bad good news
Poor Dr. N. He wasn’t going to win today. He was either going to tell me that nothing is wrong and that there is no explanation as to why these miscarriages keep happening or he was going to tell me that I have some kind of disease or disorder. I’m sorry, Dr. N. You lose. You could not make me happy today.
For those interested:
The good news is I have no (known) disease or disorder.
The bad new is I have no (known) disease or disorder.
one mississippi, two mississippi…
Being born in one Mississippi River town and being raised in another Mississippi River town, I have in my blood, a special affection for the great moustached Samuel Clemons. Known and loved by many. I even took an English class in college wholly devoted to this guy’s literature. To be fair, I didn’t read 100% of any of those books, but I digress… I ran across some quotes from this wisdomy literary that I quite liked and happened to be about one of my favorite topics – food, and happened to line up fairly well with my thoughts on the topic; so I thought I’d share:
“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”
“But when the time comes that a man has had his dinner, then the true man comes to the surface.”
“There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.”
Now, go and have a corndog and read some Mark Twain.
that girl
Today I had lunch with That Girl. You know her. She’s the girl that has the most up-to-date perfect hairstyle and it always looks so annoyingly up-to-date and perfect. The one that gets the perfect tan and manages to keep it all year long without going to the tanning salon. She loves to go the gym and her perfect body shows it with its lean lines and toned arms. She is the one with the perfect trendy wardrobe that always is perfectly polished. She wears the perfect trendy accessories and never has one bangle too many or scuffs on her shoes. Her pedicure is always perfectly french and fabulous. She’s the one who you yearn for a shallow compliment from to console your self-doubting vanity. Yes, you know her too; and if you’re like me, you want to be her.
I hate her. And it was a perfectly lovely lunch.
thinking deeply…
“The next time I have meat and mashed potatoes, I think I’ll put a very large blob of potatoes on my plate with just a little piece of meat. And if someone asks me why I didn’t get more meat, I’ll just say, ‘Oh, you mean this?’ and pull out a big piece of meat from inside the blob of potatoes, where I’ve hidden it. Good magic trick, huh?”
-Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
they grow up so fast
I have a two-year-old black and white picture of six girls that I know. Six girls with six stories of six very different lives.
One of those girls reminds me of myself 8 years ago. She is smart, friendly, outgoing and sometimes a little critical. She is growing and changing and learning more in college than she ever imagined and losing more and more of that little bit of critical as it turns to grace and compassion. She is sure of her path and is sure-footed on it. She longs for things that other girls have and hopes for them someday, but marches on embracing each step as she takes it.
One of those girls has a flair for adventure. While her friends were at their first semester of college, she was learning about mission work at an orphanage halfway around the world. She has mothered her brothers and befriended every type of person there is and has one of the purest, sweetest qualities of anyone I know.
One of those girls is my twin. Her birthday is the same as mine, but 7 lucky years behind me. She looks different from the other girls, but smiles just as big. She pushes herself harder than anyone I know and I’ve never known her not to succeed. She just cut off all of her hair, is living on her own now, is in love, is growing up.
One of those girls scares me sometimes. She is fearless. She can do whatever she puts her mind to and often does. She is a born leader, but doesn’t always realize this. She loves people and has a natural, exuberant way about her that makes them feel special without her even having to try. She is on the brink of many life changes and might experience a lot of ups and downs, but she is solid. She will always shine.
One of those girls is halfway across the world now. She was here for just a year to learn, but taught as much as she learned without even realizing her impact. She is hungry for knowledge and a serious thinker. She made the biggest decision of her life to spend a year in the U.S. and while here made the biggest decision of her life ever. Back home now, she continues to grow in faith and depth of knowledge and continues to love her friends all over the world.
One of those girls has tasted God’s Fatherly love more than any other girl I know. At sixteen she lost her dad and now at 19, her smile is just as bright as ever. She is a friend to all and a fasion plate to boot. If you meet her, you never forget her or her flair. She finds common ground with everyone and is slowly, but steadily lighting the world on fire.
I have a picture of six girls. They are my heroes.
all my exes live in Colorado
Due to the overwhelming landslide vote, this is the big new post…
The summer before my freshman year in college, I was on one of two run-down, worn-out stereotypical church buses on my way to a youth conference – my last hurrah with my youth group before heading off to college in the fall. As with any church trip with 100+ teenagers, one of the buses broke down and after filling the functioning bus to the maximum capacity, a handful of us were stranded at Long John Silver’s – hours between home and our final destination – waiting for vans coming from home to deliver us to our much anticipated conference. We waited so long that our Long John Silver’s paper cups lost their rigidity and began leaking after too many free refills. We napped on the benches. We played cards. We took pictures. We talked. We waited. After hours of waiting, we find out the vans aren’t coming. A local minister is going to take us the rest of the way on a borrowed people mover.
