Who is in control?

The Professor and I plan everything. We are both planners and like to know how things are going to turn out. We already have the next few years planned out. The Prof finishes seminars in May 2008. We have decided if we begin applying in December of 2007, then surely by August of 2008 we will have a decent job. At that point we will move into a house and few months later add a minivan and dog to the family. Then, one year later The Prof will graduate! See, we have it all figured out.

While I was in Jackson a few weeks ago I had a friend call me and tell me about an awesome ministry opportunity. I loved the organization (I had heard of it before) and I really could see the Prof and I love being a part of this ministry. However, it would require a move. We would not have to move far. But, it is still a move. I immediately, without thinking or praying about it, said, "No! I do not want to move again until we move into our house!" See moving right now, even if it is a close move would mess up our plan. Plus the ministry requires an 18 mo commitment which really would mess up the whole job search thing. If we ended up doing this, then Lee would have to start writing his dissertation here, instead of the new office he wanted to have in our house. How could God want us to do this...it is against anything we have planned.

Wow! I have been here before. I have said no so many times. The same thing always happens. God always, at some point, says, "Who is in control? You or Me?" Then I reply with "Well you are, God. I mean I have commited to live for you 100% and well..." and it hits me! Have you ever had one of those times? Where God just totally calls you out! He allows you to have many sleepless nights, or makes you think about things over and over until that conversation happens? Well it happened to me last night (Monday night). After days of struggling with it, I gave in. I am putting God back in control.

As for the ministry, we shall see what happens. This may have been God's way of getting my attention and showing me that I had once again tried to take over. However, this may be God directing us to join this ministry team. At this point He is the only one who knows.

In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps. Proverbs 16:9

The Farm Days - The One Where The Professor Broke Up 2 Fights and Got Hit With a Coat Hanger

The Professor and I worked at The Farm (Happy Hill Farm and Academy Home) from April 2004 - May 2005. We were house parents to 8 kids who had a variety of issues. We even had the Dr. Phil boy for a few days (that is our claim to fame - hahaha). We lived in a 2 bedroom apartment at the end of a house. The house had a formal living room, informal living room, huge kitchen, 4 bedrooms (with 2 beds in each room), and 2 bathrooms. In our apartment we had a monitor that allowed us to hear everything going on in the house. The only time we got to turn the monitor off was when we were off (which wasn't enough!). The Prof and I are very glad that God allowed us to move on, but we both look back on those days and would not change them for anything. We learned so much and have so many fun memories, as well as ones that were not fun at the time, but are nice to look back at now and laugh.

Our first shift had to have been the best memory of them all. It was the evening of day 4 of our first shift alone. The shift had gone pretty good. We had the usually problems though...boys getting up after lights out and getting into trouble. We had been trying to whole shift to figure out which boys were involved in the light night adventures, so we had a plan in action for that night (i will come back to this later in the story). After supper that night, since things were going well, I took Johnathan (who was about 8 months at this time) back to our apartment to give him a bath. Almost as soon as I got him in the bath tub, I heard one of our guys come inside and tell all the other guys, "Man, you gotta come out here! There is a fight!" I jumped up and ran to see what was going on. About that time the fight was over and The Prof was the hero that broke it up. Just as I turned to go back to the bathroom (where Johnathan, 8 months old was still in the tub) a fight broke out right in front of me...The Prof ran inside and broke it up. Yes, 2 fights in one night...he was my hero! :-) Anyways, by this time I remember where Johnathan was and ran back to the bathroom, finished bathing him and put him to bed. I knew this was going to be a long night. The boys settled down pretty quick and soon it was time for lights out. It was time for the plan to come into action. We waited for all the boys to get in bed, turn the lights off and then we pretended to go to bed. What the boys did not know was that The Prof was not in the apartment with me. He sneaked into the hallway without them knowing, so that as soon as he heard something he could catch them. I went back to room to listen on the monitor and see what would happen. About 20 minutes went by and then I heard them begin to move around. The next thing I heard will make me laugh forever. I heard someone throw something, heard the light come on, and then heard, "oh ----!" I knew they had been caught. What I later found out was that at night they had been playing tag, or something like that, with their coat hangers. The boy throwing the coat hanger that night saw a shadow and thought it was another boy and so threw it. However, it was the Professor. As soon as he was hit with the coat hanger, he turned the light on. The boy was caught and he knew it...so he said some bad words and jumped back into bed.

