GGG Unplugged: "Welcome To Our World"

Brought to you live via GGG Kitchen Cam, it's my first attempt at recording music to broadcast via the internet. You guys had better enjoy this while it's still free! I mean, seriously, when I'm packing out stadiums and stuff, you all will be able to remember back to when I was putting music out there for free... Oh, wait... it's not my song... Crap! Can't charge for it! haha... Oh well. Wishful thinking I suppose.

Yes, I know part of my head is cut off and the audio lacks much to be desired, but if any of you would like to contribute to the "Launch GGG's In-Home Musical Studio" fund, you just let me know and I'll tell you to whom to make out your check! Until I at least get a tripod, this is the best I got.

I'd like to do these a lot more often; I don't know why it never occurred to me before to do a musical post. So many writers, such as the featured Chris Rice, pinpoint exactly the thoughts going through my head and the prayers whispered in my heart. So hopefully, when I don't have the time to knock out some "amazing" verbage, I will remember to do one of these.

Why this song? Well, for many reasons. Advent is a time of preparation. We prepare our homes to offer hospitality to friends and family. We prepare gifts as gestures of our love toward others. Spiritually, we prepare our hearts by considering the Christmas story and its significance. We intentionally mull over the connection between the manger and the cross. We prepare the world for Christ's return by feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, and giving more generously than we have given over the past year, expecting nothing in return.

This song reminds us why we need Messiah to fill that manger. Our souls hunger, our world reels and aches with toil and strife. We wade through life, wondering when we may welcome Jesus back into our world once again. Really, we welcome Him back into our world every day as we wake up to face the day and all that will transpire. He is truly with us, watching over in times of peril and rejoicing in times of mirth. May our lives be lived as songs of praise, welcoming Jesus to our world anew every day.

Holiday Hope

"There is a past which is gone forever, but there is a future which is still our own." -- F.W. Robertson

I just have to take a moment to gloat a little. Today is my rockin'-est day of December yet. Got kids off to school this morning, had my hot coffee in hand. We woke up to a day that was already 30 degrees colder than predicted. Seriously, I think our high temperature yesterday was 79 or 80 degrees! Who needs Hawai'i for Christmas when you could take a gamble on Texas?!? At any rate, I got home, put on all my uber-cold weather gear, wrapped my pipes, pulled all of the old, mostly dead plants out of my garden and built a fire in the fireplace. Even as I sit here with my steaming cup of homemade apple cider, I can hear the crackle of the dry pecan wood over the Amy Grant Christmas CD playing. The high temperature for the day was 39 degrees, around 0730 this morning. Temperatures have been dropping slightly all morning, and you can just tell that the thick, grey clouds overhead are pregnant with moisture. What I wouldn't give for some snow!

Speaking of which, this winter storm charging across the midwest reminds me of our first Christmas at FT Riley, Kansas. This Texas felt as if surely Christ were hovering above the horizon, threatening to return -- it was just ungodly cold and snowy for what seemed like years (really just four solid months -- but still!).

I digress. Christmas cards got sent last week. Three out of four PLMA papers have been typed, proofread, and submitted as of today, the original deadline. I've got chili simmering in the crockpot, and I just finished making cookie dough so that the kids can help me bake and decorate our cheap economical Christmas gifts for teachers. I've got all but one last Christmas gift bought and paid for, but I still have wrapping left to do.

Either way, I'm unusually chipper for this time of year. What's up, GGG? Did you put a little Captain Morgan's in that "apple" cider? This just isn't like you! No duh -- I've even surprised myself! Hahaha...

I've actually been mulling over this post now since 10 DEC. I was in the kitchen over at the sink, and looked up long enough to read the quote on my "Home Sweet Home In Family, In Nation, In God" calendar. The quote I fell upon, posted up above, really struck a chord with me, and I wanted to pay that forward to you, The Readership.

