Recently, I was approached at church about facilitating a new program in which the creative talents of our congregation would be implemented into our services each week. This means that anyone who may be blessed with the talents of photography, video production, creative writing, painting…and so on…contacts me (or I have the pleasure of searching them out) as the person who coordinates it into our weekly worship services. A bit daunting but so far it has been an amazing blessing.
My first challenge of course, was finding an economic way to display art that wouldn’t break my little piggy bank. I started searching out deals at local Goodwill’s for cheap frames and display ideas. The frame on the front is marked at .50$…believe it. I wanted to be sure that all the frames matched, so I bought a bottle of gold flake paint and a small paintbrush and got to work.
The second challenge was finding a way to encourage the artists of our congregation to involve themselves in this new and somewhat revolutionary way of worshiping the God that bestowed upon them their awe inspiring talents. So far a few artists have stepped up to the challenge and it has been nothing short of …..
ah.may.zing.
I love creativity. It seriously keeps me from going crazy. It’s times like these that I don’t feel bad for not scrapbooking or sewing together tote bags with my initials on them. I get the opportunity to scour the pews for creative people and in turn they let me work alongside them to worship with it. I’m one lucky blessed lady.
Just thought I’d share a bit of what I’ve been up to, and the ways in which I have been allowed to serve in my church body.
Well to be clear there are some things going on in my life, but in all honesty I cannot speak of them at this time. Mostly they have to do with the CIA and the FDA and some PB&J. Very technical and highly classified and extra crunchy on whole wheat. Just trust me that you don’t want to hear about it.
In all sincerity, I’ve been off of work for the past two days and I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing outside of acquiring a minor sunburn and hiding my dirty laundry to be less conspicuous to my own line of sight. So in honor of my boring and seemingly unimportant week (as far as you know) here is a list of my things that could be thrown off a bridge during the month of July:
1) My new neighbors and their adorable yet beastly sounding dog: I’m throwing the neighbors off the bridge because every day they leave their dog unattended and unkenneled thus causing it to suffer from serious separation anxiety and in an expression of that anxiety HOWL for the entirety of their absence. I also don’t appreciate the party they are currently throwing, regardless of the fact that they asked us very politely to join them. I’m pretty sure they may not have done that, had they known that I filed a formal complaint against them just this morning to our leasing office. Not necessarily neighborly, but honestly more courteous than blaring the same Miley Cyrus song through their vents for several hours, like I really wanted to do.
2) Charter Communications: …who once again sent me a bill for $95 stating that I should be paying for new services, most of which I had not requested nor received. Upon calling their Indian customer service hotline, I explained once again my situation to someone named “David” (which he even somehow mispronounced….I mean honestly, if you are gonna give yourself a fake american sounding name make sure you can say it correctly), only to find out that my current amount due was a mere .85$. Once I agreed to pay the balance due, the gentleman let me know that the balance had since jumped to $2.00. I immediately logged on to the e-charter website to pay my bill only to find it had since upgraded to $2.95. So from that I can only assume that Charter decides it’s pricing by some sort of auctioning process, like EBAY. Somehow in my brain that makes much more sense than trying to wrap my mind around the idea that they honestly do have some logical process by which they create their monthly statements.
3) Dog poop: because it stinks in my house.
Um that may be it. Must be a slow month so far. I mean…it is only the fifth. I suppose that only having 3 things to throw off a bridge in 5 whole days….not that bad. I went two entire days without coming up with anything to throw off a bridge. I was gonna write “my boss” because one day last week when I took a personal day, he ate some food off my desk that a coworker had left for me specifically. After several rather passive aggressive notes describing to him my feelings towards his obvious breach of personal boundaries, he literally filled my office space full of chocolate goodies. I can’t throw him off a bridge now. That would be a wasted resource.
I was thinking long and hard about how I would post a list of all the corny silly books I would be reading this summer. I thought instead a picture would suffice along with maybe a few recommendations. I also have mixed a few serious books in there. Gotta keep the brain working properly…unfortunately chick-lit very rarely ever does much besides make me grateful for a good husband and a functioning brain.
Speaking of a good husband:
While I was photographing my books I noticed him peering over the arm of the couch. It’s so rare I catch him on camera while at home, since he’s almost ALWAYS lounging in his underwear. There are so many times when he is doing something adorable and I feel the urge to document it, yet can’t due to his lack of appropriate clothing. Kelli has suggested I just throw up a censor bar and post them anyways. I’ll think about that one. Isn’t he kind of a fun guy?
Anyways, getting back to the book pile.
>The Glass Castle by Jeannete Walls. I put this bad boy on top because so far this summer, it has been my favorite. I would seriously recommend it especially for those of you who aren’t in to the chicky stuff so much. It was at times a bit gritty….but still a total page turner. Great story, great dialogue, amazing talent and I even walked away feeling like I had learned something.
>Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I have started this and have so far found it pretty intriguing. So many times any more, Christian authors love to get so wordy so as to prove their worthiness as published writers. Francis speaks as if he were just catching you after a Wednesday night service to chat about how crazy the love of his God is. Pretty interesting so far. I’ve taken a short reprieve from this right now though to finish the next one….
>My Sister’s Keeper. I wanted to get this one done before the movie came out this weekend so I wouldn’t have to constantly avoid spoiler alerts. So far so good. I did mention to someone today though that I’m still not clear on who I should be relating to. Every chapter is from the perspective of a different character…and at this point I love them all, yet all of them are so different. I’ll let you know hopefully by this weekend if the movie is worth seeing.
>The Wonder Spot & The Girls Guide To Hunting and Fishing: Both of these books were written by Melissa Bank and I read them in succession. I started with The Girls Guide and found the first half of the book to be amazing. I was seriously on my way to calling it as my top summer read…until I finished it and discovered it sucked. I gave The Wonder Spot the benefit of the doubt, hoping that the author had realized the error of her ways and written a better second novel. Eh. No such luck. Turns out you can write a great book, finish with crappy endings….and still make it on the best sellers list. Good to know for my first novel. I only have to work hard for the first 200 pages.
So from there I have a lot left to go. I’ll be interested to see if I get through all of them. I’m hoping for the best. It would help if I had a hammock.
Every day I dream of a hammock to read in. At night I dream up crazy adventures of wizard children and their pet robots (my husband plays a lot of video games in front of me that cause my brain to do awful things in my sleep).
Please tell me that’s normal.
A conversation had while I begrudgingly visited the local video game store with my husband.
Me: I hate it in here…its always freezing cold….and it smells.
Chris: Like what?
Me:……..virgins.
Chris: (looking over at the nerd standing directly next to him) Well it’s not me!
Me: (rolling eyes) Can we please just wrap this up?
Recently I was asked to write something to be read before our Wednesday night worship service at our church. I was given a fairly short lead time and what I felt would be a near impossible task. This task being poetry. I can see most of you literally smirking at the idea of me writing poetry.
Sarcasm…yes. I’ve got sarcasm. Witty quips and imaginative headlines…at times…yes I’ll say I have that. But poetry…not something I would exactly put on a resume. Especially poetry that is focused on creativity and the love of God. I mean, it’s one thing to write a short poem about dog poo or my poor cooking skills. It’s something totally else to say something meaningful in front of a room of what you consider to be your spiritual leaders and peers. Pressure is not a word I feel sufficiently fufills the need I require it to at this moment. So I began googling Christian poetry in hopes that I would find something dynamic that would melt my face, to which I would give full credit after admitting I never got past the first line of writing “God is good, God is great….”. Turns out, I’m not the only one suffering from “Godly Poetry Block”. After several hours of scouring the online world of Christian poetry the most dynamic thing I found went a little something like this:
“God has been so good to us
Except that we still have no bus
We could simply take out a loan
Or pass out the plate and ask for a bone
Please know that we are on your side
But not when your neighbor kid needs a ride
So dig in those pockets and pull out some coin
We got old ladies with places to be goin”
Okay so I didn’t actually find that so much as write it, but I will say this….
it’s not actually the worst thing out there if I do say so myself.
Needless to say I came up with a big fat zero nothing. So I said a prayer, bucked it up and wrote something from the heart. Of course I made sure that husband was clear to tell everyone who asked that I didn’t write it. In fact after I read it I sat right down next to him and wrote on my bulletin “I’m so entirely embarrassed”. He just smiled as most supportive husbands would and whenever anyone would ask if I wrote the poem I read, he would just look over at me to see if I was seriously going to let google take responsibility. He is such a good boy. And I am such a horrible public speaker.
I got rid of our cable channels this week. For two reasons. One…charter is an evil organization which has been created solely for the purpose of furthering the demise of a culture based on morality and justice. Two….I watched the season premier of Jon and Kate Plus 8 twice and cried both times. I seriously have never felt so insignificant in my entire life. If I could have added less to human kind during those moments, I would have seriously been surprised. After several hundred phone calls and countless transfers to India, I’ve washed my hands of it. Why in the world do I want to spend a fortune every single month for the pleasure of knowing that I’m supporting a company responsible for the addiction of several million people to “Rock of Love: Bus Tour”? Of course, regardless of two trips from Charter employees, our channels still have not been removed. They have been removed from our bill yet still remain in our living room. Eh…what can I do but choose not to partake in the temptations they are graciously bestowing upon my household despite my best efforts to have them disposed of? In retaliation, my internet has been out for the past 24 hours and is now only crawling at near snail speeds, as I’m connected to the wall via ethernet. According to tech support, the next available technician won’t be available to visit us until next Saturday between the hours of 1pm and 3pm. Did I mention that I hate charter? What do we feel the moral implications are of using the word hate in this instance? Discuss.
