Cruisin

We went on a cruise...3 months ago. It was a really interesting experience. Our room was much bigger than I expected. (I have heard a lot of tiny stateroom horror stories.) It had a balcony which I'm sure helped to enlarge the feel of the room. Looking at the ocean is one of my favorite things so being able to lay in bed and watch the ocean at the same time was ridiculously awesome. The food was plentiful and mostly excellent. There were lots of nerds on the cruise who were big fans of my husband so I got loads of free drinks. What more do you need in life people?

More to come from our Mexican excursion. Hint:It was almost an international incident :)

Book Review - Staying at Daisy's

Remember Millie's Fling? I like it so much I read this book by the same author. Mistake!!!

The problem with this one is there are far too many characters doing far too many things. It's just exhausting. And beyond that, it's just so predictable. Daisy works at a boutique hotel near Bath, England. The hotel is owned by her father. Daisy's philandering husband dies early on leaving a girlfriend and a baby in the town. Daisy donates his organs and one of the recipients, Barney, comes to work at the hotel. He falls in love with the dead philanderer's girlfriend. Yeah really. There is also a busty chambermaid. (Isn't there always a busty chambermaid?) There are a bunch of other cahracters. I didn't really care about them and you probably won't either.

The one bright spot occurs near the end. The busty chambermaid lives with her aunt. The aunt has been without a washing machine for weeks due to a negligent repair service. She is so distraught that she takes the repairman hostage until the company owner replaces her machine. Don't worry. It's not violent or anything. The hostage repair man makes her homemade pasta and tries to seduce her. That could totally happen in real life, you know.

Easter 2011

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Spring Break - Pool Rulz!

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Savannah's 13th Birthday

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Quoted - C.S. Lewis Edition

Continue seeking God with seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.

Rock City Redux

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Book Review - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

This book was quiet perfection. It's not too long and the author is not interested in beating me over the head with whatever her opinions are. It's just a story. And it's good.

Major Pettigrew is a widower. He is also a bit of a curmudgeon. I am also a bit of a curmudgeon so, of course, I loved him. As the novel begins, Major has just buried his brother. His is worried about an antique set of guns that his sister in law refuses to give him. He is worried about his grown son who is a bit of a butthole.

Then Major begins a slow, sweet courtship with Mrs. Ali, a Pakistani widow who runs the local store. This causes a lot more worry. And there are hijinks. Everybody loves hijinks, right?

Read this book. Fall in love with Major Pettigrew and Mrs Ali. And embrace your inner curmudgeon. You won't be happier but I'll probably like you better.

Ruby Falls

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Book Review - Minding Frankie

Maeve Binchy is like the Irish Fannie Flagg. Does that make any sense? She creates these great characters and they keep showing up in all her novels. They are all 'stand alone' stories. The characters just intersect quite a bit.

This book is about a sweet couple with a pitiful son. The son, Noel, has a dead end job and enjoys a pint more than most Irishmen...which is a lot. Cousin Emily arrives from America and sends the whole family plus the entire neighborhood into a tizzy. (It's a Maeve Binchy tizzy so it's much calmer than an American tizzy.) About the time Emily arrives, Noel finds out he is going to be a father. The mother of his baby has a terminal illness so Noel is going to be a single father. Emily mobilizes the entire community to help with baby Frankie. Noel goes back to school, starts going to AA and generally does very well.

There are no deep themes in this book. It's just a few hundred pages of joy. You meet these goofy characters and you like them all. Even the mean social worker is impossible to hate.

If Maeve Binchy lives long enough, I know she's going to write a book about Frankie as a grown up.

Dear God, please let Maeve Binchy live long enough to write that book!

Update

!!!She did it again!!!

Just two short weeks later. I cried a lot harder this time and made even less sense. I'm hoping she learned her lesson.

I am starting to seriously think that God does not care if I am humiliated. Honestly, after a lifetime of making a complete idiot out of myself, I'm not sure why I didn't figure this out earlier.

Book Review - Unbroken

First, let me admit that I often go overboard about books I enjoy. That being said...

OMG!!!I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH!!! IT IS BETTER THAN (FILL IN BLANK WITH BEST THING YOU CAN THINK OF)!!!

I just put this book on my library hold list because it was wildly popular on Amazon and it had over a thousand 5 star reviews. I never read Seabiscuit (although now I'm gonna) and I knew absolutely nothing about the subject of this book.

Unbroken is the story of Louie Zamperini. Louie is an track star Olympic hopeful who serves in WWII. The following items are not *Spoilers*. From the beginning, you know that Louie is going to survive. But as you read, you just can't figure out how he can possibly live through all this stuff. Louie's plane gets shot down over the Pacific. He survives...on a raft... for 40 something days. That story alone would make a great book. Then he is rescued by the Japanese. He is put into several POW camps. Apparently POW camps are about 6 trillion times worse than I ever imagined. After he returns to the US, he goes a little crazy and becomes an alcoholic. I assure you, you will not even blame Loiuie for these things.

