Our staff is currently going through a new ministry we’ve created called Step 2. It goes through the “basics” of having a walk with God, such as learning to find our identity in Christ, learning God’s character, learning to spend time with God through prayer and reading the bible, understanding intimacy with Him, the importance of community, etc. I highly recommend it if you have a chance to go through it – it’s only 8 weeks long and it is great for anyone with any kind of relationship with God.
And as I was saying, our staff is going through it right now. We just finished Week 2, which discusses trusting God. One of the questions at the end asked, “Where do you have trouble trusting God?”
I thought about this. I thought about moving to Wilmington 5 years ago and how scary it was. But I did trust God enough to do it. And I thought about the decision to date Mike and then marry him. I think that was only possible by trusting God, since I had no clue what I was doing. Really, I thought, big things in my life have made trusting God the only option.
And then another thought crept in. Followed by a whole swarm of related thoughts. A couch bought that would not fit into our home for anything last week. Having to pick out another couch from the same store, only to find out that it would not arrive at our home in time for family coming into town to utilize the bed incorporated into said couch. Which also leaves us going for 12 days with no couch to sit on. Traveling 4 hours to buy furniture, and then finding upon our return that one of the pieces was not the right color. Redecorating and having to find new homes for every object we possess. And then, the kicker… returning to a home for the past week that went from this:
to this*:
(*The room did not ACTUALLY flip-flop; I took this photo with my computer so it is the mirror image of the room. Which does, in fact, accurately reflect the feeling that our home has been turned inside out and upside down in the process of changing things up.)
Do you know how this has made me? CRAZY!
Okay, I have to admit… this picture is deceptive. It gives you the impression that oh, these things probably are making her nutty, but she realizes that it’s actually quite silly.
Lies. Ask my friends. I’ve been ranting about it, dwelling on it, griping at Mike about it. An accurate picture would be me with an evil look on my face, ripping my hair out or in the process of throwing things. Breakable things.
And in my Step 2 group, I realized I’ve let this get to me more than any big decision. I don’t like when the little things in my life are out of place. What will I learn from an oversized couch? From 12 days with nothing to sit on? From a mismatched piece of furniture?
Upon pondering this, I realized that I have 2 choices: 1) Rant about it and freak out; get angry and irritable until everything is set right and then next time be MORE diligent in getting measurements and ripping open boxes to ensure that the product is exactly as I wanted it, or 2) Allow myself to grow in gratitude, and chill out realizing that it’s NOT THAT BIG A DEAL and there are many other things that deserve way more attention than this.
I’ve started with choice 1. Not trusting God enough to believe that this is okay, that it will be okay, and perhaps that He is simply trying to develop my character by providing circumstances in which I have the choice to let things go rather than cling to the control I’m convinced I have over the little things in life.
Taking a lesson from Step 2 and allowing myself to trust God would be choice 2, and the one I need to choose for the sake of my character, my sanity, and my husband and friends for that matter. Trusting that perhaps this is revealing my desperation for control so that I might be able to change my attitude. And let go. And realize that we found a couch that I think I might like better that will be here soon. And laugh at the college feel of our living room with the beach chairs in the prominent seating location in front of the TV. And stop worrying about the clutter, which is looking 10 times better now that my incredible husband has tackled a lot of it. And therefore stop criticizing my husband for what’s not been done and start letting him know how much I appreciate his hard work in putting together our furniture and cleaning our entire home beforehand – without me asking. (Baby, you don’t know how much that meant to me!)
Yeah… it’s harder to trust God when it comes to control, and the little things. But it’s funny how much more I could chill out and be a nicer person if I did. So, I’ll try choice 2. And trust God.
Mike and the breakable objects in my home will hopefully be able to stop backing away in fear whenever I walk by!
Mike and I like to detox when we get home from vacation. Last week, we went to Myrtle Beach. When we came back, we did what each of us always does upon return.
Here’s Mike:
Aaaand… here’s me:
Completely opposite! And I’m definitely, definitely attracted to him.
