December 2009
65 posts
Roller Coaster
A tumblr friend of mine recently blogged all of the major things to happen in her life over the last decade. So, I followed suit and made a list. It was a mile long and looked like a roller coaster. The ups and downs in my life are sooo extreme. Maybe it’s that way for everybody, but it’s definitely that way for me.
Here are just some of the highs for the last ten years:
* Get...
2009: A Blog is Born
So, a little look back at Happy 2009 according to the stats…
First post: June 18th, a picture of London and a link to Justin’s sermons
First post to get 50 visits: A discussion of Mo Willems’s kids’ book Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed
First post to get 100 visits: “Idealism and Marriage Counseling”
Most-visited post: The side-by-side shots of London laughing...
Yes, I changed the format again. I cannot be satisfied. Change is my MO.
“Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—...”
– I Corinthians 15:51-59
I love the way Paul’s excitement builds in this text. I can see him talking faster with each breath, waving his hands, standing up in the middle of a sentence. It reads like a speech on the eve of battle, Paul pacing in front of his men, stirring their souls.
Reminds...
Pioneer Woman Love Story →
This is the very thorough story of Ree Drummond’s falling and staying in love. It’s adorable and fun and entertaining. The rest of the site is cool too. She’s a way fabulous photog and a homeschooler and a cookbook author.
Check it.
Predictable Stories
I recently overheard a heated discussion of the movie Avatar. Half the group really liked it. The other half didn’t. Biggest complaint? Predictability.
Depending on what you go to the theater expecting to find, this can be a totally legitimate complaint. Especially if you like to figure things out, and you like a challenge.
But I was thinking in the car today about the best stories: Romeo...
Deconstruction Clarification
I feel like maybe a clarification is in order on the Deconstruction post I did Saturday.
Deconstructionism is “a challenge to the attempt to establish any ultimate or secure meaning in a text.” It’s a literary theory I studied in grad school that has recently become a popular way of looking at life. It says, “Don’t hold onto anything too tightly. It’s all...
If you could disinvent one thing, what would it...
I played Loaded Questions with the fam last night and nearly wet my pants laughing. It’s a game where you answer questions like “If you could live anywhere forever where would you live?” or “What advice would you give Christopher Columbus?” I guess it’s possible to play this game and not laugh, but only if you’re playing with lame-o people. The question...
Deconstruction: Don't Stop There
My friend and I spent the night talking about her recent foray into deconstruction. She spent the last few years tearing down all of the institutions, assumptions, go-to’s, absolutes, and assurances in her life. If she’d previously believed it, she knocked down the wall. If she’d grown up being taught about it, give her a sledgehammer.
But lately she’s taken a step back to...
Indulgence: It's Fattening
Sometimes, when I’m feeling really frustrated about not having lost all my pregnancy fat, I’ll eat a Mcdouble to make myself feel better.
Other times, when I’m working on the budget and I realize I’m running out of cash, I think, “Shopping would make me feel so much better.”
And when I’m totally stressed out because I have a million things to do, I do...
Jesus is coming. But He's not here yet.
I was thinking last night about the Israelites waiting for the Messiah, about the years and years and generations even who lived under the heavy burden of God’s silence. I was thinking about how hard that must of been, how frustrating and painful and lonely.
And then I thought about God’s arrival, about how quiet and almost clandestine it was. GOD lived on earth for somewhere close to...
Justice, a Gift
Just got this AWESOME Christmas present from a friend. He’ll be mad that I opened it up before Christmas, but we needed coffee and I saw the coffee bean box and I couldn’t help myself. And I was right, COFFEE! But something lots better, too.
Here’s the note we found at the bottom of the box (edited from it’s original version for length—you don’t have all day):
...
Christmas Uninhibited
So, I promised you a funny Christmas memory today…
My funniest memories almost all involve my father-in-law. I’ve been celebrating Gerhardt Christmas for 16 years—well over half of my life. So I have a lot of Scott Gerhardt moments to catalog. Here are a few of my faves:
*The year Justin and I received matching lighthouse statues. Justin was 18. I was 16. A smiling Scott...
