I’m testing out Typepad. You can get a free 30-day trial when you sign up. Mine starts today. Thought I would see if its easier than Blogger — especially with my Mac.
I got an idea from another blog I happened upon and thought I’d journal the last 26 days of my 30s. And probably reminisce a little about the paths I took getting here. Here’s the link.
Check it out and let me know wha’cha think.
I’ve had one of those blissfully restful weekends. I took long walks around Radner Lake, read quite a bit, cooked some (an amazing and rare thing for me), did a little sorting and discarding in preparation for my move in October, and just generally kicked back.
I spent much time in my own head, thinking through deeply rooted problems and sin in my own life from childhood crap. I needed this time, and need more still, to begin the healing process and make changes in life; changes that will lead to a restoration of Life God meant me to have.
Much of my writing ended up being stuff that’s really only for private consumption. I had big plans to finish all the various drafts of posts I started last week but didn’t have time or energy to finish. But sometimes — well, often times, really — life just doesn’t pan out the way we plan.
No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth.
No, I haven’t gotten bored with blogging, or moved on to something "new".
No, I haven’t run out of things to say (as if that were possible!!).
No, I haven’t forgotten that there are people who stop by here every day to see what crazy thing I will say—uh, write—next.
I’ve just been ultra-busy on a project at work, and mega-tired after work (for more on using too many adjectives to describe something, see this article). So, while all the thoughts and ideas run rampant in the chaos commonly known as my mind, this space has had to remain blank for a bit.
But the weekend is on its way, and, hopefully, I’ll have a little time and enough energy to thrown down here, for your reading pleasure (or whatever), a few of the thoughts that have currently taken up residence in my brain.
Until then, check out this recent post and Dan’s comments from Dan Kimball, and Carlos’ take on a similar subject. Okay, talk amongst ya’selves…!
to do some cleaning, a little packing, and a lot of resting and reading. Been a busy day.
I received an email from my brother tonight, letting me know my nephew-in-law (my niece, Billie’s, husband) has officially left for Iraq.
Ed left for Iraq this morning. It’s supposed to be a 7 month deployment but we all know how that’s been working out.
He will be based in the north, repairing equipment that is being used to secure the border. That means he will occasionally be required to go get equipment in the field that has broken down…. which is dangerous. The terrorists are, for good reason, fighting this build up along the border.
Please remember my nephew, Ed, my niece Billie and their two young sons during this time.
I know his heart, and he walks with Jesus. I know his desire is that all who see him will see Jesus more than they see an American soldier. Please pray that this will happen. Pray that his presence in Iraq will have eternal consequences, even as he serve the Iraqi people to make their home a better, safer and free land.
NFL Monday Night Football is on again. MMMMMMmmm… is that the smell of Fall I detect in the air?
I have to confess. I don’t watch football as much as a fall asleep to it. š Something about the sound of the crowds cheering and the commentators… er, commentating…. it’s just so soothing and comforting. Reminds me of Sunday afternoons when I was a kid.
The fact that Monday Night Football is playing tells me my favorite season is on its way. I absolutely love the summer-into-fall fall-into-winter season. September through December. My birthday. Fall and Halloween — even though I don’t celebrate it, I still love the feel and look and smells of Fall — Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yeeeesss!!! Awesome time of year.
Bring on the birthday celebrations! Bring on the holidays! Bring on Autumn! After this summer, I’m ready for it!
Go Panthers!!
I had The Most incredible day! I met some amazing new friends, connected up with a fellow worker from my former region overseas (and serving a people group that I still pray for constantly), hung out with new friends at lunch and for a time afterward, and had soul-nourishing conversations and laughter.
This morning Rick showed a Sarah McLaughlin video to preface his sermon. It was incredibly powerful and humbling. Shaun has a great post on this. I’d highly recommend watching the video and taking account of your own life afterward.
Rick’s sermon was on coveting. And I, like most "mature" Christians listening, I’m sure, thought, oh, I don’t really need to pay much attention today. This one’s not for me. I don’t want somebody else’s stuff, I want my own.
Whomp! That’s pretty much the sound I heard just before Jesus smacked me upside the head with Rick’s sermon, point after point, after point….
