We miss you... or I wanna be His hands and feet.

Last summer and into the fall I read a book by Angela Thomas, it's called "Do You Think I'm Beautiful? The Question Every Woman Asks." It is intended for married women, but there are a lot of truths in it that even I as a single woman can hold onto.
This past week has been a hard balance of celebrating great joy with friends and also walking through really hard circumstances with friends. I have gotten to celebrate the birth, or impending birth of children in several friends' lives! (shout out to Lena, and Jennifer, and Mark!) I went to a bridal shower this afternoon to celebrate an impending wedding. (Yay Janelle!) I also watched as two friends walked through probably what could be considered some of the darkest days in their lives.
As I was cleaning my house this afternoon, going through things to send to my friend's yard sale, to celebrate another great joy, they started the process of adopting again, I ran across that book, and as I flipped through it's pages I read the underlined parts, the parts that I had circled and starred and really enjoyed. Then I came to this section "Being a part of a community of believers is about relationships. We were not made to do it alone. God never intended for a man or a woman to fly solo through life. And when it comes to the clutter of our souls, we may have to call in some help. Asking for help means being vulnerable. It's risky. It's embarassing. We choose to let someone inside and show them things we've been hiding. I don't know if you need a good friend, a pastor, or a trained counselor, but I can assure you that the journey should be shared. Moses' arms were held up in his weakness. Paul's letters reflect a strength that came from knowing other believers shared his journey. You and I have been given to the body of Christ so that they may be the arms of God to hold us, the feet of God to guide us, and the heart of God to love us."
Never in my life has that truth been more real to me than it has been this week.
God says it in His Word this way in Romans 12.

Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully. Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.

I am sad that though I knew my friend was really struggling, she didn't allow us to reach out and help her. Though for over 2 years I have been concerned, even voicing that concern to the women who have mentored me from church during that time period, I always was worried that my friend would cut off communicating with me if I tried to talk to her about my concerns. And so I have felt conflicted for a long time about how to love her and be the hands and feet of Christ to her, and speak truth to her, which is sometimes hard to hear. Ultimately, whatever happens in her life, there is one truth that I really really hope at some point, I or someone else will be able to speak into her life. Angela Thomas puts it like this: "Here is one thing I can say with great confidence: the man that you love is just a man. He may be your soul mate. He is possibly your best friend. He may be hunky and funny and suprising and strong, but he will never -- not in a million years, not if he goes to relationship therapy twice a week and keeps every promise ever written -- be enough to fill your soul ... he will never make you whole." She goes on "The man is simply a vessel. God uses him to give you a part of the filling of His holy love. But he is not the only vessel, nor is able to fill you from his own strength, nor is he the only thing you will ever need. Are you hearing this? There will never be a man on the face of the earth who can make you whole. Being filled in the depths of your soul is only about the love of God... knowing Him...hearing His voice... believing that He's wild about you...dancing in His arms." and finally "He is not perfect, and he never will be. He is not your Savior. He is not your filling, nor is he the answer to all your longings. You must let him be fallen and forgiven and in process. You must learn the difference between men who are healthy and those who are not. You must not mistake his opinions for the opinions of God. He may have never called you beautiful or smart or witty. No matter what the man says or doesn't say, God is still wild about you. We must realize that there will never be healthy love between a woman and a man until she comes to rest and find her being in the great love of God."
So my prayer this week is that my friend would come to truly understand the great deep love of God, not that I have fully grasped it, it can never fully be understood, but I pray that this week she catches a glimpse of it. And I am praying for her husband, that the work that the Lord has begun in him will continue, that he would become a more healthy vessel that the Lord can more effectively use to speak His love into her life. I am praying that she would realize that community is vital to this walk with the Lord, that she would allow us, imperfect as we are, to be His hands and feet to her this week. And mostly, above all else, that we would all remove anything in our lives that is trying to compete for God's rightful place on the throne of our lives. Even if removing it is an embarrasing request to have that thing locked up in a friends basement for the time being. Even if removing it is having to make embarrasing confessions to your friends who might see that you are not the perfect Christian who has it all together. Because I was reminded in a new way this week that NOTHING, NOTHING is worth it, there is nothing that I want in my life that will detract from my relationship with the Lord. ANd I hope that if I am ever confused about that, the body of Christ will lovingly point that out to me and not be afraid of what my reaction might be.

If you know anyone...

I am one of those people who comes up with an idea, and runs, hard with it. So as I have been complaining about my singleness, and my lack of single friends, and blah blah blah, I have also been scouring the Internet to find said young nonmarried non college student adult ministry in Murray, KY or near Murray, KY. Of course as previously mentioned, I haven't found much. There are several in Nashville, TN, there are a couple Sunday school classes in Paducah, that would require driving to Paducah for church. So last night my friend Jen was on facebook at the same time as me and we started discussing. She is the athletic trainer at Calloway High school (here in Murray) and also a Christian, and also single. We moved to Murray the same summer and occasionally get together for lunch and what not. I decided to ask her if she knew of any singles ministries in Murray. After conversing back and forth, we came up with this CRAZY IDEA TO START ONE, right here, in Murray, KY. GENIUS. So we are. I promptly e-mailed my pastor for his opinion, and also permission to use the church building. He responded this morning, saying that he thinks it is a great idea and that he would love to be of whatever service necessary, and that he would like me to start coming to some leadership meetings! I always have this fear when I come up with a crazy idea, that people are going to think it is just that, so when people don't respond with "That's a crazy idea" it's like conformation from the Lord to me. Now I am at work, again scouring the Internet, this time for information on starting my own "singles" ministry. I don't like that term cause most of the time it implies "Christian meat market" but none the less, that is what I googled. I found some very very interesting stuff. For example, did you know that approximately 40% of the general church population consists of single never married adults? I had know idea! I was reading this article and this guy was describing the way the church deals with the single people, this is what he said

"I went into singles ministry with these same thoughts. But a couple of weeks into it, my attitude really began to change. The transformation grew out of a dream: I was looking over a huge wheat field. A bunch of people were harvesting only half of it, and leaving the other half of the field untouched.

God immediately showed me what it meant. The harvesters were church leaders reaping traditional families. The untouched half of the field represented single adults. The single adult ministry is a huge and responsive mission field."

He went on to say this "Clearly, the single adult ministry in our churches needs attention. Out of 700 reader survey respondents, 72.2% said that their singles ministry was either non-existent or so small as to be ineffective in outreach. When you consider that 48% of female adults and 42% of male adults in the U.S. are single, you can see that we're missing an entire segment of the population."

So... if you live in Murray, KY and are a single not in college adult, and you are interested in getting involved, even if getting involved means showing up, let me know. OR if you know any people in Murray, KY and you are thinking, "hey I bet that would be something that they would enjoy" let them know and give them my contact info. OR if you feel led, pray for Jen and I, as we meet on Monday, with maybe a couple other people, to start planning, what we will do, and what our group will look like, and when and where we will meet, and how we can publicize, and all that.

Mixed emotions

My grandfather past away sometime during the day on Tuesday. The details of his passing have yet to be made clear though he has been extremely ill with a long list of ailments for about the last 3 1/2 years. It was something that my family has been expecting for a long time. I think today when I told some coworkers that I would be out of the office till Tuesday for my grandfather's funeral they were a bit perplexed. I had to tell them that I wasn't especially upset about it.
I know that every family has drama, and that compared to some people's drama, my family's drama is really minuscule. None the less, my relationship with my mother's parents has never been especially good. I was looking through pictures to find one to post here and I realized that I have relatively few. I have tons of my dad's mom and dad. I have several of my mom's Aunt Lois and her husband Uncle Paul. When I really truly think about it, Aunt Lois and Uncle Paul were much more active in our lives growing up and I have fond memories of visiting them at their house in New Bedford, MA. My brothers used to have crab apple fights in her yard, we used to eat meals together on her amazing screened in porch. Paul was the owner of a very well known art store in Cambridge. I always left their house with a bookmark, or a post card of some painting or another. Paul and Lois took an active role in getting to know who we were individually as people and we always always loved visiting them when we were back in the states. The following picture is from the last time I visited them before Paul died and Lois moved out of their house.

