Peppermint Latte with an Extra Shot of God

I once heard someone say that God is in everything that makes you happy.

It makes sense that we should find our Creator in all that bring us joy. The Bible says that there is "strength and joy in His dwelling place" (a). So the rush of joy we get from playing with puppies or riding a roller coaster is just a small taste of being in God's presence.

I also like what Nehemiah said to the masses: "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." (b) Isn't that great? The people are told to go have a big party with delicious food and special drinks--and THAT is called the joy of the Lord!

It's easy to forget that our Creator is in ALL our joys; not just the ones that happen in church. For me these joys include (but are not limited to):

Sitting on our patio in perfect weather.
Long walks with Bryan. (or anything else with Bryan!)
Doodling pretty little flourishes.
Coffee.
Shopping. (Yes, God is in shopping! Maybe that will be my next blog.)
Making people laugh. (It's not my forte, so I love it when it happens!)
Pastries.
Family get-togethers.

God is in all these things! I wish non-believers could understand this concept of God being the Creator and Inhabitant of joys. It hurts to hear them talk about heaven and hell based on the centuries-old stereotypes. Many non-believers think the Christian heaven is just an eternal, boring church service and that the Christian hell has all the debauchery and edginess they know and love on earth. I pray that they will realize the truth beyond those lies. Our Creator and his dwelling place are the ultimate good time: complete ecstatic joy!

(a) 1 Chron 16:27
(b) Nehemiah 8:10

Summer Drought

I feel a little guilty about Bryan doing more housework than me. It wasn't always this way though, so for now we'll just consider that he's paying me back for our years in NC. When the payback is done I may have to pick up another chore or two.

I need a designer friend that I can meet with to describe my bad days at work. They would understand and commiserate much better than my mechanically-engineered husband.

Neck ties are for guppies and lawyers, unless you're getting married or buried.

It's funny to see the people that some people end up marrying.

Twitter is tired. Perhaps even expired. I don't understand why people still like it.

Wow, I can feel this Excedrin Migraine starting to kick in. This is the first time I've used it. It's like someone just poured iced coffee directly in my skull.

Bryan and I agreed that our first son's middle name should be Awesome.

I took one of those personality tests this week. It said I was "Situated at the intersection of the strong creative thinker and the practical executor...". Well done, personality test. Well done.

We adopted a blender this week. It has fluted glass, an ocher base, and tall beige buttons. I'm sure it was a great wedding gift to somebody in 1975.

Doodle Day

My doodles are poorly done, haphazard, and most are half-finished, but I generally think they're pretty cool. This is one of my favorites. It perfectly depicts those days when conversation fails me. :)

Sleeting Outside and in My Head

I am resigned to the fact that I will have five girls. Mostly because I want the experience of raising both a son AND a daughter, and I doubt I'll be that lucky. Although I'm pessimistic about my chances to score both female and male offspring, I do think it's really cool in this age of knowledge, technology, and custom-anything that we still cannot choose the gender of our children. You get what the Lord gives you!

Bryan doesn't understand watching the same girly movies again and again. Sometimes I wish my college roommates still lived with me so we could giggle over the Mormon Pride & Prejudice late at night. At least my future five daughters will watch chick flicks with me.

I like that Gwyneth Paltrow has a long neck and makes it look good. I have a long neck too, but I blame mine on the neck-brace I had to wear after being in a car wreck in 6th grade. I'm pretty sure it stretched it out.

I am so glad I went to public schools instead of a private or home school. I'm convinced I'd be completely dysfunctional outside my church and home were it not for the secular exposure provided by public schools. For this reason I kinda feel sorry for home school kids. Then I remember the crazy scholarships they get for being so smart and my pity is gone. Why is dysfunctional spelled with a y? I suppose its spelling should be a little off.

I'm watching the old Emma now (which explains some previous statements). "I love John! ... I hate John!" The last bit of this movie absolutely transfixes me. "Marry me, my wonderful, darling friend!" Excuse me while I go give Bryan a kiss...

I assume nobody really cares to read this blog post. I figure you must be very bored to have read this far, and you must be glad for the reminder of why you don't share your own pointless thoughts with others. But I like writing. Not that I'm very good at prose, but I really can't stay away from it for too long. One of my favorite things at work is to compose emails.

I've been thinking about pulling out my old journals and blogging the quotes of my fourteen-year-old self. I'm convinced they would be very entertaining and almost equally embarrassing. But perhaps the distance of 12 years is enough to make me laugh instead of cringe. We'll see.

Surely I'm not the only one who thinks it's weird when couples say they're "trying to get pregnant". That phrase makes me uncomfortable. As it should.

And this is one reason (among others) why I have a strict personal policy against facebook friending people I work with. My blog posts link to my facebook Notes. This nonsense is not the kind of thing you want your coworkers reading. Hopefully none of them Googled me and found my blogspot and are reading this right now. If so... grrr. Not cool.

