Joke of the Day

In light of my brother's recent wedding - all I can say is thank goodness this didn't happen:

A couple was arranging for their wedding, and asked the bakery to inscribe the wedding cake with "1 John 4:18" which reads "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."

The bakery evidently lost, smudged or otherwise misread the noted reference, and beautifully inscribed on the cake "John 4:18" ...

"for you have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband."

In Two Days

In two days, my brother will stand in front of friends and family make a covenant with the woman he loves.

In two days, my brother will slip a ring on Megan's finger and vow to love her until his dying breath.

In two days, my brother will make a decision that will forever change his life.

In two days, my brother will stand before a holy and gracious God and pledge he will honor and cherish the King's daughter with every fiber of his being, no matter the cost.

It's a hefty decision.  Apart from accepting Christ, I'd say it's the most important decision a person can ever make in his or her lifetime.   

But you know what's really mind-boggling about those moments?  They are mere reflections.  Mere reflections of what Christ desires for His Church, his own bride.  But you know what I also really love about those moments?  It reminds me that God is for us.  He is for marriage.  He is for purity.  He is for covenant relationships.  He is in favor of those things that ultimately reflect Him.

One of the poems that I absolutely love is called "Dear Bride to Be" by Beth Moore.  I don't know where I first encountered it, but I think I have given a copy of it to nearly every friend I have that has recently gotten married.  In my mind, it captures God's deepest desires for our marriages.

Josh and Megan - this is my prayer for you.

Come to Me, dear bride to be
And kneel before My throne,
And I will share My heart with you
And make your house a home.
Listen well, lean closely,
There are secrets at My feet.
The marriage you will soon begin
This Bridegroom will complete.
The man with whom you’ll journey
Is your wedding gift from me
To teach you things beyond this world,
A precious mystery.
For through your union I will choose to teach you of myself
Let him hold you tightly
and keep you safe from harm
until I’ll one day hold you in my everlasting arms.
Let him wipe away your tears
and trust him with your pain
until I wipe them all away and heaven is your gain.
Pray to love his tender touch and want his gentle kiss.
I grant you both my blessing
and ask you not to miss
the reason why I have chosen for two halves to become one
That you might see the Bride of Christ,
sweet daughter, dear son.
So make his home a refuge, he’s to love you as I do
Until your mansion is complete for you
And if I should choose to leave you here when I call him home Trust me, I’ll be your husband then, you’ll never be alone. 

Captured Moments

It would be easy to drown in sadness on days like this.  This day 10 years ago is etched into the subconscious of our lives, both as individuals and as a nation.  It's easy to lose sight of a lot when tragedy strikes.  The pastor this morning spoke about that very thing - what do you do in the face of tragedy?  How do you invite God into those moments and not lose hope when it seems "hope has grown legs and run off"?

In the midst of such thoughts has come an overwhelming sense of gratitude.  Not just for the good things in life, but for the hard things, too.  I have a lot for which to be grateful, and I was reminded of that as I scrolled through some photos my friend snapped Labor Day weekend.  My sweet friend Kristen was in town for the weekend - we hadn't seen each other in four years, but throughout that time we still managed to talk about once a week.  She's a photo fanatic so to say she took a few pictures would be an understatement.  Try close to 500.  But of those hundreds, I could see in each something to be grateful for. 

Friendships

I think small pieces of my life and my heart have been coming back to me in recent weeks, primarily in the form of friendships.  Alex returned from Germany after being gone for 6 weeks.  Kristen visited after 4 years.  Joy moved back to Ohio with her husband after living in Washington for nearly 5 years.  Jill finally caught her breath and stopped in one place long enough to sit down and have dinner with me.  Such sweet parts of my life.  Women that I'm so grateful for.  And then Nick entered my life - that one's definitely taking some getting used to.  Attaching the word "boyfriend" to someone in regard to me is a very foreign concept.  But his presence is appreciated probably more than he could fully understand.  And it's not just those people solely that have been reminders - I have co-workers and former colleagues that get added to the list of friendships to be grateful for.

 The details

Then there are the details.  I'm learning more and more about the little things that make a big difference, the value of not overlooking the small and the mundane.  Kristen and I decided to go out on a limb and do a photo shoot of me in this old prom dress I have.  We basically went around our house and farm and snapped photos of whatever we thought would look good.  I told her I wanted a picture of me with my pony, Bud - but just of our feet.  So here we are in my houndstooth-print rain boots and prom dress with Bud's little feet next to mine.  It reminds me of the details because it's just a smaller piece of a bigger whole.  I need to be reminded of that perspective more often.

