Don't Face Facts, Face Faith.

This was one of Pastor Crabtree's points from his sermon this morning. It really spoke to me.

The sermon itself was about running the race of faith, using Hebrews 12 as a focal point. Basically, know that there will be hardship in your life. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that becoming a Christian makes your life all sunshine and roses. Nowhere does it promise endless health until the day you die. Being a Christian doesn't mean you are handed a "get out of hardship free" card.

In our search for a new church, this is something I'm very happy to hear. I've been in churches before where it is preached how God hates cancer, he hates suffering. If you just pray hard enough, if you are faithful enough, then you will be healed. I don't buy it. I just don't. God doesn't just hand out hardship as a punishment. (Not saying that doesn't happen, but it is certainly not always the case). There is a reason for everything. Sometimes it's clear what that reason is. I'm sure you've seen someone of great faith struggle in body with a disease, though their heart never wavers from their faith...and by being a visual example of faith, others are led to believe. Sometimes it's not clear. Tragic things happen every day for which no man can see a reason. But it's there........

Some times hardship is a discipline. Not necessarily a "you've been a bad boy, get to your room" discipline.....much as an athlete much be disciplined to hone their skills. They must work hard every day, avoid food or drink that will harm their body or take away from it's performance. It's hard, but they aren't being punished. They are being trained for the race they have coming up.

It's a pretty clear parallel. Sin is what we've got to avoid...it's harmful to our soul. The hardship is a form of conditioning...of training. It gets us in shape for our race of faith.

Also, the alter call was very laid back today. I like that. I know as far as alter calls go your can't make everyone happy all of the time. Some people like to see an alter call every single week. I mean the big, "If you want to accept Christ in your life you've got to stand up RIGHT NOW and walk down here in the front, in front of all these people looking at you, DO IT" type of alter call (often followed by the call for all followers to stand and come forward if "You want to receive the blessings Christ has for you or something that you feel like you have to stand for because, hey, who doesn't want that.....but you also feel like a sheep just following along with the crowd when it happens week after week with no conviction from anyone. my apologies on this run-on aside).

Anyway, it was pretty much, "If you are ready to take this step of faith with us, please come up here after service. We have some alter workers who would love to speak with you. If you're a follower and you are feeling discouraged, like a runner in need of hydration, please come down and we have some people to pray with you." Very laid back. No pressure, just a we're here with open arms kind of call. I like it.

Sometimes I feel like the big pressure type of alter call is exclusionary. I worry that maybe someone was sitting there, feeling called to Christ. That they prayed and confessed. And they just can't stand up in from of all these strangers shout out that they did it. I don't think that they need to (some people need to....I think the call to Christ is different for everyone). And I worry that then they'll start to feel "Hey, maybe I'm not really a Christian. I mean, I prayed that prayer, and I felt it in my heart.....but I just couldn't stand up and walk down there. Maybe this really isn't for me. I know lots of people will argue with me about it and say that standing up is the least someone can do.....but I'm thinking baby steps here. Some people need that.

I, for one, would never be able to do that. I mean, I was raised a Christian, so it's not like I need to accept Him...he's always been a part of my life. But I know there are other quiet, non-demonstrative people life me out there.

Soooooo.....how this whole sermon pertains to me. Well, the word "discouraged" came up about a zillion times. And I think if there's one word that can truly describe how I've been feeling lately that would be it. Very discouraged. In fact, if I hadn't had to rush off to the childcare room to get Celia (she got upset last week when mommies started arriving and she couldn't see hers, so I wanted to be early), I may have very well gone forward.....just to have someone else pray with me...which is something I rarely do. I'm talking once before in my whole life...while I was in the midst of awful, debilitating morning sickness. A very sweet woman held my head and prayed with me...in the teacher's break room at the school where I worked. And it did help....I went from laying there just unable to move from being so sick and not getting any nutrition for week to being able to drag my butt through the rest of my day....which is sometimes all you can ask for.

Also, for the past month or so when I've been distinctly miserable, as I pour out my heart to one of my closest friends, the theme of my argument has been, "I just need to face the facts that this is how it's just going to be. I need to become accustomed to the fact that this is how it's going to be forever and learn to live with it. I knew good and well that just because hubby became family oriented for a year before and a few years after the wedding that really he's a fickle work-a-holic, who becomes obsessed with one project after another. Everyone once in awhile I will be that obsession, but for the most part it's something else and he becomes completely emotionally (and occasionally proximally) distant and unavailable. The sooner I accept that fact and get on with my life, the better for us all."