Summer vacations to the states always included trips to the cottage in Maine with my dad's mom and dad. We call them Nana and Poppi. Poppi passed away when I was a freshman in high school. Nana always wonders when I am coming up to visit again. We always spent at least a week at the lake with them, and my Auntie Brenda, and her dogs, first it was buffy, then it was Kato. I think my love of dogs comes from my aunt. We used to go sailing on my dad's sunfish, Poppi used to pull us in inner tubes behind his motorized canoe. I'm seriously not joking, he invented tubing. We sometimes would take the canoe to an island across the lake an picnic. We would build fires and pick blueberries. When they sold the cottage when I was 13 or so because my grandfather was having some health issues and couldn't take care of it anymore, we were very sad. After they sold the cottage we would spend the week at Auntie Brenda's. She had a pool in the backyard, and Kato, and we would float around on inner tubes. We avoided the diving board because I am pretty sure it had a bees nest in it. The following are pictures from those times with Nana and Poppi


.
The last picture is Nana with my brothers and I the morning of Auntie Brenda's wedding the summer of 1996, I think Nana had just told Ian to look normal for a picture for once in his life. She says that almost anytime she is in a picture with Ian, they tease each other a lot.
Every summer after we spent time in Maine with Nana and Poppi, we would fly or drive out to Michigan to see my mom's parents. Those times were always always stressful. My grandmother used to yell at us it seemed like just for breathing, in reality it was probably for kicking a soccer ball or throwing a football, outside. There was always arguments, from a very young age I remember being angry about the way my mom was treated by her mother. As I grew older I would get angry at the way my mother was treated by her mother, and angry at my grandfather for sitting idly by. When my aunts and uncles were part of the mix it was even worse. At some point we started staying somewhere else, because even though they lived in a fairly spacious house with ample guest rooms and bathrooms, we either weren't welcome to stay with them or my dad refused to stay with them, I'm not sure which. We always heard about how wonderful our cousins were, and left feeling like we were worthless failures. The irony of it all is that once we became adults and my cousins and I started communicating with each other apart from our parents, we realized that my grandmother did that to all of us. I now am thankful to have better relationships with my cousins, but I definitely grew up resenting them. My grandfather interspersed between my grandmothers interesting lectures told war stories from his time in India during World War 2, or stories about the farm in Illinois and his dog growing up. Another fun activity that we got to partake in at my mom's parents was the slide shows, mainly of interesting rock formations and sailing regattas that my mom and her sisters and brothers participated in growing up. Funny because a. who cares about interesting rock formations other than my dad the geologist, and b. they talked about sailing ALL THE TIME but never actually got out of their recliners to take us on a boat. My grandparents only ever came to visit us 1 time the entire 20 years that we lived in Saudi Arabia, even though they travelled all the time to places like South Africa, and that was only because I told my grandmother that I knew they would never come. Basically without knowing it, according to my mom, I accidently guilted them into coming. Then when they did come, they only stayed a week. Yeah who travels halfway around the world to see their grandkids and only stays 7 days? Seriously, by the time they got over their jetlag they were back in the States. It wasn't till I was finishing my Master's degree, so 24 years old, that I had any incling that my grandparents where in anyway even remotely interested or proud of my accomplishments. The word love has never ever been a thought. When they came to my high school graduation they told me that it was because they felt obligated to since they had gone to my cousins. It was so bad at times growing up that my brothers and I used to beg our parents to leave us in Maine while they went to Michigan.
That picture is the only day of my life when I have felt like my grandparents didn't consider me a loser.
I'm not sad about it, the fact of the matter is that I have a very strong relationship with my dad's side of the family, and my mom's aunt and uncle really were more like grandparents to me. I used harbor a lot of anger and bitterness about it all, but in the last 2 years, the Lord has really shown me that who I am in Him is so much more important than who I am in the eyes of my mom's parents. My mom has been worried for the last year or so that my grandfather would die before I made peace with him. I don't really think that she realizes that I am at peace with it all. He made the choices that he did, not to develop strong relationships with very many of his grandkids, if any, and that is his loss. If you didn't know I have some pretty exceptional cousins, and my younger brother is pretty funny as well. I don't feel like I was jipped, the way I used to. I realize that the Lord has blessed me immensly, and that there were other people who filled that role in my life. I realized that he was never going recognize how things were, and I let it go.
As I travel up to Minnesota this weekend (after my Westtown reunion) I am not going because I feel obligated to honor my grandfather. I am going because I know my mom needs my support, and because it will be the first time in a long time that I will be in the same room with both my brothers and my parents. And because my cousins will all be there from all over the world and this many of us haven't gotten together since my brothers wedding 6 years ago. So really in all honesty, I am excited about the trip, not so much the funeral part, but definitely I am excited to hopefully make new memories with mom's family.

10 years later

The following is a journal entry from about 2 weeks ago.

I have been thinking a lot about this trip back to Westtown for a long time. Should I go? Will it be emotional for me? Will I be able to put all the anger and bitterness behind me? Will it stir up more stuff I will have to deal with?
In the fall of 1996 I was a 15 year old, and for 14 of those 15 years I had lived in a small tight knit community in Saudi Arabia. I remember a few weeks before coming to Westtown my mom sat me down. Being a psychologist and already having had 1 child struggle with the transitions I was about to make, she had some very real concerns. She wanted me to know that even though I had been raised all my life knowing that I was American, this fact always evident to me because of my passport, my accent, that I was about to find out that I really wasn’t. She told me I was going to be different from the other American kids. She kept using this term, she kept calling me a third culture kid. I kept telling her, in my infinite wisdom as a 15 year old that she was wrong. Oh how I wished I had listened.
I arrived at school early for preseason soccer. I had played soccer all my life and I was excited to get to school early and meet some of the other students. On the second or third day some sirens went off. I would later learn that they were the call sirens for the volunteer fire department or something like that. The problem for me was that they were the same cadence and tone as the air raid sirens in my home town. Those sirens meant 1 thing to me a disaster has happened, or there is a missile attack coming. They were tested every Saturday at lunch time, other than that, those sirens going off was not good. All my life those sirens had meant that. So here I am on the soccer field, everybody is still practicing, and inside I am in panic mode. That was the beginning of my struggle with my identity as a third culture kid.
While most teenagers are struggling with questions like who am I, and what will I do when I grow up? I was struggling with all those normal questions. I was also struggling with questions like where is home? Is it in the United States or Saudi Arabia or neither? Who is my family, is it my biological extended family that I barely know, or is it my family of fake aunts and uncles back in Saudi?
I would like to say that Westtown made it easier, gave me a safe place to wrestle with those questions, gave me freedom to be myself. That is so far from the truth that it is astounding.
I will never forget the week, sometime during my first trimester at Westtown, when an entire class of peace and justice students kept stopping me in the hall, on dorm, everywhere. They had been told by their teacher to interview me about the deplorable conditions that women in Saudi Arabia faced, still face today. The questions were all sandwiched in “is it true that” and “that is horrible.”
This is my country. I grew up watching the sunrise over the Arabian Gulf, you would call it the Persian gulf. I grew up always eating in the family section, because that is the only part of restaurants that females can eat in and yes haagen das does not have a family section, so they don’t serve women. Yes it is true that women cannot drive, yet. And yes I would give anything to eat a shawarma, or some hummus, not the nasty Americanized kind, or shop in the gold souks, or visit the camel markets again.
And here where hordes of people telling me that all I’d ever known was horrible.
It was during that week that I learned that absolutely I could not ever be truthful about who I was, and what I believed and thought. I signed petitions because everyone else was, I never talked about my deep evangelical Christian faith, born out of the underground churches I was raised in.
I would occasionally snap. Like the time that Bush Sr was about to invade Iraq. A television was set up in the South room and while I was in the kitchen washing dishes, some kid was running around joyously screaming “We are going to war, we are going to war.” I remember having a melt down. The largest installation of US troops at that time in the Middle East was 45 minutes from my house. My dad was the maker of all the maps of the Saudi coastline. Our town is in the middle of the largest oil refinery operation in the world. There is a reason I grew up with air raid sirens and gas masks.
My mom says it was at Westtown that I learned what racism is. She tells a story about a Sunday trip to church. Too many people had signed up for the van space available and the other teachers on duty didn’t want to have to go and drive, it was a mess. I told my mom about it later on the phone and the story puzzled her. I had left out 1 important detail. A few weeks later she received a perplexing letter in the mail apologizing for the event. The next time she talked to me on the phone she asked “Cate, what kind of church was it?” I told her “it was a fun one with a very loud and rowdy congregation.” I told her that I didn’t know what denomination it was, that whole denomination thing still confuses me. She said “Yes Cate, but what did the people look like?” I said “Mom what are you trying to ask?” She said “Cate, where they white, black, Asian, Arab?” I had to think about it for a second and then I told her “they were mostly black.” It had never occurred to me that it even mattered.
My friend Arnab is an Indian, like from the country of India. He is a comedian in London now and I was watching one of his shows on youtube the other day. He was telling a joke based in reality. He was talking about the school plays we used to do growing up, he said, “we looked more like a UNICEF appeal than a family.”
But it was at Westtown that I was accused by a white teacher of being racist simply because I was not friends with a black student.
For 3 years I lived a lie in this place because when we talked about tolerance, we only meant it if you were just like everyone else, thought like everyone else. I was not used to that, I grew up as part of the network of largest expatriate communities in the world. By that I mean that the community I grew up in had people from all over the world, being different was the only thing that was normal. The only time I ever came even remotely close to being honest with this community was in the spring of my senior year, when I wrote my final paper for Eric Mayer’s religion class. When I left this place on the day of graduation I swore I would never come back.
It was only after leaving Westtown that I found communities that gave me the freedom to wrestle with it all. I had friends in college who didn’t understand me but loved me enough to let me be me. My friend Ian (not my brother) was also there, I have known him my whole life, he grew up across the street from me, so when I needed someone who did truly understand, I could stop by or meet him for lunch. Though I didn't hang out all the time, just knowing he was there and occassionally running into him on campus was extremly comforting to me. We also had several mutual friends, which made where we grew up not weird to them.
On December 30, 2002 my parents moved back to the United States and so in the summer of 2003 I moved in with them as I started graduate school. Though it was an extremely hard decision, it was the best decision I have ever made and the place where healing from the wounds and struggles from my time in high school could finally begin. My mom forced me to tell her the truth about my struggles. We did research together about third culture kids. My mom, my dad, and I cried a lot. My parents had had no idea there were things I wasn’t telling them, like I felt completely alone, like that I was afraid to let people see who I really was, because based on their initial responses, that wouldn’t be good. Like that I really struggled making friends because my class was incredibly rebellious and I grew up in a system of corporal punishment and was raised by a community. Normal American peer pressure was overwhelming to me, at home having an alcoholic drink would cause either deportation, jail time, or the loss of a limb. And not only that, I grew up in a community where if Susie’s mom saw me doing things I wasn’t suppose to, she was calling my mom. This whole idea that you wouldn’t get caught was completely foreign to me.
Now I live 14 hours from my parents, it’s a far cry from the 8 time zones it used to be. With modern communication like facebook, I am in constant contact with all the friends I grew up with even though they are scattered all over the globe. I haven’t had a $600 phone bill in a really long time, though at times it has been the norm in my family. I have a community of friends and coworkers who know me, who I really am. Who aren’t surprised when I say things like, “I don’t know what you are talking about, I never watched that show as a kid.” Or “I hate pork products, they are too salty and growing up they were illegal.” I have learned that telling the truth is important to me, even though sometimes it’s painful. Secrets are part of my past, they won’t be part of my future.
I am working on finding peace with my time at Westtown, it’s why I decided to come back for alumni day this year. I don’t say these things because I feel like a victim. I wasn’t a victim in 1990 when Saddam invaded Kuwait and my town was evacuated and my mom, brothers, and I couldn’t go home for a year. I wasn’t a victim in September of 1999 when my dear friend Kim was shot while attending her church in Dallas, Texas. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. All that I really want is for what happened to me here to not happen to others. And I’m praying that the next time a third culture kid steps onto this campus, the will have freedom. Freedom to struggle, freedom to be real. And not only that, I pray that they will have the courage that I didn’t back then to do that.

