IT WORKED!!!  PHILIP, (ah, I mean, person who shall remain nameless!) IT WORKED!!!!!!  Thanks for the challenge - love ya!

So everyone keeps coaching me on this whole blog thing, which is good because I have no idea what I'm doing!! The thing is, I need more details... someone (who shall remain nameless, right Philip?) said I should post photos. Well here's my first shot at it. If this doesn't work (nameless person) it is because you are telling me to do something that I have NO IDEA how to do! LOL!! It reminds me of the first time I went snow skiing. I went with some friends. They said that they would teach me to ski. I went up the hill with them (medium difficulty because they were not bunny slope types). We got to the top and they said, "It's easy, watch us." Then some of them went down the hill. One stayed with me and went slow, but not slow enough. Of course I had NO IDEA what I was doing so I started down and went faster and faster and FASTER. Behind me all I kept hearing was "SNOWPLOW!" I thought one (a snowplow) was coming my way so I headed for a tree and hugged it - HARD! My friend came over and said, "You have to snowplow so you won't keep going so fast." Whatever the heck that means! I decided that my best lesson was going to come from watching until I had enough courage (or was it stupidity) to make it to the bottom of the hill (seemed more like a mountain!). I watch for about a half hour and then I tried it. You know what, I didn't learn what snowplowing was until much later because the people on this more advanced hill didn't snowplow, they darted from side to side. I learned to dart. Interestingly enough, the whole thing came very naturally for me and I had a blast! By the end of the day I was taking small jumps and loving it! So I imagine, after a few times landing on my rear end (can you do that blogging? LOL), I will get the hang of this. To be honest, even though I inserted a photo at the beginning of all of this, I don't know if it's there or not! All I see right now is a bunch of lettering and symbols. It certainly doesn't look like what I submitted!
Anyway, assuming the photo uploaded successfully and will look different when I hit "post", this is a picture that my brother-in-law took of Keith and I. Isn't he the cutest (Keith, not my brother-in-law, you can't even see my brother-in-law!)? O.k., you don't have to think so, but I sure love him (and I didn't think that photo was too bad of either of us)!
I want to thank all of you who commented on my last post... it really helped. Shoot, blogging was actually pretty cathartic (I'm such a therapist nerd). Anyway, it all helped and I'm feeling much better. No more informed than before, but better. Sometimes I just need to vent. You can ask Keith. He learned (thankfully) that sometimes when I'm whining and complaining, I don't want answers. Sometimes I just need someone to say, "Ahhhh, I'm sorry you had such a rough experience blah, blah, blah..." Actually it doesn't matter what they say as long as it isn't advice. Sometimes I just need to whine! Unfortunately for Keith, he gets to be my sounding board. But he says he likes it when I tell him how I'm feeling - a glutton for punishment, don't you think? Anyway, back to this little life lesson... Keith learned that early on in our marriage and I am so thankful! For a while he would say, "Is this something you want help solving or do you just need me to listen?" Then we could clear up any confusion in the beginning and avoid me getting mad at his desire to help. Ever had that experience?
I hope no one thinks this is my way of figuring out if I am as "normal" (whatever that is) as everyone else! I probably should have named this blog "Crazy woman's point of view" or something along those lines! I guess I just ramble on and on... but to be truthful, I don't much care if anyone thinks I'm "abnormal", I just pretty much say what I think (that isn't too offensive) and offer some comic relief. Life is SO fun to laugh at! Yes, even the really yucky stuff (at some point!). You should have been around our house this summer when we were all cracking jokes about not having a heart, or having a heart full of holes and therefore not whole. There was plenty to laugh at! Anyway, we do a lot of silly stuff around here, hopefully it relieves some of the tension of daily living! Everyone needs something to relieve that tension! My wish for you is that you can enjoy life a little more today than you did yesterday and that you will find laughter in strange places! Celebrate life today, you never know when you won't have it to celebrate (a morbid, but true thought).
We are leaving tonight for the senior high retreat. Lee must be hard up for chaperons cause he's letting us come :^} . Say a prayer that God will be revealed to all who go and that the young people will find some kind of relief from the stress of their daily lives and will draw off the strength that only God can provide. Please be praying for our youth and our church as we face the transition from Lee and Ashley to ? Have a great weekend.

