The Journey

How did that happen?

2008-07-30T14:23:00.003-05:00

I guess it happens to everyone at some point...maybe women are just more aware of it than men...but I don't think anyone is ever really prepared for it.

I'm talking about that single moment in which you look in the mirror and don't recognize the person looking back. I had that moment just now, in the bathroom of the nursing building. I looked up from washing my hands (while singing Happy Birthday, to make sure I washed long enough...I'm such a dork) and was almost frightened by the reflection. Bags under my eyes, lines in places that didn't used to have lines, a deer-in-the-headlights look in my eyes, and really poorly-styled hair that needs a good cut. This semester has really taken a toll on me, I guess. It's a good thing that nursing school is preparing me to make good money because I'm going to need it to start doing more self-maintenance.

I just handed in an essay that will count for a good chunk of my grade for the summer. I have to say, while everyone else has been freaking out about having to write a 5-page paper (which is NOT a big deal), and making sure their APA format is correct, I actually really enjoyed the assignment. The topic of the paper was not one I would have chosen myself, but the task of writing is one that I know I can complete...I am confident in my ability to write, especially when I have time to draft and revise. The essay was probably one of the first assignments this summer that I actually felt certain I could and would earn a good grade on. It is nice to finally find a piece of nursing school I know I can do well.

I'm almost done for the summer...one more week, and then I have a few weeks of vacation to relax, recoup, and re-energize. "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can," said the little blue engine...

Tired

2008-07-22T11:37:00.002-05:00

The summer semester is winding down...finally. My last skills mastery test will be on July 31, and then my last final is August 6. One of my classmates emailed recently with the comment, "Does anyone else wish that today was August 7???!?!"

One of my professors had mercy on us last week and condensed material so we would have an extra day off this week, which was yesterday. Not much of a day off, really, because while we weren't in class as much, we had more homework to even it out. I woke up this morning, after sleeping for 10 hours, still feeling really tired. I realized it's the kind of tired that isn't going to go away with a day off or extra sleep or anything...it's being tired of having things to do always hanging over my head and having no relief from huge stressors (the skills masteries just freak me out...I start shaking about two days beforehand and can't eat until about 5 hours after it's all over...assuming I've passed...). As soon as you wrap up one, there is another one looming on the horizon.

Every morning I tell myself, "You just have to get through today. Just this one day." And I make it. And start all over again the next morning. It's getting old.

I really need an end. I wish today was August 7.

Zipping right along...

2008-07-12T13:59:00.002-05:00

What a crazy time! We spent our 4th of July weekend moving across the metroplex to a fun little duplex...it is a great place with a big yard for Jasper and so much more space inside than our old apartment. Plus it is not on the third floor. I can't tell you how appreciative I am of that fact when Jasper needs to pee at 3am.

We are pretty much settled in now with just a few random items still needing a place (or a trashcan). Moving in really takes a long time when life outside of the move doesn't slow down. School keeps rapidly firing the work at me, and Nate's duties at his job actually increased right about the time we moved, making more demands on his time and energy...so the fact that we don't still have rooms full of unpacked boxes is pretty significant.

This past Wednesday marked the beginning of a new 5-week summer semester for me, and after only one day (and several hours of reading assignments), I feel like I have a renewed spirit about this whole pursuit of a nursing degree. Up to this point I've become increasingly down-trodden, feeling crushed by the workload and discouraged about the difference between my picture of the nursing world and the reality that I've been observing in the hospitals. Without knowing it, my scope of vision had been slowing narrowing until I was only thinking of nursing in terms of a list of skills I needed to master (quickly!) and an extensive list of dos and don'ts for every shift. Not very inspiring or encouraging. I had lost sight of the bigger picture: the place of a nurse in society, the significant role the nurse has played in history, the overarching goals and priorities of nursing, and the general sense of pride a nurse can take in her/his work: knowing it is an act of service done for the betterment of a single patient, and therefore of all mankind.

I just finished reading an article in the American Journal of Nursing by L.L. Dock and am feeling very inspired by her words. She wrote about our duty to continually be advocating for the fair treatment of everyone, not just ourselves, fellow workers, and patients...like our role as nurses expands far beyond the hospital or clinic we work in, reaching out into other professions and into society in general. For example, she wrote that a newspaper had printed an article comparing the grossly underpaid teaching profession to the nursing field. She chided the nurses who had responded to the article by pointing out the inherent dangers of the nurse's work as justification for the salary difference, saying they should instead have used the opportunity to advocate for the teachers and say, "Yes, they are underpaid! We should do something about it!" The general tone of the article was just so...noble, I guess. The way she wrote about the work of the nurse...to be associated with an emerging profession that is generally aimed at helping, encouraging, uplifting and supporting people rather than doing whatever it takes to scramble up the proverbial professional ladder first creates such a sense of fulfillment for me. Not that I am above scrambling up the ladder, but that my profession expects me to be. Even though she wrote the article in 1913, I feel like her words are as relevant today as they were the day she penned them.

I have so much work to do today...I've got to get back at it. I just couldn't help taking a few minutes to (for the first time since I started nursing school) vent the pride I take in my line of work.

Shadow Day

2008-06-18T09:55:00.002-05:00

This is an excerpt from my nursing clinical journal...I think it paints a really good picture of the struggle I'm having in school so far:

Shadow day at the hospital. I definitely felt better about today than I did about orientation day...what a world of difference being one-on-one with a nurse made. I think I am still experiencing a little bit of reality shock, though. For some reason I just seem to have a picture in my head of what a nurse's job looks like each day, and it is not jiving with what I am seeing actually happen. I can't figure out if this is because I am seeing a Med-Surg unit and that's just what Med-Surg units happen to look like (while some other unit matches my mental image), if it is because I have not yet seen a nurse who performs nursing care the way I envision myself doing it, or if it is because I really just have a skewed picture of what the nursing profession looks like. It is a little bit discouraging, but I keep reminding myself that the nursing field is so broad; somewhere out there is a niche for me. I just have to find it. :)

I think another little point of discouragement is the reality of the nursing shortage and all that follows because of it. We are reading Bed Number Ten for Cheek's class, and I was horrified to read of all the miscommunication between staff and the lack of loving, personal care to each patient. I thought I was reading about a rare unfortunate situation, but I'm finding out it is reality. There really are lazy nurses, there really are communication breakdowns (frequent, actually), and there really is a lack of warm, personal care, simply because nurses are stressed, busy, and overloaded. I don't want ever to become that kind of nurse, and I'm afraid that working in an environment that repeatedly puts me in that situation will mold me into that shape.

On the bright side, I am really looking forward to relationship-building with my patients, and I am thankful that I will only have one patient to really focus on each day, leaving me with lots of time for personal attention. Even just the small amount of time I had with first-time acquaintances today, I experienced the emotional high of helping someone get to the bathroom. Sounds weird, I know, and it probably won't last, but I felt really good being someone's rock--meeting such a real and tangible need. I enjoyed helping. I really think that med-surg is going to be a difficult unit for me, just because of the rapidly changing clientel. I see myself doing better in a unit such as oncology, or even in a nursing home, where I am able to interact with clients for longer periods of time, getting to know them as people with lives rather than just bodies in beds.

That's all for today, I guess. Mental note: stuff more PB crackers in my scrub pockets next week. I gave mine away and was really shaky by the time we got out of post-conference today. This is not conducive to learning!!

Picking up a second income...

2008-06-15T20:32:00.003-05:00

My mom is an expert at finding money. She saw some program on TV once about all the places you can find money, and once she started paying attention and looking around, she found all kinds of change in all kinds of places. Dollar bills in the car vaccuum filter, quarters in the newspaper and vending machine returned coin slides, random money in random parking lots...we have paid for ice cream at Dairy Queen with Mom's found change on more than one occasion. Free ice cream tastes really good.

It appears I have inherited this talent for finding change. Or maybe just the appetite for free money (but who doesn't have that??!). I have gotten pretty good at finding money in the parking lot of our apartment complex; I usually make anywhere between one and five cents every time I take Jasper out to poop (letting him out to pee doesn't take me far enough into the parking lot...has to be #2). Today, though, I hit a personal high of 56 cents, mostly in pennies and nickels. And I found it at the beginning of our walk, which means I held onto a dirty handful of change for 30 minutes while we walked around the neighborhood. It was gross, but I was not giving up my free 56 cents.

Don't laugh. It all adds up, you know. I've calculated that if I find just two cents every day, I can pay off my tuition loans in about a million years...that's faster than the billion years I'm looking at without that free change!

Lab Specimen

2008-06-12T16:35:00.002-05:00

Interesting day at school today. I was not really prepared to take my shirt off in front of everyone in my nursing lab.

We were practicing musculoskeletal assessments today, so we were doing all kinds of range of motion exercises with our partners, assessing gait and looking for any kind of abnormalities. You can only practice range of motion for so long, so to kill the extra time, my partner suggested practicing checking for scoliosis. No problem there...I have great posture and have no problem being a model non-scoliosis patient. So we went behind the little curtain thing and I whipped off my shirt so she could look at my spine. When I bent over, she said, "Hmm...this side looks higher than this side. And your rib cage looks uneven." I totally thought she was joking.

Right about then one of the instructors walks in and says, "Oh, my..." I'm thinking, "Oh, crap." She palpates around and calls another instructor over and they poke around together. Before you know it, the curtain is gone, and the instructor is pointing out my problems to everyone in the class. Everyone is looking at my back, gasping and leaning forward, trying to palpate my back muscles and get an idea of what an abnormal musculoskeletal finding looks like. That was kind of an awkward moment, to which I responded by exhibiting diaphoresis (excessive sweating), making palpating me that much more fun...and by that I mean embarrassing.

In the end, the instructors diagnosed me as having one leg shorter than the other (which I suspected after doing inversions in yoga...my legs always looked uneven to me). Apparently this has caused my hips to be unequal in height, my back muscles to develop differently in order to compensate, leading to a slight side curvature in the thoracic spine and an elevated right shoulder. Great. So funny that something like this can go on and I have no idea about it. Not even an inkling. I don't walk strangely, I don't have back pain, I really do have great posture...apparently things just aren't so perfect on the inside. I'm actually kind of impressed at the body's adaptation skills.

For the rest of the day my partner, Dy, and I kept making jokes about peoples' reactions to my "deformity," we called it. People kept asking me if it hurt to walk, if I'd broken my back, if I wore special shoes, etc., like it was even a miracle to them I'd made it this far in life. We were just cracking up. We wondered if maybe I could get a handicapped parking pass out of the deal, which would be stellar because those are about the only open parking spots on campus. :)

A New Brother!!!

2008-06-08T15:39:00.007-05:00

Last weekend we flew home to Chicago for my sister's wedding...absolutely fantastic. The ceremony was beautiful and the reception--my favorite part--was just the kind of thing she had talked about having when we were kids. Somehow she landed on this farm that rents out their two barns for huge social functions, just minutes away from the church. The farm was on this huge spread of land covered in the greenest grass I have ever seen, bordered by a creek with a golf course just on the other side. The weather could not have been more perfect for that kind of occasion--everyone was completely comfortable milling around between the two barns in dresses and tuxes. We really had a wonderful time, and it was hard to come back to Texas, land of hot. There has been talk that we'll head that way when I finish nursing school next summer, but then again there has been talk about heading in 40 different directions when I finish school, so who knows where we'll end up. :)

Speaking of nursing school, I finished my first semester just before we left for Chicago. It was a mini-mester, which means we packed a whole normal semester of Pharmacology into three weeks. I can honestly say I have never worked harder at school in my entire life, and I don't say that to brag at all. School has always come easily for me with not a whole lot of effort...this time around, I am really having to push myself. Nate jokes that I was more in love with my Pharm textbook than with him those three weeks, which could possibly be true, if you look at the amount of time spent with each. ;) Anyway, I am now one week into the summer semester, in which we'll cover fundamentals and history of nursing, plus I get my first round of clinical experiences, starting tomorrow. I am so excited!! I have been assigned to a terrific hospital about 10 minutes from our new house and am really ready to jump in and soak up the experience. I am hoping I get to spend a few days in the oncology unit, which I think is where I want to end up, but last I checked that was still up for debate. We'll see.

Other than that, things are just moving right along for us. We've been trying to take advantage of fun things to do that are close by, so we've taken in a few Rangers games and have plans to go to Hurricane Harbor in a few weeks. The Rangers games are pretty cool...we like to grab drinks and just hang out in the cheap seats, enjoying the outdoors during the only time of day that Texas heat is bearable. Makes you feel like a real American, especially if you get a few $5 hot dogs to go with your $5 soda. :) Going to the games reminds me of two favorite pastimes back home: when I was little, my dad used to take me to the dog races in St. Croix, and we always got $5 sodas to drink while we (he) bet on the dogs. We called them bladder busters, which back then, they really were. I'm also reminded of the Eau Claire Express baseball games I went to with Dad before I got married...what's crazy is that it was $6 a ticket for those games, which were definitely not major league games, and down here we are paying $6 a ticket for games that definitely are major league games. There are definitely advantages to city living. :)

Don't expect me to cover your butt anymore.

