Getting my hands dirty

I can't recall the last time I felt so excited about the prospect of going back to work as I am right now. A few months ago I began sending out my resume and filling out online applications for different jobs. The job market is tight and I didn't really get any responses, but didn't panic or get frustrated with the process because I know God is faithful to provide and we've been doing just fine. But today, I had a meeting for a prospective job. I feel funny about calling it work or a job. I'll be helping our new church in their business office. I am so excited about getting back out there and being productive. After leaving our last place of worship where I also worked and was heavily involved in ministry early this year, I have kind of been hanging back from diving back into ministry. But God has been tugging on my heart for some time and I am so excited to have the opportunity to serve Him in this way again. Yesterday the sermon was about the different ways that we worship the Lord. I have to say that even though I feel close to the Lord when I am singing praise and worship songs to Him and when I am surrounded by nature; the beautiful world He created...just the idea that I will be serving Him once again in ministry; getting my hands dirty for God...I am so excited!

Can't live a day without YOU

Most of my friends know that I can be pretty cheezy...no, really. Anyway, Monday, I left my daughter's theater rehearsal and got home feeling as though I was missing something. My pants pockets were empty, my purse was mysteriously lighter. Yes, it's true...I lost my cell phone. It's an older phone so I wasn't heartbroken, but not being able to find it was unnerving. I sent an e-mail and called the theater in the morning and noone turned it in or found it. Hmmmm. Years ago we didn't have cell phones and everything was fine. I didn't feel as though I was so important that people needed to be able to contact me 24-7. But now, with two teenagers at different schools with different schedules and extracurricular activities, I was feeling a little lost, almost panicky. I went a day without my phone. It was really awful. I started trying to put it into perspective with other things in my life and it made me think of a song by Avalon (here comes the cheezy part). But before you take this the wrong way, let me preface this by saying NO, I'm not comparing the importance of my cell phone to the importance of having Jesus in my life. But it did make me think about how trivial little things like cell phones have escalated in importance in my life over the years and perhaps my recognition of the importance of Jesus in my life has not. All this to say, that I'm glad to have my cell phone back, but today I reclaim Jesus as having more importance in my life than my cell phone. Enjoy Avalon on this YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsgY5mYbMoo&feature=related.

PS - I've now lost over 13 pounds and I CAN live a day without them.

As for me and my house...

You all know I'm new to blogging, so there might be an easier way to do this, but I wanted to share with you one of the theme songs of my life at the moment. Follow this link and check out Natalie Grant's song "So Long" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5cLx0cIJ1E. If you haven't purchased her new CD yet...whatcha waitin' for? She's so awesome. In fact we just purchased another one of her CD's to help my daugher prepare for a Christmas production that she is in this year. The CD is called Believe. It's a Christmas CD which may have been released last year, but it's AWESOME.
This morning's sermon at church was about making choices. One of the verses referenced was from Joshua 24. In verse 14 he says "Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forerathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD." But he knew not everyone would be as accepting to his plea so he goes on in verse 15 to say "But if serving the LORD seems undesireable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." We all have choices that we can make in our lives. We choose to live for Jesus, we choose to live for ourselves - making money for the sake of collecting things and making our lives comfortable. Sometimes, I think God is telling us (ME), you aren't always supposed to be comfortable. You need to be in want to give you an opportunity to recognize our need for HIM and to recognize all the blessings we have in our lives. Most of us have roofs over our heads, cars to drive, food in the pantry and in our fridges, some even in spare freezers. We have clothes to wear, shoes to cover our feet. Bathrooms, toilet paper. TV's, WII's, computers, MP3 players all for the purpose of entertaining us. It makes me wonder how many people are out there right now who don't even have the simplest of necessities. Think about it.
This year, we are really scaling back Christmas. In the past we've gone WAY overboard on gift giving. Yes, most of the things were practical gifts, but were they necessary and more importantly, were they in any way tying us back to the reason that we even celebrate Christmas? We were given a gift beyond what any one of us could even fathom. God sent HIS son for us. Talk about practical and a necessity! So this year, just before Thanksgiving I'm going to put up our Christmas tree decorated sparingly. On it I plan to hang pieces of paper which recognize the things that we are thankful for and the things we have been so richly blessed with this year. On Christmas morning, instead of sitting in our pajamas around the tree opening presents for an hour, I hope to go through each piece of paper reflecting upon all the things that each of us have been blessed with; thanking and praising the Lord!
Wow, a little long winded today, but I'm inspired.