Family   

Families will forever be dysfunctional in some way, shape, or form in my book.  I had never seen the movie Little Miss Sunshine before until a month or so ago.  I spent more time laughing during that movie than I had in awhile - because splashed on the TV were tiny glimmers and reflections of my own family.  I often sit back and tell myself, "We are so not normal.  And I love it."  Somehow we still manage to embrace family and all that it is.  I snapped this photo of my niece while we were visiting my brother's family one night.  I think it is one of the most precious photos of her because I caught it at just the right moment when she had this particular look on her face.  I'm not sure what word I would use to describe it, but I love it either way. 



New Favorite

So, I may have discovered my new favorite design technique that I will probably use more than a normal person should.  Erica sent me this link the other day from Pinterest and I immediately fell in love with the idea.

You basically paint your nails a base color, dip them in some rubbing alcohol, plaster some newspaper on them, peel it off, and voila!    Love it!

Makes Me Think

Every Wednesday morning one of the local radio stations has a segment called Zuko's CyberScoop.  The DJ references a few websites that listeners have recommended or that he has stumbled across.  He had one this morning, though, that caught my attention.  And after reading a few, I'll admit that I got a little misty-eyed.  I'll let the site do the talking.

http://www.makesmethink.com/

Today, I was sitting on a park bench eating a sandwich I made myself for lunch when an elderly couple pulled their car up under a nearby oak tree. They rolled down the windows and turned up some jazz music on the radio. Then the man got out of the car, walked around to the passenger side, opened the door for the woman, took her hand and helped her out of her seat, guided her about ten feet away from the car, and they slow danced for the next half hour under the oak tree. MMT


Today, I took a cab ride 16 blocks in Manhattan and when I got to my destination I realized I forgot my wallet at home. As I fumbled through my purse, trying to explain things to the cab driver and scrounge up enough cash, a man walked up behind me and handed me a $50 bill. “Thank you!” I said. “Let me have your address. I will pay you back.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out an old receipt and wrote down an address. “You can drop off my money here,” he said. This afternoon I went to the address he gave me and found myself standing in front of a soup kitchen that had a sign out front that said, “Accepting cash donations to feed the hungry.” I walked in and donated the $50. MMT


Today, my father celebrated his 85th birthday in his hospice bed. Our entire family gathered in his room to celebrate with him. It was a bittersweet experience. And a few hours before he passed he used every bit of strength he had to read a love letter aloud to us that my mom had written to him back in 1946 when they first started dating. MMT


Today, I saw my elderly neighbor down at his mailbox getting his mail when a gust of wind ripped a large yellow envelope out of his hand and blew it down the street. As I got up to assist him, my dog, who was sitting on my front porch next to me, unexpectedly got up and went running after the envelope, caught it in her mouth halfway down the block, and brought it back to my neighbor. MMT

Today, I am a corporate accountant for a privately held chain of restaurants in the mid west. Our company employs several hundred people. The economic downturn has had a noticeable effect on the number of customers eating in our restaurants, but not a single employee has been laid off. But what our employees don't know is that the owner hasn't written himself a paycheck in six straight months. MMT

(Mis)Adventures in Baking

I had last night is what I considered a baking FAIL, which is not normal for me.  I'd like to believe I'm a decent baker.  However, I know I am prone to mistakes and failures, with the occasional recipe quite literally crashing and burning. For the most part, though, I can hold my own in the baking realm. 

I first encountered this cupcake a few weeks ago when a lady at church made them for a small group leaders meeting.  It was like discovering a whole new world when I first tasted this cupcake.  Out-of-this-world good.  Being from Ohio, we love our Buckeyes, and I'm not talking about the football team (although we love them, too, we are just having an unstable relationship at the moment).  I'm talking about the chocolate peanut butter candies.  These cupcakes were like eating a cake version of those Buckeyes.  

So, I got the recipe from my friend and I morphed into a domestic goddess last night and decided to give the recipe a try.  The general idea is that it's a yellow cake mix with peanut butter cookie dough in the middle.  Sounds simple enough, right?  That's what I thought.  

