Quoted

“Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.”

Mark Twain

The Challenge

I am challenging myself to a "No Buy January".

Let me try to clarify this a little bit. For the entire month of Januaury, I am going to try not to purchase anything other than household necessities (food, gas, toilet paper, etc). That means, no new clothes which none of us need. No nothing off Amazon. I think I spent 56,000 dollars there for Christmas so if I succeed in this, their stock may suffer. Just sayin. No nothing off eBay. No cute antique silverplate items. No slightly used books. No craft kits. The more I list here, the worse this idea seems. Ugh.

I really am only doing this as an experiment for my own life. We're not in a financial crisis. My husband is not screaming about the money I spend. (He never fusses about money at all which is wonderful and odd at the same time.) But basically I had an epiphany of sorts during the beginning of the holiday season. Someone asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I could not think of one stinkin thing that I needed. At that same time, the idea of simplifying my life became this nagging, ever present idea for me.

So, if I need nothing and I know that God is calling me to make some margins in my life, then there really shouldn't be any difficulty at all in not making any unnecessary purchases for 30 whole days. Right? Right?

This isn't an all or nothing challenge. If one of the kids gets invited to a birthday party, I will buy a present. If somebody needs a black turtleneck for some school nonsense, I will buy it. I'm not doing this to punish my family. I'm guessing most of them won't even notice. I just want to see how much time I actually waste on being a consumer. And then see if I can put that time to better use.

And please don't worry about the state of the US economy. My grocery bill alone can sustain it.

Quoted

"When I was young I admired clever people. Now that I'm old I admire kind people."

Abraham Heschel

Silver Lining

I may or may not have gone off the eBay deep end.

I can explain...kinda.

I really, really, really love silver.

Also, I never actually owned any.

Kevin had a few nice pieces when I met him. A tea set, a couple of pitchers and a few platters. (Funny story...once when we were dating, Kevin's ex-wife wanted to borrow the platters. He agreed and told her just to come by and get them. This was before the robbery when the doors were not routinely locked. When we got home, he noticed the platters were still there. He called to see why his ex hadn't picked them up and she said she couldn't use them because they were tarnished. This story tickles me every time I think about it because I just can't figure out who she thought might actually polish those platters.) Anyway, the tea set and at least one pitcher were stolen which broke my heart.

After we got married, I polished all the remaining pieces and didn't think much about them for a while. Then a few months ago, I read about a silver punch bowl in my Southern Living magazine. This created an unquenchable need for a silver punch bowl in my life. How had I lived 37 years without one? The author of the article said she used hers to chill champagne and to ice down shrimp. Champagne! Shrimp! I love both those things! The hunt was on. Unfortunately, every gal south of the Mason-Dixon line must have read the same article because the bidding for silver punch bowls was going hardcore when I arrived. It was not pretty.

During the three month period that I was stalking the punch bowls, I discovered all kinds of awesome silverplate pieces. First, I fell in love with these butter dishes.




(Also I got those candlesticks so cheap it was nearly stealing.)

But mainly what I love about the butter dishes is the knife.



Ain't it cute?

Then, I started seeing these cake baskets. I know. I never heard of such a thing either. Apparently, brides used to carry them in the early 1900's. These things could bring out the hoarder in me. I just want all of them.



Finally, the Southern Living furor died down and I got this beauty for a ridiculously low price. It is perfect for me. The best part was that it was tarnished when I bought it. Cleaning up a piece of tarnished silver makes me feel like I have discovered a treasure. It thrills me.



I'm trying hard to taper off my silver hobby. If I really want to simplify my life, spending an hour a day on eBay is probably not the best way to achieve that. But there is just something about silver. I'm not sure what the draw is. Maybe I just like the idea of having something to leave for my children. Maybe I just like shiny things. Maybe I just like the idea of having something to hide from the Yankees.

Book Review

Polygamy infuriates and fascinates me. It drives me nuts yet I cannot pass by an opportunity to hear or read about it. I almost always regret it. This book was no exception.

The lonely polygamist is Golden Richards. He has four wives and 24 children. At the beginning of this novel, he finds himself embroiled in a chaste love affair with another man's wife. Normally I would never use the phrase 'he finds himself' when referring to adultery. That's the cop out excuse of almost every lying cheater.

"I didn't mean to."
"I don't know how this happened."
"I had no control over my feelings."