We won't even get into all of the problems in the world. I started a short list in my last post that couldn't even cover the tip of the iceberg. When I read this quote, however, I didn't think about anyone else's problems. I selfishly thought of my own. Of course, my thoughts naturally jumped right to losing T. As anyone who specifically loses a spouse, you grieve not just the loss of your mate, and hopefully best friend as was my case, but you also grieve the loss of your future together -- you grieve raising your children together, rediscovering your romance once the nest is empty, seeing each other through health scares and taking care of each other as you prepare to look Homeward. You grieve the loss of children you will never give birth to. For me, I also grieved the loss of the military lifestyle and watching my husband work diligently to earn rank and change jobs and grow as a father. You grieve the loss of being grandparents together. Am I making my point? There are just so many things you can't even think of until you're a little down the road and they smack like big juicy bugs on the windshield of your life. Then you just look at it, crestfallen, and think, "Crap." I'm sure that people who lose children grieve the loss of seeing them grow up, find careers, fall in love and marry, and watching them blossom into the adults you always prayed they would be. I cannot know for sure since that has not been a part of my life. Either way, memories are bittersweet and can cause as much anguish as they do laughter and nostalgic smiles. All you have is the past -- you no longer have a future with this person.

Then my thoughts jumped to my extended family situation. Maybe many of you have been in this position. My grandparents are having issues associated with growing older and reaching a different, difficult stage in life that affects everyone who knows and loves them. There is a lot of musing about how quickly things have changed, how things used to be, and what on earth the future will look like. The grief process has likely begun for some in my family who live far away and see the changes more starkly because they cannot be around to see the gradual progression of life. For them, I think an entire chapter is over and another begun, not necessarily one that is pleasant but rather is part of the natural course of human life. For those of us who live locally, we see the pages turning one or two at a time, but to others who live further away it might seem like reading the first few pages of the chapter and then skipping fifty pages to the next chapter. For all of us, it makes us realize how blessed our past has been with these two precious people and how we long to return to those days when we were all younger, vital, and thriving. But the fact remains that we can't regress to the past.

No matter if you grieve the loss of a loved one, if you have lost your job, if you have fallen out of love with your spouse or you are awaiting news from the doctor regarding your health, there is a past which we all might look back on and realize that it slipped right by us. This can be oppressive at the holidays. No wonder suicide statistics are higher at this time of year. We all need to allow ourselves to take time -- time for rest, time to eat well, time to reflect and pray, time to cry or be angry. These are things that are necessary, not only to keep us sane, but even to keep our bodies healthy. However, it's easy to get stuck there and bog down. We've got to allow ourselves that time of addressing our burdens, a time of healing, and a time of moving forward.

C'mon, GGG, what about Jeremiah 29:11? Don't you know that's the perfect verse here?? Yeah, whatever. That verse used to give me fits. "Oh, really? God has a future and a hope for me? Mmm, yeah, he's got a jacked up way of showing that." As terrible as that sounds, I needed to get to that dark place, the bottom of the pit of despair before I could not look any lower -- I could only look Upward. Only then could I really appreciate how God could act in my life and come to treasure Jeremiah 29:11.

As I wallowed in my muck for a little while, I recalled something I had heard Thelma Wells of Women of Faith fame talk about at an old conference. She gave a personal testimony about a long string of hardships she and her family had endured through the years, and she turned it around with Lamentations 3:22-23:

"22Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. 23 They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness." (NKJV)

Or better yet, read how The Message paraphrases vv. 22-24:

"God's loyal love couldn't have run out, his merciful love couldn't have dried up. They're created new every morning. How great your faithfulness! I'm sticking with God (I say it over and over). He's all I've got left."

After I claimed that as a promise, then Jeremiah 29:11 was less of a bitter pill to swallow. There was, indeed, a future ahead of me, a future I could pursue and take hold of, own for myself. If I already knew God to be consistent and faithful, why would he not uphold this promise, too? I had to come to terms with the fact that the future and hope I had originally envisioned was gone, but that didn't mean that there was not another, completely different, completely wonderful future ahead of me.

The past is just that, and we can't live there. We can dust it off and revisit it, but there is a future ahead of us. It may not look like we planned, but there is a tomorrow. That future waits for us to get up, get moving, and claim it with God's help. That is my Christmas gift to you -- to encourage you to move forward, one small step at a time.