I mix them up, stick the cookie dough in the center, and slide them into the oven.  Twenty-three minutes later I'm wondering where I went wrong.  My friend's cupcakes definitely didn't look like this.  They overflowed the edges a little bit, which is fine.  I can deal with that.  But then when they began to cool, they started to collapse.  And then the center got bigger and bigger until I was left with a gaping hole right in the middle of my cupcake - where, in theory, the peanut butter cookie dough should have filled up the space.  Yeah, not so much.  They ended up looking like donuts.  It was like the scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation when Clark goes to slice the turkey - it looks so great and so amazing and then he cuts into and the entire thing deflates.  That's how this felt. 

So, I'm not sure what in the world I did to botch this one up, but I am going to have to call up the reinforcements and see what my strategy should be for next time.  I mean, they tasted great and I'll definitely still eat them, they just look terrible.  

I included the recipe below, which is from The Cake Mix Doctor Returns cookbook.  I hope yours turn out better than mine.     

INGREDIENTS

24 paper liners for cupcake pans
1 package plain yellow cake mix
3 tablespoons vanilla instant pudding mix
1 cup reduced fat sour cream
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 package (16.5 oz) refrigerated peanut butter cookie dough, chilled

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat oven to 350. Line 24 cupcake cups with paper liners and set the pans aside.

Place the cake mix, pudding mix, sour cream, milk, oil, eggs and vanilla in a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds. Stop the machine and scrape down teh side of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase mixer speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes longer, scraping down the sides of the bowl again as needed. The batter should look well blended.

Set aside about 3/4 cup of the cupcake batter before filling the cupcake pans. Using the rest of the batter, spoon or scoop a heaping 1/4 cup of batter into each lined cupcake cup, filling it two thirds of the way full. (You will get between 22 and 24 cupcakes;remove empty liners, if any.)

Unwrap the cookie dough and slice the log lengthwise into four pieces. Then cut each piece into 6 even chunks. Place a chunk of cookie dough on top of each cupcake and push it down into the batter. Top each piece of cookie dough with about 1 teaspoon of the reserved cupcake batter.

Place the pans in the oven and bake the cupcakes until they are golden and the tops spring back when lightly pressed with a finger, 18-23 minutes. Remove the pans from oven and place them on wire racks to cool for 5 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pans and place on wire racks to cool for 15 more minutes before frosting.

...After All

I'm pretty sure anybody walking by my desk today at the precise moment I read a particular email would probably have given me a really puzzled expression and asked if I was okay. 

I was, in fact, okay - just rather stunned and too busy picking up my jaw from desk. Then awe settled in as I considered the intricacies of how God brings together the pieces of our world.

I received an email earlier today from my good friend Kate, whom I met while in Kenya last summer.  We quickly became partners in crime and had many an adventure together, our safari probably being the most memorable.  We've kept in touch since then and are both hoping to go back to Africa sometime next summer together, if God wills.  Kate is currently in Burkina Faso with her daughter and son-in-law as those two are adopting a little boy from Burkina.  Kate went along to help with the process and to be of assistance in taking care of her other grandchildren. 

Well, this past Saturday one of the orphanage's staff members from another village came into town to run some errands and help with finalizing the adoption process of the young boy.  Kate and this staff member get to chatting, Kate mentions she had been to Africa before with the Rafiki Foundation.  The staff member turns to Kate and says, "Oh yeah, I know the Rafiki Foundation. I know a girl who went to Kenya with them."  "Well, what's her name?"  "Courtney."  "You know Courtney?!" 

Lo and behold, this staff member is Becky, a girl that I worked with for a year back in Missouri!  Our offices were practically next to each other and we had had several conversations about Africa and our interests there.  Becky was a year younger than me in grad school, starting her first year when I was starting my second year.  She eventually left the program because she just knew that she wanted "to love on little black babies," so away to Africa she went.  She's pretty much been there ever since.

Can you believe that?  What are the odds?  How amazing that God orchestrates these moments where individual lives intersect, but still somehow manage to leave us all connected.   

It really is a small world.

After all. 

Big Picture Definitions

Oh, life.  Sometimes I wonder about you.  Like how the heck you and I are supposed to work together.  Or how I'm supposed to survive you without completely botching everything up. 

I have felt this tremendous pressure lately - probably self-imposed - to have somehow "arrived" at a job better than one as an admin assistant and to own a home or to at least be living somewhere other than with my parents. (I hate seeing that last part in black and white.)  I wrestle back and forth - do I get an apartment?  Do I buy house?  What is this desire to own a home?  As Christians, how much of the American Dream should we buy into?  What does it look like to live in community?  Where should I live?  Why do we own homes?  What does it ultimately signify?  And if I go back to Africa for any length of time, shouldn't I really answer that question first before I go and buy a house?  Am I less of a person for not being out on my own?  What if people think I'm a slacker?  Am I enabling some kind of crazy habit and I don't even realize it?  Why do I have this job?  Am I a good steward of my talents and skills?  Why am I not better using the education I have?  Should I be doing something different vocationally?  Is this really how it's supposed to be?

