Hey y’all –

Here are the winners of the Third Day question contest:

1 – Suzanne (she also won at Big Mama‘s – WHAT ARE THE ODDS, I ASK YOU), so I’ll check and see if I can pick one more winner)

50 – Amy Martin (earthlink email, question about shopping)

130 – Mozi Esme’s Mommy

157 – Amy K. (cox email, question about hair, and WHAT IS IT WITH THE AMYS?)

168 – Kerry – Colored With Memories

Congratulations, everybody! Mark from Third Day will be answering your questions on his blog on August 18th – I’ll be sure to post a link so you can read all the great questions and answers.

Thanks so much for your participation – and winners, if you’d send me your mailing address, I’ll forward that info to the people who’ll be shipping your fabulous prizes.

Now. If you’ll excuse me, I need to be getting back to my place on the couch so that I don’t miss a single second of the Olympics.

I tend to err on the side of obsessive, you know.

Oh, don’t judge me. I’ll always interrupt a bloggy break for some great music.

And in this case, the great music is the FREE copy of Phil Wickham‘s live CD that you can download by clicking on the photo below and hopping over to his blog.

No kidding: Phil (Mr. Wickham? Mr. Phil Wickham? Mr. Phil?) is an amazingly talented singer / songwriter. An incredible musician. You don’t want to miss this (FREE!) download.

And that is all.

(link via sweet Annie)

OH NO MA’AM.

MA’AM.

1992 was fun and all, but I’m not making a return trip. I don’t care how cute Katie’s hair is.

Thank you and have a lovely weekend.

I guess on some level I tried to prepare myself for what I was going to see once we got to Uganda. I’ve never been overseas before, and truth be told I’ve probably never seen real poverty up close and personal, though I thought I had.

But all I can think about right now is how I have managed to live my whole life without any idea at all about what real poverty looks like.

Earlier today we visited one of Compassion’s partner churches (Compassion does all of its work through local churches), and I was deeply touched by the kindness and the faith of the people there. They told us about their ministry in the community, introduced us to some of the children involved in their programs, and answered every single question we had with absolute grace and candor.

Then we walked outside the building.

And I’m telling you: there is nothing aside from Divine Revelation that could have prepared me for what I saw. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.

These are the rooms behind the church where the kids have what we would call Sunday School. And compared to what we saw next, those Sunday School rooms were the absolute lap of luxury.

We split into groups and walked just across the street to visit with some families who live in the area. We made our way up a short hill, and as we rounded the corner I saw something that I will never, ever forget. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.

You have no idea what this little girl has done to my heart. No idea at all.

She’s an orphan who lives with her aunt. Her aunt is HIV-positive and struggles to provide for the two of them. And they live in a room that is no bigger than the half bath in my house. It has a straw floor, cardboard walls, and a sheet for a door.

I cry just thinking about it.

And yet she was just one of many children all around us – children who live in a level of poverty that is absolutely incomprehensible, even when you’re so close that you can see it and touch it and smell it.

For about twenty minutes I took pictures of the kids and then let them look at the screen on the back of my camera. It was evident that several of them had never seen their own faces before.

And I just keep thinking that we have to see these kids’ faces. We have to see these kids’ faces. They are not statistics, they are not case studies, they are not random images on public service announcements.

They are precious, sweet, loving faces. Just like your children. Just like mine. And we have to – WE HAVE TO – see them.

We have to.

Because if we don’t, who will?

This post was originally published on February 12, 2008.

Back in February Keely told me that Dave Barnes (I’m not sure if y’all realize this, but I kind of enjoy him) did a stand-up show in Nashville last year, and she said, “Hey, if he does one again this year, y’all should totally try to be there.”

And I was all, “Well, um, DONE.”

The stand-up show was this past Thursday night, and IT WAS A DELIGHT. Before the show the husband and I had dinner with some fun friends, and I cannot adequately express what a great meal we had.

However, there are two magical words that just may help you to understand: CHEESE FRITTERS.

