it's this crazy, crazy love.... :) and randomness. my little word.

i just had to make mention of this:) it's a small thing, really, but whatever. :)
this really sweet lady at church gave me these socks (not that i lack socks or anything! hah!) ...she always smiles and thinks it's the funniest thing when i wear socks --colorful ones, yes-- under my pumps on sunday mornings. she was telling me this one time how i can pull off the look, when lots of other women just can't, or aren't that funky to do such a thing:)

that's....kind of a compliment.
to me, anyways.
well, she also said how i reminded her of her daughter --in funky, different, traditional styles and everything, great taste that lady has!-- and how i reminded her of all the girls when she was younger, wearing socks under their pumps, yes, even colored socks....in the 30's and 40's. okay, so i'm a sucker for some of the styles back then. :) 
everyone who knows me knows how funky i am.....
and weird. and sometimes creative.

and... and i can't believe that was me last february. i have such blonde hair! ;) in a month today, i'll be 20. weird! oh, and i've ditched eyeliner for mascara since march 2010, too....
nevermind. :P

oh! obsessed with food. yep. no no no, we shall not mention coffee in this post! hahah! 

while i was ironing stuff earlier, i told rachel to make those peanut butter cups....
and to my astonishment, she did.
i've had three.
well, wait. 4 actually. 1 she gave me, and these 3 i got out of the muffin-tin-in-the-freezer all by myself:) 
random note: go check out this lovely blog: words spoken. stalking it will only take 5 minutes of your time, since there's only two pages, but i love the quotes.

so....um......yeah....
hey, nevermind that last crazy picture--
i can't wait--i'm starting to read crazy love by francis chan with a friend of mine.
it's on my book list.
:)
and the videos that go along with it, to discuss it more in depth......they look really good.
actually, they sound really good.
how does knowing God affect our everyday lives?
does it?
it should.
all for love of Him......
am i the last person to post their 'one little word'?? amy did, danielle did, andrea did, how many others did, so i guess i'll say mine now.
this year: learning. definitely learning this year about His wonderful crazy love:) and loving Him back...
last year....growing. um yeah. :] can anyone say, loooong story?? 

sanctus real, the big wide world, etc...

Hmm. The warm weather is coming back. :) It’s a wonderful thing; yesterday was all 30ish and snow thin on the ground. Ew. We’ve had enough of that –and more, this winter. Spring, come my way! I saw you last week, but I’d like you to stay!
I didn’t mean to rhyme. It just came naturally. (heheh)

Last night was the Sanctus Real concert, and it was really good.

Heather (hi!:)) met us there, and it was her first “ccm” (Christian contemporary music) concert. The whole night was a bit more on the mellow side; Me In Motion was good: loved the guitars, and watching the drummer is always fun –well, when you’re in a mosh pit. Sheesh. They didn’t have one at this place, this time. (sigh) I was quite disappointed, since I like to be right there, between the moshing peoples and the stage. :)

Then there was Above The Golden State. They were good; more soft than MIM (the above) and a bit more jivey. I told Heather it was kinda like café music; you sway and want to maybe snap your fingers, bob your head sideways. (haha) And drink coffee. Or tea. Whichever you prefer or are able to tolerate. ;)

Then…there was ^Addison Road. Man, they were good. I had gotten their CD from the library, and wasn’t too impressed because not a minute into each song I was tired of it, it sounded the same. They were way better live. I loved them. And it always helps when someone in the band likes to talk, and talks good. Well, interesting and different. That’s how Jenny was. She was the sweetest thing, introduced the band and her husband on a guitar to the right of the stage, and talked about their 11-month-old little girl who looks like a squirrel, crazy hair and oh so cute. They had some slower songs, but then they really got into a few that were almost dancy, a bit of attitude. I would look over in the middle of one of these songs, and see Heather moving more to the music than I was. I laughed, and she would just look at me, like I'd asked her if the music was loud or her hair was brown, and tell me “I like this song!” (okay, heather, i will refrain from writing about your antics...no need to worry for your reputation.;)) And the sad thing is, we were some of the most liveliest people in the crowd. And that's not saying a whole lot. All those privileged little stink-pots up in the first several rows were still as a bunch of frozen peony stems. Sheesh. :) (alright, i cannot deny it: i kinda like the sentence i just wrote...pshaw...it's kinda spunky/clever. haha!)

