1. Katrina over at Callapidder Days is hosting the delightfully-titled Spring Reading Thing on March 21st.

It’s a great way to set some reading goals, and even though I didn’t participate back in the fall because we were getting ready to put our house on the market and had many incomplete projects and I was, you know, overwhelmed by all the overwhelming details of the overwhelmedness, I still enjoyed looking through the lists of what other people were reading.

Which is sort of like watching someone else exercise, if you think about it.

Anyway, you definitely want to check out the details on this one.

2. The Bulldogs play Arkansas today in the semi-finals of the SEC tournament. Yesterday we beat Kentucky in one of the best games I’ve seen all year, and when we scored a three-pointer at the buzzer to send the game into overtime (notice the “we” I used before the word “scored” – it was completely unintentional, and I think it’s indicative of the fact that I believe I make a difference in the on-court activity), I immediately called Sister.

Want to know how she answered her phone?

“COME ON, NOW, SON!”

I laughed out loud. And then I hollered.

3. Also in basketball-related news, my friend Daphne called me yesterday afternoon to discuss the MSU victory and also to tell me a funny little anecdote:

Yesterday her husband J. happened to be home when the MSU game was on, and since it was a beautiful spring day, he opened their back door so that a little fresh air could come in through the screen door.

He settled in to watch the game, and he became very vocal as the hoops action unfolded. He was telling the players to “STOP IT RIGHT NOW!” when they did something foolish, telling the officials “YOU’RE KILLING US!” when they were calling one foul after another on our Bulldogs, telling our coach to “DO SOMETHING!” when we fell behind and seemed in dire need of a time-out.

Well, apparently Daphne and J.’s neighbor who lives behind them could hear everything J. was saying to the television since the back door was open, and the neighbor was so concerned by what he was hearing that he called the woman who lives across the street from Daph and J.

When across-the-street neighbor answered her phone, behind-the-house neighbor said, “You know, I think we’d better go check on J. I keep hearing him scream for someone to STOP IT and DO SOMETHING, and I’m a little concerned!”

It must be March Madness, y’all.

It’s true.

I can’t STAND the word “pit.”

And in fact, a few days ago when Emma Kate and I were talking about Beth Moore’s book Get Out of That Pit, I mentioned my disdain for the last word in the title.

“Well, it’s BIBLICAL,” Emma Kate said.

“I know it’s Biblical, missy,” I replied. “But I just think there could be a better word. Something not quite so dirty. Something that doesn’t make me wrinkle my nose when I say it.”

“Well, missy, I think you can just get over not liking the word, because that’s the word. Period.”

We call each other “missy” a lot, if you can’t tell.

And really, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the word I dislike so much – the word that refers to those deep, dark parts of our lives – it should be something that makes us wrinkle our noses, something that makes us just a little bit uncomfortable. Because the fact of the matter is that we don’t have any business, as believers, hanging out in, well, pits.

(I totally just wrinkled my nose.)

When I started reading Get Out of That Pit, I was a little detached, honestly; Beth (and I say that like she’s my BFF and we shop for shoes together, but I just can’t bring myself to call her “Mrs. Moore”) mentions that that there are essentially three means to pit-dwelling: being thrown in, slipping in, and jumping in. And as I read through the chapter that covered that first point, I wasn’t sure that I could relate. Certainly there have been times in my life when I’ve been thrown in a pit by something someone else has done, but that’s not where I am right now, by God’s grace (see: “victory in Jesus,” “more than conquerors,” etc.).

But then I got to the second route to the pit: slipping in.

And I may have done that a time or two hundred.

You know the drill: you tippy toe! tippy toe! over to something that you have no business messing with – an old hurt, an old habit, an old hang-up (my former pastor’s words, not mine). You mess with it a little – and then you step back. Then you mess with it a little bit more, and you back away again – but maybe not quite as far away as you did before. And gradually, slowly but surely, you slip back into the depths of that particular thing. Instead of keeping a healthy distance away from it, you’re all up in the middle of it. Back in the dead-center of the pit.

I’d like to think, as a fairly intelligent 30-something woman, that I’m immune to doing anything so stupid, to doing anything so self-destructive. But I do – and the devil loves it, no doubt.

There are two areas of my life that have been consistent battlegrounds: discipline and trust. The biggest way the discipline issue manifest itself is with my ongoing battle with weight (sidenote: DON’T GET ME STARTED, but as I told Big Mama in an email the other day, I would like to lose 40 pounds in the next two weeks, so if she needs to find me I’ll be right here starving myself. Which I WON’T, of course. I was just kidding. But sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying, and I’m just keepin’ it real, interpeeps. And now I’m fearful of getting emails telling me YOU DON’T HAVE TO STARVE YOURSELF and PLEASE, WOMAN, EAT SOME CHICKEN, so let me just reiterate for clarity that I was kidding).