Martha

I have been thinking for a long time that it would be a good idea to sponsor a child through either Compassion International or World Vision. I just have never taken the time to actually do it. I have been following Beth Moore's blog for a while and recently started following this blog . Beth's daughter Melissa has been blogging from India where she is on a trip with Compassion International, and Angie (the other blog) has been blogging from India, where she is on the same trip, with Melissa. I was reading both of their blogs and it was like God was saying to me "Cate, seriously, go to the website, look for a child, be a sponsor." So I did. I went to the website and I was looking at all these little girls and reading about them. They all seemed like perfect opportunities to use the resources the Lord has provided for me to help others, they all seemed like pretty normal little girls, they have chores at home, they like to play with dolls, they live in extreme poverty, but I just didn't feel compelled to click the button that said "sponsor this child." I did a search for females, with my birthday in any of the countries that Compassion International has ministries, and there was only one child that came up. Her name is Martha. Martha is 6 years old, she lives in Tanzania, with her mom and dad who sometimes are employed as farmers. She has chores around the house, like carrying water, helping in the kitchen and running errands. Here is the BEST PART, her list of favorite activities includes running, drawing, and playing ball. UM YES, I think this is a match made in heaven. I mean I am no artist but... seriously...

For those of you who don't know, for a lot of different reasons I started a massive health and fitness plan 5 and 1/2 weeks ago. I have been kickboxing, and running, and very sore some of the time, and I have completely changed my diet. It has been hard at times, but I believe that God was serious when He spoke through Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. If you aren't familiar with this passage this is what He said,

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body"

Part of my plan has been that I will run the country music marathon next April in Nashville. I have wanted to run a marathon for years. I know sometimes we as women get way carried away with negativity toward the bodies we were given. I know this and I deal with it at work on a frequent basis. There is a difference between making healthy lifestyle choices and being hyper critical, I needed to make some lifestyle choices. I needed to make some choices that would honor God by honoring the body he has given me. I have been more diligent this spring about taking my allergy and asthma meds as well. I was thinking that it would be cool to run the marathon for someone or something that I care about, I have even considered raising money for a ministry by getting people to sponsor me by the mile. I think I may have found it. And she has my same birthday, I think I can stop whining about having lousy birthdays now.

Who needs a groomer?

Those of you who know my dad, know that he is a neat freak, in the compulsive sort of way. He's not a germaphobe, he just does not like clutter, at all. An example of my dad's problem is that almost everyday my mom will bring the mail in and set it on the counter in the kitchen. My dad will walk into the kitchen a short time later, relize there is paper on the counter where it doesn't belong, and take into the garage to the recycling bin. Then a short time after that, my mom will come in and ask my dad what he did with the mail. He then replies with "oh, that wasn't trash, it was on the counter so I thought it was trash." I'm not kidding you, they have been having this same conversation everyday for like 40 years.
This past weekend and the beginning of this week my parents were in town, and as usual I had several tasks around my house that I needed my dad's help on. One was chainsawing up all the tree limbs in my yard that I hadn't yet cleaned up from the ice storm. He spent two days cutting things up till he broke his chain saw. The other task was to lay a huge rug in my living room and move my immensly heavy coffee table onto it. Ofcourse my dad decided that in order to put down the hand woven carpet from the middle east, all the furniture in the room had to be removed, then he had to vaccumm every nook and cranny in the room. I am not complaining, I mean, it saved me from having to vaccum over spring break. I was at work while all of this was going on at my house. When I came home, my dad asked me if Brady looked clean. Well I geuss she does. Brady has been sheddy a lot lately due to the fluctuations in temperature. Apparently while my dad was vaccumming, Brady was following him around, which she does everytime my dad is here. My dad got annoyed because she was getting in the way, so he vaccummed her. I'm not talking, let me point the wand at her and scare her a little. I'm talking flipped her over and vaccummed her belly and her back and behind her ears. He said she liked it.

Health History

I take care of sick people a lot, so it's a wonder that I am not sick more often than I am. However this week has been a monster. On Monday night I ended up staying at work longer than normal, due to some unforseen fun not involving injury or illness or the basketball team. Towards the end of the meeting I was feeling ill and was trying to get the people to wrap it up so I could make it home before getting ill. I didn't sleep much and I woke up at 5:45 and got in my car and drove to work. Upon arriving at work I realized that I felt like I'd been hit by a truck, and that my temperature was 99.9 I called my coworker, who I might add had just gotten in from a trip with the men's team at 3am. By the time he arrived and I left, which was approximately 45 minutes, I had taken tylenol and my fever was still climbing, to 101.3. I went home and stayed in bed and didn't move except to eat chicken noodle soup, and take more tylenol and sometime in the middle of the night tuesday the fever broke and so did the full body ache. I went to work on Wed, and then to cell group that night with a mild cough and loosing my voice. Weird. THursday my voice was still around but slowly fading and by Friday, I was wispering. I wasn't feeling bad, no fever, no runny noise, none of that. Friday night the coughing increased substantially, as did the amount of stuff coming out my noise. I know, awesome. So last night, after our game, our team physician basically told me that I sounded like death, though he said it much nicer, called in antibiotics, he already called in a steriod pack earlier in the week due to the whole lost voice thing. So now I am sitting in bed at home on a Sunday, eating more chicken soup, which I HATE by the way, with a ton of housework that has been neglected for probably close to a month, taking my sudafed, and steroids, and antibiotics, and allergy and asthma meds like clock work, and hoping that by tommorrow morning, I will be feeling better and not blowing grey stuff and blood out my noise or coughing up green goo.

