Pinterest!

I have a confession to make. I haven't blogged in a while for a couple of reasons... I have been busy with birthday parties, Thanksgiving, sick kiddos, and Christmas shopping. Oh, and one other thing... Pinterest! If you haven't discovered Pinterest.com - proceed with caution! You can find anything on pinterest! It's a virtual bulletin board that allows you to save links to your favorite things in one convenient location... Oh - and did I mention that you can also search everybody elses bulletin boards?  Since discovering Pinterest we have eaten delicious new recipes, decorated in fun new ways, and are no longer disposing of things like toilet paper rolls, stained t-shirts and empty ribbon spools.

If crafting is your thing - look no further than Pinterest to get those creative juices flowing! But beware - it is addictive, and something strange happens to the clock when you are surfing... It speeds up dramatically! You do have to be invited to join - so if you want an invitation, I am happy to extend one as long as you don't hold me responsible when you find that you aren't getting your chores done!

I promise, I will be back with new blogs soon... I am thinking about a topic as I type... But while you wait - go play on Pinterest for a while!

I leave you with a picture of 2 of my pinterest Christmas projects. A paper cone advent calendar, and a Christmas Card "Tree" that will soon be displaying any Christmas cards that I receive, hung with ribbons from the branches.

A Challenge

When I was about eleven years old I made my first album... Okay, my only album. And I guess it wasn't really mine, so much.  So there was a man at our church who was an entertainer. He went to churches and kids birthday parties and did magic tricks and sang with his puppet, Hezekiah - you local people probably know who I'm talking about because he is still at it today! Anyway, he decided to make an album that he could sell at his events, and he enlisted me and several other kids to sing with him.  All of the songs on the album were scripture set to tunes that he wrote. I remember going into the recording studio and feeling like the famous singer I knew I was destined to be - but that's not what this blog is going to be about...

I also remember that he had given us a sheet with all the "lyrics" typed out for us to memorize beforehand so that it would be easier for us to pick up the songs on recording day. Memorization... Oh what a struggle it was! Not because I wasn't capable of doing it, but because there are just so many more interesting things to spend your time doing when you are eleven years old!

But that day, in the recording studio, something magical happened.  He put those verses to music, and suddenly it became easy to memorize them. In my musical mind, the tune made the words easy to remember, they made sense. So much so that now today, 28 years later, when I hear one of those verses that we sang I can still remember them, word for word, if I sing them.

Maybe music isn't your thing - but everybody has something in their life that helps with memorization. I remember in high school and college I had teachers/professors that would suggest mnemonic devices to help us study and retain information. Things such as acronyms, rhymes, and acrostics. They would also suggest things involving all of your senses like wearing the same comfortable clothes each time you studied, eating the same snack, or playing the same quiet music in the background.

It occurs to me that as I've gotten older, I haven't tried to memorize much. As kids in Sunday school, we had memory verses every week. In school we had deposited new things into the information bank in our minds daily. But as an adult, other than a few favorite song lyrics, and maybe a couple of recipes, there is just nothing new being added to the library in my head.

I have always admired my mom because in every situation, she is able to recall some scripture that is relevant. Other than the few verses that I remember from the songs, I have very little scripture memorized. In this day and age, it doesn't seem as necessary because I can google "scripture about wonderfully made" and my computer will tell me that I am looking for Psalm 139, and then I can read it. I even have an app for that on my phone. But in a time when there are so many ugly things going on around us every day, I have started to notice how much all that negativity can impact my mood. And I was thinking, if I worked on memorizing verses that are important to me - things that can uplift rather than tear down - then I am taking back the control over what kinds of materials are being filed away in MY library.

So I am challenging myself. I woke up this morning with "fearfully and wonderfully made" running through my head.  I'm not sure why it was in my mind, but who am I to question God's intentions? I got on here and googled the verse and found Psalm 139.  I read the entire chapter and found that it holds so many wonderful reminders for me, not to mention one of those songs that was on my first album! "Search me oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there be any hurtful way in me. And lead me in the everlasting way." (That was paraphrased from Psalm 139: 23-24)

I already have the last two verses memorized, so I have a head start... My challenge is to memorize all of Psalm 139. I'm not setting a time limit for myself because I am much older now then I was when I memorized the last two verses, so I'm not sure what my daily capacity for memorization is now! But I will study it daily, and I will commit it to memory. And maybe this will be just the beginning for me. Maybe I will start to file away more of God's words and promises, and less of the ugliness in the world. And maybe this will make a change in my life.

How will you change YOUR life today?

Mondegreens

My kids love listening to music. They love to sing! And the funny thing is, when they sing, they do it with all their hearts, belting out the words as though they understand the emotion behind every lyric. Even when they don't quite get the meaning or the lyrics right... The other day the kids wanted to listen to one of my 80's collections, and in the middle of Bonnie Tyler's heart-wrenching ballad, Total Eclipse of the Heart, my three-year-old asks me, "Mommy, how can a girl that's all grown up fall apart?" While trying to explain what that meant to her, I was transported back to my childhood, and my understanding of some of my favorite songs at the time.

