I dreamt of my friend Tim last night; at least this time when I awoke I remembered he is dead.

The anniversary of his death is coming up. Don’t know why I refer to it as an “anniversary” – it is not as if it is something I am celebrating. He has been on my mind lately more than normal. Probably because the weather turned autumn-esque for a little while and my internal clock knew what I was experiencing last autumn.

My own personal haunting…only in my dreams.

I feel like God truly has answered my prayers when it comes to that. I always have dreams about my friends that I don’t get to see on a regular basis, it is what reminds me to stay in touch with them. When Tim died I PRAYED HARD to not have dreams about him. Then, because I missed him I remember sort of telling God that I take it back. That was when I had the last dream, where when I woke up I had forgotten he was dead and reached for the phone to call him.

God has been good. I have not dreamed of Tim since then, until now. I am actually kind of grateful for it. You see, you would think that having shared a nine year friendship with someone that over the course of time you would have some EVIDENCE of it.

Nope, not me.

I live in the moment.
I don’t take pictures or video or things like that.
I have nothing but memories….
…………………………..…..sometimes though I wish I had a video
…………………………………………………..…..just to hear him laugh.

So God gave me dreams.
Not quite the same, but hey…He’s trying.

Hey!Internet Explorer!

Yeah YOU! Listen up!

Your new version included 2 things that brought me back from Firefox:

– Tabbed browsing
– RSS feeds updated right in my favorites window (no more need for Feedblitz!)

Well the RSS feeds haven’t updated in over a month. The blogs have, I have checked. I thought maybe it was my computer. Well I have tried 3 different computers and no luck. Whats the issue?

I can get tabbed browsing with Firefox.

(Anyone know how to fix this?)

So, it begins…

Paige had been the only person at her school bus stop for some time. This year there is a new girl, Alexis. She is a year behind Paige in school and at least a head shorter than Paige.

The first day, once the girls got on the bus, as I was walking back toward my house a green mini-van came careening at me and apparently it was Alexis’ mother who had parked WAYYYYY down the road to watch her daughter get on the bus because Alexis did not want her mother to accompany her to the stop for fear of embarassment.

So, yesterday when Paige’s bus arrived Paige gave me the normal half dozen hugs and kisses and professions of love and as I am walking off I see little Alexis lean in and sort of look at Paige funny and whisper something to her and then saw Paige grin and shake her head and smile at me and then they get on the bus.

So, last night I asked Paige what that was about. Apparently Alexis asked “Doesn’t your Mom embarass you when she does that?”

Silly child…Paige let her know that it is SHE that initiates these things. Paige is a regular snuggle bunny. She loves hugs and words of affection. She has a hug and kiss routine for farewells and bedtime. If she has met you, she has probably hugged you good-bye. Up until now, no one has challenged her thinking.

Breanna was done with hugs and kisses before she went to kindergarten. She recently started to allow me to hug her again and it has taken – oh, about a year – for me to get used to her WANTING hugs again. So, with that being said I have been appreciating Paige and yet waiting for my younger daughter to be anti-affection.

Let’s see how much influence little Alexis has on my Paige’s way of thinking.

So today was expected to be a bit crazy in my house. The first day back to school we usually scramble. The kids and I are both used to sleeping in and so getting up at 5:45 am is always a shock to the system this time of year. HOWEVER, this year…it went very smooth. We were prepared, no one was grumpy all went well. Unfortunately, I think that our doberman, Scarlet, was feeling the anxiety for us.

I was awakened at 2:47 am by (of all things) a peculiar SMELL. My husband said that he had gotten up a short time prior and the dog had an accident and he was hoping it could wait to be cleaned up until morning. (OK, we have been through this before, he knows better…he REALLY likes his sleep) So, we both get up and as I round the foot of the bed, I step in something squishy. I demand he turn on the light and I look down and see a puddle/pile of dog vomit. Yum! So, as I am waiting for my husband to bring me something to clean off my foot I watch as my pathetic dog walks out of our room, into the living room and pukes on the floor. So, I hobble toward the hallway – only to see A LOT more puddles.

It ain’t dog vomit in that thar hallway.