2008... According to the books I read

If you didn't know, I read A LOT. Here are some of my favorites from 2008

1.God's Smuggler by Brother Andrew and John & Elizabeth Sherrill

It's about Brother Andrew and his ministry to bring Bibles and Christian literature to the former Soviet Union during communism. It was very suspensful and also insightful about what Christians in those countries went through and why ministry is so difficult there now

2.No Compromise, the life story of Keith Green by Melody Green and David Hazard

It's basically the biography of Keith Green who is one of the fathers of contemporary Christian music

3.The Color of Water: A black man's tribute to his white mother by James McBride

It's okay

4.All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

It's a classic, what else is there to say?

5.Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

I was a lot skeptical because it is a Christian romance novel, but many many friends kept telling me to read it, so I did. It is an amazing story of redemption, you should read it.

6.When Difficult Relatives Happen to Good People by Leonard Felder

My brother gave it to my mom last CHristmas. She made me read it, it was worth it.

7.Beckham, Both Feet on the Ground: an Autobiography by David Beckham

It was a very insightful book about one of the greatest soccer players of all time. I don't understand how he remembers pretty much every detail of every game he ever played.

8.Jewel by Bret Lott

It was an Oprah book club book and paid a dollar for it at the consignment store. It is about a mother raising her developmentally delayed daughter. It was worth the read

9.The Shack by William P. Young

It is amazing, definately not the Bible, but definately shook me up and made me stop putting God in a box

10. Old School by Tobias Wolff

It's about boarding school, I went to boarding school. It was worth the read to me but I think people who didn't go to boarding school might not get it.

11.Playing for Pizza by John Grisham

It's about an American NFL flunk out who moves to Italy to play professional football there and really enjoys it. I really enjoyed this book that is very different from everything else John Grisham has written.

12.Out in the Blue: Letters from Arabia 1937-1940 by Thomas C. Barger

So it's about the founding of Saudi Aramco, the company my dad worked for, for 20 years. It was a great read for me, I really enjoyed it.

13.Walking From East to West by Ravi Zacharias with R. S. B. Sawyer

Pretty much Ravi Zacharias' autobiography. Ravi is on of the leading apologists today, I love his other writting, I really enjoyed his autobiography about living in two different worlds.

14.Signs of God Along the Way by Steve and Ginny Saint

Steve and Ginny Saint are people of immense faith. What a testimony of how faithful God is.

15.The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve

Also an Oprah book club book, but better than Jewel. It's a really sad story though.

16.The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

I loved it, it explains a lot about what Afganistan was like before the Taliban and it's a really great story also.

17.A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

It is a really really sad book, but hopeful also. I think it should be required reading for high school kids or college freshman. It makes me so thankful for my childhood. You should read it in 2009

That's a snapshot

Brady

Last night I went to see Marley and Me with my friend Kim. I knew it was going to be sad and that I would probably most definately cry. I read the book about a year ago. I think I cried for the last three chapters.
What I decided last night was that I am pretty sure that Marley and my dog Brady are somehow related. For example, there is one scene in the movie and the book where Marley jumps out of the car while it is moving, um, yes Brady has done that. Then there is the scene where Marley jumps into the shower while the dog sitter is there. UM yes Brady has also done that to me. While Brady has yet to consume any electrical appliances, she has eaten a life time supply of wooden cooking implements. She has ripped apart several phone books, that is REALLY fun to clean up. She has destroyed an area of drywall in my kitchen. She has eaten I don't even know how many socks. She thinks that her rightful place is sitting in the recliner in the living room and gets annoyed when I kick her off it so I can sit there. She loves to chew on carrots and the stems of broccoli. Figured that out when she jumped up on the counter and stole them. She loves to try to take off running when I take her for walks or runs and trys to pull me around, however, when my brother tried to stand on his skateboard and get her to pull him, she just stood there looking at him like he was crazy. She is incredibly friendly and is very gentle with small children though she tries to greet all adults by jumping up and licking them in the face. She loves to eat ice, and for that reason LOVES it when I take her in to work when I have to stop by the office. Brady loves to go to the lake but she is a hysterically frantic swimmer. She loves to go hang out with her friend Sadie, and she loves going to the vet. She is just an incredibly social dog. And everyday I come home to a smiling, excited, tailwagging dog who thinks she is a lap dog and crawls up on the couch with me to snuggle.

Crazy, I KNOW

I just got back from San Diego, where my family spent an extremely relaxing Christmas. We stayed in my parent's time share, I met up with my good friend Nate and saw where he works, which is beautiful by the way. I played a round of golf at a par three course with my brother, he showed us around San Diego. We went to church at a really neat church that my brother's friend attends on Christmas eve. We ate Christmas dinner late so that Ian's roommate could join us, he had to work, and is from New Zealand so obviously he doesn't have family there. It was completely drama free, which is exactly what I needed, and what I had been praying for. Except for the plane rides that is. Despite the fact that flights were getting delayed and cancelled all over the country, I had no problems in that department. I was so exhausted from all the basketball travel lately that I got on the plane in Nashville, fell asleep before even taxiing from the gate, and woke up tucked in with a blanket. I really appreciated that flight attendant who did not wake me up for anything. Then on the connecting flight from Houston to San Diego, I ended up between an Iraqi and a Persian (Iranian). Now I don't know if you know much about the modern history between these two countries, but it isn't pretty. The Iraqi was a 21 year old college student whose parents fled the country before he was ever born. The Persian was a 65 ish yearold man who was convinced, based on the Iraqi's facial features, that he was Persian. Long story short, the Persian guy was extremely opinionated and made both myself (in the middle of the three seats) and the Iraqi kid very very uncomfortable with his racist remarks. I was thankful when the plane touched down in San Diego, and even more thankful to have some quality time with Nate who has similar frustrations and fun in his work with college students. So then after my relaxing stay in San Diego, I hoped a plane back to Houston today, it was a pretty uneventful ride. THen I hoped another flight from Houston back to Nashville. It was on an extremely small plane, and the guy behind me was somewhat inebriated and VERy LOUD. I have not heard that much foul language, maybe ever. There was this girl next to him who thought he was cute and nice I guess and they kept talking and talking VErY loudly, F this and F that and etc... This woman sitting behind him asked him to stop because her 5 yearold was hearing everything he was saying, it didn't stop. So sitting next to me was this cute couple who like me were getting more and more frustrated. When the plane finally touched down in Nashville, we all booked it as fast as we could. We commented to each other how nice it was to be away from this guy and hoped that he didn't have baggage to claim. So I end up on the bus with this couple to parking and we are discussing our AWESOME ride when I mention the plane ride to San Diego and the crazy Persian guy and that I grew up in the Middle East. Suddenly the wife's ears perk up. "I did too." she says. GET THIS, she is the same age as my brother, and we grew up in the same town in Saudi Arabia, but her family left when I was about 5 so I don't remember them. Our cars end up being at the same bus stop! and we stand there in economy parking at the Nashville airport reminiscing a little. Her husband is totally floored and excited to his wife able to talk about her childhood so freely with someone who understands. He is a physician at Vanderbilt Childrens' hospital and she works for the Vanderbilt hospital system with their computer systems!!! I gave them my card, and she is going to e-mail me, and I am SO PUMPED. All that from two airplane rides next to loud obnoxious travellers that will hopefully I never see again.

