For lots of reasons, this post by Toni blew me away.

Y’all click on over and give her a warm bloggity welcome. :-)

You’ll be encouraged.

Let’s just take several topics from the last few days and wrap them up in some festive paper with a lovely bow on top, shall we?

1. Based on your comments and some serious over-analysis on my part, I’m gonna leave the blogging church people alone. Here’s what I figure: if they wanted me to know they were blogging, they would’ve told me. Now if it comes up in conversation and I decide to tell them about my own blog and they’d like to visit, fine. But since I do know them, and since they haven’t told me about their blogs, then I don’t want to trample on their territory. Put it this way: if they were all having a picnic, and I found out about it, I wouldn’t just show up. The thing is, I wouldn’t care at all if one of them stopped by here and commented…but since I don’t know what their blogging boundaries are, I’m going to assume they’re pretty rigid and keep my distance. At least until I change my mind. :-)

2. I’m officially not posting what I wrote for the LBY study this past weekend. I talked to D. about it Saturday, and he thought it would probably be wise to leave it off the blog – and we got major, 100% confirmation last night that it was the right thing to do. Just because I feel strongly about something does not always mean that I need to share it with the world. The irony is that NOT posting actually confirmed what I learned last week in the study about being humble. Posting what I wrote, telling y’all how I felt about a certain something – it would’ve been really cathartic for me. But sometimes – and in this case in particular – it just ain’t about me. I actually exercised more gentleness – the topic we were studying – by leaving well enough alone. And I hereby abandon this vaguest of all vague topics.

3. D. got the chance to continue his home improvement marathon today when he and our neighbor Jimmy used some form of metal-melting tool to fix our lawnmower. D. described all the sautering to me with pure love in his eyes, said he even got to wear protective goggles, and told me that he and Jimmy looked like Stormtroopers as they worked in the garage. D. also got to cook on the grill not once but twice today, then discuss how to kill ants over supper, so I think all in all it’s been a fine Memorial Day weekend for him.

4. Not that anyone, you know, CARES, but I’m probably going to be a sporadic blogger this week. Alex and I are heading out of town this Thursday, and I have a bunch to get done Tuesday and Wednesday. A haircut is a top priority…those of you who have never seen me don’t know that I usually love me a funky haircut – the more pieces sticking out all over my head, the better – but my hair has gotten so long (it’s touching my shoulders – I might as well be Crystal Gayle) that I can actually pull it back into a ponytail. Clearly the sun will be hurling itself toward the earth any moment now. GOT TO GET IT CUT. And I’m sure you’ll be surprised, but I’m cooking for a dinner at church this Sunday night, so there’s lots of grocery shopping to do before I head out of town, because I’ll have to HIT IT when we get home Saturday afternoon.

5. Seeing the cast of “Grey’s Anatomy” on Oprah today has me considering renting the season 1 DVD’s. Daphne, pick yourself up off of the floor. It is VERY difficult for me to get on board with a TV show unless I watch it from the first episode, but I’m considering playing catch-up with this one. I know, I know – MAJOR comfort zone step-out on my part. I typically don’t like medical shows (never been an “ER” fan), but I’m increasingly willing to give this one a chance. Nothing like jumping on a bandwagon, huh?

Have a great week, everybody!

Lauren tagged me for this “spiritual meme,” which is a mighty good thing indeed because I have nothing to say this morning…that is, I have nothing to say unless it’s an attempt to answer the constant barrage of questions that Alex is firing at me (Where are my brown shoes? Where are you, mama? Can I see my daddy? Who’s that, Mama? What’s that for? Can I watch Noggin? Can I have some turkey? Is that Mr. Jimmy? Can I see Clay Clay? And on. And on.) At some point I believe that my head will spin off its axis, land in the middle of the floor, and Alex won’t have a single reaction except to say, “What happened, Mama? Can I touch it? Can I put it back on? Can we take it to the park? Please, Mama?”

Sorry. Needed to vent. :-)

Now on with the meme.

