Out of Control...

Now, I would never classify myself as a "control freak"... freak might be a little harsh... maybe just a "control fan" would be a more accurate description. But nonetheless, there are times when I do not like letting go of the reins and trusting the ride I'm on. Now, is one of those times....

Finding out that my sweet mama has breast and bone cancer... and as of this week... finding out it's at Stage 4... leaves me feeling helpless, uncertain, scared, frustrated and well, out of control. I'm a 'fixer' by nature. I'm resourceful, creative, a problem solver, a manager, a take-the-bull-by-the-horns-kinda-gal. If I see something gone awry... I don't mess around. I whip out my proverbial tool belt (even though the tools are pink and kinda girlie)... and I get to work. I am a true McGuyver.

I can't fix Mom's problem.

Sigh.

Because this is all in God's hands. The Maker of the Universe. The Creator of all that is good and right and holy. My Father. My Savior. Mom's Father. Mom's Savior. The Lover of both our souls.

So why do I think that my abilities and wisdom and love for my mother would be a better resource for her? I mean, I don't really think that. But... I really do. At least I act like I do when I think I'm her better option. When I panic and worry and struggle with my lack of control. When I try to dictate to the Lord how to solve these issues and I try to wrestle Him into submission. When I advise the Creator of the Universe as to how He should answer my prayers. "All ya gotta do Lord is..."

It's one thing to pray in faith and believe that God can and will do miracles and to know that He has my best interest in His heart... it's another thing to take back the reins (reign) and hope He jumps in on my agenda.

So, as you pray for me, my mom and our family... pray also that my faith would increase. That my ability to trust the One, who is the only One worth trusting, would increase and that my desire to McGuyver my way through life would be what's wrestled in to submission.

Thanks friends.

Pages of Inspiration

My friend Annie just wrote on her blog about needing inspiration to write... and asked her readers to chime in on how they find said inspiration. I started to comment and then realized my comment was turning into its very own blog post...

When I need inspiration to write... I usually don't get it from reading other works... I mean, sometimes I do. But I think I often lose my motivation and inspiration for writing because the written word seems to have lost some of its specialness and mystery. Thanks to modern technology, books, magazines, articles, news, and information is instantaneously at our fingertips. Internet savvy publishers, powerful search engines, Kindles, iPhones... all provide us with an immediate access to just about anything we want to read. Don't get me wrong... I love technologyy (insert Napoleon Dynamite song here)! Trust me, I know how convenient some of these high-tech avenues have made our lives, and I for one, am grateful to their inventors.

But I think sometimes the value of having a physical book in my hands... one that I had to hunt for on the shelves of the bookstore or library... in my mind, increases its worth. If all I did was hit the download button, it seems to have cheapened its specialness. It's kind of like dating relationships... if someone is too accessible... their mystery and desirability lessens. Yes, I said it.

So... what really brings me inspiration to write.... is engaging my other senses. I'll go into an antique store and find the old book section. I gingerly pick up the dusty, faded and tattered hardbacks and listen to the binding creak as I slowly open to its contents. I hold my face close to the yellowed pages and breath deep the musty scent from years of use and storage. I run my fingers across the frayed leather or cloth hard-backing and try to imagine all that it had gone through. I try to make out the faded gold-stamped title and author that was once shiny on its spine. Each faded volume has its own character and history and story that goes far beyond the tale written on its pages.

Then I look for hand-scribbled notes in margins and heartfelt dedications written on inside cover pages and I am drawn into the relationship that all the different readers have had with this book. And I remember how important, how meaningful, how moving, how life changing the written word can be and our innate need to communicate our thoughts and to discover nuggets of wisdom and creativity from others.

So... need inspiration? Just try it... find that treasure-filled corner of your local antique store, pick up a dusty novel or frayed collection of essays. Maybe a thick book of poems, a tear-stained hymnal or even a doodled text book. But enter into the lives of those books... and the life they've brought to others. Fall in love again with the written word and the beauty of a well-worn volume.

.......

My New Recipe Blog!