She (my friend) is not the least bit happy with that argument. She always has a suggestion, some of them I'll try, some I'm just to discouraged to see the point of them and don't bother wasting time with. This is why I always say how strong she is, and how much faith she has....it's just always there. So I'm going to try this week...to not bog myself down with those "facts" and have faith that it will change and get better (even though I can't fathom how, when, or why).

And I'm going to tackle the sin thing. It's got to be anger....because I really did think and I really did examine myself, and that's all I can find. So that has to be it. The hard part it, most of it's in my head. I'm not walking around kicking people in the leg, flipping people off on the interstate, or screaming at cashiers. Most of it is just the constant, angry diatribe that plays over and over in my own head.....disguising itself as rationality. Just the past week I've really starting being short with the kids and not having patience, so that's one outward thing I can work on....but the rest is all inside. So how do you tell the thoughts in our own head to "SHUT UP"?

The Power Team

Last night we got to go see The Power Team. They break things and evangelize all at the same time.

Now, anyone who knows me will tell you I'm not a "Cool, let's see big men break things" kind of girl. I'm much more of a "see a show or o to a concert" kind of girl. But, having a boy child exposes you to things you'd never choose to see for yourself......so we went to see The Power Team.

Since our friends were helping to set up and organize the event, they got there very early and saved us some seats. Front row, center. Close enough for the heat of the fire to singe your eyebrows front row.

Also, anyone who knows me will agree I'm a smirker. I smirk. It's what I do. I glide through life with a smirk and a sarcastic comment. That's just who I am.

So, the team manager comes out and starts hyping up the crowd....and I'm trying really hard not to smirk. Because it's rude. And while this whole "break fiery concrete blocks with my head and tell you about Christ" isn't my kind of thing.....it obviously works. I mean, I have never seen that many people at the church for any other function. So while those people may be there to see some big men break things....they are also going to be inspired by their stories and hear about the Gospel. That I can buy into.

So the manager starts introducing the team, and I'm really good until the second guy comes up. He's got a mohawk. Not the stand up spike kind....the strip of hair in the middle of your head with shaved sides kind of mohawk. The smirk breaks through.

And I'm trying SO hard not to smirk. Because really....I'm sitting about 10 feet from the enormous guys. If they see me smirking at them, they could easily hop off the stage and crush me between to of their weakest fingers. Then they threw some water on the crowd. Me, in the front row.....yeah I got a little wet. How can you not smirk at that? Really, if you're a smirker by nature, it's impossible.

Then they lit some things on fire and broke them....then they blew up some of those impossible to break hot water bottles until the exploded. At which point my toddler decided she had quite enough of those funny men and we escaped to the child care area to color. Whew. My safe zone.

My son got to stay and enjoy the whole show though....and I will say he was quite inspired. He had to buy the bandanna and have all of them sign it. We have to go back to see them break ice Saturday night (they are here all week folks!). He wants to go to the summer camp.

He asked me at breakfast if I was still using the phone book or if he could try to rip in in half with the power of his might.

So much to blog....

...and so little time to do it. But here we go!

I did make it to church yesterday with the kids. Not as relaxing as I had hoped....Celia was having a shy day and didn't want to go in the children's room. We went to Trinity Assembly of God, and I got to hear Pastor Crabtree speak for the first time.

I did enjoy his sermon, but I think my favorite part was the strength of his personal conviction. He was speaking about the importance of the Gospel, how if we could all just live it more, the world would be a better place. As he spoke I could see that he was deeply bothered by some of the social injustices around us today. I have a lot of respect for that: someone who is bother by something wrong...even if it doesn't affect them directly. Maybe because I spend a lot of my time bothered by random things that I can't change....I guess it moved me to see a man who was bothered in the same way (stereotypical, I know. but women tend to be the "fixers" a lot of the time)

I did not maim Chris in any way after he dropped tortillas on the floor and left them for me to clean up. MY tortillas. My specials "reward for not having a breakdown this week" Chilli's tortillas. If you've never had Chilli's tortillas, you need to. They are seriously good. And you don't even have to go there to eat them, you can just pick them up to go.

