April | 2013 | itsawonderfilledlife

Archive for April, 2013

iEat (repost)

Posted in WONDER, tagged Chocolate, Eating, Food, humor, Life, Wonder on April 30, 2013| 3 Comments »

Hello, my name is Carole, and I am food-aholic. There I said it, step one is covered. Hum, maybe too harsh, too guilt-laden. Just saying it made me feel bad (maybe I need chocolate). Let me try again …

Hello, my name is Carole, and I am an emotional eater. Now that sounds better. Kind of less … responsibility, on my part … it’s all my emotions fault that I eat so much, so often. I love having something else to blame for my thunder thighs!

The thing is, it really is true, I am an emotional eater.

When I am sad, I eat … because I am feeling low, and I need something to make me happy, and food tastes good, so it makes me happy.

When I am depressed, I eat … usually I am depressed because my buttons won’t button up past the inches of flesh covering my 6-pack. Food always fits, perfectly.

When I am happy, I eat … what better way to celebrate, anything (a birthday, a wedding, a Monday) than to stuff your face with celebratory food (chocolate, anything with whipping cream, cheesecake)?

When I am unsure, I eat … when I just don’t know what step to take next in life, I just walk to the refrigerator. There is still uncertainty in opening the door … do I choose the cheese, the left-over chicken, or the left-over cheesy potato casserole? Heck, we’ve got an entire meal, why choose just one?

When I am angry, I eat … I like to think of chewing as a non-violent way to unwind from the rising tension of anger, and then I swallow, and then, hours later … well I kind of … flush the anger away!

When I am scared, I eat … feel gives my tummy a very uneasy feeling, like the contents of my tummy might revolt, and toss my cookies. Well then, I better make sure there are cookies to toss!

When I am PMS’ing … do I need to explain this one? I don’t think so! Heck Pre-menstral? Post-menstral? We women are always PMS’ing … buy your stocks in Lindt, Purdy’s, Ghiradelli, and Hershey’s men, and we women will grab the chocolate.

Look out world, my emotional eating is about to change the TSX, the AMEX, the NASDAQ, and the TSE!

See, it’s all for good in the end!

Pass me some Hershey Dark chocolate, please … my excitement over emotional eating is stimulating the world economy!

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Evil Thoughts … (repost)

Posted in WONDER, tagged Evil Thoughts, Life, Me, Wonder on April 29, 2013| 1 Comment »

Do you ever have … evil thoughts?

Well, maybe not really ‘evil’, just … thoughts that, if you carried them out, would be so against your nature, and so vile and nasty to the recipient of your actions or words.

I am mature enough to tell you that I am guilty of having … evil thoughts.

This revelation began w a y back into my childhood, when I was old enough to know better than to do what the ‘little voices’ (oh man, now I am revealing that I hear little voices … now it’s in print, and could be used against me … to the ‘home’ they will send me) in my head were telling me to do … with my brother (I don’t remember which one, but that doesn’t really matter … I’m sure I had this thought about both, at one point or another). I was carrying him, and, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there is this evil thought in my head … Carole, throw him down on the floor … Yikes! Now, depending on what he had done recently to my Barbie dolls, I might have contemplated that a bit longer than I should, but, let me assure you that I did not do it … but I thought about it.

Then, the other day, I was out walking my beast. We walked near our home for a change, along the road, past other more rural properties. My beast, at the beginning of the walk, had a poo (and, yes, I did have a poo bag) … now this is strange, because she normally ‘goes number two’ at the end of our walk. So, I had to carry the full poo bag on our walk. Then, out of nowhere, there is this evil thought in my head … Carole, put the full poo bag in one of the mailboxes …. Yikes! We passed m a n y mailboxes on our walk, and the temptation was great! (and just to let you know, especially if you live near me, I did not put the poo bag in any mailboxes … just sayin’)

Not long ago (okay, yesterday) I was at a movie with my girls. And when I returned to the theater I almost went to sit with the wrong person (it was a very dark theater). Then, out of nowhere, there is this evil thought in my head … Carole, just sit beside him anyway, and eat his popcorn … Yikes! Okay, that one did make me giggle (and my daughters heard me, so they could direct me where to sit … and to ‘be quiet, mom, you are sooooo immature … imagine if I had told them why I was giggling)!

Then, there’s the parking lot … any parking lot. And the lot is jam packed, and I cannot find a spot. Then, just as one comes available, someone else gets it before me, and I have this thought … heck, just play the video!

And, NO, I am not guilty of actually doing this … yet (I do fear that the onslaught of … getting older, might make me susceptible to actually fulfilling what, lets face it ALL of us have had evil thoughts about doing).