The trust thing is an issue that I thought cropped up for the first time in my 30’s, but I’ve really dealt with it my whole life, I think. If I’m not careful I can find myself doing terribly productive things like Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop, and the older I get the more I realize that it’s a pit custom-designed for me, a trap that the devil uses to steal my natural bent towards joy. I’ll think I’m over it, that I’m done with it, that I’m not going to worry about such-and-such ANY MORE – and then BAM! – I seize up like a rusty motor.

If rusty motors actually “seize,” that is. I’ve never been very strong with the figurative language. But you know what I mean.

So in the end, I think the biggest thing Beth’s book did for me is to remind me that these pits that continually beckon me are spiritual battles, and I can’t fight them in my own strength. I try – but at the end of the day, “willpower” is just another word and not a bit of help in terms of climbing out of the pits into which I sometimes slide. What I need instead is His power, because if you get right down to it, there really aren’t any battles that we’re meant to fight alone.

“I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD.” – Pslam 40:1-3

To see more responses to this book or to add your own, head over to Robin’s blog. Also: anyone can jump in the discussion in the comments; you don’t have to have read the book to chime in.

I mentioned one day last week that I’ve been praying about some Major Life Decisions, and as a result of that, there has been Much Talk Of Blogging around our house lately.

Really, I’d love nothing more than to tell y’all that someone has offered me many bags of cash money to write my little blog, but unfortunately that is only true in the world that I inhabit when I’m dreaming. However, I am trying to decide if I’m going to be More Serious About Writing, and if I am, there are going to be some mighty big changes around our house. Domestic re-structuring, if you will.

Thus: lots of praying.

Walking through this particular decision-making process has caused me to think a good bit more than I usually do about writing in general, blogging in particular. And while I know that y’all might be surprised to learn that I actually think about topics other than what exciting new meat products I can drop in vats of hot peanut oil while I’m watching college basketball and simultaneously trying to record American Idol on the (faulty, evil) DVR, the truth of the matter is that I love to think about and analyze things from as many angles as my admittedly limited intelligence will allow. Unless it concerns metal fabrication, in which case I can’t even pretend to be interested.

I don’t talk about my blog much in real life because it makes me terribly uncomfortable, but occasionally, I need a bloggy sounding board. As I’ve been praying through the possibility of taking the writing part of my life more seriously, I’ve had some really frank discussions with my friends Mrs. Rocks and Mrs. Big Mama about my writing limitations. They are kind enough to listen and give me great feedback and encourage me despite the fact that I have an incurable case of the crazies.

The stuff I write for the blog is so personality-driven that it makes my head hurt to try to figure out how to take what I do here and put it “out there.” Publications would never hire me as a freelancer because if I wrote an article on, say, nutrition, the final draft would probably say “THE APPLES! THEY ARE GOOD! AND GOOD FOR YOU!” somewhere around the beginning of second paragraph.

Or, better yet: “BUTTERBEANS, Y’ALL!”

Oddly enough, it’s not a tone that Serious Media Outlets are looking for.

But even still: that urge to push a little harder on my blogging and writing boundaries won’t go away.

I keep coming back to the idea that God knows my strengths and my weaknesses because He gave them to me. And maybe, at the end of the day, I have to be willing to set aside my fear that I’m just not good enough – and, as Max Lucado says, “use [my] uniqueness to take great risks for God” because “the only mistake is to not risk making one.”

D. and I have laughed a lot lately because we are not, by and large, risk takers. We will choose the path of least resistance every single time. We enjoy things like retirement funds and employer-provided health insurance and low-risk investments. We play it safe. And by and large, we like it that way.

But y’all – I have to tell you: I feel so strongly that God is calling me outside of my comfort zone and away from my safety net. I keep looking for reasons to justify staying with the status quo, and He keeps nudging me to step out, to take a risk, to trust Him a little bit more.

And I am scared out of my ever-livin’ mind.

I have gone back and forth about whether or not I should post about all of this, mainly because I felt like any attempt to shed light on such a personal decision might come across as nothing more than a fishing expedition for people to encourage me! love me! validate me!

But if you know me at all, you know that’s not where my heart is. Right now my heart is, above all, seeking God’s guidance and peace. I want to do the right thing for the right reasons. I want to do the thing that enables me to serve my family in the very best way. And I want, above all else, to glorify Him, to serve Him with complete and total abandon.

So.

Needless to say, I’d appreciate your prayers.

And I’ll keep y’all posted.