Quick Reflection

"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." -- II Corinthians 4:18

This is the Bible verse on my desk calendar for November 30. This is a date that is etched on my heart forever. For me, it is my 9/11. That is T.'s birthdate into heaven. Really, I struggle with that day and the day before, which is when he had the accident on the motorcycle, but that's a completely different blog. This verse really captures my view of what happened that day in the surgical ICU in LSU Medical Center in Shreveport, Louisiana, and it's something I need to remind myself of more often.

I didn't blog anything on November 30, not because I was avoiding it or dreading it or planning some uber-emotional tribute. We were out at the cemetery laying a wreath that day, with the cold, damp late fall wind whipping our hair around, musing about how long it had been, how fast the time has gone and yet how it has seemed to go so slowly at the same time. I'm learning that, as Heath Ledger's widow has lamented, the longer T. is gone, the more I miss him. Strangely enough, it hasn't kept me from embarking on a deep, sweet love with R., which is God's working in and of itself. In fact, when R. showed up for the holidays, I could just feel every muscle in my body relax and my blood pressure go down. It was so comforting to see the continuity in my life that he brings and how he allows me to both go on loving T. but yet move forward with my life with him. As stressed out and emotional as I get, I know that all my complexities can be exhausting, but he loves me through it and comes back for more.

But back to Shreveport, 2005. I didn't have the extensive mental Scripture file that some of my friends have, but I knew this verse. I couldn't have told you the book, chapter, or verse, but I understood this truth in my heart. When I realized that T. was gone, not breathing, not going to open his eyes any more, not going to sit up and complain about having to eat spaghetti one more time, or fight back to good health, my thinking had to shift immediately from temporal to eternal. To consider the temporal without T. was to want to reach into his chest and pump his heart with my own bare hands to make it work again. I could not dwell on this because I would have begged for death myself. Instead, I know that God had already planted the seed of eternity in my heart -- I instantly had to look beyond where I was, standing over the body that no longer contained the soul and let him go. I actually had to tell him this, that he needed to go. In looking back, he was already gone and I would realize this when piecing together details after my brain was functioning somewhat normally later on. But for me, I had to put him into that eternal context to keep from caving in on myself.

Flashing forward to Advent 2008, I reconnected with a college buddy last night on FaceBook who had not heard of T.'s passing, and it obviously came as a real shock to him. I remember telling my friend Marily about this last year, and she was completely speechless as well. And even just last week, HisGirl was watching Super Nanny and was just floored by the episode involving a widow with a two year-old and a five month-old, which is almost exactly the ages Li'l G and Bud were when T. died. It was a real eye opener for her on what our reality is like, especially with such little ones in the picture. What's amazing to me is that I have come through any of this, and now this feels normal, if such a bland, descriptionless word could ever be used in this context. I have no idea how I have made it this long, and still have no idea how any single day in the future will transpire. All I know is this: having an eternal perspective has everything to do with it.

Consider this: Our economy is as fragile as a glass Christmas ornament. Terrorism is a constant threat. People die every day in tragic ways, and more still are diagnosed with terminal illnesses. Millions of people in our own country sleep under blankets of cardboard in sub-freezing temperatures. Children starve and are abused. In my own life, I have certain ideas on how I'd like things to play out, but there are no guarantees. To live with our focus on the temporal is overwhelming, at least to me. Even the wonderful glimpses we get of beauty and love are not enough to get me by. To live with an eye on the eternal is where I draw my strength and my hope. It helps me to get past all of the pain and hurt in the world, in my own life, and to keep walking toward the One I know to be faithful, the One constant in a world filled with variables. "How do I know this?" I have been asked countless times. To be honest, you can read your Bible or not; I don't really care about that. All I can say is that God has been there for me, revealed to me in real and tangible ways that honestly speaks louder to me than Scripture. Hang me up to dry if you want. I read my Bible as often as I can and revel in its words, but there is absolutely nothing like experiencing, really experiencing, the peace which passeth all understanding in real life. There is nothing like knowing that the same God which brought his people out of Egypt and cared for them in the wilderness for 40 years is caring for me in the midst of my wilderness. There is nothing like knowing that the same God who bodily resurrected my Jesus has my sweet T. in his care right now and has made him whole, healed his broken heart and body, and is guiding the kids and me all at the same time. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've not read any passage of Scripture that says he will take away our pain if we just pray or come to him. What God does promise is that he will never leave or forsake us. He is there if we keep our eyes on the eternal and don't let the temporal distract us.

