Tag Archives: blogging

John Eldredge

1 Christ is All, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, , ,

I REALLY like him.  I use and regularly share The Daily Prayer with friends and family and young women I disciple.  I haven’t read everything he writes, but Walking with God revolutionized me…after The Sacred Romance did (my dad requested I read a copy he’d underlined thoughts in, such treasure!)…after The Journey of Desire did a number of years earlier.  :)

The Journey of Desire: Searching for the Life We Always Dreamed of The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God

I did a whole Sacred Romance thing with my friends on this very blog.

Walking with God: Talk to Him. Hear from Him. Really.

And certainly have mentioned Walking with God …a little.

Then, this!

I hadn’t been to his site for awhile, but the other day I went to catch up and found that he’d posted an entry on his blog on December 26, 2011 called “I am Bethlehem.”  {See it here}

And I had, if you will recall, posted an entry in December called “I am the Nativity.”  {see it here}

I am smiling as if something wonderful just happened (silly, I know).  I want to say something like “John Eldredge and I think alike,” as if!  But it is just one of those things.  Sorta similar, but not.  One written by some one who is read by millions and one who is read by 7 or 8 on a good day.  *insert self-deprecating laugh

I re-read the post I did and I certainly recognized my words are so influenced by his writings.  What I wrote just came tumbling from my heart in the early dark hours of a winter morning.  But they are also words born of the people, speakers and authors whose revelations have pierced my very soul, line upon line, precept upon precept.  And John Eldredge is way up there on my favs list as an author!  So what felt so powerful and unique to me that day, and for days following, was merely a summary of years of the walk with God and the voices which have spoken in to and impacted my life.

His post was classic John Eldredge.  Mine was a tumbling sensory something-or-another.  They were different.  Yet both inspired by fresh of understanding during the Christmas season of 2011.

And I just kind of think it is cool because I am such a fan.  And I feel kind of validated in a very silly way.  Because God will reveal Himself to us: wildly famous writer, or not so much.  So we shouldn’t be surprised when He does.   But can I just {very indulgently} say I am kind of giddy that God did that?

That’s all.  Just smiling because the same God that spoke to John Eldredge spoke to me.  And to you, too.  You know it is true!

Inquiring minds

Stuff I Actually Think,

What the heck is happening at Thought Collage?

Not sure myself.  But I guess I am trying to find my new blog-look.  And they write this stuff in CODE.  Geesh.  That is so not me.  But Dave is helping and I am trying not to throw in the proverbial towel as I picture what I want and then have to research and read all these tech-talkers speaking a foreign language about how easy it all is to do.

Reading WordPress forums has become the new bain of my existance.  Yet, if I can’t create the “room” in which to write, I will surely go mad.  Therefore, I shall trudge on.  And it may look different everyday for the next 263 days.  Parts may or may not work.  Fonts may be crazy sizes or not show up at all.  Or whatever.

Just in case anyone is wondering.  Like me.

My ONE-THOUSANDTH Post!

3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , ,

1000!  One…THOUSAND!

My blog is almost 4 years old.  This is the 1000th post.  But there are over 30 posts in my drafts folder waiting…just…waiting.

I started blogging 1409 days ago (11.29.06) a.k.a. three years, ten months and nine days ago.

Graphomaniacal.  In a word.  And if I could always sum things up in one word, there would not be this blog…with 1000 posts.

Oh, and as it happens, today is the one-year anniversary of the day I turned 50.  Or as some negative-Nellies like to call it: turning 51.  Sigh….

Aka – 18,628 days old.

Tre took the photo of me,  Stormie added me to the Sesame Street gang.  Some one else had posted the original pic and “1000” sentiment and I swiped it from Google-images.  Makes me happy. ;p

The most recent change to the blog is a new HOME MOVIES page.

 

My 800th Blog Post! That’s EIGHT-HUNDRED!!!

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Why I write~

Do-overs, of course!  That is why I write and why I blog.  And to inspire, to rant, to rage and to whine unabashedly.  I blog to encourage and confess, to get comments (yes, I want comments) and be snippy-if-I-wanna.

I blog to be up close and personal and tell you how adorable my grandbebes are.  I like to write about the people I love and write to the people I love.  Sometimes I’m mushy.  Sometimes I am lamenting and sometimes I have to apologize – publicly!  I get to vent, I get to express my incredible opinions, and I get to gripe if I feel like it.

I hope I have made your mouth water with my food posts and infused you with passion or zeal on some amazing topic or another along the way.  I mean, after reading Thought Collage, are you anxious to be a grandparent?  Do you want to go in deeper in worship?  Are you in love with the Word?  Do you feel better about your life because I publicly self-deprecate and tell on myself?  I hope.  I hope.  I hope!

