I’m having a devil of a time getting links, etc. into today’s post. It’s a little frustrating because I don’t UNDERSTAND any of this stuff…I just click where they tell me to click and hope for the best (and by “they,” I mean the little men inside my computer – you do realize that this whole computer thing is in fact controlled by hostile elves, don’t you?). Everything is running slow as molasses, but I’m trying to get it all straightened out (those elves are gonna have to PICK UP THE PACE). I would be more specific except for the fact that I don’t know the right terms to use, and I would say something like, “I think it’s just a matter of getting the HTML code to correspond with the RAM interface,” and y’all would laugh at me because I am really. painfully. stupid. when it comes to technical matters.

Thank you for your patience and your patronage. :-)

I have to admit that I was a little anxious about letting people – even if it’s just family and friends and Buddy – know about this blog thing. It wasn’t that anything was so terribly personal – but when you write stuff down and let people read it, you make yourself vulnerable. There’s a little tiny part of me that pictured people reading it and then getting on the phone and saying, “Can you BELIEVE she said that? Well, I’ve never in my life. I’ve a good mind to call her up and give her a PIECE OF MY MIND.” :-)

On the other hand, several (and by “several,” I mean “three”) of y’all have called and said, “Gosh, it’s like reading your diary.” But it’s soooo not like reading my diary because 1) I do not have a diary, and 2) if I did, do you really think I would put it on the WIDE WORLD INTERWEB?

I guess I think of diaries as being so personal that you hide them from everyone, and, as my friend NK said last night, you “don’t know whether to save them or burn them.” The stuff I write about here is stuff I would talk to my friends about anyway. If you were ever in my living room during one of our girls’ weekends, you would hear conversations on pretty much these same topics. Marriage. Kids. Church. TV. Basketball (at least for Daph and me).

But the really personal stuff – the stuff that you might only tell one other person in the world and then you would tell it with your eyes closed while you curled into a really tight ball – that’s diary stuff. That’s the heavy-duty stuff. The I’m-not-sure-I’m-happy stuff. The I-can’t-believe-someone-did-that-to-me stuff. And that stuff, at least in my mind, is off limits. So if I’m privy to one of your Deep Dark Secrets – have no fear. Your secret is still safe with me.

So maybe the interesting – and I realize that “interesting” is a very, very strong word – thing about the blog, for y’all, is seeing what’s going on with us. For me, the initial anxiety has been replaced with a deep fascination – bordering on obsession – to know who’s reading it.

What I did not know when I first started the blog is that I could pull up a list of who’s looking at it. I can’t see your names, mind you – but I can see general locations on a little map of the world. In other words, I get just enough information to be curious, but not enough to know anything specific. I just know that someone in [insert name of town] has read something. Except for the ones of you who have implemented all sorts of privacy features on your computer so that you’re the Stealth bomber of the internet and completely unidentifiable.

This morning Alex and I were out for a stroll, and I was thinking about all the cities that have popped up on my site meter. Wait – that’s misleading. I was thinking about the SEVENs of cities that have popped up on my site meter, and Greater Jackson, you win. I have no prize to offer, so you’ll have to consider it a moral victory. I think I can attribute the abundance of Jackson hits to the fact that E. can’t walk past her computer without checking her email and then checking the blog to see if I’m talking about her. Plus, that’s probably where the greatest concentration of my college friends are.

But aside from Jackson, the rest of the places are a real Southern hodge-podge. Memphis, Nashville, Tupelo, Birmingham, Baton Rouge – you get the idea. And what I was thinking about when I was walking today was that each one of those places has an emotional component for me. It’s not just a random city looking at a random blog. It’s my friends – or my friends’ friends – caring enough to stay connected, even if it’s just for a couple of minutes while you’re drinking a cup of coffee and trying not to scream at your children. :-) For me, that’s oddly touching. *tear*

So when I see Pennsylvania, it makes me wish LM weren’t so far away – and I know she wishes that, too. When I see Louisiana, it makes me wish B and B would go ahead and move back here already. When I see a city in northern Alabama, I know that it’s Daph, and it makes me want to call her and see how the freelancing thing is going. When I see a city outside of Columbus, MS, I think “Is that Beth? I bet that’s Beth” – but I don’t know for sure. What I do know for sure is that it makes me want to know how Beth is doing.

The blog has also taught me that you people are a BUNCH OF LURKERS!!!!! You lurk in the corners of my blog universe and never say a word. See that little “comment” link at the bottom of the post? That’s so YOU CAN TALK BACK TO ME. It won’t hurt a bit. I promise.

All in all, it’s been a fine time so far. I don’t know that I’ll continue to post as much as I have the last few days, because at some point D. will be cured of his upper rib fat cancer and we will leave the house again. I also have to, you know, work. But I have no doubt that I will continue to multi-task during my television viewing – you might not realize that it’s possible to watch “24” and compose a blog entry at the same time, but I can assure you that it is. It is also possible to write and pull an almost-three year old off of the kitchen counter while simultaneously wiping peanut butter off his mouth.

It not, however, possible to write when the almost-three year old is holding a train up to your ear while the train is loudly playing the Thomas theme song. So on that note, I’m done. For now, at least.

Later, internets.

Alex and I stayed home from church this morning because he has a rotten cold and I didn’t want him to share the love with all the other two year olds. Somehow not being at church has made me think about it even more – a sure sign of age, if you ask me. :-) But what I thought about the most is how, for a lot of people, church is the last place in the world they’d want to be on a Sunday morning. And that makes wonder: why are so many people are turned off by churches in general and Christians in particular?

Probably the first answer most people would give is that Christians can be judgmental and intolerant. There’s not world enough and time for me to get into that in a blog entry, so I’ll address those two things by saying Yes. And Yes.

