Friday, April 29, 2011

His and Hers; an epic but true tale

Funny Friday

HIS AND HER DIARY FOR THE SAME DAY



Her Diary:

Tonight, I thought my husband was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a nice restaurant for dinner.
I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment on it.
Conversation wasn't flowing, so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed, but he didn't say much.

I asked him what was wrong;

He said, 'Nothing.'

I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset.

He said he wasn't upset, that it had nothing to do with me, and not to worry about it.

On the way home, I told him that I loved him.

He smiled slightly, and kept driving.

I can't explain his behavior I don't know why he didn't say, 'I love you, too.' When we got home, I felt as if I had lost him completely, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there quietly, and watched TV. He continued to seem distant and absent. Finally, with silence all around us, I decided to go to bed. About 15 minutes later, he came to bed. But I still felt that he was distracted, and his thoughts were somewhere else.
He fell asleep - I cried. I don't know what to do. I'm almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else.

My life is a disaster.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

His Diary:

Boat wouldn't start, can't figure out why.




Thursday, April 28, 2011

Africa in black and white

1,000 Word Thursday











 


http://www.nickbrandt.com/

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

My song

Wednesday's Word

"The Lord is my strength ... my song
~ Psalm 114:18~


Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Self healing plastic

Tuesday's Quotes

“Researches reported that they developed a "self-healing" plastic that repairs itself if cracked. The plastic will change the way airplanes are built and medicine is practiced. In a related story, Joan Rivers will never die.”

 
Tina Fey

Monday, April 25, 2011

Pausing for the roses

 
holy experience
 
Thankful
 

Continuing on my "Thankful" expedition.
I've observed that people with a strong sense of gratitude, love and appreciation don't necessarily have more than others; they simply recognize and see more beauty in their lives.
Haven't you noticed that people who count their blessings are generally happier and healthier than those who don't?  If you ever feel as if anything in your life isn't "enough", try practicing an attitude of thankfulness. You might realize how good you have it after all.

Ann Voskamp got me started on this journey but it truly has taken on a life of itself.

It's not always easy. It has taken work at times but the fruit from this practice is immediate and continues to multiply with every new thing I find to be thankful for. I've unearthed a dance take shape each day in this search towards a contented heart...

Relax
It's hard to cultivate a sense of gratitude when you're angry, frustrated, or anxious. If these are issues that you struggle with, it's important to resolve them, as they're formidable barriers to thankfulness.

Live in the Moment  
If you're too busy dwelling on the past or thinking about the future, you won't be able to fully notice how fantastic things are right now.
Plus, thinking about the past and future opens the door to
comparison, which is the only way you can perceive something as not good enough.
What you have now is all that exists, and comparing that to something that doesn't exist anymore (or yet) is an easy way to foster dissatisfaction and torture yourself.
Like the old saying goes "Past is History, Future is a Mystery and Today is Gift and hence it is called the Present". Enjoy today, this moment and don't postpone your enjoyment.

Start with your senses
The most basic pleasures in life are usually accessible to us all the time, but they slip out of our consciousness because we get so used to them. Learn to notice the little things, and deliberately appreciate them.

  1. *Look around. Notice beautiful shapes, colors, and details. Notice things you normally take for granted, like sunlight reflecting off someones hair. Think of all the little things you'd miss if you were blind. It's often the most minute joys that are missed the most.
  2. *Pause and Smell the roses. And the food. And the air. Recognize the smells that make you feel good: a freshly cut lawn, the air right after it rains, a fresh pot of coffee.
  3. *Savor your food. Eat slowly. Don't just gobble and chug. Identify flavors. Appreciate how they intermingle. Take notes from wine enthusiasts; they know how to enjoy the subtlest of flavors.
  4. *Appreciate the sense of touch. How do leaves, blankets, lotions feel against your skin? How many times during the day do people touch you affectionately, and you barely notice?Listen to more than music.
  5. *Listen when you think it's quiet, and you'll discover it's not really all that quiet. You might hear the wind, leaves rustling, kids laughing.
Cherish any kind of lightheartedness in your life
Things like laughter, affection, and playfulness are fleeting. Once a relationship has degraded so that those things don't spontaneously occur anymore, it's very hard to get them back. You might know that from experience. So treat those moments with care (especially with kids, who are at the peak of lightheartedness). Don't be the person who takes life too seriously, who doesn't have time to have fun, or who has no sense of humor.

Keep a gratitude journal Or blog...
Challenge yourself to write down five new things every day that you're grateful for. It'll be easy in the beginning, but soon you'll discover that you have to increase your awareness to keep on.