The one that hit the hardest was that coveting comes from a lack of gratitude.
Last week I found out I’m getting the exact place to live that I wanted. Its the place I’d left a couple weeks ago shouting "YES!!!! I don’t know what your answer is, Jesus, but mine is YES!!" and then proceeded to spend the next two weeks begging Him to let me have it.
Well, He did. And was I happy and jumping for joy? Not exactly. Now I was attacked daily with pang of worry over finances — what if this temp job I have falls through? What if they decide they don’t want to hire me after all? What if I can’t get another job? Will I be able to pay for this place… it is a little pricier than I’d planned, but I’m not paying utilities, so that helps doesn’t it??
Round the questions and doubts and worries went. No, I wasn’t grateful I’d gotten the place of my dreams. I was fretting that God wouldn’t come through the next time. This morning I came face-to-face with the reality that I’m so ungrateful for all that God has blessed me with.
My car, an old Ford Escort that continually reminds me that it’s name really does mean "Fix Or Repair Daily". But it was loaned to me at no cost over two years ago while I began the healing and grieving process after the deaths of my parents. And then it was sold to me by a generous family of four who’d discovered while I was borrowing it that they really don’t need two cars.
My roommate, provided to me by God at the last minute, for a season when money and jobs were scarce. Now I really can afford the place I wanted when I first moved here.
The jobs I’ve had. Especially the one I currently have. I absolutely love going into work. I love the people I work with. I love the work I’m doing. How many people can say that?
And then there’s the more global perspective. Last month Shaun posted a link to the Global Rich List site.
I plugged in my income and discovered this little fact:
You are in the top 3.46% richest people in the world.
There are 5,792,173,913 people poorer than you.
Okay, this isn’t really news to me. I’ve lived in India, I spent 6 weeks in Ethiopia. I’ve visited rural China. I got the hint that I was pretty dang wealthy by the rest of the world’s standards when I was given top student housing to stay in during my first visit to China, which would have been considered slum lord project housing here in the States.
I have it really good. I don’t just have it sort of good, or pretty good. I have it really good.
Too often I forget that.
I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. — Phil 4:12-13
I have struggled for several days with this particular post. It seems I have apparently offended and hurt some people by some things in a recent post. That was never my intention or my desire. But obviously it happened anyway.
Have you ever had people say things to you that are offensive, even mean? Didn’t you want to retaliate, say something equally mean? You know, like back in jr. high, when someone in a conflict would eventually say, "oh, yeah?! Well… you’re ugly!" "HA! You’re stupid!" "You suck!" "Yeah?! Well, you suck more!"
It was usually a way to say "you hurt/offended me but I I don’t want to be vulnerable and just tell you so, so I’ll just hurt/offend you back…"
Well, it appears my recent post generated such a controversy that I found myself in the middle of a similar situation.
It never occurred to me that there are people out there that, once offended, continually revisit the blog that so offends, and eventually even post comments laced with insults, or mean and offensive words of their own. I know, I should not have been surprised by this. We are all human, after all. Even the best, most mature followers of Christ lose it and go mental every once in a while — including me. š And I would wager that some of those people offended would say I had it coming, that I deserved every mean word I got.
I just didn’t think that there were people out there who took blogs so seriously. Last week I learned the hard way that there are.
Ultimately I ended up with 3 or 4 very mean comments and two gracious,well-thought out ones. Unfortunately, the mean ones got the best of me.
Everything in me screamed to strike back at these people for their mean words. And, for a moment I gave in to that temptation and wrote a comment that was pretty harsh. But Jesus had His own comment to make and He made sure I heard it loud and clear.
"Here’s another old saying that deserves a second look: "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ Is that going to get us anywhere? Here’s what I propose: "Don’t hit back at all.’ If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.
"You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best–the sun to warm and the rain to nourish–to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty."
With my comment I was falling into the same game, "tit-for-tat". You offend me, so I’ll offend you. You say something that hurt my feelings so I’ll say something to hurt your feelings. Where does that get us in the end? Especially in the family of God? Someone has to break the chain. Someone has to have the courage to step up and say, "whoa, this is getting us no where."
I realized I needed to be that person. I needed to delete my comment. It was midnight and I felt sure no one would have seen it yet, so I went to delete it.
