I seem to be coming out of my funk.  A few days ago I actually woke up (before my son), came down the stairs and thought, “Wow, what a beautiful morning,” instead of, “Ugh, I can’t wait ’till the day is over and I’m in bed again.”  Sound depressing?  Yeah, it kind of was.

But now my pregnancy sickness has lifted it’s like a Whole New World out there! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, food actually smells good and I’m not tired all the time.  I feel as if I’ve been given my life back, and glory hallelujah.

Guess what I did yesterday? I actually Cleaned the Downstairs, Did the Laundry, Deep Cleaned Some of Hudson’s Things, Washed our Sheets, Went Grocery Shopping, AND Completed an Inductive Bible Study of Esther Ch. 4. It was an over-acheivers dream! I felt energetic and motivated the entire time, and even though I was ready to fall asleep at 5 p.m., the day was a total success.

So why am I telling you this? Is this pertinent to all the horror in the world? Does this reawakening in my life actually help any of you?  I don’t know about that, but I do know I’m learning the value of SEASONS.  And no, I don’t mean “Yay, it’s Fall!” (which I do secretly mean just a tiny bit.)  I’m talking about the seasons of our lives.  This summer was really awful for me.  My whole world was different in a matter of days: no more running or getting up early to enjoy the morning, food became the bane of my existence, my son took the brunt of my exhaustion, and (worst!) I never read my Bible any more.  If there isn’t running, solitude, food, children or God’s Word to enjoy, what else is there?

Thank Heavens it was temporary.

I don’t know if there’s any one else out there going through a hard time, but I bet there is.  If you are, I can’t promise that your cloud will lift after 3 or 4 months like mine did (I’m on a timetable, people), but I can remind you that seasons come and seasons go. For everything there is a season, and if you ask God to walk with you through those dark, yucky seasons, HE REALLY WILL.  And it doesn’t depend on YOU being a good person, or on YOU reading your bible all the time, or on YOU having a good attitude.  Sometimes we just hold on by a string but HE is there, faithfully hanging on with us, HE sees the end of the tunnel when we don’t, and HE is so good to hold us when we turn to him and cry.

Where would I be without that kind of LOVE?

Maybe I will just end this with a short prayer of thanksgiving.  Thank you, Father, for your goodness to our family during this last hard season. Thank you for the faithfulness you have shown me even when I didn’t deserve it, and thank you for taking care of my son and allowing him to feel loved even when I was so tired.  Thank you for providing my parents who have been such a help, and Brian’s job which provides for us.  You have done GREAT things for us, and we are glad!  Help us to walk faithfully with you throughout the future, and please protect the child inside me as he or she grows. We love you, Lord!

Hodgepodge: odds and ends; a motley assortment of things.

As in, this post will be a hodgepodge of information.

I’m not really sure what to write about today, since there are so many things going on. I usually try to write each post about a single idea, but today I don’t know what that one idea is and I’m at a loss. Maybe it has something to do with the beautiful, cool fall day we are having and the fact that my windows are open, giving the whole house a refreshingly crisp feeling. You might imagine this crisp feeling would energize me, but instead it kind of makes me want to lay on the couch…

But before I do that, I’ll just tell you what I’m thinking about today.

1) THE WEATHER, which is so fabulous right now I could just cry. I hate extreme heat and this summer was a tough one for me. But these cooler days are lifting my spirits and I just want to say, “Thank you, God. Thank you so much for Fall!”

2) WOW, PARENTING IS SO MUCH HARDER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE.  Can I get an amen? For the past two years I’ve lived in La-la Land of Easy Parenting, but now I have a 2 year old.  I LOVE my son and wouldn’t choose any other life, but HOLY COW he is putting me through the ringer. Parenting theories sound so fantastic until you actually put them into action and then you realize they are as exhausting as they are necessary. So, I’m kind of going through this time of reckoning, really trying to hone my parenting skills and ask for God’s help in raising my son. Basically, I’m stealing myself for a lot of hard work in the year ahead. Good thing Hudson is so dang lovable.

