Grouchy when tired.
WARNING TO … EVERYBODY: Just a little worn out, pretty fatigued, a couple days behind, playing catch-up-clean-up-wrap-up and probably just grouchy.
Category Archives: Stuff I Actually Think
Four wondrous things on a Wednesday
My little sister.
It is her birthday. And I love that girl. Who also happens to actually be a woman in her possibly mid-40s now, who is beautiful, accomplished and fun. Wish I could hang out with her more. She is a woman I admire with my whole heart.
Tami & my little brother, Tim, at the Moslander Family Reunion in June. Not a wrinkle on her face nor a gray hair on her gorgeous head of hair. She is a beauty inside and out.
The Phipps Fam.
They are leaving us. They have accepted a new job which first will take them to Texas for 3 months, then to a yet-to-be-named location which will not be here after that. And we love them so much. And Brighton seems a little less home already because they are not at the corner I have so often passed and on the farm land where we took Nativity pictures and enjoyed a summer feast with horseshoes and where Tre once lived, too. But for now, they are here, in the house with us. And that is good.
Just really so proud of them and thankful to God they came our way. And excited for their future. But **sniff, sniff** gonna miss them like the dickens!
The fruit of my labors.
The garden did not die while I was gone. Now to keep all of my post-Heaven-Fest promises. I actually have not labored much this year…yet. But it is time.
Guinivere.
She turned 6 the day of festival (all in her honor!). And I love her little heart, as well as her gentle eyes and drawing talent. She is my little Guini-Poo and after her Grandma and Paw-paw Kelley, who are visiting from Indiana this week (o, they are having such fun!), are gone, she and I will gather to make a Nonna-loves-Guini movie! Hers last year, was the first birthday video I ever did. I love this girl!
D I S T R E S S
I am thinking most all physical illnesses have the ability to take you down because of what you do to yourself, how you push and stress and internalize negativity and life is just go-go-go. I mean God created these amazing vehicles, our bodies, with such an infathomable ability to be renewed time and again. Yet, I know when life gets the craziest, when I am too busy to be stopped, I actually feel physical pain.
And I have wondered: should I ask God to heal my physical symptoms if I am not open to Him re-arranging my heart, healing my soul (mind, will and emotions), and allowing Him to restore joy for strength and peace for the journey? Is there any point in physical healing for something I am doing to myself through overwork or negligence towards my body, the very temple of the Holy Spirit? Won’t I just get sick again, maybe in a different way?
Get busy living, or get busy dying~
In other news, it turns out we will all die. Every single one of us. There is a time to die. But to give in to death early, to die all the way to dying: what a waste. To live fully on your way to death, well, this seems better. If I were to find out a few months from now that I had a fast-acting terminal condition, I would hope that between now and the finding out, to have lived and loved. In fact to have lived and loved and loved and loved and laughed and cried and felt pain, yes, but joy, too. I would hope to have bled a little and scraped my knees (not literally, but in sort of a similitudenous way). I would just hope, not knowing when the end will be, the way to it will have left the inevitable debris of some really adventureous, loud and joyful living.
No morbidity. Just things I sometimes think about.
NOTE: Shawshank Redepmtion is such a powerful movie.
A Beast named Sue
She is suing Old Navy for having a model who resembles her in their ads.
Kim Kardashian “has invested substantial time, energy, finances and
entrepreneurial effort in developing her considerable professional and
commercial achievements and success, as well as in developing her popularity,
fame, and prominence in the public eye,” the lawsuit states.
As long as she is using the rest of her time (the less substantial part) to make a difference in the earth and actually have a contributing reason for being on it, I am ok with that. Just wondered if when developing her “popularity” and “fame” if she ever even in her wildest dreams considered that some one might, just might, want to emultate her? Guess not.
www.heavenfest.com
Three things I loved about Heaven Fest.
Just got home from Loveland where Heaven Fest 2011 happened. And I am sooooo tired, but it is a great kind of tired. There was so much good stuff. My brain is mushy so for now may I thank God for these things:
1. The interns. What an incredible bunch of kids. I love them and am going to be so sad as we begin to part ways. I love my Chelsie, Jon (the plankster), Gwen, Nina and Katherine (owling!) & Conner, too. You guys are all so amazing. I will someday say “I knew them when…”
2. The week of Heaven Fest. It WAS a week of celebration. We powered through morning, noon and night and laughed and worried and made quick videos and answered questions and made signs and forms and set-up and prayed and got nervous and had a festival. The whole week leading up: amazing. The 2 days cleaning up, tearing down, wow-tired, but sweet, too.
It DID hit 98 degrees that day. Yeah for water trucks!