We will always remember our first shift as "The one where The Professor broke up two fights and got hit with a coat hanger" and we will always laugh about it.

Record Setting

In the almost 5 years The Professor and I have been married, we have been able to do many things together and accomplish many goals and dreams together. However, until this week, there is one thing we had never done. Until this week, we had never lived anywhere for a year. The longest we have ever lived somewhere was 9 months. We have now set a record, that for a while I thought would never be set. We have lived in one place for a year! Yes, that is right! The Professor and I have managed to figure out how to stay in one place for a lengthy period of time, well lengthy for us that is.

We moved into our lovely little (and trust me it is little) town home this week last year. We decided to move this week, because it would give us about 7 weeks to get settled before The Little One arrived (I was due May 3). As most of you know, however, we did not get that 7 weeks. The Little One only gave us 2 weeks. Oh well, we made it anyway.

Happy Anniversary to my little town home! We made it a year! Hopefully only one more year to go!

Little Red Wagon

Yesterday the weather was awesome here in Fort Worth, so The Professor and I decided to take The Little One and Wild Man on a ride in the Red Wagon. We had the best time. However, it really bothered Wild Man that The Little One kept trying to take his bottles of water. So, he rode the whole time with one hand on each bottle of water, like this...

I do not know what he thought she was going to do with the water, since she is not able to open it yet, but the water was protected anyway.

The Little One began pointing at things as we were riding. It was fun to see her point and hear her babble, knowing that she was trying to show us something. As you can tell in the picture Wild Man was too busy guarding the water to look at whatever she was pointing at. I really think maybe he thought that was all the water we had. Bless his heart!

We had a wonderful time and look forward to many more rides this Spring! Of course, next time maybe Wild Man will relax enough to enjoy it as well! :-)

The $25.86 Recliner

In June of 2005, The Professor and I moved back to Fort Worth to begin the PhD program. The apartment we moved to had a huge living room. Our wonderul futon was just eaten up by all the floor space. After much thought The Professor and I decided we needed a recliner. However, there was no money in the budget for a nice new recliner at the time, so we decided to try to find a nice used one. Our thought was we just needed to find one that could make it until we could afford a new one. So, the search began. After about 2 weeks of searching we found it! There was a Seminary student who had decided there was not enough room in their apartment for their recliner (imagine that - Seminary housing too small - hahaha). The recliner was in great condition and the price was perfect - $25. So, the recliner came to live with us.

The first night we had it The Professor decided to put it to work. So, he sat down and pulled the lever to lean it back. As he did that he also leaned on the back some, to help move it. However, the back of the recliner never stopped. In fact, the back fell off and The Professor fell out of the recliner backwards. I laughed so hard! Almost as hard as I am laughing right now as I type. (That moment will always be a fun memory for us) Anyway, he got up and looked at the chair only to realize that there was a screw missing. He figured out what screw he needed and headed off to Walmart. He found the screw for 86 cents and fixed the recliner.

The $25.86 recliner has been good to us for almost 2 years. However, he is tired now and ready to be replaced. I do not even sit in him anymore, because I do not want to be the one sitting in him when he completely dies, if you know what I mean.

Needless to say we are now officially recliner/nice chair shopping. Our prayer is to find one before the $25.86 recliner dies. However, The Professor is a thinker, looker, and low cost buyer when it comes to shopping, so we have many more recliners to view and sit in before the decision is made. Who knows how this will end? Will we be able to replace the $25.86 recliner before he dies? I will let you know!

Just for Laughs!

The Little One has decided she is tired of Wild Man getting all the attention just because he can talk. The past few days she has begun trying to make as much noise as possible do get as many people looking and laughing at her as possible. She is already as cute as can be be, but when she gets in this mode all you can do it laugh. When you laugh, she just has reason to do it more. She tucks her chin down into her chest and just goes at it, making the best motor noises I have heard, even better than Wild Man. I wish I could describe it better for you, but I think the picture of her face when she does it is worth much more. Just for laughs!

These pictures will definitely be saved for her future boyfriends, if The Professor allows her to date. :-)

Don't Give Up

I consider myself I pretty tolerant person. There are very few things other people do that I let affect me. To some extent that may be a weakness, but other times I am very thankful that I am that way. However, there are some things that I am not very tolerant of at all. We will not get into my list today, but I am going to share one thing that I do not have much tolerance for. The issue came up at lunch today and so it got me thinking about it again.