3) GOD’S WORD IS A LAMP UNTO MY FEET. Over the summer I really struggled with finding regular, peaceful times to read God’s Word and pray. Well, if I was being totally honest I would just tell you I wasn’t even looking for time to do those things.  Mostly, I was sleeping whenever I wasn’t directly caring for Hudson (the first trimester of pregnancy can do that to a woman). Now I’m feeling much better and I sense an aching, empty place where those precious times of reading and prayer used to be.  I’ve been getting back into it lately and it’s lighting up the darkness.  In fact, I haven’t done it yet today and now is my only chance so…

I guess I’ll sign off now. Thanks for stopping by!

(What was this post even about? I don’t even know.)

So, guess what? I’m pregnant!

I’m eating saltines and pickles by the ton, there’s a little pooch forming in my belly and I’ve already gained *BLEEP* number of pounds. I am most definitely pregnant. Plus, by way of more quantifiable evidence, the pee-stick, blood test and doppler all agree that I’m preggers.

Hallelujah!

Old news to some of you, I’m sure, but I just posted the big news on Facebook and Twitter so it’s time my bloggy friends were let in on the secret. Truth be told, this is why I haven’t been writing lately. First, I was too sick (gross–just the thought of “morning” sickness makes me want to yack). Then, I was waiting for an appointment with my OB before spreading the news and that has taken an INORDINATE amount of time to schedule. Since I didn’t want to mention the pregnancy, there was really nothing else to say. It would have come across like this:

“Hello. Am so sick today. Can’t tell you why, but you’ll probably all guess, so I’m logging out now.”

Or,

“Wow, I’m so tired today. And I just burst into tears for no reason. I wonder why that is. Wait! Don’t think too hard about that!”

Or, how about this,

“Parts of my anatomy are growing at alarming rates. And I seem to have developed another personality. But, besides that, everything here is normal.”

So, really my two options were 1) spill the beans, or 2) go completely silent for awhile. You already know which one I chose. I’m sorry to those of you who kept faithfully checking my blog while I remained reclusive. Thanks for checking up on me!

I’ll keep you posted from here on out. Current stats are as follows: I’m almost 4 months along with a due date of March 20, 2010. And I’m hoping to learn the sex of the baby at my appointment 2 weeks from now, or shortly thereafter.

Have a great night, everyone!

I think it’s finally time to just jump-start myself into blogging again. I seem to be a very on-again, off-again person when it comes to blogging, and I wonder why this is? To those of you who blog consistently, rain or shine, all through summer, fall, winter and spring, I admire you. You seem to posses a gene I didn’t inherit.

In my defense, I seem to go silent during periods of change. (More on that in my next post.) Maybe some of you blog well during periods of change, but I seem to freeze up and fold in on myself. I go into contemplative hyper-drive and close out most avenues of communication besides direct human-to-human conversation. Anyone else do that? I wonder if I’m actually a very private person in disguise? My disguise being (of course) an outgoing, very-talkative-almost too-much-information type personality. Anyway, I wonder.

But the point of this post is really just to put SOMETHING ELSE UP ON MY BLOG BESIDES A BOOK REVIEW FROM A MONTH AGO.

So, hello. Let’s see if this makes my blog beat again.

When I first opened the box containing Your Jesus Is Too Safe by Jared Wilson I did the logical thing: smelled the book.  New book smell, check. Second, I evaluated its general look and feel: cool cover, shiny, very modern and appropriate to the subject. More fun than your garden-variety Jesus-book cover.

Thirty seconds in, of course, I got down to the nitty-gritty and read the subtitle: Outgrowing a Drive-Thru, Feel-Good Savior. Wow. It sounded like a challenge and, very possibly, a good dose of medicine. I need a little bit of shaking up in my house-wife/full-time-mommy world.

And indeed, I was correct. Wilson’s book is one of the most humorous, challenging and well-written books on Jesus I’ve read in a long time.