Apparently the mess has multiplied since my husband originally was made aware of it. So, I rinse my foot, and grab supplies. Dave gets the hallway of poo, and I get puke duty. So, I clean what I can off the carpet in the bedroom – less than happy with the icky smell and stain left behind and I move on to the living room, and just as I am finishing with that pile I look over on the area rug and I see ANOTHER Puddle-O-Vomit.

Did I mention that this is at 2:47 AM?

So, I grab the rug and drag it down the part of the hallway that my hero hubby has already rid of Puddles-O-Poo and go back to clean the puddle left UNDER the rug…yes, boys and girls-it had seeped through. Once done, hubby takes the plastic bags filled with toxic waste out to the garbage and heaves the rug out the back door! (I will hose it down later)

I find a magical cure for my ailing bedroom carpet and apply it, grab the Oust spray and clean the air and hero hubby and I return to bed.

I can’t sleep. I have a freaking song in my head, and when I share this with my husband he states he has the same problem. Except mine is One Week by the Barenaked Ladies and his is Pink by Aerosmith. So I decide to read the NIV version of Proverbs 12 and finally get to sleep about 4 am (ish).

Back up at 5:45, just enough time for hero hubby to throw on clothes and be to work at 6am…and there, in the hallway is another Puddle-O-Poo. So, since my magical cure for the bedroom carpet seems to be working well, I figured I would try it out on a fresh Puddle. So, I sprinkle said magical cure all over this mess and go to wake my sleeping children.

As I am on my hands and knees I start to remember a speaker from the Leadership Summit, Carly Fiorina, stating “There is a gift in everything if only we will see it” and I think to myself “where is the gift in THIS Carly? Huh? Where is the gift in THIS?”

Finally I get to shower and I realize darn it, she is right. My gift is that I have found a great magical cure for cleaning vomit and poo, and I can share it with everyone. So, here is your flippin‘ gift:

You too can make quick clean up of vomit and poo….
With Arm & Hammer Baking soda. (or whatever brand you purchase)

Seriously, I COVERED the last pile of poo with baking soda and it killed most of the smell and turned the runny mess into something more “normal” and easier to handle. As for the vomit, same thing…trust me, I usually want to heave myself when faced with that and this does seem to make the smell diminish almost completely and again, a consistency easier to deal with. The trick is to COMPLETELY cover the mess, no sprinkling.

So, there ya have it. The first morning back to school in a nutshell.

To help explain, I am going to share with you from Dan Vukmirovich’s blog this excerpt:

“This weekend we will be asking people to cross the line of faith by walking through a doorway we have set up onstage. Pastor Mark Beeson, has evangelism flowing through his blood. It’s at the heart of GCC. He talks about a farming approach to evangelism where we plant seed, water, fertilize, and patiently wait for people to be ready and then we harvest. Rather than asking people to make a decision for Christ every week, we do it only 1-2 times per year. Part of his rationale in this is that most thinking people don’t make life changing decisions in 20 minutes. I agree.”

Paige walked through that doorway this weekend. I was happy and weepy and well, I was a mom. She asked me to walk up with her but when it came to going up on the stage, and crossing through the doorway…she chose to go without me, I waited at the bottom of the stairs…her decision…her walk…her journey.

She has already chosen her next step…Baptism. On September 9th she is going to be baptised, (this date is also mine and Dave’s wedding anniversary!) and when we registered her for the event there were questions for her to answer and I am going to share them with you:

What was your life like before you met Christ?:
Um, wow…I don’t know

How did you realize you needed Christ?:
By coming to church

How did you commit your life to Christ?:
Walking through the door

What difference has God made in your life since you’ve begun this relationship with Him?:
made me believe in something that I can not see but I still know is there

I must say this…not everything I read is for the purpose of learning. I read to read, I read to laugh, I read because I love seeing what the world looks like through the eyes of other people, I read because I love to see what other people can conjure up in their own imagination, I read to see what my imagination conjures up through the input of other people’s writing, I love to read because there has always been something in every book of fact or fiction that I did not know before…even if it is a word that is unfamiliar that makes me dig out my dictionary, every book teaches me something. That is what keeps me reading. If I were to go blind tomorrow I would be thankful for braille and books on CD, and MP3. Blindness would not stop me from “reading” it would only stop me from reading with my eyes. Reading, to me, is second to breathing (and any other functions needed to live such as eating and hydration).

