Lost and Found

I recently re-found Lost and Found.

If you've ever heard me play you know I love their song "Baby". But until I found them via myspace yesterday I had forgotten how much I enjoy them!! I mean they wanted to release a record without a title and someone said "You have to call it something". So the title of the Cd "Something". And the one after that? "Something Else" How GREAT is that?!?

Not to mention the fact they got started by riding their bicycles from one end of the US to the other. They once slept in my friend Andy's parents house. On my list-of-things-to-do-before-I-die list is to see them in concert. I don't think they make it to Nashville much...I need to figure out where the Lutherans are....

You need to visit their sights www.myspace.com/speedwood and www.speedwood.com

I think I'm going to buy their Speedwood Set.

Some songs to listen for: Baby, Lions, Rachel Racinda...and there's one about how the church is like the YMCA...but I can't remember the title of that one...

Hotel Rwanda

I just got done watching this movie. I went through the gamete of emotions one should go through when watching innocent people die at the hands of their own countrymen while the "super powers" of the world only worry about their own people instead of helping....worried about the politics behind it....blah blah.

I just want to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry we didn't treat you as if you were worth something. I am sorry you were treated as if you were not created in the image of God and that your family wasn't as important as ours. We traded the truth for a lie and justified it. For this...there is no excuse.

Days at home

So I haven't been feeling the greatest...I'll save you the details, but I did come home from work early on Friday. Let me tell you about "food-stamp cable" and Friday afternoons. It's not that exciting.

However, I did watch Mad about You. I LOVE this show. Paul Reisser and Helen Hunt are so funny to me. I laughed most of the 30 minutes they were on.

Mad about you and Jill's goodie basket were the highlight of my day.
Coming in a close 2nd was The Cosby Show. Man...I miss good sitcoms.

Funeral Song

Ok...so I'm slowly becoming ok with the fact that I'm not completely normal.
I'd love this song played at my funeral. It was a long line of thinking this morning...but then this song came on and I love the last couple of lines "Son, welcome home. The war is over." What a glorious, unimaginable day that will be!! I mean, "welcome home" is huge in and of itself. But "the war is over" A-mazing...


It haunts me so
This gloomy weight
That comes and goes
Without a trace
A thousand times my flesh embrace
A thousand more but if for grace

To see the Lord, the promise land
Where in sins pearly gates look bland
And what was once a pearl now sand
That blows away in light of Him

When battle lines become unclear
And the waging war is all I hear
Lord sustain me with Your voice
And the choice to walk in truth

And by the Spirit
That I might see this day
This waging war might go away
And be no more
That I might see His face
And hear Him say
Son, welcome home
The war is over
(shane and shane--clean)

Come quickly Lord...come quickly

Random photos

I got bored one day....

Valentine's Day '06

The fellas made us ladies brunch!

i should be more worried

But I'm not.
I'm excited to see what happens.
I want to grab hold and make something happen and yet...
I just need to leave it where it is.
It's in better hands.
I feel that.
Feel it?
Yes. totally...in the deep places of my heart.
In two weeks I'll know a little more.
And then in two months even more.
All party's involved will grow
be stretched.
challenged.
changed.
transformed.

Shamrock shake part iii

I got this e-mail today:

Thank you for taking the time to contact McDonald's. We appreciate your interest in our Shamrock Shake.The Shamrock Shake is a "promotional" product offered for a limited time only. Since the decision to offer promotional products is made on a region by region basis, I have forwarded your comments to the McDonald's regional office in your area for their consideration in deciding if they will offer the Shamrock Shakes to their customers next year.Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact McDonald's and sharing your comments with us. Hopefully, the Shamrock Shake will be offered at your local McDonald's next year.
TimMcDonald's Customer Response Center

Disheartening? i thought so...

grace...part ii

(smg...this one is for you)

Boenhoffer writes about cheap vs costly grace. Here's small sampling.

Cheap grace...
...means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system
...means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs
...the grace we bestow upon ourselves
...preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, communion without confession,
...grace without discipleship

Costly grace...
...the gospel which must be sought again and again
...the gift that must be asked for over and over
...costly because it calls us to follow, grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ
....costly because it costs man his life, grace because it gives man true life
...costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner
...Above all--costly because it cost God the life of his Son and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.

The truth is that most of the time I enter the holy of holies with nothing but cheap grace on. I have an odd system of checks and balances for myself and if I feel like I'm worthy enough I make my requests known...this can't even be considered grace because I'm still basing it on my merit, my thought life, my actions. I'd love to be able to blame it all on the fact I grew up in a church that had more emphasis on rules than relationship, but I haven't lived at home for 10 years now and that's an excuse. I've known the difference but choose to live in whatever grace I decided to give myself for a day.

It's hard to accept so costly a gift. If it's not clouded with guilt and shame, then my stubborn pride creeps in....and so the cycle goes. Yet in stubborn spite of my stubborn spite I am loved nonetheless and loved all the more because I exist.

So how does one walk in costly grace? And how does one bestow costly grace to another? Is it even ours to give? Maybe just ours to extend?

Grace...it's the name of a girl. It's a thought that changed the world...u2

Bring back the Shamrock Shake

http://www.tiktok.org/shamrock/ This website is great! :)

odd concepts

1. That you can call food "Santa Fe Style" by adding corn to it.

2. No one in the south has ever heard of and/or tasted a Shamrock shake. My friends, this is a travisty. Tiffany is whole-heartedly searching for a way to get me a Shamrock shake. (THANKS TIFF) I'm afraid it will not happen as the cost of shipping something with dry ice may be too expensive in the long run. A bummer...but not a major one.