2008-05-06T18:17:00.005-05:00

There is absolutely no feeling I hate more than that of being taken advantage of...it stirs up within me some of the most deep-seated rage I've ever experienced. This feeling pops up in sometimes the most unexpected places, but always for the same root reason. The store charged me a price higher than the tag said. The mechanic got me to spring for repairs I didn't really need. My hair stylist "just dried" my hair and charged me extra for it without disclosing that fact beforehand. The wranglers are supposed to pool their tips from the multi-guide rides; everyone but me pockets their money, so I wind up making about a third as much as everyone else. Some kid in school really wanted me to be her partner for the project...because, as I later learned, she knew I would work for a good grade even if she didn't do a darn thing, which she didn't. A boy I was totally in love with and would have roped the moon for...well, let's leave that one alone.

The latest issue has been with other employees at Starbucks. We are going through a bit of a transition time right now, training new employees and losing two faithful workers (one of them is me), so there has been sort of high stress anyway. On top of that, yesterday my relief person called one minute before my shift ended to say he'd just woken up and would be about an hour late. I didn't stay to cover until he got there because he has overslept on numerous occasions, doesn't do his job when he does show up, leaves messes for everyone else to clean up, and I'm tired of covering his butt. Then again today, my relief person didn't show at her scheduled time. I called my manager several times to see if she'd called, asking him to call her, asking him if he'd reached her, etc., for an hour and a half, with absolutely no helpful response. Finally, it was time for me to leave and she still hadn't shown, nor had my manager bothered to let me know what was going on, so I just left. And I don't feel badly about it. I am really tired of being the responsible one who gets shafted because no one else feels like being responsible.

Grrr.

Finding the good in the bad: anger is a phenomenal motivator in kickboxing. I kicked butt tonight.

Terriffic in Texas Number Two

2008-05-01T08:58:00.002-05:00

Sonic Happy Hour. There is nothing better to do between 2 and 4pm than get a cherry limeade for sixty cents!!

Hi Nancy :)

2008-04-30T21:26:00.003-05:00

Thanks for dinner tonight..and for REAL Dr. Pepper. I am so relieved to finally know the true original taste of those 32 flavors! :)

Terrific in Texas

2008-04-08T20:37:00.005-05:00

Texas is not exactly my first choice of places to live on this planet...getting used to it has been full of challenges. However, I've discovered that when I look for them, there are some really great things about this state (which, might I remind all you Texans, is exactly what Texas is--a state. One state that together, with all the other 49, make up the UNITED States, which is a nation. Texas--albeit a very big state--is not a country or nation in itself, despite what you are apparently taught here. Sorry for bursting your bubble. Actually, I'm not. You had it coming.).

Okay, so I thought it might help me to remember these good things about Texas, the state, if I wrote them down. So as long as we live here, every time I think of another excellent feature of life in the state of Texas, I'm going to post it. Maybe by the time we leave I'll have convinced some of you to move down here!! :)

Today's Terrific in Texas is the extended Autumn and Spring seasons. I was very disappointed with the "cold" season and am still deeply mourning the loss of a meaningful winter (one in which I actually wear my winter coat), but on the flip side, there are really long periods of time where the weather hovers between 50 and 70, which is what I believe Heaven weather will be maintained at. :) It's the kind of weather that, to me, doesn't really belong in any season and does not make me feel like it is any certain time of the year (which is why I think it'd make excellent temperatures for eternity), but it is just plain nice, easy, uncomplicated and undemanding weather...it doesn't interfere with outdoors plans or make other tasks (like hauling groceries up three flights of stairs) difficult (or any more difficult, I should say).

Someone will have to remind me this summer, when it is over 100 degrees for 30 days in a row, that I actually was thankful for Texas weather at one point. :)

Still kickin'!

2008-04-02T13:21:00.002-05:00

Hello? Hello? [tap tap tap] Is this thing on? Can you hear me? [loud screech of feedback] Oops, sorry about that.

Um, hi. :) I know it's been several months since we've posted anything new...to be honest, I haven't had the motivation. I've sort of been in hibernation mode this year, preferring to think things through quietly and privately rather than in front of the general public. Today, though, I suddenly felt like connecting to the outside world again, and I thought this might be a good way to begin. :)

We are doing well here in Texas. I think we've adjusted well and have settled into a decent pace of life; we are connecting well with other people and we are finding our own niche here. I think this might be the first time in our married life that we can say that! It is nice to feel like you belong to the community you live in. Nate is now a Manager at Macaroni Grill and I am working at a Starbucks, eagerly anticipating (finally) starting nursing school on May 12.

On a deeper level, God has been doing some major construction on us both this year...lots of healing, lots of learning, and, thankfully, lots of laughing at the realization of how silly and ridiculous we can both be! I sort of feel like we are at the point most couples are at right before or right after they get married; we are growing together, learning how to do this dance without knocking each other over. When we got married almost three years ago, neither of us understood how much individual growing we both had to do or how marriage would magnify those shortcomings, and it took two years of wrong turns and bad decisions before we saw what a mess we'd created. So we've spent much of the last few months trying to undo the damage we did in ignorance throughout our first two years together...it has been messy, but very, very beautiful. :)

We are excited about what lies ahead for us in the next few months--I am thrilled to start nursing school, and we are thinking about buying a fixer-upper down here and plugging our money into that instead of paying so much in rent. Houses are very cheap here right now; we are able to buy a good-sized home for much the same as my parents would have paid for their first home thirty years ago! Then, when I graduate next August, hopefully we'll be able to sell it for at least what we put into it. If not, there are several large universities in the area and rental property is in high demand. So that's something we're looking into.

*whew* Lots of changes, but lots of good. We thank God every day for the rich blessings He has bestowed upon us and the grace He has shown us this year!!

Texas

2007-10-29T18:07:00.000-05:00

Now that we are here in Texas and are basically settled, I thought it would be a good time to update everybody as to how things are! Things are good :) We now live in an apartment complex in Arlington, TX, about 1/2 mile from the Texas Rangers Stadium and about the same distance from the new Cowboys Stadium. It is basically right between Dallas and Ft. Worth off of Interstate 30. I have never been much a big city person, but there are definitely some things that I am finding out that I like. The biggest one being how easy it is to get to anything. There are so many places to shop and eat and most all of them are close. Also I like that there are things to do any given night of the week. It is a different matter to be able to afford to go do them, but it is nice to know that we could do them. Our apartment is great and is plenty for the two of us and Jasper, but it is definitely a huge change from the monster house we had in WV. It has been good for us to realize all the random stuff we kept just because we could and we have been able to get rid of some things that should have gone a while ago.
Maria has a job at the YMCA that is seriously less than a block from our apartment building. There are actually other buildings in our apartment complex that as as far away, if not farther, than the YMCA. This has been great as far as working out, it takes alot less effort to get motivated to go when you only have to walk a block or so instead of drive 10-15 minutes. Anyway...she likes the work there and is even considering picking up another part time job at some point until nursing school starts in May. As of today (I accepted the job this morning) I am a Manager (in training) at a local Macaroni Grill. I am a little nervous about it as it will be moving into an environment I do not have much experience in, but I am excited about the work, it pays well enough for us, has great benefits and room for advancement. At this point I am not exactly sure when I start, but it should be in the next few weeks or so. So God has really taken care of our needs in this arena and I am thankful for his provision.
We also have found a home church and sunday school/group of friends which has been great! We are attending First Baptist Church of Euless, Tx which is where my Aunt and Uncle that live here attend. It has been a great for us, especially in that we have been able to connect with a group at the church that is made of people that have been married around 3 years or less and don't have kids. We have already made some friends in that group and have been able to go to some different things with them, which has been a real blessing. The church is a great place to grow in the Lord and for us to build and work on our marriage, which is really why we are here anyway.
I suppose that just about does if for the quick update, hopefully we will find some time to keep updating our blog and keep you all informed on life in Texas. I hope that you are all well and apologize for the long break in posts. Till next time!! :)

Bachelor

2007-08-17T16:53:00.000-05:00

It has been approx. 1 month since Maria and I said tearful goodbyes and she left me for the lone star state. It has been a most interesting month since she left. I have realized some things:

1. My clothes don't wash themselves. (sad but true).
2. I think my dog likes my wife more than me (I think it is because she walks
him more regularly than I do..).
3. I can't cook (at least not well).
4. It is weird to sleep in a big bed by yourself every night after having
another person with you there for so long.
5. I don't shave as much when nobody is going to be kissing me (and my dog
doesn't count).
6. I watch way to much TV when I am bored.
7. I eat better, sleep better, get more done with my day, am more disciplined
and overall am probably just a better person when Maria is with me.
8. It is hard for me to drink a whole gallon of milk by myself before it
expires.
9. I actually like yogurt with granola in it. Wierd.

I am sure there is more, but these are just some of my initial 1st month of being apart observations. Maybe I will do one of these every month just to let you know what I am learning about me. There have been more deep spiritual lessons and marriage lessons learned as well, but I will save those for later.

Who wants to play balderdash?

2007-08-01T08:37:00.001-05:00

I remember when I was growing up, we used to eat some of our Holiday meals at my Grandpa and Grandma Gibson's house. I suppose I should mention that they really were not my actual grandparents, there were my Uncle's wife's parents. So we really were not related, but since my dad's parents died before I ever knew them, I came to know the Gibson's as Grandpa and Grandma.

Anyway, one of my memories of being there was when the whole family would get together and play games. There were many games we played, but for some unknown reason to me, I will always remember playing Balderdash. I imagine that because I was still fairly young and I have a very creative uncle and two people who work in a medical field in my family and the definitions created by them for different words, were often quite funny to me. Maybe it was just being together and laughing that I remember, or maybe something else, but whatever it was, I have a very fond affection for Balderdash now. It makes me feel good to think of it as a game, despite the fact that I probably do not enjoy it as much now as I did then.

Well, the point of all of this is that I have recently come across a video of a guy who asks his friends if they want the play Balderdash and it made me laugh. I am not sure if you would think it was funny, but I can just see myself running into a room full of my family (when I was younger of couse, I would never do this now) and begging them to come play Balderdash or some other game with me. I know now, you are all curious, so here is the video

Transitions

2007-07-22T20:36:00.000-05:00

First, I want to thank all of you who have prayed for us throughout the last few weeks/months. There has been too much going on to tell you everything, but know that we have appreciated your support more than you know. With that said, here is the basic update on the Lails.

We are moving.

We came to the realization through some different circumstances in our life and marriage that we needed to be nearer to some people who could be an encouragement and example for us, for a time. We both feel as if we lacked the example of strong Christian marriage growing up and we are starting to see some of the effects of that in our marriage. So as we talked about it, there was really only one place we felt really fit the bill for both of us, Texas.

Now, we don't really like Texas all that much as we are both mountain people, not desert people. And we like to have all four seasons and see snow, not just have hot all the time, but the people who are there are why we are going. I have a very Godly Aunt and Uncle who live there and four sets of cousins (all older than me) who are all married and have at least two kids. All five of these marriages function very well and all have there center in Christ. Additionally, Maria and I feel more as if they are our family, instead of mine or hers. Granted they are connected to me, but we got to know them together and that has made a big difference. Also, they all attend different great churches and have resources (like counseling, etc) that we can plug into immediately and that is what we need right now.

So, I will be quiting my job (I have already informed my employer) on Nov. 1st, hopefully sooner if they can get my replacement here. Maria has already "moved" down there and will be working on finding a job and place for us to live. She will be living with my Aunt and Uncle. Also, she is going to be getting into the nursing program at TCU, which should have her finished with a BSN in about two and half years. I will be needing to find a job when I get there, so that remains an item of concern, for those of you would like to pray for us.

So...I guess that is sort of it in a nutshell. Of course there is so much more to the story, but I think this is all that needs to be said for now. I am grateful that the Lord has brought us both to a place where we are looking for and willing to receive the help and advice of others, and I look forward to seeing our marriage grow and seeing God become more of the center of it. The future is a little scary at this point, and being apart for three months or so is also scary, but we are excited and hopeful and trusting that the Lord will use this to do great things in and through us.

Lastly, thanks again to those of you who have kept us in your prayers. It really means more than you know! Lots of Love to all of you!

Difficult Times

2007-06-27T10:06:00.000-05:00

Hello to all of you out there who still check up on us from time to time. I am not sure how many of you are people who I have talked to in the last few days or weeks, but I want to let all of you know that Maria and I can use your prayer support right now. There are some very serious issues and decisions that we are facing with our marriage, jobs, and really just life in general right now. At some point I hope to post more about all of this, when it becomes something I can post about, but for now it is still to fresh and current and hard, and I am still too confused and worn out to try to explain any of it. I just covet the prayers of those of you who read this and believe in the power of God to make transforming changes in the life of his children. I will try to update you all as we start to make some decisions and definite plans for the future.

Nate

Oh Boy!