Come stop by my kitchen for a visit... there's always room for one more.

bunheads with banana feet

I have what's called a StatCounter that's linked to my Blog which tells me not just how much traffic I get on a daily basis... but I can even see what cities, states and countries you, my readers, are from, and sometimes what site you found my link on. And I must say, I'm always surprised at the random places readers are from... Australia, Japan, Norway, Kenya, even New Jersey! I'm always curious as to how they found me. I'm also very intrigued that I have a regular reader(s) from the American Airlines office in Dallas - one day I hope they'll come out of hiding and say hi!

Many people land on my Blog because of a word search through Google or Yahoo. Stealing an idea from this guy... I searched through the recent Keyword Activity to find out what words or phrases people were entering, in hopes of discovering some informative website that would answer all their burning questions about said entered subject... but instead they found me. Sorry to disappoint... but hopefully you found something mildly entertaining, so as not to have wasted your time.

Here are the words and phrases that have landed people on my site in the last 30 days:

making of just dance
should have googled, 'making of complete sentence'
worst jilted lover letter
I feel your pain... feel free to plagiarize
ketter by jilted lover
And Google probably asked, "Did you mean 'letter' by jilted lover?" So helpful those Google people.
is little rock racist
I'm pretty we all are to some degree... oh, fallen world of ours.
april spring teasers
I hate a tease... don't you?
bunheads with banana feet
this had several searches - huh?
Africa photographer
take me! take me!
allergic to mzungu
which means you're allergic to white people. Understandable.
Tall pepper plant
Consider yourself warned. And you're welcome.

Google is a strange and wonderful thing, I must say. Happy reading. And don't be afraid to say hi if you visit... even if it's by mistake.

Fa Me Sew La Ray Tea Doe

This just makes me unbelievably happy. So I had to share.

Enjoy.

Sound of Music Train Station @ Yahoo! Video

You're not the boss of me. Ok, maybe you are...

I was talking to my friend & roommate, Meghan, yesterday and confessing that I still get tremendously nervous when having to "perform" in front of people who have positions of authority over me. Whether performing my job, speaking, executing a plan, or sometimes just answering direct questions... I get instant dry mouth, my jaw will subtly quiver, and the normally fluid phrases & words in my head will become fragmented and erratic. Now this doesn't happen when I'm around said authoritative figures during just our normal daily interactions... just when it's time for me to be "on".

Monday night, our new pastor/elder in charge of developing our church body through teaching & education... showed up unexpectedly to my Neighborhood Group. He and his wife came to sit in and observe and get to know my group. And to observe my leadership and my teaching of the series we're going through as a church. Ugh.


Now don't get me wrong... I love Tom and I'm thrilled he's taking this position with our church. It's very much needed and I think he's an amazing gift to our church, at just the right time. That said...

I went instantly into nervous-mode the second I saw them walk into the room... especially since I was not feeling very well that night, had just come off the road and was exhausted, and... and... I know, I know...

Excuses. Excuses.

But I felt off my game nonetheless.

It's just amazing to me that with all my growing and maturing over the years... I can still be instantly transported back to a quivering, knock-kneed child. Granted, I'm not nearly as bad as I was as a kid. I remember spending almost my entire 2nd Grade year in tears. My mom paid a lot of visits to the Principal's office that year. Not because I was in trouble... but because of how often I came home sobbing. And just FYI - I wouldn't recommend asking my mom about it. To this day, her blood pressure goes through the roof at its mere mention...

My 2nd Grade teacher, Mrs. Guest, was large and scary and always seemed to be looming over me (think Sybil's mother). Her tightly-pulled, ashy-white hair knot and chunky white eyebrows were a stark backdrop to the thick ebony-rimmed glasses that balanced on the tip of her nose. She wore her standard charcoal-gray woolen shift-dress everyday, paired with thick opaque support-hose that always fell shy of her dress hem and sagged at her ankles above chunky black shoes.

Mrs. Guest could reduce me to instant tears with her fierce, chastising look. Hand on hip and finger pointed, she nicknamed me "Hippie" because (yes, it was in the early 7o's) my mom dressed me in some pretty happenin' outfits, and she did not approve of my "style". More often than I care to remember... she would raise her voice and bellow complicated questions at me like, "Ms. Hippie, what is the answer to problem number 12?" But all I could see on my paper was a swirl of numbers and blurry figures that seemed to mock me and then run pell-mell all over the page (although numbers still do that to me - but I digress). Unable to mutter a sound, my tears would flow and Mrs. Guest would shake her jowly face with a tsk tsk tsk of her tongue and say... "That's what I thought. Yes siree. Not a clue."