I have a very low tolerance for people who commit to serving the Lord 100% and then quit when things get hard or when something happens that they do not like. For some reason, there is a mind set in ministry that says, " I have committed to God and so He will not let me go through anything that will hurt me or that is hard for me." THAT IS SO WRONG!! In fact, I firmly believe that when we commit to live our lives for Christ, we commit to having trials. We commit to things not being easy. We commit to having things in our lives that sometimes hurts. The reason being that when we commit to live the life God wants us to live, we immediately get put on Satan's hit list. I mean think about it. Why would Satan want to worry about people he already has under his control? Wouldn't it make more sense to focus on those who are doing things he does not want them to do? Makes sense to me.

I do believe that God blesses those in His will and I believe that He clearly promises to be there for us and give us the strength we need. He has been all of this to me at so many points in my life. He has given me exactly what I need when I need it, even if my opinion I do not think I need it or I thought I needed it at a different time. God is good.

So, if you are a follower of Christ and things seem impossible, DON'T GIVE UP! Know that God loves you and He is your strength. Let Him be that for you. Let Him control everything and understand that as a follower of Christ you are promised trials, but you are also promised so much more. DON'T GIVE UP when it gets hard.

A Little Bit of Nothing

I found myself at the post office today mailing a package to one of my friends. While I was in line waiting for my turn, the little old lady behind me started talking to me. She started by asking me what I was mailing (a little nosey don't you think??). We continued talking some and I told her I was here in town visiting my parents. Then she said something that made me think. She said, " Well welcome to sin city". She must not get out much? I mean I know there is good bit of crime, but compared to other cities, I am not sure we can call it sin city yet. I listened to a few more stories from her, finished my business, and left. After I got in the car, the first thing I thought was, "Don't we all live in sin city?" I mean I would love to know the place where there is no sin. I would be the first to move in!

I had lunch with KV today. We had a great time, as always. We even ate somewhere other than McAlister's or Beagle Bagel. We talked about our families, and pretty much life in general. We even talked about some personal things in our lives that neither of us has told the other before. It amazes me to no end that we have been able to stay friends as long as we have. I mean we know just about everything about each other and yet we still love each other. In fourth grade we made a pact that if we were still friends when we got married we would be each other's Maid of Honor. She was my Maid of Honor when I was married and in August of this year I will be her Matron of Honor. Hard to believe. God has truly blessed our friendship.

The Professor is ready for Little One, Wild Man, and I to get home. I think mainly because he is getting tired of eating Spagetti O's, but I think he may also miss us some. He has enjoyed his freedom to venture to Half Price Books as often as he wants, and read without any interuptions. Read up Professor, we will be home before you know it! Enjoy the quiet while you can!

All in all I am enjoying my time in Jackson, as always!

Change

I have an addiction, that I believe is not normal. I am pretty sure than I am addicted to change. I am not addicted to the change I have no control over. I am addicted to the change that I have 100% control over. I love being the one to make the changes. I color my hair and change my hairstyle often because of this addiction. I also move furniture a lot. However, the things I like to change the most are things that can not be changed right now, and I am having the urge to change something.

So, I have decided to displace this need for change onto my blog. I have changed the template enough and have found one I like, so that will not change. However, as I think of things you will see some changes. The first change you will see is that I have decided the people in my blogs need to have nicknames. So, beginning on my next blog there will be nicknames. I will reveal them as I go and leave you to guess. Most of them will be obvious, if you know me well.

Change is good!

long time no blog

okay, so i know that i have not blogged in forever. the truth is over the past few days i have attempted blogging several times, but as soon as i know what i want to say, it leaves me or i decide i am not ready to blog about it. so, i end up just giving up and saying, "oh, i will blog tomorrow." it is not that i do not have a lot to talk about. in fact since i have been in jackson tons has happened that want nothing more than to talk about. i am just trying to decide what is okay for the blog and what is not. it may take me a while to figure it out. i am still alive and i am in no way giving up on blogging, just a little break while i sort my thoughts out.

random questions you can answer for me...
1. do you think i should create nicknames for the people in my blogs?
2. if you could read me write about one topic what would it be?