"I'm not Lisa. My name is Julie. Lisa left you years ago. My eyes are not blue, but mine won't leave you..." Okay, so obviously this song was about a blind man, and for years nobody bothered to tell the poor guy that his old girlfriend had left and he had a new girlfriend who didn't have blue eyes - right?

Oh, and how about that good old Steve Miller song, "Bingo Jet had a light on"? Who knew that there was a whole jet made for playing bingo on? Awesome!

And poor Kenny Rogers and his 400 children. What was Lucille thinking?

And not quite a misunderstanding of the lyrics, but just simply having no idea what this song was about... I can remember walking in circles around a pole at Kmart singing repeatedly, "That't the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it, uh huh uh huh,"while my mom was in the check out line.  She was mortified and begged me to stop singing that song. I really didn't understand why.

Of course it was always curious to me how Dire Straits got their "Money for nothing and your checks for free" in a time long before free checking came about.

I never did understand what the lyrics to this oldie meant, "Bob bob bob, bob bob a ran..." Why was Bob running, and did he have a stutter?

Then there were a couple of songs that my sister and I intentionally changed the words to because we thought it was funny. One of my favorites was the Copacabana... You remember it, "Her name was Julie, she was a floozy..." (Keep in mind, this was long before I really even knew what a floozy was, and I just thought it was funny because it made my sister mad!) The other one I cannot repeat in it's entirety because no matter how I try to spin it as an adult, it will never seem as innocent as it actually was when sung by 5 and 8 year old girls... But it was an Abba song, and it started with, "The wiener takes it all..."

I think my favorite one though, is one that my oldest child sang at the tops of his lungs while listening to the radio in the van one day a few years ago. You have probably heard the song, Breathe, by Anna Nalick.  Only, his version of the lyrics are what you might call a Freudian slip? Because according to his young mind, the chorus of the song was, "Pray, just pray..." I loved this "misunderstanding", because from the mouth of my babe, I was reminded that no matter what is going on, there is one simple thing that I can do that will help me through any situation. And still to this day, when I hear this song, I smile when I think of my little boy's sage advice.

"Pray without ceasing..." I Thessalonians 5:17

Bent and Broken

We got snow on Tuesday and Wednesday. It's the end of October, so there is nothing unusual about that... Except that what we got was a wet, heavy, deep spring snow, at the end of October. All of the trees were still full of leaves, which made a lovely hammock for the blanket of white. The problem of course being that the snow was too heavy a burden for many branches to bear. Eventually, even some of the strongest branches gave up, and the trees in our city look like they are just back from battle.

As I was driving through my neighborhood on this beautiful, sunny day I was surveying the damage.  These trees are not old - maybe 10 years at most. But they have been standing in their place, doing their part to bring shade and beauty to the neighborhood. Just last week I was noticing how beautiful the flaming red maples were - and today they are mere sticks with a few wisps of torn leaves left, and a graveyard of broken branches below them. They have seen battle. They have taken on a burden that was too heavy, and they have paid the price.

This isn't the first time our trees have been broken, nor will it be the last. In time, the fallen branches will be picked up, the snow will fall, the spring will thaw, and the trees will bud again. And they will be different. They will bear the scars of their fallen limbs. Their canopy will form a new shape. And they will still be home to the birds, bring shade from the sun, and turn crimson and gold in the fall. As though nothing has changed.

I am reminded of a quote that I once read by Charles Dickens; "Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape."

We all carry scars. Battle wounds that are many times invisible to others, but seem so very obvious to us. We have been shaped by the different seasons of our lives, and we are growing into the people God intends for us to be. When we are broken, and we see our branches lying on the ground around us, it is easy to feel as though God has forsaken us.

According to Isaiah 64:8, God is the potter and we are the clay.  We are the work of His hand. And in Psalm 147:3, the bible tells us that He (God) heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds. With the knowledge that it is God who shapes us, and binds our wounds, perhaps our scars should be a reminder not of our pain, but of the love that God has for us, and the healing He provides.

So as I go through each season of my life; the laughter filled summer days, the golden autumn afternoons, and the broken winter nights, it is good to know that there is a new spring morning awaiting me. And although I have been bent and broken, I can't wait to see what God shapes me into next!

Good Enough

I'm not good enough. There, I said it... And after all, isn't that something that we all think from time to time? The people that we label "weak" are the ones that will say it outright. The rest of us spend our days trying to convince our friends, coworkers, family, and even ourselves that we are, in fact, good enough. That we do measure up.  


I remember as a teenager that my world revolved around trying to be good enough - trying to fit into a very unforgiving mold. And the heartbreak that came as a result of not being able to fit that impossible mold. And I remember thinking that the handful of plastic people that did fit into that mold HAD IT ALL FIGURED OUT! There was no sadness, no struggle, no tears. No, they were the "Chosen Ones"! 


And now as an adult, I think I have it all figured out... I mean, we are all individuals, our uniqueness is what makes the world interesting, yadda yadda yadda. And of course I know that even the plastic people of my youth had their insecurities - they just dressed them in designer labels in hopes that no one else would notice.