I grew up in a home with no outward conflict (key word: outward). And my first two years at school were delightful! So, neither my family, nor Kindergarten or 1st Grade had prepared me for handling the wrath of the 2nd Grade Gestapo.

Mrs. Curren was my 1st grade teacher. She was sweet and kind, gave frequent hugs and smelled like apples. Sometimes she would stick a little daisy in her blond up-do. She had bright flowers on her dresses and a lilting voice that drew you in and made you smile even when she was asking you about a math problem. She drew cute little faces on our homework and clapped her hands and jumped up & down when you got the answer right in class. She never scolded. She always encouraged. I raised my hand a lot that year. It's how I think 1st Grade should always be remembered.

Mrs. Guest had the unfortunate lottery of following one of my favorite heroes in all of Elementary School... and though 2nd Grade felt like a prison camp in comparison to my blissful year under the tutelage of Mrs. Curren... I've always wondered if I had just demonized poor Mrs. Guest because she couldn't live up to the likes of Saint Curren. I mean, Mrs. Guest wasn't a good teacher. She wasn't kind. She said and did some pretty mean things to me that year. And I'm pretty sure that much of my still becoming a blithering idiot in front of authority-figures was a result of my spending a year being molded by Heir Commandant. But maybe, just maybe... her knuckle-wrapping, name-calling, spirit-crushing ways were how she thought 2nd Grade kids would respond best? Maybe she... she...

Oh forget it. Even I can't find the silver-lining in this one.

Needless to say, I am still working through childhood dramas that continue to affect me today. I'm assuming we all are. Fortunately, the good things from childhood still affect us, as well. I will always believe that the Mrs. Currens of the world exist, because well, they did once. And thanks to her example, I will always believe that love does cover a multitude of sins (including math)... and that kindness is possible in authority... and smelling like apples is a good thing.

Thanks Mrs. Curren.

Diary of a Flight Snob

So, this past weekend was the first event of the Women of Faith tour... held in Kansas City, MO. When booking my flight I was decidedly disappointed to find that I could not get a flight on American Airlines. Yes, AA and I have a past... but they made nice and now we're back together.

So I had to settle for traveling on Southwest Airlines. Now, don't get me wrong... I understand that they are rather excellent in their field. That they have more direct flights and on-time departures, early arrivals, and less expensive ticket prices than most any other airline.

But I suppose it's a matter of taste. I have a few friends that LOVE, and I mean vehemently LOVE Southwest. So, nothing personal, I promise. I'm just not a fan of the following requirements for flying SWA.

1) Having to check in online: Sitting poised at my computer, exactly 24 hours before my flight... shaky finger hovering over the enter button... waiting for that exact moment to "check in now".... only to get a "B" seat. It brings back such bad memories from high school math class... no matter how hard I tried... I never got an "A". Actually, I never got a "B" either.

2) The Cattle Call. Or, having to line up in numeric order: What is this? Seriously. The over-achieving, performance-driven, rule-following, OCD, anal-retentive side of me raises its ugly head, only to go crazy when people don't line up right. I mean, I may have failed getting an "A" boarding pass, but I'll be darned if someone with a "B 32" ticket is going to board before my "B17". I'm not competitive, really.

3) Casual attire, casual attitude: Again, I realize this is a matter of preference. But wearing shorts to work with socks and tennies, just seems like, well... camp. Now, I'm all about camp. It's one of my favorite things. But I need to feel confident in the attendants who might have to act as my rescuers if things should go awry 30,000 feet in the air. I need to sense an air of professionalism. A hint of competence. The potential for heroism. It's great that you're so perky at 6am and can chuck peanuts at me with lightning speed... that you can tell corny jokes, sing silly songs and get sleepy patrons to clap on cue. BUT IT'S 6 O'CLOCK IN THE FREAKING MORNING!!!!! 'Nuff said.



I love the face on the sleepy guy in the front on the left. He looks like I felt Sunday morning when our jovial flight attendant told joke after joke, pun after pun... all before sunrise.

Dear American Airlines. I miss you.