Sometimes you just need silence

For those of you who don't know, I went to a Quaker high school. It was an experience I have mixed feelings about, there was a lot of transition going on in my life and I was away at boarding school. Often people are confused about what Quakerism is, basically it was a protestant sect with some very particular ideas about silence and about consensus. Most Quaker meetings are now pretty liberal compared to most protestants today. It's a boarding school so we all lived there. At my high school we had 1 television for about 300 kids. So think kind of like 300 high schoolers living in your house with 1 television. We didn't watch very much of it, partly because there was only 1 and partly because we had so much other stuff going on. We had study hall every night, and we all played sports. Living at boarding school there was constant activity, constant noise. But I could always count on Wednesday morning meeting for worship where we would sit in silence for an hour, unless that is, that someone had something they felt the entire student body needed to hear. Complete silence. 300+ people sitting in complete silence is a pretty powerful thing. I always had that time to think, to process. It wasn't until this past week that I really realized how that silence to process is so important to me. In high school, with all the transitions, the normal ones like growing up, and the unusual ones, like moving half way around the world to a new country and a new culture, it was really helpful for me to have that silence. In my life today, there is still a lot of activity, I work with 18-22 year-olds, I have a lot of commitments at work, and several weekly activities, mostly related to church, outside of work. I am sometimes thankful that I live alone with my dog, because I get to come home to a quiet house. We have been on the road a lot in the last 3 weeks for basketball. This year, with the addition of a female sport info person, I now have a roommate on the road. I appreciate her, she is very helpful to me, she is a good friend, but I also miss the ability to go to my hotel room and have a few moments of silence. I think better with silence, I sleep better with silence, I don't feel awkward having a quiet time with the Lord when I am by myself. I do feel awkward having that time when there is someone else in the room watching television, and who doesn't share my beliefs. I also have to forgo my usual bedtime routine, which includes laying in bed reading before turning off the lights and going to bed. She goes to sleep with the TV on. I have never in my life had a television in my bedroom and I never ever plan on changing that. My family, though they can be loud, especially my dad, recognize my need for alone time, and the importance it is to me to get a good night of sleep. I get kind of, well maybe a lot cranky without it. I definitely met my limit last week. I was frustrated and when people made some interesting decisions that made more work, and disgusting work I might add, for me, I kind of definitely LOST IT. This past weekend we went on a short just over 24 hour trip. I got sick, I had a fever and horrible horrible stomach cramping. I ended up going back to the hotel to be alone while everyone else went to dinner. I really needed that time. When my roommate came back, the TV immediately went on and the noise in general increased. That is when it hit me. I think that for the most part, our society is afraid of silence, because silence allows us the time to think, about all sorts of things, especially deep stuff. If you never turn down the volume, you never have to face truths, like that we are all people who intentionally break God's heart, and that we are in desperate need for a Savior. As Christmas approaches and we get ready to celebrate the birth of our Savior, I am thankful to be home this week, and turn down, or off the volume, and remember that I truly need a Savior, and that God loves me enough to send one. And that he came to earth on Christmas day, and His name is Jesus...

The Blue Screen of Death

There have been several topics that I have wanted to blog about lately, however it's been prett busy around here so I have falen behind. About 2 weeks ago my computer crashed and I got the blue screen of death, more than once. I, not being so great at fixing nonfunctioning computers, took it to a place in Murray that does fix them. When I took my precious laptop in, the asked for my contact info. I told them to please call me during bussiness hours at my office at Murray State. The guy said "oh your a Murray State student?" I said "No, I am employed by the athletic department." I might add that this wasn't a day that I was wearing sweats and sneakers, I was actually dressed professionally in khakis and a polo and shoes that don't have a nike swoosh. I left and spent several days computerless while they fixed my computer. Several times I talked to them on the phone and they told me that they would give me the Murray State discount. At no time did the specify that the Murray State discount is for student, and I had clearly communicated that I am not a student, so I just assumed it was a discount for faculty and staff. So finally my computer was fixed. They were able to save all my documents, pictures, etc... I went to pick it up, they charged my debit card. AND then they showed me the bill and said "and this is the Murray State student discount." I AM NOT A STUDENT PEOPLE. I didn't say anything. I was so frustrated, I am constantly mistaken for a student. I know sometimes it's because I go to work at 5:30 am in sweat pants and t-shirts. But seriously, sometimes, when I dressed for games, in suits and high heels, people still think I am a student, or at least a graduate assistant.

Lately I have been thinking about those versus in Matthew 25 where Jesus talks about the final judgement. If you need a refresher, here it is

31 “But when the Son of Man[d] comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne. 32 All the nations[e] will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left.
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. 36 I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’

37 “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? 39 When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

40 “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters,[f] you were doing it to me!’

41 “Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.[g] 42 For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. 43 I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

44 “Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’

45 “And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’

46 “And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.”

Recently there was a situation in my life where I had to call and report a little boy and his parents to the Department of Social Services. I wonder if I did enough in this little boy's life.

Then last week on campus there was this group of people who had this HUGE display of babies who had been aborted out in the middle of campus so that you couldn't walk by with out looking.

So it makes me wonder, how do I live out that teaching? I don't think it's enough to just give away money to causes I care about, but how do I make time in my busy schedule to get my hands dirty? How does it effect the way I vote a week from today? How do I apply it as a single woman who lives alone? Like do I even worry about personal safety? I mean honestly I don't often have random strangers knocking on my door asking for a place to sleep, but what if someone did?

Cate and Arwen 2008

So every year, starting last year, my roommate from college and dear friend Arwen and I take a hike. Last year went swimmingly well with a 30 mile hike over 2 4000 ft mountains in the white mountains of New Hampshire over a 3 day period. So this year we were optimistic about a hike through the Land Between the Lake here in KY. It started with Arwen's flight, which was suppose to get in at 6pm Thursday night, getting delayed multiple times, rerouted multiple times, and finally arriving at 11:30pm. Needless to say it was rather late when Arwen and I finally made if back to Murray and went to bed. We were suppose to hike the 60 miles of the north south trail in three days over undulating terrain, but since we didn't start until after 2 pm on Friday, we opted to only hike 30, from the South station to the Golden Pond visitors center. No big deal right. So the first day we made our tenish mile hike to the tent site/ water spring. When we got there we were starting to run low on water so we went to fill up. YEAH, so the "spring" water was nasty stagnate water which we boiled, AND filter, and drank. The next morning we set out to hike about 15 miles to another tent site/ "spring" water. We were planning on filling up about half way. This is where it starts to get rather interesting. First, due to storm damage from IKE, part of the trail was closed and we had a detour. The place where we had planned on filling up, we had to bypass and we had to walk down the Trace highway till we were finally able to get back on the trail. So we look at our handy dandy LBL map and think, "well we can make it to the next water place." So off we hike. Occasionally we stop so Arwen can lubricated her blisters, with, Chap Stick. Yes, Arwen forgot the first aid kit so she improvised. We finally get to the place to turn off the trail to get water, and decide that we are going to camp there, it's only 6 miles the next morning. The sign said .8 miles to the camp site, and supposed water. At this point I think between the two of us we maybe have 2 Tablespoons of water left. After I'd say 1.5 miles we decide that the supposed camp site /"Spring water" site is not here. Arwen is now walking down hill backwards, her feet REALLY hurt and she is REALLY thirsty. So I ask Arwen "Arwen, are you having fun?" So she says "At this particular moment, NO." So we make a plan, we are going to hike back to the N/S trail and up to the next "Pic Nic/ Water" area. I would to remind you all that we did not make up these "Spring water" places, they are clearly marked on the map and my Murrayan friends told about also. So we get to the next lovely green sign and low and behold we realize, someone thinks they are funny and has rearrange some of them. We see a little map in the wooden box thing and we "sprint" ahead to read it. It looks like about 1/2 miles down a gravel road will get us back to the Trace. We decide we are DONE with this whole LBL hiking extravaganza and we hike to the road. We use my trust and ever true compass, purchased for 99 cents, last year at Walmart and we head NORTh on the Trace. Every car going North, we turn and stick out our thumbs. Yes Chris Talcott, it is true Cate and Arwen hitch hiked. Arwen at this present time has switch to the crocs and Cate is alternating between bare feet and flip flops. NO ONE STOPS. We finally make it to the pic nic area, NO SPRING WATER HERE. At this point my lips are crusty and I think I may be hallucinating. Finally some dears souls in a white car, with a messier backseat than mine pull over to get us. They have no water but they do drive us 4 miles to the law enforcement and administrative building for LBL. NO ONE is there and NEITHER IS THERE WATER. There is a vending machine, but I only have a 20 dollar bill. It's 7 pm so we leave our gear in front of the building cause we are not carrying any of it ANYMORE. We walk/ slash shuffle from the law enforcement building about 500 yards to the Golden Pond visitors center. Arwen is jogging in her socks. We know there is beverage in the trunk of my car and that my car is in that parking lot. Several people pass us with perplexed looks, it's also getting dark. We to the entrance, the gates are shut, it is past 5 pm. We get to the car and we chug, and I mean chug. I have never chugged alcoholic beverage, ever, but I'm pretty sure I could win a water chugging contest with my performance this evening. I mean were talking close to 9 ish miles with NO WATER. So now we are sitting in my car, chugging water and juice figuring out how to get home with no cell phone reception, no pay phones and the gate locked. Arwen is convinced that we can bust of the Golden Pond visitors center so I drive down and she directs me, still in socks, around several trees and out of the center. Yes my Ford Contour drove OFF the road and around several obstacles we shall say. At this point we have seen NO stunning views, pumped water in No running streams, but we are laughing at our lawlessness. So we head back to the law enforcement center to load up our gear. We pull and start packing the car when a kind gentleman, with, according to Arwen, a cute beard, what can I say, she like beards, asks us if we are okay. I'd just like to point out, that this is the first time someone has asked us that. We tell him of our trial, his face speaks of major confusion. He says "well would you like some water." NO thanks got that already, and juice, in the trunk. We drive out and towards home, cross the Kentucky lake, now there is also some water. As we are driving down 68/80 I notice that there is a car coming straight at me in the fast lane of the divided highway. I swerve to just barely miss a head on collision and I honk my horn. SO we head over to Culver;s for ice cream, and to the RSEC for a cold whirlpool because we have hiked over 20 miles today. Note to self, we will never hike again in the LBL. We will continue our annual tradition in a place where, when the map says water in 2.5 miles, there will be water in 2.5 miles. And I know this sounds like an amazingly fun trip and you are sad you missed it this year, but no, no guests will be allowed on the Cate and Arwen annual adventure. We finally made it home, Arwen had not fallen once, and she stubbed her toe going up my stairs, so now she is bleeding.

