I'm it!!

Hey Friends,I got tagged! I am being tagged by Pamela at http://pinkshoelady.blogspot.com/ She has a great blog with thought-provoking questions. Go see her you will be blessed.

Here are the rules:1) Link to the person who tagged you (see above)
2) Post the rules on your blog (this is what you are now reading)
3) Write 6 random things about yourself (see below)
4) Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them.
5) Let each person know they have been tagged and leave a comment on their blog. (quick go look)
6) Let the tagger know when your entry is up (Hi Pamela)

6 Random Things about me...
1. I love Diet Coke (even though I am totally aware of its inherent evils).
2. I completed an Olympic-distance triathlon while pregnant with my first son.
3. I was the athletic trainer for the football and wrestling teams for the 10 years I taught in the classroom.
4. I met my husband on the internet (in the days waaaaay before match.com).
5. My grandfather married us in a bilingual ceremony (I had to say all the vows in Spanish too!)
6. I have 11 sisters-in-law and 11 brothers-in-law.

I am tagging...
1. Amy at http://livingablessedlife.blogspot.com/
2. Lindsey at http://lindseykane.blogspot.com/
3. Amelia at http://ameliahadley.blogspot.com
Lee's already been tagged. Those are all the bloggers I know. Amy, you'll have to help me, since you know more bloggers than I do.

Prayer Request from Renee Swope's blog

This is a prayer request from a reader of Renee's blog (link to your lower right). Please pray as you feel led and may your heart be sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. I'd love to have you post your prayers here or on Renee's blog.

I want to seek your prayers for an opportunity I’ve been presented with to go to Israel with Tony Hooper. Tony is a former worship leader at Brownsville in Pensacola, FL. He is currently recording and gearing up to lead worship with Michael W. Smith for the upcoming Promise Keepers tour. He’s toured with many major acts in Christian music over the years and has a an absolutely on fire heart for Jesus.He and 9 others are going to stay at a ministry house on the Sea of Galilee in Tiberius. Each morning and evening will be spent in intercessory prayer and worship for the nation of Israel and for the upcoming U.S. elections. As musicians we will have a chance to spend some time with local musicians and worship leaders teaching and training them in their churches. As a team we will probably be leading worship in some Messianic churches.

The cost of the trip is going to be about $3000 depending on what it costs to get me to Atlanta. I don’t have $3000. I don’t have $30. That’s why I need your prayers. God has to bless this or I can’t go. I spent a great deal of time in prayer over this this morning and in tears I asked the Lord for help in making this happen. I’m extremely humbled by this. I’m not sure why this guy who has a great deal of friends and influence in places I could only imagine would invite me, a guy he hardly knows at all, to go on this trip with him. I can only think that the Lord is leading. Inside of 7 days I have to have a plane ticket paid for to secure my place. The Lord knows I will probably be the least talented in the group but I have a passion for Yeshua.

Thanks, Pastor Bob Headley
Director of Worship & Media Arts
Maranatha Assembly of God

