November Cakes

Another Amy Beth Post

Several months ago, I wrote a blog about a girl I knew in high school who took in a friend who was having a baby. Well, the young lady had a beautiful, healthy baby boy. I have the blog on my links...it is entitled Ministry So Fabulous, but I thought I would repost her blog post from today just in case you didn't have time to click the link:

All her scarlet letters.

On Monday night, right before Roomie began pushing, I got as close to her bed as possible, looked her in the eyes and, with tears rolling down my cheeks, thanked her for not having an abortion.

Listen to me. Please, please listen to me.

If you think that Christian girls in their twenties are not having abortions, you are dead wrong. I could give you a list of girls I know who seriously love Jesus and have seriously had an abortion. When you are “caught” in actions that you shouldn’t have been in, you would be amazed at the choices that suddenly seem applicable to your situation. Things you never thought you would do can suddenly seem like the only option out.

This is the ugly truth, you know. It would be so sweet for me to be able to tell you that Roomie never considered that option, that I would never consider it if I was in her situation.

And it would be a lie.

About two months ago, I began literally laying myself before God every morning and asking Him to show me how to best love Roomie. Through tears, I would beg Him to let me experience some of the emotions she was feeling simply so I could understand what it felt like to be her at this time in her life. Once He began letting me feel them, I wished I had never asked in the first place.

I’ll never forget driving to a meeting in another city for Starlite when God began granting my prayer to feel what Roomie felt. As I drove, I thought about what she must have felt like. She was 23, just like me. She was highly educated having just earned a master’s degree, just like me. She was planning a vocational career in ministry, just like me. She was wanting love from her family, just like me. She was lonely, just like me. She believed he meant it when he said he loved her, just like me.

And in one moment, with one bad decision, the rest of her life was changed.

When I hear Christians talk about wanting to put an end to abortion, I sometimes just want to scream. I want it to end, too, but if it became illegal today, I am convinced that we would be in one heck of a mess unless the body of Christ suddenly wakes up and gets a spirit of adoption, of fostering, of being willing to take these babies into our own homes.

We are asking for something that we are not prepared to receive.

When we get down on our knees before God and beg Him to put an end to abortion, we need to also beg Him for hands that will reach out to all the babies that would suddenly have a legal right to life. And listen, I’m speaking to myself here, too. A year ago I would have never believed I would have done this, that I could have done this. There’s nothing glamorous about this experience, no big amount of thanks at the end of the day.

But there is a baby, swaddled and asleep at this very moment, given a chance to live.

And a girl who can take all her scarlet letters — S for sin, A for alone, U for unwed — and trade them in for a new letter: W.

Because, in His eyes and mine, she is wanted.

WOW. Amy Beth, very well said.

One year

Today marks our one year anniversary in Texas.

They say the first year of marriage is hardest, but I completely disagree. The first year you live away from almost everyone you know is the hardest. We miss our family and friends and that wonderful, crisp autumn air that is abundant in Tennessee right now. But we know that for this time, this is the place God wants us. To celebrate our first year, I thought it would be fitting to document some of the things I (we) love most about our new home:

1. Our Church - we absolutely love our church. It is a place where you can just be yourself, no matter who you are. God is doing some amazing things in the lives of those at our church and I can't wait to see what He has in store!

2. Our Texas friends-Clay and I were fortunate enough to know a few people when we moved to Texas and it has been great reconnecting with them. Even more special have been the people we have met here. I have been lucky enough to have a couple of best friends who have "been there since back in the day" so in Knoxville I never really needed anyone else. Now, I have been so much more open to meeting new people. At 26, I honestly haven't "made" a real friend in a long time so sharing experiences over lunches or walking through the neighborhood with a new friend are really some on my cherished times in our new world.

3. Cheap furniture- okay, the first two were fairly serious so I needed to have a little humor. But seriously in Texas you can find some great wood furniture for next to nothing. Today, Clay and I found several pieces that we love. When we returned home, Clay found similar furniture on the internet for double the price. We plan on buying out the store as soon as possible!

4. NASCAR- not really, but I couldn't do a post today without telling you that Clay and I spent Halloween in a box at the truck race at Texas Motor Speedway. Clay's work had a box and lots of tickets so off we went.... Honestly, it wasn't that bad. We had free food and drinks and didn't have to set with thousands of drunk rednecks. We only stayed for about half of the race ( I mean, how many times can you watch them go around) and while there were a few exciting moments (a pretty big wreck during the second lap) it was pretty uninteresting. I was surprised by how large the track/infield were as well as how loud it was. I think that will probably be my one and only NASCAR event for my lifetime. :)

Amy Beth, I do NOT want your Starbucks card!

Okay, so a few months ago I wrote a post about a girl I went to school with who started an amazing ministry for girls and who also happens to be quite an inspiration.

Her name is Amy Beth and she needs some help! Sometimes the best ministry happens when you haven't spent a dime. In random moments. When you least expect it. But most of the time in order to get to those moments you have to spend some $$$. Amy Beth's ministry (Starlite) depends on the generosity of others to help spread the message of Christ's sacrifice and the beauty found in God's love to hundreds of young girls.

Not only is Amy Beth an amazing woman of God, she is also quite the savvy business woman. She has worked out a deal to get lots of $$$ donated just for people downloading Microsoft Live search. Click here to see all the details and how-tos. Also, you get a chance to win a Starbucks card...can you say Pumpkin Spice Latte?