I'm ready for Fall

Last Sunday morning hurricane Ike rolled through Murray with a lot of wind. Many trees fell, and many power lines were severed for various reasons, and Calloway County is still cleaning up the debris. Had I owned a tree removal business, I probably would have made a great deal of money this week, but I don't. Sunday afternoon was a rather peaceful afternoon spent with friends. Most of Murray was without power. I enjoyed the quietness, I hadn't really realized how much background noise there is in my everyday life. We played scrabble. I can't even remember the last time I played scrabble but I'm pretty sure it was a long time ago. We also had a bonfire that night, just sat around roasting marsh mellows and what not. We had another bonfire last night. I haven't had the opportunity to just sit around and talk, about nothing, about God, about what is important to me and to you and to whoever else.
I think so much of my life is really pretty fast paced, I have a list of things I need to get done, and do those things, and get interrupted with more important things and then I go home and I sleep. I don't really get a chance to process it all with other people, with no agenda.
So this week I have been thankful for the opportunity to do that a little, and also I am thankful because it's starting to become fall, and I love fall. I am excited for crisp air and being outside. I am really excited for fall break when Arwen will be down in Murray, KY and we will be out in the wilderness with nothing electronic, pumping our water and falling asleep under the stars after a long day of hiking, in the cool October breeze.

Don't you wish you had my life?

Note: Please read as much sarcasm as you want into this post...

I had an AWESOME it sucks to be single weekend. Now when I say AWESOME, I mean REALLY AWESOME. It started Friday afternoon. I left work at a decent hour, maybe 6:30 ish, I didn't feel like going home and cooking something because we all know that cooking for oneself all the time is SUPER FUN, and since I generally eat most of my meals at home, I decided to stop by Matt B's, a local pizza establishment that sells pizza by the slice, to purchase a slice, to eat at home of course. Because while I am getting up there in the "she's still single?" age, I'm not to the "wow, check out that girl in the corner booth eating by herself" category just yet. SO I took my pizza home, and ate by myself. I thought to myself, hmmm it would be fun to hang out with people tonight, but when I ran through a list of my friends in Murray that are fun to hang out with, most of them have small children who generally go to bed early, have date night with their husband on Friday night, etc... in fact my only single friends are some guys I work with, and we don't really hang out outside of work, and they were all in Indiana with the football team. So I decided instead of sulking at home, to make a night of it, so I headed out to do some much needed grocery shopping at Wal-Mart. At Wal-Mart I had the immense pleasure of running into SEVERAL student-athletes and their significant others, always fun, to try to get away from work for a couple of hours, or maybe 30 minutes, and run into people from work. So after spending $32 on food for the week, it's true, very cheep to feed one person, I headed home where I realized that my washer was officially broken. I stayed up watching the Wedding Singer, always a good movie to watch when you feel down about being single and then I headed off to bed. Of course I woke up at about 7:30 am because well, I go to work at 5:30 am during the week. I took Brady for a walk, she pooped in the yard of an abandoned house, I didn't feel compelled to clean it up, nobody lives there and the grass is like knee high. Some lady across the street came out of her house and yelled at me for it. Thanks just what I needed. It was really nice weather out and I thought, gee it would be a nice day to spend hiking or out at the lake, but alas, those activities are pretty boring by yourself. SO THEN THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY. After cleaning the house some, I headed out to Lowe’s to buy a new washer, oh the joys of being a homeowner. As I perused the selection of affordable, and by affordable I mean costing less than $1000 dollars, ouch, the very good looking, super nice, no wedding band, salesman named John came up to ask me if I needed help. Now I will say, I have done some research on washing machines, because I knew this day was coming, but what guy wouldn't think that a single girl looking at washing machines would need help. I might also add that I was looking SUPER HOT, in my royalish blue mesh Nike shorts, sports bra, old and ragged looking Murray golf shirt, with my disheveled hair, my backpack, etc... you get the picture. I also, in my despair the evening before, forgot to take my allergy meds, so pretty much I eyes were puffy, I couldn't really hear out of my ears, AND my voice was, well, deep. So John and I discussed the pros and cons of various washing machines, he asked me if I played golf, I told him that indeed I do, but that I am not very good. Several times he mentioned his love for golf. I told him that I wanted to peruse some more but that in a couple of minutes I would make a decision because I needed to purchase one due to the excess of dirty laundry at my house and my desire to NOT go to the Laundromat. He verbalized his distaste for Laundromats also and told me to find him when I was ready to make a decision. Here's my thing about Laundromats, first of all they are gross, second of all, all sorts of sketchy people go there, and being single, living by myself, who will call the police if I don't come home? So as I'm wandering through the five isles or so of washers and dryers, I think to myself, 1. why aren't there any good looking, nice, single men, that go to my church, or that are Christian that I know, I mean what the heck, and 2. I have a "no dating guys named John" rule imposed by my dear friend Arwen. Arwen imposed this rule on me because the last two guys named John, were very unclear about their intentions, and pretty much it sucked. I mean what guy spends tons of time on the phone with you, always pays for your meals when the two of you go out, takes you to his "favorite place to watch the sunset", etc... and then sends you a facebook messages stating that he is not interested and maybe we have different ideas about what our relationship is? Seriously? SO no guys named John. SO I can't locate John the salesman, so I push that silly button that announces "assistance need at the appliance desk, assistance..." and John comes back from where ever he was. I purchase my awesome new washer that is energy efficient. This year instead of spending approximately $19 to run my washer, I will spend $11. John continues to tell me how much HE LOVES TO PLAY GOLF. I finish the details of having it delivered, give him my number to put in the computer in case the delivery guys get lost, and as I start to walk away he says, "hey if you ever want to play some golf let me know." Sure, I'll get right on that, I know nothing about you, or how to get in touch with you, other than the fact that you sell appliances at Lowe’s. So I returned home, where I spent the rest of the day watching the UNH wildcats beat Army on ESPN classic live, it made me proud to be a wildcat. Then I fell asleep in my chair because I was tired. I woke up, took Brady out to the lake, she had fun though there was an old man out there who appears to be living there, kind of weird. I came home, gave Brady a bath, and cleaned my house some more, ate dinner, by myself, thought, "it would be fun to go to the movies tonight." but alas, no fun by myself. I put in Memoirs of a Geisha because that is also an awesome movie about people who have terrible love lives. Then I went to bed. I woke up this morning and went to church, where there are no single guys to date, and where I had to hear about other people's great weekends. Then I went to lunch with people from church, I must confess that I was pretty pissy. Then I called Arwen so I could rant to someone who understands how much it sucks to be single, after you graduate from college, and graduate school, and have a real job. She suggested that I needed to look for a group of career aged, single, Christian people to get to know, like maybe another church has a group that meets for Bible study weekly or something. So this afternoon the washer was delivered, thankfully, I am doing laundry. I also spent time looking for said group online. I guess unlike the northeast, we don't have those types of groups, cause I searched Murray, Paducah, Paris, and Clarksville. In fact the closest one is in Nashville on Monday nights. Now that I am done ranting on my blog, my advise to you married people in the world, STOP TELLING YOUR SINGLE FRIENDS THAT YOU MISS YOUR SINGLE DAYS, because really if you think about it long enough, you don't. And don't assume that you understand how hard it is, if you were never single, and by that I mean not married, or not dating the person that you married, after you graduated from college and were in the working world for a while. UUGGHH.

Why would anyone do that?

