Are You Ready for some Football?

Being a Texas girl, I live and breathe football in the fall. And for a football fan and mom, Friday night and Saturday were AWESOME!
 
Aaron got his first chance to kick at the varsity level on Friday night. It’s six-man football, so field goals are rarely attempted, but he made 5 of 7 extra point attempts. That was pretty exciting. At least I thought so until this morning.
 
JV played their first game today and, frankly, our jv players are small and slow compared to most teams. But we didn’t count on the largeness of their hearts! They were down the entire game, but hung in there. When the center was hurt, Aaron stepped in and handled it. Our jv quarterback was battling a bad headache, so the backup QB stepped in and did beautifully. With 4 minutes left in the game they had the other team backed nearly to the end zone. Aaron made a hit, caused a fumble. We recovered and scored, putting us ahead by four! Of course, there was still time left and we had to stop them. They marched past mid-field. Their QB launched the ball into the air just as the buzzer sounded to end the game. AND MY AARON INTERCEPTED IT AT THE 10 YARD LINE!!!!
 
Game over. We win.
 
Amazing!

Meeting God at Every Turn

I read an incredibly wonderful book the other day—Catherine Marshall’s Meeting God at Every Turn. I’ve been wanting to read it for awhile, but I think the Lord saved it as an exclamation point to the weekend I spent finishing my book.
 
Catherine Marshall, in case the name rings a bell but you can’t quite place it, wrote the novel Christy, as well as the story of her husband, preacher Peter Marshall, A Man Called Peter. She wrote other books as well, a dozen or so, all told. Most were books on Christian living, and, I confess, I haven’t read any others of those. Just her two fiction works. Until now.
 
Meeting God at Every Turn was written just a few years before Catherine went to be with the Lord. It is the story of her life, but not just the events of that life. It is also the story of her spiritual journey. She talks about herself with such honesty, reveling her own shortcomings, her own wrong patterns of thought, and how God met her at each place, nurtured her into a deeper relationship with Him through the often painful twists and turns of life.
 
Besides challenging and convicting me, her words gave me a longing to strive every day to know God more fully, listen to Him more completely, and display Him more boldly.

Cover Story

Although two or three of my stories have found their way to the cover of NeighborsGo, the local magazine insert in The Dallas Morning News, I still get excited when it happens. 

Today I awoke to find my story about the Mission HCA trip to Ghana, focused on the kids presenting school supplies to a village school. To me, having my story make the cover means I’ve found a noteworthy event to cover. That makes me feel good as a writer. And when it is an event so close to my heart, that’s even more fun. 

But this particular cover stunned me: the picture they used was this one of Elizabeth! 

To see the cover and read the piece, click here and scroll down to the "my stories" section.

The Last First Day

And so it’s over: Elizabeth’s last First Day of School.
 
The pictures didn’t turn out.
 
She came home and slept.
 
Kind of anti-climactic, huh?
 
But whether it comes in with a bang or a gentle whisper, the Senior year has officially begun.
 
 

Squashing the Olympic Dream

My fifteen-year-old son has the driest wit. We’ve been watching the Olympics, where, of course, there are often athletes competing that are close to his age. Here’s our conversation from the other day:
 
“Mom, you squashed my Olympic dream,” he said.
 
“I did what?”
 
“You squashed my Olympic dream.”
 
“How’s that?” I asked.

He shook his head slowly. “You wouldn’t buy me a ping-pong table or a badminton set. Now I’ll never win a gold medal.”
 
We have laughed about that for days now.

Return of the Runaway

This has been a crazy-busy summer. Between “normal” teenager stuff (social life, appointments, sports, work, etc, etc.) times 3, trying to get my house organized, dealing with a boatload of responsibility at my kids’ school that got dumped in my lap, and putting the finishing spit and polish on my novel, I’ve teetered on the edge of sanity! So last Thursday I ran away—with the permission of my family, of course!
 
I spent two and a half days ALONE in a cabin, with nothing but my computer, my Bible and my ipod. It was glorious. I spent some uninterrupted time with the Lord. I worked through the last edits on my book, readying it to send to an agent. I slept. I even watched a movie. And I reveled in the silence.
 
I came home refreshed in body, mind, and spirit. My book will go in the mail on Wednesday. Now I’m ready to concentrate on school and football and college decisions and catching up with friends and getting ready for my trip to the ACFW conference. And I’m ready to keep up with my blog again!

Not That!

Last year I took on a volunteer role at school that I didn’t want to do. It required two things—organization and coordinating people. I can organize, but I don’t particularly like to lead, or even organize, people. So at the end of last school year I purposefully took on a different job, one in which the duties involved organization alone. No dealing with other people.
 
Or so I thought.
 
Suddenly I find myself thrust into the same position I hated, but on a larger scale, and in addition to the job I so smugly assumed was my protection against the other. Yesterday I was ready to scream and cry and throw a bit fit. But after looking again and again at the other options (of which there weren’t any), a thought suddenly struck me: maybe the Lord allowed this. Maybe He wants me to learn how to deal with people.
 
Not a happy thought, let me tell you. I don’t like it. I don’t do it well. It frustrates me to tell people what needs to be done and have them ignore or dismiss me. And yet, in spite of finagling my life to avoid such a thing, here it is again. So I am accepting this as the hand of the Lord. Teaching me. Stretching me. Again. Continually. It never stops. Even when I feel like protesting that I’m as grown up as I want to be. It all goes back to that word the Lord spoke to my heart so many years ago: I love you so much I have to grow you up.
 
It’s one small lesson amidst a lifetime of others. Maybe I can get it one right this time. Or at least more right than I got it last year.

Summer's Waning Days

I’ve been quiet lately. No, not because I’ve been sitting around a pool, book in hand, cool drink by my side. I only wish! Alas, I’ve been busy with too many other things—cleaning out my house, writing, grocery shopping, laundry, piano lessons, etc.
 
Today, I took my kids to get their sports physicals. My son, my 10th grader, came in at 5’8” tall, 108 pounds. I had to laugh. Those were my stats the day I married! I told him he could fit in my wedding dress (almost)! (He didn’t seem to appreciate that.) Anyway, it makes it official. He is as tall as I am. And my youngest son is just a couple of inches behind. Yikes!
 
So football two-a-days kick off on Monday, which means summer is officially over. Kind of. Two and a half weeks until classes actually start. In between are orthodontist appointments, dentist appointments, piano lessons, and, of course, football practices. My kids may bemoan the fact that their days of freedom are nearly at an end, but I have to say: I’m so ready for a regular routine!