I am usually reading more than one book at a time. One of the books I am currently reading is a book called Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. One reviewer said that “Some will no doubt call it foul, blasphemous and sacrilegious. Those people need to learn to appreciate a good joke.” I totally agree with him.

I am going to share two excerpts from the book which I think show both the humor that the author is going for and what the author portrays to be the qualities of what Christ may have been like as a child/young man:

First…the funny (beware…there is some colorful language in this book):

To get this, you have to understand that in the book “Biff” is brought back to life into current day by an angel so that he can write his “gospel” and is being forced to stay at a hotel and guarded by said angel until he completes his writings. He is fascinated at how long people live these days. Here is the excerpt that made me laugh the longest so far: (I have done some censoring of the words)

“If I do manage to escape the angel, I’m not going to be able to make my living as a professional mourner, not if you people don’t have the courtesy to die. Just as well, I suppose, I’d have to learn all new dirges. I’ve tried to get the angel to watch MTV so I can learn the vocabulary of your music, but even with the gift of tongues, I’m having trouble learning to speak hip-hop. Why is it that one can busta rhyme or busta move anywhere but you must busta cap in someones a$$? Is”ho” always feminine, and “muthaf**ka” always masculine, while “b**ch can be either? How many peeps in a posse, how much booty before baby got back, do you have to be all that to get all up in that, and do I need to be dope and phat to be da bomb or can I just be “stupid”? I’ll not be singing over any dead mothers until I understand.”

Now on a totally different note, what may be just as interesting as the author’s sense of humor is that that I think Christopher Moore did some serious study of the bible and the history and culture of the bible as well. Again, it is a work of fiction, but really, I would love for a bible scholar to read this and write about the historical and cultural accuracy of the details in the book. However…his assumption of what Christ’s personality must have been like as he was discovering how to BE the Messiah is very refreshing.

To set this up I will simply say that this is from Biff’s “gospel” in which he and Jesus have visited, by this point, two of the three wise men who came to witness Christ’s birth. (By the way, Biff calls Jesus “Joshua” saying that it is the closest translation to his Hebrew name)

Joshua reached across the table and took the old man’s hand. “You drill us every day in the same movements, we practice the same brush strokes over and over and over, we chant the same mantras, why? So that these actions will become natural, spontaneous, without being diluted by thought right?”
“Yes” said Gaspar
“Compassion is the same way” said Joshua. “That’s what the yeti knew. He loved constantly, instantly, spontaneously, without thought or words. That’s what he taught me. Love is not something you think about, it is a state in which you dwell. That was his gift”
“Wow,” I said

Yeah, I read that and thought “Wow” and so I blog…

I love our weekly staff meetings at Granger Community Church (we call them S.W.A.T. which stands for Staff Working As Team). Today the meeting was led by our Senior Pastor Mark Beeson and we were discussing internal church things but Mark always has great biblical comparisons to current life and I am going to paraphrase some of today’s comparisons…simply because they were AWESOME and I do not want to forget them. (My thoughts in green)

Moses probably thought his life sucked when he was 39. Toiling around in the desert with his sheep all of his life. Not knowing that a year from then he would find the burning bush. He did not know that his pain was part of God’s plan. Who better to lead God’s people through, and teach them how to survive in, the desert for 40 years than someone who had spent 40 years doing that exact thing! God had a plan. God’s plan was/is good. The “pain” you are suffering through today may be part of something BIGGER and greater next year.

Learn in and from your suffering.

Everyone loves a dream…until it happens. Everyone wants to fly to the moon until you build a ship and ask for people to go. Then no one wants to go, it’s too scary.

Prepare for change, prepare for the dream.

Seed or harvest? No one given a one dollar bill would think “Yee Ha! I’ve made it! This is the harvest! Payoff for my life’s work! Time to retire!” No, they would think “seed” lets put this dollar to work. What could happen if we all thought that same way about a million dollars.

I don’t have a million dollars, but my thought was that every day is a dollar and I can make that day my seed and plant as much as I can while I am here on earth and enjoy the harvest in eternity with God.

I love this team!