Your Jesus Is Too Safe challenges Christians to look beyond the one-dimensional versions of Jesus that American culture, Christian and secular, have provided us and look instead to the original Jesus as portrayed in the gospels. “The purpose of Your Jesus Is Too Safe is to remind us, for the glory of God and the hope of the world, of the original message of the historical person Jesus Christ, who was, in fact, God in the flesh,” Wilson writes in his Introduction.

If you’re anything like me (and you may not be) you’ve learned a lot about Jesus through the years and you’re always trying to put the pieces together for a good view of what he was actually like. There are a lot of writers out there who twist Jesus’ actions to fit their own agendas or focus on one aspect of his character while ignoring others. How do we put the real pieces together?

Wilson tackles his initiative in twelve chapters, chapters that cover twelve portraits of the Jesus who emerges from a careful examination of the gospels. I’ll list them at the bottom, but to give you an idea, my favorite chapters were #4, Jesus the Man, and #7, Jesus the Redeemer. Each chapter is good enough to stand alone, but taken together Wilson paints an authentic and powerful picture of a Jesus I am proud to follow. There is no safety with this Jesus, you certainly can’t just take him or leave him, but He is everything.

There are two things I appreciate about Wilson’s book that I haven’t found in many other theology books. First, Your Jesus Is Too Safe is not a weighty theology tome. You don’t have to rent harnesses and strap it to your back if you want to read at Starbucks. Wilson’s theology reflects years of careful study and meditation but his writing doesn’t read like that of a seminary professor. Sorry seminary professors, but sometimes your stuff is just too “deep” and dry for most of the people I rub up against in my daily life. Wilson has mastered the art of readable theology. The Internet Monk, in his review of Wilson’s book, called it “mini-theology” and I like that description. It’s theology for the college student, theology for the working man or woman, theology for the stay-at-home mom. In other words, it is accessible to ordinary people, just as Jesus was.

Second, Wilson makes me laugh, pure and simple. I appreciate his humor and tongue-in-cheek footnotes, they add spice. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t take himself too seriously, maybe it’s because he’s an experienced blogger and goodness knows that’s different than traditional writing. Maybe he just has a stinking good sense of humor. Whatever the reason, he kept me laughing while learning. I could barely get through two pages without stopping and reading something out loud to my husband. We just love that kind of stuff. Pastors, bring on the funny! Wilson balances his humor with sincerity, and often had me in tears just moments after laughing. His humor doesn’t take away from the seriousness of his topic, it adds to it.

For those of you who are looking for something to re-direct your eyes to Jesus, this book is for you. I’m still reeling from chapter 7, Jesus the Redeemer, and what it means for my personal life. I’ve truly experienced some reckoning moments while reading Your Jesus Is Too Safe, and I think that’s something any pastor who writes a book can thank God for. Wilson’s very pastoral in his writing, meaning he won’t just tell you what to do or give you data, he will lead you to Christ, carefully, sincerely and with purpose. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

The twelve portraits of Jesus in Your Jesus Is Too Safe: Jesus the Promise, Jesus the Prophet, Jesus the Forgiver, Jesus the Man, Jesus the Shepherd, Jesus the Judge, Jesus the Redeemer, Jesus the King, Jesus the Sacrifice, Jesus the Provision, Jesus the Lord, Jesus the Savior.

Jared Wilson is the co-founder and pastor of Element church in Nashville, Tennessee. Also (and possibly more importantly), he is a faithful husband to his wife Becky and a caring father to his two young girls.

I highly recommend his blog, The Gospel Driven Church. You can also follow Wilson at The Thinklings.

Editor’s note: A copy of Your Jesus Is Too Safe was sent to me at no cost, in exchange for my review as part of the blog tour. I was not obligated to provide a positive review.

The Corvallis river front where Brian asked me to marry him.

Today has been a hot day in the Inland Empire. Actually, every day for the past month has been a hot day in the good ole’ I.E. It’s times like this that really make me miss living in Oregon.