In an effort to combat their futile attempts to make me dumber, I have begun reading. When my sister and brother in law cleaned their office to make room for their new kiddo, I was given a stack of “chick lit” to read through. So far that has been a mindless great way to get myself in the habit of choosing to read rather than stare at classless reality tv shows. I have read 3 in the past few weeks, but I’ll be taking a short reprieve from the girly stuff to get serious with a new one I just bought by Francis Chan called “Crazy Love: Overwhelmed By A Relentless God”. He actually spoke on this subject at Passion a few years ago when Chris and I attended in Atlanta, GA. Let me just say that it melted my face, so I’m a little anxious to see what he has to say in this book. I think I’ll begin keeping a record of all the books I get through, even the girly ones (once I finally get through all the ones I have right now), here. Maybe that will help me stay motivated to lay off the boob tube and do something a little more productive with my time. Speaking of, in the next week or so I should be posting some pics and whatnot of a rad new project I’m organizing at church. It may be the first and only DIY project I will be able to post on here…as I am probably the least DIY’er on the face of the planet.
So the unfortunate circumstance to having a horrible memory, whilst also having an incredible mind, is that very often you think up something so brilliant the human kind will never be the same again upon hearing about it, and you pat yourself on the back and think about what you will wear to your awards ceremony, but by the time you attempt to retell your brilliant idea to someone worthwhile you realize you have already forgotten what it was you thought up all together. Which pretty much sums up why I hardly ever write anymore. All day long I run a brilliant dialogue in my mind that sometimes causes me to even laugh outloud, but very rarely am I ever able to capture it anywhere that makes it legally binding or worth money or anything before it is lost forever in the abyss of my forgetful brain.
Which pretty much just evens me out to someone who doesn’t think up anything cool at all.
I’m not even ashamed, although I should be, to admit that it took me 3 years to memorize my own husbands birthday. I’m still not really that confident in telling you right now that it is on April 22nd. He’s not even sad anymore when I ask him his information while filling out important documents. He just knows that I’m partially impaired and can’t be held responsibility for my own stupidity. It’s not uncommon for people to tell me about situations in which I had acted in some very outlandish way and I will have absolutely no recollection of it at all and won’t actually accept it as truth until shown photos.
Like on Mothers Day when my mom was telling a story about drug testing…Lord knows why….and caught me off guard by telling some story about a good friend of mine from high school using his brothers urine for his weekly drug test. I sat for the rest of lunch just trying to remember what in the world she was talking about. Never in my life have I had a friend that used his brothers urine for anything….nor do I think I would have told my parents I had a friend that required drug testing unless I myself was drugged with some sort of truth serum. Is it sad that I have to use my near elderly mother (semi gross exaggeration) to dictate my highschool years back to me over family dinners?
My 3 year old niece is even way better at the memory game than me, and you can’t even say it’s because she cheats because so do I.
Anyways, I said all that to say this…
I think I forgot to use shampoo this morning in the shower.
I am a self proclaimed champion at many things in this life. Instant messaging, focused movie watching and cheeseburger eating, just to name a few. One thing I will never claim to be a champion of is efficient googling. Rather than just focusing on the keywords that generally tend to be sufficient in bringing up the results you desire, I tend to instead type entire sentences followed by punctuation and perhaps even a side note.
For instance, this past week has been a horrible look into the life of one of those people you see on tv who is allergic to everything including their own skin. I’ve been experiencing it all. I’ve nearly scratched my eyes out on more than one occasion causing black makeup to smear across nearly 75% of my face and huge bags to form giving me the look of an overworked woman of the night. I’ve found myself stuffing kleenex into the sleeves of my sweaters to be prepared for a life altering sneezing fit. And most recently I’ve been fighting what I can only explain as an unscratchable itch covering the entirety of my throat, mouth, nose, ears and skull. This has been what has caused me to take a better look into my googling skills after I found myself lacking helpful results when I entered the phrase “I FEEL AS IF I HAVE HAIR GROWING IN THE BACK OF MY THROAT AND I’M CONCERNED??”.
You know what happens when you type a statement in allcaps with improper punctuation at the end? Not a whole lot. It gives you a ton of information concerning dreams involving mouth hair growth. It may even mention how to grow hair where hair perhaps should never be grown. But what it definitely doesn’t indicate is that what you shouldn’t do is guzzle half a bottle of Benedryl to just make the itching stop and inadvertently get totally blitzed and fall asleep for what feels like years but yet still wake up every 12.3 minutes due to anxiety and the thought that perhaps Chris didn’t turn the oven off that time he made cheese fries 3 weeks ago.
Now, if I had only typed in something more functional, like “common allergy symptoms” or “how to properly treat allergies at home” or maybe even “effects of inadvertently overdosing on purpley goodness” I may not have had to deal with the unwarranted hang over the next morning.
PS. My husband just fish hooked me and my cheek hurts. I will not be googling about this.