Oh, and please post the link to your blog...since I know lots of you have lots more readers. Wouldn't it be awesome if 1,000 people downloaded it? Think of the lives that could be impacted all because of a download.

One more thing: we baptized 68 students at UNITED tonight. How absolutely amazing. I am so honored to get to do what I do.

When is November?

I really don't think I can write a blog right now. But I am forcing myself to update this thing before a whole month goes by without me writing a thing. October has been an eventful month...too eventful to record it all. So here is a quick update of what has been going on(at some point most of these will be a longer post):

* The first weekend of October my dad came for a weekend visit. Since he is traveling the rest of October, we made this weekend my birthday weekend. It was fantastic! We went out for nice dinners, went to Beth Marie's for ice cream, and all kinds of other fun stuff. On Saturday, I went to Canton for the 1st time. (Canton will be a blog all on its own so more to come later) The best part of the weekend though was Sunday. Our church held a Baptism Bash and 500 people were baptized. 500!!! It was one of the most amazing things I have ever been a part of.

*Second weekend: I (along with my Student Ministry team) got to go to Sacramento for a great conference. There were some amazing speakers and some really great worship times. One of my favorite moments of the conference was a speaker by the name of Phyllis Tickle. She is 75 years old and quite possibly the most intelligent person I have ever seen. She spoke on the emergent church and how the movement came about. I think in her hour long talk she used 37 words I had never heard before and another 52 words that I had heard but didn't have a clue as to what they meant.

*Third weekend: Clay is in TN for his friend Justin's wedding. I am quite sad that I was unable to make the trip but I know Clay is having a wonderful time. As for me, I am going to Great Wolf Lodge ! Just me and 298 of my closest friends....our student ministry is holding our fall retreat this weekend. And I am so excited to see what God is going to do in the lives of our students.

So like I said, October has been too busy for blogging. Hopefully, this update will silence my critics until I have a little more time to write.

Pretty close to perfect

It was almost magical. Yet, completely and utterly mundane. I wish I was as good of writer as some of my blog friends, but I know I don't have the words to paint the picture of what I so badly want to share. I will try my best but know that I don't really expect you to get it. I just want a record. A record that I can cherish when my car is one day full of arguing boys headed to football practice or chatty girls going on and on about the latest drama in their juvenile world.

Headed home on a long, straight stretch of highway. Underneath the oh-so-big (I can't believe it is really this big) Texas sky with the sun beginning to go down. Windows down. Feet on the dash--almost hanging out the open window. Alone in the car with my husband. Perfect songs on the radio.

No looming decisions, no second house payment, no real worries.

Just me and Clay and a time of peace that I have so desperately longed for over the past few months. I know other storms may come in the future but we will cross those bridges when we get there. For now, I am just going to close my eyes and enjoy the wind across my face.

Late night and a little random

It's a little past one in the morning as I begin to type this blog. I am wide awake as I often find myself. This past year there has been a lot of being wide awake in too the wee hours of the morning, pacing the house, working, doing anything to get rid of all the nervous energy welling up inside of me. But that anxiety seems to be leaving....all of that is really another blog post. One that I have been waiting to share for months on end and will hopefully be written in a few weeks.

No, tonight is not about fret or worry or useless energy. Tonight I am just plain awake. I hate when I am up this late on Tuesday since Wednesdays are my longest and most energy consuming days of the week. So what do I do, I look through my books. When we moved to Texas, wait no when we moved to our 1st house (as owners) in Knoxville, I gave away my bookshelf. Thinking, well actually, I don't think I was thinking when I left it in the garage with all of our other "old" furniture to be carted off by Goodwill. Ever since that day, we are just shy of two years now, my books have been in boxes.

There is something you have to know about me--more than most any material possession in the world I love two things: stationary and books. My friend Shannon says it is because I am an old soul. I don't know what it is but I love books. Its not so much that I like to read them (well, I do the first time). On nights like this I love to look through them and see what I circle, underlined or made notes about. It just always makes me reminisce about what was going on in my life when I read the book or think about how I have changed since that time.

Tonight, though, I came across a special book....my high school yearbook. It was actually my junior yearbook which I haven't flipped through in years. Usually, my senior year is the one that has the least amount of dust of it. In fact, I use it fairly often.... in fact, it seems every time I get a friend request of facebook, I need to remember "just who the heck is this person."

Rather than looking through the pictures, I read the things people had written. And, I think I almost woke Clay up from laughing out loud. I mean, one guy took up an entire page and seriously wrote, "I really think that song is true 'God must have spent a little more time on you.'" This is NOT a guy I dated. Just a guy I was decent friends with. I would really like to know how many girls' yearbooks he wrote that line in and what kind of return he got on his investment. I know I thought he was an idiot but even back then I was pretty cynical. Then, there is the completely blank page with the paper clip and a note still attached. The note reads: "Brooke's page" I don't think my best friend wrote in my yearbook senior year either. It was always one of those "we see each other so much, let's not waste time on yearbook signing day."

When I was little, I remember reading an entry in my mom's yearbook that said, "Good Luck with George or Fred." She married George and to this day claims she has no idea who Fred was. I used to think she was lying and didn't want to tell me who this Fred guy was. Now, I totally understand where she is coming from. Tonight as I read, I couldn't remember what some of these people were talking about. One girl told me she loved me and my mexican boy....I am 99.9% I never had a Mexican boy. I wonder what my child is going to think when he/she reads through my yearbook....

So, what picture of you does your high school yearbook paint?