As I prepare in my home and in my heart for the birth of Jesus, I think of Him in a tempral perspective, and it brings a lump to my throat. This precious, soft, sweet child is our sacrificial Lamb. Those tiny little fingers and toes will end up bearing Jesus' physical weight and the spiritual weight of our sins on the cross someday. How sad! How tragic! But in an eternal perspective, it inspires awe. This baby boy, through the love and nurture of his earthly parents, grows up and maintains His obedience to the Father. The story begins with the stirrings in the womb, continues through the labor pains, infancy, toddlerhood, life as the son of a carpenter, radical ministry that ends with His death on the cross, and is still continuing at the right hand of the Father. Why wouldn't we want to focus on the eternal in this picture?

This may sound crazy and hair-brained, and I'll give you that, but it has everything to do with how I understand my world, how my perspective has changed and continues to do so. I have got my eyes fixed like a laser past the end of my temporal existence to one that is eternal. It gives me hope and strength to march on with purpose in situations where I cannot comprehend uncertainty, grief, suffering, or even evil in the world. And even as I try my hardest to speak light and life and live what I believe, I still pray constantly, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!"

May that also be our prayer as we journey toward Christmas and, ultimately, Resurrection Day!

Christmas Thoughts

I've got so many things on my plate right now this minute that I shouldn't even be posting, but this song has really touched my heart this season.

I promise to be up and posting soon... Enjoy this song -- it really speaks my heart...

The Week(s) In Review

"A cheerful heart is a good medicine." -- Proverbs 17:22

I just realized today, as I was catching up on all of my Bloglines feeds, that I have been relatively "offline" for almost two weeks now. It seems like a lot longer than that! Not only have I not posted in that long, I also have read very few posts of others. My apologies for being such a slacker!

If your house is anything like mine right now, it's a real mixture of excitement and exhaustion, long grocery lists, recitals, exponential amounts of laundry and cleaning to do, and a potentially sick child as of bedtime tonight. In the midst of this, I'm trying to keep my chin up and soldier on, but my knees are already starting to feel a little weak. Between PMSing this week and celebrating T's third birthday in heaven, I know that God is going to have his hands full listening to my prayers for the next week or so!

In light of all that has gone on in the last two weeks, and all that will undoubtedly transpire over the next one, I thought I'd take this point by point and try to find God's fingerprint in all this mess...

Recitals: Li'l G has had two of these in the last ten days, one of which went for about two hours and ended around 8:30 P.M. on a school night. Ugh!! The one today was so, well, weird. Let me just say that the recital itself went well and was thankfully only 20 minutes long. But when we were warming up and rehearsing her "piece," her debut of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," she just mentally shut down. Couldn't even remember the song. Partly she was distracted by Bud watching "Pinky Dinky Doo" in the background, but I suspect now that she wasn't feeling very well. It really made me panic -- she was about to perform this song by herself and she couldn't remember even half of the song that she's practiced almost flawlessly since August! Somehow she pulled it off and did a really good job, but you could tell by looking at her face during the recital something just wasn't right. Then she tossed her cookies tonight after dinner. GREAT! TMI, I know, but I'm a mom so I have no qualms discussing childhood ailments. Now I feel like a total dragon mom for hounding my kid to get out there and do her best when all she probably wanted to do was lay down and croak because she had a low grade fever and wanted to sleep. Where is God in this? In the sweet little face of my beautiful baby girl. She is such a fighter and wants desperately for me to be proud of her. One more recital after Thanksgiving and then we get a month-long break, thank God!