Skylight Confessions

Skylight Confessions, by Alice Hoffman

I almost quit reading this book about a third of the way through. It's quirky, the main character is kind of flakey, and it's a fantasy-wrapped-up-in-reality type novel. I am not a fan of fantasy generally. However, as the book went on, the sadness, yet hopefulness, of the story itself grabbed me. Arlyn was such a dreamer and so into fate (or something) guiding her that I was having a hard time getting into it. But Meredith, although she believes in ghosts, was more grounded and she saved the novel for me. I don't personally believe in ghosts, but I did like the symbolism that Hoffman used to announce the presence of a ghost (broken dishes and soot). What had been burned was anybody's guess, but it seemed to me it was Arlyn's dreams, since she had her head in the clouds all the time, but didn't live long enough to see any of them come to fruition. I really disliked John - he was totally checked out of his family's lives and I just can't respect that.
They lived in a glass house (literally) and at first I thought that was totally hokey. But, I came to really appreciate what Hoffman was trying to say - a house can be made of glass, but the people living there, although obvious to neighbors, etc, can have no idea who each other is.
Hoffman has an unusual, but excellent, grasp of language and of sentence structure. Her writing style is unique, as is her voice. Subtle changes in both occurred as she focused on one character more than another, almost as if the narrator changed with a deeper look into one particular person or another.
If you read this, pay particular attention to Arlyn's hair color and her (then Blanca's) pearls. My heart broke for Arlyn's lost love - missed by hair, but then by her choice. That's another theme running through the novel - getting lost. It led to Arlyn and John finding each other, but their love was lost. Sam was lost from his mother's death forward. Blanca was lost her whole life, trying to fit in somewhere and never really knowing where that was. John - lost in his work and in himself and in so being lost, he lost his (first) family. Blanca may have found herself in Will, but the ending left us on a hopeful note, unsure of how the meeting of Blanca and Will might have gone. I usually like loose ends tied up in novels, but I actually liked how that meeting was left open. It provided hope that was (dare I say) lost throughout the rest of the novel.
Check out her website. www.alicehoffman.com. I haven't read anything else of hers, so I can't speak to them. Look at the "other writings" tab. I liked her essays and although I HATED Wuthering Heights when I read it in high school, she's almost convinced me to give it another go. I might actually fall in love with Heathcliff. The only other Heathcliff I've ever run across was Dr. Huxtable and I really liked him.
STARS: 3.5 out of 5
RATING: PG (affair alluded to, a few uses of the F-word [appropriate, in my opinion; that's how a ticked off teen would talk], drug use)

Pride and Insecurity and Enough already!

They sound like this is an oxymoron, not so much. They are different, but just by degrees. I don't think I have pride in any one trait or talent, just pride in "myselfness", that I am able on my own. It's hard to say "I'm sorry" and "You're right" and really mean it. I've tried to hide from God (note to reader: it doesn't work - don't bother). I've tried to hide my bad traits and habits from others (note to reader - it works for a while, but it's exhausting; I don't recommend it). I have issues with perfection - perfect kids, perfect house, perfect marriage, perfect faith, perfect class, perfect faith, etc... My insecurity sounds like, "If I'm not perfect you won't like me. Oh, you won't like me anyway."
However, I find that the more transparent I become to myself, the more I can admit my depravity to God. Not that He doesn't know, but He can do something with it when I admit it. Otherwise, it gets locked in a closet somewhere, covered with dust, and He can't do anything with something I won't let go of. He can only work in me when I MOVE ME ASIDE! Which I can't do on my own anyway - He has to do it for me. For the first time in my life, transparency doesn't scare me. Not that I want to live in a glass house (seriously, it would scare off the neighbors), but in glass flesh so that who GOD is, is visible in me. I respect and value transparency in others. Finding it in myself, sensing my own depravity and grasping the fact that only God can give me anything worth being prideful about, is powerful. As Paul says, "If I must boast, I only boast in the things that show my weakness" (2 Cor 11:30) because that's where God is seen. Being transparent about my mistakes, sin, depravity makes Him visible. I can't do anything worthwhile without Him. No legacy, no nothing, unless He is in control. Looking in the mirror and seeing my own ickiness makes it possible for Him to be glorified.
Are transparency and authenticity the same thing? Maybe I'm just afraid that my real self isn't what my trumped-up, opaque self claims to be. But my real self is the one God made and is the one He is molding. My opaque self is my own shellacked and white-washed creation and I am no artist compared to God. Isn't His museum-caliber masterpiece so much more than this thrown-together pale imitation?
Hard to live out, though, huh? I'm protected behind my whitewash. I look good to passersby and even to myself if I don't dig too deeply. I'm vulnerable and more than a little nervous with my bare soul hanging out.
I'm afraid of not measuring up (to whom?)
I'm afraid of not being in the cool group. Still.
I'm afraid I will scare people away.
I'm afraid of not being enough (who decides when it's "enough"?).