Too late. Someone else had seen it and posted their hurtful words right after.
At that point the only way I could think to stop the madness was to delete the post that people found so controversial and disable the comments section for a while. Was that the best idea? Dunno. But it was the best I could think of at the time.
For me, my blog is a place for me to write; one way for me to use the gift of writing that God gave me, on my own little space on the internet. It’s a place to express my opinions, my passions, my thoughts and the things God teaches me. Sometimes I will do it better than at other times. And most times I can pretty much guarantee that it will offend someone. Partly because I’m human. And partly because I am my Father’s daughter. God has a tendency to say things that offend as well. And Jesus was an expert at offending the religious community of the day.
I guess my biggest issue with all this is how seriously people took my post — and I base that conclusion on how seriously they were offended. It baffles me that little, powerless, no-name, dorky me has had such power over nearly a whole community (if one commenter is to be believed).
How did I get such power? How did my blog come to mean so much in the eyes of these people? I just don’t get it.
I love reading other blogs. Especially ones that present new and different ideas, or, even in their anger and frustration, point out issues from a perspective I don’t have. I have occasionally run across blogs that I found offensive, even from people within my same community. But I just ignore them and don’t read them again. My life is too full and meaningful to waste on frustration and anger over someone else’s opinion.
I just figured the rest of the blogging world saw things the same way. Apparently I was wrong. And I got a harsh lesson from it last week.
To all those I offended – and probably even offended with this post – please hear me. I deeply apologize and ask for your forgiveness. I hope someday you will be able to see my blog for what it is, just my 2 cents. I’m not a holier-than-thou expert. I’m not the great and powerful Oz. I’m just Lu, with opinions as fiery as my hair is red.
No, really. My hair is red. Pay no attention to the roots that are growing in darker — or perhaps just grayer…
I’m setting a new rule for my blog. If you disagree with me, I invite you to tell me (once I get brave enough to enable comments once again) in a kind and gracious way, why you disagree. Please try to be as specific and on-topic as possible. However, if your comment is mostly full of insults about me, telling me I’m rude and selfish, for example, I will delete it. I like a good dialog with people who disagree with me. I learn a lot from it. But I don’t like it when people call me names and are purposefully mean just to get me back for a post they found offensive.
I heard a song on the radio today that best sums up my feelings about all of this in the chorus,
I’m not trying to be a nuisance,
I just think we can do better than this,
That was simply my 2 cents.
You can take it or leave it.
Okay, I think this one is finally ready for prime-time…
Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you. — Eph 4:32
Wendy has a great point about Dove’s and Nike’s new campaigns using real women, not the airbrushed stick models. What do we need to do to ensure that this becomes the norm of advertising, instead of the exception?
I love these campaigns! I think it’s so cool to finally see women the way we really look, rather than the way the fashion industry would like us to think we should look like.
I wish someone had been doing advertising like this when I was a teen. Perhaps I wouldn’t have starved myself like I did, or loathed the way I looked because my breasts were so small, my thighs so much bigger and my "Brooks" (my mom’s side of the family) hips and waist were so prominent. —- My mom had the perfect sweater girl figure. But she was a teen back in the 30s and early 40s, when the sweater girl, hour-glass figure was not only appreciated, but idealized. By the time I was a teen, the waif look was in, and waif-girl I am most certainly not.
I’d love to see the profits of Nike and Dove soar in the wake of these new campaigns. In fact, I’ve decided that I’m going to by Dove from now on, to show my support. I know, I’m just one person, and my $2 doesn’t’ really make much of a difference. But I hope that there are other women out there like me who are tired of the messages our culture shoves down our throats on a daily basis that only stick-thin, no-butt, big-boobed women have all the fun, the men and the life worth living. Perhaps if we all add our $2 — or $60+, in the case of Nike — we can make a difference big enough for Wall Street and the fashion industry to sit up and take notice.
Dove even has this cool thing on their website called "Real Beauty", which includes a self-esteem fund to help raise awareness of how body-related self-esteem is affected by the messages young girls receive through today’s media.
So please, go out and buy Dove. Go out and buy Nike. Support these companies who are pioneering a new, better way to advertise their products.