Then Sanctus Real came up, after a video of Sammy Adebiyi (add-ah-bee). I guess this is the second time he’s toured with them, speaking for 10 minutes or so, and it was good. The underlying subject was poor African people and making clean water available to them, but it was much different from your normal take-pity-and-give-money commercial. When the video first started, all you saw was a shockingly young black guy with a mop of dreads. I have to confess, I leaned over to Heather (you’re noticing a pattern here because she sat inbetween Anna and I) and said something like, “How old is he? Like 19?” I would’ve said 16, but I’m guessing you can’t adopt a child with your wife at that age. Har har. So the video turned out to be long, but he was fascinating and amusing, his imagination taking us for a loop. His accent came out in the really passionate sentences, which was especially near the end. He gave the example of 100 people in the room, all representing people from across the world. Half have clean water and food. The rest have malnutrition. Ten of the better-off half have access to internet and have a computer at home. And one –once again, of the better half-- (if I remember this right) has the choice to go to college.

It was fascinating. Heartbreaking. Like, how many of us actually think of the people outside of our busy schedule? Our busy little world.

So he spoke to us, all in the room. We were obviously part of the proven better-off half. We were in the front of the line. And we were doing nothing for the people in the back of the line, starving and thirsting and dying off as we sat there. We think we can’t do anything to influence change in this big wide world because we’re so small, we’re only one person; what can I possibly do that will make a difference? . . . but he spoke of how he’d always thought that way, but then Matthew 25 came completely alive to him—in that, at the end of time, if we got it the least bit right, when we stand before God, He’ll say “_____, thank you. Thank you for clothing me when I was naked, thank you for giving me that drink of water, thank you for feeding me. Because when you did it for those ‘least of these’, I care so much that it was like you were doing it for/to Me.”

And really, do we want to go through life and not have done anything? For His Truth, for Love? To me, that's one of the most important things.

There’s this thing called Mocha Club that he talked about. You can research it if you want to. It’s a 7-dollars-a-month dealy-o that seems quite doable for even me. Like, heck, I can do that.

Needless to say, it's got me thinking. A lot.

Life is nothing if we do not Love.

Life is nothing if we do not Give.

Life is nothing if we do not just be, and rest in Him as His children, His people, His beloved ones.

Because no matter what, He Loves us.

Sanctus Real started, then. They were really good. They played practically their whole newest album, which was kind of weird because no other band I know has done that . . . at least, none that I’ve seen.
But they were good. :) A few, like I Want To Get Lost, and Keep My Heart Alive, made you just stand there and feel the music. Others, like Forgiven, These Things Take Time, Take Over Me, and Dear Heart, made you move and sing –--thank goodness they had all the lyrics, because some lazy people like me needed them. I didn’t purposefully put the CD in to play, though Anna did, and a few songs sounded familiar.

Hmmm.
I'm tired. And going for a walk in the dark with Anna--one needs a walk when one has just finished a dinner of leftover seafood lasagna and fresh homemade apple-pie-in-a-pan. :]
So...goodnight.

life, quotes and suffering.

Sometimes you can help it if you're touched and changed and blessed by someone suffering more than you by far.
I was, just this afternoon. And on the way home, I held Lyd close and sang songs with her.
Because sometimes that's all you can do.
That's how you can react, especially when your "outlook on life" (sorry to be using such an over-used phrase) has just been changed, impacted, and pointed upward, outward and lastly inward. But not to admire oneself and plan the next thing to do and be noticed; rather, to examine and choose to Love more. So I chose to Love Lyddie.
Because she was within reach, and sometimes one forgets what's right in front of oneself, and misses the chance to impact a life with love before it has already grown.
I want to be remembered as that loving sister.
And I can only try my best, and I'm just starting to work on it, and asking God's help a ton.
And now I have to stop ranting on this, otherwise I'll feel even worse next time I fail . . . and get back up. And reach out. Or is it the other way around?

But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
[C.S. Lewis]

And forgive me, but I googled "C.S. Lewis suffering quotes", and I got this along with it:

A newborn child has to cry, for only in this way will his lungs expand. A doctor once told me of a child who could not breathe when it was born. In order to make it breathe the doctor gave it a slight blow. The mother must have thought the doctor cruel. But he was really doing the kindest thing possible. As with newborn children the lungs are contracted, so are our spiritual lungs. But through suffering God strikes us in love. Then our lungs expand and we can breathe and pray.
[Sadhu Sundar Singh]

Hmmmm. Talk about thought-provoking. And true.