Wooohoooo

I am back on track and have now lost 10.8 pounds since I started using my bodybugg. After last week's gain of almost a pound, I was a little discouraged, but mostly determined to just "keep-on keepin'-on" and it paid off. I had to check my weight a few times this morning to make sure that my scale wasn't lying to me. When I got off all I could think was "thank you Lord". I know that I owe it all to HIM. He gives me strength and hope and I know that I can do nothing without HIM.

Update...

I'm sure you're all wondering...yes, the pot finally came clean :-)

Oh, and please remember as you appreciate your Pastor not to forget your Worship Pastor, Associate Pastors and any other Pastors on staff at your church.

Am I ready for my close-up...what?!?!?

Yesterday was an interesting day. If you know me or you read my profile, then you know that I don't like to have my picture taken or look at pictures of myself (but I'm working on it). Well, I found myself unintentionally involved as an extra for a film. No, the theme music doesn't have the lyrics "bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do". This is a project that my daughter's involved in and is being made by a local church. Not only was I asked to walk in front of the camera and actually act (no lines), but I also had a "close-up" shot taken of me in another scene. My only hope and prayer is that those shots will not make it to the final cut. On the other hand, since I'm early in my weight loss process and knowing how long production and post-production can take on an independant film, I can't wait to look back in a year and see how far I've come; confident that in a year I'll be much lighter than I am right now.
But enough about me. On a completely different subject, I would like to encourage all of you to make sure and recognize and appreciate your Pastors during October; Pastor (Clergy) Appreciation Month. Having worked in ministry before, I can say that it is always nice when you are appreciated by those who you are called to minister to. Not so that your Pastor will be given praise and glory, but so that he will know that he is effectively being used by the Lord for His glory! So, send your Pastor and his wife a nice e-mail, note or card, a gift card to a coffee shop, one of their favorite restaurants or online shopping spots like Christian Book Distributors or Berean's. Have them over for lunch or dinner. If they have small children, offer to babysit while they go out for a nice meal or offer to help with some yardwork, wash their car or help with some other task that they may not have had the opportunity to keep up on while serving the Lord.
Anyhow, speaking of tasks that may not have been kept up, I should go. I'm not sure how (or why for that matter I would admit to this), but I have a pot in my sink that has been dirty for two weeks. I have been soaking it and every time I go to wash it, there's still stuff stuck on it so it's in a perpetual state of soaking. But soak no more pot; if it takes me all afternoon and a steel wool pad, you will be cleaned today! At least I'll burn a bunch of calories in the process and my kitchen will be one less pot dirty.

How did that happen?

I think that it's quite possible that one of my 4 pets has opposible thumbs and rolled the dial on my scale forward so that it would say that I weigh more than I actually do. This is the first week in my bodybugg use that I have shown a weight gain on the day that I record my weight. Using the bodybugg you update your online profile once a week. For the first three weeks of using my bodybugg I lost about 2 pounds a week. Today I'm up 8/10th's of a pound. I know it's not much, but it's going in the wrong direction. Surprisingly, I'm not as upset as I thought I would be. Perplexed yes, but not really upset. I guess the Lord is finally getting through to me in really believing my live-for-today montra "Tomorrow is another day". But it got me wondering why or how I could have actually gained back some weight instead of losing it. I went looking for answers in the Bible and found the Proverbs passage that might be familiar to many about not leaning on our own understanding. What's so awesome is how the Lord revealed the following verses to me that talked about bringing health to my body and nourishment to my bones. While the underlying meaning of this verse may not be as literal; it speaks to me today. God is so awesome!

