I'm an Aunt!!

On December 29th, our niece was born!!! She was a week early and we were out of town so I didn't get to go to the hospital to see her. I've been visiting a couple times since we've been back to see her. She is just the smallest little thing when I hold her and she is extremely entertaining with her amazingly creative and silly faces. There are so many loving people in her life...Lilly's parents and great aunt are visiting from Colombia in addition to tons of friends. Here is my extended plan for Gabriela...watch out little one!
1. Be her cool aunt. When it's time for Lilly and Ciro to get out of the dang house for a change, Gabriela will ASK to come to my house.
2. Teach her to do the stuff girls aren't normally encouraged to do...like climb trees, dig for earthworms, play outside and get really dirty.
3. Be an influence. I'm going to be the strong voice of English as her parents wish her to be completely bilingual. Later we'll also see if she has an affinity for the piano :) lessons anyone?
4. Crafts! My poor sister and brother in law...you won't be able to see the surface of the fridge!
5. Faith. Here is the most important thing; to be another adult who will assure her that God is with her and loves her in everything she is and everything she isn't. More than anything in this world, she will need God's guidance as we all do in loving Gabriela.
Yeah for babies!!!

Lost in the river bottom

Maybe you're thinking I got lost over the Christmas holiday after our wild night of light gawking in Austin. I promise, I'm still existing on the face of this earth. It is so easy to get lost at the farm. We spent our days around Christmas at my sisters and then the day after Christmas came to Blackacre to spend a week sleeping in the cabin, taking walks to the Guadelupe and doing projects with my mom and dad. I've decided that my biggest achievement of 2007 is burning out a huge tree stump. Dad knew I would love that job so he saved it for me. Let's not talk about what that might say about me :)
I know I always write the same things about the farm but it's always true...I truly get my 'fix' in being in this place. The sounds, the sights and the answers I seem to find here. I know it's because all the other junk is out of my way and I can clearly hear what God has to say to me.
Anyway, I hope you all had a meaningful Christmas and that 2008 is full of growth, peace and love.

Feeling Green

So it's colder outside and I'm lamenting the absence of gardening activity. The morning glory vine is truly sad looking, the impatients are leggy and everything is looking wintery. I love living in Texas which provides an actual changing of seasons even if it does go from 85 to 55 in the course of one hour. It's just hard to see the back yard go from lush to SKELETOR. Very sad.

What that means is all the plants come indoors. So in the course of coming through the front door to stepping into the living room you've already passed 5 plants and you can see at least four more. I choose to surround myself in green. This either means I have a green thumb or I truly can't stand to not garden...even if it does mean just keeping plants alive indoors. Sometimes, since I'm fanatical about it, I just sit and look at the way the sunlight hits an ivy at a certain time of the day. There is an obsession about keeping things alive. I'll cut the plants down and watch to see what they do with their new growth.

As I was cutting a couple of closet plants back today I felt great guilt. Here they are killing themselves to thrive and I'm hacking away. They look naked but I have to get all that old growth off. Surely they can't do well in this dry manmade heat with all of last year's growth. Sometimes we all have to start fresh and see where we can go...just see how far we can go with a new outlook. It may be a new job, a new promise to be healthy or a renewed passion for our spirituality. At first we look naked and vulnerable...all our shoots sticking out...not pretty

Today, in preparation for the new year...think about what needs to be cut down and given a fresh opportunity for growth.

Boxing Life's Ears!

Being a woman is not easy...let me tell you! What's with the emotional rollercoaster anyway?! One day, feeling great...next day I want to box someone's ears. As I wait in expectation for God's peace (on any given day) I experience dispair, then some peace, then some anger, then some peace, then some time of questioning, then some more peace. The one consistent thing is that the experiences of peace increase in degree each time it comes to me. Isn't that consistent with faith in God anyhow? The experience isn't "no faith and trust in God one day and then suddenly WHAMMO! we have faith and trust in God for the rest of our lives'. The road seems a little more up and down to me...like peaks and valleys. I guess I would be faking spirituality if I pronounced my faith life as 'having arrived'.

In the meantime I'm feeling like this little cat. PEW PEW PEW...boxing life's ears and being allowed to be angry sometimes...yep! I'll give it about 2 more hours then I'm done with it for the day.

Confirmation Rocks!

Okay, so when I was in Confirmation I didn't think it rocked. In the Lutheran church, Confirmation lasts for two years, one hour every Wednesday night. Sunday school was a seperate lesson. We learned Luther's Small Catechism, memorized the words and meanings of all the creeds and were pretty much prepped for seminary if that was the direction one wanted to go...

This past Sunday I had the honor of leading the FUMC Dallas Confirmation class in United Methodist Heritage. At first those kids were characteristically squirrley and thinking they were going to eat my lunch! But man, are they sharp! I enjoyed that hour more than most in leading Sunday school classes. We discussed our heritage of grace given to us as a free gift of God. We talked about John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, and his understanding of service, study and spirituality. We discussed how our family heritage and our faith heritage sometime go hand in hand. Most importantly, I think, we talked about what Confirmation actually means to them. When I asked that question, one boy said it means that when I'm confirmed, I become a full member of the church. And the truth is, on their day of confirmation, they get to choose for their very own selves whether or not they want to be a member of the church. For all their years previous, they've been brought to church by their parents, been taught by their parents and leaders here at the church and for the most part been told what their faith is all about. But at the end of confirmation they get to say, "I am a Christian not only because my mom and dad said I am...but because I myself chose to be".

That is a very powerful moment in the lives of our youth as they become mature in their faith and realize and use the gift of free will that God has blessed them with. They are on their way and I'm so blessed to have had that hour with them.

What is your spiritual type?

Each day in my job, I get to visit with lots of people who are looking for a church or some kind of spiritual family. It would be ignorant of me to assume that everyone grew up just like me and have the same feelings about spirituality as I do. What I can assume is that everyone has feelings about spirituality...even if they don't consider themselves to be spiritual or religious.

I found a fun quiz to help me define my spiritual type. Click here to take the quiz. I learned that I am a Questioning Believer. Yep, that's about right! :) I'm strong in belief in the big stuff but I don't sweat the smaller issues that many people like to argue about. Actually, since college I've thought that it's okay to question God...how else am I going to work out what my beliefs actually are? I want to use the reasoning brain God gave me. Plus I'm stubborn and sometimes a hard sell so I have to ask questions.

It's interesting to look at the different Spiritual Types and then look at the different Christian denominations...the lines are almost perfectly drawn. If you wanted to, you could even put our familiar labels on these groups...all the way from conservative Christian to liberal left. To find out where you fit in on that continuum you first have to learn what kind of spiritual person you are; rather than WHAT you actually believe about every single issue. This way you have an avenue of growth rather than barriers to break down.

If you haven't already, take the quiz above...if nothing else, it is interesting to see if they have you pegged :)