Thanksgiving Geese

Our Thanksgiving Table where we got to dine and laugh with Sissy and her wonderful family. I chose my new geese as centerpieces (love them!) Didn't have any matching tapers so I used little cream pumpkins from Halloween. Dishes are done, kids in bed, and now I'm turning in. Hope yours was joyful, too!

Well With My Soul

I ran into a neighbor at the grocery store early this morning. As we stood in line, we talked Thanksgiving recipes and how many guests we were each expecting. "The number keeps getting smaller," she said sadly. I was quiet for just a moment before I quietly agreed. And then she told me about the last Thanksgiving her Dad had on this earth and how she burned the turkey. Bad enough to call 9-1-1. We laughed our way out of the store.

I've been thinking about the empty chairs around our Thanksgiving table this year. How I miss my loved ones. I miss them all the time, but the missing is right there front and center this time of year. No escaping it. But even if I could, I wouldn't want to escape my grief. A grief that has matured and changed over the years, a grief my children would be surprised to know about, lives quite comfortably with happiness.

The poet Shelley was right, I think, about our sincerest laughter being fraught with sadness. In a weird way, it's that sadness that makes my joy complete.

Thank you, Lord, for everything. It is indeed well with my soul. Because of you. I love you!

Midnight

Well, I'm going.

Opening night. Premiere. Im not sure what it's called because I usually watch the "Now on DVD" movies.

Starts at midnight. As in 3 hours past my usual bedtime.

Tickets sold out within a 40 mile radius of our city.

Time with our fun-loving daughter and her friends seeing book characters come to life...well, that makes it all worth it.

It is not your usual vampire book.

Coffee's ready. Gotta run.

Africa

Yesterday I met a man named Stakwell Yurenimo from the Samburu tribe in Kenya. I wept when he shared how he came to know Christ. I was inspired by how God is using him. I felt a stirring in my soul as he spoke, and I sometimes felt like (and my family observed it, too) he was speaking just to me. The fragrance of Christ in the room...filling it!

I wonder if our meeting yesterday, seemingly a footnote in a normal day, was in reality a chapter title in the book of my life. The words of the chapter to be written sometime in the future, but the title now stands. Waiting.

"Africa."

The dryer upstairs is whirring. The kitchen mess, from last night's pots and pans and this morning's assembly of school lunches, wait for me. Right now, I have a family to raise, neighbors to care for, students to teach and love.

But someday, when the kitchen stays clean and the mountain of laundry is just a small hill, I wonder if husband and I will find ourselves sitting in Kenya...across the table from Stakwell and his family laughing and breaking bread together.

I don't know what God plans for my tomorrows. But yesterday I feel like God gave me a little wink as He watched the Spirit in me connect with the Spirit in Stakwell.

This is the great adventure of following Christ.

There's more to come: We continue to shout our praise. Romans 5:3

Young Messenger

You'll need to do 3 things right now.

1. Turn my music off -- down and over to the right. Hit the pause button next to the arrows. Good.

2. Get a kleenex ready.

3. Push the "play" button.

"I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don't have any clean laundry, because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life?"

-author unknown

Thus the reason my 6'5 husband used a handtowel after his shower this morning. It's becoming more common and still, the man never complains.

Bird in the Living Room!

I got this bird decal awhile ago from one of my favorite stores on earth (McMaster and Storm). Kind of pricey, but the rest of the project was cheep (cheep).

$3 for this gold framed mirror behind the pillows.

$4 for a can of black spray paint and my own free labor...and Voila!

And They'll Know...

...We are Christians by our Love.

The problem is not a certain type of legislation or even a certain politician; the problem is the same that it has always been.
I am the problem. I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest...the thing I realized on the day we protested...was that it did me no good to protest America's responsibility in global poverty when I wasn't even giving money to my church, which has a terrific homeless ministry. I started feeling very much like a hypocrite.
Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

Lord, help me to look in the mirror everytime I feel the urge to judge. Amen.