like diamonds in the sky

mmmmm. slept in today. a real novelty, because we are usually up and at 'em every day. and as sleep eludes us on a fairly regular basis, waking up when it's still dark is more more the norm. i rolled over this morning and noticed the sunshine filtering in through the closed blinds.
i kinda got excited because we had one weird day yesterday with snow, rain, sleet,  rain, snow… it was all matters of precipitation all day long. followed by a shockingly cold nite that resulted in the most spectacular sight this morning.
the hubs was down in his new cave, continuing to set up his new home office, and i didn't even bother to say good morning before i was out the front door in my yoga pants, tshirt, and some fuzzy lined crocs (don't judge, they're my house shoes!).
the limbs on the trees were so beautiful in the early morning sun. like diamonds dancing in the branches. i could have stood there all day.

except for the fact that i was wearing yoga pants, a tshirt, and my fuzzy crocs.

brrrr.

so a quick snappy snappy of the camera and i was back inside in a flash.

first time i can remember church being cancelled. nothing like a little black ice to shut down the city. there's no messing around with black ice. period.so i've enjoyed a day of catching up on some paperwork, a little work, a little "deep end" (the new lawyer show on abc right before grey's anatomy… i like!!)
and just some chill time. a rarity for a sunday. sundays are usually one of my busiest days, so having a relaxing sabbath is a treat!!

just sittin around, watching the ice melt off the trees. and pretty glad we didn't get more ice that we did. it was dangerous enough as it was!! hope you had a great day too. monday will be here before we know it!

i'm all, like, y'know…

a few mondays ago, i began teaching (with some team teachers) a class on the Christian worldview. what got me interested were some startling statistics… like 80-some-odd percent of church-going freshmen in college were walking away from church by the third sunday in october… never to return. or the fact that only 2% of evangelical young adults can articulate their faith. say what they believe in a way that is non-confrontational, yet truthful and loving. speaking with clarity and conviction. is this a lost art? articulate speech?
i came across this today, and it struck a chord with me. i've often been accused of injecting too many "likes" into my speech. maybe it's all the work/hanging out with high schoolers…maybe i'm just inarticulate, you know?

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.
on an unrelated note, the big, massive storm we were to have ended up fizzling into some snow, much rain and some freezing rain. for all the children interested in making a snowman, i think the window of time for that to happen is rather small, and expecations for a nice, white frozen man may be a bit unreal as most of the snow is realy just a slushy mess.

but it is pretty on the trees. it's neat to wake up to a whitewashed world. it may not be so neat tomorrow morning as they're calling for temps around 16 tonite. that could make for a rather trecherous trek to church tomorrow.

bring on your bad self

life is smoothing out. (at least if i keep repeating this to myself, i'll begin to believe it, anyway) so i survived the big meeting with our new partners. you know, bringing all of my projects i've been working on, the marking forecast for the rest of the quarter (nevermind that i've never forecasted nuthin in all the years i've been working for the fam biz.) and even some stuff i've worked up for the new partner's company. as in i'm now their designer too.
needless to say i've been really worked up about this. i've only met these folks once. and it was pretty brief. i've let my mind get the best of me and convince myself that i'm not all that good, bladdah, yaddah, blah. i'm still nervous, but at least the meeting went well and they were very complimentary of my work.
so today, in my relief that the "big meeting" was over, and in preparation for the "big snow" we're supposed to be getting (so hysterical here that the school supe closed school for today YESTERDAY just on the forecast. . . you don't want school children trying to get home in the snow around here. lots of windy twisty hilly roads + snow/ice + bus = certain disaster… just not worth it) and knowing that the hubs had pushed up his moving of his office home because of pending snow doom, i totally forgot about a meeting with our interior designer that we pushed up b/c of the "weather." gah. i was late. but i made it. and thankfully, it was just with "our" people, not the "new" people. gah.

okay. so the snow we were supposed to get aaaaaaallllllllll day long finally showed up about four. it snowed for a few hours (hmmmm. maybe two inches) and the hubs and i decided to venture our to join the BIL and SIL for dinner. looking out the window, we noticed our big flakes had disappeared and we looked at the snow just melting. well, so much for that miscalculation/disappointment (forgive me here… snow is a pretty novel thing here in the south. we pretty much throw a party with just a forecast) lameness of a snowfall.

only it hadn't stopped. we just switched to freezing rain.

whoo hoo!! now it's getting interesting!

on the way home, out of the blue, we about tossed in a 360 down a five lane road. YIKES!!

