Very disturbing entry - also quite useless

This is probably the strangest and most useless blog entry that has ever been posted. As a matter of fact you may want to stop reading now, because what follows is quite disturbing.

Let me set the stage. For those of you that know me, you know that I have a LOT of hair. I also have a lot of weird issues. One of my weird issues is my wet hair touching me. So, the other day after my shower, I was blow-drying the ends of my hair so that it would not drip on me (I am cringing just typing it – ewwww.) Anyway, I was leaning far to one side so that all of my hair was hanging down in the air and not on my back. I then leaned a little forward. While blow-drying my hair, I happened to look in the mirror and noticed something quite strange and frankly downright frightening. I noticed that gravity was not my friend.

My face looked quite strange. It actually looked like it was melting. I was leaning to the left while using the dryer. The left side of my face looked like it was stretched realllllly far and the right side of my face was all bunched up at my eye. After I got over the sheer terror of realizing that was MY face, I became interested to see what would happen as I moved around. Unfortunately, I discovered that it was not just that one position. As I leaned further over and forward and backward, my face continued to morph into unrecognizability.

I knew that as you aged, your skin lost elasticity and have even noticed it around my eyes. However, NOTHING could have prepared me for what just happened. I am still in my 30’s! Not by much, but I am holding on to the 30’s with dear life. I forget quite often how old I am. I don’t think I will forget any more, though, as that image is indelibly etched in my brain.

I am still going back and forth between being mortified and morbidly fascinated. I keep finding myself in front of the mirror leaning over in different ways.

Now, I am going to be curious as to which of you go and try this when no one is looking. Let me know if you discover strange contortions of your face. If you try it and nothing changes in your face – well then PHHHHTTT. Just kidding, it will happen soon enough.

You may wonder why in the world I posted something like this. My reasons are two fold – one, it gives everyone fodder for teasing me with, as if you needed more ammunition. Two, it gave me a chance to use my new Mac book and see how well it works with blogger.

Thanks for reading this absolutely pointless entry.

Teenage epiphany

To clarify at the beginning, this is an epiphany that my teenage daughter had. NOT an epiphany that I had about teenagers. I'm still waiting on that to happen.



As you saw in my last post, J. was baptized earlier this month. Before that, she obviously had been doing a lot of thinking. One night, she came to me and said this:



'You know that phrase that you hear people say - "God is Love?' (I John 4:8) Well, you hear it a lot but don't ever think about it. If you do, it is kind of hard to make that phrase make sense. So I started thinking about it. Then I thought of that passage in the bible that says "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." (I Corinthians 13) If God is love, then you could say that God equals love. So, you could go through this passage and replace the word "love" with "God." That would make the "God is love" phrase make a lot more sense. '



I was blown away! I had never thought of this in this fashion before. It got me to thinking more about it.



Here is how that passage would read with the replacements made:

GOD is patient

GOD is kind

[GOD] does not envy

[GOD] does not boast

[GOD] is not proud

[GOD] is not rude

[GOD] is not self-seeking

[GOD] is not easily angered

[GOD] keeps no record of wrongs

GOD does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth

[GOD] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
GOD never fails



That is powerful stuff in my opinion.



If you look at this passage in The Message translation, the sentence that precedes the passages states, "So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love." Again, if you replace love with "God," it is right on target again.



This has been floating around in my head for the last couple of weeks since she said it. It has really got me thinking. I wonder if this thought went through the authors head when he wrote these words?



Irregardless, it got my teenagers thought processes going in an awesome direction - there are a LOT worse things that she could be thinking about!



Thank you for stopping by and reading.



I do want to ask 2 favors from you:



1) Please visit my friends on the right sidebar over there. Many of them are going through a lot right now and some kind words would go a long way. Just don't leave me for them. They are much more talented writers than I am and lead much more exciting lives than I do. You will enjoy their sites more than mine, I promise. But remember how insecure I am and still come back and visit me, please??????



2) Leave me a comment and let me know you were here. You don't have to say anything other than "I was here." I just like to know I am not alone. Plus, it helps my insecurity issues when I look at my blog and see that I have comments posted. :-)

Marching forth on March Fourth!

What a happy, happy time! My oldest daughter, J., got baptized Wednesday night!

(As stated when M. got baptized in July, I am not wanting to start a theological debate or anything. I just want you readers to understand what baptism means to us:

The word baptize comes from the Greek word "baptizo" and literally means, "to dip, to immerse, to plunge." In addition to the literal meaning of the word, immersion is practiced because it was the practice of the church in apostolic times. Still further, only immersion conforms to the description of baptisms as given by the apostle Paul in Romans 6:3-5 where he speaks of it as a burial and resurrection.

We believe that baptism by immersion is a necessary response of faith to God’s free grace. It is not a work we do to earn God’s favor, but rather, a work God does for us."We see this as one of the steps necessary to becoming a Christian - giving your life to God.)