Someone tried to scam my 92 yearold grandmother today. They called her pretending to be her grandson. Their fatal flaw was that they called her grandma which is not what her 3 grandchildren have ever called her. She asked them which grandson they were. After an ackward pause they started to tell her that they had been in an accident in Canada and that they needed her to send money. She told the individual that they knew better than to call asking for money, that if they needed money to call Auntie Brenda and ask her, then she hung up the phone. My grandmother at 92 is one sharp cookie, thankfully she didn't fall for the story. She was a little rattled and immediately she called my aunt, who called my dad, who tried to call my brothers, and then called me. So then I got ahold of both my brother, cause I am good at that. Indeed neither of them were in Canada.
More and more you hear about people who prey on the elderly in our country. Many times they are extremely succesful at it too. My other 2 grandparents aren't as capable cognitively anymore. My dad's mom also has a daughter, my aunt, who is constantly coaching her on how to deal with these types of situations. Recently I saw an article here in the Murray paper about a public service class for the ederly to help them avoid scams. It's sad on two levels. First that people who take advantage of the vulnerable like that, and secondly, that many elderly don't have families who take great effort to look out for them. My grandmother has an incredible resource in my aunt, though my grandmother still makes all her own decisions about finances, my aunt always is with her when she makes those decisions. It was easy to tell the scam artist to call Auntie Brenda, because she knows that Auntie Brenda is much more aware of people trying to take advantage, not because she is quicker mentally, but because she was an incredible savy bussiness women her entire career and knows what to look for.

The FINAL COUNTDOWN begins

There are 11.5 days left till I leave for Colombia! And there are a ton of things I have to get done. Here is a list:
1. I really need to mow my lawn
2. I need to pack, then unpack, then repack half of what I packed the first time
3. I need to call the newpaper and tell them to hold it for me
4. I need to tell the post office to hold the mail (I did pick up the form)
5. I need to either find a ride to the airport or see if I can park my car at a friend's in Nashville
6. I need to make sure I bring my passport and plane ticket
7. I need to clean out my fridge
8. I need to clean my house and especially make sure the trash is out when I actually leave
9. I need to make sure all my bills are paid, specifically my mortage, electric, and utilities
10. I need to workout the details of Brady's extended play date with my friend's dog and give them the bag of dog food
11. I need to finish the hotel reservations and turn in the contracts for the upcoming basketball season
12. I need to find someone to work the last men's basketball camp
13. I need to ask someone to watch my house and give them a key
When I was growing up we would leave for vacation and be gone for a month and a half. I don't know how my mom did it. Not only did she have all the details about our house, dog, bills, etc... to take care of, she also had 3 kids the pack for. It's always so so busy before going on a long trip. There are always a million things running through my head that I need to get done. I always end up getting on the plane and remember about 17 things that I didn't do, and then it hits me, it doesn't matter now cause I am on a plane and if it's not done now, it won't get done. It's kind of like life. We spend so much time running around worrying about things like whether or not we will get everything done at work, or whether or not we will be able to rewire the house in the next 6 months, will I have enough money saved to retire when I'm 55 or 60 or whatever? But in the end one day we will be on our way home to be with our Heavenly Lord and non of that stuff will matter. What does Jesus say in Matthews? Oh right, today's troubles are enough for today. Don't worry, I will clean both toilets before I leave so that my house isn't sitting with dirty toilets for 3 weeks mom, I promise I will remember. PS the picture at the top? My older brother and I on vacation in the mid 80s at my grandparents cottage in Maine, mom remembered our play clothes but the probably forgot to throw away the milk in the fridge, good thing she remembered to have someone thoroughly clean the house including the carpets who probably found the rotting milk and threw it away.

Taiwan... OR COLUMBIA (South America)

Last Thursday I got a call from Shannon at Athletes in Action. The long and short is that I will no longer be travelling with them to Taiwan, instead I will be travelling with them to Columbia. People keep asking me which one. Several people have asked if I mean South Carolina, one person asked me if I meant Columbia, Ohio. I didn't know there was a Columbia, Ohio. Anyway, I will be going to Columbia, in South America. So to get excited about this fun change of plans here are some fun facts:
1. Spanish is the official language (Cate does not speak spanish)
2. They use 110 volt appliances (that means I don't have to take converters)
3. They use the metric system
4. Their currency is the Columbian Peso
5. We will be there during the "less dry season" which means it won't be the wet season but it won't be extremly dry either
6. Bogota, one of the cities we will be visiting is a mountain top city (yay for mountains!)
7. Cartagena, another city we will be visiting is on the Carribean ocean
So basically we will be in two of Cate's favorite places, the beach AND the mountains!

Party Party Party

The last few weekends have included a whole lot of events. First I think was my friends' Jaclyn and Brian's 2 year old son Luke's birthday party. The party was just days after his sister Norah was born. Luke received a wide array of vehicles, trucks, boats, planes, steam rollers. After Luke's party came his dad Brian's birthday at August Moon. Then after that, three weekends ago was my friend Greg's 30 birthday party. Then the next weekend was Greg and Kristin's daughter Cate's 1st birthday. I was also Kristin's birthday the day of Cate's party. Then after that was Achazia's 2nd birthday, we had cake at cell group. This past Wednesday we had an end of the year cookout type event to celebrate the women's basketball team and the 5 former players who were graduating. Then after that, this weekend my friend Holly graduated from grad school so there was a little shindig at her house yesterday afternoon. Then after that a family from my church with an AWESOME house had a game night, AKA random party, which lasted well into the night last night. It has been pretty busy, but also exceptionally fun. I think one of the highlights was the 2 random kids, Lucky and Thomas, who invited themselves to Holly's graduation party. They were not acquittance's of anyone at the event, just two random neighborhood kids that invited themselves in for some food and fun. I remember when I first moved here I felt was bored a lot of the time. I felt disconnected so to speak. I would try to find stuff to do on the weekend. I think the amount of events on the calendar the last couple of weeks is a clear indication that I am now connected to this community. There is a woman who works at the university that I have been getting to know better of late. She lives on my street and so she has been randomly driving by as I have been walking Brady and beeping at me. At first it kind of scared me cause I didn't know who it was driving past me. But now that I know who it is, it kind of fun. A few months ago I was asked by one of the assistant athletic directors at Murray State how long I thought I would stay here. I told him that I didn't know, and that is the truth. Beyond that though, the more rooted I become in this community the more difficult it will be to leave. Also the more rooted I become in this community the more balanced my life has become, the more perspective I have been able to gain, the more blessed I feel to live in this community. A lot of people who work in college athletics bounce around a lot from one job to another. On one hand it makes it okay that they spend excessive amounts of time at work, and also it makes it easier for them to leave, because they never are attached. However I am beginning to see that that lifestyle is incredibly lonely and unhealthy. So here are some photos from the last several weeks, most of them were taken by my friend Kristin.

That's Luke at his birthday

That's Norah at her brother's party

That's Brian and Greg trying to cut ice cream cake at Brian's Party

That's some of the guys playing cornhole at Greg's birthday

That's Kristin, Tuvia, and Kristin's neice Milla helping Cate open her presents

That's Cate and Holly at Holly's graduation party
Next up in a suprise birthday party for a woman at church. That will be tuesday. After that I'm not really sure. However I am considering celebrating my half birthday right before I leave for Taiwan. I mean I was in Morehead, KY for my real birthday, and since we are all about parties in Murray, KY why not...

Grace flows down and covers me.

I can't wait for the summer!!!! It's almost here!!! I will be spending my vaction traveling to Arizon and then to Taiwan with Athletic in Action. http://www.athletesinaction.org/
I went on a tour with them to South Africa and Zimbabwe in 2002 and it was an amazing, perspective changing experience. I am excited to be serving the Lord with this organization again.
I have been thinking a lot about people in impoverished nations lately. I know that is strange thing to say, but recently two families from my church adopted children from Liberia. I have learned a lot about Liberia and the civil war that they have gone through lately. I also read a book called "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier." http://www.alongwaygone.com/
Basically it's this guy's story about how the civil war in Seire Leone affected his life, how he got sucked into the military, how they got him addicted to cocaine, etc.. He was only 11-13 or so when all this was going on. Then when I finished the book I read his bio in the cover jacket of the book, and realized that he was less than a year older than me.
Then recently I met up with my friend Kerstin while I was in Baltimore for the NCAA tournament. Kerstin works for a organization called World Relief and was about to go on a trip to Haiti. I had learned about Haiti and all the economic issues that they face regularly in high school but hadn't heard much about Haiti since then. Kerstin basically is a photographer for World Relief so she documents what their organization is doing in different parts of the world. SO while Kerstin was in Haiti I saw this thing on CNN about Port Au Prince and how the people in Haiti have no food because all their food has to be imported and it's so expensive. I started watching it because I thought, wait a minute, Kerstin is there right now. They were interviewing these people about how they eat "dirt cookies" which are basically dirt and water and butter, because that is all they can afford. THey were interviewing (CNN was) some healthcare workers about how the dirt doesn't get digested and sits in these peoples stomachs and we'll just say it doesn't turn out so good.
All this is to say, I didn't choose to be born into the life of privledge I was, Ishmeal Beah didn't choose to be born in Seirre Leone. It is only by the Grace of God that I have been blessed with the life I have. There are things that I can do to help people in Liberia, and Sierre Leone, and Haiti, and I should do those things. I also need to remember, and remind others that we are not owed anything in this life. What is the old saying? There but for the Grace of God go I? It's true, so today I want to live a life of gratitude, for all that have, most importantly my salvation, and that God has saved me from a lot of hurts and pains, and seeming hopelessness that some many others have not been spared from in this life time.

