A Slightly Boring Post

Sorry guys, no words of wisdom today.  Here are some pictures from my birthday recently.....it's 11pm and I really have nothing of intelligible significance to say at this hour.  :-)  For the record though, everyone is alive.  Yes, big news, isn't it?  Told you it wasn't significant. 

Life goes on - homemade iced lattes, pink nail polish, hot days, a new Krause movie production in the works (remember last year's?), a dentist appointment coming up (yippee), Grandma visiting in a few weeks, wonderful friends to fellowship with, and fun with music editing software.

Oh - and I'm now a regular at Ragazzi's Terretoria, a gourmet italian resteraunt. Regular pianist, that is. They put an ad in the newspaper for me each week to gather in more customers.   Last Friday night I pulled out $120 from tips plus what I charge.  Not bad for three hours of plunking around on a keyboard, huh?!  A dream job, for sure.....

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Free Download Friday

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Terrific Tuesday (aka corny title)

Hey!  Today was a fun day for me.  I headed down to the CPC for the morning and, as usual, had a great time.  My shift was from 9 to 1....no clients today, but there were plenty of other projects to work on.  Tons of followup work (I closed probably eight cases today!), shredding of old expired cases, and the creation of new pregnancy info packets that we give out to our positive-test clients. 

So you all probably know by now that I truly do love scarves....right?  Right?  I think I've mentioned it a few times :-).  Anyway, my friend Kayla from church crocheted this one for my birthday recently.  Isn't it simply gorgeous?  She is so good at making these kinds of things.  I'm thinking I'll be seeing a new business emerging soon in the yarn aisle of Jo-Ann's...Kayla's Proffesional Looking and Amazingly Detailed Products, Inc.   :-) 

It was gorgeous today - yes, it's almost summer, but the weather is absolutely breathtaking.  Like, low 80's (if even that?), cloudy skies but still sunny (does that make sense?), and just generally windows-open-kind-of-weather.  I sleep with my window open, and no joke, the chirping birds wake me up every morning around five.  I get to jog at 5:30 listening to my favorite songs on my ipod and watch an amazing sunrise. I love it!

 So Josh is the ever-present echo and constant copy-cat around here.  When Isaac says he's hungry, Joshua is right behind him saying the same thing.  Today Isaac told me he was stuffed, and low and behold, a little voice pipes up "I'm stuffed too!".  Anything that Isaac is, Josh feels he MUST be, or his little emotional ocean breaks forth and he crumples. :-)

Anyway....after the CPC, I came home and had lunch, and then ran some glamorous errands that included a trip to Ace Hardware purchasing a new p-trap for my bathroom sink and a hair-catcher for my shower drain.  A hint?  I've been having some...uh....trouble with clogged drains due to....well, you know....hair. Don't tell me I'm the only girl who plugs up sink drains on a regular basis. Up until a few weeks ago I was standing in four inches of water during my shower it was so backed up.  Yeah.  I'm....working on that one.  :-)

Isaac is our completely original clown.  Upon getting into the pool for the first time this summer, he looked up at me, completely serious, and said, "Hey Rachel, baptize me!"  Maybe we've been watching too many John the Baptist movies or something?  Anyway, now he thinks it's a hilarious joke, and baptism is always discussed at the pool in some form.  They also think communion is hilarious.  Um, kind of not good??!!!  Seems like I'm always trying to get them to stop re-inacting the Last Supper with giggles and sarcasm in the living room.  Example?  "Hey look!  Take and eat, this is my bod-ee! Ha ha!"  Yeah.  We're...working on that one, too.

Some of you probably heard about our juicing fast from my mom's blog.  I am back on food now (thank heavens) but I'm still juicing on the side.  And generally, I'm now wanting to really eat healthier.  I even skipped cupcakes on David's birthday.  Don't know how I did that one?!  But remember I said generally I'm being healthy.  So....if you find me with a Starbucks or something similarly poisonous, well - it must be a special occasion or something. :-)

Have a great week!



