F Bomb

Ok. So I need to post about the f-bomb series at church the last two weeks. I said I was going to post about it. I NEED to write about it to work through all of it myself.

I cannot figure out how to write about it.

I feel like if I say everything I need to or want to, that I may as well just put up the link to the sermon because the entire thing needs to be quoted. (www.elevationchurch.org Click on media and then sermon archives and then the f-bomb icon) I also question that if I bring up things that have happened to me-am I just reliving it and allowing that situation to hurt me all over again-or is it in the name of working through it? I am also very convicted of gossipping now. Would I be gossipping if I talked about it online? Even if I changed names? Also-and this one is HUGE-I need to identify areas where I have been the one to hurt people. What do I need forgiveness for from people? It's not just about what all I have had done to me. What have I done to other people in the wake of my hurt...while I was out seeking justice?

Maybe soon I will write about it. Every time I think about it the wall of writers block gets higher and thicker. I will leave you with a few quotes from the sermons. These are what I remember...so they may not be exact quotes and if Pastor Steven isn't the original author, I apologize. I am giving him the credit-lol.

*Unforgiveness is like eating rat poison and expecting the other person to die.

*The forgiven forgive.

*Forgiveness is like setting a prisoner free...and finding out the prisoner was you.

*We come to the Kings court expecting grace for all we have done wrong. When someone has wronged us, we expect justice.

*Forgiving someone isn't forfeiting justice. It is guaranteeing it.

*Give up on the hope for a better past. If you catch up to it, what are you going to do with it? It is bigger than you. Go back in the house, under the protection of a soverign God, and let Him...who IS big enough...handle it for you.

*Living at peace with someone doesn't mean living in partnership with that person. Sometimes separation is the only way you are able to forgive.

There are more. This series blew my mind, rocked my world....made me think like nothing has in a really long time. (It was about time I knocked the cobwebs off the brain..lol). I will get out my notes and when the post comes to me, you will have it here for your reading pleasure. In the meantime, please check out the sermons! He says it so much better than I ever could!

Tuesday Tidbits...Take Two

1. I need to blog about our most recent sermon series at church. I think because I have so much that I need to work through with it, I am hitting a wall of writers block. I decided a list would maybe break me back into the writing world.

2. We are still at home. We should have left out yesterday but our truck is in the shop. Not sure about today yet...we aren't sure when they are going to be finished working on it.

3. I had a FABULOUS weekend! Seth, Olin, and I had real quality time together. I long for more weekends like that! We had great family come in on Friday. Saturday, we went to church. Saturday night, Olin and I went "unplugged" and had great quiet time together. Seth and I made cupcakes, we all three played with water rockets, painted, etc. Good memories~!

4. It was sad that Shane, David, and Kealey couldn't stay longer. Work duty calls, though. Hopefully, soon, we will have a repeat and they can spend the weekend!

5. We are in the final countdown before school starts. I hope we get it all together!

6. There will be a middle school student in my house. Send back-up help immediately. His math is officially over my head. Amen.

7. Can you tell I have severe writers block? I also struggle with procrastination. My house needs to be cleaned-desperately. I am on the computer taking care of things...like blogging and facebook...so I don't have to do it yet.

8. This may be the time that I don't have a list of 10 things. I think I am going to take the pressure off of myself and say it's ok to stop at 8. I hope you all have a great day and I promise to come back soon with a post that will have some substance to it. Maybe. :)

Whose team are you on?

I may anger some people with this post. Before you read, please remember that this is MY blog....therefore, MY opinions. You are entitled to have your own.
Now that the disclaimer is out of the way...lol...

I hear everyone walking around arguing about whose team they are on: Team Edward or Team Jacob. I have never read the books. I have never watched the movies. My husband and I have agreed that they will never be read or watched in our home. Then how do I know the main characters names, you ask? BECAUSE. IT. IS. EVERYWHERE. And I'm sick of it. I am tired of walking into Wal-Mart and seeing more bookshelves filled with books on vampires than with anything else. I am tired of the posters. I am tired of all of the magazine articles about the actors and what they are doing. I. DON'T. CARE. That may sound a little harsh, but I am telling you that if we were able to saturate the media with things about God as much as they are allowed to saturate the media with things about vampires, I may not be on a rant.

The thing I don't understand is this: Why does everyone think it's ok to be infatuated with vampires? I am concerned with the amount of adults that have been sucked into this, but I want to address the fact that parents allow their children to watch this and be sucked in. We, as adults, can watch things or read things and discern what is right and wrong in it. However, children do not have the ability to discern what we do. They take things in and internalize them, and process them in different ways than what we do. Why, then, would parents allow their teenage girls to watch this? Why would they let their little girl watch something where a girl changes herself for a man? If your daughter started dating someone that asked her to change for him (or that she had to change for) and someone that prevented her from seeing other guys because he was scared she would find something better out there YOU WOULD BE LIVID. So why are you going to let her watch a movie that promotes that and glorifies that????? I was told the other day that little girls were online talking about wanting to find "their Edward". WHY ARE YOU NOT ANGRY OVER THIS????? And we can talk about the little girls not needing to watch it for obvious reasons...but there is a reason boys shouldn't watch it either. It is our job as parents to teach our children how to behave and to teach them how to be productive adults. Take a moment and think about your own spouse. It was their parents responsibility to raise him (or her) and help shape them into the person they are now. Their parents taught them how to treat people in general, and people of the opposite sex. Aren't there a few things you wish they would have done differently? It is our job to raise boys to be productive people as adults, but also to teach them how to be a good husband. Why would you let them watch something with someone like Edward in it and know that he is glorified? I can assure you that if he treats his future wife like that, she will not appreciate it.