Parish Lay Ministry Academy: I attended my last class session last weekend, and literally wanted to throw a tantrum and refuse to leave when the day was over! This two-year program has been such an amazing experience; it has literally changed my life. I can honestly say that, while I'm so incredibly grateful for this experience, it's made my life extremely difficult in many ways. First of all, there is the time when you have to complete reading assignments, papers, and projects. The kids have certainly watched their fair share of movies or played unsupervised in the backyard (gated and locked, though -- I promise!), and many family members have come through to hang out with them as I spend full-length days in class. Even though these have been serious sacrifices for me, the real difficulties have been internal. While I have had to read some borderline-heretical material, God gave me a clear understanding of what was false teaching and what wasn't and why that was so. I have had to excavate some serious familial demons, assess my own spiritual understandings, and measure that up against society's yardstick. The real problem I'm having is that I have come to some stark, clear understandings about myself and how I believe based on things I have learned. In and of itself, this is not the problem; rather, the problem is how to interact in the world, quite honestly. There are certain perspectives out there, popular and seemingly Biblically based, that I just cannot endorse anymore. Combine my strong conviction with my personality and that should pretty much explain my conundrum in a nutshell. I've also come to the conclusion that I need to pursue seminary. Every possible avenue I've looked into has turned into a dead-end so far, so I'm taking at least the first half of next year to digest what I've learned, get back into shape, volunteer at Li'l G's school, and see what unfolds. I want to savor this time of my children being young and still wanting to be around me. I just have this nagging feeling that my days are numbered the way they stand right now, and I want to enjoy each of those days and cherish them. Where is God in all this? Oh man, he's ALL up in my grill. I feel like Martin Luther walking through that field dodging lightning bolts. The problem is, I'm still unclear on where any of this is leading. So I'm putting the ball back in God's court. And waiting. Again...

Church stuff: Good.grief. You can't even BEGIN to know how much stress this has brought to my life over the last couple of months, much less the last two weeks. Some days I don't know whether to thank God that he put me in the position where I am or to curse the day I decided I needed to be involved. I can say this: I'm learning a LOT about people, both in general and specific ones. In my church in particular, I'm having such a weird experience. To my knowledge, I think I'm the first charter member child who has ended up serving on our church council, which is kinda cool, but is also very eye-opening. I have even asked my praise band cohorts, "Have things always been this way?!? If so, was I just blind to it because I was a kid and didn't notice?!?" Where is God in this big, hairy tangle? Good question! No, seriously, I know he's there. This whole season at my church is like a fire that was raging hot and engulfed with flames at one point and has now been reduced to a pile of ashes. If you poke around in the thick mound of ashes, you will still find a handful of red, glowing embers, and given the right conditions, that fire can be ignited again. Because I'm an emotional person to whom it comes more naturally to react and take things personally, I get all wound around the axle about the drama going on and even want to wash my hands of the whole thing sometimes, but I'm really learning that a handful of people respect my opinions, so I try to be clear and deliberate about what I say. I'm also learning the power of saying nothing. (I know, I know, stop the presses! haha!!) But as I have learned from Exodus 14:14, the battle does not belong to me; however, I am really trying hard to discern what role God would have me take in the next steps we take as a congregation. It's definitely a labor of love for me.

Thanksgiving/Gathering With Family: Who else's Thanksgiving gathering this week will put the "fun" back in "dysfunctional"?!? There is so much strife floating around in my family that at one point today I was actually having chest pains. Once again I was asking, "Have things always been this way?!? Or was I just too young to have noticed that the adults aren't playing nicely together?!?" R. is coming this year and will help us with some of the food prep. I always love schlepping him around with me at these kinds of things. His perspective is unbiased and fresh when it comes to assessing the social atmosphere at these gatherings, and I really appreciate his insights. To be honest with you, I'm desperate for this to be a relaxed, joyous occasion. I want the food to be scrumptious, the weather to be chilly, the home in which we're gathering to be cozy, and the laughter to be contagious. What I absolutely, down-to-my-core cannot handle is eyes rolling, back-biting conversations in hallways and corners, or just crankiness in general. With the third anniversary of T's accident and death just two days later, I am striving with all my might to reclaim Thanksgiving as the happy, comforting gathering that it was when I was a kid, both for my children and for my own sanity. Family drama needs to take a vacation, for crying out loud. Where, oh where is God in this picture? Going straight up my spine and into my heart, keeping me upright with a smile on my face to get me through this holiday. I'm counting on it 200%.