I spent the morning out at the old church helping my friend organize the childcare rooms. Our girls got a chance to play together and I think both of the rooms look much better. It took a LOT longer than I think either of us had planned for.....but we both share the same obsessive "different toys can't share the same bin" gene and had to sort through everything and organize. It's a big improvement though. She does a great job there without a lot of help. It was nice to spend the morning with her!

Then...the dreaded Walmart trip. If you haven't caught one of my rants on it yet, I view Walmart as the earthly equivalent to the inner rings of hell. Not that I believe in levels of hell, it's a purely literary statement.

We have a brand-spanking new Super Walmart now. If just opened last week. I thought maybe if I went in the middle of an afternoon a week after it opened it wouldn't be too bad. WRONG....boy was I wrong. But I did get the few craft things I've needed for awhile and some more duckies (we LOVE rubber duckies) and made it out alive. Hopefully I won't have to go back for a few months now.

If it's not enough to hate Walmart....I also hate getting there. They have the whole area tore up and corral the cars through a maze of fence to get you into the too-small parking lot. I also wish I'd taken a camera just to capture on of the arrows painted on the road. You know those arrows that tell you if it's a straight only lane, or right only, or right and straight? Well this arrow was marking a "forward and backward" lane. I'm sorry, but what in the world?

My final rant for the day....and I cringe even to write this because it's so darned mean....but old people drivers! On my very slow, residential street I had this little old lady ran a stop sign (two way, I didn't have one) and turned right in front of me. Luckily, I was going pretty slow and saw that she had no intention of stopping..so I did. Then a block later she blew straight through another stop sign by the school! Not a flicker of brake lights! Thank goodness no kids were out! Please, if your grandma drives like this, offer her a ride. And hide her keys. And remove the spark plugs from her car. Thank you.

Wrath- You can dress it up, but you still can't take it out.

(My thoughts on this week's sermon at Chestnut Ridge Church. This was week 5 of their series titled "Seven" discussing sin. I encourage you to listen to it on their site, it's great!)

That's right....you can put it in jeans from the Gap and give it a nice shiny SUV, but anger is still anger. It's still in there.....somewhere.

Not that much of what I wear comes from the Gap, and shiny would NOT be a good description for our SUV, but I do have some anger issues.

Emotional issues in general, but anger is a pretty strong emotion that I deal with quite often. Pastor Bill Walker talked a little about two different kinds of anger: implosive and explosive. I'm a real weirdo in this category because I do tend to internalize my anger....for a little while. Until I get good and heated and then just let it all out. I think I do a decent job at directing my anger where it belongs.....and that most of it is justifiable anger (if not righteous....). I also think I do a decent job about working through my anger. I generally can't hold a grudge or stay angry with anyone for an extended period of time, provided I work through or around the cause of the anger. And as I get older I think I'm getting better about talking through things with other people on a rational way and dealing with problems as they come up.

Ack, there were so many great points I wanted to share just running around in me head this morning, but I seem to have forgotten them all. We stopped at the hospital on the way home to visit a friend, and she pretty much blew my mind with her amazing faith and strength.

Anyway, thanks to my small circle of friends and readers....for letting me vent my anger with you. (Which is a healthy, recommended way of dealing with anger) Take a minute to listen to the sermon....I'm doing a horribly inadequate job of sharing powerful points!

The Green-Eyed Monster

That's right, this week we were talking about envy (week 4 of Chestnut Ridge's series Seven). Another one of those biggies that I think everyone struggles with now and again.

It was particularly pertinent to me in light of several events of my week and conversations I had. Lots of friends read and were bothered by an "anonymous" response to one of my blogs and questioned why I put negative stuff out there (not primarily I hope, but on occasion).....and open myself up to such comments. Aside from the personal cathartic reasons, I do it because it's real. I've talked to so many women who struggle with feelings of envy and inadequacy....over someone else's "perfect" life. So I want what I write to be real. I've got a great life. Great husband, nice house, wonderful kids, an adequate amount of money, health. But sometimes I fight with my husband, have a messy house, get frustrated with my kids, stress over finances, and I get sick. Those aren't the norm, but they do happen......and I don't want to pretend that they don't. It perpetuates this false sense of perfection that we see EVERYWHERE. So many women get brought down because you watch tv, and every thing is perfect. On all the mommy boards on the Internet everyone post photos of their huge, spotless houses, talks of their perfect children, and how they never fight with their husbands.

