Shhh…

Has this ever happened to you?

You see an old acquaintance at the store and ask how they’re doing.

Within 30 seconds they’ve stumbled on an embarrassing and slightly inappropriate topic.

You can tell they’re embarrassed, but now that they’ve started,

they don’t know how to stop.

So they just keep talking.

You picture them later banging their head on their desk, saying

“Stupid!”

*bang*

“Stupid!”

*bang*

“Stupid!”

You stand with your head cocked to the side,

listening,

and the whole time you’re imagining putting your hand over their mouth,

smiling,

and gently saying,

“It’s okay if you want to stop talking now.”

A Kitchen Haiku

Boiling Water

Pot boils, flames below.
I have an electric stove.
Must clean my drip pans!

Facebook: action or illusion?

Facebook.

I can tell you where I am and who I’m with.  I can show you a picture of my child.  I can share what I’m thinking. 

But can I change the world?

Every few days a new post surfaces that calls our attention to a hurting group of people and then challenges us to repost.  These are almost always worthy topics:  cancer, bullying, armed-forces, mentally handicapped.  Our heart hurts for the hurting, and we are moved to act.  We repost, hoping to spread the word, and we move on with our day.

But has anything fundamentally changed?

What is facebook doing to our desire to help?  Has it helped us by enabling the quick spreading of information?  Or is something less beneficial happening?  

By reposting information on facebook, are we helping?  Or are we only assuaging our guilt by making ourselves feel as though we’ve acted? 

When I repost about orphans, I feel as though I’ve made a difference for orphans.  In reality, have I made a difference in even one orphan’s life? 

What do you think?  Is facebook simply an easy way to spread awareness?  Or is it subtly replacing action with illusion?

Mine!

I’ve been thinking tonight about how often I look at the things in my life and name them “mine.”  It’s easy to fall into the trap of compartmentalizing – these parts are yours, God, but these are mine.  I like the way C.S. Lewis describes our desire to keep as much of our lives for ourselves as we can:

“Our temptation is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle. We make our returns truthfully. But we dread a rise in the tax. We are very careful to pay no more than is necessary. And we hope– we very ardently hope –that after we have paid it there will still be enough left to live on.”

Sin and God’s plan

These thoughts were prompted by a discussion we had in our small group last night.  If any of you are still out there, I’d love to know what you think about this topic!

Many believe that when God placed us in the Garden of Eden, the perfect scenerio entailed us not sinning and living there forever.  We say that God knew that wasn’t going to happen, but it would have been ideal.  But it seems to me it also would mean that we would be forever excluded from Heaven. 

“Wait!” you say.  “We didn’t need Heaven!  We had perfect communion with God in the garden.”  I agree that Adam & Eve experienced communion with God that was not marred by sin.  They walked with Him, talked with Him, and probably played checkers.  However, they did not enter into His throne room.  Even more disconcerting, they did not (and never would) share in the nature of Christ.  And finally, they were capable of sin.  Can you imagine an eternity balanced on the razor’s edge?  You’re forever one sin away from separation from God.  Is that how you want to spend eternity?

When we accept Christ as Lord, we are marked by His blood.  One day we will be perfected.  We will be made like Christ — unable to sin and sharing in His likeness.  We will be heirs with Him.  How exciting!!!  This would not have happened if we had not been redeemed.  We would not have been redeemed if we had not sinned.

 We do not like the idea of sin being part of God’s plan.  It does not make sense to us, because He is perfectly good.  But is He big enough to have even sin be part of His plan?  When we say He is sovereign, do we really mean over everything?

An unceremonious ending

Baby girl contracted RSV last week and is finally (9 days later) starting to feel better.  The third day of her sickness, when she was absolutely miserable, she suddenly refused to nurse.  It was scary, because I was worried about dehydration, but thankfully we found that she enjoys grape pedialyte

I thought that she’d start to nurse again once her throat felt better.  She didn’t.  I thought that she’d start to nurse again once she started to recover.  She isn’t.  Now I think we might be done nursing for good.  The irony of this is that, unlike when nursing my boys, I was willing to nurse her for quite a while still.  With the boys I was ready to be done when they hit a year, and we started the weaning process the moment they reached that milestone.  Knowing that this is my last baby and wanting to savor every bit of baby time, I was envisioning nursing her well into her second year.  Ha. 

So now it appears I’m done nursing forever, and I’m working through a lot of mixed emotions.  Part of me is sad, realizing that that part of my life is over.  Part of me is cautiously excited about my new-found freedom.  And honestly, part of me is feeling a little rejected. 

Also, she’s graciously shared her virus with me, so I, too, have RSV.  This would be funny if my throat didn’t hurt so much. 

Blizzard!

Oh, how I love snow storms. 
…the anticipation
…the crazy people at the grocery stores
…the excitement as the entire city braces for impact
…the fact that something is happening

The schools all closed before the blizzard hit, so we enjoyed a low-key morning preparing for the storm.

We made valentines.

More importantly, we made cookies.

Then the snow started.  This is what the yard looked like as the first flakes began to fall.  (It’s been a while since we’ve seen our grass.)

This is what it looked like the next morning.  If you use the white fence as a guide, you can get a feel for the amount of snow out there.

Soon it was time to dig out.

Thankfully, when we were about 1/2 way down the driveway, three of our neighbors came to our rescue with their snow blowers.  One may ask why, living where we do, we don’t own a snow blower.  To them we say, “Who needs to shovel?  Hit the gas and don’t stop till you’re free of the driveway!  It’ll melt eventually.”  That tactic didn’t quite work today…

The end.

What I learned at Disney

1.  My standards of cleanliness are completely subjective and easily altered.  “Sweetie, you just touched a public door-handle.  Please wash your hands” becomes “Yes, you may sit on the floor, but try not to touch anything” and then becomes “Hmmm?  You found it where?  Does it look chewed?  Sure.  Eat it.”

2.  When you have a beast of a dog and leave him at home, you’ll return to massive amounts of dog hair on the floor.  Just because you’re not at home, don’t assume your house isn’t getting dirty.

3.  I’ll go to great lengths to avoid the dreaded pat-down at the airport.  (Goodbye, underwire!  Catch ya on the flip-side!)  In fact, I may have greatly resembled someone going through the line at the Soup Nazi’s shop.

4.  After a week of Disney food prices, spending $17 at Subway for lunch for the family will seem like a STEAL!

A screamin’ good time

Baby girl likes to scream. 

A lot. 

It’s a happy scream (if there is such a thing), and she entertains us with her scrunched up little face, her wide eyes, and her tremendously loud bellows.  I especially enjoy when she and the boys have entire conversations comprised of screaming.  You think I’m being sarcastic about enjoying it, but I’m not!  It’s actually quite funny.

As proof, I offer you my first youtube video. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTtLHVw-7jY

I’d figure out how to play this on my page, but it’s late and I’m tired.  Maybe tomorrow.

A wedding memory

I may have blogged about this before, either here or on BlessedWon before I killed that blog.  Either way, this memory makes me smile, so I’m going to write about it again!

Hubby and I wanted our wedding to be a time full of worship, meaning, and fun.  To start things off on the right foot, we decided to choose a less-than-traditional song for the grandparents’ processional.  My grandmother was using a walker at the time and moved quite slowly.   We thought it would be great fun to have the rear sanctuary doors open to reveal my grandmother, who would then proceed at a snail’s pace up the aisle to the tune of…

…The William Tell Overture.