Don’t get me wrong, I love our situation right now. I love living by a lake, in a city where we have every store imaginable at our finger tips. But can you blame me if every once in awhile I yearn for the smell of a grass field growing? If I ache for the feel of fresh air blowing through my hair, or a glimpse of the Willamette River, or the chance to pick blueberries again at Blueberry Meadows? No, you can’t blame me because if you’ve experienced those things before, you know exactly how I feel.

Today I missed my friends. And the old memories. Oregon State University, where I went to college, Weatherford Hall where Brian and I were married. Coffee shops (the first street Beanery anybody?), fondue, the riverfront walk and the Saturday market. How have I been living without these things for two and a half years now? Surely I should have shriveled up and died?

It’s so strange how places can become such integral parts of who we are. I often wonder how people can even know me without seeing me walk across the OSU campus or play in the leaves or dance through the parks. Don’t I bleed green after all that time in Oregon? I miss the first apartment I lived in with Brian, with it’s warped windows that never really closed and the ivy that grew in through them. I miss McMenamins Pubs and the sweet smell of rained-on leaves being trod underfoot. I even miss umbrellas!

My favorite walking/running path through the old Irish Covered Bridge.

Memories are sweet things. I cherish my life here and now, with my son and my husband and the opportunities God has given us. But I look forward to the time when, God willing, we can move back to Oregon and breath the sweet air. I’ll take Hudson blueberry picking and we’ll walk through the trees. I’ll show him how much fun it is to romp through puddles and play with leaves. We will fish and hike and camp and enjoy this great big beautiful world God created.

Dear Oregon, I miss you. Stay the same you crazy old liberal tree-hugging state. I love you so dearly.

Well, I might as well come out and say it: I love the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.

So there. Some of you will recoil in horror and some of you will come out of your own HP closet and start quoting spells at me to prove how big a fan you are.

I started a post about this a while ago called “Controversial Children’s Stories of Our Time and Why I Like Them,” but got so bogged down by deflecting all the anti-Potter propaganda I expected to receive that it kind of petered out. So, here I am, just saying it like it is, and trusting you to know me well enough to not freak out.

Some of you, of course, will be wondering what the big deal is. Why would anyone freak out over a christian reading the Harry Potter series? Well, the sad truth is these books are misunderstood by a large part of evangelical christian culture. I’ve found, however, that they are almost exclusively demonized by people who have never read them.

Let me tell you why I like these books: They are brilliant. J.K. Rowling is a writer with enough modern sense to write a book kids (and adults!) these days can read with ease, and enough gumption to require something of her readers in imagination and retention. Her stories are not simple or inane, as many children’s stories are these days, and they almost always teach a moral lesson. The scope of Rowling’s imagination seems absolutely limitless and her commitment to the characters and their story is something any writer is justified in envying.

I first began reading the Harry Potter series when I was in college. When I reached the fourth book I stopped abruptly when I realized how much the books were changing from children’s stories to young adult fiction. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (#4) contains some horror that is simply not appropriate for children, or, possibly, seniors in college trying to take 21 credits per term and sleep at night without nightmares. I had to wait, anyway, for the 5th book to come out.  By the time it did I was on staff full-time at a church that would not have welcomed Harry Potter reading and, anyway, who had the time?

But when my son came along two years ago I jumped right back into the frenzy just in time to chew my nails off waiting for the seventh and final installment of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Since the release of the seventh book, I’ve read the entire series through twice. I’ve laughed and cried through those books, dreamt and imagined along with Harry and his friends, and I finally have to tell you all how good they are.

If you haven’t read them yet, your missing out. Start them right away!

Christian parents, please understand: I’m not saying you should read these books to your ten year old. The first two might be okay, but by the third book you’ll get into some stuff that might scare them. I’ll play it by ear when I introduce these books to my own children. I’m not sure a pre-teen should be reading some of this stuff.  It’s a classic good-against-bad tale where the evil side is truly, horrifically, nightmarishly evil. Even good kids in these books have to learn lessons about morality and ethics in the face of fighting great evil. The questions are deep, but the ultimate lesson is beautiful: Sacrifice is the greatest gift you can give to those you love, and sacrifice may be, in the end, what saves us all.