strap on, folks. this bad boy snow storm just got interesting. we'll see what we have to deal with tomorrow morning. leaving the car unlocked outside, just in case. and since our car got broken into earlier in the week, the littel thieves know there's pretty slim pickins in our car.

then again. we get screwed all the time here, with a plateau just to our west. all the good stuff hits that and goes north and we get nothing. so we could be in for a night of just really cold rain.

you will be able to hear the gnashing of teeth of all the little kids here at least all the way to texas.

it matters

i am sitting here, late(ish) on a wednesday nite, after our youth group, and after a late dinner with the hubs.

i have no idea where this is going. .  .

or why i'm here late on a wednesday nite, other than i know tomorrow is going to be gone before i can get a hold of it. i just know that right now before tomorrow even begins. because my calendar tomorrow is full, full, full.

we're (and by we, i mean me. the hubster. the biz) in the middle of a merger and it's exciting and frightening all at the same time.

and it's causing some friction between me and the hubs.

the long work days, the pressure of new people in our business and just all the uncertainties with that have caused nerves to be jangled and emotions to be a bit raw, and things to be said that maybe we don't really mean.

or maybe we do.

sometimes it sucks bigtime to work with your spouse.

like big time.

is it wrong for me not to want to spend every waking moment talking work? like at breakfast (other than our morning devotions that are such an important beginning of my day, but one ended up in a performance evaluation, and that, frankly, sucked) or numerous times during the day on the phone, and then through dinner and into the evening?

i'm excited about the changes. and the fact that we get to continue to BE in business… really i am.

but as a wife, i'm also trying to guard my heart and not be overly excited. is that wrong?

is that not honoring or unsupportive or just all wet-blankety?

or am i just tired?

i don't know. really.

it's been a tough couple of days.

and i don't really know what this is all about other than it matters.

i'm not sure how and why, but it does.

that is all.

stuck on tuesday

if it's tuesday, it must be post it note time. and thank goodness, because i don't think my brain can operate in more than 140 characters. i call it tweet-brain. you can call it bird-brain. same diff.

you can create your own here, and then click on the post-it below and head on over to supahmommy who has it all going on… a post-it, of course!

that evening sun

over the weekend we invited some friends over for dinner and went to a movie. we really wanted to see this film because it was filmed here in knoxville (and blount county) and was produced locally by dogwood entertainment. 
that evening sun, starring hal holbrook (who at age 83, just starred in his first feature length film in his career.) i hear there is some oscar buzz, and he deserves it. what an awesome movie!!
despite the heavy nature of the story line, there is a good deal of humor, and nipper, the dog, is worth the price of admission. incidently, the daughter in the film is from australia and for the life of me i'd swear she could be from the backwoods of rockford, tennessee. she was amazing (and is soon to be in alice in wonderland)!
out of the 16 film festivals they took the movie to, it won like 14 of them. i think this is going to be the indy film to see this year! if you have an art house movie theater in your town/city, ask for it. they're all about audience buzz!!

tough to explain

while i was busy doing something, i was listening to the television and i heard an ad for an upcoming show, and the storyline had to do with someone waking up after being in a coma for the past ten years. the voice said, "how do you explain facebook to someone, i mean really!"

yeah, and…

blackberry

blogging

IMing (that is so four years ago)

skyping

sexting (or just texting for that matter)

how google is a verb

katrina. it's not just a name anymore

darfur. more than a country

monica and the definition of "is"

another JFK dies too early

Y2K not such a big deal after all

bailout is not something you do on a boat

enron… only the beginning of epic failures

crocodile dundee. suddenly alligator wrangling doesn't look as scary as a stingray!

reality tv

ipods

tsunami

guitar hero and rock band

wii

michael jackson. the thrill is gone.

9/11 an emergency number of olympic proportions

and the list goes on…

what would you have a hard time explaining?

finder's keepers

the hubs is always trying to get me to clean out the upstairs freezer and put non-essentials in the downstairs freezer.

i finally got tired of frozen food falling on my big toe (ouch) and sent some chicken stock, pre-browned stew meat and cooked ground beef (makes for super easy tacos or spaghetti sauce) and alot of other stuff to the frozen down-under and what to my wondering eyes should appear??

not eight tiny reindeer, but a dozen frozen girl scout thin mint cookies!!

i have lamented my empty nest.

not today!

muh ha ha ha…

what are the odds?