2007-05-07T18:40:00.000-05:00

Um....it has been a while since we have updated. Sorry! I had been thinking for a while that if I would just take a few minutes and write some of what was going on in our lives then I could get the monkey off my back and feel like we were at least updating our blog at times and that people who click our link from other blogs wouldn't continue to see a post about snow!! Anyway, we are finally posting and wonder of all wonder it is me the male half of us doing the posting. I know, you are all thinking...hasn't he only posted about 2 times ever. Yes..this is actually my second post ever, but I thought maybe I should try again. I have been telling myself for years that I cannot write all that well and I figure maybe this would be a chance to try to hone some skills. Not sure there are any skills to hone, so maybe I need to find some skills or build them or something, but I figured that this might help....and what can be easier than writing about yourself, right? So off we go.

My first thought before I write is, I wonder how many people have given up on trying to read our blog? I think our last post was on Jan. 21st or something like that. I hope there are still some of you who had enough faith in us that you are still checking our blog once a month or something. If so, thanks for hanging in there, hopefully we will be better going forward.

Maria and I had been talking for some time about what we wanted to do for the next few years. There were many options on the table, as we were considering if we wanted to move to get closer to family, or move to get closer to a good nursing school for Maria, etc. After lots of thought and prayer, we have basically decided that we are going to stay here for a while. A while being a few years. Maria has been looking at doing the nursing program at Shepherd University, which is only about 20 minutes from our house. They have a pretty good nursing program and if all goes well, she would be finishing in the Spring of 2009. Which would mean that we would be here at least through that October, since that is when the season ends for the campground. Which means I have at least another three summers running this place, lord willing. That is another item, I figured that I could write about at some point and I think that I will, but you will have to wait in anticipation for my reflections on running a campground. All that being said, you should be able to find us at the large house at 270 campground rd, with the large glowing yellow and white KOA sign the front yard for a few more years! :) (I need to get a good picture of our yard at night sometime, the sign makes the most eerie greenish glow in the front yard, it is pretty neat) This would be a good time to mention that if you want to come and visit us, you should. The campground has tons to offer and since I know the manager, I can get you a great deal on a place to stay ;) Call me

In other news, my wife has fell in love with another man.....or should I say a man and a woman. More accurately, I could say that she has fallen for some horses. This really should come as no surprise to any of you as I think everybody who has ever met or talked to Maria knows that she loves horses (what girl doesn't). It is actually pretty neat the way the Lord worked out for her to have a place to spend some free time doing something she loves. When Maria was working at the gym, she met this older gentleman named Earnest. The importance of (being) Earnest is that he has a small farm with three horses and is getting too old to handle them all himself. So...he needed some help....which my wife was more than willing to give. Needless to say this has become somewhat of a pastime for Maria, and for the last two months or so, she spends around 3-4 days a week over with the horses for a few hours trying to teach them and doing general horse things (cleaning up after them, feeding, etc.) It has been exciting to see her find something she loves to do and have some extra time to be able to do it! (in case you are wondering this is some of what made our decision to stay here a little easier) I would encourage you to ask her about it sometime, but make sure you have a few hours!! ;)

hmmm...well, there is much more going on, but I think I will save some for another post and leave this one right here. If you are reading this, thanks for continuing to check our blog and I appreciate your perseverance or stick-to-it-ness in checking back even though we havent updated in eons. We have now :) Till next time...

I can't believe this!

2007-01-21T14:13:00.001-05:00

It's snowing--finally!!! Yep, today we received our first sprinkling of snow for the season. It has felt like one long, retarded psuedo-winter without the fluffy white stuff around, although you can hardly call average temps of 65 "winter." Having been born in the middle of a blizzard, I think I just have a natural need for snow--I have to have my yearly dose of snow to even feel human!

The snow is not my primary reason for posting today, though...it is Jasper. We finally had him in for an allergy test right before Christmas and got the results back last week. The vet left a voicemail sort of summing up the report, and here is what she said (I swear I am not making this up!): "Hi, this is Dr. Daniel from Hillside vet, calling in regards to Jasper's allergy test. I would like to discuss this with you but briefly I can tell you what he is definitely allergic to. Um, lamb, beef, rabbit, potato, soy beans, salmon, venison, shellfish mix--although I don't know of any dog food that has shellfish in it. They also say he is borderline to duck and also to a berry mix. They did send a list of foods that would be acceptable for Jasper to eat..." and of course, at this point we are thinking that list must be quite small. We are also rolling on the floor in laughter because neither of us have ever heard of a dog having so many allergies, not to mention, how in the world can anyone be allergic to POTATOES??!??! Come on.

So this has helped somewhat, and we are now trying a new food that we actually purchased from the store (we had been buying specialty food online...lamb, no less), although it has chicken in it which he, technically, is also borderline allergic to, so we'll see how it goes. Nate made a good point yesterday, saying that it must be tons easier to deal with a dog with such severe allergies than it would be a child because with a dog, you just find a food that he can eat and you give that to him the rest of his life. With a child, you'd have to explain why he/she couldn't eat such and such and then spend a lot of time finding new foods and recipes that the child could eat. Plus, you'd have to make a billion people aware of the situation...babysitters, grandparents, neighbors, schools, the child's friends, the child's friend's parents, etc.

Jasper is enough child for us for now. :)

Pardon my poetic moment...

2007-01-13T20:40:00.000-05:00

Nate is away on business for an extended weekend, so I bought a book to fill the sudden increase in down time. When Crickets Cry was recommended several months ago by a girl I went to college with, and I'm just now getting around to testing it out...so far, 37 pages in, I am intrigued by the story line and seriously impressed with the author's talent. He reminds me of my friend Rebekah, whose blog (linked at right) will confirm everything I am about to say about her. She is one of those writers who can say a truckload in the space of a sparkplug. Her words are so perfectly chosen and ordered that with just a few lines, you almost feel as if you'd walked through the experience right next to her. I've always been very impressed with her skill, and the author of this book expresses the same skill but in a very poetic manner...not just because the main character is quoting Shakespeare and the Psalms every other page, but just in the descriptive writing.

For example, here is his description of one of the secondary characters of the book: "No makeup. Strong back, long lines. Rigid and stern, but also graceful. Cold but quietly beautiful. Complicated and busy, but also in need. More like an onion than a banana. Her eyes looked like the green that sits just beneath the peel of an avocado, and her lips like the red part of the peach that sits up next to the seed...'Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.'" I must have read that paragraph six or seven times. Great description. And I love the poetic quotes, although it is going to take me forever to read this book because I have to read the quotes several times to (a) understand them and (b) realize their relevance to the story. Oooh, a challenge. Love those.

Anyway, after reading that chapter, I set the book down and just sat there, feeling all poetic and everything, and Jasper came walking up, asking for a belly rub. He actually climbed into my lap--which he takes up more than all of...he hangs off all sides and it's more like I'm pinned beneath him than he is snuggling in my lap--and I tried to think of how I would blog about that moment in a very poetic manner. Obviously, I cannot even produce pre-meditated poetic writing. But it was a nice moment and helped me miss Nate a little bit less.

Check out Bek's blog and experience some great writing. :)

New Year's...new beginnings

2007-01-01T21:37:00.000-05:00

Like most everyone else on the planet this time of year, I've been giving a lot of thought to my life in 2006, specifically the things I am not too proud of myself for. With the help of our pastor's sermon yesterday and a conversation I had with a good friend over Christmas, I've decided to make a few changes and I thought perhaps "going public" with them would offer more accountability than my own conscience. :)

1. Prayer. I have really been slacking on capitalizing on the power of prayer. This year I will pray for people to whom I have said, "I'll be praying for you," and I will pray for my friends and family on a regular basis. I put together a prayer notebook this afternoon that is very organized and I think will be very helpful to me in keeping me on track.

2. God's Word. I am hesitant to commit to reading the Bible in one year because I don't think I can go that fast and really grasp what all is there. But I do commit to reading it regularly and developing some sort of method of study. Still working on that...

3. God's people. I have friends (mostly a friend...you know who you are, Amy) who are very good at sending cards and notes and gifts when needed/appropriate. I am definitely not that kind of friend. You may have noticed you have never recieved a Christmas card from me. I have never sent them. Would like to, but just don't. This year, I have marked lots of dates on the calendar that I am going to commit to sending cards and/or gifts for. Please don't be offended if you receive an e-mail from me in the near future asking when your birthday is...it's not that I didn't care before, it's that I'm commiting to show you I care now.

Let's start there. May you all have a safe, wonderful, exciting, stretching, blessed new year!

Don't give up on us yet!

2007-01-01T21:09:00.000-05:00

Many apologies to our faithful checkers...I know things on this blog haven't been very exciting lately. :) Hopefully we can do better this year, but I won't promise anything!

We just returned from our cross-country Christmas tour...two and a half weeks on the road with a dog and a loaded backseat! Jasper was really sick of being in the back by the end of the trip. After stopping to let him pee, when we tried to get him to hop back in, he would often just stand there and look at us with sad brown eyes as if to say, "Do I have to? Do you understand how small this space is and how large I am?!!!??" And we would say to him, "Yes, buddy, we're all cramped. Just a few more hours. At least you can lay down to sleep--we're stuck sitting up!" And then he would hop in as if he was satisfied with that answer. We have such a wonderful dog.

Okay, but the trip wasn't all about the dog, it was about family. It was so good to be at home (both of them) and see all the family again. We didn't have long enough at any place (no time would be long enough!), but we will take what we can get! Neither South Dakota nor Wisconsin nor anywhere in between had any snow, so it was sort of hard to actually feel like it was Christmas (funny how mere precipitation can make or break the holidays sometimes), but there were some familiar seasonal things that really helped it set in...Christmas Eve church services, for one thing, billions of Christmas cookies everywhere for another, and of course Dad's Christmas village/ski resort. I'm not even kidding. The thing grows every year and takes over a bit more of the basement than the year before. It is all very impressive, of course, but I have to say that the highlights are the completely functional chair lift (that moves and sounds just like a real one!) and the snow cloud that gently dusts one building with snow flakes. I pointed out to Dad that it seemed kind of phony to have snow dusting only one building while the building two inches to the left got nothing...he just looked at me and said, "Small cloud." I wouldn't be surprised if next year the whole village has a cloud...ah, the power of suggestion. :)

Back to the point, again, this Christmas was more special to me than any other I can remember because this year I didn't become trapped by the presents and food and other Christmasy things that are nice but not really important. This year, I realized over and over how precious family is, and how priceless and immeasurably wonderful time with them is. I seized every moment of this trip that I possibly could and hung onto it for everything it was worth...understanding that each one was such a gift, a gift that I could never know the whole value of nor be thankful enough for. Family, each and every single one of you are so precious to me and to Nate; there is nothing we could say to make you understand how vast and deep our love for you runs. We are far away from all of you and don't see any of you nearly enough, so please know that our love is so much bigger than the few words we can say in a few days of visiting. When we look back on this trip, we see how blessed we were to be with all of you...not because you took us skiing or shopping or watched our dog while we were out...but because we are family and having each other is the biggest blessing we could ever have been given.

Love to you all--

Visitors!

2006-10-22T15:12:00.000-05:00

We had the great priviledge of having Jake and my sister Catherine over this weekend for their fall break. We hadn't seen them since we moved from Marion in January--we were WAY overdue! They got here Thursday night and we didn't waste any time hitting the streets of DC...we managed to make it to all the memorials, Ford's Theater and Qdoba all in one afternoon! Catherine had some really nice leg cramps from all the walking. :)

Then on Saturday we went to a local pumpkin patch and selected our perfect projects...strangely, there was only one weird-shaped pumpkin, and Jake found it. The rest of us were stuck with round, smooth, perfect, boring pumpkins. When it came time to carve them, it was funny to see what design we each chose. Catherine and I obviously grew up in a home where Catherine's gap teeth were a big deal because we both made gap-toothed pumpkins. Nate took great pride in his pumpkin, specifically for the "angry eyebrows." They are not that angry, but he kept insisting that they were the angriest eyebrows ever. Jake's pumpkins gets the A, though...he made an incredible likeness of his new best friend--Jasper. The acuracy of his design is spectacular! :)

They left this morning right after lunch...the visit seemed much too short and I hope we get to see them again soon. Enjoy the photos!

Oh, Jasper...

2006-10-15T12:17:00.000-05:00

I had a brake light out, and when Nate went to fix it, Jasper thought we were going somewhere. Not wanting to be left behind, he hopped into the rear-most portion of the vehicle where he always rides. Except he doesn't usually ride in my car, where the rear-most portion of the vehicle is the trunk. Apparently he doesn't care. :)

*This picture accurately depicts the "rear-most" portion of the vehicle. :) You still have to love me, Nate. :)

It's that time of year again...

2006-10-07T22:39:00.000-05:00

These are some of my favorite pictures of two of my favorite people in the whole world. The shots were taken about this time last year at the high point in Wisconsin...I was so proud of Gramma and Grandpa for making it all the way to the top! Boy, do I have in-shape grandparents. :) That second one always makes me laugh...it was Grandpa trying to figure out how to work the digital camera. :)

Maria Pull?

2006-09-26T20:44:00.000-05:00

So I was sitting in the kitchen eating waffles. Completely minding my own business really, and I look over and see this:

It made it awful hard to eat waffles cuz I was laughing so hard. :)

God's been working out!