Sound familiar to the Christian? Yeah, read it and weep, those who share with me the understanding of Christ’s sacrifice. It’s a beautiful story.

The name of this post comes from the way I’m feeling right now. I have Post Potter Depression. After finishing the series I now feel listless and book-less. No, correction, I have a great book I’m reading (see right sidebar); what I need is a good fiction book to go with it.

Now, if you haven’t lost all your faith in me as a reader, take my word for it and rent/buy/borrow or otherwise get your hands on the Harry Potter series. If you’re an adult, you have nothing to loose. If you’re a kid, better ask your mom and dad first.

Note: I endorse Harry Potter, not because I think the books are without moral error or sketchy content, but because they are fantastic stories with an epic conclusion. They are magical in every sense. I have very serious questions about why books with such weighty content are published as “children’s stories,” but that doesn’t stop me from reading them. Indeed, I have many questions about why some adult novels are called merely “adult” when they should be labeled “pornography.” But then, I’m not controlling the publishing biz, so why yell when no one’s listening?

Fore more information on Harry Potter, see the Wikipedia entry or J.K. Rowling’s official site.

"Your Jesus Is Too Safe" when it arrived.

During my senior year at Oregon State University I took one of my very favorite writing classes, Critical Reviewing. Despite having to read a book that should have bored me to tears but didn’t, I loved every minute of that class. We reviewed restaurants, books, movies and coffee shops. For awhile I fancied myself the next book review writer extraordinaire.

Well, here I am six years later, not reviewing books professionally, maybe, but still reading a whole heck of a lot of ‘em. And this summer I get to do something extra special: review Jared Wilson’s new book hot off the press, Your Jesus Is Too Safe.

I’ve followed Jared Wilson for quite a while in the blogging world, and despite never being able to attend his church because it’s across the country, I’ve learned a lot. He’s got a down-to-earth way of saying things that just make a lot of sense. I encourage you to check out his blog The Gospel Driven Church. It’s about just what the name says it’s about.

As a part of Wilson’s summer blog tour to promote his new book, I’ll be posting my review here on August 12. I haven’t finished the book yet, but I’ll tell you this: it’s full of readable theology, challenging to my spirit and downright funny. Yes, I suggest it. Yes, I’ll tell you more on August 12.

Besides being excited to read Wilson’s book, I’m simply excited to get some more practice writing and reviewing. Happy reading, to me!

Oh dear, oh dear. It’s been nine days since I wrote ANYTHING on this blog. Horrible, neglectful me!

Put it down to busy summer days. You all understand what that’s like, don’t you? I love my dear little blog but I keep being distracted from writing by birthdays and anniversaries and holidays and visitors and good books. All good things–I wouldn’t miss ‘em for the world–but also the mortal enemies of creative production. But, who cares? It’s summer and I’m throwing creative production to the wind for a bit! Ha!

I have a few updates I’d like to share, but I’ll give each of them their own post to be fair. Right now I’d like to know what you’ve been doing on these warm summer days? Swimming? Fishing? Hiking? Camping? Boating? Visiting friends and family? Let me know in the comments section what you like best about these summer months. I’m looking for some good ideas.

And thanks for visiting even though I haven’t been posting much lately. Summers are notorious for blissfully lazy days.

Where has the time gone? I haven’t had much time to blog lately, due to birthdays and events and the Fourth of July, but I’ll be back tomorrow. I was going to write something tonight, but, nah!, I’d rather go watch a movie with my hubby.
My parents are gone for 3 weeks so we have the house to ourselves and plan on watching a lot of movies and just lounging around enjoying each other. It’s like a vacation!
So, I’m off to watch a movie. Be back tomorrow!