Pretending to be Happy on Christmas--It's a Good...
So, as a countdown to the big dance, I’m going to blog a Christmas memory each day of Christmas week. Today’s will be sad. Tomorrow’s will be funny.
Do I open the presents?
I remember sitting on the couch of my parents’ house, looking at the Christmas tree, and wondering what kind of a person opens Christmas presents five days after her brother’s funeral. One part...
Disappear
I just read the COOLEST story in Wired Magazine about a reporter who tries to disappear completely for one month. The magazine sponsored a contest, encouraging people to find Evan Ratliff, even offering a $5,000 prize. The question was, in a digital world, is it really possible to disappear?
Check out the article, Evan’s first-hand account, to see.
If you don’t have a Wired on hand...
“All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.”
– Michael Chabon describing all fiction as a form of fan fiction in his book of essays, Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands
I get this—this idea that everything we write is repetitive—that all new ideas grow out of old ideas, that my life is in some way a reliving...
Singing with My Family
My parents left for Florida today. I stayed here in Henderson.
This is the first time in my life I won’t be celebrating Christmas with my parents, my aunts and uncles, my grandfather. And I’m sad.
Got me to reminiscing…
On Thanksgiving night this year we gathered around a fire in my cousin’s front yard out in the middle of nowhere. The sky was ink black and the stars...
Sweet Dreams
Justin: Tell Eve goodnight.
London: Goodnight Eve. Dream Horses.
Jonah's Fish Saves the Day
We talked about Jonah in Bible class Wednesday night. About how every time I heard that story growing up I remember being told that because Jonah was bad a big fish ate him.
Cause: being bad.
Effect: eaten by a fish.
But then when I read the book of Jonah I realized that the fish wasn’t the punishment at all. It was the salvation. Check out Jonah chapter 2, a prayer of thanksgiving to...
That brother isn't my brother
Daniel said something I loved in his sermon on Sunday. He said, talking about the parable of the prodigal son, “The older brother in that story isn’t my brother. My brother runs with me into the Father’s arms.”
Because I often see too much of myself in the older brother, I rarely see myself as the prodigal. But when I do put myself into that role, I feel the pain that...
Message from Another World
For the last eight months I’ve been in love with someone who can’t speak. I tell her in songs and poems and whispers and shouts. She just looks at me, sometimes smiles. It’s so frustrating.
But this week she waved. This may seem little—if you don’t have kids you definitely think this is little—but it’s not little. It’s huge.
My daughter sent me a...
“My bones are troubled.”
– Psalm 6:2
(I wrote this on Monday night.)
Lately I’ve been feeling really overwhelmed. That’s what Christmas is about right? Stress yourself out trying to make everybody around you happy while everybody around you tries to make you happy and everyone just ends up miserable. Tonight...
Help Me! Jonah, Psalms or Knowing?
I’m teaching Bible class tonight (kind of a last minute thing) and I haven’t settled on a topic yet. Here are three options. You help me choose.
1. Look at Jonah and the big fish. Discuss the fish as salvation from drowning and not punishment. Look for examples in our lives of what appeared to be punishment but was, on second thought, really, really good for us.
2. Pick a favorite...
“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have...”
– Francis Bacon
I’m not one hundred percent positive this is Bacon (other sources cite Marie Beyon Ray), so don’t hold me to it.
I like it because it’s true and it’s false. In one way, like James says, life’s like a vapor. In another way, we’re already living a...
Do Something Outrageous--At Church
Read the book of Ezekiel recently. That book is crazy—full of totally weird performance art meets sermon illustration. We find Ezekiel eating a scroll (literally), lying on his side next to a battle diorama for 390 days, shaving with a sword, clapping his hands, stamping his feet, digging a hole through the side of his house and carrying his baggage through the street. Then, in chapter 24...
CHRISTMAS CONTEST!
Merry Christmas Happy readers! To show my profound appreciation for your loyalty and thoughtful contributions to this blog I’m buying each and every one of you a Christmas present. Well, I’m actually buying one present and letting you guys duke it out to win.
