Thoughts on Romans 14

"Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him."

I like this scripture. I understand that it is referring to God's New Testament blessing of eating animals that were once thought unclean, but I think the lesson from these verses has a broader range of application. It makes me think of people who identify themselves as Christians yet also smoke, cuss, drink, etc. In my opinion, those are also "disputable matters" that should not be judged. And on the flip side, those whose faith allows them to do such things should not "look down on" those with weaker (more traditional?) faith who might be wrongly judgmental about the issues. Christians need to understand that there are varying degrees of faith, but they are ALL faith. Let's not get trapped into thinking that the church has to agree on all disputable matters. Your opinion and/or participation in these matters should be based solely on your own measure of faith:

"But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin."

pathetic athletic

I've often wondered why the UPS man has to come to my house at the END of the day. I feel like the poor kid who gets home an hour later than everyone else just because his house is at the end of the bus route. I'm expecting a package today and I've already opened the front door four times "just to check" in case my doorbell stopped working or my ears went temporarily deaf when it rang. My childlike anticipation is for none other than a new pair of running shoes I recently ordered. Ah... there is little more satisfying and nothing more motivating than a fresh pair of running shoes. They're still white, their shoelaces have never been crossed, and they don't even smell like the road yet! And I get the pleasure of introducing these shoes to their destiny. Shoes, this is the sidewalk. Sidewalk, Shoes. I can't wait!!


But unfortunately I don't have a choice. I must wait. (and pray that my UPS driver has a heavy right foot)

In the meantime though, I do have a question for you. Yes, you. The person reading my blog who also jogs, runs, walks, or does any mindless monotonous task. What do you think about when you're doing it? I asked a couple people this question and found the answers interesting. One girl said she does math problems in her head while she's jogging. Another person said he pretended he was a superhero running to save the day. I could use some more suggestions b/c all I end up thinking about are my many friends who can run so much faster and farther than me!

Ok, time to check the front door again...

Finish Another Blog Post About Finishing Things: Check!

Continuing my theme of completing things I set out to do, I've decided to make a list of some short-term goals. This is mainly for my own benefit, but if I get one or two comments on this post then it's worth sharing. :)

Finish the baby doll quilt. I bought the fabric, cut the pieces, even sewed it together, but after sewing the completed top together with the batting and back fabric I realized my immediate need for a fairy godmother to undo my mistakes and give me a clean slate. My fairy godmother came in the form of a $2 seam ripper from Michael's. Now I just need to actually use it and start another round of sewing. Have I mentioned that I have no instructions on how to make a quilt? I have an idea of how it should work, and that seemed good enough to start the project.

Finish out the golfer illustration and get it selling on iStock. I owe it to Tru (the model) to get this done before he leaves Cherry Point next month!

Finish Don Quixote. I've spent about 9 months trying to get through de Cervantes' masterpiece. It is a very very very long book and the last quarter of it is proving to be my most difficult hurdle. I've been slacking off lately and haven't read a chapter in a few months, but yesterday I had a brilliant idea of something that will motivate me to finish the last bit of that book. The beach! Yes, I've decided that this summer I will take regular trips to the beach for reading time to finish Don Quixote. (But don't expect this to mean that I will come home this fall with a tan—it is physically impossible to alter my fair complexion.)

Finish the canvas paintings. Well I have this big empty space on the wall above the landing in our staircase and Michael's had their blank canvases 40% off last week, so I put two and two together and knew it was a sign from God calling me to create some original art for the empty space in my home. So now I have three canvases, two paint colors, and a few pencil-drawn thumbnails. I'm thinking something along the lines of a series of organic silhouette images in neutral colors. But I do tend to think a lot and do very little. :\

Hopefully this public admission of my intentions will keep me accountable to actually getting these things done!

Follow-Through Complete

Sometimes it's hard for me to finish things that I start, like this blog post for instance. I've had a draft of this post saved for over two weeks, and even though I'm typing in it now, I'm not sure that I will be able to follow-through and click the Publish Post button today.

As promised, here is the completion of the partial illustration I showed you in the last post. I'm still not sure if I'm done with it though. Maybe I'll change the color of his shirt or bag. Something about those colors just aren't jiving with me. The other two images I showed you last time have each sold three times this month. Not bad. Not great, but not bad.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about quilting. I've never done it before, but I think I might give it a go. This link is the coolest quilt I've ever seen. I'd love to make one like that, but this virgin quilter will require an incredibly basic pattern for my first time. I'm going to do a practice run by making a baby doll size quilt (which will probably be a gift to Flora) about 20" x 20". If I can master that project without getting bored or frustrated then I'll promote myself to the big leagues and start on something, well, big!

Happy 26th Birthday, Bryan!!

Yes, today is my love's golden birthday! He is 26 on the 26th! And we are celebrating with his favorite activity: staying home and doing nothing! lol, yeah he's pretty easy to please!