I have no good answers, unfortunately.  I suppose some of my thought process stems from reading books like Radical by David Platt and Crazy Love by Francis Chan, books that really challenge(d) me to reevaluate biblical truths versus things I had been told all my life, things that I just bought hook, line, and sinker.  A lot of "why" questions came out as a result of those books - why this, why that, why not this, why not that.

I really appreciated what Shiao Chong wrote in an article for Comment:    

If we don't make enough money to buy the latest technological gadgets, watch the latest movies, wear the latest fashions, eat at the trendiest places, in short, if we do not have the money power to participate in the culture of consumerism, to be a consumer, we are left out at the margins; we are not "in" or "hip"; we are made to feel that we are missing out. We are not worthy because we don't fit the big picture definition of who we are supposed to be.

But just who is it that we are supposed to be and what is the big picture definition?  Who is writing that definition?  And why are we defining our worth on whether we have a home or a corporate career?  Why am I defining my worth based on those things?  Not to say that those things are wrong - having things, pursuing a great job, etc - but the question must be "What is our motive?"  Why am I seeking those things?  And are we doing it from a biblical, Christ-centered worldview? 

I sure wish I knew.

"What? You Too?"

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."   - C.S. Lewis

I must say, I've got it good when it comes to friendships.  This past week I took a little road trip out to Missouri, back to my alma mater to spend a few days catching up with some of the dearest people in my life, and to also witness a friend's wedding. 

It's always a whirlwind returning to Missouri for such weekend excursions, but every moment winds up being so valuable.  As soon as I landed on Wednesday afternoon, I met up with a friend for dinner and then spent the evening with Ed and Debbie.  I can't even begin to express how much that couple has influenced my life, particularly Debbie.  I imagine college would have looked very different without her guidance. 

Thursday was spent drinking and eating my way through conversations - and by drinking I mean French Vanilla cappuccinos and strawberry smoothies.  I made a pit-stop back on campus to see former co-workers, people I consider dear friends.  Friday was similar with a surprise visit from a friend that I wasn't expecting to see, but was so grateful to spend time with her.  Just so many good conversations, the ones that just feel so right.  The ones where it's a little bit like coming home.  The ones that are exactly what C.S. Lewis was talking about, where you remember the moment when you first met and said, "Yes!  Someone who gets me.  It's nice to know I'm not alone in my zany-ness and quirks and insecurities." 

It's nice to know I've got kindred spirits who are willing to laugh along with me, who know not to take ourselves too seriously.  It's nice to know I've got a friend close by who will move with me into a convent when we've decided we've had enough of boys and their shenanigans.  (We're totally joking, but we often say we're going to join a convent when we want to take the easy way out and just avoid boys all together.  It's happened frequently as of late.)  It's nice to know I've got friends who can talk Mizzou and Ohio State football as well as they can talk about theology, Tozer, and whether I should go with this nail polish color or that one.  It's nice to know that everyone else's family is just as crazy as mine.  

So, to my "other family" in Missouri - I am blessed because of you.  And so very grateful.       

Here Comes Friday With a Script I Haven't Seen

It's amazing the timeliness of some recent events here lately.  Just small things that have come at just the right moment.  Maybe it was something that someone said, or an act of kindness that someone went out of their way to complete, or a sweet text message, or a bouquet of flowers from a dear friend, or an email from a respected pastor that spawned all sorts of possibilities and ideas.  The little things that have added up to the big things and made me all the more grateful.

One of those timely small things was the poem below.  I snatched it from Travis's blog, which seems to be a habit as of late.  I happened to read it the morning after I had a minor meltdown about life and relationships, basically having my own pity-party and feeling like I was "ill-prepared for the privilege of living."  I think it hit me at just the right time and spoke to so many of the emotions that were running through my head and my heart. 

Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine, I can’t exchange it.
I have to guess on the spot
Just what this play’s all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for hammy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me even more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can’t take back,
Stars you’ll never get counted,
Your character like a raincoat you button on the run -
The pitful results of all this unexpectedness.

If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
Or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
Since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
Taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.

The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
Will become forever what I’ve done.

Wistawa Szymborska