For the first-ever Happy Christmas Contest, you will need to come up with a caption for the picture below and share it in a...
WatchSaw this on my friend Broderick’s blog. I think it’s fascinating.
My only real question for Wright is about books. Aren’t books far more destructive than blogs as they encourage an even further degree of isolation? With books there’s no conversation, no opportunity for further explanation or correction.
Interests me as Wright is an author and evidently sees what he writes...
Where is God?
I heard someone describe this question as an expression of doubt recently. I can see that. But for me, this question demonstrates the opposite of doubt. It says, “I know God is. But I don’t know where He is. I know He’s somewhere. I don’t think He’s here.”
I’ve felt that way before. I believe in God. I believe God will do what He’s said He’ll...
A Second Opinion on The Sacred Meal →
My friend Ben liked this book more than I did. Check out what he has to say about it here.
Gems and Junk: Nora Gallagher's The Sacred Meal
Just finished Nora Gallagher’s The Sacred Meal. I have friends who LOVE it; so, I plan on stepping carefully.
As backstory, I should say that I am a huge fan of communion. My love affair with it started about five years ago when I read F. Lagard Smith’s Radical Restoration and then John Mark Hicks’s Come to the Table. I’m big on the Sunday meal being a shared celebration,...
That’s Eve’s foot. I love taking pictures of my daughters’ feet. Something about the holy ground, no shoes picture in the Bible and the feet being described as directors of the self—the beginning of movement. That and baby feet are beautiful.
Just heard about a family in Texas who miscarried at 22 weeks. The funeral’s today.
Makes me rethink the way I felt when I...
WatchHere’s the video from last year’s project. Awesome. People cry. :)
Act Like Jesus--Fix What's Broken
Big weekend this weekend. Justin’s up to his eyes in Home for the Holidays—a project he started last year with his friend Bill. It’s one of my favorite ways he serves God.
Over three days, a handful of people will completely change the lives of a needy Henderson family—a family without resources and a family without God. They’ll pull up moldy carpet, paint walls, lay...
“Those people are God with skin on them”
– Dwina Willis
One of my college girls was teaching Wednesday night, and she quoted Miss Dwina on learning to rely on our brothers and sisters. I loved the graphic description of what it means to be the body.
“I have almost no idea what God’s going to do in my life”
– Me (Mistaken Me)
I was re-reading my post from yesterday and I came across this sentence and now that I’ve thought about it, I don’t think it’s true.
No, I don’t know what job I’ll have or where I’ll live or whether or not I’ll have more kids in ten years,...
What is God Doing?
So, yesterday I spent the day thinking I might be pregnant—no, sure I was pregnant. We women do that occasionally. We become obsessed with some hunch and in minutes it’s an undeniable truth. Yesterday, I was convinced, with very little evidence, that I was having another baby. And I was terrified.
Another baby right now would be so hard—sooooooo hard.
And I kept thinking,...
Tutu Cute (well, tutu something...)
Holiday House tonight. Sold 11 tutus. Awesome. And terrible. Now I have to make 11 more.
To the work…
A Letter to Seventeen-Year-Old Jen
Hi me. Seventeen-year-old me. I’m writing you this letter because Justin just wrote a letter to his seventeen-year-old self, and I’m inspired. Yes, Justin is still around, but, of course, you knew he would be.
I bet you’d be shocked to know that although we’re almost thirty, we are not famous. You’re not going to be a hard-hitting reporter for a major news...
Faith when it isn't easy →
Doctors discovered a tumor on Matt Chandler’s brain last Thursday. This is what he said to his home church yesterday.
(It doesn’t matter if you don’t know who he is. It’s not about him. You need to hear what he says about living for God. Don’t quit before you hear the Hebrews 11 stuff)
“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.”
– —Virginia Woolf
This is writing for me. It’s arranging my pieces, sorting the life-notes jotted on post-its and old receipts and worship bulletins, and making sense of my experiences.
I think Woolf’s making two strong suggestions here:
1. “Arrange.” Don’t live...