Worship on the Road

For the past month or so, Pastor Chris has been teaching on the 5 Love Languages.  If you've not read the book by Dr. Gary Chapman, I highly recommend it.  Those love languages are legit and will change the way you communicate with everyone around you, not just your spouse.  Knowing your child's love language is EVERYTHING.  The story I'm about to tell you, however, happened before I knew anything about love languages. I'd never heard of Gary Chapman.  I didn't know that I score almost equally in acts of service and words of affirmation.  I just knew that there were words I needed to hear. If you know me or you've read any of my other blogs, you already know that I'm an OCD perfectionist.  Some of that is genetic.  Some of it is deeply ingrained because of my childhood.  My parents, even as loving as they were, were not easy people to please.  They had high expectations and were not afraid to tell me.  There were times that ...

When it comes time for little miss (my nickname for my 2 year old daughter) to go to sleep, I always make my husband rock her if he is here.  She absolutely hates to go to sleep because she's terrified she's going to miss something.  But, if Daddy rocks her, she fights much less than if I do it.  Do you want to know why? He knows how to be still. My husband has an inner peace that I envy.  When he sits down to rock her, he's usually asleep before she is.  He doesn't worry.  He doesn't fret.  That is a completely foreign concept to me.  I come from a long line of worriers.  When I sit down to rock her, it's usually with a device in my hand so that I can get some things done while I'm sitting there.  In my head, I'm working on at least 1 list, a spreadsheet, songs for Sunday, the laundry I need to get folded, and, of course, world peace.   Even when I'm sitting still, I'm not being still. Martha had the same...

This is something I wrote last year.  Maintenance isn’t a glamorous word or concept, but it is necessary.  Sometimes we need a reminder. I was thinking this morning that my rings didn’t seem to sparkle anymore.  They were still pretty, but not the same as when he gave them to me.  I didn’t throw them out.  I didn’t start shopping for something new.  I just put in a little bit of work and cleaned them.  If something in your life has lost its sparkle, maybe you haven’t been doing your part to maintain it.  Maybe it’s time to do some maintenance before you blame someone else or just throw it out.  Chances are, whatever you replace it with will eventually end up in the same condition.  Change your behavior, change your life.

When I was growing up, every year sometime between the day after Thanksgiving and the 2nd week of December, we would go to buy a Christmas tree.  I tried in vain for years to convince my parents to buy an artificial tree.  My arguments were thus - They don't shed and make a mess. They don't have to be watered. They won't potentially catch the house on fire. They don't require me to take allergy medication. But, most importantly, they always look perfect. My mother was an emotional, artsy, free-spirit and remained unmoved by my logical reasoning.  My dad just didn't like fake trees. So, off we would go in our winter layers to the tree farm or local tree lot in search of the perfect Christmas tree.  My mother and I had very different definitions of perfect. As soon as we arrived, I would jump out of the truck and begin my search for what I thought was the perfect tree.  It needed to have long needles as to be less painful during decorating.  It s...