It was not on purpose...this time I mean it

We all remember this conversation, do we not?

Well, I'm taking this Novel Writing thing seriously and last night, I decided to get writing. (I am writing everyday as outlined on the website). I started at 8:30 pm. I always write by hand first because there is something that is quite artistic and therapeutic about writing by hand. Plus, I can still only type 33 words a minute so...naturally I do my first draft on paper.

After a good session of writing, I felt it was time to go to bed and hoped that hadn't gone past my 10:00 pm bedtime.

Lo and behold it was 1 am!

1 am, folks. A.M. as in after midnight.

I was completely absorbed and lost all sense of time.

But I am pleased to announce that by a rough estimate, I have written approx. 7 000 words. Only 43 000 more to go!

Stay tuned, I need help naming a character and you guys get to name her.

Broken and Spilled Out

The woman with the alabaster box has always been a story that has connected with me.

I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I hope that, if I lived in the day and the hour that she lived in, I would be her. I would come to Jesus with oil that cost so very much and I would pour it on Him.

The Bible says she broke open the box and washed the Lord's feet with her hair. How intimate-how worshipful.

I think about when my hair was long I would wash it with flavored shampoo so that at night when I would go to sleep, my hair by my face, I would go to sleep smelling the wonderful smells of wildflowers or exotic fruit. And now, I think about this woman who washed the smelliest, dirtiest part of Jesus' body with this fragrant perfume-how did her hair smell that evening?

Did it smell to her like the picture of her life--smelly and dirty mistakes overwhelmed by the scent of His majesty?

She committed herself to the act of worship when she broke that box. The oil spilled out, never to be recaptured or contained again--it now had the purpose of serving the King of Kings.

How I long to live my life this way...broken and spilled out for the purpose of serving the King of Kings. I long to never be contained again with the way that I passionately love my Saviour. Never again to be afraid to share His name or the power and truth of His cross. Never to back down from giving Him glory...all the glory.

Lord, I commit my life to You. There is nothing You can't have. There is nothing that You ask for that I won't give You. There is nothing that I will withhold from the One I love with my life. Ask for any of it. Ask for all of it. I will freely give it to the One who is so kind and accepts all gifts.

Even those gifts that are broken and spilled.

In my defense, I was very...oh, I don't have an excuse for this one

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by Mckmama.

I did not make the remaining last bit of whipping cream in the carton all for myself. Nope. I am a woman of moderation and excessive use of dairy products is not something I do.

Nor did I run and get my camera thinking, "Hey, this would be a great blog post?" I do not think about my blog other than when I'm on my computer. That shows a weak constitution revealing that digital hobbies are starting to dominate other areas of my life. Me? Have a problem like that? I don't think so.

I did not take 3 big heaping spoonfuls of whipped cream and then gobble it right up and then put another 3 heaping spoonfuls of whipped cream before actually even tasting my hot chocolate. I wouldn't do that. That sounds like a crazy girl out of control with no moral-hot-chocolat-ish restraint. I am the picture of self-containment.

I never once ditched the hot chocolate for the bowl of whipped cream. There's something very childlike about that and clearly, as we all know from reading this blog, I am a very mature, reasonable and grown up adult. I don't "do" childish.

And I absolutely never bailed on the cup of hot chocolate and poured it into my bowl of whipping cream so I could enjoy it's creamy goodness and put an end to this time-wasting efforts of transferring whipping cream into the cup time and time again. While it is logical, I would never do that because, and I feel this bears repeating: although it is logical, it is very unsound in practical application and leads one to believe that there is a strong sense of whimsy nonsense going on in the kitchen.

And that never occurs at my house.

It's all in me head! It's all in me head!

Have you ever had a conversation with yourself. I did. It went like this.

"Diva, you went to bed late last night."

"Yes."

"Do you remember what you decided?"

"No more going to bed at midnight."

"That's correct. Any idea why you fell off the band wagon?"

"Old habits die hard?"

"That's an old habit from your 20's. Remember when you didn't have as many kids and you didn't know that sleep is integral to health and skin elasticity. Remember what old people look like who have lived wild? It's not pretty, Diva. You don't want that to be you."

"I don't. It's true."

"So...."

"So....?"

"So, what are you not going to do tonight?"

"I won't stay up late watching a movie. Ever again. And then I won't have a flabby face when I am 55."

"This time you mean it?"

"Yes. Absolutely."

"Good. Now go have some mint tea and try not to talk to yourself today."

Hoito

Pumpkins from Harvest Time Past

Before I reveal this year's masterpieces--take a look at what we did one year.

Cinderalla pumpkin carriage--go Inez!

Sparklers inside our pumpkins...because that's how we roll

This one is a bit blurry, but it's someone with their hands on their face as they say, "oh!"

Like chewing cud-only not-since I'm not a cow

Trust in the LORD, and do good;

Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.

Psalm 37:3

I've been feeding on His faithfulness today.

Just thinking, and reminiscing on how faithful He is and how dramatic He can be when He comes through at what seems like the last possible moment. Here are a few to share with you:

-The x-ray technician told us that we would miscarry our first child. He looked at the screen and showed us how the egg was imploding, told us that there were vital parts missing and that if we looked at what he was showing us we would see a very broken beginning.

We went home that day and prayed. I told the Lord that I would worship Him and call Him good no matter what happened. I believed Him for a miracle but trusted all things to His care. He spoke the word "Shalom" to me and gave me a poem to go with it. I looked up the Hebrew meaning of the word Shalom and it means "complete peace, total wholeness, nothing missing, nothing broken." And that's exactly how my daughter was born.

