never been here before

This is a little late... Kansas Bob tagged me, asked me to give “8 Random Facts About Myself” and gave me the following instructions: I have to post these rules before I give you the facts. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog. All about a very uninteresting me: Food : As a corn-fed Nebraska girl, it will always be a steak for me. Nothing fancy, just a good cut of rib-eye or filet mignon and I'm happy. However, I can't cook one to save my life. But I'm great with chicken. Family : Love them more than anything. The best parents anyone could ask for and they just celebrated their 40th in January. I have two older brothers who also live here in the Husker state. One's...

It's been a complicated couple of weeks for me. 1.) I applied to seminary - and I allowed the application process to drag on and on. The personal statement hitting on 4 major points in under two pages was a bit of an issue for me. I think part of it was just wanting to write about the best parts of my walk and my experience in ministry along with the best sentences. I didn't want it to be cookie-cutter, and I didn't want bad sentence structure. I don't look at that enough here, and I'd hate for that to carry over into the rest of my life. 2.) I've been dealing with some major changes in the worship ministry I lead. They are good and difficult changes all at the same time. And the entire time I've had to look at from this perspective: "What if I'm not here in three months?" The entire 7-year experience of building the worship ministry at my church was astounding, heart-breaking, wonderful and complicated all at the same time. I'd never done ...

Agnostics and Christians alike have asked the following question for centuries: Why does God let bad things happen to good people? Instead of delving into that topic for the evening, I would simply like to ask for your prayers due to a bad thing that happened to some very good people. My parents have life-long close friends who suffered a tragedy last night. One of their hired men died - most likely from suffocation. They found him after they cut through one of their corn bins. These close-friends of our family are the kind you really do have for life. My brothers and I were the same age as their kids; we grew up together. We played hard and worked hard on the farm together. We went to church together. We even dated each other. Our families were not only fellow farmers, but we once owned a ranch together up by Westerville. They are the kind of friends small towns provide. And this afternoon when my dad called one of his closest friends after he heard the news - his friend broke down....

...Ah, Gilmore Girls. I got cable just for you, and now your show is over. I've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with this show over the years and I nearly gave up halfway through season 6. But I just had to know how it was going to end. From 7 to 8 tonight, I said at every commercial break "I'm so going to miss this show." Not so much for the plots (they were nothing to write home about.) For me, it was more about the quick wit and charm of the writing, along with the very fine acting chops of Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson. (Those two actors are very over-looked.) Then the blessed TWoP recaps kept me in stitches for years. Thank you Pamie and Al Lowe! Lots of nostalgia for me tonight because this show, in the way it portrayed a realistic mother/daughter relationship, was ground-breaking to me. I'm so going to miss this show. Then in a huge surprise, Veronica Mars and a plug for one of the best causes I've discovered in the last year: Invisible C...

My pastor preached on John 15 last Sunday, and if there is any chapter that I identify with the most in scripture, it's this one. Pruning is harsh, and it really hurts when it happens to you, especially when you don't want the pruning to happen in the first place. The things of our past make up who we are today. Even the bad stuff, and that's what I hate. I don't want the bad stuff to stay with me, and I realize I shouldn't. I know I need to let it go, and most of the bad stuff I have. But I have some major battle wounds I'm not sure will ever go away. Some of them resulted in God doing a lot of pruning in my life, and it's those times of pruning that left me with some wounds. I have a scar on the lower part of my neck, under my chin. How I got it is a really stupid story, so I won't bore you with the details. It happened about 6 years ago, and though the scar has faded over time, it's still visible (and reminds me of my own stupidity, which you wou...

Why do we feel the need to apologize for not being enough? (...this is not a rhetorical question, btw.)