But God lets us come to Him empty-handed. There is no "enough". And it's a good thing, too, because we'd wear ourselves out trying to reach that ephemeral "enough". And the accounting would be a nightmare.

So why aren't I, empty-handed, enough?
The crazy thing is, I am. Not in a prideful way, although pride sure rears up his ugly head in the most dichotomous way. I'm enough and I'm not proud.
I need to let God balance that teeter-totter for me and not make myself dizzy and sick running back and forth between "pride" and "insecurity".

He is enough. Period.

Prayer Request

So as it says over to your right, I have been praying about starting a Gather and Grow group at my church. I am also reading the book, mentioned to your right as well, by Melanie Chitwood. God has been gently and then (as I say, Are you sure?) not-so-gently nudging my heart to start a study for women based on this book instead. I also feel God pushing me (almost literally) to contact Melanie about that. So, would you pray about that with me? Thanks.

No Sense of Direction

I have no sense of direction. I mean, NONE. I barely know which way is up; don't ask me where North is - I seriously have no idea. Even when the sun is setting, I can't find West. Seriously. My dad, on the other hand, could be dropped blindfolded into the middle of Omaha and find his way home. I, genes not withstanding, always park in the same spot at the grocery store so I don't lose my car.
I lived in the same house from the time I was nine months old until I left for college and I went to the same campus 7th-12th grades and I taught at that same high school for 5 years. I knew my way around the campus. I could tell you where any classroom was, the football field, the gym, the office, whatever. My directions to you would include words like "left", "right", "just past the...". Never "North" or "East". So one day in the middle of teaching the finer points of Biology to disinterested 16-year-olds, they were relieved to hear we were having a fire drill. Relieved is probably an understatement - perhaps estatic would better sum up their emotions. This was a drill as in practice, not as in fire alarm going off. This drill consisted of an automaton, oblivious to the entertainment needs of high school students, bullet-listing the places EACH teacher's class needed to report to once THEY WERE RELEASED, NOT RIGHT NOW. My class was to report to the goalpost at the North end of the football field. As was earlier mentioned, I could conduct a mistake-free tour of my campus. However, you can imagine my direction-impaired brain glitching at the mention of "North". Ah, I have an ace in the hole. Un-glitch. The interstate runs parallel to the football field. I know, because my father who has had to give me directions countless times (with a panicked phone call like "Dad, I'm at the corner of umm... Elm and umm... I think that says Patterson. I think I might be in Hemet. How do I get home?") told me that even interstates run East and West and odd interstates run North and South. This particular interstate is 8. Oh crap, that's an even interstate (let me check my math... yeah, evenly divisible by 2, dang, it's even) and that means there can't be a goalpost at the North end. Glitch. I am not a math teacher, but I do know parallel and across the cow pasture that surrounds our football field on three sides (yes, that makes us a peninsula in the middle of cow patties) is the interstate I have driven 3 million times. I know my house growing up is in East County and that I turned right to get on the freeway, so right must be East. Therefore, left, even I can figure out, is West. So how can my parallel-to-the-interstate football field have a goalpost at the North end?? Double-glitch.
All of this is running through my brain at a fevered pitch as I am trying to keep 10th graders from stampeding over me like so many elephants. They apparently know North, or at least Exit. I have to wonder, would I care where the North goalpost was if the building were really on fire? Wouldn't we all just trample over the top of each other without me first taking out my handy compass, everyone pausing politely for the teacher (as always) to determine which end of the football field was (I think haphazardly labeled) North, and following in a silent single file line to the chalked-off North end zone? But, I digress. This was just a drill - no actual flames were sighted during this broadcast. So, I did what I do in the case of my father not being home - follow someone who looks like they know where they're going. In this instance, the teacher across the hall. He has no classroom control, but he can tell North from his elbow, because he is not stopping to consult a map on his way out the door. I always thought classroom control trumped actual knowledge, but in this case, not so much. His sloths are meandering behind him in a quadruple-file wave. My little darlings know from single file, and are fortunately following me following him, who I hope does not turn to me to ask for directions to the football field. We make it to the field and back again (apparently my classroom is West of the football field - who knew?)