After all this something truly wonderful happens. Let me try to set this up.
1. This book is secular. It may be described as 'inspirational' but it's not a Christian book. 2. The stories of Louie's childhood and war service take up about 85% of the book. I explain this so you will know that I was just expecting a few last pages to tell about Louie's post war life. I had no inkling that a Jesus moment was waiting for me. But then, I saw this name :

BILLY GRAHAM!!!

Yep. After an amazing life (that honestly you will not believe)a depressed, alcoholic, PTSD suffering Louie gets dragged to one of Billy Graham's Los Angeles Crusades by his wife (who was planning to divorce him.)

Let me tell you something. I don't care if you are Satan's secretary. You will not be able to read this story and not be overwhelmed by the power of God.

If this book doesn't change you, I don't know what will. It is simply the best story I have read in forever. I beg of you. Go buy this book and read it. Then let me have the joy of saying "I told you so."

Spring 2011

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Quoted

"You don't realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have."

Tim Keller

Book Review - The Paris Wife

This book is interesting. It is a fictionalized account of Hadley Richardson, the first wife of Ernest Hemingway. I bet you know this story even if you know nothing about Hemingway. He marries Hadley when he is a flat broke, unpublished, struggling writer. She supports him, puts up with his novelist nonsense, gives birth to his son and then gets dumped for another woman right about the time his career takes off.

Of course, you know something is going to happen to the marriage from page one. The author's intention (I think) is just to write about their years as a young married couple in Paris. She does a great job with this. But here's the problem : I know the mistress, homewrecker, heifer is coming. For me, she haunts every page.

Reading this book was a very emotional experience for me. (I know. I know. Everything is an emotional experience for me. Whatever.) I realize that I view my memories of Ryan just this same way. All the memories that should be sweet to me are made bitter by her. She has become the lense through which I view our entire marriage. It shouldn't be this way.

If you had a marriage ruined by a lying, adulterous hoebag, you might want to skip this book. If not, you will probably love it.

Quoted - C.S. Lewis

If God thinks this state of war in the universe is a price worth paying for free will, then it is worth paying.

The Power of a Praying Dufus

"Rachel, will you close us in prayer?"

Smallgroupleadingpreacher'swife say what?

Panic engulfs me. I scan the room looking for emergency exits. I gasp for air.

"What?" I reply sweetly as if I didn't understand the question.

"Would you close us in prayer?" she responds.

It hits me like a ton of bricks.

She doesn't know.

Because we have just met, she assumes I am normal. She has no idea that my non-public praying is somewhat legendary. Had she asked that question while any of my friends were in attendance, their hysterical laughing would have drowned out my response.




Allow me to try to explain. I pray. Quite a bit actually. But I do not pray out loud in public. You might be surprised to know that this actually has nothing to do with my ridiculously low self esteem or my insurmountable insecurity. I don't pray out loud because I cannot utter even a single boring request to God without crying. Ever. No petition to my God is too mundane to start the waterworks.

This is why I don't pray with my husband. I know praying together is one of the best indicators of a strong and healthy marriage. I'm sure Kevin wants to pray with me. God knows we have a neverending set of topics we could address. But we don't because, honestly, I already make that man suffer through a tear filled rant at least once a day anyway. Hasn't he suffered enough?



We have one good friend who seems to be the unofficial prayer leader for our lives. If we go to lunch and she is not in attendance, chaos may erupt. The girls will not look to me to stand in the prayer gap. Nobody needs to see my chubby self crying over a vat of cheese dip at Cinco de Mayo.

I don't wanna get all super-spiritual here. I'm just a crybaby. Plain and simple. If you pass me in my minivan (where I spend 3/4 of my days it seems) and you see that I am blubbering. Don't worry. Chances are nobody died. I probably just heard a good praise song on the radio. (I can't worship without crying either. I've learned to accept it. You should too.)

So ... back to my small group.
I realized pretty quickly there was no way to deny the request of my pastor's wife.

So I prayed.
Out loud.
In front of people.

Did I cry? You betcha. But it wasn't awful. I wasn't sobbing or anything. It wasn't an ugly cry. And people got up to leave just like normal. No one whispered or pointed so I'm guessing they weren't horrified by my efforts.

This should be the part of the post where I say how happy I am to have conquered that fear. How thrilled I am to be free of that yoke of oppression on my prayer life. How eager I am to start interceding for anyone who might ask.



Seriously. Do you people even know me?

Just Katie