happy Thursday!!!

hey, i wanted to wish you a happy Thursday! we all got another one this morning to spend as we like.

some of us will be going to jobs we love - and others, well, maybe not so much. some of us will have sunshine and searing temps, while some will have sunshine and no need to run the a/c. some of us will be dealing with some hard circumstances, the kind that bring the gut punch of reality and take our collective breath away. some of us will be celebrating first steps, a birthday, a promotion, a job, a hard won day of sobriety, a car in the garage, a soldier home, another year of school completed.

there are no extra minutes for good behavior. or an hour subtracted for being a grade A jerk. homicidal maniacs and saints both get the same 24 hours for mayhem or for mercy (and everything in between, of course).

i know that we know :) that it is what we DO with those one thousand four hundred and forty-four minutes that counts. . .

so. . . what are you going to do with your Thursday???

another kind of dumb

i posted on a different blog an unfortunate incident concerning plugging in my dying laptop and shocking myself silly. . . actually i shocked myself silly twice within oh, about 4 seconds and with all due intent. i couldn't believe i did it, so i did it again. and yes, that was dumb. it got me to thinking about a different kind of dumb, the kind that needs to be addressed every so often. . . so i followed it up with this post. . .

there is another kind of dumb. . . the kind of dumbness that takes over our spiritual lives. . . yep, you guessed it. . . DSD. . the Dreaded Spiritual Dumbness.

DSD can strike anyone at almost any time - although more common in Christ followers who have some years under their belt "doing" the Christian life. DSD creeps in and slowly, insidiously begins to suck the joy right out and leaves a kind of unfulfilling, uninspiring, "ok-ness." gone is the passion, the excitement, the fervor. DSD has claimed another victim.

i have personally suffered from this ailment - more than once even (see there is a tie-in to my last post, you can be dumb more than once in a short amount of time). i woke up one day and realized that i was coasting, no longer walking, coasting, meandering, wandering without a clue. kept reading the Bible, praying, going to church, trying to do all the right things for all the right reasons and knowing that something was missing.

now what did i do about this "missining-ness" once i realized?

nothing - i just read the Bible, prayed, went to church, tried to do all the right things for all the right reasons.

right there was the proof that i was suffering from DSD.

one of my favorite definitions of insanity is this - one from Albert Einstein “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

DSD is a lot like that.

i kept expecting something to change. after all, i was doing something. i was staying busy and pretty much outta trouble ( well, for me at least). AND that dang Holy Spirit was part of this equation wasn't He? And just where was He anyways???

treatment for DSD is easy - TAKE SOME RESPONSIBILITY AND DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT IN YOUR SPIRITUAL LIFE!!!!

if you are reading in the New Testament, find some dramatic readings of the Old Testament and listen to them, REALLY listen to them. or grab a couple of friends, go to the park, sit around a picnic table and take turns reading out loud chunks of verses through the book of Mark. take a walk ANYWHERE and listen to worship music that is based on scripture.

at church, find a different seat, far, far away from where you usually sit - scary, i know - but you will probably see and meet some new people, see the same stuff from a new vantage point. if your church has more than one service, attend the one you usually don't. if you usually sing, don't. listen and let the voices flow around you. if you usually don't sing, then sing and make a joyful noise, though you might want to watch the volume on that. . .

shake up your prayer life too!!!! pray with your eyes open. hands open. eyes and hands open. eyes and hands open and standing. laying face down on the floor. praying with a pen and notebook (also called prayer journaling - i highly recommend). praying with a friend. praying with more than one friend. BUT ACTUALLY PRAYING - not just doing the catch-up prayer circle. call your pastor and ask him for some things to pray for. . . current missionary concerns, church finances (this is always on that list it seems), the youth group, the youth pastor. better yet, get the names of a few of the members who don't get out much and go visit them and ask to pray WITH them and FOR them.

there really is no excuse for suffering along with DSD once you've diagnosed yourself.

get out there. . . get moving. . . or quit moving. . . only you know what you've been doing/not doing that hasn't been inspiring you to be more like Christ.

quit being a spiritual retention pond. . . they seem to get stagnant or they dry up. . . choice is yours. . .

Tim Hawkins-Hey There Delilah

little red sports car and my bucket list

yes, i have a bucket list. i have called it different things over the years as it kinda evolved with my age and stage in life. and well, to be honest, it has consisted of some fairly insane "things to do before i die. . . "
get a tattoo
get another tattoo
talk someone else into getting a tattoo with me

ok, those are some of the sane, already "done" things :)

seriously, some of the items on my current list. . .

getting a book published (would be easier to to actually attempt if i could figure out a) who my audience would be and b) why in the world would they be interested in laying out hard earned cash for anything i would write)

driving a little red sports car (this should probably be OWNING said "little red sports car" since who in their ever-lovin' mind would want to share it???)