Personally, I think that part of the problem is that some Christians seem to lock themselves in a vacuum and only come out of said vacuum when they want to completely suck the air out of a room with their complete. inability. to. relate. I know that Christians aren’t supposed to be “of the world,” but honestly, some people come across like they’re not even in it. It seems like pastors struggle with this syndrome as much as anyone. Or maybe I feel that way because they’re so visible.

When we lived in Louisiana, there was an associate pastor on staff at our church who was obviously very intelligent. And he was a really, really nice guy. But when it was his turn to preach – oh, the agony. It was almost like he came out of his Sealed Chambers of Books to preach, and anytime he tried to relate his message to real life, it came out sounding all stilted and awkward and almost like he didn’t understand the words he was saying.

One time he tried to work in a reference about “stopping by a local video store, where one can rent and even purchase films that you don’t see in the movie theatres” and I thought I would roll right off of that pew onto the cold, marble floor and have myself a little siesta with my head resting on comfy, quilted kneelers.

Unfortunately, that’s the kind of stuff that comes from the pulpit when pastors get out of touch with their parishioners. I don’t think it’s because they necessarily want it to be that way…it might just be a personality thing. Or a lack of personality thing. Sometimes it’s probably because coming out of that nicely appointed pastor’s office means they have to deal with all the backbiting and politics that seem to permeate a lot of churches…so they survey the landscape, see what’s in store, and walk right back in that study. Where The People can’t get to them.

And then there’s a problem on the opposite end of the spectrum: pastors who are utterly charming and relatable and approachable but who don’t say anything.

There’s a very popular pastor who’s on television quite a bit, and the first few times I saw him, I was impressed. His delivery was great, he was funny, and he seemed really down-to-earth. The more I watched and listened, though, the more I realized that his sermons had lots of flash but not so much substance. Scripture seemed sort of “tacked on” – almost like an afterthought. And every message focused on some variation of Being Your Best Self. Succeeding in Life. Discovering Your Potential.

His defense for his approach is that his messages are geared to the unchurched. That may be true. But when you’re preaching to a room filled with 20,000 people, odds are that there are some “churched” folks in there looking for something to chew on.

Or maybe not. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we’re the problem. Maybe we’ve settled for watered-down theology and teaching for so long that we can’t really gripe about the message or the messenger. Maybe we’re just getting what we’ve asked for.

We have some sweet friends who are leaving their church. Their decision is the result of a lot of prayer, a lot of godly counsel, and a lot of tears. What’s been heartbreaking, from our perspective at least, is to see how hard they have tried to make their current situation work. They have been on an emotional rollercoaster…filled with hope that things would get better, filled with sadness when things didn’t change.

I wonder if their situation would have turned out differently if their pastor had stripped away the veneer of being “a fine Christian” (and I’m sure he does love the Lord – I don’t think that issue has ever been in question) and let his congregation see the real man with real struggles and real problems. Because isn’t that really the greatest testimony? To open your life and your heart…to let people see your imperfections…and then let them see that God uses you anyway? That He’s actually able to use you BECAUSE of those things?

I think that kind of authenticity is what bridges the pastoral / congregant divide. I think that kind of authenticity is what attracts people to churches. I am so grateful that there are people like that in the ministry. I won’t name names *cough* Kevin Wood *cough* :-) – but let’s just say that we need more of them.

I usually cringe a little bit when people start the whole “What Would Jesus Do/Drive/Say” discussion because all too often it just reeks of self-righteousness. However, I do trust that most of you know my heart pretty well and understand that “holier than thou” just ain’t my thing. So bear with me for just a minute, because really, in a discussion about churches being out of touch, Jesus is sort of the only place to finish it.:-)

Jesus walked with people. All of them. Whosoever. He met them right where they were. He showed them His heart. He taught them Truth. He loved them unconditionally.

Today’s churches, I think, would do well to do the same.

I would like to take this opportunity to report what D. has had to eat today.

4 teaspoons of coffee with 1/8 teaspoon of skim milk
3/4 of a piece of sugar-free whole wheat toast (that was breakfast)
1/2 cup lima beans (that was lunch)
1 apple
1 piece of baked fish
1 baked potato with mere pats of butter and sour cream
2 tablespoons of English peas
several sips of various juice and / or soda products

At this rate, he’ll be 104 lbs. by the beginning of March, and we’ll have to stage some sort of intervention because “shhhhh! he’s not eating! shhhhh! but he thinks he looks great! shhhhh!”

I know he’s in pain, and I know this whole “gallbladder thing” makes it difficult to eat. The “enormous” supper he ate caused him more than just a little discomfort.

But he’s making Mary Kate Olsen look like a pure-D hog.

He also read an entire mystery in one sitting, was extremely cold while he read and stayed wrapped in a down throw, and kept his reading glasses perched on his nose for the better part of the day.

Based on all these events, I have come to one conclusion.

Aliens have abducted my husband and replaced him with an elderly British gentleman.

Cheerio.

To make commenting a little more user-friendly, I’ve added Haloscan commenting to the blog. I’m hoping that now Elise and Tracey and Merritt will speak up and say something. But keep it clean, ladies – this is a family-friendly site. :-)

I have no idea what Trackback is, but it was part of the package. I’m sure it’s a terribly useful feature, though.

Yesterday I mentioned some of the things I overheard while I sat in a hospital waiting room this week. My friend Tracey emailed me with a story of her own – and it cracks me up.

We were visiting Sis’ dad in the hospital and we went downstairs to get something to eat. As we were sitting there eating our dinner, we overheard a woman talking to her family on the phone saying, “you just aren’t going to believe this – Daddy ain’t dead, daddy ain’t dead he has been revised by the respirator – praise god he ain’t dead!!”