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We Be Older Now

We had three birthdays this week!  And four this month.  We're now older, wiser (that counts me out), and jumping into another year of life. 

I turned 20 just a few days ago.  Officially no longer a teenager!  I totally don't feel ready to be this old. I mean really.  I have always thought that when I reached such a lofty number....I'd somehow have everything together.  Be mature, rich, (sorry, it's what I always assumed), prepared, smart, and just generally ready to tackle anything that came my way.  Oh, and incredibly spiritual, too.  

But - here I am , twenty years old, and I seem to be none of these things!!!!  Definitely not rich.  Two traffic tickets took care of that one.  Mature? Not so much.  How else do I justify my love of chasing my little brothers up and down the stairs and tickling them till they say what I want them to say???   Prepared?  Only for today.  Smart...um, let's not talk about that one, ok?  

But I am twenty now.  Here I be.  Secretly I wish I was still a four year old.  The little girl I babysit is having a princess birthday party next week and I'm finding myself jealous. lol

And David?  He is fourteen today!  As you can see from this very grainy and poor quality picture (sorry bout that one), he is much taller than me and getting....kinda....broad.  Apparently my chubby cheeked little brother grew up overnight.  He's shaving now.  When did that one start?

Ah well.  More pictures coming, just wanted to throw this up tonight.  :-)

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Waiting - not my favorite thing

"Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him...."

(Psalm 37:7a)

I don't like waiting.  I don't like not knowing. I don't like wondering what's going to happen next.  I don't like being patient.

I like being in control of things...I'm not a dominant person, but I like having all my ducks in a row and things figured out.  New situations scare me - rather than take them head on I'd really rather just hide.

So what do you do when there's nothing to do BUT to wait? And trust?  

For a while, I tried convincing myself that this whole trust business was something I was pretty good at; you know,you just kind of, "trust God" and then do what needs to get done. Your way.  Because, God helps those who helps themselves (a well-known Biblical fact, of course) and the trusting part is really more of a theoretical concept....not necessarily something you'd actually do, right?

Right?

I mean, God doesn't really expect me to just give everything I've worked for up until now to Him, does He?  He wouldn't actually ask me to surrender every area of my life to Him...would He?  

No no no. Of course not.  He would understand, of course, that my dreams and my goals and my desires are quite important to the success of my life and my appearance and my purpose and.....well, ME, really.

Unfortunately, I'm finding out differently these days.  Unfortunately in the sense that it's dealing quite a blow to my sense of control.  Sometimes things change, situations come up, life happens, and control is literally the last thing you have.

I'm finding out that I can't change the things around me I don't like.  I can't alter circumstances that God has allowed into my life for whatever crazy reason.  

But mostly, I can't keep change from happening. It's inevitable. Things will always change. People will always change.  That's life.  

What a perfect opportunity to literally go running into the arms of the One Who never changes.  Ever.  

What we call "surrender" or "sacrifice" is simply giving God what He already owns anyway.  It's not like He's relieved when we give Him control over our lives - He doesn't need us.  And He already has control anyway.  It simply boils down to how we relate to God, not the other way around.  

There's something about just letting go and allowing God to do what He wants with my life that frees me to watch for what He's doing rather than worry if it will line up with my ten-point plan for life success or not.

Because honestly, I'd much rather be saying "Not thy will, but mine be done!"

I don't like giving the controls over to God.  In my self-absorbed stupor I like to think that, yeah, He IS God and everything, but He doesn't understand how much ________ means to me.  I seriously like to think that I know how to run my life way better than He would, since it's, you know, MINE?

And...there inlies the rub.  This happens to not be my life.  

It's His. 

So again, "surrendering" control to Jesus isn't doing Him a favor or anything. It's just giving Him what He already owns anyway.  

And I'm learning that He....kind of DOES know what He's doing.  Usually it's not till later that we get to find out why He took us certain directions.  But it is all for the best.  And God happens to have the advantage of seeing the whole picture.

In the famous words of Jim Elliot, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

I'm learning. Slowly. :-)

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