Well who wouldn't want that? Who wouldn't envy someone who has all that? I know I did! The first time I was even invited to the home of someone I knew from church was so overwhelming to me (keep in mind, I was pregnant here, so hormones certainly factored into this). She had this gorgeous house, perfectly kept. Nicely decorated. It was a scrapbook party....something I had no experience with. So we spent an hour in this perfect house, making these cute little pages to hold 5 picture. One hour....5 pictures. And the whole time I'm sitting there thinking.. "Where do they all find the time to do this? I mean, how many pictures do I have sitting in boxes at home? I don't have the time to do this! And this house! How does she have the time to keep it looking this great? How could they afford all this? What am I doing wrong? My house will never look like this! I'll never have the time to so this scrapbooking stuff!. What are they doing that I'm not?"

And I came home just completely upset over the whole thing. Crying my eyes out asking Chris what in the world I was doing wrong. And he's just baffled......doesn't get it at all. He's just shaking his head trying to do anything he can to calm his pregnant wife. Before retiring to the bedroom, I bawl at him to "get that scrapbook page out of my sight....it's just a blaring reminder of what a failure I am". He obliges and I've never seen it since.

The funny thing is......I was envious of something I already had. Someone's "company face". You know, that good deep clean, spiff the place up, put a smile on your face because someone's coming over? Well, shoot, I already have that! We do that all the time. I have been known to have people over, and they have been known to think I have a cute little house. I like my house! Why in the world did I want someone else's that bad? Who knows. I'd like to blame it all on raging pregnancy hormones....but I think they just brought out a feeling that was there all along.

I like to think my eyes have opened a little since then.....I still have moments where I start to do that.....to be envious of the blessings of others. But then I realize I have quite a few of them myself.

And I used this to better my own life. Not in a "keeping up the Jones" kind of way.....but I learned to scrapbook and I REALLY like doing it. I now have several nice albums that my kids love to look through and see their special pages. We've started remodeling some rooms in our house. Not so it looks nicer when we put on our "company face".....but just to make the most of what we have. We're doing it ourselves and learning a lot in the process (let me clarify...I ripped down some walls, Chris did the ceiling, and we bought a bunch of stuff. Chuck has taken over rebuilding the shower, but is almost done so I can take over again soon). Lots of this stuff I never thought I could do....never tried because I didn't want to mess something up....to have it not be perfect. But I don't think there really is a perfect. There's just stuff you can do, and some you can't. And most of the time you can do a lot than you thought you could....before you tried it.

Anyway, back to the church service....I liked it, thought it was very good. Chris thought it was the best he has seen yet. We were both blown away by the special music. Lauren Byrer sang a song that fit the topic of envy so well. Just a perfectly expressed feeling and cry of help for this struggle. And it was GOOD. I mean, the song and musically good, plus she's got a great voice and sang it really well. She and Chris kind of knew each other (she used to work at his company) so we spoke with her a few minutes after church (she's a super sweet person, btw!) about the creative process that goes into all this....which is something I've been wondering about. They have a whole creative team that gets together and brainstorms and plans services together, which is an awesome resource in itself. They were having a real hard time finding a song they liked for special music illustrating Envy.....so Karen Haring (music director, wife of the senior pastor) wrote it! This is a serious song now....not some "we needed a song about envy so I wrote one fluff". I'm thoroughly impressed.

While at first I was a little overwhelmed by the hugeness of Chestnut Ridge....that's dissipating now. Each week we seem to run into and talk to a member of the staff or leadership team...and I find them each to be a very friendly, well-spoken person that I would like to spend more time talking with and getting to know!

Leaving you with one of the scriptures from service....

"No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.

1 Corinthians 10:13

My weekly church blog.

It's Sunday again, time for me to review in my mind our new church happenings for the week.

We really wanted to check out a new church this week, but didn't want to miss one of the series at Chestnut Ridge. I should have been doing this all along, but I encourage you to check out the MP3's they have online of the sermons in this series "Seven". Pride and Sloth are currently available, this week's will be up soon (I'm sure, not like I have any control over that. They are pretty on top of things though!)