I am so grateful for those who wade through the meaningless drivel because they know I have the occasional day of inspired, grapho-epiphanic clarity {you KNOW I made that phrase up, don’t you?} which, I am just certain, causes the angelic choirs to break out into song and lives are changed forever for it.  Yeah.  Those are few and far between.  But they happen.  Wait for it!

And, finally,  I write because I love the words.  Not just any words.  The exact words that will capture what it is I really want to say.  When, oh, when will I actually find those?….

I love blogging~

{Source} 

Stormie asked me what witty banter I would have for my 800th blog post?  Could she have been mocking me?  Naaaaw…surely not.

I recently saw that people on Youtube do “vlogs!”  And I was like {lightbulb moment} Vlogs?  You can do that?  Hmmmmm….

Gratefulness

Thank-you to Tristan, the s-i-l, who got me up and running here at www.jeanierhoades.com on Novemeber 29, 2006.  Where would all these words have gone otherwise?  Thank-you for letting me say them and giving me a safe place to keep them!

Blogoversary

Stuff I Actually Think,

I started blogging 3 years ago today.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.  ~William Wordsworth

gkerstingladybywindowwriting word-collage

It was November 29, 2006. Tristan “presented” me with my very own namesake website and I was excited, but wary, hopeful, yet afraid; I felt exposed, naked and thoroughly vulnerable – about to share my innermost thoughts, stories and dreams with the whole wide world…or at least with my mom and my kids. 

“Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?”  Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen

Just emerging ever so slightly from a very despairing place at the start of the blog, my words initially felt ripped from my guts, laying me bare for everyone to judge.  Now I read those early posts and I doubt anyone can really see how bloody and tormented they were for the darkness I was struggling to escape.  But they were what I could do at the time.  Over the course of 3 years I have both willingly divulged and unmasked my pain and faults or carefully hidden and protected myself, alternately (it isn’t my real true life, only what I allow you to see).  But I am so much less afraid of feeling now and admitting to that, caution to the wind.

“A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer.  But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”   – Stephen King

I am so blogging this!

This is my 740th post and Akismet has saved me from over 50,000 vile spam comments.  I have rambled on about my family and music and movies and silly news stories and  my failures and blessings and what I have heard God say and the dog and gardening with a heavy tomato emphasis (because tomatoes are  probably the best thing I write at all) and growing and healing and I write graphomaniacally because it is how I finally, at this ridiculous age, am finding out what I actually think about things – about anything and everything.  Most anything is blog-fodder.

I love writing.  I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.  ~James Michener

My blog is my love note to living.  It’s the depository of the bits and pieces, “the collage”, as it were, of my thoughts and feelings and silliness and words.  It is embarrassingly me. 

The real reason I blog like a maniac?

I LOVE the comments.  I LIVE for the comments.  Like this one from Bryan recently when I mentioned how a lot of my blog-peeps had started spending so much time on Facebook, they aren’t really blogging anymore.  Here is his response:

“OK OK I’ve had a little bloggers-block of late and I actually don’t spend as much time on line as I usually do. I will try to do better. Because your side of the internet is getting full and I would hate for the internet to tip over.”

That did make me laugh, actually, right out loud! 

And guess what my mom wants for Christmas?  The only thing she requests?  She wants a book form in paper (!) of this blog – something she could get online at any given moment of the night or day. 

Ah, yes.  I am writing for my mama.  But I am glad/honored/so grateful you are reading, too.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood.  I’d type a little faster.  ~Isaac Asimov

images: google (woman writing, and word collage), representing the “romantic” notion of writing a blog and the messy, wordy side of it

Five Hundred

1 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , , , ,

blogging

This is my 500th blog post!  Very cautiously and nervously entering the blog world in November of 2006, I find I can now blather endlessly about the minutia of my life, even sharing my most embarrassing moments in the mix.

blogging  blogging1

But still, I write it for my children and family.  That has always been the point.  And because my mom likes it.  But mostly for my children.

Because between the silly and the mundane, I have also exposed and cast down sin as it has been revealed to me.  I have spoken truths almost too unbearable to reveal in the light of day and I have written the things that someday they will look back on and read and see as an altar, a guidepost and landmark – the place where the truth of heaven was spoken and remembered in my life.  And it will become for them, eventually, if not now, the wisdom that will keep them on the right path.

“Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set.”  Proverbs 22.28 NKJV

The coolest thing now, though, is realizing a promise of God to me in my lowest hour – that there would also be spiritual children, that I would be increased and multiplied, that I will continue to be vigorous and bear fruit in old age.  And true to His promise, my family enlarges (it has even happened through this blog!).  My capacity to love is increased.

So, for the children I know and the ones I have yet to meet, I write.  And I write. 

And I write what I have heard, what I have seen with my own eyes, what I have observed, and what I have touched with my own hands in the hopes that these things will be received in the spirit with which they are given and that they will, in some measure increase your joy (1 John 1.1-4).  May your joy be ever full!