Blah, blah, blah. But I use that to describe this situation because Golden Richards doesn't seem to do anything intentionally. He is a pretty pathetic character yet, for some reason, I like him. I give tons of credit to the author for creating any sympathy at all in me for his character. Because, in case I haven't mentioned it eleventy times. I NO LIKE POLYGAMISTS! I watched one episode of that show 'Sister Wives' on TLC and almost went insane. Conversely, I always enjoyed 'Big Love' on HBO mostly because it highlighted all the obvious problems that polygamy creates.
Katie saw me reading this book and asked me what a polygamist was. I explained the concept to her in the most basic of terms appropriate for a nine year old. Her immediate reaction was "I would never share my husband with another woman!" See. Even a fourth grader can see how jacked up this lifestyle is...but I digress.

The book goes on to talk about how complicated Golden's life is (shocking, huh?) In the end there is tragedy, confession and, in a way, redemption. It's a thought provoking book. I would not say that Brady Udall is antagonistic or sympathetic toward the idea of polygamy. The novel is really about this particular man and while his lifestyle may be unique(thank God) his character faults aren't.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2010

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.

Isaiah 9:2

Brrr!

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Dear Gaylord,

I still hate you. I will never get over you taking Opryland away from me. When I think of all the fun my kids and I could be having every summer, I am filled with rage at your corporation. That being said...I really enjoyed Ice!, Snow! and the Rockettes. Normally we would have had to win the lottery to attend these productions but my beloved children's minister, Amy Buttrey, gave me an insane coupon code back in October. I would tell you how cheap the Rockettes tickets were but it would just make you mad. But I assure you, it has to be a good deal to get all 9 of us plus Dylan's girlfriend tickets to ANYTHING.

Christmas Frivolity

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Interesting facts about our family.

1 - We will use any excuse to go eat at Demos'.

2 - We will pay ten bucks to see a pretty good Christmas light display if it is in Lebanon because there is a Demos' there.

3 - Not one of us knows the complete lyrics to any Christmas carol. It's pitiful.

4 - All of us know the complete lyrics to "Tonight the DJ got Us Fallin In Love Again" by Usher.

Just for me

More from the 'Deeper Still Conference'.

Kay Arthur was the first to speak on Friday night. She began in Matthew Chapter 1. The intent and purpose of her teaching that evening was to discuss 'Emmanuel- God with us'. Seems pretty clear cut, right? She preached for about 2 hours. It seemed like about 12 minutes. She started at Matthew 1 and went straight through to Matthew 28. It was actually pretty amazing. But I want to tell you what happened about halfway through. She looks up and says "You need to simplify your life. Do you really need more stuff? Do you really need one more thing to sit on a shelf?" I think I may have stopped breathing at that point. It was such a sudden statement. So completely unrelated to her intended topic and so obviously meant for me.

Hear me out on this. I'm sure there were many women at that conference who need to simplify their lives. But I knew that message was for me. I am not an arrogant person but I am fully persuaded that God is crazy in love with me. (He feels the same about you. We've been all through this.) That being said, God also knows that sometimes I am in need of a spiritual sledgehammer begfore I really 'get' what he is trying to say to me. Before the weekend was over, that hammer would fall two more times.

Here's the backstory. In the week prior to the conference, my friend Jen wrote this blog post. I simply could not get it out of my mind. Day after day I just kept thinking about it. Her statement about margins in our lives just rocked my world. I realized basically that I don't have any margins. Not in one single area of my life. Reading Jen's words made me realize how much I wanted them.

Kevin and I talked about it for a couple of days and both of us kept coming back to the fact that the word 'margin' was such a great explanation for what we needed to create. Neither of us had ever heard that word used in that context before. But thinking about that clean, white space around the edge of a piece of paper created a perfect picture for what I needed in my life. The embarrassing part of this story is that during this week leading up to the conference at the same time that I was ruminating on Jen's admonishment to 'simplify', I was in a desperate search for plastic candy canes to decorate my mailbox. Let me tell you something. Nobody NEEDS plastic candy canes on their mailbox. This would be become a pretty good metaphor for how I was wasting my time and treasure.

Back to the conference.

Priscilla Shirer was the first to speak on Saturday morning. The point of her teaching was about having 'an empty quiver'. Basically she was encouraging us to use all we have and trust God to replenish it. She talked about how we all want to keep a little back as a safety net. She was speaking about lots of areas, emotionally, financially, etc. At some point, she says "And you don't have any margins in your life." I don't know what she said after that because I'm pretty sure I lost consciousness for a second. Margins...she actually said margins.