This week Pastor Tim Haring spoke about the sins of excess: Lust, Greed, Gluttony. I don't know whether it was because we had Celia in service with us (she's a little distracting, but was overall pretty well behaved. She did take a big poo in the middle of the sermon...could have done without that!) or because I don't feel like I'm in too much danger of these particular sins (like I struggle with Pride and Sloth). I'm pretty much the picture of anti-lust.....enough said there! (I know, lust can be used as a non-sexual thing. And while I did really want those Cloggens someone introduced me to the other day, I wouldn't say I "lusted" after them). I don't *think* I'm greedy. I am the ultimate bargain shopper (sometimes to a fault) but don't it it just to get more stuff (in my defense, I do donate lots of that stuff, and enjoy doing it! It makes me feel really good to be able to just give someone in need, friend or stranger, a bunch of things to help them out). As for Gluttony.....I have been known to put away a few to many cookies or chocolate or bread from time to time.....but I don't really think it's to excess. It was still a great service overall....though I didn't "get" the poetry for this week like I have for the other two.

This morning (Sunday) we got up and went to Trinity Assembly of God. Pastor Adam (minister of music) and I have the same taste in music. Almost every song they did was something Chris and I either did or had planned to do with our old church. They do have a large group doing praise and worship, but both Chris and I can see a place for us among them if we are led to stay there (I'm not sure I can say the same for Chestnut Ridge myself....Chris certainly can!). We also chose a bad week to go (in terms of evaluating a church) since they had a guest speaker. He was okay....said a few things I'm not sure about but his overall message was very pointed and pertinent to me (us): God just tells you to go.....but not always where you're going. You just have to trust Him and go......you'll know it when you get there.

That being said, I'm starting to doubt that the pentecostal church is something I'll ever be comfortable with. Nothing wrong with it, just different strokes for different folks. It was nice to be so warmly embraced by the leadership of the church (although one new guest greeter was squeezing a little too tight! She kept introducing us to every one saying "This is Chris, he's been here before...he worked on the cd. This is Rebecca, this is her FIRST TIME. She's NEW. after about the sixth introduction of this type I felt like I was wearing a blinking sign on my head flashing "Newbie" or maybe even "Heathen". She had good intentions, but the introspective cynic in me was overwhelmed) Anyway, we were warmly welcomed and I hope in any case we get to spend some more time with Pastor Adam and his family. They are so fun to be with, have a little girl Celia's age and another baby on the way. (We got to spend a good bit of time with them in Chicago last summer)

Both kids enjoyed their rooms. Celia found a slide in the toddler room the minute we walked in the door and never looked back. She went full steam ahead with a room of rough and tumble boys the whole time. Jordan really enjoyed children's church. (He said even more than Chestnut Ridge, which is quite something because that's ALL he's talked about these past few weeks). They've really done a good job with the room and the kid's service. His favorite "character" was Napoleon Explosion (ahh....Dynamite?).

Looking forward to going back and hearing the head pastor speak on another week!

Hmmm....are we sluggards?

Well I guess everyone is at some point and time! But this is the phrase Chris and I have been slinging around all day after our second week at Chestnut Ridge.

This was week two of the series on the seven deadly sins.....sin of the day was sloth. (AKA, being a sluggard!) Now, last week was pride. As a musician and a performer, pride is always something that I struggle with. God has a pretty clear way of dealing with that though! Every time Chris and I would start thinking we were hot stuff, just a little something would come up to remind us who the real achiever really is! Just enough to make us go "Oh, whoops, you're right. I'm not all that great, but You certainly are! The other half of pride is a little more difficult for me to struggle with (the "I can't do that, I'm no good" part...it's equally as self-centered as the "look how good I am" pride). I do have a problem with that, and usually I'm overly critical of myself. At least I think so. Chris always seems happy (musically) with what we do, and I hope he'd be honest if it wasn't good. But anyway, talk about pride to a musician, that's a given. I don't know many musicians who don't struggle with pride at one time or another!

So back to sloth. Right after music there was a dramatic reading...just kind of about what you think of when you think of sloth. Fat, smelly, lazy guy. Whew, that's not me! Off the hook on that one! Then the pastor come up and talks about how we have all these distractions....and to dwell on them when there are other things that NEED done (umm, like posting on BabyCenter instead of cleaning the kitchen) is slovenly. Okay, so maybe I'm not off the hook.

There were lots of other good points made.....like how work is not a bad thing. It's often said that work is God's punishment after the fall, but in fact he put us on the earth to work (though maybe we toil a little more now) and through hard work we receive fulfillment.....of one kind or another. And the punishments of laziness kind of snowball into a big thing you'd rather not deal with....if you'd just gotten up and done a little bit of work in the first place you would have saved yourself a lot of work in the end.

