Testy friends...

My sweet baby girl is a magnet for testy people... people who, as Beth Moore says, test where you are in the sanctification process. She has a co-dependent personality, and her greatest thrill in life is to be needed. Unfortunately, she attracts friends no one else would put up with because they are so bossy or bitter or rebellious. I admire the way she loves them anyway. I hate the way it tears her apart to be friends with them.

She had a rough end to this week's mission trip. But by all accounts, especially from one of her teachers with whom I have been most impressed, she came forth shining like gold. And the two other girls who ganged up on her seem petty and bitter. Even when we picked her up, those two girls looked... trapped. It made me think that we choose bitterness from a very young age. It also made me feel icky to know that I come across as a bitter, offensive person to others.

I admire my daughter, and I look forward to loving on her a lot this year. It's not going to be an easy one. I pray that the Lord, in His mercy, will go before and behind and with her as she wraps up high school and looks forward to college.

LNO...

Tonight I had coffee with some really awesome women. There were many conversations, but a couple of things stand out in my mind most.

1. When I walked away from high school, I REALLY walked away from high school. I thought it was a good thing at the time, and maybe it was. Jury's out on that one.

2. No church is perfect. I think I may have talked my friend into staying at her church and inadvertently talked myself into staying in our church. What I did realize is that the things that bother me most about my church are the same things that bother my church-discontented friends about their churches. Whatever is broken, it seems to be broken all over.

3. Chances are that what's broken in the churches all over is the people who go to them.  Like me.

4. I love coffee at that sweet coffee place. It feels like home.

5. Drawing pictures across from friends is fun. I would love to make a little project. Big wheels keep on turning... sorry, proud Mary wasn't there tonight.

And that's all folks.... nite!  

Write a little each day...

Yesterday I thought I'd use a writing exercise book to fuel content for this blog. Today I opened the book for the writing prompt, and it's all about reading your writing aloud.

Nah... I think I'll pass today. If I go to publish anything, I will most definitely read it aloud, probably to my listening-because-he-has-no-choice husband.

Today was hot. 110 on the pool deck. I took a picture, see...

...hot, humid, sweltering, sweating, stifling, suffocating...

That's about all I can manage today. I was in 110 heat for about four hours, reading a Clyde Edgerton novel, which was, in all honesty, quite a letdown.

My laptop died...

I wasn't in a good mood to begin with because I was listening to a sermon by a guy whose church I would rather attend than the one I go to now. I should have been excited to hear the sermon, but instead I was miffed to be stuck in our languishing church.

It's an ugly attitude. I own it. Jesus and I are working through it. 

I decided to take my computer upstairs so I could get a shower and climb in bed and finish listening to the sermon. I pulled the earbuds out of my ears and laid them across the keyboard, lightly closed the screen, and walked up stairs. I put the laptop at the foot of my bed and then took a shower and got into my favorite jammies and snuggled down under the covers. I grabbed the laptop, opened it up, and probably would have shrieked but for the mercy of denial. That can't be a cracked screen. Seriously. SERIOUSLY! SERIOUSLY? SERIOUSLY?!!!

Shut down and battery removal cure all curable ills. This one was obviously incurable.

So my laptop is on life-support, connected to the desktop monitor. I have a zip-drive for back-up. I'm in the market for a new laptop. MacBook Pro or Air. My Macvisers encourage me to hold out to see what the new Airs bring. It's not like I actually have money to spend on a new computer for a couple of weeks anyway.