-At 9:27 pm one night, the Lord instructed me to stop what I was doing and pray for protection over my husband. I found Psalm 91 and declared the Lord's promises. My husband came home one hour later. The vehicle he was in what side swiped while stopped at a red light by a vehicle that was traveling 80 km/h.

It left a small dent and nothing more.

-My husband shared with me how he felt the Lord was telling him to go on paternity leave when we had our last child. At first, I panicked knowing it would cut our single-income family to an even more meager amount. As I prayed, the Lord only spoke to me with the simple words of "Trust Me." My husband went on sabbatical, much to the derision of family members.( I love how he would rather be obedient to God than to anyone else). He had no promise of a job as he took sabbatical, but got on His face before God and pursued His presence like nobody's business. When we had a $200 commitment that needed to be paid and we waited on God to provide, our church called saying that someone had donated some money for us and left it with them.

It was the exact amount we needed.

My husband went to Africa--a dream that he's always had in his heart. In three weeks, a five thousand dollar trip was fundraised. Money that came from very unlikely places. And nothing we could do ourselves as we were on...a meager income. He came home and reminded me that paternity benefits would run out in the next week and a half. We prayed for about two minutes--we knew that the Lord had specified this time off for His purpose in our lives-- so we knew He would provide a job.

And He did. The guy who took over for my husband left that job a week before our paternity pay ran out. My husband had his old job back. A job he loves.

-My father died 19 years ago today. I found myself fatherless.

. But then He found me. He picked up my broken heart and broken life and gave me His Son who died broken so that I could be whole. Nothing missing, nothing broken. Totally whole.

For this feast, I give thanks. Shalom.

What a novel idea! And now the news...

Good morning. Our top story this morning is one of exhausting proportions.

I was up from 3:30 am-4:30 am with a sick girlie

I woke up at 5:15 am with a chipper boy-ca

I made pumpkin tarts for breakfast

I went back to sleep at 7:30 am and tucked all the kiddies for a nap. I was on the edge of becoming a grumpy cow.

I turned on the computer, checked the weather and saw this:

Snowfall warning in effect

Today

Rain changing to snow early this morning. Snowfall amount 10 to 15 cm. Local blowing snow. Wind northwest 30 km/h gusting to 50. Temperature steady near plus 1.

I'm going back to bed!

And this special bulletin has just been handed to me. Thanks to this website, I was reminded of what I've wanted to do for many a November now. And this November I'm going to do it. I am now an official member of this year's NaNoWriMo. (Loosely translated as the National Novel Writing Month). Yup. I'm going to write a novel starting November 1st. So, stay tuned to this station for the next week or so as I will be giving you a chance to name a character, pick a plot twist and read the opening pages.

I will keep you posted as this story unfolds. And now a word from our sponsors....

Saucy-Saucy-Uber-Saucy

I did not spend the majority of the day re-organizing my linen closet. No, I didn't. I wasn't even inspired when I saw this closet and thought, "I could do that too!" I don't do things because other people have done them. That's copying and I am completely original...and organized.

I did not throw stuffed animals at my children today because that would be ignoring all warning labels on toys and I always pay attention to the labels. I didn't let me 13 month old feed himself a saucy-saucy-super-saucy meal tonight because I was too lazy to do it myself. Nutrition is important and developing positive eating habits is vital to good health-I wouldn't jeopardize that.

I did not make more work for myself by letting my son feed himself an uber-saucy meal that required an immediate bath following dinner. After all, I'm organized and don't waste my time getting caught with unplanned work. (see above for proof)

And when my little family came up to me while blogging and demonstrated that they knew how digestion worked by dropping carrots from their backside, I did not roll my eyes and stifle a laugh. Digestion and all the sounds that go with it are not funny.

It's not.

Pffffffft.

***by the way, the aforementioned announcement that is supposed to happen today will be told tomorrow. My timer rang and I'm outta blog time!

I know...the suspense! Oh, the suspense...

Friday Flashback: And that's why I don't drink lemonade

OK, before Friday Flashback begins...I must tell you to come back here on Monday. That's right...come back Monday. Semi-sorta biggish news being announced then.

When I was little I drank some lemonade. I thought it was gross. It rolled around in my mouth for a minute and then I spit it back in my glass.

And then I poured the glass back into the pitcher.

"What did you just do?" Big sister Lori Ann said with her most authoritative voice that mimicked my Mom's angry voice.

Fear and trembling fell upon me, so I decided to omit certain truths. "Nothing."

"I saw you. I saw you gargle the lemonade, put it in the cup and then into the pitcher."

I just stared blankly, hoping the incident would go away.

"That is dis-gus-ting! Do you know what you just did? No one can drink that now. You put all your germy germs in their and now no one can have that."

"Well, I didn't like it."

"That's no excuse," Lori Ann said, once again sounding quite motherish. "You are going to drink this whole jug now."

"NO!"

"Yes!"

"No."

"Yes."

Here's the thing. Lori Ann was bigger than me, she was six years older and babysitting me and she had this really firm grip on my arm. So I relented and started to drink the jug of lemonade, gagging the whole time.

Well, you can only get so far before the inevitable happens.

"I have to go pee, Lori."

"No."

"I do. I have to go."

"Fine, but you're still drinking the lemonade. Don't think this bathroom trick is going to get you out of anything."

There I was, on the toilet. My little seven year old self drinking and peeing lemonade.

It was a rude and harsh introduction to manners when it comes to double dipping.

But it worked.

Scarringly, so.

And that's why I don't like yellow beverages.

How about you? What was your Friday Flashback about manners? Was it as horrifying as mine or quite pleasant?