Angry from a new standpoint

Like I said before, I've found it.

Now WHY didn't I find it during all that time people told me that I was wrong and that such places didn't exist?

Coping with the feeling that I've lost so much time. In the meantime, I'm wasting a lot of my time NOW on the Internet, so I must not regret it too much...

I'm stupid.

Accidental discovery

Goober (aka "Guber") likes rainbow sherbet push-ups.

What is going on?

First, Todd Walton dies. Then Eva Beckett dies. Then Josh Taylor and Josh Holmes have a wreck that badly injures one and all but kills the other. Now we have word that our ag teacher has been in a wreck that required 3 air care helicopters--we're assuming one for him, one for the lady with whom he collided (no fault being assigned) and one for her three children.

Great stuff and comedy, too

One thing I love about Plum Creek is that it refuses to take itself seriously.

I haven't gushed over Bob for a while, and I won't take time to today considering I'm in charge of Care Group supper tonight AND I have to get the rest of my stuff ready for my NKU class tomorrow night, but I have to write this down before I forget it.

We are on Genesis 5. This is the book with the first genealogy, and we used a timeline to see just HOW all these folks overlapped. It was surprising to see that Methuselah, for example, was a contemporary of both Adam and Noah. (Reasons for that are great, but alas...) Someone pointed out, though, that Methuselah lived until the Flood, so the question arose, "Did he DIE in the Flood?"

Bob's answer was, "We'll discuss that in a little bit when we discuss the meaning of Methuselah's name and such."

Dave Wecker, the columnist from the Cincy Post, was at the next table. His response was, "It means, 'I can't swim.'"

I think "I've finally found it"

Many years ago...before I was married...before I was engaged...maybe before I was in high school...there was this commercial...

"Where's the beef?"

This ancient little lady was looking with some others at a bun (if I remember) for a hamburger that they couldn't seem to see. Her line grabbed the nation: "Where's the beef?"

The sad thing is that this was a commercial for Wendy's. After a while, though, another company (was it a chili company??) grabbed her because of the success of the Wendy's commercial and placed her in theirs. Her line there was, "I've FINALLY found it!" She found the beef. Wendy's wasn't thrilled that she had found her beef somewhere else and her contract with them was terminated.

I go through all of this just to say one thing: I think "I've finally found it."

I've been blogging for a while about the problems and the frustrations with the church. In a nutshell, I see folks who are more than willing to tell you what to do and how to do it based on their perspectives of the Scriptures, but they aren't willing to essentially give you the time of day otherwise. I would go all week without contact with anyone from church, regardless of what I tried, unless they either wanted me to attend some sort of home sales show or they wanted to whine at me about something they, for whatever reason, thought I could set straight or they wanted me to join them in their pet projects for the church. It was either that or it was a lack in "clicking." I knew I was pretty stagnate, whatever the reason.

But now I don't feel like I'm bucking the system--and boy, was it that! Now I feel like I've finally found some folks who REALLY understand what I've just started to understand and they care enough to help me understand it all a lot more along the way. And they're interested in letting me help them, too.

And that is why I feel so at peace all of a sudden with what is happening here. Hard to explain except to say I feel at peace.

Why do we always seem to be surprised?

It's late. I'm tired. I'm going to make it short, but I have to blog this.

I know that, regardless of what we see here on earth, God is glorified by everything that takes place. Regardless of how we mess up or how our lives don't go just as we hope, God picks up the shards of the broken plates, bowls, vases--whatever, puts them together and makes a beautiful work of art. And sometimes I think we look for the plate or bowl or vase that we used to have and we miss what new, unexpected beauty God is trying to stick in front of our noses, all while he's saying, "HERE! LOOK AT WHAT I'VE DONE!"

But today...today we got the vase back and it is GORGEOUS!

The story is this: early last week, two of our PC kids--one graduated with Bart in 2002 and the other is getting ready to graduate with Brett this year--were going to or coming from the Lexington Catholic tournaments. There was an accident and the senior was thrown from the vehicle. When we heard about it the next day, they didn't expect him to live. The graduate was banged up, but he was going to be OK after some repairs. The one, if he lived, was probably going to need 24-hour care for the rest of his life.

That was BEFORE bunches of us started praying.

The story went, "If he can make it through the next _____", every day. You fill in the blank. The next 24 hours or the next 72 hours or the next...We were holding our breath through each milestone, praying all the while. We prayed individually. We even prayed individually in school. We EVEN prayed as a mixed group of faculty and staff yesterday morning.

Some time yesterday, the teen who would at best need 24-hour care because of brain damage was trying to sit up and was mouthing to his mom, "I love you."

Sorry if it's too much to know that I cried today when we got that fabulous news. Sorry, too, if I'm being shallow because I can only see that my prayers and hundreds--maybe thousands--of others' were answered the way we wanted them to be. But there are times when you relish the vase...you treasure it...you hold it and pray that you never, ever come that close to having it shatter on the ground again.

Especially when the vase is no more than a jar of clay that is 17 years old and is someone two people call "son."

"Glory to God in the Highest!"