so the hubster and i were in the downstairs room, recently vacated by niecey who went back to her family in wisconsin after deciding that college in the south was a bit more than she bargained for. turns out that move was good timing as our family business is in a state of transition and we are in the midst of moving our corporate office to atlanta, and the hubs is moving his personal office home.

i could blahg, blahg, blahg an entire new post about how i feel sharing my home office oasis with the hubs, but i won't go there. let's just say sharing is not my strong suit and in true two-year-old fashion, feel more inclined to bite than to use my words…

back to the "room."

i affectionately called it the cave when i was down there. no windows, tucked away downstairs… it was cave-like, although i think the hubs took offense at that name. i wasn't crazy about moving my office home two years ago (i liked my diggs downtown, but again, that's another story) and grudgingly cranked out work from my little hermit-like dungeon.

last year i moved my office upstairs in preparation for niecey's arrival, and i'm not gonna lie… having a window is awesome!

so with the pressures of merging our concept with another company has the hubs working long hours, and as we stood there last night looking at all the prep-work and painting that needed to be done, i looked at him and said why don't we just hire someone?

i think he was relieved to have a way out!

we called, and believe it or not, our contractor was available the next day!! in fact, he's busy at work as i type!

i mean, what are the odds?

post-it note tuesday. . .

are you like me and find that no matter what size the post it, you begin well, and by the end you're cramming your thought in to get it all on?

well, whatever. here are my thoughts for the day:

you can create your own here, and then you can head on over to supahmommy who has it all going on… a post-it, of course!

got food?

my plate overfloweth.

and it's diet time, but not that kind of diet {not that i don't need one, mind you}.

i have loaded up my plate with all kinds of delicious activities. all of them rich, nutritious morsels. all of them healthy and filling. and i'm not going to lie… there's ample desserts on the side, too.

but enough is enough, and i've come to the conclusion that i'm so gorged on goodness, that i can't taste what's best.

so in the spirit of learning to savor, i've been clearing my plate.

over the weekend i decided that i will leave BSF immediately. right in the middle of a wonderful study on John. no offense, John {or Jesus for that matter}, but you will still be here when i'm better equipped to taste you. i don't much like the idea of stepping away from this bountiful buffet of biblical delicacies in the middle of an 8-course meal, but this buffet ain't goin' anywhere, so i can always go back. as much as i hate pushing myself away from the table, i need to know when i'm about to blow. {did you know that it takes your brain about 15 minutes longer than your stomach to feel full?}

i'm taking a backseat in leadership with our sophomore girls. i'm still going to sunday school with them, attending our sunday nite small group as well as our wed. nite gathering, but am leaving the planning and teaching to the other two leaders. so in essence, i'm still at the table, just abstaining from a plate of my own. occasionally i'll take a bite off of someone's plate, because it's pretty hard to see all that good stuff and not savor a little morsel now and then!

i'm going to take a year hiatus from our global mission group, specifically, the ch*na team. i've been three times and have led the last two trips, and as much as i have a heart for that country and the people there, and for bringing our young adults there to see how they might fit into the great commission there, i am not the only one capable of doing that.

ummmm did i just hear myself say that??

wow. huge step for me.

even though i've been recently lamenting that this particular team at our church is highly lacking in female representation and in participants in general {as opposed to, say, the africa team}, the world will continue to rotate and come to Jesus even though i am not actively involved. even though i am not planning to lead a trip there this summer {as was my hope}, hearts will be changed, students will continue to become aware of the need there, and the mission of Jesus will continue…

so now i feel better. and i'm not sitting at the table wondering how i'm going to eat all this food. i'm not worried about offending the cook by not making a "clean plate."

the whole reason for clearing the plate is to make room for a new ministry called anchors away. it's a Christian worldview study designed for seniors entering into their final semester in high school. i became increasingly aware of this famine among our young people the more i heard the statistics…

only 2% of Christians can actually defend their faith…

only 9% of believing teens believe in moral absolutes…

ony 2-6% of Christian teens are living out their faith…

90% of Christians lose their faith in God by the time they graduate from college…

63% don't believe Jesus is the son of the one true God…

58% believe all faiths teach equally valid truths…

51% don't believe Jesus rose from the dead…

65% don't believe satan is a real enemy…

68% don't believe the Holy Spirit is a real entity…

and the list goes on…

i'm feeling called to feed our youth.

it's like they're hungry and don't even realize it.

the feast begins tonite at seven. would love our first meeting to be bathed in a blessing before our meal… care to join us?