#69-75
~ A week of pondering of a great sacrifice made for mankind
~ Injuries that don't turn out to be life threatening
~ Prayer time and a passover meal with a group of sweet people I barely know
~ The bad news of a loved one needing surgery only to find that we will have the best surgeon possible AND that we serve Jehova Rophi a God who heals.
~ Filling a room with notes and words that breathe life into my soul. Singing with friends and gathering with friends of old and family on a Great Easter day.
~ Pulling into my driveway only to find it full of carefully placed folding chairs in the the one ray of sun Oregon had to offer.
~ Unexpected family waiting eat, fellowship, Nerf wars and Easter egg hunts
~ A Friday night with a much missed friend



Friday, April 22, 2011

On the Friday we call "Good"




He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows…he was pierced for our transgressions…crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth…he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken
Isaiah 53:4-8



The Friday we call “Good,” the day upon which we commemorate the sufferings and death of Jesus on the cross seem to drive this point home to us. This Friday brings us not to the God of our desiring, a sweet and nice God, but to a God perhaps we would rather not have.

I find myself rathering to jump ahead to Easter Sunday than sit here for hours pondering an event that seems to destroy our illusion of a God who seems nice and sweet all the time.

On Good Friday, we contemplate God not in light but in darkness, we contemplate God not in happiness but in suffering. On Good Friday we contemplate God not in his abiding presence but in his desolating absence. On Good Friday, we contemplate God not in his thunderous voice, but in his silence. On Good Friday, we contemplate God not in life, but in death.


On the Friday we call “Good”, Jesus himself came to know God not as light but as darkness, not as presence but as absence. He experienced God not as a “nice” and “sweet” deity, but a terrifying one. “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Why? Why have you forsaken me? Why?”

On the Friday that is “Good”, Jesus came up against the silence of God, Jesus came up against the terrifying night that hid God. God is experienced not as heaven but as hell. When Christians recite the Apostles’ Creed as part of the worship, these terrifying words are said,
“He (that is, Jesus) descended to hell.”

Yet, even in the darkest moment of his life, even as he died searching for God, Jesus refused to give up his faith on God. In the midst of suffering, in pain, in confusion and chaos, in death and in hell, Jesus refused to believe that God had truly abandoned him. He refused to give up on God even if God seemed to have given up on him. He embraced the darkness, he embraced the night, believing that even in the midst of the awful things of life, even in the human experience of hell, God would never be absent even though he was silent.
In the midst of things he could not understand, he abandoned himself to the hands of the God who seemed to have abandoned him. In that hour, he refused to believe that God had stopped loving him, and so he willingly placed himself in the hands of the silent and hidden God. Jesus quoted the prayer of Psalm 31:
“Into your hands I commend my spirit.

But he added one word to the prayer, and the word was “Father.” Or more accurately in contemporary popular language, “dad.” Abba, Pater, Father. Dad. Even in his darkness, for him God remained his loving Father. Jesus refused to believe that God ceased to be a loving “Father” to him.
And indeed, Jesus was right. God did not disappoint him, for Easter shows us that God was in the darkness of Good Friday, that God was really present in the seeming emptiness loneliness and abandonment of Good Friday. And that from out of evil and death, God brought forth goodness, salvation and life…
But it is scary for us to let ourselves submit to the darkness of God. It is hard for us to trust in God who is hidden and silent. It is difficult for us to abandon ourselves to God in the night of faith.
Yet, what Holy Week teaches us is that we could reach the brightness of Easter Morning only if we walk through the darkness of Good Friday.

To hear the joyous noise of the Easter Alleluias, we must first endure the silence of God’s desert. The days from Good Friday to Easter teach us that the path to certainty of God’s love for us is through abandonment of our selves to him in the uncertainty of the dark night of faith.

Whenever we struggle with the dark moments of life, whenever we grapple with God’s silence in our lives, let us abandon ourselves to him, and say, “As I wait to behold your appearing in my life, O hidden God, as I wait to hear your voice, O God of silence, I embrace this night as holy, this darkness as a blessing waiting to unfold. I trust that you are here in this terrifying silence, and so, “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.

~Reverend Noel E. Bordador~




Thursday, April 21, 2011

Maundy Thursday

1,000 Word Thursday


Showing the full extent of His love before the Passover meal.




The Passover meal
 


Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Pressing on



I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. (NIV)


Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Beauty of change

Tuesday's Quotes

"Welcome the unexpected changes in life.
Learn to bend with grace and humility.
Grow through it all and never ever forget
to take notice
of the beauty changes can bring."
~ author unknown~

Deep breathe through the chaos!


Monday, April 18, 2011

Brussel sprouts and humble sauce




Marriage Language decoder part deux
Not even a dazed deer in the headlights could have appeared more frightened and full of trepidation. I think I might have spotted a bead of sweat on his temple. Looks warned me that I was treading right into the “THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER” game show, but I hit the buzzer anyway!