This wouldn’t be the last time that I’d spend hours in transit with this high-energy, ballcap wearing, toothy grinned savior of ours. A few months later, I was in a van with him every Tuesday night with a handful of others, driving to a women’s prison to learn from him how to do ministry. Not long after that, at a dive restuarant, eating foot long chili dogs and slurping milkshakes. A year later, we were in that same people mover driving to Mexico to build walls and roofs and hang ceilings. That next summer, we drove to a retreat to plan a year of campus ministry. My senior year, that same people mover that saved a group of teenagers on their way to a youth conference, broke down on the way home from Mexico.
That’s a short list of just some of the trips we took. His dad taught me to do ministry and he taught me how to do ministry - just as his dad had taught him how.
I graduated from college, moved on and away, but still went back to visit occasionally. One semester after I graduated, he and his family moved to Colorado to do ministry there. They are so lucky to have him and even though I’m gone, I was selfishly so sad to see him go.
I saw him this spring. I saw him once when he was in town for a wedding. A group of all of the former college students who live in the area who knew him and learned from him gathered. It was a sweet reunion. He has affected us all more than he knows. Perhaps more than even we know.
The pastor that married Husband and I is moving to Colorado. The sermon that he preached at our wedding was a bunch of bull. Well, not the Bible part, but the part about me being a little girl dreaming of my wedding day, blah blah blah. I wasn’t that little girl. Nevertheless, he is a good friend and we feel so blessed to have such a good friend perform our wedding.
Husband has a similar relationship to him that I have to my campus minister from college. He learned a lot about doing ministry from him. He counts him as a true friend, not just a pastor. I am grateful to him, not only for the work that he has done at our church, but for the servant he has taught Husband to be.
I look forward to the trips that Husband and I will take together (hopefully no breakdowns!) to Colorado. I want to encourage and invest in these great leaders as they have encouraged and invested in us. I want to see their ministry now and learn how to partner with them.
Not only that, but I want to pass on what I’ve learned about doing ministry and living in community. I want to see stories about the high school girls from my small group reaching their friends for Christ, getting B’s instead of A’s in college because they are equally focused on ministry as they are academics, throwing off everything that hinders them and the sin that so easily entangles and running the race that is marked out for them. I just don’t want them to move all the way to Colorado.
pray, pray, pray
I’m begging for prayers for my friends – R & J. J is 15-16 weeks pregnant and had a routine ultrasound yesterday where they found that they baby’s heart rate was way way way way high…like super scary, rush you right over to a perinatologist right away high. She is on some high dosage meds now that are supposed to adjust the baby’s heart rate, but have some nasty side-effects for J (bad headaches, puking, etc. – nothing permanent). They don’t know exactly what is causing it, so all in all, it is a pretty scary situation right now. She is doing some blood work today and another appointment with the perinatologist on Wednesday I think, so presumably she is taking today/tomorrow off of work. Knowing them, I would guess that R is staying home too to take care of her.
It literally makes me sick to my stomach to think about how they must feel. I sent J an email offering meals, a buddy to watch chick flicks with, etc. and trying to offer some encouragement, but I’m trying to be so cautious with how much I sympathazie because:
A. I don’t want to pretend like I know how they feel because every situation is so different, and I think that can come off sort of insulting in that moment where you feel like no one knows how you must feel.
B. I don’t want to draw any parallels to any of my experiences because they didn’t turn out so great, so I don’t feel like that is super encouraging. Its like everyone know that I must have a clue how she feels, but no one wants to acknowledge that and if I don’t blame them!
All of that to say – please, please pray for them and for their little baby.
stew
I have some various posts brewing, but I haven’t been able to commit myself to sit down and tackle any of them, so we’ll have a vote, here are your options:
- all my exes live in Colorado (a rambling on why important/influential people in my life keep moving to Colorado)
- all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth (a collection of my favorite gifts)
- crack (an attempt to explain my obsession with Big Brother)
- get a mirror (a look at the notion of establishing a personal style)
rhetorical or not
Things that have been on my mind lately:
- Did God invite corndogs to try to teach me self control?
- What’s the difference between faith and hope? Which comes first?
- What do nudists do with all of the time we spend clothes shopping, washing clothes, drying clothes, ironing, folding, etc. What do they keep in their closets? Do nudist babies wear diapers?
Inquiring minds need to know.