2006-09-23T13:08:00.000-05:00

I had a great conversation with one of the guys I work with at the gym last night...Friday nights are really slow, which gave us a chance to talk over subs from Subway. Just having a conversation at all was quite an answer to prayer, and the topic of conversation...well, isn't it just like God to go above and beyond? :)

This particular guy, who is just a bit older than me, just broke up with his girlfriend of 5 years. I have a really good feeling about it because he is a smart, quality guy and she--well, I don't know her well, so let's just say I never felt like they really "fit." So he's on a new track now, at that stage where he's sort of feeling things out, trying to get his bearings, figure out how to do this, etc. GREAT time for making some changes, if you ask me. :) Anyway, he asked me randomly if Nate and I's relationship changed when we got married. To be truthful, I told him yes, it did, some for the better and some for the not better. We have lots of things to work on. :) And before I could elaborate anymore on it, he asked me if we had lived together before we got married. I just about cried at the opportunity to explain to him how much that can damage a relationship, not make it better like the world says it will.

Nate and I did not live together before we got married, but we struggled with physical things for most of our dating life; sometimes I feel like, considering all that went on, we basically did live together but just didn't call it that because that is a sin you can't hide, while physical things you sort of can. So I am well aware of the psychological and emotional turmoil that a woman experiences when certain marriage-only benefits are pursued outside of marriage. As I was talking to this guy about all of this, I was discouraged at my inability to find words to accurately describe what happens without sharing too much detail...we have not been friends that long and I didn't want to gross him out or overwhelm him or make him feel awkward. At the same time, though, I wanted to convey the seriousness of the situation.

We only had 10 minutes or so to talk, so obviously it wasn't a real in-depth discussion, but I feel like it's got him thinking and perhaps re-thinking some of his habits. You guys, out of everyone I work with, I feel like this guy has the most potential in life--he is smart, curious, and bold about the things he believes in--and is really someone who, if he ever got hooked on Jesus, could really do some damage for the Kingdom. And this big time of change in his life might be just the primest of all prime times for him to make that decision. Please join me in prayer for this man's future and for my own wisdom to open my mouth when I should and be bold in a way that does not push him away.

This is SO exciting!

Thankfulness...

2006-09-22T07:28:00.000-05:00

Inspired by my friend Amy's excercise in thankfulness, I thought I would make a list of my own. Here are ten things I am very, very thankful for today...

The kind and gentle spirit my husband has. He is never mean or rude to anyone, not even to campers who really deserve it, or to I, who sometimes super deserves it.

Weather that is sunny with highs in the 60s. Perfect fall weather.

Enough intelligence to know how to be a good student and the desire to do so. I am realizing more and more that not everyone has this...scary when these people are going into the medical profession!

Hymns

A piano on which to play the hymns, even if it is grossly out of tune and third-space C won't play.

A job at a gym so I can go to the classes for free.

God's faithfulness to be Jehovah Jireh in all senses of the name...abundantly providing everything I need precisely when I need it. Like the woman at the gym yesterday. I think I may have just made my first friend in West Virginia.

Free sermons online...both by podcast and by live feed. It is funny that they call it live "feed" because that's exactly what it is to me: sustenance.

Jasper

The gift of today, and that Nate and I both got this gift again.

Grab a Kleenex

2006-09-16T15:54:00.000-05:00

My father-in-law sent this to me today...

From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day. Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester , Mass. , 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. ``He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an institution.''

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. ``There's nothing going on in his brain.'' "Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want to do that.''

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore for two weeks.''

That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!'' And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. ``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?'' How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii . It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-o! ld stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? T! wo hour s, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.'' And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.''

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston , and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland , Mass. , always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy. ``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''

Watch the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryCTIigaloQ

I want to be a nurse because I feel like it is my way of being Rick's dad to all of my patients. I think, at some point, everyone needs a Rick's dad in their life.

More games, but no flames

2006-09-15T08:35:00.001-05:00

I am happy to report that this year's US Open (specifically, Andre Agassi's performance in it) has concluded its airing in our house with no articles of furniture being toasted. You will recall that last year, the intensity of Agassi's game led to our coffee table being lit on fire. Flame free this year.

Be Still My Soul

2006-09-15T08:31:00.000-05:00

Was moved by the truth in this hymn this morning....

Be still, my soul! the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change, He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul! thy best, thy heavenly friend
through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul! thy God doth undertake
to guide the future as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul! the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Apple Pie?

2006-09-10T16:19:00.000-05:00

Due to a great deal that I couldn't pass up, I now have approximately 2 bushels of apples (that means a lot of apples) that I need to use up very soon. I don't have much experience in knowing which recipes freeze well and which don't, so I need some help. If anyone has a great apple pie recipe that can be frozen after it is baked, please pass it along! Either leave it in a comment or e-mail it. Thank you! :)

Power of Prayer

2006-09-09T18:29:00.000-05:00

Maria gets the feeling on Thursday morning like she needs to hit the floor with her knees, that God is urging her to prayer. Maria had planned to attend an aerobics class at the gym before work. Weighing the two options, Maria decides she will just pray in the car on the way to the aerobics class. Maria later learns of an event that occured on Thursday that had a rather undesirable outcome. Maria is stuck wondering if she would have prayed, if things would have turned out differently. If she could have stopped the yucky from coming.

I believe in the power of prayer, I really do. Which is why I can't get over the thought that I could have done something. Could I have fought off the enemy and avoided the current circumstances? The situation, technically, is not my fault, but if it could have been avoided had I done what I was supposed to, that does make me partially responsible for the way things are now.

What do I do with this?

2006-09-08T17:39:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it bothers me that people tend to comment more on the pointless or strictly-for-entertainment blog entries...not just mine, but all across the board...but they remain unnervingly quiet on the more in-depth and/or controversial blogs. Anytime people write about a certain stand they are taking or Biblical truths they are grasping and/or struggling with and/or feel deeply about, the "comments" section is pathetically empty.

I am guilty of being a non-commenter on the deeper blog entries. Sometimes I disagree with the post and am afraid to voice my opinion, sometimes I agree and just find it redundant to comment about it, and sometimes, I will confess, I do not comment because I have skipped over that particular entry, feeling like it was going to take too much work to read the whole thing and think through it.

I would guess that many people have these same feelings, and that drives me crazy. It is so frustrating to walk around needing depth in my life and have conversations with people who are feeling the same loss, yet when we are actually confronted with depth, we avoid it. Because it is safer. Easier.

Grrr.

Sometimes you just want to do this:

2006-09-07T20:02:00.000-05:00

You know, stick your fingers in your ears, make a scary face, and lean way out over the wall of a humongous cathedral.

(This was taken by Nate at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. More info later on exactly what we were doing taking pictures of gargoyles on the rooftop of a cathedral in DC.)

God's Gym

2006-09-02T13:48:00.000-05:00

Do you ever get the feeling that you are a twinkie in a sea of rice cakes? That sharp, clear understanding that you definitely do not blend well with your current surroundings? That you stand out like a white guy on an NBA team?

I grew up in the church and have had Scripture quoted to me, reminding me that I am not of this world, and the world will reject me because I am Christ's and they rejected Him first...it is one thing to hear that and quite another to actually experience it. For those of you who don't already know, I started working at our local Gold's Gym last month (making my twinkie analogy all the more fitting), and in the past 30 days I have felt the difference between me and the world more intensely than I have ever felt it before.

Lots of the women I work with tan frequently, have perfect hair, have perfectly toned bodies, and have had breast implants. They look terrific and I am not condeming or judging them for these things in anyway...I am just way more aware of my white hind end that has never seen the light of day, my haircut that is not exactly what I had wanted, my not-so-toned areas and my small womanly curves. Some days I walk into work and just wish I could get through the day without anyone seeing me because I feel so frumpy next to these other women.

But my not fitting in goes way deeper than looks. It is painfully obvious that my priorities/morals/choices are in stark contrast to those of my co-workers. I work with gay people who often share details of their private life; I work with people who come in Monday and exchange drinking stories from the weekend; I work with people who are not married but are living together; I work with people who are not married or living together but are having sex; I work with guys who stand around my front desk area and talk about other women, make sexual jokes and/or comments that though not directed at me, often make me wish my small features were even smaller because I can't stand the thought of what they might be saying when I'm not around.

Yes, I know that the fact that these things shock me so much points out how sheltered I am. I know that this is how the world is now and that this work environment is not unlike any other. I know that I should just get over it and accept that these things are part of men/life. Or should I? Shouldn't I be bothered by some of these things? Just by reading the Scriptures, it is clear that God does not approve of anything I just mentioned, so why should I?

The working out of how to be in this world but not of it has been an area of slow growth for me. I really love the people I work with and truly enjoy them time I spend with them. It is just hard to know how to love and support the person but not love and support the actions, all the while trying to keep my light out from under a bushel but avoiding burning the place down with words of fire and brimstone.

Often when I am typing "Gold's Gym" I will miss the "l" and type "God's Gym." While I do think the "L" key is in an awkward place, I also think God is reminding me that it is, ultimately, His gym; that He loves those people, too, and that He has plans for them and wants them to come to Him as much as He loves you or I and wanted us to come to Him. I am both honored and humbled at the thought that He might want to use me to reach some of them...like Moses, I am tempted to think up some excuse to avoid opening my mouth to my co-workers ("Lord, I can't speak to these people! I have small boobs!"), but I am trying to remain open and willing.

If you think of it, pray for the people at God's Gym this week.

Quiet Time

2006-08-28T13:40:00.000-05:00

I seem to go through quiet times every couple of months. Not "quiet time" as in reference to the pace of life or the state of my emotions, but "quiet time" as in I just have nothing to say. No, it's not even that...it's that I can't find the right words to accurately express what is happening on the inside. I don't write much during these times, and I seem to speak less and process more. I know I am in another one of these times when, as Nate and I lay in dark silence at night, he asks, "What is wrong?", and continued dark silence is his answer. I can't say, "Nothing," because I am thinking while nothing is really wrong, something does not feel right. But I don't know what is unright, so neither can I explain it...I just lay there wanting to say something but feeling like my mouth has forgotten how to work, or like if I did open it, a whole stream of nothing that made sense would come out.

I am in one of those times (as you might have guessed from over a month of not posting). Just a lot of processing and sorting things out. We just got back from a few days visitng family in Texas, and that was such a wonderful, fabulous time of refreshment, but it was also a very educational experience for me and I feel like God gave me a whole dose of raw material in that trip that He is going to slowly mold and shape and work out in me over the next couple of months. I wish I could explain it better, but it is all so vague, even to me. It is just a sense that He is going to use what He showed me there to change who I am.

Just to brighten things up a little bit, here are some pictures from Texas, compliments of Uncle Ken. Unfortunately, we didn't get many shots with family, but we did get a couple. The first is Nate's cousin Tate (yep, that was confusing to some of the smaller kids) and his son Davis. Then obviously that's me and Nate in a hat store...I think I am a Western girl by nature, but Nate doesn't pull of the black Stetson very well. We will work on that. The last one is a group shot of all of the Texas family...just kidding. It is a picture of some Longhorns we saw at the Stockyards in Fort Worth. That one bull does look a lot like Uncle Ken, though...

PS

2006-07-20T15:10:00.000-05:00

I've caught more than a little flack about omitting a certain detail from our New York trip last weekend. It was not intentional, I just did not know how to express my reaction to the situation in a way that would not be...taken the wrong way, for lack of a better way to say it. So here you go, the omitted detail, unedited. You've been warned. :)

Like I said, the McCallums took us out for lunch...I did not mention where they took us. I guess I didn't realize that Woodstock was actually a real live place that still supported life; honestly, the only thing I'd ever heard about Woodstock was what everyone in my generation (unless you live there) knows about Woodstock--that it was sort of like Sonshine Music Festival for hippies. And we usually leave it at that because (a) none of us are hippies and (b) none of us really know what it is that hippies do and (c) there are no national monuments in Woodstock and it is not a capital so they don't cover it in Geography class.

But, lo and behold, it actually IS a place, a place that you can DRIVE to, even, and there are people there. I was impressed before I even got out of the car! :) At first glance it appears to be just a normal summer tourist town, brimming with random shops and flea markets and out-of-the-ordinary restaraunts and people who are just happy to be out in the sunshine. But as you start to really look at stuff, you notice some very not-normal-summer-tourist-town things. Such as the fact that you can buy a bong in several of the little shops. And not just bongs but things to go with bongs, if you know what I mean. You can also buy just about any occult item you could conceive of buying, have your fortune read by any number of psycics, and participate in a healing drum circle in the middle of town most any afternoon of the week. And these are normal town events.

We actually ate lunch at a pretty normal restaraunt called Joshua's...I would go there again if I had to be in Woodstock over a mealtime. I had a turkey, apple and brie sandwich (first time I've ever had brie...it is a nice cheese, I've decided, but I will stick with sharp cheddar) with sweet potato circles (they were actually called 'chips' but they were not crispy) and Nate had a chicken, pesto, tomato and (fresh!) mozzarella sandwich minus the tomato. Both were really good, we thought. But I think I was too creeped out to really enjoy my food...on the beam next to Pastor McCallum's head was a poster advertising the Shaman healing drum circle, and I was weirded out just reading the bio on the leader, Julie Straightarrow. Note, Native Americans often have names like that and it actually is their name...there are no Native Americans in Woodstock and names like that only come from the "enlightenment" of the individual. No offense meant, I am just stating a fact.