Advent/Christmas: It's been hard for me to have the emotional energy left for this holiday over the last couple of years, and for longer than that I've been so righteously pissed at what our society has made of this holiday. However, this year I have decided to take this holiday captive, too. I'm going as overboard as I can possibly go and still have a dollar left to my name. I'm trying to participate in as many opportunities to provide gifts or support as I can. I am trying to make the house festive and exciting for the kids. I'm trying to wrap my heart around the miracle of Jesus' birth, who He truly is, and how to apply this in my life. I want the kids to have a magical, memorable holiday, while also seeing that not everyone has warm, soft PJs and toys. I want them to be able to connect the soft, sweet baby in the manger to the grown man on the cross at some point. Advent is a season of preparation, sometimes somber anticipation, but always a time of remembrance that God is faithful and fulfills his promises, including his promise to send the Messiah because of his love for us, even when we don't always love him back.

To be honest with you, I haven't been very cheerful lately, which is why I chose the opening verse. And in catching up on some of my blogs, I can tell I'm not the only one. It's a hard time of year for more people than we realize. Case in point, my cousin's sister was just taken off life support recently and died. She had sustained a Christopher Reeve-type injury earlier in the year. It caught us all by surprise. Then a woman in the local community died from a stroke quite suddenly. She had taught music and been involved in a jillion things for over 60 years, and even played piano at my church when I was growing up. Last but not least, Li'l G reported to me on Friday that one of her friends' father was sent to jail last week. This little boy is just adorable but can be a behavior problem. I've written about him before; for some reason, he just touches my heart. Now he gets to go through the holidays with this burden. At the age of five. My heart just aches for all of these families for whom Thanksgiving will feel like a hollow experience -- been there, done that. Yet I know that "there are still good times to be had," just as Shelby told Miss Clairie in "Steel Magnolias." If we really look, get down on our hands and knees sometimes and scrutinize, we can see God at work in all these situations. When I can identify that, it makes it easier for me to find hope, to see even one positive thing, and that uplifts my heart more than kind words or inspiring songs. That, indeed, is good medicine.

My Heroes

"Blessed by the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle -- my lovingkindness and my fortress, my high tower and my deliverer, my shield and the One in whom I take refuge..." -- Psalm 144:1-2a

This is by no means a complete grouping of the men and women serving our country who have touched my life. Two in particular I can think of but couldn't find pictures of are CPT Julie and CPT M. Stubenhofer. CPT Julie is a sweet friend of mine who is a nurse in the Army, and CPT Stubenhofer was the first person I knew personally who died in action. His wife is an amazing woman that I am proud to call my friend. One more is my father-in-law, R.T., who served twice during Vietnam.

To all of you serving now or who have served in the past, you will never know just how much what you're doing means to not just your own country, but to the rest of the world. Your selfless service and sacrifices are truly humbling. To your families, we stand with you, the ones who serve on the homefront.

My Heroes

Thank you all for being my heroes. Happy Veteran's Day.

Samplings From My Mental Smorgasbord

I have had six or seven different blogs percolating in my mind over the last week or two and have yet to blog about any of them. In fact, I should be loading my sleeping toddler into the car right now this minute to go pick up my daughter from school, but if I don't jot down a couple of ideas before I leave, I'm afraid I may never find them again! Rather than taking the time to blog about each item in full length, I'll give you all the Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) about each topic over which I've been mulling:

Politics: Christine over at Red Lipstick Diaries has been waiting anxiously for me to post something meaty post-election. And while I have strong opinions and could do just that, I have kept true to my word and not blogged about something for which I had no edifying language to publish. Now that the dust has settled and the Obamas have had their first meeting with the Bushes, here's what I have to say:

Just as Christine herself said on Facebook, it's time to be the united states and time to cease being either the red or blue states. An administration can only be successful if every single person is doing their part. So we deal with the next four years shoulder to shoulder with every other American, regardless of their voting preference. If we want to be perceived as a strong, vital nation, we have to actually be one. That will be harder for some (read: me) than others, but I truly believe that's what has to happen.