learning Polish/Russian/Chinese OR becoming incredibly proficient in Pig Latin (i have been known on occasion to massacre the english language - imagine how dangerous i would be in another. . . )

finding the cure for gastric cancer (my mom died of it at 57 and i don't mean me personally FINDING a cure - i just meant someone finding a cure for it in my lifetime)

keeping every single area of my home organized AND clean for 30 minutes (in one stretch. . . not 30 minutes of 1 minutes increments, i mean 30 minutes in a row, one after the other. . . probably not going to happen unless i hire a crew to come in while i am on vacation and the 30 minutes is clocked before we get home)

holding my grandchild (this is not a subtle or even an obvious hint for my kids - i just think it would be a cool thing - but then of course, the hint is in the eye of the beholder. . . )

some things i have already checked off. . .

falling in love
marrying a man i could grow old with (and incidentally - same man i fell in love with)
owning a boston terrier
having children (this was an on again off again listing)
owning a cat
being completely caught up with our family's laundry (happened just once in 1997 - never to be repeated - musta have been a fluke of nature or the hand of God)
making more than $XXXXX amount of dollars (this fluctuated a lot!!!)
becoming a home owner (this was before i realized that "becoming a mortgagee" was more accurate)

i wanted to blog about my bucket list because this week i got to check off "driving a little red sports car." and no i didn't have to buy one. . .my husband and my son went section hiking on the AT last week. they grabbed a friend who was up for "a walk in the woods" and took off in one of our Hyundai's. this friend just happens to own a little red Benz. and he happened to let me have it for FIVE glorious days. it was awesome.

although it was a little hard giving it back (after all, the difference is huge between piloting a Benz and putzing around in a golf cart) i surrendured the ????? whatever you call the doohicky that takes the place of a key and then promptly hugged the owner.

i am proud to say i received NO speeding tickets. . . partially due to the fact that i drove 12 miles under the limit. . . yeah, you and i know that's not true. . . let's just say that i prayed a lot. . . and i'm sure the little red sports car's owner did too! :)

Sunday's Coming. . . and it's "Contemporvant"

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

a love story Part II

hmmmm, seems to me i left off right where it was getting kinda interesting. . . a Christmas brunch, a forgotten camera, and my mother.
it was December, 1990 in Phoenix. my sister and i were unable to make it home that year so our folks were on their own for the holidays. a woman in my parent's Sunday School class had passed away and left her husband very unexpectedly alone at Christmas. her grown children had come in for her funeral and to spend some time with their father.
now my mother, being 100% Polish and therefore genetically predisposed to using her great culinary skills to heal all sorts of ailments, including grief, depression, and loneliness decided to have the family over for comfort food. my parents had just built a steel frame house with a lot of room for some good old world hospitality - and so brunch it was. (much later the widower would tell me how for a little while that day, he enjoyed the food and forgot for a time, the nagging pain in his heart.)
now one of the widower's daughters brought her camera - took some pictures and promptly left it behind. my mother found the camera and realized too late that the owner had already left for home in the Pacific Northwest. so well, she boxed up the camera with a note and sent it on. and from time to time they touched base with each other, my mom wanting the daughter to know that her father was being looked after.
eight months later my mother had died suddenly of misdiagnosed stomach cancer and my father found himself alone for the first time in 36 years.
Kris and i knew that mom had forseen this possibility and had made it very clear that he had her permission to remarry. now there were single women of an appropriate age at church and at his work but i think they were all kinda waiting around for a reasonable and respectable amount of time to pass before making their intentions known. (it was interesting - women i did not know sent me kind notes offering their sympathy and availability to check in on dear old dad, if that would put my mind at ease. . . uhhhh, yeah. . . ).
it was while i was back in Phoenix that November to help dad close my mother's estate that he showed me an interesting letter - a letter from the owner of that forgotten camera. she was writing to share her shock at the suddenness of my mom's passing and sympathy for our family.
she was also writing to introduce her best friend to my father. her best friend living in Denver. . .
my dad showed me the letter and asked me what he should do. . . wow! let me tell you, i took the easy way out and told him to call the best friend. (understand that my mom had only been gone about 6 weeks AND i was not looking forward to having THAT TALK with my dad about how the dating culture had evolved since 1955. besides, this woman was of the right age - old enough to be my mother! - and lived far enough way to ensure this relationship would take some time to develop).
ok, i was right about the age thing but suffice it to say that they officially tied the knot much sooner than the "ladies-in-waiting" thought "reasonable and respectable" - less than 5 months to be exact.
my step mom sold her condo and made a profit large enough to bring her daughters home from Hawaii for the wedding. that was amazing, since she had only made one, yes, only one mortgage payment before she met my dad.
i am not sure how supportive her kids were about this shot gun wedding (ok, there was no shot gun) but Kris and i could see how quickly and deeply they had fallen in love with each other. we gave them our support, our love, and our fierce loyalty.
they have been really good for each other and therefore, really good for us.
and yes, some days it was hard to balance the grief of losing our mom with the truth of our father's happiness. but it was worth making the tough choice, the choice to love a woman who so openly loved our dad.
so yes, this is a love story. . . a family love story. . .

A Tiny Apartment Transforms into 24 Rooms