Man oh man, it’s been silent around here way too long! I see dust bunnies collecting in the corners of my blog from lack of life around here lately. It’s time to sweep away the silence! And what better time to do that than at a time in which I have other work to do and must therefore put it aside for just 5 minutes more?
So, because I DO have work to do, and I can’t hang out here too long, here are the quick updates on what’s been happening lately:
- Mike and I started the process of looking for a two-bedroom apt, in hopes of relocating to a place near Mike’s brother, which would mean we’d be 2 miles from church and 2 miles from the beach, and able to have guests in a Spare Oom. *ahem*, I mean, spare room.
- I redecorated my desk at work. Made it a bit more cozy, minus the fact that the frames have none of my pictures in them. However, the pictures that come in the frames – you know, the ones that show you what great pictures can be held if you buy them – are still in place. There is a lady in one of the frame spots holding up a little girl, about 2 yrs old, which naturally encourages co-worker inquiries of “so, is she YOURS?” Very original, everyone.
- We had a yard sale with my family in Charlotte, and encountered many yard sale “professionals”. Who were not very much fun to encounter at all. Really, it’s just not kind of you to walk up to us and tell us our old treasures are junk. And who has the nerve to pick up a $40 pair of shorts, tags still on them from never being worn, and tell us they won’t pay more than $2 for it? Lucky for those folks we were more intent on getting rid of stuff than getting money for it. Or maybe that’s lucky for us, because I don’t think people go to yard sales intent on spending any more than $10 for what might be $100 worth of stuff. The lesson from this experience is that I don’t think I have what it takes to be a yard-saler!
- I turned 23. I felt a little older, save for the fact that I acted like a 5 yr old the morning of my birthday, in the bad way, fighting with Mike over something stupid. And he, despite it all, was so great. Got me a new video camera for my birthday! And threw me a surprise party! My husband is pretty much amazing to me.
- We went to the lake with Mike’s family! I got to try out our set of water skis while we were there. They worked great, and were so fun. And camping with the Paschals was a glorious time of rest, relaxation, slight sun burn, and great food. Oh, and iPhones. For those who must maintain connection with the rest of the connected world, you know.
- We decided not to get the two-bedroom apt, and are now going to try to “completely” redecorate our own apartment. Which means new couch and switching furniture from one room to another, plus a trip to Ikea! I love edifying change more than absolute change. Hurray for new furniture and rearranging rooms!
That’s all I can think of for now. Hopefully, I haven’t overlooked any important events. Have a great day, everyone.
If you read this blog, please go to this website every day until May 20th… check out Joey Connolley’s video and PLEASE vote for him! He is one of our incredible interns at church who has a passion and a gift for film. He wants to go to NYU but really needs this scholarship to make it! If you go to the site and vote for him, you’ll be helping him get closer to the goal! He has made it to the finalists and now whoever has the most votes will win.
Please go vote for him, and remember to continue doing so! Click the link below to see his video and please vote for him! Tell your family and friends to go vote as well… you will be helping an awesome kid receive an opportunity to go to NYU.
I don’t know what I was thinking. Or why I expected it to go away.
After all, it wasn’t just students who complained about it. I heard other people complain about suffering from it as well. I suppose I just thought they were soft. There wasn’t REALLY anything for them to worry about. Once I was out of school, it would be smooth sailing, and my character “affliction” would pass.
But, as it would seem, I. am. still. a. Procrastinator!!
I remember school (having just left it a little less than a year ago). I remember the long nights. Sleepless nights. And I remember… yes, I remember the afternoons that preceded the sleepless nights. Those were seemingly the most productive afternoons of my life. That is, productive in getting everything straight in my life to avoid studying. Room needs cleaning? On it. Yard needs mowing? Definitely. What? There are dishes in the sink? We’ll just have to deep clean the entire house! And my room hasn’t been rearranged in months; that will need tending to before I can REALLY focus. Oh, what fond memories I have of my beloved friends and I seeking out any unfinished business before actually getting down TO business. Anything to give us 15 more minutes before we sat down… then realized the seat was located inconveniently in front of the TV (you can’t just turn those suckers off!) and drove across town to the library… and sat down again… checked facebook… for an hour… and then finally. Opened our book to… what? It’s 5am? Definitely time for bed. (You can go ahead and define “bedtime” as a 1-2 hour nap before class.)