Graphomaniacally yours…Jeanie/mom

NOTE TO SELF: “It is written…” was even for Jesus, a touchstone of proof, a declaration of the “fixedness of the divine record” to the faithfulness of God.  Make my written words nothing less, Lord…

A Thankful Tree, the Flu, a Light Snow and a “Blogoversary”

2 Mi Familia, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , , , , , , ,

    

Thanksgiving.

Can I just say the sooner the leftovers are gone, the better (except for Stormie’s pumpkin pies)?  But all delish.

We did a “thankful” tree on Thanksgiving, everyone filling out little “leaves” and hanging them with things for which we are grateful written.

Thumbnails (click for larger image):

  • The Thankful Tree
  • Wrex, whose medium was colored pencils, wanted his art on the “family art wall.”  The picture was drawn by Amy Jo Becker and includes the lyrics to a little turkey ditty (Five Fat Turkeys are We) to the tune of a song from The Mikado.
  • Turkey-bread by Stefane (who, as a devoted Texan, also introduced us to “Armadillo Eggs”-which are fabulous!)
  • Fake Thanksgiving-food cupcakes by Tredessa and Stormie for Jovan, who does not like one thing  – not one  Thanksgiving-related food (not turkey, not dressing, not mashed potatoes, nor gravy…not green bean casserole, not cranberries, not even pumpkin pie!)!  So the girls made cupcakes (which she loves) that LOOKED like Thanksgiving food using icing, white chocolate, Starburst candies and melted caramel.

    •  

    The Flu.

    In the middle of the night following Thanksgiving, I got hit with a full-on, horrid stomach flu, complete with fever, chills, and wrenching.  I won’t say more.  If it hadn’t been for the entire Kelley family having contracted and suffered through it just before Thanksgiving (Gavin does go to public school now – germ breeding grounds!), I’d have been thinking food poisoning.  But no, just a very untimely stomach bug!  So I spent Friday, while my husband and daughters were all shopping madly, in bed – when I wasn’t running to the bathroom.  Truly a “Black Friday” for me!

    I wish the google image above really did reflect my 3 a.m. view Friday morning!

    Snow at Last.

    At about 11 o’clock last night, we looked outside to see the most beautiful snow.  My nephew Zach from Montana, living with us while he completes a ministerial internship here, had just asked 2 days ago, “Yeah-so when do you guys get snow here?”  I am not a huge fan, but since it has so politely remained largely at bay this year so far, it was a welcome sight.  This morning the grass is almost covered and every branch has a puffy white coating and it is lovely and makes you want to watch Christmas movies and wrap presents.

    This is the snow-on-the-branches view out the back door this morning at 7:15 a.m., just after the bunny rabbit, who’d been looking in at me, hopped away.

    Blogoversary.

    Teena from Toronto left me a “Happy Blogoversary” message this morning and I realized that, yes, it is indeed my “blogoversary.”  How did she know that?

    Two years ago today, I started blogging.  The kids found and bequeathed the image that adorns my blog banner to get me started.  They all said she looks just like me, and I am happy they understand the inner me, for surely that is what they see. 

    To blog was both exhilerating and trepidatious for me.  I was so afraid to hit the “post” button back in those days, fearful of what my words would reveal of me, but also needing a place to tell some truth and speak some words I was struggling to communicate, especially to my children.  I was so cautious and agonized over how much to say, carefully wondering how much I could really tell truthfully, lest my truth hurt some one else.  You can read my very first blog here. (from 11.29.06)

    Now I blather on with both spiritual epiphanies as they come (they are for me, anyway) and the torrid, word-filled minutia of my life (like telling you about my stomach flu, for crying out loud!!).  This is my 398th post and I have 30 drafts in the folder waiting for me to finish off and publish – there is no end in sight, people!  And I always wonder about when I am gone – if my offspring should really ever begin to read this stuff, investigating it as they look for meaning and understanding of their past and their own lives – how really weird will they think I was? 

    It all remains to be seen…from the ever-graphomaniacal Jeanie

    NOTE TO FAMILY:  To all the Rhoadeses in every direction-hope Thanksgiving was warm and wonderful for you.  To the whole Moslander bunch, far and wide, always think of you and miss you on these days. 1991 was our last everyone-together Thanksgiving, and that does not seem right!

    Stef blogs!

    Stuff I Actually Think,

      

    I love Stefane Phipps!  She is blogging now.  She even wrote the sweetest birthday blog for me.  She is passionate and crazy, elegant and striking, extremely competent and caring and remember that little thing called Heaven Fest?  Well that girl got us through it in style!  She was our cheerleader/encourager/go-to girl!Think glamour.  Think Hollywood.  Think Stef and check out her blog here!

     

    pictured: Stef with lover and husband, Wrex (aka Sexy-Wrexy); Tredessa and Stefane during one of their many summer evening HF meetings; Stef at a Speedway HF promo thing, and Stef at work in the HF office with my niece, Elise.