I guess I am just showing my ignorance and my shelteredness by being so creeped out. I just didn't grow up with marijuana and bongs and voodoo dolls and such...those are things I've only ever heard about in a negative context and my first reaction is to run away when confronted with them. But stretching is good, and I am feeling more and more well-rounded by all this travelling to new areas we are doing.

McCallums, thank you again for welcoming us into your home and being such wonderful friends! I hope you really can make it down here for some time away...there's a cabin with your name on it! :)

2006-07-17T20:11:00.000-05:00

"'Do not be afraid, O worm Maria,
O little Maria,
for I myself will help you,' declares the LORD,
your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel." Isaiah 41:14

Lord, I will trust You in all of this. I will not be afraid.

Another weekend camping...I could get used to this!

2006-07-17T19:52:00.000-05:00

We jetted away for yet another weekend camping this weekend...this time we headed up to New York to check out one of the other KOAs that RAC (who owns our KOA) runs. The Newburgh/New York City North KOA is about an hour north of the city and is actually in a VERY rural part of NY called Plattekill. Everything there ends in "kill," I noticed; not a very pleasant realization for someone who already doesn't care for the east coast. :)

We did have a pretty good time, though. We had thought we'd drive into NYC and try to catch a show since that is where "we" began (yay for Chorale's New York tour!), but we had Jasper with us and you can't just board a dog in a kennel for a night without having vaccination records and test results and stuff...we don't normally carry those types of things in the car, so needless to say we were forced to find dog-friendly activities. We looked up Wesleyan churches online (not that church is a dog-friendly activity...we just thought he could manage in the car for the length of a sermon) and found that the closest one to us was about an hour north, so we dressed in our nicest camping clothes and drove up for the 9:30 service. As it turned out, the pastor there is the father of Nathaniel McCallum whom we knew from Chorale. When we "meeted and greeted" we explained the connection and it was like instant credibility...we were no longer heathens off the street who didn't know any better than to not wear shorts and t-shirts to church--we were friends of Nathaniel McCallum. His parents, Wes and Patty McCallum took us in like they'd known us their whole lives, inviting us over, taking us out for lunch, etc. We had such a wonderful time with them and for three hours did not hate the east coast.

On the way home we stopped and checked another high point off our list...New Jersey's high point was six miles off the interstate we were travelling on, so it would have been rediculous to not stop. It was a decent high point, and had this fun obelisk-shaped monument on top that you could walk up in...sort of like a mini Washington Memorial. We braved the 292 steps and were rewarded with pretty much the same view we had at the bottom of the 292 steps, but it was fun. We did take some pictures but will be putting them up in an online album with all the rest of the high points pictures, hopefully this week sometime.

Where in the world (ahem, east coast) will the Lails be next weekend??!??

It's like circumcision...

2006-07-11T22:07:00.000-05:00

Or atleast that's what I am told. The DeNeff sermon we listened to this weekend focused on circumcision...of the Old Testament, that is, and how it is to be paralleled in our lives today. Not literally. But sort of.

Let me start over. It was a great sermon on obedience to God and bearing the mark of a covenant with Him. Biblical example: God chose Abraham to be the father of many nations (covenant) and He told Abraham to have all the men circumcised before they went any further to set them apart as chosen by God (bearing the mark). Probably not the way Abraham would have chosen to be set apart, but that's usually the case with God. There is nothing wrong with not being circumcised...God still accepts into heaven people who are not. It is not the mark that gets you into heaven...it is, in a way, being willing to bear the mark. Not entirely, but you know what I mean.

DeNeff's crossover application into our lives was the challenge to live a circumcised life. It reminded me of the classic youth camp sermon on giving up what you know is wrong of you to be doing because you are a Christian...giving up what you feel God is asking you to give up...except that DeNeff wasn't asking us to give up bad habits, necessarily. He put it like this: "You say, 'But God, there's nothing wrong with this.' 'I know.' 'Other people don't have to give this up.' 'I know.' 'This has nothing to do with spirituality.' Silence. 'This is stupid.' Silence." Sometimes God asks us to give up perfectly good and natural things so that He can do something supernatural. Sometimes we can have those things back eventually, sometimes we can't. Sometimes the "something supernatural" is seen clearly by all who cross your path, sometimes you won't even know what it was all about until you get to ask Him to His face.

My thing for right now is exercise. And do not think for one moment that I am even the slightest bit happy about this. I know, it is strange because 90% of our nation has given it up with joy and relief...but it has been one of the hardest things for me for several reasons. First and foremost, I am terrified of gaining weight. Of all the things I do not want to be, chubby is the number one...been there, done that, not wishing to repeat. But second, and forgive how pathetic this sounds, but it is the truth, Denise Austin is the only friend I have out here. I am not even kidding...I so look forward to working out with her on her TV show every morning because she is encouraging, upbeat, and I can pretend it is just her and me hanging out, working out. It sounds lame even to me, but it is the sad truth.

But I understand why God is asking this of me right now--not that I need to understand, because obedience should not depend on understanding. But it certainly helps when you have an idea what's going on. :) I let my half hour with Denise be all my socialization because I am afraid to get out in the community and meet people (not having a church is not helping). I spend more time with Denise than I do with Him by far, and there are some very serious issues at hand that need immediate addressing...I need to be pouring that energy into my walk with God and into praying for and growing through these issues. I don't think He will ban me from working out forever, but my priorities are seriously misaligned and it is doing more damage than I am willing to admit.

So I am concluding my third day of 40 days without Denise, and so far I have not been making good use of the extra time. Dealing with issues does not mean taking naps. But maybe now that I've gone public with it, I'll feel like someone's checking up on me.

Pennsylvania Saves the East Coast

2006-07-10T20:52:00.000-05:00

Nate and I took a much-needed getaway from the Harpers Ferry KOA this weekend and went camping at the Hershey KOA in Pennsylvania (one of the perks of managing a KOA is great discounts at other KOAs). We were both interested in visiting the city that supposedly smells like chocolate and in checking out some new territory, so we loaded up the family station wagon (sorry, the Subaru) with the dog and all our camping supplies and set out for some relaxation.

It was a really great weekend. Touring Hershey's Chocolate World was pretty neat (and free) and I really enjoyed just lounging by the pool in the afternoon. We even decided to "luxury camp" this time and took the air mattress..it felt like we were cheating, but cheating has never felt nicer. :) We had time for another great DeNeff sermon on the car stereo (which will be a topic for later discussion) and slept more in two nights than it felt like we did in the last month. The absolute best part of this weekend, though, was that someone talked to me.

Several someones, actually. The first was a woman who was coming out of the campground shower just as I was going in. Upon spying my shower gear, she smiled and said, "Oh, are you needing the shower? Let me get my stuff out for you." I just stood there like an idiot with my mouth hanging open in total disbelief first of all that she had smiled, and second that she had spoken to me. Then, after my shower, Nate and I had a nice little conversation with a couple whose site we walked past on the way back to ours. A whole five minutes of talking to smiling people! And later in the afternoon, as Jasper and I waited in the car for Nate to finish a game of disc golf, a couple who had parked next to us and their puppy walked up and we chatted about dogs and the area until Nate came back.

It seems silly, but it has just been so long since a stranger initiated interaction with me that I've almost forgotten how to respond. People in the Harpers Ferry area are not friendly and do not even acknowledge your presence unless absolutely necessary. Cashiers at Wal-Mart will complete your entire transaction without speaking to you or even looking at you unless you make them. Sales people at various stores will not ask if they can help you and will even let you stand at the register for several minutes before putting aside their current task to ring you up. Drivers are rude, servers are not friendly, and campers...we won't even go there.

So even though Pennsylvania does not get great marks for appearance or road quality (sorry, Combs, but you know it is true), its people saved the reputation of the entire East Coast for this midwesterner. I feel a little bit alive again and like there actually is hope of making friends here.

You might be an employee at Harpers Ferry KOA if...

2006-07-08T12:55:00.000-05:00

1. You can do a whole load of laundry of just yellow shirts.
2. You answer your home phone with, "It's a great day at Harpers Ferry KOA..."
3. You cannot find the piece of equipment/tool you are looking for.
4. You find the missing piece of equipment and discover it is broken.
5. Your alcohol consumption is directly proportional to that night's number of reservations.
6. Your phone rings at 1:30am and it is a camper calling to say they are sorry they are late but they are about 10 minutes away now and want to know what site they are in.
7. You realize at work one day that all your fellow employees are 14 years old.
8. You realize the next day that the ones who aren't 14 still act 14.
9. You come to work the next day and no one else does.
10. Upon clocking out for the day, you run to the bathroom and change into your Casual Camper costume so no one will stop you on your way home and ask you to please deliver 2 cords of wood and a six-pack of Bud Light to their site.
11. Your little sister, who is doing volunteer work this summer, makes more money than you do.
12. You go down to the pool for a little pre-work swim and discover that the pool is closed because someone pooped in the skimmer last night.
13. The computers go down, the theater floods, two new hires don't show up for their first day, the city shuts off your water for repairs and forgets to notify you, the health department comes for inspection, and you catch an underage employee buying themselves some beer all in one day and it is not the worst day you've had all summer.

2006-06-23T14:56:00.001-05:00

I'm a bit overdue for a post, aren't I? I apologize for the lack of new reading material here...you would not believe what we have been through the last couple of weeks. Honestly, as I sit here and think about how to explain everything, I am very near tears out of sheer exhaustion and mounting frustration with just about every aspect of life in West Virginia.

For starters, there is some good news...my family came out to visit a few weeks ago and it was so wonderful to have them here!!!! We had a lot of fun touring DC and driving through Gettysburg National Park and "periscoping" (you had to be there), not to mention eating smores and slightly overcooked hot dogs (read: Ed knocked one into the fire and rather than just pitching it, I insisted I would rinse it off and it would be fine...FYI, ashes leave a bit of an aftertaste) and the same pot of baked beans three days in a row...fabulous. :) Seriously, their visit was much too short and I am already looking forward to seeing them all again next summer.

Also, I have decided to join the ranks of many of the other Lail/Thurm/Johnson women in my family and begin a career in the medical field...I started taking classes towards a nursing degree a few weeks ago and will go full-time when we become official in-state residents in January (I have mixed feelings about being an official resident of this state...so far the only good thing about it is the in-state tuition). I am taking Anatomy and Physiology right now and I love the class, but have been frustrated more than once at the low educational standards of the region. My entire class is constantly asking, "Will that be on the exam?", "Will you tell us what will be on the exam?" and "Do we need to know that for the exam?" I sit in the back with my head in my hands wanting to scream, "Just know it all! You need this information for your careers, you idiots!" I think once I become a nurse, I will never let another nurse touch me for fear he or she was one of those who learned only what they knew would be on the exam. I was not on the exam, so don't come near me with that needle. The worst part, though, is that the professor caters to the complaints! Each quiz gets a little easier, a little shorter...I am really missing the scholastic standards of IWU.

Alright, so all of these exciting things have been going on, and right in the middle of it all, our staff sort of "blew up" and rumors went flying. We discovered that workers who are nice to our faces are not very nice to our backs, various supplies have mysteriously disappeared and we are tipped off that some employees might be using the company gas card to slip a few gallons into their car every once in awhile. In the end, our maintenance manager and housekeeping manager (husband and wife), who were the two most valuable employees we had, gave their 5 days' notice and left. On a Friday morning, right before the busy weekend. You can imagine how easy it is to find qualified and knowledgeable people who will work for near minimum wage at a seasonal job. So we have been scrambling, to say the least, to cover shifts and clean up messes and complete projects. I am now the head housekeeper (not because I am qualified or know anything about industrial chemicals, but simply because I am still here) and Nate is both the maintenance manager and the general manager. So I'm trying to go to school and do my homework and keep the house liveable AND work housekeeping every day of the week, and Nate is trying to keep all the maintenance guys busy with jobs and interview 15 people a day AND still do all his general manager stuff. You could say we are a little busy.

I wish I could now type a paragraph about how God is just carrying me/us through this whirlwind time and how we hardly feel the stress because God has given us superstrength...but I need to be honest and say that I'm tired. I'm frustrated. I'm bitter towards the company we work for for not letting us pay people what they are worth so we can attract qualified employees (I'm sorry, but minimum wage does not really attract good maintenance managers). I'm angry with the employees who are taking advantage of us. I'm even angry that I'm frustrated with all of this! I know that God is with us and that He IS carrying us in the palm of His hand, but I still feel like I can barely keep my head above the water. I just get up in the morning and start working and pray it will be enough to make it to tomorrow when I can work some more. I'm sure you can see why blogging has taken a bit of a backseat.

Anyway, I'm sorry this is not a more positive post. We need your prayers, everyone. We are definitely in over our heads at the moment.

whew!