So I call my dad when I get home that night, confused and a little miffed, as I generally am when people in charge mess things up, wondering why the automaton referred to the North goalpost, when the (even, hence East-West) interstate runs parallel, for crying out loud, to the football field on the campus that I have been to every day for ELEVEN years (not in a row, but eleven years, nonetheless).
And my dad, in his patient, stifling-laughter, she's-lost-again voice, says after a long pause, "Didn't you ever notice the freeway turns about a half mile before the school and runs North-South for about 2 miles to get around the MOUNTAIN there?"
No, dad, sorry to say, I, in the billion times I have ridden in your car and driven in my own car on that stretch of freeway, have never noticed the 90 degree turn and the subsequent 2 miles of North-South driving, nor the next 90 degree turn to return my vehicle to the originally intended East-West route. The only thing I got from you, genetically, is my eye color and obviously no ability whatsoever to tell which direction those eyes are facing.

When the Ground Turns in its Sleep

When the Ground Turns in its Sleep, by Sylvia Sellers-Garcia
REVIEW: This is a first novel by this author and I loved it. It has excellent writing and a unique story. A young American man's immigrant father dies and the young man is compelled to visit his father's homeland of Guatamala to learn about his parents' past. Nitido is mistaken by the people of his father's village as the new priest and he stays on in this role, thinking that he might get more information out of the people this way. He is not Catholic and is for sure not trained as a priest, but he does it anyway. I loved how the author wove an earlier episode with plagiarism when Nitido was in college with his life of plagiarism in the little village. It was a theme that I've never read before, born out in a whole novel. I also really liked how the title was explained - how time colors your view of events and how your perspective changes as you get older and hopefully wiser. The ground appears to be a certain color in the morning, a different color at midday, and then a darker, richer color as night falls and "the ground turns in its sleep". A great analogy, I thought, for the novel as a whole, and for Nitido specifically as he learns about his parents' past and matures himself as the story progresses. There was also an interesting undertone of spiritual warfare in the little Guatemalan village that Nitido visited that was alluded to, but I would like to have seen it more fully developed. I also was a bit disappointed in how Nitido dealt with another death of a person close to him, since his father's death sent him on a journey, both geographically and emotionally. The second death seemed like a footnote and his character seemed like a person who would have responded in some way to it.
I am looking forward to more of Sellers-Garcia's work.
STARS: 4.5 out of 5
RATING: PG (no inappropriate language or relationships)
FAVORITE QUOTES: "It came as a complete surprise: the idea that silences in Rio Roto could arise not only from secrecy but also from doubt."
"The stones [of your past] cannot be left behind; they fill your pockets, their added weight affecting slightly the manner of each new step." [Sadly and clearly, not a Christian.]
"It's because she altered my thinking that I can't see where her ideas end and mine begin. I don't know how it's possible to distinguish one from the other. I don't know what purpose it would even serve, when so many of the things we think about came from somewhere else. From this perspective, it's impossible to avoid being a compilation of stolen words and ideas."
[See the plagiarism theme?!!?]