ravings of a semi-sane white woman

Something happened to me this past week that threw me into a spiritual quandary.  Let me start by saying that my faith is solid, so please don't post a comment about how I need to strengthen my faith, etc.  Actually, this is something that satan has been putting into place for quite some time I think.  I don't mean to sound vain, no I don't think that satan has nothing better to do with his time than focus on me.  However, I do think he has nothing better to do with his time that plan to trip christians up!  Anyway, I try to focus my life on Christ and on God's will in my life as best I can.  I do my best and I pray for His blessings and I ask Him to fill in the spots that I fall short in some areas (many areas).  I had another occasion to do that not too long ago and this past week I got some feedback from that situation.  For whatever reason, one I simply have not been able to fathom, God did not choose to fill in the blank spots.  This confuses me.  The situation is embarrassing so I really don't want to announce it throughout cyberspace, but I realize this is confusing.  I think that maybe leaving it vague might allow you to put your situation into it and ponder your own reality for a bit.  So here I am basically not getting the answer to a prayer that I thought would end one way, and has taken a dive in the opposite direction.  It isn't that God doesn't answer prayer, it is that sometimes His answer is no.  I can usually understand and accept this, but this time it was more than my mind could wrap around.  I can find nothing good from this answer.  So as I ponder what the answer must mean, I come to this conclusion (sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning - I really wasn't sleeping much): regardless of the answer, regardless of my understanding, regardless of any of the circumstances beyond my comprehension, I am to praise God - just because He's God.  The "no" answer complicates many things for me right now but I can't choose to pout and deny praising Him because my world isn't as easy as I'd like it to be.  He is God.  For that alone is He worthy of my praise.  I think it was Randy Stonehill (not sure) who sings "Just Because You Are".  He sings about how easy it is to praise God when things are going well.  Any of you who really knows me well, know that there have been many times when satan attacked my world and according to stats, my life should have turned out a lot different than it is, but God basically told him (satan), "Not this one."  I will never understand that except to say, "But by the grace of God, there go I..."  So, Sunday morning (ish) I have this revelation that perhaps the answer was no because satan wanted to see what I'm made of.  Perhaps satan wanted some time to drench my heart in pain to see if all the blessings that I have are the reason that I praise God.  I woke to the fore-mentioned song in my heart and I sang it through tears in the shower and I'm listening to it through tears even as I write.  Then I went to church where, you guessed it, the same message was being preached.  Has anyone else struggled with the pain of rejection to the point of heartbreak (and I do mean painful heartbreak)?  What do you do?  What sustains you through the loneliness?  How do you feel God through those times?  I'd really like to hear ...  (how do you like that, an invitation to comment)  Thanks for listening to the ravings of a semi-sane white woman, I look forward to your wisdom.

Getting started

I'm finally doing this because so many people have encouraged it.  Frankly I have no idea why anyone would want to read what I have to say but I guess it might be fun anyway.  So now the question is, what do I write about?  

I imagine I should start by telling something about who I am.  I am, first and foremost, a daughter of The King.  Secondly, I am married to Keith.  He is a wonderful husband and treats me like a queen.  I just wish I was better at treating him like a king!  We have three children; Courtney, Bailey and Tyler.  We are very blest by our children!

I'll start by telling you a little bit about Courtney.  She is about to be 16 years old (January 20) and that will open several new doors!  At 16, she will start driving, can begin dating and can get a job.  And I thought I had heart problems before!  Bailey is 11 (May 5).  She has such a passion for life!  She experiences the whole spectrum of feelings that go along with that too!  Tyler will be 8 on December 13th.  I discovered something interesting about raising boys... the sum of the energy of two boys in one room far exceeds the sum of the energy of both boys apart from each other!  I believe this should be a mathematical law!

I really have no idea what kind of things to write and its been a VERY long Monday so I'm going to close for now.  I hope to try to figure this all (blogging) out somewhere in the near future!  I decided to call this "Do I Dare Blog" because I have no idea what I'm doing or if there is really anything worth reading that I would write.  Maybe over time people can let me know if I am writing anything of value or just wasting cyberspace!  Maybe I don't want to know!  Ha, Ha!! I better go ahead and close for now - its getting more and more lame.  More to come later...