Religion: See posted picture above. Really, my religion and politics opinions could all go in one big section. In both areas, it's impractical to be a purist in whichever school of thought you fall under. Contrary to popular belief, extremism is a frightening concept to me. I think there are ways in both these areas to focus on the things that we have in common and emphasize on those, rather than spend our time having conversations where no one is truly being heard. There are certain areas where people are going to disagree, and it doesn't necessarily mean that either side is not truly Christian. Just means they're different. For example, what I'm reading right now for Lay Ministry about leading worship really brings this into light for planning worship services. I'd love to explain all of the amazing things I'm learning, but I'm afraid there would be an explosion of grey matter all over the computer screen. Just too much to boil it all down.

Role of Women in the Church: I'm writing a paper about this and must admit I approached this topic with an anti-Paul sway based on what I, at the time, believed to be godly teaching. I think, if I could boil this one down to a statement, is that Jesus personally commanded each one of us to love one another. I believe that where we started having "issues" or "problems" is where our sinful human element took over and started trying to figure things out or get things organized. Do we as humans need structure and organization? Basically, yes. Do groups get priority in the pecking order? Eventually. Did God intend this? Well, dear Readers, I believe my answer to that is now no. (Ducks for cover before the tomatoes pop me upside the head...) Honestly, I really don't know that we can say for sure. I can already hear arguments on both sides and see validity to them both. I don't see this question ever being answered to anyone's satisfaction this side of Paradise, guys.

Obama's Pre-Presidential Activities: Barack and Michelle met with George and Laura this morning at Quarters 1 to kinda "get the inside scoop." Apparently the women went off to do things like talk about how irritating it is when the guys drink beer, scratch themselves, fart, and watch football or something, whilst the menfolk had a history-making hoedown in the Oval Office. Seriously, folks, do you KNOW how many eggs I would've sold to have been a fly on THAT wall! No media were allowed to follow into the OO, and no aides were on hand, either. The words that were exchanged in that room are known only to them and to God. I can't even know whether to faint from terror or to faint from excitement.

One last point before I leave the topic of politics but under the "Obama" tag. I read an AP story and heard repeated on the news that the "Obama team" is reviewing the record of Bush's executive orders. According to the AP, one of the first things our President-Elect wants to do is reverse every one of Bush's EOs to try and undo all of the legislative marks GW has left on America. All I can say is: America, hold onto yer butts. It's gonna be an interesting ride...

Parenting: Having some significant issues these days with Bud. Not end-of-the-world, kicking-him-out-of-school issues, but ones that I just don't know how to handle. I feel completely inept to handle this, and I realize that parenting is mainly learn as you go kind of stuff and trusting God to give you guidance along the way. The BLUF here is that I see in Bud many of my characteristics. Many of my not-s0-good characteristics. I know which road they led me down at one point, and it grieves my spirit to think of that being in his future. I'm fervently praying that God will help his teachers and me to flip a switch in that little round head of his before he grows up to be an out of control teenager in a mean, viscious world. Or at least let me be dead before he ruins his life. (Just a joke, guys.) :)

Grief/Loss/That Whole Drama: Things have really been piling up here. I think, in particular, needing T. around to help me parent a son has been weighing heavily on me. To make it worse, I have had dreams so vivid I can still feel the softness of his lips or hear his mellow voice as I wake in the morning, and my reality comes crashing back down on me like an Acme anvil. With R. being there for me emotionally but not around physically to spend time with me or just take care of me, let me curl up in the crook of his strong shoulder and just weep, I have felt as though I would burst. 11/30 is just under three weeks away, and I'm already dreading it. Funny, it affects me differently every year. While the happiness and love in my relationship with R. is proof-positive that things in my life are moving on in a promising direction, the struggles of being a single parent, and how I became a single parent, really rain on that parade. I've read and re-read scripture about this, and it's not that I don't take comfort in that. It's just that scripture and God don't replace my loss. Plain and simple. Some days I just need to be sad without religion and salvation getting mixed in. While memories bring joy somedays, they feel like Chinese water torture on other days. November's just a hard month.

Looking for something positive? Well, that depends on your description of that. I've been accused of being a chronically negative person. OK. What's yer point?!? No really, I just have a very different way of seeing things. I see beauty in suffering, growth in change and painful times, and realize I must give my children up each day to God. I can't swing from the rafters with a smile on my face like some people. My way of being positive is to continue walking in the soupy fog, knowing that God will always provide a path for me to go down. And that's really enough for me.