Here are two new illustrations that I uploaded to iStock this week. Hopefully they will sell like hot cakes and I'll get lots and lots of money from them! :) Hopefully. :) The first one is a seamless tile, which means you can stack the image on top of itself or beside itself and you won't be able to see where one ends and the other begins—great for wallpaper on desktops or background on web sites. The second one is a set of stylized sports balls. Thanks goes out to my brother-in-law for instructing me on the size and dimensions of a rugby ball!

EDIT: I removed the images of my finished illustrations because iStock's watermark could barely be seen on them. If you want to see the illustrations, visit my iStock portfolio page—there's a link to it on the right column of my blog!

And here is a sneak preview of what I am working on for my next submission to iStock! I'll post a link to the finished image when I get it completed, hopefully sometime this week.

Ell-Oh-Ell

Well, maybe it's just me, but this incident cracked me up and I thought it was worth sharing! Avee and Suki were playing on Bryan's jacket when this happened...



And here is the rescue:

Warthog

Hi, remember me? I know it's been a few months, but I'm that girl. You know, that girl who thought she'd never get a house, who saved her Mac from his suicide attempt, and who moaned for months—nay, years!—at her Marine husband's absence overseas. Yeah, that's me. You've missed me, haven't you? Well you can thank this twenty-something's return to blogging for inspiring me to grace you with my presence again. Really, it's been too long. Let me see if I remember how to do this...

Here's something I found very disturbing. We have some friends here from Maine, and when the wife saw Bryan's razorback baseball cap she asked,"What is Arkansas' mascot? Is it a warthog?" Yeah. A warthog. Oh, how our friend from Texas laughed when she said that. We love our razorbacks, but man is it embarrassing when your mascot is mistaken for a warthog. I kind of wish Arkansas had stuck with their original mascot long ago of the cardinals. At least they're not in the pig family.

A couple blogs down I was upset about not having a house yet. Well I finally got a house not long after that post, but now I want another one! I want a house in Arkansas! I am soooo looking forward to house-hunting in Arkansas this summer. I've already got about 10 homes bookmarked online that I hope will still be on the market in six months. Oh, but there's one little catch. I kinda need to have a job in Arkansas before we will get approved for a mortgage. Minor detail, right? So shoot me a message if you can guarantee me a full-time job six months from now!

Bryan came home and our faces morphed together

Bryan came home Monday night!! And we got our first reunited kiss pictured in the paper:


"The Lord rewards every man for his faithfulness. The Lord delivered you into my hands today…" I Sam 26:23 :o)

Bored Sara = Long Pointless Post

"Hey, it worked! I was afraid I'd have to go through that all over again. I always expect the worst!"

"You shouldn't always expect the worst, that's no way to live! Always expect the best! Always expect the best and see how happy your life becomes!"

The cashier nodded and promised the man in front of me that she'd change her ways as she handed him his receipt. I just caught the tail of this conversation, but it was the way he said that last part that assured me he was either an evangelical preacher or a Dr. Phil idolizer. Either way, both species of men are prone to disillusionment. What kind of history does this man have to make him assume that always expecting the best makes your life happier? It sounds more likely to lead to perpetual disappointment and regret.

In other news:

I still don't have my house. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe never. See that? I'm far from being an "expect the best" kind of person.

Someone asked me today if my husband was underage. More on that later if it develops into anything interesting.

Bryan's homecoming was pushed back four days. Time to reset all my countdowns again.

Unrelated to the homecoming date changing, the Marines did more very frustrating and stupid things today. I suffer from the same "arrogant independence" that Lady Catherine accused Elizabeth Bennet of having (thanks, Mom), and that doesn't clash well with control-freaks like Darcy's aunt or the Marines. Hmm... the Marines as Lady Catherine de Bourgh... I think I like that analogy. Both have a "dignified impertinence", both assume they know what's best for the man in love with the independent woman, and both try to keep them apart. Now if only Bryan owned land half the size of Darbyshire the analogy would be complete.

"For I know very well what the temptations of the Devil are, and that one of his greatest is to put it into a man's head that he can write and print a book, and gain both money and fame by it."
Don Quixote, Part II, Prologue

For Those Who Wonder About Me

Hm. I forgot about all the noisy jets around here.

I have a house! But I'm only allowed to look, not touch. For some reason Housing deems it necessary to make me wait another week till I can move into this already vacated house that is assigned to me. Of all the houses and all the streets in this neighborhood, we ended up getting a house next door to the one we lived in last year. Crazy, but I'm happy with it. Until I can move in next week, I'm crashing on my friend's floor. She lives conveniently close to a coffee shop.

And until Bryan comes home in about two weeks, I'll be sitting here in Smalltown, USA dying of boredom. I need a job, but unfortunately we're stationed in an area where graphic designers go crazy for want of work. I'd like to stay sane, but my hopes are not high.