ACH

There are multiple reasons why I love Amy (Christine) Haddock. However, she made my day slash blew my mind the other day when she called me and left me a voicemail which contained the following topics in 3 minutes:

American Idol
Driving like someone’s grandmother
WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group
Stay Green
Christmas
Her niece Karis
Dr. Stuart Scott
My worship team at COC
Nancy Drew
People who use weird punctuation
The airport
Those old roly-dial telephones that gave your hand a real workout
Todd & Noelle
Numbering choir music for church
Keith & Kristin Getty
The new Casting Crowns CD
Snow in Colorado
Iced milk
Her new coat & scarf
Wearing flip-flops
My 2010 trip to Colorado

She can also knit (crochet? SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT THE DIFFERENCE IS ALREADY) 4 scarves in under an hour, bake the best white chocolate cranberry cookies you’ve ever eaten in all your born days, and quote the entire Jerry Seinfeld CD without missing a beat. She’s talented, folks! I couldn’t make this up or even steal it off the internet if I tried.

10 Questions to Ask in the New Year

Earlier today, I was thinking about my goals for 2010 and I read a post at The Gospel Coalition that is really helping me to narrow my focus as I think through the many goal “options” from which to choose. Of course, my list always seems to be littered with the standard eat-healthier-and-get-up-earlier-in-the-morning-type goals but as I read through this list I was reminded that nothing is more important than increased dependence on Jesus Christ and developing a deeper love for Him. Sure, eating healthier and getting up earlier can definitely be part of this. But I am thankful for the reminder that discipline for the sake of discipline will be joyless and fruitless without living by the Spirit and depending on His provision in each moment to accomplish these things.

“Don Whitney:

The beginning of a new year is an ideal time to stop, look up, and get our bearings. To that end, here are some questions to ask prayerfully in the presence of God.

1. What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
2. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?
3. What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?
4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?
5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?
6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?
7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?
8. What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?
9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?
10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

Whitney writes:

The value of many of these questions is not in their profundity, but in the simple fact that they bring an issue or commitment into focus. For example, just by articulating which person you most want to encourage this year is more likely to help you remember to encourage that person than if you hadn’t considered the question.

Whitney also offers an additional 21 questions to help us “consider our ways.”

Read [Don Whitney's] whole article here.”

There are also some additional questions (21 more, to be exact) at the end of Whitney’s original article if you REALLY want to get crazy. And I just might!

Article by Justin Taylor at The Gospel Coalition can be found here.

And I Quote,

“You have SO much food in the pantry for just the two of you.”

“Well, never know when you’ll need funeral potatoes.”

“I’m sorry, ‘funeral potatoes’?”

“People die with less than a moment’s notice and you need to be able to whip together a casserole or au gratin potatoes when you get the call. Why else would we have all that?”

“Right… That TOTALLY should have been my first guess…”

-Mom (on why her pantry is filled to the brim)

The Winds of Change are Blowing

I walked into my parents’ house and saw the DirecTV music channel was on…

“Are you REALLY listening to Air Supply? You, who grounded me for sneaking DC Talk and Petra into the house?”

“I’m being subjected to this. It isn’t my choice. I don’t even know who Air Supply IS.”

Blink, blink.

“I’m not buying it. I caught you listening to the devil’s music red-handed. I expect you to go burn all your tapes now.”

“This is silly.”

What’s SILLY is that I had to hide my New Kids On The Block posters and Debbie Gibson “Electric Youth” perfume under my bed. We could’ve skipped all that. Next thing you know, they’ll be using playing cards.

And I Quote,

“We have two men up in space repairing the Hubble telescope and we still can’t turn poop into fuel?”

-Eric Geoffrey Margrave

And I Quote,

“It’s weird to me that they’re so muscular but they really don’t seem to run around much.”

-Eric Geoffrey Margrave (on cows)

Skyline

This picture of our skyline makes me feel all calm and serene on the inside.

Santa Clarita Skyline, 12/19/08

“At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that no one in the world has ever made something this beautiful and important.” M.C. Escher

For the longest time I have said to myself: Self, you have wanted to make greeting cards for a very long time now… so why don’t you get your lazy bones in gear and do it? And I would inevitably answer myself with: Well, because I’m lazy, you see. This prevents me from doing a great many things that I wish to do. So today I decided I would at least get a start on cutting up all the catalogs and magazines I wanted to cut up for the cards that probably ever won’t really exist. Little did I know how painstaking a task it would be. Because I’m rather uptight about these things, you see. I’m entirely too concerned with symmetry and neatness and matchy-matching to really be creative. Something about following the rules and staying in the lines or something. Was I born a Baptist? I digress. So I struggled with even the first step of CUTTING THINGS OUT OF THE EVER-LOVING MAGAZINES. I would tear a pattern out and then it would seem the torn edge wasn’t straight enough of a tear…. Give it a REST already. Artists aren’t neat, they’re sloppy (sometimes). And if I expect to be named among the geniuses (geniuzim?), I better just let that whole trip go or I may slow my own greatness and keep it from really emerging.