All in all, a great sermon.....both Chris and I came away with it feeling pushed to be less sluggardly and slothful this week. Plus we have a new word......sluggard. Say it, it's fun.....sluggard, sluggard. I even like "sluggardly" (though my spell checker does not, so I'm guessing it's not a real word. Must stop being so sluggardly and call someone about making it one!)

All Partied Out......

Okay, so I did eventually get in the party mood, and had quite a good time. I'm eternally thankful to my friend Heather, because without her the party would have been a total flop. I get overwhelmed by those find of things.

Not that many people came, which was quite surprising to me. Pastor J is very well loved at church and I thought lots of people would want to come to the party to show their appreciation and love for him. But that's how things go there....

The people that did come brought him some very nice things to help him set up house, and we had some serious food. Props to Heather again for what are the BEST masked potatoes I have had since my grandma used to make them! She said there were four stick of butter in them...so much for eating healthy! So good though!

Everyone oohed and ahhed over the cake, but I think they were afraid to eat it, because only a couple pieces were missing. The kids enjoyed eating the bow!

Chris fixed our real camera, so I'm working on figuring out how to use it with the MacBook and Blogspot.........but I missed some of the best pictures today! First, Pastor's J's kids and the senior pastor's grandkids got into the baptismal and had to be chased out! Then they were pulling each other wildly around the floor on my Twister mat. But, here are the boring photos I did manage to take in between servings of potatoes.





A bunch of people eating some food...













Super Heather and her side-kick Bo!












Josh and the kids.......









Opening gifts with lots of little helpers!

Party Day

Well, it's party day and I'm in no mood for a party. Mostly because I'm going to have to be at the church FOREVER. A month ago when we started planning this housewarming party we decided 4-6 would be best since it's a dinner thing. J said that was fine with him, so I made up the invites and passed them out with 4-6 on it. Well, last week in the church bulletin it was advertised as 2-5. After that screw-up (or not, I'm still wondering....) J said he'd prefer it at that time anyway! Nice. Now some people think it's 2-5 and some think it's 4-6 . They had the church calling machine call, bu no one listens to that thing. Every week it's the same.

"God is Good, All the Time! This is ---------- with church, calling to remind you that this sunday we'll be having service at 10, sunday school at 9. Please, bring a friend and join us for a great service"

Really.....church at 10 on sunday? Whew, glad they remind people. Someone might forget that we do that EVERY SINGLE WEEK!

By "we" I don't mean Chris and I...since we don't go there anymore. It's just a general "we".

Anyway, so no one listens to that machine and now people are going to be there all afternoon, which means I have to be there all afternoon. Plus, housewarmings are supposed to be low key....since I planned it for two hours, I didn't plan a lot of stuff. I figured we'd eat, talk, have J open gifts, and we're done. Well that's not going to take 4 hours! So I'm taking the MacBook and we can take funny pictures of everyone.....Heather is bringing catchphrase, I'm bringing my Bible version of MadGab. Thank goodness for Heather......this party would suck without her. She's so good at remembering all the little things (that really do matter) that I totally forget.

I'm off to make a casserole, then buy some bread and salad!

Our experience at "The Ridge"

Chris tells me that's what all the "insiders" call Chestnut Ridge Church....and that we ought to call it that as not to seem like outsiders. So there you have it.

It's definately a beautiful building. They must be doing something (okay, many things, there are lots of great things about the place) right to attract that many people. Not just that many people, but many of them who were not Christians before coming to church. It's a great thing to keep lifelong Christians happy, I'm not downplaying that. But it's a whole other thing to be able to communicate the Word of God in a way that it speaks to someone whose heart had been closed (in the past).

So we got there, take the kids to the kids area. We dropped Jordan off at his room (which was just 4th and 5th graders). He was fine, of course....he's always fine. Plus he had really been looking forward to seeing what the kid's service is like. They do a Bible lesson in small groups, then K-5th graders get together for music and drama, then back to small groups for more on the lesson. They were learning about service and how important it is. Just having Jordan be able to tell us something they learned about is in improvement in itself! He also said for snack they had grapes, cheese, and crackers. Hallelujah! A healthy snack! I'd been fighting with the children's ministry at our old church for years trying to get something other than cupcakes and Oreos fed to my kid right before lunch.