Prodigal Summer

Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver
REVIEW: This book is similar enough to The Loop that I had a hard time liking it. Since I pretty much hold every book I read up to the measuring stick that is Nicholas Evans, this one had to fall short. As a biology teacher and lover of science in general, I really appreciated the discussion of insects, in particular moths, and other fauna and flora in the Appalachian Mountains where this story took place. The love story was not nearly as compelling as the love story in The Loop, although similar in that an older woman was having a love affair with a much younger man. The rift between farmers and wildlife lovers was not as deep as in The Loop and therefore the conflict resolution was not surprising or all that interesting. I love Kingsolver's writing, but just not as much as Evans's. The story wasn't as well-woven and I felt that there was one really potentially interesting loose end that wasn't tied up and I think could have been in a clever twist. There were 3 main characters whose relationships with each other were unclear at the beginning and of course the point of the novel was to weave their histories together until you saw how they were all inter-related. That was done well with two of the characters, but not with the third. He turned out to be sort of a supporting cast member and another character began to overshadow him a little bit. That didn't seem to be all that well-thought out. I did like that cantankerous, cataract-inflicted old guy, though. I also didn't think Nannie was explained from two of the main characters' point of view very well. She was obviously loved deeply by Deanna and barely tolerated by Garnett, but I walked away not liking her very much, more influenced by Garnett's feelings toward her. I wasn't pulled by Deanna's thoughts and feelings as much, although her character was a loner, so perhaps that was intentional. I did enjoy the description of spring coming to the mountain/valley area where they all lived and the undertone of sexual/reproductive drive among the animals, plants, and ultimately Deanna and Eddie. I thought that was very well-written in the first few chapters. There was also this strange conflict between Garnett and Nannie regarding creation and evolution and I thought that was left in a muddle and perhaps the author isn't real clear herself. There is an undercurrent of Christianity, like maybe the author is at least familiar with Christianity, but it's just a barely recognizable undercurrent; it's certainly not a main tenet of any of the characters.
STARS: 3.5 out of 5
RATING: PG
FAVORITE QUOTE: "She hadn't given up her love for luna after that, but she'd never forgotten, either, how a mystery caught in the hand could lose its grace."

Kari

An important and painful milestone just passed in my life: the first anniversary of my friend Kari's and her daughter Keira's deaths. I could list all of Kari's wonderful accomplishments and traits. It would take a really long time and a long list of awards and adjectives somehow seems to diminish the person she truly was. Suffice it to say, she personified the best in "teacher", "friend", and "Christian". These labels can mean many things, but on her, they were exemplary. I was honored to work along side her as a professional and to live beside her, however truncated, as her friend. Her memorial service was painfully beautiful and while I sobbed through the whole thing, was one of the most worshipful events I have ever experienced. My heart still breaks for Matt as he deals with the loss of both his wife and daughter, pain I can't even begin to imagine, and, if I am honest, don't even want to contemplate. I can say her name and I can see her name in my phone (still!) without tearing up, but the tears are just behind a thin veil; not visible at first pass, but not all that hard to conjure up either. I'm not ignoring the promise that was the life of a nearly-two-year-old. My chest contracts at the thought - my own baby boy is only 4 months younger than Keira and that whole thing is way too close to home to delve into. I am grateful that neither she nor Kari appeared to suffer and I am comforted by the fact that I will see them both again one day. I still miss you, dear friend. Until we meet again...

These are the lyrics to a hauntingly beautiful song by Kenny Chesney.
Who You'd Be Today
Sunny days seem to hurt the most.
I wear the pain like a heavy coat.
I feel you everywhere I go.
I see your smile, I see your face.
I hear you laughing in the rain.
I still can't believe you're gone.
It ain't fair you died too young
Like a story that had just begun
But death tore the pages all away.
God knows how I miss you
All the hell that I've been through,
Just knowing no one could take your place

Sometimes I wonder who you'd be today.
Would you see the world, would you chase your dreams
Settle down with a family?
I wonder what would you name your babies.
Some days the sky's so blue
I feel like I can talk to you.
I know it might sound crazy.
It ain't fair you died too young
Like a story that had just begun
But death tore the pages all away.
God knows how I miss you.
All the hell that I've been through
Just knowing no one could take your place.
Sometimes I wonder who you'd be today.
Today, today, today
Today, today, today

Sunny days seem to hurt the most.
I wear the pain like a heavy coat.
The only thing that gives me hope
Is I know I'll see you again someday.

Someday, someday