Music Fav's

So, last weekend I drove my daughter and three of her friends from AZ to CA to go to the Revolve Tour along with my neice who lives in CA. Revolve Tour is a Women of Faith conference for teens. This is was our second year in a row going to the conference and we've already purchased our tickets for next year. I highly recommend it. One of the things I always look forward to is seeing Natalie Grant live in concert. That girl can really sing! We picked up her Relentless CD at the conference and I can't stop listening to it. Some of her songs really speak to my "Tomorrow is another day" motto like the song "Let Go". I think everyone loves Natalie Grant at the Revolve Tour, but what the girls really look forward to is seeing Hawk Nelson. It's amazing just sitting in the quietness at my kitchen computer with my dishwasher whirring in the background, I can still hear the screams of those crazy girls at the conference for Hawk Nelson. My ears have still not recovered.
Another one of my favorites right now is JJ & Dave Heller's digitally released CD called Painted Red. We listened to it on the drive all the way out to CA. LOVE IT! This CD is available to YOU free of charge for a limited time by visiting JJHeller.com. Check it out. While you're there, look at JJ's "baby bump" isn't it cute! Our family's connection with the Hellers is a blog for another day. For now, I'll just say that it has to do with our backyard and a couple of stalkers...us :-)

Tomorrow Is Another Day

Yesterday my good friend Valerie and I were talking about our seize-the-day attitude. Her motto is "Today is not my tomorrow", mine is "Tomorrow is another day". It reminded me of the verse from Matthew 6:34 "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own".
I mentioned in my profile that I am a bodybugg user. For those of you who do not know what that is; a bodybugg is a monitoring device that you wear that tracks how many steps you take in a day and how many calories you are burning. I have an account online that I download that information to and record the calories that I am eating as well. To lose weight the idea is very simple. You have to burn more calories than you eat. Each day I have a goal to burn 1000 more calories than I eat. I have a little display (looks like a watch) or I can go online and see where I am with my goal at anytime. What I like about my bodybugg is ONE: It is working; I lost more than 8 pounds in my first 3 weeks, and TWO: I feel like I am accomplishing something every day. Not only for myself as I burn calories and lose weight, but for my husband and family since I burn a bunch of calories by making myself busy around the house; vacuuming, doing laundry, dishes, making beds, etc. Sitting in front of the TV...not so much.
I made the decision to make this weight loss program only positive. If there's a day where I don't meet my goal, or I decide I want to have seconds on dinner or a brownie for dessert, I'm not going to beat myself up. It's not worth it. Tomorrow is another day. If I don't meet my goal today, I'll just try again tomorrow to meet it. I'm motivated and I'm positive about actually meeting my weight goal for the first time in my life. So why be negative and beat myself up about it? Tomorrow is another day. I start fresh with my 1000 calorie goal.
I'm off to walk now. I generally burn over 400 calories walking about 3 miles.
Live for today....nothing positive can come from worrying about tomorrow.

New at blogging, but not at expressing myself

So, this might be the most dangerous thing for me yet; to be able to just write whatever's on my mind at any time.
I used to write a monthly church newsletter which rarely had any other articles submitted by anyone but me. It was a great way to share my love for God and what He has taught me and/or what He was doing in my life. Since I stopped writing that newsletter, I've written a few family newsletters to let our friends and family know what's up, but it's been a little while since I've done that and now that I've discovered "blogging", I don't think there will be any way to stop me from sharing. Of course I'll definitely have to keep my TMI filter in mind so that I don't share too much. Even if noone reads my blog, I still think it's pretty cool. My kids and even my husband have Face Book and My Space pages, but this is like the journal that I always said I needed to start, but never got around to.
Anyway, I'm not always a very good time manager so I'm praying that I haven't created a monster and won't be blogging 24/7 and shirking my responsibilities. With that in mind, that's all for now.