Celia also liked her room. The teacher there really know their stuff (concerning dealing with toddlers). The minute that she showed interest they wisked her right into the room and got er involved in Play-doh. She didn't fuss for one minute. I also noticed during service that of ALL those kids, they only flashed one parent page on the screen. Pretty impressive.

Chris and I made out way to the sanctuary and easily found seats. It wasn't as crowded as we thought it would be, Chris went back out and got us both drinks. They have theater style seating with cupholders (!) and encourage bringing coffee drinks to service. I noticed they had a coffee bar, but was surprised that it was free. Okay, so that was nice and all....not something I base my decision of where to go to church on, but a nice touch.

The music was really good. Everyone on the teams seemed very talented and sincere......which is nice. A little sad because I know if we stay there I'll never have a place among them (I just don't have that kind of talent)....but that may not BE my place anymore. I guess I worry about that overall....just being able to find my place there (whatever it may be) and getting involved. I'm not the kind of person who is content just to sit in a service on Sunday morning and call that Christianity. But the converse of that fear is that it's so HUGE and they have so many ministries, surely I can be used in one of them. I tend to have lots of big ideas and never the resources or support to pull them off.

Anyway, it felt a little impersonal to me.....but I think most of that is me having to adjust than anything the church is doing. I mean, it's been 3 years since Chris and I sat through a service together! That by itself is an adjustment. Plus I know no one there, so it's hard to feel that you fit in among so many people. They have a MOPS group, so I'm going to e-mail the coordinator of that and see if Celia and I can get involved there....meet a few other moms and kids.

We picked a good week to go since they are starting a 5 week series on "7 deadly sins". Today Tim Haring spoke about pride. It was quite good. Not life changing or anything....but you get out of it what you put into it. We're going to go for a couple weeks and see what we think.

Charlie Hall and Bebo Norman

Chris and I got to check out the Charlie Hall and Bebo Norman concert at Chestnut Ridge Church last night. It was really awesome. We saw Charlie at Willow Creek Church in Chicago when we were there for the arts conference. It was overwhelmingly awesome at Willow Creek, but I figured part of that was the venue (Willow Creek is an awesome place). But, Charlie was just as good last night a Chestnut Ridge! He also had more time so we got to hear commentary between songs. Both he and Bebo were pretty funny! Bebo's music was also great....but I prefer the "rock" of Charlie Hall. Plus, Chris and I had to leave early because we told Heather we've be back by 10 for Celia, so we had to leave before Bebo really got into his set. We did get to see and talk to Charlie in the hall as we were leaving, which was also pretty cool.

Chestnut Ridge is one of the churches that we're excited to be checking out during our "shop" for a new church home. I was surprised that I wasn't overly impressed with the Chestnut Ridge's worship team (they did an opening set). They were having some sound issues....and I know how hard it is to work with all that stuff when you have a guest group come in...things are changed to suit them. We're planning on going to the 11:00 service this Sunday. Jordan has already been to a Saturday night service there and enjoyed it, but they only have children's church on sunday, so I'd like to go then.

Celia peed on the floor in Heather's new kitchen. I kind of figured that would happen...but she had done so well with the potty training, I was hoping it wouldn't. Unfortunately....when you're new to the whole "peeing in the potty" thing, it rates way down on your priority list. Definately under running around the kitchen with your friends. So today we work more with running around the house, naked, potty training.

I'm also hoping to get to Morgantown and get some shopping done. Walgreens has a toilet paper deal (free) so I want to stop there. Plus I'm hoping to go check out this piano. It was list in the Giveaway section of our local paper. I've been wanting a "real" piano for quite some time. We have a very nice electronic one, but it's getting older and needs some work. Plus...the real thing is just a status thing for me. Anyway, the guy gave me manufacturer and serial number...Chris and I are estimating that it's form 1904! Which would make it an actual antique instead of just plain old (like most of our other things). The guy said none of the keys are broken, none of the strings or hammers are broken, though the hammers have grooves from playing the strings. So I'm hoping to go check it out then talk Chris and Bo into getting it for me. We'll see how that goes! We need a bigger circle of friends for projects like this!

Chuck is already here working on the bathroom! Hopefully we'll make some good progress this weekend and I can work in there this week! We're just at the point right now where it's all plumbing and cement....nothing I can help with.