Ah, yes, the good old days… I’m sorry, let me rephrase that. Good? yes. Old? no. That cursed trait seems to have overtaken my shadow and followed me all the way here. Only now, the tasks that I sought to accomplish to avoid studying have become the very tasks I seek to avoid! Cleaning the house, doing the day’s bible study, working on a painting, reading the books that presently sit in the “currently reading” nooks of my househould, reorganizing closets, putting away dishes, answering e-mails… and I enjoy doing these things! However, I think right now those things feel like obligations. There are deadlines. There are timeframes. If I don’t tackle some of those things tonight, they will be there tomorrow. Some of those things have already been put off and they just make me feel behind. But if I’m not in the mood to do all “that”, I’ll go to any lengths to avoid doing “that stuff” first. And right now, I’m not in the mood. Which is why I checked facebook for an hour. Or three. And why I wrote this blog post. Instead of writing the blog post I had thought about doing which was inspired by this photo:
It would have been called, Pickles and Cheez-its and Other Strange Food Combinations. To be subtitled, Why People Have Wondered if my Eggo was Preggo since 1999.
But I didn’t want to write it. It was on THAT list. That list which for now, I am avoiding. I don’t know why. Like I said, I THOUGHT procrastination would be gone after school. I wasn’t prepared for this.
Time to post this blog… check up on my 450 facebook friends one more time… and call it a day.
It’s almost the weekend! I’m very excited and am feeling very productive… I hope lots of things get accomplished this weekend! The good weather lifts my spirits even more… the sun seems to be holding strong and if it sticks around, it’ll be a good motivator. I know some people see good weather and don’t want to do work on those days, but I feel a greater drive to be clean and organized so that when I go out to enjoy the weather, I feel accomplished as well!
This weekend here is what we are looking at doing:
- Laundry: Mike was amazing and did the laundry on his day off this past Monday. Now in just one or two loads it can be completed again!
- Clean the house: dusting, sweeping, mopping, cleaning counters, scrubbing toilets and tubs and sinks, and straightening that which has been scattered… we are taking down the unclean in our little home! Oh, and giving the plants some water… I think I’ve allowed the dirt to become dry enough to get rid of these little tiny flies that were hanging around (google suggested that they might be bugs whose nasty eggs like moist soil, so I was determined to keep our soil dry till they vanished!)
- FINISH thank you cards: The majority have been sent out, but if we didn’t know your current address, we still have your thank you card. We are GETTING RID of them this weekend. I’m determined!
- Paint Hopper painting: Mama Hopper has requested a painting for a conference and so I’ll be working hard on that this weekend. I’m very excited to tackle the style she has shown interest in!
- The finances: Ooh, I love budgeting. I love it. I love seeing the updates, seeing how all the numbers add up (when they do), seeing what action needs to be taken, and often seeing how God is so faithful to give us loaves and fishes… it’s so often that it just seems like we should NOT have had the money according to budget to make certain things happen, but somehow the numbers add up! Glorious. We will also be looking at some numbers in consideration of a possible new home.
I can assure you that to-do lists will be plenty this weekend, and productivity is the hopeful result. For now, though, must keep working.
Silly fact: I’ve become aware of a sort of “game” I play in my cubicle throughout the day… with my cube being in a busy hallway, I hear lots of people talking as they pass by, and a fun little game becomes “guess that voice”. Some voices are easy, and some actually throw me – I confess to even going to the extent of casually entering the hallway for no other reason than to place the face that belongs to the voice. Oh, the thrills of office life.
I’ve heard many people who find secret delight in the idea of living their lives like a musical. You know, where you suddenly break into song and dance when you encounter a pivotal moment in your life, and somehow that meaningful rhythm and music captivates the formerly uninterested bystanders to the point where everyone joins in with the innate ability to dance sinchronically and sing the words as if they’d heard them all their lives, and the mean old lady with the dog jumps into the song with a perfect harmony and a smile on her face, and the otherwise sketch-looking homeless man jumps into the middle of the crowd and performs ridiculous dance stunts no one thought were possible.