This is the lovely source: http://www.tentmaker.org/Quotes/sufferingquotes.htm

michael tyrell . . . and . . . lounge/pj pants. who likes 'em? i do. :)

Nothing new to say today, sorry.
Life like normal.
Prepped for turkey meatball soup. 
Watched 2-yr-old Danny for a while.
Oh, wait! But I have to blog about this beloved subject, because Anna told me to; plus, we even took pictures. Well, Anna did. And Sarah will, perhaps, be reading this. ;) (hi, sarah! give eliyah a kiss on her sweet cheeks for me! :))
Orange-and-pink plaid pj/lounge pants. :) She gave them to me for my birthday, but Sunday Anna did a wee little photoshoot Sunday afternoon, just when I happened to be all matchy-matchy. :) She said I looked 'fruity', 'peachy,' and sweet. Oh, and Heather called me 'colorful'. Guess I'm not normally so colorful. :) No, I really like wearing black, peoples. You just don't see me enough below the neck to know it. ;)

So there they are. And there we are: me and Bubby. :) 
Otherwise known as Ben. My brother. He did his hair Sunday morning, and we talked him into wearing it to church like so. ;) Everyone loved it.  
(didn't you, sarah? you cute little instructive-criticismer! just kidding.)
So it's been lovingly tolerable weather of late. Tomorrow and Thursday is supposed to be mid-50's! Yay! Praise be to God, Spring is coming. I think God loves Spring. But He loves winter, also, because we come to appreciate life's different facets in those harder, colder, unlovelier times. He does a lot of work in the winter that we can't see. Because we all know, those perennials are going to pop up when it gets warm enough, and He was good enough to make so much beauty. In flowers, in the sky, in His people.

Okay. There were several more pictures, but Ben was reacting to the camera's attentions and tried to push me off the deck with utmost brotherly affection. Grr. There was mud and snow down there, off the left side of the deck/ramp for Grammy's wheelchair, and so I put up a wonderful fight, keeping myself stable and on dry ground. Er, wood.
No matter that I was addicted to that song, Kiss the Flag by Evans Blue for probably an hour earlier, while I was drinking my first strong mug of coffee since mid last week . . . combatting symptoms completely takes away any craving for coffee.
Another thing--I finished the hour-long CD of Michael Tyrell that dear friends sent to me for my birthday (smiles--thanks rayray! and the rest of you!) . . . . goodness, my goodness. That was so good. I stood there for a little bit, just typing away a ton of quotes while listening. Here's a little part:

Stand at the crossroads and look… and ask for the ancient path and where the good way is. Sometimes you get lost, sometimes you just lose your bearings. In the church we think the lost are people who haven’t found Jesus, in the world we think lost just means I don’t know where I am. There’s a good way. And it’s Yahweh. I don’t want to go any other way.

Oh, and this one:

You won’t get popular telling the Truth, but you might get beheaded. But what are our options, we just become great at deceitfulness and act like it’s church? We just be real nice and forget how to be kind? We just become political, instead of holy? What are our options? Play church, or be church?

:) Yes, I typed it out word-for-word. Kinda raw. He was intense. I loved it.
And then there's this one:

...Until it’s a virus, until it multiplies, until we just tell the truth, and tell the truth, and tell the Truth so no lies can live…

Wow.
I'm off. Goodnight. :)
One last one:

I’m empty, You’re full, save me.

can't fix you

The other day, my sister and I were having a lovely conversation, and she made this point: church doesn’t and can’t fix you.
Only He can.

And I’m going to embellish on it, because it’s so good and I think more people need to think about it.

Sure, church can set you on the road to God, or away from it—you have to admit that. But when people talk about 'church' they're meaning 'going to church'. They're not meaning it in the way that Paul said it in his letters to the churches in the New Testament. The Church is the people of God, not a building, not a place you go on Sundays and Wednesdays optionally. It is a people. And sometimes people do things in the name of something they are not even connected with. That's the part of life that sucks. That, I think is what's called 'taking His holy name in vain': doing and living in a way that contradicts the Way you say you follow, the Lord you say is your Saviour.

But really, there are those who have no relationship with Him—but there are even those of us who do and still are rustily moving through life on our own terms and thanking/praising Him for the good times. When they come along.


We know how Christians believe, but not how they live.
The preachers and pastors tell us to lay down all the sin and our lives at the Cross, but they don’t tell us what to pick up.
[Shane Claiborne]

Going to church, as they say, does not make you a Christian (definition: little Christ). And it doesn’t fix you, that much is clear to me.
So how are you to ever be fixed? How am I? (because I certainly have not attained, shall we say, perfection of any sort?)
You talk to Him. You seek Him. You ask for His help, you read His Word. And you also fellowship with other Followers.

And another point: you can talk about Jesus all you want, make people promise to come visit your church, but you’re wasting time with only your mouth doing something. Be Jesus. Show, not tell.


Because really, since when did we stop being Him (to the world and its hopeless inhabitants) and start arguing _______? (fill in the blank)


Some of us have never been too devoted.
"Some of us" being His Followers.
There have always been some --alright, a lot-- of us that have been distracted . . . with the world.
Those haven't known or realized He want us, Loves us. Too preoccupied with the things, the materials and superficiality of the place we are in.



This was to all those Christians out there…or whoever is reading this and needed a kick in the you-know-where just like me.