What is your life verse?
I had never heard the phrase “life verse” until we moved here and I went to work at a Christian school that used this phrase all the time, and I realized that I had a life verse and didn’t even know it…a verse that I’d been clinging to for almost twenty years, but I just called it “my favorite verse.” Here it is (I’m sure the suspense is killing you): “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.” – Ephesians 3:20-21

Give a bit of your testimony.
I don’t have a dramatic, rousing testimony…I grew up in the Methodist church and accepted Christ when I was 13 years old. From that point on, I was consistently inconsistent in my walk…there were lots of highs and lows and ups and downs. There have been times in my life when I knew that God was calling me into a deeper relationship with Him – and I would “dig deep” for a period of time, then drift away again.

I think one of the reasons for this pattern is that I lacked a strong Biblical foundation, so I wasn’t advancing much on the spiritual maturity chain. And then I went through a phase in my early 20’s where I was very disillusioned with the church, very cynical about organized religion, and I decided that I would just be “spiritual” but pretty much had no need for community or fellowship with believers. It wasn’t a terribly fun time.

When I was in my late 20’s, I got a job teaching in a Christian school, and the fact that that happened at all is a TOTAL miracle, because trust me when I tell you that I was not looking to teach in a Christian school – especially a Baptist one. :-) But that was really the first step into what has become a sustaining, steady faith – it was the beginning of a huge period of growth for me. D. and I found a church that we loved, and our time there helped us to release a lot of our ‘baggage’ from the church where we grew up.

When we moved here, I was almost immediately enveloped by a circle of Christian friends. It took us awhile to find a church home, but when we did, it changed our lives. We have learned more about the Bible in the last four years than we did in all the previous years combined. We’ve learned about community, and fellowship, and really investing in people. More than anything, I’ve learned to serve others – something I resisted for so long.

Do you have a favorite preacher?
I have several. Our friend Kevin, who’s on staff at our church, is an incredible teacher and faithfully preaches God’s Word without putting himself in the middle of the message. As an added bonus, he cracks me up. Beth Moore is my favorite Bible study teacher, bar none.

What’s the best Bible Study you’ve ever done?
Beth Moore’s Believing God – hands down. Life changing.

What do you feel God’s calling is on your life?
I could write paragraphs on all the specific ways I think I’m supposed to serve and live out my faith, but I can pretty much boil it down to one simple phrase: to love God and love people. The primary way that manifests itself right now is by serving D. and Alex first – however I can – and I feel very, very fortunate that I have a couple of other ministry “outlets” that enable me to serve teenagers as well as new members in our church.

And I can’t explain it, but I feel like God has a plan for this writing stuff that I do (proof of my abilities: the phrase “writing stuff,” which reveals deep levels of giftedness). I don’t mean a book or anything like that – my lack of imagination prevents me from writing more than five or six paragraphs at a time – but I just feel like He’s showing me that there’s more I could be doing with writing than I am right now. What that might be, I have absolutely. no. idea.

I think this meme has pretty much made the rounds, but if you haven’t used it yet, consider yourself tagged.

Happy Memorial Day, everybody!

I’ve made not one but two trips to Lowe’s today – one to scope out the grills, another to pick up The Chosen Grill (we weren’t in D.’s truck when we went after church, and TCG wouldn’t fit in the back of my car).

It’s a curious thing, Lowe’s. As soon as the doors slide open D. goes into a “hunt and conquer” mode: he must find the right drill bit, the right lugnut, the right grill, the right sprinkler, the right width of such and such so that he can brace the thingamajig. It is endlessly entertaining to me. I’m eyeballing the patio furniture and the latest organizational gadgets, and he’s looking at the latest edgers and mowers, admiring the sharp blades, nodding his head and saying, “Coooool.”

Alex is no different. Both of his trips to Lowe’s today afforded him the opportunity to hop from riding mower to riding mower, each time announcing to me where he was driving, and then he’d jump off once he’d reached his imaginary destination, tend to his imaginary business at each imaginary place, and climb back on his yellow and green mowing machine, making all manner of cranking and screeching noises.

Meanwhile, I’m rocking in a patio chair, thinking, “I really like the fringe on that garden umbrella,” while Alex pops imaginary wheelies and D. talks with clerks about BTU’s and warranties and propane.

When we got in the car after our first trip, D. said, “Aren’t you excited about our new grill? It makes me want to hunt things and kill them and then cook them.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It just makes me want to eat some chicken.”