Okay, now back to the pictures. For those of you that are not from the same religion as us, I will have a running commentary on what is going on with each of the pictures. For those of you that were there, or know what is going on, feel free to just look at the pictures if you want.

Here is the excited Dad, waiting on J. to get ready:

Here is our good friend V.T. getting the baptistry ready. By getting it ready, I mean removing the foam rocket that had mistakenly and mysteriously landed in the baptistry earlier.




My sweet M. and our "adopted" sister B.B. She bridges J. and M. together nicely, don't you think? With her blue eyes like M. and dark hair like J., she blends right in.


Friends waiting on J. (There was a lot of waiting on J.)







Behind the scenes: J., MM., KJ., and CT:

I absolutely LOVE this picture. The kids are being led in prayer by one of our youth ministers.

Here we go!

J. realizing that the water is really cold:

Before I go any farther, I have a couple of disclaimers to throw in. When I was young, it seemed to always be the minister who did the baptizing. I have observed that more and more people are choosing to be baptized by someone who has been a big influence on them spiritually. J. and CT, the young man in the picture, have been talking a lot lately about Christianity, life as a teenager, being spiritual leaders, etc. They are not "dating" or "going out" or whatever the term is these days. J. calls him her big brother and he calls her his little sister. I didn't want any inaccurate beliefs about them to be floating around making either of them uncomfortable.



Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program. Again.



Here, CT is asking J if she believes that Jesus Christ is the son of God and that he died for her sins.






Based on her agreement and confession of her belief, she is baptized:
































Lest you think I wasn't there, here is proof. My left hand is holding on to J.'s hand.




Notice KJ's expression? J had just slipped coming up the steps. She is a true gymnast.


I LOVE this picture. I love these girls. I love this picture of these girls.




The "hugging" aftermath:









We are all so very thankful to you that were there in person, those that have prayed for any of us in the past, and those of you that will pray for us in the future.



Please continue to pray that we will be able to be good parents to our daughters and that we will raise them to be strong Christian women.



As always, leave us a note in the guestbook to let us know you were here!



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Dinner with royalty and more roller coasters

Last weekend was quite amazing - I got to do something really cool! I got to have dinner with royalty! The Sarah Smith crew were in town picking their son up from the airport, and several of us fellow Sarah followers met them for dinner. It was so much fun! Besides myself and the Smith's, Pam D and Vicki were there. I took my 2 girls and they chatted with Sarah the whole time. Sarah is right in the middle age wise of my girls. Pam and I discovered that not only are we from the same home town, we are from the same denomination of church. She actually goes to church with M.'s teacher! Vicki brought her 2 adorable little boys. They were so well behaved, and so so so cute! It was kind of weird in that we all knew so much about Sarah and her family, yet we had never met each other face to face. The restaurant was very nice to us and was quite interested in the whole situation. If you click on Sarah and Pam's names above where they are highlighted, you can read their version of the night. Since they are much better writers than I am, you will be much more entertained there than you are here, I promise.

Here are some pictures from that night:

Sarah and the adorable guard dog, Snowy:

The 3 blogging ladies, Pam D, Becky Smith, and myself:

J., Sarah, and M.

The whole gang, starting at the left and going around: Steve Smith, Pam D., myself, M., J, Sarah Smith, Becky Smith, Vicki, her beautiful boys and her husband, whose name escapes me at the moment.

Becky's son Nathan called to let her know his ETA back in the states. Notice the smile and the eyes glowing:

How cute is this little guy?

Sarah trying her first fried pickles. She is being quite brave here because she does not like pickles.

The men pretty much had their own conversation going:

Bravely trying an olive for the first time:

Knowing we were meeting in downtown, we were a little nervous as to what kind of restaurant we would end up with, but it proved to be quite nice:

Even if the decorations hanging from the ceiling were a little, um, strange. These were hanging right above the girls' heads. They kept looking up uncertainly, hoping they would stay suspended and not come crashing down on their heads.

Sunday brought a whole new set of emotions as the kids at church were told that their youth ministers are leaving. There were so many tears and so much anger. I worry over how the kids will get past this. So many of them have deep relationships with one of the youth ministers or with the other, or both. It is hard to understand emotionally. However, the leaders felt this was best for the kids as a whole. While I trust our elders, as I stated earlier, I wish all would have been handled a little differently. Hindsight is truly 20/20. We must remember to keep our focus on God and on continuing the legacy started by our youth ministers. Now is the time to start healing and start looking forward.

Also, during this past week, another friend of ours, Kristie, got some horrible news about her husband and his ongoing battle with cancer. This family has been dealt a "crap sandwich," as they put it, over and over again. Please go visit them and leave them some words of encouragement.

This weekend found quite a bit of snow in our area. We actually had a snow day today! The funny thing is that the temperature for this coming Saturday is supposed to be 70 degrees. Go figure.

Here a few snow pics:

So, this post was quite a potpourri of topics. Hope you stuck with it and weren't too bored.

Thank you for stopping by.

Let me know you were here.