That’s a musical.
And if you take away lady with the dog and the garbageman, and you replace the suddenly interested bystanders with bystanders who think you are utterly insane, then you will be able to envision the musical that my family has lived in for as long as I can remember.
My first memories of it are family dance nights. My sisters and I running around and on top of the furniture and somehow still squealing the words to Amy Grant’s “Love can do”, Dad dancing us each around by turn in his arms and sometimes pulling off the daring feat of carrying all three of us together; two in his arms and one on his shoulders (this attempt became more daring as we each got bigger, obviously), Dad catching Mom up in his arms for the slow songs until we stole him away so we could dance on his feet, blasting any music from the oldies records my parents loved to Billy Joel to Amy Grant, Steven Curtis Chapman, and Michael W. Smith, to the Oklahoma soundtrack, to the University of Michigan fight song. Very eclectic.
All our favorite family movies were musicals. Disney movies were played religiously on Friday’s family night. If not Disney, it was Singing in the Rain, Oklahoma, Carousel (very sad), The Music Man, The King and I, Grease, The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music… I feel like I’m forgetting some other important titles, but you get the idea. You can bet that if it had songs in it, we knew virtually every word, and we would sing them over and over and try to come up with our own dances for them, splitting up different singing parts and harmonies as best we could so that everyone would get some “show time”.
When Mom and Dad and Grandma decided to take us to a theater musical I was very much so against it. (I was against many things our family promoted in my childhood; things which I now hold close to my heart with fondness.) The musical they chose was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and by the end my sisters and I were obsessed. Our trip to Europe that summer is officially soundtracked by the Joseph musical’s CD – played CONSTANTLY as we drove from Austria to Holland, Holland to Italy, flying here and there. We fell in love with other musicals as well, such as The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar, Rent, Les Miserables,and Wicked.
We also found a trend in our travels (we traveled a good bit) that was first noted in that Europe trip. We tended to have a “soundtrack” for each trip we went on. Joseph for Europe, Steven Curtis Chapman’s Dive CD as well as Burlap to Cashmere for our trip out West, and I think Les Mis ultimately became the theme for our London trip. And you must understand that the music we memorized we also shared with every guest that came to our home. Friends can testify that if we were sitting in a room and one of the Wards entered it, many a-time they came in belting – not singing, but belting – a tune to fit the “scene”. Emily and Ashley were probably the most exposed people to my family breaking out into song when it fit a conversation, or turning up the music to dance to it. Emily was even given the honor of a random 3-part harmony that broke out one night with my Mom and my sisters. Mom walked in the room and sang “good night” taken from “The Music Man”, and Stef immediately sang the next part’s harmony, followed by the third part’s harmony from Meagan, and ending with all three of them IN harmony to complete the song. End scene.
A musical seems to have become our family. That’s the only way I can think to say it. At Mike’s and my rehearsal dinner, half my family’s toasts were in reference to or actually sung in the tunes of varying musicals. Not just immediate family, but extended as well. It just goes well with us.
With all that being said, I’d like to share what inspired this rush of musical memories my family has shared. Below is a youtube video I found on another blog I read. I watched it and laughed in awe, but also found myself tearing up a bit, because that is my family. Thrilled to pieces to jump in and sing along and dance no matter who is watching. Granted, we don’t draw a huge crowd; in fact, if we were more apt to expose our sing-and-dance lives to a room full of strangers, the crowd would probably vanish. But who am I to assume anything? Apparently, more people than I knew have that little tugging in them to live a musical.
So, to Dad, Mom, Stef, Mea… Oma and Opa and Grandma… to the Blackwells and the Koppiers, to Aunt Nancy and to the Lewises who we do not see much but who are immersed in theater, song and dance (with Mary the actress and David the agent, or producer, or both, I can never remember)… and also to Mike, who is my family now and who also has a love for music (though not quite like this so much, as far as I know)…
I hope you all enjoy this clip as much as I did. Mom, I know you love this movie in particular, and I fought it at first but I love it now too.