2006-05-23T19:38:00.000-05:00

I just finished the best book I've read since Francine Rivers' Redeeming Love graced my bedside table. Liz Curtis Higgs' newest novel, Grace in Thine Eyes, had me from page one. I would highly, HIGHLY recommend it to anyone who loves a good love story, but I would caution that the reader be prepared for an emotional rollercoaster. As I was reading and getting into the really good part, I kept thinking how similar my emotions were to the first (and coincidentally, the last) playoff game the Indianapolis Colts played this season. We're winning! We're not. We have hope! Dang it, couldn't cut it. He can still kick to win! He misses. Up and down, up and down...by the end of the game I'm exhausted and I didn't even get off the couch. Same with the book...He wins the woman! Oops, not quite. But she comes around! But then he screws up. But then she forgives! Then dang it, he goes and...I won't ruin the story for you. But seriously, I was exhausted by the seventy-first chapter!

Just to note, Grace in Thine Eyes is the fourth in a series, which I didn't know before reading it. Don't say no one told you. :)

The things you do for a decent sermon...

2006-05-22T20:55:00.001-05:00

Nate and I are, unfortunately, STILL looking for a church to call home out here in West Virginia. It's really surprising, considering how freaking many people there are out here, how few truly-Bible-preaching-as-well-as-good-fellowship churches there are in the area. Like, none that we have found. Yesterday we tried a church in Middletown (which is in the middle, between Frederick, MD and Charles Town, WV) and heard a sermon that can pretty much be summed up in this:

"Okay, everyone turn to Acts 14. Here is what John 3 says... You see, in the diagram, we were on one side and God was on the other. But the cross makes a bridge! And I realized I was frustrated with the Coke machine. Frustrated with the Diet Coke button. Frustrated with the coin return. Frustrated with the drop box. And you know, sometimes we get frustrated with life, but God wants to fix that! When the stewardess asked what the man next to me wanted, he said, 'Beer.' Not Miller Light or Budweiser, just "Beer." And I realized God wanted me to share the gospel with this man. Because Franklin Graham is coming to Baltimore, and hundreds of people with him. Let's bow our heads..."

I am not even joking. Nate and I tried to be respectful, but we laughed the whole way home, just in total disbelief that this message came from the HEAD pastor of a GROWING church.

Thankfully, a sermon series we had ordered from College Wesleyan Church (which I am beginning to think is the last Bible-preaching church left on the planet) arrived not long ago, so we pulled out the tapes and prepared to get some good teaching when we realized that we didn't have a tape player. Must have ordered tapes because it was cheaper, overlooking the fact that we didn't have a way to play them. Except in Nate's car. So yes, we put the tape in the car tape player, rolled all the windows down, and pulled up our lawn chairs to hear the sermon. But we don't have lawn chairs plural, you say. This is true. So we pulled out THE lawn chair and dragged out the wicker rocker as well.

But it gets better. We had also had a rough couple of days at the office beforehand, and on Saturday night had purchased a six-pack of Mike's Hard Cranberry Lemonade. So we are out on our lawn, sitting on a camping chair and a wicker rocker, playing a sermon by a Wesleyan pastor on the car stereo at near-full volume as we drink hard lemonade. We even got a picture to prove it.

FYI, the dog was not drinking hard lemonade. He always looks like that.

Hope this makes you more fully appreciate your Sunday morning service. :)

Broken over Brokeback

2006-05-16T18:52:00.000-05:00

I am really ashamed to admit this, but I feel the need to cleanse by confession: Nate and I watched Brokeback Mountain yesterday.

It really seemed so harmless and like it might be a good flick, having won a million awards and all, but the content of the movie made me want to vomit several times, and try as I might, I cannot get some of those scenes out of my head. I mowed the lawn today and the whole 3 hours I was pushing the mower around, I was asking God to cleanse my mind and my thoughts from what I'd seen and to forgive me for having kept watching when I should have quit (darn that whole "But the yucky stuff might be all over now!" thought train). I know I did nothing wrong, but I seriously feel like I watched two hours and eight minutes of pornography or something. It is that gross.

If it was supposed to give me cultural awareness, it definitely did that...I am painfully aware of the moral disintegration of humanity. If it was supposed to help me be more open-minded towards the gay lifestyle, it definitely did not do that...I am sickened by it and if anything, am more motivated to pray against people choosing that road.

I am a cutter...of coupons, that is...

2006-05-15T15:24:00.000-05:00

I love cutting coupons. One of the biggest highlights of my week is cutting out the coupons in the Sunday paper...sometimes I even wake up early on Sunday morning, too excited about the possible coupons to sleep! I end up throwing away a lot of the coupons I cut, but some of them I do use, and let me tell you, there are few feelings that compare to getting a great deal with a coupon.

One of the local grocery stores occasionally has Triple Coupon week, when they will triple the value of your coupon (up to 99 cents) when you use your value card. This week I managed to get a box of Kudos granola bars for four cents, another for 64 cents, a big tube of Colgate toothpaste for 24 cents, and a half gallon of Breyers ice cream for 25 cents. Those are some great deals, but they don't beat the one Triple Coupon week when the store actually paid me 30 cents to buy a box of Bisquick. That was neat. :)

The thing I really love about using coupons, though, is not that I save money; it's that I'm "sticking it" to the store. Making them give me a great deal that they hadn't really meant to give. It's like finding some great loophole that not everyone sees and proving to the store that I am not a stupid consumer. Getting them back for overcharging me all the rest of the time.

This was evident yesterday when Nate and I went to Uno's for lunch after church. I had a coupon for $5 off a $15 food purchase. We were stuffed after our meal, but our bill hadn't quite made the minimum yet, so we ordered a $5 dessert anyway just so we could use the coupon. Because it wasn't as much about saving the money as it was "sticking it" to the restaraunt.

There are lots of yucky money-costing things in this world that I cannot do anything about...late fees, the hiking of gas prices, the rediculous cost of a Starbucks coffee, etc...but I will get revenge with my coupons. Oh yes, I will get revenge.

Okay, God, what are You up to here?

2006-05-14T16:33:00.000-05:00

You know those moments when something happens...something very small and seemingly insignificant...and something about that moment just stays with you in a really big way? I had one such moment yesterday. Nate and I took the dog out for our nightly walk and decided to take the long way home, through the campground, just to see how things were going around the park. We were walking up from the tent area when I noticed a disabled girl using a walker to follow some other kids up a grassy hill. I thought she was really cute and watching her struggle up that small knob kinda tugged at my heart...I wanted to help her get up there! I was just about to turn my eyes away when all of a sudden she lost her balance and just kinda tipped over. I ran over to make sure she was okay, and as I helped her up, I was surprised to realize she wasn't trying to stand up on her own, but that she was leaning into me, trying to get her arms around my neck. I didn't really know what to do...I didn't want to alarm any watching parents by picking up their child, but this girl was leaving me no other option! So I wrapped her up in my arms (as much as one can wrap an 8-year old up in her arms) and just held her for a minute, rendered speechless at the trust this girl was showing to me, a complete stranger, and at the swirling mass of emotions I was feeling in that moment. Just about then her father arrived and I handed her back, he thanked me, and we continued on our way home.

Seems like no big deal, but all evening I thought about how much I'd wanted to help her up that hill and what I felt when she latched onto me. Even after I'd gone to bed, I just layed there and tried to understand why disabled people get to my heart the way they do. I told Nate maybe we should adopt a disabled child, because I'm sure there is a need for good homes for those kinds of kids...even as I said it I realized how strange such a statement was, coming from the mouth of someone who'd written a post just days earlier about not wanting to have kids. And there I was suggesting that we not only have kids, but that we have kids who need us more than normal...talk about a lifetime commitment. Hello, God, I can see You've been working on some things here. :)

I don't have much more to say on the subject...I'm still just kind of overwhelmed by the thoughts I've had about it and curious as to what God has up His sleeve. ????

The Best New Coffee Shop in Town

2006-05-07T20:22:00.000-05:00

Since we arrived at the Harpers Ferry KOA in January, we have had Christmas just about every day. No snow, no manger scene, no snowperson-shaped cookies, but definitely a new surprise around every corner. Usually it is not a good surprise, like that the store roof had a small leak..."small" meaning large enough to cause flooding of the theater and almost 100% rottage of the stuff between the shingles and the ceiling. Or that the foundation of our house is caving in in the garage. Or that many of the full hook-up sites were improperly wired, causing power outtages and a few sparks here and there. Or that all of our first aid supplies expired two years ago. Or that our laundromat was THOROUGHLY infested with termites. Or that 0% of our propane lines were up to code. And the list goes on. As we frequently say, "We are in a rebuilding stage. Right now you go to fix one thing and ten other things break."

But we did actually have one nice surprise yesterday. Nate discovered a relatively new but hardly used coffee grinder and espresso machine in some random storage area while trying to get the snack shop together. Thinking it would be great to follow up on the coffee craze and add coffee drinks to our menu, Nate decided to bring the machine home to try it out. Let me remind you this is an industrial sized espresso machine and that he wanted to bring it HOME. :)

It sat in the kitchen for 24 hours before I made him move it, and it has since been relocated to the laundry room. The funniest part is that it is set up to be hooked up to a faucet; it's not the kind you just fill up. So Nate ran a hose through the laundry room window to the water spicket outside. I've included a photo to help your imagination.

It is not quite working yet...the hose leaked all over the table/ironing board. But Nate assures me he can fix it. :) So we're not open for business yet, but the Lail Laundry Room may soon be the hottest coffee shop in Harpers Ferry. Just step on up to the window to order. And while you're out there, turn on the water for the espresso machine.

Told you so!

2006-05-03T20:52:00.000-05:00

See, Jerry, I told you we'd updated our blog!!!

A Taste of Home...not the cooking magazine...

2006-05-03T20:03:00.000-05:00

We just got back from an AMAZING weekend in South Dakota...it was so hard to come back east! We headed back last Friday for Nate's mom's wedding on Saturday. It was a beautiful ceremony and it was great to finally meet Jim. Phyllis had done her best to describe him to us, but "ohhhhhh" and "*sigh*" and **big smile** don't really paint a very definitive picture. :) We got a wonderfully clear picture painted for us on Friday night, though, when his kids started sharing stories of him over dinner. Let's just say that when Jim gets excited, you'd better have on a helmet and at least a towel across your back, especially if there is any sort of gun (air, paintball, water, shot, etc.) within reach. ;) He is a wonderful guy, though, and we are thrilled to have him in the family. He and Phyllis are just like two kids on cloud nine but way more wise and mature. Photos of the bliss are at: http://photos.rcfirst.org

One other highlight of the trip home...my dad met us at the Minneapolis airport and rescued us from a four-hour layover by whisking us away to the Mall of America. After driving completely around the mall about 8 times, we finally figured out how to get in and we had a fabulous lunch at Rainforest Cafe. We tried really hard to remember where we parked...and did such a great job at it that I still remember we parked in P2East Georgia B10. Hey Dad, remember to not put your mug in the dishwasher. Wash by hand. :)

Another great part of the weekend was "just" hemming Nate's pants! Aunt Pat saved the day with a crash-course in hemming, and now Nate has three very wearable appropriate-length pants, and I have hemming skills! We also got to sneak in a couple games of disc golf, Balderdash with the Johnson clan (yes, all 80), and a night at the campground in Hill City, where all our craziness got started. We really packed stuff in and still feel like we didn't get to do everything we wanted to do.

So that was our weekend. :) Okay, so I wasn't going to say this, but it is Wednesday night, 9:30pm, which means another contestant from American Idol has just been sent home. All I'm going to say about this week's results is IT'S ABOUT TIME PARIS WENT HOME!!!!

:)

5 Things

2006-04-25T14:03:00.000-05:00

Amy, this list should've been in that series you did a while back. These are my top five things it is difficult to find when you move to a new place:

1. A church
2. A trustworthy auto mechanic
3. Friends
4. A decent stylist that does not cut your hair like a mullet. Unfortunately, I am speaking from experience. More on this later.
5. That one photo from that one time...

Hmmm...

2006-04-24T17:38:00.000-05:00

I have been spending some time blog-hopping lately, catching up on friends, family, acquaintences, people I met once, and people I've never met. It's been nice to capture little glimpses of lives I'm not really a part of...it's really neat to see where people end up and what they find to do with their lives!

One common theme I have run into over and over again in all my blog travels is BABIES. Everyone is having them. Some people have already had them and are still having more, and those who haven't had them are at least talking about having them, or are talking about other peoples' babies and wistfully commenting on the "someday" when they will have their own babies.

So I read these blogs and I look at the pictures and everyone looks so happy, even the pregnant people. These people are all so thrilled with their children and are excited to have more and the moms are loving being moms and the dads are just beaming with pride; they are taking family vacations to Disney World and are buying sippy cups and first sets of utensils and "manly" diaper bags...and it all strikes me as so odd because at the mere mention of the word "babies," I have the exact opposite reaction. I shrink back on the inside and the pit of my stomach drops somewhere into my legs; I almost feel nervous...even fearful, perhaps. And it's not that I don't think I could be a good mom or that I worry about Nate's parenting skills...this is not an issue of the ability to parent. It's the whole idea of having them around. It's the realizing all the things I wouldn't be able to do anymore, or that would at least be more difficult to do. It's worrying about gaining weight. It's being protective of my sleep and my time to spend with Nate and just plain feeling like I could not handle having someone who needed so much from me so much of the time.