So, in all of my maturity and brilliance, you can imagine my surprise when I was trying to psychoanalyze myself during my latest panic attack and what occurred to me was... I'm not good enough!!!  If I was a better mom my children would always listen and obey; if I was a better wife I wouldn't have a pile of clean laundry on my couch; if I was a harder worker my husband could work normal hours and be home with our family, if I was a better Christian I would be reading my bible right now instead of blogging; and if I was a better friend I would never have to question the status of any of my friendships.  


Some of these realizations are reminiscent of things that I heard at Women of Faith - and at the time I was in one of my periods of denial and thought, "Oh, those poor people who feel like they aren't good enough. So glad I have it all together!" And here I am now, a couple of weeks later, and I'm "suddenly" battling some pretty significant insecurities. And this brings me to the realization that in fact, WE ARE NOT PERFECT! And isn't that what it's all about? The reason that God sent his son to die for us is because we aren't perfect, we can't measure up, we are HUMAN! And that is where we have to submit to Him! Because as soon as we start getting all full of ourselves and thinking we have it all figured out, that's when the enemy slams us back to the ground.


I read something on Patsy Clairmont's blog that I really liked. "Our longing to be more is a good thing as long as we use it as motivation to move forward and not a whip to beat our selves up. Jesus gave His life for our freedom...let's live in it!"


Phillippians 4:6-9  reads, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me - practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you."


And Romans 12:2 says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.


And Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved ME and gave himself for me."


So as hard as I try, and as much as I push myself, I will never be perfect. And that is okay. I don't have to be anxious for anything. I am GOOD ENOUGH for HIM, I am a CHOSEN ONE, and through Christ, I am made perfect.

Great Adventures with Gram

One Saturday afternoon my 92 year old Grandmother and I had just finished lunch at the Golden Corral and I asked her if she wanted to go walk around the RV lot with me. It was nearby, and I thought it would be fun to tour some campers and RV's.  

The gates were wide open and we saw a couple of other people walking around, so we parked, went into the yard, and started touring the campers.  We marveled over how comfortable they seemed to be, and how they had all the conveniences of home.  When we came out of the second or third camper, I happened to notice that the gates were closed.  My heart dropped into my stomach as I realized there were padlocks around the gates. 

I quickly tried to hide my panic because Gram was a worrier, and God only knew how she would react if she knew how worried I was! We walked towards the building, hoping to find someone inside that could let us out.  I banged on all the doors and windows to no avail.  There didn't seem to be anyone there. I pulled out my cell phone and called my husband, but before I could finish explaining our predicament, my battery died - of course. And just as I started imagining what this might mean for us - being locked in an RV lot for the rest of the weekend with no food or contact with the outside world, Gram started to laugh. 

I looked at Gram, puzzled, and wondered if maybe she was just hysterical with fear. But no, it was genuine laughter.  When she could catch her breath, she said, "What an adventure! If we have to get stuck somewhere, just think of all the nice campers we have to choose from! And maybe your husband will bring us McDonalds cheeseburgers? I think he could slide those under the fence." And then I was laughing right along with her. 

After a few more minutes, someone pulled up to the building and tried to go into the shop, only to find that it was locked.  We called the would-be customer over and explained our predicament.  He went back to the building and looked in and noticed that the lights were on. So he began banging loudly on the front door and window, for about ten minutes... I was just starting to lose hope when the shopkeeper FINALLY opened the door.  We were released from our RV prison, and giggled like school girls all the way home about our great adventure.

Autumn Blessings

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.  ~Stanley Horowitz


I LOVE Autumn.  Capital L-O-V-E! The early morning frost, the beautiful swirls of pink and blue that stain the eastern skies at sunrise.  The crispness in the air, and the colors - oh the beautiful artists palette of golds and reds, rusts and browns.  There is something in the air - a scent, a feeling - that tells me my beloved Autumn has arrived.  The scorching sun has begun to mellow, the cool breeze rattles the colorful leaves from their branches, sending them drifting to the ground.


I remember Autumn as a child.  Even then, my favorite time of year.  Walking to school in early October, there was nothing better than the crunch of leaves under my feet as I skipped through the piles in the gutter.  Those beautiful days when it was FINALLY cool enough to start wearing all of my carefully chosen new school clothes. And the anticipation of all that the season would bring.  The trips to the pumpkin patch. The fun of Halloween trick-or-treating.  The warmth of gathering around a Thanksgiving table with all of our loved ones. And the excitement of waiting for those first early flakes of white to fall from the sky.


As I take a moment to thank God for blessing us with the beauty of Autumn, it occurs to me that He is an amazing artist.  Psalm 118:24 tells us, "This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." I prefer the warm tones of autumn, but there is beauty in every season, in every day.   The portrait that God paints for us changes daily - just as each snowflake is unique, so is the canvas of nature. What a magnificent gift He gives us every morning. Let us not forget to thank Him for blessing us with His beauty.