greatest need

Thanks, Oswald Chambers, for speaking this truth. Amazing to think that you’re now in the very presence of Truth now.

“The greatest need we have is not to do things, but to believe things.”

That fab quote comes from Lee McDerment’s blog, the worship leader at NewSpring in Anderson, S.C.

Thanks, Lee, for the laugh and insight about quitting in this blog entry.

psalm 32

About 5 years ago I stole an idea from a friend: settle into the Psalm that matches my age.

So today starts me in Psalm 32. Since The Message translation is my home these days, I enjoyed my first awake minutes reading its truth.

I sensed the Lord saying to my heart that this year will be about celebrating Him.

10 God-defiers are always in trouble;
God-affirmers find themselves loved
every time they turn around.

11 Celebrate God.
Sing together—everyone!
All you honest hearts, raise the roof!

fall(ing) in love with greenville, s.c.

This Orlando woman didn’t quite know how to handle all the red and yellow. I stood smitten by fall in South Carolina.

More photos.

Sure there were some barren trees and brown leaves that have seen better days. I didn’t care. This was an early Christmas gift from God.

My dear friend Colleen and I shuffled in the leaves in South Carolina this weekend. What a great getaway. We were on the hunt for housing options for her beginning in February.

It was amazing what we squeezed into about 36 hours in the land of orange paw prints: time with her parents in Anderson, sleep requiring socked feet, slow breakfast with bacon (chipmunks in the background), miles clocked on Colleen’s Accord as we scooted around Greenville, lunch outside on main street, enjoying Falls Park, voice mails left to real estate agents who were not working and watching the Clemson game, dinner at Fatz cafe (who names places like this? was there no intervention?) with Colleen’s parents, laughs over old photos of Colleen we found, church in Anderson at NewSpring with my friend, Kole, lunch outside (see a theme?) back in Greenville (who would have thought shrimp and cheese grits would taste so delicious together?), and eight hours and many miles back home.

Thanks for a very memorable road trip (and soundtrack), Colleen!

what i wish it meant

Thanks, Rob. Yet again you cause me to lose my breath.

weird things done as a child

I’m sad this fad never made it beyond the walls of 221 Lakewood Drive. What a loss.

I distinctly remember this night. I thought I’d just came up with the most fabulous invention for hair in 1984. It was a princess-and-the-pea idea…how high can you get? Check out how well it coordinates with my evening wear…and the thick, canned-pea-colored dining room curtain.

Don’t miss the blog entry that inspired this line of confession. The comment from Leah at the bottom made me laugh. Out loud. In my cubicle.

What about a weird thing you used to do? Do tell! Leave a comment.

effective e-mailing

There are days I’m about file for divorce from e-mail. Being a Christian, I can’t so I might just go for a legal separation while I cool off.

Is it just me or is e-mail like missing a week of class in college? You get behind and never quite recover.

Maybe I can’t control the inflow in my inbox, but I can always grow in how I craft e-mails. These 12 tips on effective e-mailing I ran across today that might be my 12-step program.

Hi, my name’s Angie….

what kind of life do you want?

Love this one. I found it on my brother’s blog.

“Do you want a safe life or an authentic one?”

Seems like it’d be a no-brainer choice. But many days I scoot toward safe. Today I choose authentic. (Ok, there’s only 40 more minutes left in today…so I’ll throw in tomorrow, too.)

bigger than super target

Mark Batterson is a pastor in D.C. I’m a new follower of his blog. Loved the one today entitled, How big is your God? I grinned as he wrote about his son, Josiah, who’s in a season of comparing God’s size to that of things he knows: the car in front of them, trees and Target.

Mark quotes A.W. Tozer and challenges me to reconsider how big my God is:

“A low view of God is the cause of a hundred lesser evils.” But a person with a “high view” of God “is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems.”

bionic-woman-look-alike evening competition

I’m proposing that the Miss America pageant have a sleep study competition portion.

See what these beauties look like when they’re wired up: six on the head, two bands around the chest, one per shin, one on the right shoulder, two on the face, one on the neck, one above the heart, a row along the chin. Are you getting the picture? It was fitting that Braveheart was on TV as Bill, the technician, was getting me all dolled up. By the end, my hair very much resembled Mel’s.

This is why they say not to drink water after 6 p.m. You have to have a PhD in how-to-dismantle-a-bomb to qualify to schlep down the hall to the bathroom.

Sadly, the night’s sleep wasn’t at all what I usually experience. I didn’t fall asleep quickly (like I normally do) and only really slept from 2 a.m. until Bill woke me up at 5:50 a.m. He should have woken me up at 5:30 a.m. to start disassembling The Bionic Woman, but I had finally gotten into REM (for the first time), so he let me sleep a little longer.

Good news: he didn’t see any episodes of apnea (no breathing).

Bad news: he said if he had a rating scale of 1-10 for snoring, he’d give me a 9. (Oh my word! This isn’t the kind of A I’d like.) Bill technically can’t tell me any kind of diagnosis, but I wonder if I’m waking myself up with my own snoring. That’s what every single woman wants to hear, isn’t it? lol

I should hear the results in 7-10 days. Maybe Lindsay Wagner needs a sidekick.

watch me sleep

I’ve been a sleep walker ever since I was a girl. The sleep walking episodes I’ve had recently always involve some kind of party in my room. Lots of people. I usually wake myself up as I’m walking around my room, trying to figure out where people can sit. (Look at that – even in my sleep I’m working out my gift of hospitality.)

Well, that dream will almost be reality tomorrow night. I’m going in for a sleep study. I go in at 8:00 p.m. tomorrow and finish at 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning.

Here are a few questions I have:

• What kind of music do they play in the room? R.E.M.?
• Is blackmail by the staff a common occurance after they see the crazy things patients do at night? (Oh, Lord, please prevent me from stupidness!)
• I’m assuming rampant nakedness was behind the need to add this to the instructions: “Sleepwear is required.”

Prayer request:
Please join with me in praying that Saturday night reflects an average night of sleep for me. That’s so the readings will be accurate and we can figure out why I don’t often feel rested after waking up. Thanks!