And I sit there, looking at the pictures, wondering if there is something wrong with me for not wanting to have kids. Everyone else seems to be enjoying it, and most of them keep telling me we will enjoy it too and we should try it. Seems like sort of a serious thing to just "try it." I have really enjoyed most of the kids I have baby-sat...specifically Jenna and Todd. They were highlights for sure. :) But I also really enjoyed when their parents came home and I went on with my life. I don't know if I could be as excited about spending time with them if it never ended, and certainly parenting is a 24/7 deal.

I'm just not sure what to make of all of this.

Adventures in Domesticity

2006-04-22T14:40:00.001-05:00

So JC Penneys had a great sale on mens jeans a few weeks ago, and Nate and I went to try to find him a few new pairs. Two pairs, one of which the crotch is ripping out of, is not really adequate, we thought, so off we went in the great search for jeans. I don't know who they use as a model to make pants these days, but it is certainly not anyone built like Nate or I, so we always approach pants shopping with a bit of hesitation, knowing that it will take many days and rejecting many pairs before finding one that fits even sort of well.

The good Lord was watching over us on this particular shopping day, though, because in less than two hours' time we found three pairs that looked really good and fit well...except that they were about 8 inches too long. Realizing that this was such a small problem compared to the much larger problem of not finding pants at all, Nate looked at me and said, "Well, can't you just hem them?" I love that the word "just" almost always comes before "hem" whenever "hem" is used. It implies an ease, a certain confidence about the simplicity of the activity of hemming something. "Sure," I say, "I can just hem them up." It's easy.

Except I can't sew. I can't correctly thread the machine (that I don't even have!). I have not the faintest idea what a bobbin is, why I need it, or where it goes. The extent of my sewing experience is pulling the pins out of quilts before my grandma expertly passed them under the needle, and piecing together a doll dress when I was 13...and by "piecing" I mean that I cut out the pieces and my mom sewed them together. This has never been a problem until now, when my husband's wardrobe and our ability to make budget this month ride on my being able to alter the only three affordable pairs of pants on the planet that fit him.

Well, I borrowed a machine and had the woman show me how to thread it, and so far I have hemmed (not "just hemmed", just "hemmed") two pairs of pants and patched a hole. I'm down to the second leg of the third pair of pants and just now things started going horribly wrong. Everything on the machine looks the same as it did when I started, I think, but the stitches are all messed up now and it is making a big mess. So I stopped to calm down and try to call someone to come over and help me. I'm glad I live really far away from my Home Ec teacher right now...she'd be disappointed with me, I think. Well, I'm disappointed with her. Why couldn't she make that one week of sewing in 8th grade more memorable?!?!??!

Deep Thoughts from the Weed Patch

2006-04-20T15:39:00.000-05:00

Well, geez, if we aren't delinquent bloggers...our apologies for the lapse in updates. There are lots of good reasons for it, none of which you are probably interested in hearing, so I'll save my typing space for more useful thoughts. :)

Anyway, here we are...in West Virginia...so many exciting things going on! We really love being here in Harpers Ferry running this campground, and we love all the cool things there are to do out here. We've been to DC a couple of times, took a trip to Atlantic City, visited Covenant Life Church a few times, found a great disc golfing course...it's endless! We have a dog now, too...his name is Jasper and he's a lab/shepherd mix. We'll post a picture as soon as we get to it...if I can remember how to do it. It took me 15 minutes to log on to blogger.com to type this post because it's been so long since I was last on that I couldn't remember the password to save my life.

Anyway, I didn't hop on here today to give you a total rundown of all our excitement; I've just had some neat thoughts lately that I thought maybe were worth sharing. I (Maria) am working as a landscaper here at the campground, and have spent most of my time so far pulling weeds, because it is rediculous to plant a flower in the middle of a weed patch and expect it to grow. If that isn't a great life metaphor right there! Anyway, it has been great fun, let me tell you. I have done my share of grumbling about it. But God has acutally used those long hours with the weeds to teach me a few things.

There is this kind of weed I've been encountering all over the campground that drives me crazy. I don't know what it's called or even how to describe it to you other than that it looks like grass but has the longest root I have ever seen, and the root grows sideways, across the ground about two inches under the surface instead of growing straight down into the ground. I am not kidding you, I have pulled up a clump of grassy weed and found myself unearthing a stretch of mulch several feet long where the root of the dumb thing was hiding. You pull up a clump of weed on your left and find out that its root actually begins 8 feet to your right. And it never grows in a straight line across the ground; it zigzags all over the place, often crossing back over itself on the way.

So I'm sitting in a bed of mulch, pulling up these weeds and roots that go for miles, and it occurs to me that these weeds are a lot like women. Being one, I feel qualified to make this statement. :) But seriously. Much like the weed begins in one place but actually appears in a totally different place, so do many of our issues/frustrations rarely appear anywhere near the actual cause of the discord. I get mad at Nate for leaving the milk out after pouring some on his cereal but the real reason I am mad is in fifth grade Kelsey told Amanda I had a bad haircut and that because of it I couldn't sit at their lunch table. I get mad at the dog for licking me and wiping his wet nose on me when the problem is really that some other landscaper took my golf cart this morning and I had to haul my heavy watering can all over the campground by hand. We women hardly ever get mad at the real source of our frustrations; we like to save it and let it pop out at the most random times, over the most random things.

Also similar to the way this weed acts is the way sin acts in our lives. It doesn't look too bad on the surface, but it is going to be a lot harder to get rid of than you think. It has deep, long roots, and often affects more areas of our lives than we are willing to admit. Sometimes our sin is even undetectable until it makes a huge mess in someone else's flower bed, and sometimes its our flower bed that is ruined by another's long-rooted sin weed. What sins am I feeding and watering unknowingly? What sins are you keeping under the surface, believing no one will ever see them?

Nothing profound, nothing earth-shattering...just some thoughts from the weed patch. And there are more to come...these are Tuesday's thoughts and it's now Thursday...I'm behind already! It's going to be an interesting summer.

2005-11-09T10:26:00.000-05:00

I once dated a guy who, when asked what he thought my biggest character flaw was, said I wore too many t-shirts. Seriously. The relationship didn't work out for unresolvable intellectual differences. :)

But I have been thinking about the t-shirt thing lately and am sort of curious why it is so noticeable that I wear them almost everyday. I also wear jeans and underwear everyday and that's not note-worthy. Why is it strange that I would wear a t-shirt everyday when it is apparently not strange to wear cute stupid functionless high-maintenance shows-too-much shirts everyday?

It is not that I don't care what I wear. I have actually thought this out and have several good reasons why I choose t-shirts over "girly" shirts:
1. T-shirts are not form-fitting...no stumbling over my outfit! Girly shirts are known to be a source of struggle for men.
2. T-shirts go with jeans, which is almost all I own. Girly shirts require the additional purchase of girly pants, which require the additional purchase of special underwear that doesn't show lines...it all just gets very expensive.
3. T-shirts do not show sweaty armpits as quickly as tighter girly shirts do.
4. T-shirts are versatile and appropriate for any daily activity in any season. I can go for a walk, run to Wal-Mart, visit my neighbors, go to a movie, grocery shop, rake leaves, and meet someone for coffee all in the same day and never have to change my clothes, even if I break a small sweat (see #3 above).
5. T-shirts are inexpensive, long-lasting, and they wash easily, making them a very economical choice. Girly shirts have special washing instructions, and often cost more than t-shirts but wear out faster.

I'd be interested in hearing some good reasons why I should NOT wear a t-shirt everyday. Anyone?

God does have a sense of humor...

2005-10-28T11:54:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while I am reading along in the Bible and come across some phrase that just strikes me as hilarious. I've found I am usually the only one who sees the random humor in it, but just in case, I thought I'd post one such example today. This is from Jonah 2:5, as Jonah is giving this long, dramatic prayer to the Lord, recalling his circumstances in the fish and his deliverance from said location. I just picture him being so wrapped up in his retelling, much like a really excited I'm-trying-to-be-serious-and-you-laughing-at-me toddler would be in retelling how fast he went down the slide or something. And if I'd been there when Jonah was reliving his experience, I for sure would have wrecked the mood by busting out in laughter when he got to this part:

"The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head."

Hahahahaha...I'm picturing a turban of seaweed plastered to his head...hahahahha

I am in LOVE!!!

2005-10-27T11:07:00.000-05:00

I'm in deep. My feelings of love and desire are growing greater everyday, intensifying with each interaction. Sometimes my heart seizes upon sight and I am rendered speechless, overwhelmed with awe and amazement coupled with humility and the understanding I am in love with one from a higher social status than I...it is a classic fairytale romance and I am the lowly servant girl in love with the dashingly handsome...Chevy Trail Blazer.

Yep, it's pretty bad. Nate will testify to it...I am CONSTANTLY watching for them as we drive down the road, plastering my face to the window when I see one and staring after it until it is out of sight. It's rediculous, really, but I'm being completely honest here. I love them. I want one. I dream of them day and night and spend time thinking how I could possibly ever afford one.

Naturally, this would all worsen during this current time of financial stress. I'm not writing this to evoke feelings of sympathy from you, trying to woo you into sending us a sizeable check. I am just making the statement that Satan in not wasting his opportunity to try to convince me that what I can't have is better than everything I do have...for sure not a new tactic. Just call me Eve, huh?

Anyway, this morning in my devotions I was reading through the Psalms and the end of the 27th caught my heart (it usually does...that's why it's underlined in my Bible): "Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord." It sounds so poetic and romantic and it just stirs up this sense of strength and loyalty in my mind...but my heart has trouble following suit. I still worry. I lose sleep at night wondering why getting a job is taking so freaking long, how much longer we can go on what we saved up from the summer, how I can cut back in our grocery bill and other sacrifices we can make...I don't think there is anything wrong with those thoughts specifically; it is the attitude behind them that is wrong. It's not trusting. It's not being strong or taking heart or waiting patiently. It's not being content in any and every situation. It's not in line with a host of other Biblical principles, which ought to be sending up red flags of concern rather than green streaks of envy.

I confess I do not like being in this spot. I feel like I shouldn't have to be struggling financially right now. I've always managed my money well so I wouldn't have to be in this place, yet here I am. I feel cheated out of a "better life," whatever that is supposed to mean, and like it is asking too much of me to put me through this right now. I am such a weenie! I KNOW these times are meant to deepen my walk with the Father and that because I am His child, everything that happens in my life He will use for good, but I still struggle to walk through it with a good attitude. I still want the Trail Blazer I can't afford because there are other stupid bills to pay.

By the way, according to Kelly Blue Book, a 2002 model (the first model out) in decent condition with 100,000 miles on it is going for about $14,000 right now. You may make your checks out for any ammount. :)

We're home!!

2005-10-14T12:03:00.000-05:00

We are just finishing our first week back in Marion...it is good to be home! It's been so great catching up with friends and meeting neighbors and just getting back into the swing of life here. We have so many people to reconnect with that we have shared a meal with someone every day since we got here, which is so cool! Our apartment is starting to look normal (by normal I mean a low packed box to unpacked box ratio) and we are actually planning to start painting it this weekend already. Crazy!

We are both still looking for jobs, but I (Maria) am spending my mornings babysitting for the family we rent from...Todd is SO cute and so fun to hang out with...definitely watch for pictures to come!

Anyway, we just wanted to catch you all up and let you know we are still alive and functioning; blogging has just sort of taken a back burner for now. :) Have a great day, everyone!

Cloud Peak!!

2005-09-30T00:44:00.000-05:00

This last Monday and Tuesday, Maria and I and our good IWU friend Paul Kind had the privledge of taking a quick trip to the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming. We went to climb Cloud Peak, which is the highest mountain in the Bighorn Range at just over 13,000 ft. It was by far the hardest two day hike Maria or I have ever attemped.

The first day we drove from Rapid to the trail head, around a 4 1/2 hour drive and then hiked the 8 or so miles to the place where we set up camp that night. It was a chilly night, probably around 10-15 degrees or so. We woke up early on Tuesday to hike the final four miles to the summit. The final four miles however proved to be about the hardest four miles I have ever hiked. We gained about 3000 ft. of elevation in those miles and the final 3 miles were all spent hopping across boulder fields. No nice trails or switchbacks to climb this mountain, just lots of boulders and hopping from one to another. All in all Paul was actually the only one to make it to the summit, Maria and I stopped around 200 ft. or so from the summit. There are good reasons for this and you can ask us sometime, but for now we will just leave it at that. We then turned and headed back down the four miles to where we had set up camp the night before, and then back the 8 miles to the parking lot, and then drove the 4+ hours back to Rapid to complete the trip. It was a crazy good time and will prove, I think, to provide some great memories for the rest of our lives. The scenery was awe inspiring and the conversations with Paul (and also with the hitch hiker we picked up) were charitable and thought provoking. Even more to be able to share this adventure with my wife is a treasure I cannot express in words!! I have included more pictures here for you to check out.

Blessings,

NL

Half Time

2005-09-25T17:19:00.000-05:00

Okay, before you read this, I need to clarify that Nate is normally really good about not watching TV all night long or sitting at the computer for hours on end like lots of men do. Football season may prove a bit different, but for the most part, he is not at all a couch-zombie husband, as is evident by all the photos of our outdoor adventures. :) End of disclaimer.