clean

half full…

half full…

choosing joy…

choosing joy…

breathe…

the hubs and i had a devo this morning about forgiveness, and it wasn't long before there were tears streaming down my face. gah. i hate crying sometimes…

the art of forgiveness is so hard. forgiving others can be easier than forgiving ourselves. and i find that i can forgive, but i have to resist the urge to pick it up again.

as for myself, i've taken off the filthy rags of sin. i've been showered clean. so why in the world would i look over at that dung-heap of clothing and even consider wearing them again?

let it go…

let it go…

i am so incredibly thankful that i have been cleansed by the blood of Christ.

i am also, so incredibly sad that sin has consequences…

like Lazarus dying so that God's glory might be displayed, i trust that this story too will have redemptive powers…

i trust Him.

and i know upon His leading, He will give me the courage…

until then, i am going to breathe…

…inhaling His goodness

…mercy

…grace.

ahhhhhhh.

enough whining, back to living

i'll admit it.

i got swept up into the "i hate lane kiffin" hysteria that hit knoxville over the past 36 hours.

but i'm past it now. it was fun while it lasted, but seriously, people, there are bigger fish to fry than some weasel who abandons his team 14 months into his coaching stint, leaving his team high and dry three weeks before signing day. there is more to life than tennessee football (although in this town, i'm almost looking around hoping i don't get struck by lightning for making that observation). as in: hellllloooooo… a 7.0 magnitude earthquake leveled a city/country and thousands and thousands of people have died…

gives a girl a little perspective.

before i even got out of bed this morning, the hubster and i both texted "haiti" to 90999 to donate ten bucks to the red cross.

not that that makes me (or us) a rockstar or anything, i mention it to say that technology rocks that over $3 million has been raised via this text in the last day. ah. maze. ing. so thankful to be a part of that.

okay. i said enough whining.

no more disparaging comments about mother nature and her maniacal quest to freeze my a** off this winter. seriously, with the size of my a**, the temps would have to stay below freezing a whole lot longer… {i'm just sayin'…} because it was a rockin 48 yesterday and should be warmer today. breakin out the shorts and flipflops… fah rizzle.

no more hand wringing and worrying if beginning this class on the Christian worldview is the right thing for me to do or is overcommitting myself or is going to be blessed by God. i've prayed about it, there's no one else to teach it and the ball is in motion. so the goal here is to continue to be prayed up and hey, if any of you would like to commit to pray for my class, held monday nites chez purejoy, rock with it. and if you feel led to pray throughout the week for my preparation, that would rock my world… i cannot do this alone, so i'm thrilled beyond belief that Jesus will be leading the way and i have an army of prayer warriors flanking me on all sides. please, oh, please be a part of that with me, won't you?

i named this blog consider it pure JOY because i have a tendancy to be a half-full kinda girl, and this was supposed to remind me to be joyful, and see things from His perspective. so today, people, in a world that is broken and hurting and messed up… i cannot succumb to worries and frowns and feeling sorry for myself or my city or this world… even though it is right and appropriate to grieve bad stuff…

but today, i choose JOY.

not happiness, but JOY.

my savior REIGNS. he RULES. he has GOT IT.

i read the end of the story.

HE WINS!!

so i'm firmly planted on this rock. today. and every day. i just need to remind myself sometimes where my feet are.

i'm standing tall. my feet are planted firmly. i straighten my back. i raise my hands…

Rejoice in the Lord always… again i say REJOICE!!

and i'm also rejoicing that twenty years ago today, in the middle of NFL playoffs, the Lord blessed the hubster and i with a beautiful baby boy. happy birthday, boy wonder. you really are a wonder, you keep us smiling, the love of Christ is evident in your heart and how you invest your time, and i love you to the moon and back… oh about a million times infinity.

it's mourning time in tennessee

not to over-dramatize, but this little town in tennessee has been rocked by a sonic boom. UT's football coach of 14 months has jumped ship and is heading to USC. there was a lane kiffin t-shirt burning party held after his press conference last night.

he's taking his dad, monty, who is the defensive coordinator and ed orgeron with him, and since college signing day is feb 3, probably the lion's share of our recruiting class.

i know there's more to life than football…

try explaining that to this town that bleeds big orange.

so much for the "lane train."

more like the "lame train" and it can head out of the station any time now.

grrrrr.

post it note tuesday

thanks to supahmommy for this fun way to spend a tuesday. visit superstikkies to make your own post its! directions are simple (if i can do it, anyone can!) and play along yourself!