After dinner we went to the Dave Barnes comedy extravaganza, and while we didn’t conduct an official survey, the four of us were pretty confident that we were the oldest people there. By a considerable margin. And the age difference was made all the more evident by the fact that Travis started to yawn A LOT about ten minutes before the show started, which, by the way, was at 7:30.

SORRY WE KEPT YOU OUT SO LATE, PAPAW.

On Friday Sister and I shopped the day away just as we’d planned, but I’m afeared that something must be deeply, terribly wrong with me because I did not buy one thing.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I bought a twelve-pack of diet Coke and a pack of IceBreakers gum. But unfortunately I cannot actually wear those items. Unless I find myself in the middle of some sort of impromptu Project Runway challenge, of course.

Friday night at something like 1:30 in the morning (is that contradictory? to say “Friday night…in the morning”? rest assured that my intention is not to confuse), Sister and I were sitting in her den – with our respective laptops, of course – just like a couple of sixteen year-olds who had nothing to do but scour the web while we watched video after video on CMT.

Which reminds me: the median age for a female country music artist? Is now seven.

Anyway, at some point in our late night / early morning interweb surfing we realized that lots of blogs wouldn’t load at all in Internet Explorer. And we also realized that it was taking my blog approximately four hours to load in Safari and Firefox. As it turned out (thanks, Twitter, for the help!) there were two culprits: Site Meter and Bible Promise. So I took down the code for both, and then everything worked perfectly fine.

You may have heard me sigh audibly around 2:30 Saturday morning.

And please, let’s remember: the Bible still has promises. You just won’t be finding them in my sidebar until I can figure out why those promises take so long to load.

Perhaps my blawg is in a season of spiritual rebellion. Sort of like its author in her early 20s.

Ahem.

So.

I guess I should get to my point (aside from the fourteen inconsequential things I’ve already discussed, none of which will increase the quality of your life even one teensy tiny bit; however, you are probably all too aware that I consider rambling to be one of my spiritual gifts).

Here we go.

I’m going to take a bit of a bloggy break for the next couple of weeks. We need to get ready for the school year and then get in the swing of our new schedule, and I want to do that without self-imposed deadlines looming over my silly little head. I have some stuff from my archives scheduled to auto-post, and hopefully that will prove to be mildly entertaining if you have a day where you’re absolutely desperate to be mildly entertained.

I live to serve, you know.

I’ll still be posting over at allaccess a couple of times a week, so check in with us there if you get a chance.

And if all goes as planned, I’ll be back here around August 18th-ish.

See you soon, everybody!

It would seem that our abundance of summertime activities finally caught up with me, because for the first three days of this week I didn’t leave my house. Oh, I showered, mind you (GOALS!), and I decked myself out in my finest all-cotton pajamas, but I didn’t leave the house. We were HUNKERED DOWN. Loved every second of it.

But yesterday afternoon I finally gave up the reclusive ghost and ran a few errands. It was delightful, I tell you. The traffic lights! The cars! The sunshine! The cheerful merchants! I was so thrilled to be in the company of other people that I didn’t even mind the excruciating heat, and that, my friends, is saying something.

Later today we leave for our last little summertime adventure. We’re going to Nashville to see Sister and her hubby, plus (hopefully) spend a little time with some of our buddies who live there. I am BEYOND EXCITED about our dinner and entertainment plans tonight, and then Sister and I have a day-o-shopping lined up tomorrow. Consider yourselves warned, Nashville-area Steinmart(s).

Anyway, I’m feeling renewed and refreshed after all this time at home. Plus, it’s given me the opportunity to do some Deeply Analytical Thinking about Critical Issues. You know, things like “Why is Popeye’s so much better than KFC?” and “Why do so many of the girls singing country music right now have blonde hair?” and “If Dave Barnes and David Crowder Band were playing in my town on the exact same date at the exact same time, HOW COULD I POSSIBLY CHOOSE?”

So as you can see I’ve been very, very busy.

Thanks for hanging with me during the downtime, internets.

I heart you more than you know.