So Nate is into this Fantasy Football thing, and while we don't have a whole lot else to do at work these days, it seems to me that he spends an awful lot of time glued to the computer screen with the occasional outburst of, "Argh! Put him back in! I need points!" or "Grr! Are you kidding me?!?!" or "YESSSSSSS! *insert Napoleon Dynamite fist pump*".

First, this makes me nervous because it is quite similar to what caused our coffee table to ignite a few weeks ago. But second, in my failed attempts to talk to and/or have any sort of meaningful conversation with my husband while he is engaged in such an activity as accumulating fake points with a fake team in a fake football league, I am reminded of just how powerful of a thing media can be, and I am starting to realize all the little ways it works its way into our lives. We can't go anywhere without our cell phones. The first thing we do when we get to work is check our e-mail, read up on our friends' blogs, and scan for the latest world news report. The radio is almost always on in the car. As soon as we get home at night we check the answering machine. We will interrupt dinner and/or quiet time with the Lord to answer the phone.

I see this need to be connected to the world robbing us of precious time with God and with other humans. Nate and I do not talk to each other very much if the radio is on in the car, and we do not talk to each other when we are staring at separate computers at work. I cannot have a serious conversation with the Lord if I keep getting up to talk to someone calling on the phone. I cannot show Nate he is important to me by listening to what he has to say if I choose to watch TV as he speaks or answer the phone in the middle of his sentence. So often we as a society choose to make machines and gadgets a higher priority than a face in front of us (or one that is trying to be in front of us, if we would stop looking at the computer or TV screen). As one whose primary love language is quality time, I am really sensitive to being given what I call Half Time, meaning either you are only talking to me because there has been some sort of break in what you were watching/playing, or if it isn't in a break, you are only half-listening to what I am saying or half-looking at me, with one eye still on the game.

I do not mean to make a cheesy devotional out of this, but as I sat here typing, I wondered if God doesn't get sick of the Half Time I give Him. How many times have I knelt in prayer only to be half talking to Him and half making a mental list of things to do that day? How many times have I committed to change something or committed to do something He is asking of me, only to half carry it out? To obey some parts but not others? To let go of part of a grudge but not the whole thing? I could sit here all day and tell you all the ways I rob God of my time, my energy, my love, and in turn I rob myself of blessing and deeper intimacy with Him.

I am seriously considering a media fast in the near future. I think it would really help me re-evaluate my time spending habits and teach me a few things about the kind of time and attention I give to others.

Recent Adventures

2005-09-20T16:43:00.000-05:00

Below you will find some pictures of our adventures so far in the Black Hills. There have been some more fun things we have done, but I don't have pics from all of those, so these are the ones you get!!! Enjoy!!

NL

2005-09-20T16:41:00.000-05:00

This is me making macaroni and chese with tuna for breakfast. Yes...for breakfast. We couldn't get matches the night before (I had forgot ours at home) so we had eaten our breakfast stuff that night, which left us to eat our dinner stuff (mac and cheese) for breakfast. It was good :)

2005-09-20T16:35:00.003-05:00

This us also us on top of Harney Peak....if you look close in the background you can see the Catherdral Spires.

2005-09-20T16:35:00.002-05:00

This is us on top of Harney Peak, the highest point in SD.

2005-09-20T16:35:00.001-05:00

Come on Maria, you can do it. Hold that rock up!! ;)

2005-09-20T16:35:00.000-05:00

This is a sweet little campground we stayed at a few weeks ago. A nice little river, some sun....it was nice

2005-09-20T16:34:00.000-05:00

This is us at Crow Peak, which is near Spearifish, SD. It was a good hike and somewhat difficult.

I (Maria) love our Sunday School class!

2005-09-18T16:51:00.000-05:00

We are attending this great Sunday school class at South Canyon Baptist here in Rapid City and it would be an understatement to say that I like going. No, it's pretty much the greatest part of my week. I look forward to every Sunday morning, and not just because they always have sprinkled donuts sitting out (just for the record, there is no other donut worth eating). I love having fellowship with other young married couples, and I love just simply watching the couple who lead it. Tom and Dee are the most energetic people I have ever met, hands down, and sometimes I forget to listen to what they are saying about the lesson because I am caught up in observing how they finish each others' sentences, how they transition so well from one thought to another with both of them talking, as if they were sharing a brain and the same train of thought, and how much their faces light up when they talk about God, which is all the time. I find myself so totally caught up in their excitement that I feel as if I actually lived with them and was present through all the stories they share about their lives. I find myself asking every Sunday, "How can I have a walk like that? How can I have the kind of relationship they each have with their Savior? And how can I have a marriage like that, so centered on Him and so obviously grounded in His Word and in His truths?"

Those seem like such simple, harmless questions, but they're really not. Not because the answer is difficult to sift out or because they require in-depth theological study to understand, but because they are the kinds of questions non-believers are supposed to be asking about believers, not believers asking about other believers. In my asking, I came to realize my own sad state of Faith.

This week was, in a way, I think, a turning point for me. I had some serious misconceptions about marriage, about Faith manifesting itself in marriage, and about plain old walking with the Lord that I had cleared up for me (thanks, Dee, even though you will probably never read this), and I feel like I got a jump-start (or maybe a shove in the right direction is more like it) on getting back to where I need to be...at His feet. I have long been hearing Him whisper my name, asking me to come and lay it all down, to come and rest, to come and just be still, but I kept finding other ways to try to clear the confusion and ease the pain. The world is so good at offering band-aids of various types. But I need healing, not bandaging. Lord, I am ready now. I come.

Life in SD

2005-09-17T19:41:00.000-05:00

In an attempt to try and sastify the desires of those of you who are reading our blog and not seeing me (Nate) actually write anything, here is my first attempt at being a writer. First, I guess I would like to point out that I am not any good at writing, or at least I don't think I am. Actually, I don't necessarily feel like I am ever very good at explaining anything the way that I want to explain it, orally or in writing. I feel like I have the idea in my head, but I can't ever put the right words together to make it sound right and if I do think I am putting words together correctly so as to convey what I am thinking, I am often confronted with the reality that the person to whom I am conveying them still doesn't understand them.....so, here I sit writing hoping that you can understand and still care to read what I am writing! That having been said....I am moving on.

I have been commissioned by my beautiful bride to write a little of what has been going on in our lives, so as to keep you all up to date, so here goes:

- Well I suppose the thing that we have been doing the most is just being outside. We have spend much of the last month here in the Black Hills camping, hiking, biking, etc. Just this last Friday (I guess that would have been yesterday!) went rock climbing for the first time since the wedding, which was sweet! It was a great outing with our good friend Adam Pequette and also some kindred spirits from IWU, Paul Kind and Brandon Bruce. They are both here working at Fountain Springs Community Church and it was a blessing to have them along. Look for some pictures soon.....we hope :)

- Today we helped my mom move out of her trailer and into the basement of my grandma's house. It was quite a project, and we really only moved about half of her stuff. It was a huge blessing to be able to help and it has been an answer to prayer to see my mom move out of that trailer and in with my grandma, both for my mom's and for my grandma's sake. God has been good and we have been able to see his hand moving in the way he has worked this whole thing out, so that my mom could sell the trailer and move on with life. (if you think of it, the trailer is still up for sale, so prayers for a buyer would be greatly appreciated).

- Also this week, we went camping at Center lake. We worked the early shift on Wed. and the late shift on Thurs, so we were able to pack our stuff up and spend the night outside in the wonder of God's creation. It was, of course, and incredible time. We made some dinner over our stove (brocolli and cheddar rice with tuna), the same stove with which I started a somewhat large, but harmless fire with in our living room. (my wife's version of the story is not quite the same, it is posted below) :) We hiked around the lake, made a fire, had some smores (mmm...good), and called it a night. We took the scenic route home on Thursday and were back in plenty of time to get ready for work. We definitely enjoy being in a place where great mountain campsites and hikes are everywhere around us and I am pretty sure it is the thing we will miss most when we move back to Indiana.

I am sure there are more adventures which I am forgetting, but alas, time escapes me! ;) I guess I will end my first real post with something that has been bothering me for the last few hours. :) We got our pictures back from the photagraphers and they made a slide show thing for us of all the pics (which I am excited to watch), and they put it in this really nice little leather cd case thing, which was great. BUT then I looked at the picture that they had chosen to put inside the cover of the cd case and it was this wonderful picture of my outrageously attractive wife, looking stunning of course, with her hair perfect, her skin smooth and beautiful, and her smile...wow!!! And there I am right next to her with what looks like the mumps all over my face. It is like in the process of digital editing or whatever they do, they decided to "brush up" my face by adding a "few" beauty marks. grrr. Oh, well I guess that is what I get for marrying such a stunning woman...I get to be the ugly guy in all the pictures from now on. :)

Blessings to you all!!!

NL

Smores.....a la grill?

2005-09-13T23:12:00.000-05:00

So we came home tonight and decided that we wanted to make some smores. However, we live on the second floor and not wanting to recreate the havoc that ensued due to the fire I created previously on our coffee table, we took out our little propane grill and made some smores over that. It was altogether a very fun time and nobody got hurt and our house is still standing! :)

A "Heated" Situation

2005-09-10T16:36:00.000-05:00

True Story:

I am standing in the kitchen this afternoon making spaghetti while Nate is sitting on the couch watching the semifinals of the US Open. I hadn't known before yesterday that Nate was such a large fan of Andre Agassi...he has been glued to the TV every match the man has played in the last 62 hours. Anyway, I'm just standing at the stove, stirring the spaghetti sauce when I hear Nate say, "Oh, no!" He has been making statements like this repeatedly since turning the TV on, so I am not really concerned. Thinking he is probably referring to a missed serve or a sacrificed shot, I calmly turn around to look at the TV. It is then that I realize our coffee table is on fire. Yes, on fire. Flames are shooting forth from the coffee table in all directions.

I should explain that Nate and I are going backpacking up and around Harney Peak this weekend, and we spent the better part of today getting our stuff packed, meals figured out and all kinds of other details worked out. One of those details included making sure our Whisperlite single-burner stove was in proper working order. Of course this couldn't be done outside--THE TENNIS GAME WAS ON TV! So my husband had decided to test it out on our definitely-not-fire-proof coffee table instead. Genius. I just stood there with the most incredulous look on my face...I could not believe what I was seeing! I was half in shock that there were flames in my living room and half dumbfounded that Nate would actually light a fire inside. !??!?!!??!?!

Not to worry, the coffee table is fine; the only evidence of the episode is slightly shorter fringes on one side of the coffee table covering. But let this be a lesson to all wives: hide the matches and make sure you know what they are being used for (and where!) before you hand them over. :)

Mirror, mirror, sleeping next to me...

2005-09-08T20:12:00.000-05:00

I read a post on my friend Amy's blog awhile back in which she commented on the "mirrorness" of marriage. I would like to give a hearty AMEN to that, and add that it seems very seldom that the mirror reflects anything good about me. Maybe we get to that later? Right now all I see is yucky stuff being reflected. It's a little discouraging to have lived 23 years thinking I was doing alright, and then in one month to realize what a slimeball I am. Okay, I am not a slimeball. But where did all this nastiness come from!??!?

I think the hardest-hitting reflection has been on the issue of pride. There is not enough space on the internet to tell you how prideful I am, so suffice it to say...um...I am very prideful. I can't enjoy card games or board games or disc golf games or any games at all with my husband because I HATE losing (which happens everytime we play anything). It hurts my pride to be found less than at least equal; it almost kills me to be found less-than-the-best. Rediculous as it sounds, I feel as if my taking more putts on a mini golf course is a sure sign that I am not as valuable a person as Nate is. I feel...short, I guess. Insignificant. Worthless, even. All because of a stupid game. Which, I might add, is supposed to be a fun thing.

It goes further. We have had a couple discussions the last couple days about whether or not it is necessary for a Christian to be reading his or her Bible everyday, as seems to be the teaching these days. Nate has obviously given the matter some thought, so he has pretty good arguments for his point of view. As is usually the case, I had the opposite opinion, but as we talked (okay, argued) I began to see that my opinion was based on my own self-constructed concept of what walking with Christ means. I had left no room for other ways of having a relationship with God. As I thought about it, I was actually relieved to hear him say some of what he did, but I couldn't bear the thought that Nate's way might actually be a better approach than my way (does that sound like pride to anyone?!?!?). That would mean that I was wrong, and wrong equals losing, which, like I said, to me means I am worthless. So I get angry and defensive because I feel like Nate is telling me I am stupid and like I don't even know what it really looks like to be a Christian, and poor Nate, all he was trying to do was talk about Galatians!

While I am so very happy to be married to Nate, as of late, I am not happy with what he is showing me about myself. It is not the mirror's fault, but it is a heck of a lot easier to be angry at the mirror than it is myself...haven't done very well at that. :( But God is still working for good; I am seeing more and more clearly everyday that it it ONLY by God's grace that we amount to anything other than slimeballs.

Thanks for the mirror, Lord. Keep him strong and shiny. :)

Our first blog!!!!

2005-09-06T11:47:00.000-05:00