We break radio silence to bring you...

I've actually posted more recently than I had thought. 

The Lord is putting me through the ringer lately.  From ALL angles of life.

I'll go into that in more detail later.

For now, I wanted to share a blog post that really spoke to me today.  Pete Wilson is the pastor of CrossPoint Church in Nashville.  I have followed his blog for a couple of years now.  He ranges from humorous to challenging; real life to dreams; spiritual to funny...sometimes all in the same post!

A tweet from Dr. Tony Evans this morning said something along the lines of "It's not about your pain.  What the purpose?"  That rocked my world today, too.

I think you can see a theme.

I just want to share.

Books for High Schoolers (or adults)

I was cleaning out my parents' attic earlier this week and decided to let go of many books from my high school English classes.  If you're interested let me know.  These are free or only the cost of shipping (if you're far enough away for that.)

Cliffs Notes:
Moby Dick
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
Lord of the Flies
Brave New World & Brave New World Revisited

Novels:
Brave New World

Lord of the Flies
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Moby Dick

A Farewell to Arms
The Great Gatsby
The Catcher in the Rye
The Scarlet Letter
One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest
Tender is the Night
The Old Man and the Sea
Of Mice and Men
My Name is Asher Lev
The Gift of Asher Lev
Anna Karenina
A Man for All Seasons
The Notebook

Showing Hospitality

I'm a Christian fiction reader.  I have a few authors I read as favorites and truly enjoy reading their stories over and over again.  The characters become friends and the stories weave in and out in a slightly unreal, but full of life, way.

I'm currently about half way through one of these books.  The pastor of the small church is teaching on hospitality.  One of the characters has some commitments that keep her from showing hospitality, but she wants to be an obedient follower of Christ and works to do as much as she can. 

For some reason today, this particular part of the story arrested my attention.  How often do I show hospitality?  How often does my group of friends assume everyone coming to an event should bring something?  Is it cultural?  Financial?  Are we trying to make everyone feel a part?

How often do I feel conviction and instead of focusing on the feeling, I actually focus on changing?  I know it's not as often as I should.

I enjoy showing hospitality, but I have learned that it makes people uncomfortable.  They want to bring a bottle of wine or the dessert or "no big deal, I just threw the salad together." 

Is this hospitality?

I looked up some verses in Scripture that talk about the command to show hospitality.
These verses are from I Peter 4.

7 The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray. 8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. 11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.


I want to be obedient in this.  I want to show hospitality.

Another Parent Story

We (my teaching partner and I) received an email from a parent late Friday afternoon regarding an incident involving her son.  She was simply making us aware.  We received another email late Monday evening asking for a conference, but maybe we didn't need to actually conference about it, she thought.  We received an email Tuesday morning asking to meet over our lunch time.

Um, wow.  We hadn't even had a chance to reply to Friday's email before two others arrived!

All of that not withstanding, we are now having a first time parent/teacher conference when there are only 3 days left in the school year.

There are just some things I don't understand.

Heir Apparent

About a week and a half ago, I was in Arkansas for my cousin's high school graduation.  The Mavericks were playing the Thunder in the playoffs...which is quite humorous in my family since we're from Texas, but all of the extended family is from OkCity.  It made for some fun conversations!

Anyway, at one point my dad and I were chatting about Jason Kidd and Dad mentioned his "heir apparent."  I wasn't familiar with that terminology and asked Dad to explain.  No big deal..."learn something new every day" and all that.

I think I've heard it no less than 5 times since that conversation.

Always funny how little things catch my attention!

End of May update

What a boring post title! 

I haven't blogged in awhile and when I have thought of blogging, it hasn't necessarily been original material, but more to link to someone else's blog.  I'm still probably going to do a couple of those, too...

We only have 3 1/2 more days of school to go and I am VERY ready for summer to arrive.  On the other hand, this year has been fairly drama free in regards to kiddos behavior and parents' too, for that matter.  We haven't had kids talking about sex at lunch or any major fist fights or anything like that.  For the most part, parents have been friendly and supportive.  I've heard next year won't be the same way, so I'm trying to relish this year while I've got a few days left of it!

In exactly 9 days, I will be departing on a Carribean cruise!  It was pretty funny how the decision was made.  I'd sent an email to some people asking if anyone was interested.  When it came down to it, 5 were possibilities.  We were looking at a 4 or 5 night cruise.  Out of our options, I emailed out the dates that worked for me.  LJ responded with the ones that worked for her.  The other girls ended up not being able to go.  So LJ and I said, "Ok, which of these dates do we prefer.  June 6 sounds good.  Great!  Now, where are we going?  Cozumel and Progresso.  Ok!"  Haha!

Either way, I'm excited.  The last day of school is Friday.  I'll pack over the weekend, and we sail Monday afternoon.  YES!

Terrific...or Exhausted

Remember in Charlotte's Web, when the goose was trying to help Charlotte spell?

"T, double E, double R, R, R, double I, double F, double I, double C"

Or something to that affect.

That's how I feel right now...except with 'exhausted' in place of 'terrific'.

"Double E, double X, double AUS, double T, double E, double DDD."

There's not anything overwhelming going on in my life right now.  I'm just running on not enough sleep and then dealing with cranky, ready-for-summer, sometimes slightly clueless people...and of course the children, too.

My bedtime tonight =  EARLY.