I know better... but I just couldn’t help myself.


Babe I’ve lost more weight this week can you tell?
“Ummmmm”
What do you mean UMMMMM?
“Do you want me to lie here or tell the truth?”
Unsure if I should bust out in laughter, pinch him or act my age
Yes!!! “I want you to lie, Have I not made that clear over the last twenty plus years?”


“Lie until I smile!!!”

I think of a post from October "LANGUAGE DECODER".
I jest but marriage and relationships can be pretty tough at times. I think oft of the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson

“I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all”

I find my continual struggle being that of humility and vulnerability. I like being vulnerable about as much as I like brussel sprouts, need I say more? Being strong and courageous has helped me survive some tremendous obstacles in life but it has also become a “yoke” around my neck at times. Having pride has enabled me to accomplish when I was told I never would. It’s all about pride and humility isn’t it?

Yes Lord I will take some humble sauce over my brussel sprouts.

‘Marriage requires attention, the moment you stop working on your marriage is the moment it begins to falter’

As crazy as we can make each other we equally and in an even greater way complement one another.

The flip side to being vulnerable is you get hurt sometimes. Without being open to hurt, you won’t be open to the joys of marriage and relationships. I love this quote…

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for."
— Bob Marley

When we have difficulty humbling ourselves before man, it’s a sure sign that we have not humbled ourselves before God either. There is a time to give and a time to receive.

So be content with who you are, and don't put on airs. God's strong hand is on you; he'll promote you at the right time. Live carefree before God; he is most careful with you.

Sooo to be perfectly real here, taking in the verse above as literal as I can, "Don't put on airs" could be interpreted in such a manner that I would need to respond in truth...by just chucking something at that cape wearing hero of truth. The man I love my husband. Obviously making it a soft something.

#60 Communication
#61 Brussel sprouts
#62 Humble sauce
#64 My husband (again :)
#65 Laughter (again :)
#66 Weight loss
#67 Food :-)
#68 Tim Hawkins "The Wife song"




Friday, April 15, 2011

Let's Yahoo it!!

Funny Friday

Dear Noah,

We could have sworn you said the ark wasn't leaving till 5.
Sincerely,
Unicorns

 
Dear Icebergs,
Sorry to hear about the global warming. Karma's tough.

Sincerely,
The Titanic


Dear America ,
You produced Miley Cyrus. Bieber is your punishment.
Sincerely,
Canada

Dear Yahoo,
I've never heard anyone say, "I don't know, let's Yahoo! it..." just saying..
Sincerely,
Google

Dear Rose,
There was definitely room on that raft for the both of us.
Sincerely,
Jack

Dear Saturn,
I liked it, so I put a ring on it.
Sincerely,
God


Dear Fox News,
So far, no news about foxes.
Sincerely,
Unimpressed

Dear Osama Bin Laden,
Marco....
Sincerely,
United States

Dear Batman,
What was your power again?
Sincerely,
Superman


Dear Customers,
Yes, we ARE making fun of you in Vietnamese.
Sincerely,
Nail Salon Ladies


Dear Global Warming,
You're the best imaginary friend ever!

Sincerely, Al Gore


Dear Martin Luther King Jr.
I have a dream within a dream within a dream within another dream.... What now?
Sincerely,
Leonardo Di Caprio

Dear Giant Spider on the Wall,
Please die. Please die. Please die. Please die. NO! Where did you go?
Sincerely,
Terrified

Dear Dr. Phil,
Look man, there's only room for one fake doctor in this world and I was here first.
Sincerely,
Dr. Pepper

Thursday, April 14, 2011

You are missed

1,000 Word Thursday


Wednesday, April 13, 2011

For I know

Wednesday's Word




Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Tuesday's Quotes

Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
~ George W. Carver~







Monday, April 11, 2011

Bacon


Normally I walk through my week pondering the rhythm of life, family and work. I count the endless ways I'm so blessed so that on the weekend, when I sit to write for my Monday post, it really hits deep at the heart of all that moves me.

Last week found me carried away with concerts, work, and a ton of extracurriculars so that I didn't even get to pen one thought. We who find our center through written words can feel strain when time does not allow to unload on this glowing
screen.

These last two weeks have been filled with great laughter. I enjoy my children being 15 & 17. Between them and my husband I'm in stitches quite often. My kids are always showing us the latest/funniest youtube videos.

So though part of me feels like I digress, I look at the title of my blog and it reminds me that LAUGHTER IS MEDICINE FOR THE SOUL. I mean it's even in His Word!

#59 So this week I give my kuddos to LAUGHTER!! Scroll down to the bottom of my blog, pause the music player and come back up here to enjoy some crazy, random and mind emptying videos that are just silly.







Friday, April 1, 2011

Why dogs bite people

Funny Friday