To Choose a Church

How do you choose a church? I've faced this question a couple times in my life when moving to a new city, but I'm still not sure how to answer it.

When you know nothing about the town and know nobody in it, your initial church visits are based solely on the exterior of the building and what little information you can find online. So you end up spending weeks of Sundays feeling uncomfortable in churches whose outside marquees completely misrepresented them.

When you do already know people in your new town, you will inevitably commit to the church of your favorite friend, and live with the nagging feeling in the back of your mind that there could still be a better church out there that you never got the chance to visit.

The idea of a "better church" brings up another question: if you're a Bible-believing Christian, shouldn't you be happy in any Bible-believing church? Some would say yes, I would say no. Choosing a church is a rare opportunity to choose your extended family, and there are so many more factors to consider beyond the obviously important factor of faith.

I'm excited about starting a new long-term relationship with a church in the area, but I'm dreading all the blind dates it will take to get there. If you have any advice and/or recommendations I'd love to hear them!

Homeless No More?

What a great weekend! My sister came into town, I got to play with her babies, I had a sleepover with my brother, my mom made opossum pie, and I bought a house! Not one of those plastic houses you buy with pink money to put on Park Place, I bought a REAL house! Well, maybe. I guess I don't really know for sure until they hand me the keys at our closing date.

We've spent the last eight months pouring over house listings online, so after moving to Arkansas and landing a job it only took two weeks for us to find and put an offer on the perfect house. And only a few short hours after that, we got the call that they accepted our offer! We expected a counter-offer with compromises, but luckily for us the owners have already moved out of state and are just anxious to sell the home!

Bryan and I were very subdued in the agent's office while writing up the offer. The agent asked why we weren't more excited. I shrugged my shoulders, "We know it's not ours yet." I figured we wouldn't get excited until closing day, but now that we know they accepted our offer the excitement is building. I know things can still fall through if the inspection fails or some unforeseen problem arises, but it's getting harder to hold back the giddy expectation of home ownership!

I'll keep you updated, and I promise to post a picture if we make it to closing day!

One Week Later

Well I don't want to leave you hanging after that last post. You'll be happy to know I've gotten better about bringing my brain home from work. The environment and coworkers are great, it's just the busy workload that is difficult to get used to. (I hate ending that sentence with a preposition, but I just don't have the energy to reword it.)

#1 question everyone wants to ask a new hire: "So what kind of music do you listen to?"

Sara v. The Man

I started my new job today. If the rest of these sentences are short and lack proper grammar/punctuation it's just because my brain is simply overloaded. If I could sum up the first day in one word: overwhelming. I suppose that's the same for anybody starting a new job though. Except for those statues of liberty that wave at cars during tax season. I bet they can still use their brain after their first day of work. Not me. My head is not my own right now. I left it in a black leather office chair facing a wall.

But I'm realistic. I can handle this, and things will get easier every day. I've just got to remember to bring my brain home with me tomorrow.

I'm Baaack

Three weeks ago today I was in the middle of a cross-country transition… somewhere between the good life I had with Bryan in North Carolina, and the blank pages of a chapter in our lives titled "Return to Arkansas". This chapter is beginning like many good novels do: with desperation. We are currently jobless, homeless, churchless, and all our meals come from the microwave oven. We are one stolen loaf of bread away from being characters in Les Miserables. Fun times, eh?

But despite the stress of job interviews every other day, mortgage loan complications, and allergic reactions to my parent's rent-free flop house, we really ARE quite happy to be back in Northwest Arkansas! Every day that I get to see beautiful green hills outside or get to cheer on my little brother's baseball team I'm reminded of how truly grateful I am to begin this chapter surrounded by all the places and people we love best!

Lovely Distraction

With less than a month until our big move to the Midwest, I was spending several hours a day job hunting. I scoured every online job board in the morning, and again in the evening. Google search became my intimate friend. I found perfect jobs for everyone I knew, except myself. I was consumed and verging on despair when I finally accepted the hard truth: I need a hobby!! Something to distract me from my job-hunting obsession!

Cue the craft blogs. Yes, all of them. I visited one of my favorites for inspiration on a new project for me. Soon I clicked on one link, that led me to another, and after a messy maze of hyperlinks which I could never recreate, I finally found it. It was beautiful. They called it a buttercup bag, but I called it a savior. I knew instantly its destiny was to save me from my depressive compulsory job hunt. 24 hours and some leftover fabric later, I'd made my first purse. Another 24 hours and a fabric store after that, I'd made my second purse.


I'm extremely proud. I cannot stitch a straight line, the buttonhole is crooked, the magnetic snaps don't align, and my attempt to tackle piping is quite flawed, but I'm SO happy with the results! Considering I've never followed a pattern nor sewed anything more complicated than curtains, these purses were super easy to make. And best of all… I have three job interviews this week!