Parents need to realize that it's the little things that add up that we expose our children to that shape and mold them into who they are to become. That is a HUGE responsibility. One that some people take lightly. Every decision that you make as far as what they listen to or watch should be weighed with caution. If you decide not to let them watch something that turns out to be harmless, it is not going to kill them because they never saw it. Making sure your child sees a show or a movie does not make or break their world. I don't know when society started behaving like it was. If there are any doubts about it at all, don't let them watch it!!!!! It's not rocket science, people, and censoring children from shows and music never killed any of them.

I am convinced that if people put as much effort into pouring religion into the main stream media that lives could be changed. If they took the effort that they put into pre-ordering release movie tickets, standing in line for dvd releases, book releases, etc. and put it into their city to promote the gospel the world could be changed.

I could go on about this all day long. It is one of my soap box issues. My great friend, Jonathan, wrote a post that probably reads better and makes more sense...lol....over on his blog.... www.jlwide.blogspot.com. You should take a minute and check it out. Until then....I know whose team I am going to be on. No long decision making process here. Whose team are you going to be on?

Restoration

We are finally home. And I woke up at 6:30 this morning. ??? What in the world is wrong with me?!?! Not only did I wake up at the crack of dawn, I woke up and started in on a house project that is long overdue. Second sign that I have a problem...lol.

In my dining room of our little apartment, I have a corner hutch. I believe my great-great-great uncle built it for my great-grandmother and it is probably around 70 years old. (Not exactly sure of the age...just guessing here). As I started scraping off layers of contact paper and years of paint this morning, I couldn't help but peel back some memories of my childhood. They are starting to fade a bit, so I decided I should put them down in writing before I forget completely.

I was raised mainly by my great grandmother. Granny Kiser, as she is often referred to, was the one constant in my life for many, many years. I may have forgotten a lot of things but I don't think I will ever forget her smell. She always smelled of baby powders and sweat. Ever the lady, but she worked hard. That's what her smell makes me think of. I will never forget her hands. She always had nails. Her hands were wrinkled but her skin was thin and felt as smooth as glass. Her fingers were slim but you could tell they had seen years of hard work and diapering babies. She always wore house dresses. I never saw her in pants. Ever. Some of her house dresses were worn so thin you could about see through them. It was what she loved. We had one tiny bathroom with a clawfoot tub-no shower-so she bathed standing up and washed her hair in the sink. She had perfectly white hair and she rolled it every Saturday night. You know-it had to be fixed for church on Sunday mornings. And she rolled it in metal rollers no less. Her earlobes were thin and I loved to sit on her lap and rub them. She was never too busy to let me and to "nuss" me as she called it (this consisted of letting me sit on her lap and she would bounce me and listen to me talk about nothing important...but to her at that time it was the most important thing in the world). She was a great woman of God and even though I strayed for many years, she laid the foundation that led me to making the greatest decision ever of accepting Jesus Christ as my Saviour.

I'd like to talk a few minutes about the house I grew up in. It was white...nothing fancy at all. It was traditionally built to be a one bedroom house, but as grandkids became plentiful, she turned her dining room and formal living room into more bedrooms. You see-at Granny Kisers house there was always room for one more person. On the back porch, she always had her washer and dryer. She used the washer plenty of times, but never that dryer. We had two long clothes lines that stretched the length of the concrete drive and we hung clothes out...every day...unless it was raining. I'm not sure I remember all the lessons that were taught to me under that old clothes line but I do know there were many. In her kitchen, there was still a flour bin built into her cabinets. Windows right over the single sink where she would wash dishes in a metal wash tub and rinse them on the side. The dining room table was one that held thousands of meals and always had some type of food on it. Sundays were always baked bbq chicken and all the sides. And she left them out on the table for hours covered up. Anyone stopping by was pleaded with to eat something. She wasn't happy until you ate. (This fact is proven by the way I look today..ha!) In the formal living room was the upright piano that sits at my moms today. That piano bench has seen more kids behinds while she tried to teach us to play. One of my biggest regrets is never learning. I remember her going in and playing from time to time, though, and I can't say that I remember hymns sounding more beautiful than they did coming from that room. The den always held a deep freezer and a television. (No cable here!) And this corner hutch. She used the bottom for storing food and the top for whatever it needed to hold. I remember for years my baby shoes sitting it, my mothers china sitting in it. My rainbow brite pony sitting in it. (I gave my first one away in kindergarten in exchange for a "diamond" ring...lol. When mom bought me a new one it was guarded very carefully!) I remember the black and white tile floor and the braided oval rug.... I remember the shades (the kind that roll up and you pull down) and her chair sitting in front of those windows. That chair still exists and I promise you can sit in it and still feel her. She ate in that chair, did crafts in that chair, talked and visited in that chair, rolled her hair from that chair, and prayed. Boy, did she ever pray in that chair. There was a small closet in this room that always held toys. I can still smell it to this day. You could open it up and there would be toys piled from the bottom to the top of it. The other closet in this room was always hers. I can still see her shoes hanging on the shoe rack over the door. The rack was full of Sunday dresses and house dresses. I loved to stand in that closet and feel all of her clothes. It smelled like her.

I just realized how long this post is and I still have a couple rooms left. Maybe I will post about them tomorrow. I guess working on this hutch just has me remembering and hoping. I hope she sees me. I hope she sees the woman that I am now and I hope it makes her proud. I hope she is proud to see her hutch in my tiny apartment...where I live with my little family. Where we pray. Where we always offer people food. Where we work. Where I am trying to raise Seth and teach him the same lessons she taught me. The little apartment where we try every day to put God first like she did.

I hope she likes it.