3. The location. LOVED The Ranch. Not only did the site work well, the people there went above and beyond in welcoming us and making the facility work for us. It was gorgeous and organized and almost like God had it in mind when it was being built or something.
Happy sigh.
In the news
http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20110731/LOVELAND01/307310004
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_18587676
http://www.reporterherald.com/news/loveland-local-news/ci_18583885
You are Here
Loving Loveland
In for the long-haul…
Finally got up here last night. Heaven Fest is less than 3 days away!! Met with a cool sponsor representing a Christian filmmaking company (they are going to shoot some crowd shots at HF). I think we just wrapped up Otter Box as an official stage sponsor at Heaven Fest (such a cool company, LOVE my Otter Box!) and my friend, Susi, got us the coolest rooms at Embassey Suites (exec rates, or something…I only know 5 nights for me will = 1 night for all the rest – PTL!!). I just wish I’d actually get to hang there a little more, but the suite is beautiful, the breakfast buffet is delicious, there is Starbucks in the lobby, you walk outside to an incredible view of the Rockies and the people at the front desk are huge Heaven Fest fans.
I am rocking the beach-hair in our comfy HF Offices at Rez, wearing my HF dog-tag. Dave is over in the field painting parking lines with his shirt off, getting darker and darker by the minute. Hanging with the wonderful volunteers and our super-cool interns (bringing me coffee) and a whole prayer-room praying us up around-the-clock all the way to HF!
I feel excited and anxious and joyful and afraid I have forgotten something important. But at this point, it will happen anyway. Ahhh…..I love Heaven Fest week.
H i d i n g Place // Song for a Sunday
You are my hiding place
You are my hiding place
You shall preserve me from trouble
And You shall compass me about
with songs of deliverence
What time I am afraid
I will trust in You.
Some days, I just pull out the old Hosanna! Ingrity Music and worship my head off. Couldn’t find a Youtube for this particular Hiding Place song, though the other You are My Hiding Place song that I also love like crazy is everywhere there.
But in looking, I also found this one. I sang this so much back in the day that people in our church liked to play it and say, “Hey, Tredessa (or whichever kid), – who is this singing?” “Mommy,” they’d say. I sang it that much. I’ll tell you something now, we’d have to drop it about 3 or 4 keys!
Wow I loved this song back then! Those late 1980s…
I Hear Angels
T W O songs for a Sunday! Sing with me!
Festivus for the Rest of Us!
God’s Plan: Sabbath Rest. Reeeeeeeeesssssssssst.
Rest = Restoration, recovery, healing, rebuilding, reclamation, renewal, rejuvenation.
Rest = revival = rebirth/awakening, literally coming alive again.
Sabbath heals me. Rest renews me. Sabbath rest? So good that Hebrews 4 tells us, “…let us make every effort to enter that [Sabbath] rest so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.” Whose example? The people who didn’t receive and celebrate Sabbath rest as an offering from and to God. I don’t want to be one of those sinners!
Sabbath is good times and a gift from God to man, for man!
“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” – Jesus, in Mark 2.27
But guess what!!??!!
“…celebrate with joy…this festival to the LORD…”
Huge, raucous, loud, days-long celebratory festivals are also an offering to the LORD! God Himself gave mandates for big celebrations in the OT and baby, those people partied like it was 1999! How do I know those OT’s knew how be happy and LOUD?
Nehemiah 12.43 “Also that day they offered great sacrifices and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women also and the children rejoiced. The joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off.”
I was contemplating the rejoicing and celebrating of the Israelites and I saw in my mind’s eye the final scene of Star Wars-Return of the Jedi, where the whole village of Ewoks broke into dance and song at the defeat of the enemy (the Death Star was obliterated and Darth Vadar was defeated). Kinda like the victory WE have in Jesus Christ!
www.heavenfest.com
It is hard work, as massive worship and music festivals tend to be. It is overwhelming and there are many details. I am physically tired and filled with anticipation. And this? Is my offering to the LORD. I am aware of His smile…
Come to Heaven Fest. We exist merely to get to share the Father heart of God with a world which needs to know…
Robert Liparulo & Dave Rhoades: LIVE @ Heaven Fest!
Check it out at the VOX STAGE @ Heaven Fest! July 30 at The Ranch in Loveland! www.heavenfest.com
Best-selling author, Robert Liparulo (YA series The Dreamhouse Kings and thrillers such as Germ and Comes a Horseman) and newcomer/author and my husband, btw, Dave Rhoades (Altar and soon-to-be-released Road Rage) will appear 3 times at Heaven Fest 2011. They’ll talk about writing, sign autographs and sell books. Check out the line-up schedule for times and plan to stop by and meet them!! I am very proud! :)