each morning the kids are working on reading, math, spelling or Russian. By the time we finish up those lessons, clean up around the house and have a minimum of two fights, it’s already lunch time!
BAM! No lazy summer days here. No siree.
The pool is providing great afternoon entertainment as are neighborhood friends and a bit of TV, because what’s summer without a teeny bit of laziness, yes?
I’ve ordered a ton of books and we will be heading to the library periodically as well. We have offered the two older kids a bribe an incentive to get them reading over the summer. For every book they finish, we will pay them a dollar. Sloan gets two dollars if he reads longer chapter books (at least fourth grade reading level or higher) and I’ve have offered him 5 dollars if he will read an entire book in Russian from front to back.
I did not think about the work all this would be for me as I now have to translate said Russian book to help him with comprehension and I have to read the more advanced books to make sure he is comprehending those as well. That kinda blows because while I want them active and busy, I myself had envisioned a nice, relaxing summer with my feet kicked up beside the pool and a cold iced tea in my hand.
*snort*
Clearly I am delusional.
So what about you? How do you keep your kids from driving you crazy active during these summer months?
untitled
May 29, 2012 by
I’m not sure if you heard or not, but I went to Africa a couple of weeks ago. I may have mentioned it a time or 500. Honestly, I’m a little embarrassed to bring it up again but just know that everything swirling inside of me has been filtered through that one experience.
See the thing is, I feel like I have a million things to write, but I can’t seem to get them out because I’m a bit scared. Petrified, really. Because who am I that anyone should care what I say? I like to hide behind the light, humorous posts in some regard because they’re safe. I spent a lot of time as a youth taking myself too seriously and I don’t want to do that anymore. I’m a blogger who actually doesn’t really like to talk about herself.
Shocking.
But there are other things than just the humorous that I want to share and I’m just so…scared. I’m scared because I don’t want it to all be about me. The fact of the matter is I don’t believe myself to be a great writer of spiritual things. I’m not a super critical thinker, I don’t have the beauty and eloquence of words that so many others hold when unpacking the mysteries of faith. I’m a good writer, yes – but writing about the God of the Universe scares the crap out of me.
See what I mean? I just used the words God and crap in the same sentence…twice. How eloquent am I?!
I mentioned these fears of mine to Shaun one evening in Tanzania and he encouraged me to read 1 Corinthians. I’ve pretty much camped out there since we returned, particularly in Chapter 2.
“And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come to you with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (emphasis mine)
Friends, this is how I feel. I fear writing too in depth about my faith not because I worry about offending (though I certainly do desire this to be a place of comfort for everyone from all faiths and backgrounds and walks of life), but more because I so badly do not want to misrepresent the God I love. Does anyone else feel this way? How do you overcome it? 
There are so many words to say – so many songs to sing – so much praise to give. The Earth itself cries out to Him – why wouldn’t I?! Of course, the humorous posts are where I’ll spend more of my time because I strongly believe that one of the greatest gifts He gave us was laughter and my goodness isn’t there so much joy to be had on this Earth?
For example, Lee and I sat in bed the other night and laughed until we cried at this old gem of an Al Denson video that we found after both sporadically belting out a rousing rendition of “Be the One,” which only solidifies how terrifically dorky we are, but I fell asleep with a smile on my face and a prayer in my heart.
Lord, thank you for laughter. And thank you for cheesy ’90’s Christian music videos.
I love laughing with you guys. I love it so, so much. But I don’t want to hide behind the laughter because I’m scared. Just know that when I speak of my God, I do so with much trembling and not with persuasive words of wisdom. We will still laugh…a lot. But there are also words stirring that I will need to write at some point – all to His glory.
I just need some time to let them develop and the courage to hit publish.
PS – I don’t say any of this as a means of fishing for compliments. In fact, I feel kind of weird and I will probably sit on this post for a bit before hitting publish because I do NOT want to look like I’m asking for people to say nice things about me.
PPS – Thanks for taking the time to read this and for being a community that loves to learn and grow and laugh. I don’t really think of myself as having anything to say worth reading, but my goodness I’m glad to have you guys around. Makes this life journey a little less intimidating and a lot more fun!
PPPS – I don’t like to use emoticons in posts, but I feel like this one is begging for a smiley face – 🙂 .
Recent Comments