I began with a neat stack of catalogs like so:

catalogs from the greatest store on planet Earth.

And after an hour or two of furious cutting and hemming and hawing over the straightness of the edges and OH MY GOSH, I TOTALLY DIDN’T KNOW YOU COULD MIX ORANGE AND PINK IN THE SAME OUTFIT we arrive at this post-bomb-like (ish?) scene (which eventually reaches DefCon 1.5 in a matter of about 20 more minutes):

disaster strikes.

But then my hand got a scissor-cramp and I decided that, to make the whole thing worth it I needed to make at least ONE greeting card. And yes, I will insist on using the word ‘greeting’ when I refer to my yet uncreated collection. And I had a friend in mind when I pulled out all the greeting card accoutrements, so I should at LEAST get one together. So this friend will get a sneak peak of the card but won’t know it is coming to her (…or is it him?). Watch your mailboxes, folks.

Of course I needed to tidy up a bit before I could settle in with glue and The Chosen Cutouts For Greeting Card Number 1. Tidying here basically means consolidating anything that was cut out and intended for future use on a greeting card into the same clear box for ease when glancing at it.

The fruit of my tedious and back-breaking labor.

At which point I was able to settle in, break out the glue (and more glue) and create Greeting Card (Number 1) Made Especially For You By Holly Ann Worsham (available out of the trunk of a Gray Mazda 6 near you):

Voila

So I’m no Charley Harper (my hero, will post about him soon). But I’m going to keep trying. Wish me Godspeed, many more free catalogs, and success with the hot glue gun.

Top 5

Thanks for the tag, EG. Please forgive my horrendous delay in posting this! Also, you must all know that these lists may not be limited to just 5 items, ideas, desires, etc. Come on, now. Let’s get real. Also, the answers to some of these change according to the minute, the wind, and/or my blood pressure.

Away we go:

Things under $5 that I couldn’t live without (okay, yes I could live without them):
Orbit Mint Mojito gum (what about jaw problems?), floss, 16oz container of sour cream, tall Americano (in a grande cup with heavy cream, of course), cheap Wal-mart flip-flops (which get mistaken weekly for the J.Crew ones), #2 from In’N Out w/ 4 packets of special sauce. Yes, you heard me.

Favorite movie:
Top 5 in which genre? Sheesh. Let’s go with: Rushmore, Fletch, Silence of the Lambs, Seven, Little Miss Sunshine

Baby names I love:
Chloe, Ivy, Cayren, Jane, Cash (yes, I said it, Lynn)

Songs I could listen to over and over again:
Your Love Is Extravagant (Casting Crowns), La Cathedrale Engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral, Claude Debussy), Kingdom Come (Coldplay), Before The Throne of God Above (by any artist), Hymn (Brooke Fraser), Hide and Seek (Imogen Heap), Rescue (Jared Anderson)

People who have influenced me in a positive way:
Gary & Freddie Worsham (they’re one), Elizabeth Worsham, Dr. David Smith, Brad Brock, Bob Childress, Sam Neylan

Things that are always in my wallet:
ATM card, business cards, 6th grade student ID card (that hair?), license, black tar heroin (not really), Starbucks receipts

Moments that changed my life forever:
Moving from Iowa to California (June 1, 1993); being exposed to The Master’s College for the first time when Majesty came to my church (1996); having jaw surgery (August 1998); attending The Master’s and changing my major from music to biblical counseling (1999; and yeah, I just crammed 2 into 1); Truth & Life Conference about personal holiness (specifically included speaker Art Azurdia, January 2001); returning to Church of the Canyons (~2003)

Places I would like to go:
Heaven, Scotland, Ecuador, Korea, Branson

Appliances or kitchen tools I couldn’t live without:
Paper towels, steak knife, dip, can opener, dip

People who I would like to see their top 5’s:
Lynn, Amy, Lisa, Michelle, Nadine

The Girl In The Window

I heard about an article today that reminded me of a joke from the past. But then I read the article and the joke didn’t seem funny anymore. The term ‘feral child’ ring a bell to anyone? This is a story from the St. Petersburg Times about a girl (Dani) who was the victim of severe neglect – the most horrible case I have ever heard about. I moved from being angry at the mother for doing this to her own daughter to being thankful for the courageous family who has adopted her and has given her a new life. I find myself weeping for the girl’s past, for her mother’s devastating choices that have left her crippled and unable to function in so many ways. And yet I am so moved by her new family’s selflessness and undying love for her. They didn’t adopt her because of all that she would bring to the family. They adopted her because she was in wounded and in need. I am moved to tears again to think that God has done the same for me. He sought me and found me crippled, dead, unable, hating Him. I had (have) nothing to offer Him and yet He revived my soul and brought me near to Himself. I pray for Dani’s mother and that God would save her soul.

The article is a bit long but well worth the read. The video is shorter but much more impactful with the background of the entire article.

Full article

Video and audio component for the story