Whoville

I went to the movies and glow golfing with a family from my church. We went to see Horton Hears a Who. I am not a big movie goer. It was a lot of fun because the family I was with has two newly adopted kids and it was quite a joy to see their four year-old watch the movie. There was one scene in the movie that made me laugh. There is this one scene where the mayor of Whoville comes home and he is in his bedroom hanging from the chandelier when his wife comes in. He is saying these things that make absolutely no sense. His wife comes in and is trying to understand what he is doing and what he is trying tell her. She is trying to be supportive and non judgemental, but she is really confused and thinks that her husband has gone crazy. I was sitting there and I thought, there it is, there is the explanation as to why I don't understand men. It's because they are crazy and make no sense at all. Well maybe not all of them, but most of them.

We're going dancing

So we won the OVC championship!! We won our first round game at home against Morehead on Tuesday night. On Wednesday night we headed to Nashville for practice and the awards ceremony on Thursday. Player of the Year was a member of our team. We won our semifinals game against Samford University on Friday. In the other semifinal game Eastern Illinois University beat Southeast Missouri University. SEMO was the team that beat us last year in the final. So we met EIU in the finals. We were down a couple points early in the first half, but we made a run, and led the rest of the game. It's kinda of surreal to work so hard for something and want it for so long and then for that to happen.

Now we are headed to the NCAA. It's pretty exciting. We had this crazy police escort back. Once we crossed the Calloway County line we were joined by 2 police cars with all the lights flashing. I think that by the time we pulled up in the loading dock at RSEC pretty much every cop in Murray was surrounding our bus. It was pretty awesome. Then there was a fire truck with it's lights on and crazy chanting fans when we pulled into the loading dock. It was a lot of fun. I am also excited for a pretty low key week before getting back out on the road again.

March Madness

So I hate uncertainty. I am a planner. I like to have everything ready well in advance. SO this whole March tournament time is one of mixed emotions for me. It is fun. There is a lot riding on each game, emotions are high. Each win is celebrated. Each loosing team walks off the court with tears.
One of my job responsibilities is coordinating the travel arrangements for our team. It is not my favorite thing but most of the time I have everything done well in advance. I have the hotel contracts done in July and August. The bus contracts are done in September. I have worked through everything with the caterers and those contracts are done at least a month before we travel. The week before we leave the itinerary is finished and sent to the appropriate people.
But all that isn't possible when it's win or go home. The travel arrangements for Wednesday (as in tomorrow) are tentative based on the outcome of tonight's game. If we win I will be finalizing it all late into the night tonight and early tomorrow morning. If we don't win, I will be canceling it all.
In some ways I wish that I could just hand all of this travel stuff off to someone else. However this responsibility has taught me some important lessons over the last two seasons. There are things I can control, and things I can't. I can't control it if the sandwich place messes up and forgets to bring someones sandwich with the other 22. I can't control it if the bus has issues or the driver can't go for more than 2 hours without stopping to pee. All I can control is my attitude when those situations arise. This is a message I feel like I have been hearing all my life. It is only recently that I have come to understand it.
So I hope we win tonight, and keep winning. Even though the uncertainty of the travel planning is stressful to me. Because I would rather be up all night finding restaurants and printing driving directions than up all night leaving messages to cancel our plans.

I'M BACK

So I haven't blogged in a really long time. But my brother just started a new blog about his adventures on his way from North Carolina to San Diego and I decided that I kind of miss blogging, so I am starting up again.

So it was a lot of fun to catch up with my friend Amanda. We shared memories that know one else can relate to so that was super fun. Yesterday I found out that my uncle has facebook. NO KIDDING, MY UNCLE. I was exceedingly suprised. This weekend will be one of my last free weekends before basketball season starts. I am going yardsaling tommorrow morning early with my friend Hannah, then later in the day I am going with the youth group to Clarksville to go caving. I also will be spending some time cleaning my house which hasn't been done in a while. I also need to collect all the walnuts in the backyard and mow the grass, hopefully for the last time until spring. I HATE mowing, mainly because I can't breath afterwards. This week has been really busy, Monday night I went to dinner at the house of a family that goes to my church. That was a really good time, it was also good to talk to Alice the wife, and gain some insight about some things that have been heavy on my heart concerning my cell group. Then Tuesday I watched the US women beat Nigeria with the daughters of the family I ate dinner with on Monday. Then Wednesday I had cell group which was really good, emotional but good as we talked about some hard stuff about how we treat each other. Then Thursday my friends had a whole bunch of family and friends over to celebrate the final adoption hearing for their daughter. So tonight I am planning on trying to get some of those chores I need to get done done so that by Sunday I can rest because I am VERY tired.

Make new friends, but keep the old...

In a few minutes I am leaving to go to St. Louis to watch a Cardinals game with people who have become dear friends in the last 2.5 years. Meeting us at the game is someone I can't remember not knowing. She was my best friend in preschool. Our birthdays are just days apart so we used to have joint birthday parties. Our mom's felt it was silly to have two parties that were exactly the same. We even shared birthday cakes. We used to play for hours together, and our moms would forget if we were at my house or hers. One time in the 1st grade we broke into an empty house and painted the garage. Got grounded for a month. In about 2nd grade she moved with her parents to Dhahran. My mom used to put me on the Aramco bus and I would ride there by myself, her mom would meet me and we would spend the weekend together. Then the next time she would ride the Aramco bus to Ras Tanura. Then in 4th grade the war came. My mom, brothers, and I spent the year in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan while my dad was in Saudi. Her family chose to move back to Spokane, Washington. The summer between fourth and fifth grade, I flew unaccompanied minor by myself to Spokane to spend a week with her. We went to her family cottage in Priest Lake, ID where she recently had her marriage celebration. For the next several years, even in highschool. We corresponded through letters. Yes we wrote letters back and fourth. Some where around the beginning of college we kinda lost touch. I mean our mom's still send Christmas letters, but Amanda and I lost touch. So a few months ago when she found me on facebook, I was suprised and excited. Today she is going to meet me at the Cardinals game and we are going to catch up face to face for the first time since the summer of 1991. In brownies we used to sing a song. "Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold."

PEACE

I am waiting right now for the last athlete I have today to come in for treatment. While I've been waiting I have been thinking about something that has been frustrating me. Do any of you have any of those friends who require a great deal of emotional energy. They are fun to be around sometimes, when they are in a good mood. But most of the time they just suck you dry? Well there are a few people here in Murray that are like that. They are the people that think that their drama, or trauma, or whatever is the WORST. That what is going on in their lives should consume yours as well. It's been very frustrating. I'm not saying that I am perfect, or that I am necessarily the easiest person to be friends with. But seriously. Last night we had a suprise birthday party for my friend Jaime. One thing I really appreciate about Jaime is that she is very easy going. It's fun to do nice things for Jaime because she truely appreciates what you've done. She isn't one of those people who has an idea of what she wants people to do for her birthday and then pouts when people try to do something nice but it wasn't exactly her vision. Her attitude frees people to plan and do nice things for her. Anyway, Jaime's husband took the whole day off from work to make her day really special, but as they were returning to Murray for the suprise party our Bible study had planned, their van broke down and had to be towed back. Jaime's response, "the van breaking down was fun actually." Being Jaime's friend is easy. My other friend, in the same Bible study is not so easy to love. She is the kind of person that I have started to describe as "living on the edge." What I mean by that is that you just NEVER know when they are going to LOSE IT. It's like they flip out over who knows what and make everything miserable for everyone else. There are times when things happen, and you know she is going to lose it, and it's just really frustrating. That whole idea of being flexible, rolling with the punches, just isn't easy for her. So last night during Jaime's birthday celebration, she asked me a very direct question. I knew that my answer would not be what she wanted to hear, and that she would throw a little temper tantrum, so I lied. Half of me was thinking, I can't tell the truth she will flip out and throw a temper tantrum, and make this birthday party uncomfortable for everyone. The other half of me was thinking, I can't believe I am lying. Ephesians 4:2-3 says "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." I wonder how far Paul meant for us to take that. And I wonder what to do now. Do I set a time to meet with my friend and tell her the truth? or do I just let her think that I told her the truth and let it be? And now that athlete is hear, and I will go take care of her...