And to everyone else… I hope it makes you smile, and that perhaps you feel a little tug to live like this – even if you don’t admit it!
We’re animal-sitting Lucy the dog. Lucy belongs to the family I babysit for and she is the sweetest dog (though sometimes quite skittish and silly). I don’t know if she’s some kind of hound or greyhound mix, but she is a beautiful dog. She is also very loving, easing her way as close to you as possible until – oops! – she is sitting right on your lap! She is very content just to curl up right next to you on the couch, or to stare at you with her big doe-eyes until you cave and pet her again.
Animal-sitting Lucy makes me want a dog. However, I’ve always wanted a dog. I love them. But having Lucy has caused a bit of a problem. Having Lucy has made Mike want a dog. But not just any dog. He wants LUCY. They seem to have bonded this weekend:
It’s going to be a bit rough for him when we have to give her back. Poor guy! But maybe this means a puppy in our future… maybe!
I’ll be 23 in a month and 15 days. No, I don’t think this is old, although I prefer even-number ages to odd-number ages so 23 may not get as much enthusiasm from me as 22. For that matter, no number will probably get as much enthusiasm from me as 22 did… it is not only my favorite number, but it is also the age in which I got married to my best friend. What could be better than that?
No, 23 is not old. But it is older. 21 was two years ago. 18 was 5 years ago. 16; 7 years ago, and the big 1-0 was a whopping 13 years ago. It doesn’t seem like that much time as passed. I feel like the memories of my childhood are so vivid that they all could have happened yesterday. However, I have been noticing how much more paranoid I get as I age.
13 years ago, I would do the most dangerous stunts on my bike and my roller blades. My sisters and I had no problem testing our speed on wheels on the steepest driveways and the biggest hills of our neighborhoods, no matter how many battle scars we tattooed on our knees in the process. I also had no problem eating cookie dough after the eggs had been put in. If I was sick, I was sick till I got better. I didn’t give a second thought to playing streets away from home, outside the view of my mother. I played on wooden playgrounds and on metal playgrounds. I didn’t have a care in the world as I tramped through our woods, exploring abandoned homes and climbing through brush and up tall trees in bare feet. Life happened.
Now, life happens differently. I don’t do dangerous stunts on my bike. When I ride it, I seem to be acutely aware of every bump and crack that might cause my bike to skid to its side and into the road. If I get sick… well, I just wait to get better, but I do imagine all the accidents and illnesses that my body could encounter that might be detrimental or fatal. I have to wonder how Mom let me go streets away when many mothers I know of now never let their children leave their sight (I still don’t like that, but I’m not a mom and who knows, the paranoia could build to that point by the time I have kids). When I walk barefoot, I think of all the stupid stories people fill my head with about tapeworm and nasty diseases that could infect my feet. I get nervous licking envelopes because someone told me it can have bug eggs on it. Heights seem more treacherous and the woods seem like a place where dangerous people reside. And just today, the inspiration for this blog, I was cooking chocolate chip cookies and wanted to eat some dough and the thought flashed through my head: but the eggs! The salmonella!
Good grief. I am determined to battle this aging side effect. We seem to LOVE sharing information, knowledge, and stories that increase our paranoia as we get older. And one side of me wants to take it all in and run to my neighbor to make sure they’ve heard about it too. But the other side of me wants to say, just stop. I’ve eaten plenty of cookie dough without getting sick. I’ve been barefoot countless times without getting so much more than a stubbed toe. Any injuries I obtained through bike accidents healed. And I LOVED playing in the woods, having a little freedom, playing and exploring. And when I try to think of satisfying the paranoia… always wearing shoes, never riding my bike, living under constant supervision, not enjoying tastes or sights or smells just in case, and still convinced I’m going to catch some disease and die anyway… well, it just doesn’t sound like much fun.
So this afternoon I ate the cookie dough. And it was ridiculously delightful.