I’m pretty private about my blog. I have only told my close friends and family, I don’t put my real name on here, I haven’t told our friends at church about it – and you can ask me why all you want to, but the bottom line is that it’s hard for me to explain. It may have something to do with the fact that I don’t like to talk about what I’ve written – I write it down, and I read the comments, and I move on. The few times that I have been around people who were talking about what I’ve written, I was so uncomfortable that I can’t even articulate it. I wanted to crawl under the floor and stay there until The Blog Talk stopped (so yes, Emma Kate, THANK YOU for bringing it up in front of our friends who didn’t know the other night. That was a lot of fun for me).

Another aspect of my blog secrecy is that I’m a little afraid that I’ll tell somebody – maybe someone from church – and they’d read it and I’d run into them later and ask if they read it and they’d say, “Um. I. Uh. Yeah. I read it.” And then the deafening silent disapproval would consume me.

ANYWAY, a couple of days ago a friend of ours mentioned that a former staff member at our church has a blog. D. found it, bookmarked it, and when I finally got around to reading it, there were links to eight or nine people from church who also blog. None of the people are close friends of mine – just people I chat with on Sundays, or speak to when we’re getting our kids from the nursery, or work with on a project from time to time.

So you can probably imagine what I’ve been doing all afternoon…it’s like there’s a whole new planet in my blogging universe. And I kind of want to comment on their sites – because now I feel free to tell them about mine – but is that invading their privacy somehow? Why do I feel like I need to be invited? Why is this so much weirder when dealing with people you know than it is when dealing with people you don’t know?

Could I possibly be more paranoid?

Lots of fun at the concert last night. We were, as I told D., “disconcertingly close” to The Talent (thanks to Sister, who hooked us up with incredible seats).

When the show started, Faith was on the opposite end of the stage, and D. leaned over to me and said, “Hey, I bet Tim enters the stage right here.”

And just as he said it, like magic, Tim (who from this day forward will be known, at least for the purposes of this blog, as Mr. Hottie McHotterson) appeared before us.

I screamed. Just a little bit.

And then Faith (Mrs. Hottie McHotterson, for the record) made her way to our side of the stage.

Here’s one thing I appreciated about Faith. She was thin, but she wasn’t skinny. The last time we saw them in concert she was rail-thin, but this time she had curves and toned arms and really looked healthy. She also looked like a regular person – no fancy outfits, no over-the-top hair or make-up – she just seemed real and approachable and like someone I could’ve grown up with.

And she sounded great, to boot. D. and I were both impressed with how strong and full her voice was – way better than when we heard her live six years ago. She did a version of “There Will Come A Day” – one of my all-time favorite Faith songs – and it was like listening to great gospel music (in fact, she even said, “Praise Him, Praise His Name” at the end of it, and all I could think about was that Emma Kate would have said, “Did you hear that? Did you hear her? She said, ‘Praise His Name!’Oh, I think I love her now!”).

The second part of the concert was Tim’s solo set.

He was wearing blue jeans.

AHEM. A-HEM. And just so you know, D. listened with amusement to all of my kind comments about Tim’s blue jeans, and I listened with amusement to all of his kind comments about Faith’s appearance, and we still love EACH OTHER very much. We’re also quite confident that Tim and Faith love each other, too.

At the end of the show, our pretend celebrity couple BFF did a few numbers together, and I LOVED the dress that Faith wore. It looked so much like something Liz would wear that I wanted to call her, describe it, and then see if she could find it on the internet. ADORABLE.

All in all – it was a great show. Aside from the drunken revelers who kept working their way down to our seats, hardly able to keep their balance, sloshing their drinks all over the steps, it was a fun crowd. And the police eventually gave the drunken revelers some gentle encouragement to return to their assigned seating. And seriously – Tim McGraw is a great live performer. He has the personality, the vocals, the blue jeans :-) – he is just a ton of fun to see live. So if you get the chance….

In other bloggity news, I haven’t forgotten about my LBY post for this week. But after working on it yesterday, I decided that it might be a wee bit personal to post on the interweb…the topic (gentleness) definitely hit home with me, especially the part about having a teachable spirit, which is an area where I’ve been struggling lately. But since I don’t want to say anything that could be construed as divisive, and since I don’t want to be SO vague that people would read it and say, “HUH?” – I’m contemplating keeping this one to myself. If I have time today, though, I may try to re-write it altogether. Just so you know.