Saturday afternoon, Beth Moore presented her session. She was teaching from Luke. She was talking about several passages where Luke says that Mary 'treasured or pondered' something in her heart. She said that our society doesn't really value that kind of behavior. We don't allow ourselves time to meditate, think, pray, whatever. We just rush through the day hoping to survive. Then she said we don't have any God margins in our life. No place that we set aside to be with Him or think about His Word. You should know,at this point, that I was caught between the ugly cry and hysterical laughter. It wasn't pretty. Then Beth said "It's so funny that Priscilla used the word 'margins' this morning because we don't compare teaching before we present it." I knew it wasn't 'funny' and I also knew it was no coincidence.

So the question I am posing to myself now is this. How messed up is my life that God would compel my four favorite Bible teachers to speak to me about this one specific thing? And how can I possibly fail to respond?

Deeper Still 2010

I have a love/dislike relationship with the idea of the 'women's Bible conference'.

Let me get the dislike part out of the way first. I find myself in head shaking amazement at the sheer numbers of women who attend these things. (Full disclosure: I have only attended 3 or 4 of these conferences. My experience may not be true of the genre as a whole.) I wonder what the world would be like if these same women, myself included, could maintain the same kind of passion and intensity for Jesus outside of these few weekends sprinkled through the year. What kind of impact could we have just in our own families? Other than that, my main problem is that, as in all situations, people who claim to be Christians don't act like I want them to much of the time. For example, there is no biblical edict that says "Thou shalt pick up your trash before you leave the arena." But I just feel like people should do that. Even godless heathens ought to pick up after themselves. In their defense, I'm sure that lots of these gals pick up after people 24/7. Maybe they go for one of these weekends and just determine that they ain't gonna lift a finger to do anything. I understand and commiserate with that situation but it's still tacky. My other pet peeve is with Lifeway's general seating policy. If you sell 15 thousand tickets and yet guarantee no one a seat, mayhem will ensue. Trust me here. If the conference begins at 7PM and the arena doors open at 5:30, you can expect 12 thousand people to be pressed up to the doors by 4:45. These people act worse than Black Friday shoppers. And nobody believes 'the last shall be first' when it comes down to making sure that the Pineville Baptist Women's group gets 67 seats all together. It's just not a nice scene and I dread it every time.

Now for the stuff I love.

First, I am so blessed to have Savannah. She is such a spiritually mature kid. This is the 2nd conference we have attended together. I'm not sure many other 12 year old kids could sit through 2 full days of Bible teaching. She assured me that she loved it and is even bugging me to go to another one next summer.

Friday night the conference began with Kay Arthur. I love her more than peanut butter. She wrote the first Bible study I ever did and so she feels like my spiritual grandmother. Kay and I both became Christian at the age of 29 so I look to her as an example of what's possible for a gal who cam to Jesus a little later than others. Saturday speakers included Beth Moore and Priscilla Shirer. I'll have more to say later about their specific messages. (Ain't you excited?)

But I attend these things for one main reason - the music. One of the biggest adjustments in moving from a Baptist to a Methodist church is...well...basically the Methodists suck at music. They are good at lots of other stuff but praise and worship is just not their area of emphasis. When I am at a conference, I sing those hymns at the top of my terrible voice and it is, without a doubt, some of the most precious moments of my life. When you stand among that many people singing "Holy, Holy, Holy" I think you have just a litte taste of what heaven may be like. I'm assuming I will have a beautiful voice at that point but I can't support that with one speck of scripture.

The Many Faces of Ava

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Quoted

“Complete weakness and dependence will always be the occasion for the Spirit of God to manifest His power.”

Oswald Chambers

Thankful

This is the main reason I keep teaching the 2nd grade Sunday School class. I wish (and I think God does too) that we all could be so honest in our prayers.

Quoted - The B-I-B-L-E Edition

Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!

Isaiah 30:18

Halls Decked

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Quoted - C.S. Lewis Edition

"I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer."

C.S. Lewis

Taylor Swift - Dear John

Katie loves Taylor Swift.

Therefore we are all required to love Taylor Swift.

The first time I heard this song, I wept like a 16 year old. I know there is some drama and speculation regarding who this song may be about. Let me just say that I could not care less. But her voice is so plaintive and and so...raw in this song. It just unleashes the memory of every heartbreak I have ever experienced. That's a lot of heartbreak people. I still really like the song though because, apparently, I am a glutton for punishment.

Rest in Peace

Elizabeth Edwards is one of my heroes. I love her as much as I hate her lying, piece of crap, husband and his idiot mistress. I pray for her children and I pray for a world that needs a whole lot more women like her.