Not long ago, my hubby had declared his 50+ pound weight loss, in our church, to much praise and congratulations (I’m so proud of him, too). After the church service, someone (whose identity God has been gracious to wipe from my memory), came up to me and said, ‘I see you’ve been finding all the weight that your hubby has lost’. And out of nowhere an evil repertoire of words came to mind, but … yikes … Gods omnipotence struck my vocal cords, and I was unable to respond (and, I have to say, I am a bit bitter about that one!).

Then there is that email … you know the one. It talks about fun things to do, to other people, while shopping (so many ‘evil thoughts’ in that one email)? Like slipping boxes of condoms into unsuspecting shoppers carts, hiding in a clothing rack and, when someone is looking, yell out ‘pick me’, or setting all of the Tickle Me Elmo’s off, then scooting out of the aisle, just as hubby walks into the aisle … oh wait, I actually did do that one … but not the condom one … yet 🙂

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(in)courage (ment) for my soul

Posted in WONDER, tagged (in)courage (ment) for my soul, (in)courage.me, anxious, bonnie gray, guest post, it is well, satan, sufferings, walking the little girl in you out into the world, Wintley Phipps on April 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »

It’s been a week …

Here I was (again) feeling

low. uninspired. discouraged. uninspiring.

That anxious, overwhelming feeling descended upon my heart.

The ‘to do’ list longer than the hours in my day.

The hindrances to accomplishment seemed to come from every angle this week.

If you believe in Satan, as I do, you will understand when I say he utilized every internal and external force to get under my skin, and infect my being with thoughts of doubt, frustration and discouragement.

So, as I sat down to locate the link I wanted to share today, I was in a mood to ‘just get it done’ so that I could move on to more pressing matters (like laundry).

I went to the home page of incourage.me. This is a blog I have just started following, since being drawn in by the fact that one of it’s contributors is Canadian author Ann Voskamp (a little Canadian pride surely won’t diminish our ‘nice’ reputation). The home page featured a different, newer post … I rolled my eyes, knowing I would now have to remember what day’s post I had wanted to share (and I cannot usually remember where I put my car keys).

Then I started to read …

“I’m trying to type words onto the screen.

But, there is only blank space staring back at me.

If you’ve ever experienced anxiety — the kind that wraps around your heart with the cloak of stress — you’d understand how it can tether you back.

It keeps you silent.

Keeps you in your home.

And on the hours or days you need to be with others, you may end up retreating from being seen. Or heard.

You are working hard. You are getting things done.

But, you might feel like I do, unsure if things can really be different.

Whether you can really be known.

This is soul wearying.

Because you may have been hurt, like I’ve been — by words that wound you still — that made you regret that you shared.

Words that made you feel even smaller than how you’re already feeling.

Words that make you feel pressured to get over what you can’t get over.

Words that make you feel more alone, standing on the outside of where you want to be: belonging, loved and understood.

It’s then, at that moment, you and I chance upon a glimpse into our soul.

To the little girl inside us who is broken, feeling cast off and lonely …”

Then I started to weep …

And I remembered something, a song, from my teens, that I would sing,

over

and over

and over again

until

I meant every word I had sung.

And so I sang it,

over

and over

and over again

until

I meant every word I had sung.

If you need to remember, like I did, that

our peace,

our futures,

our very souls

do not have to be controlled by the sufferings (whether from our own hands, or from the hands of the Destroyer) of our lives …

“Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.”

Click on :

Walking The Little Girl In You Out Into The World

by Bonnie Gray, the Faith Barista, serving up shots of faith for everyday life.

“In the quiet crucible of your personal, private sufferings,
your noblest dreams
are born
and God’s greatest gifts are given
in compensation for what you have been through.”

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How Many Times?

Posted in WONDER, tagged Encouragement, god please help me, guest post, how many times?, Isaiah 40, Pain, plumb, Suffering, tiffany arbuckle lee on April 26, 2013| 1 Comment »

For the next week, I will be featuring guest posts, as I spend my regular ‘writing time’ preparing for a speaking engagement. If you feel led to pray for me in this regard, I would so appreciate it, and specifically that Pinterest does not pre-occupy my writing time 😉 … I am so weak !

e1a6d575ab73d9c818b33f143c65cae2

The guest post today is a video of a song I have been listening to since it’s recent release.

This song is written and performed by Plumb, the stage name of Tiffany Arbuckle Lee. Tiffany says this song came out of her high school years when she suffered terrible physical pain, brought on by anxiety, as well as a tough season she had recently been going through. Through these experiences she has always called on God, and He has always been there with her.

“Do you not know? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.”
Isaiah 40:28-31

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The Touch of the Master’s Hand

Posted in WONDER, tagged Death, guest post, memory, roger tharpe, Story, the touch of a master's hand on April 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »

master

The guest post today was a guest post from a blog I subscribe to and read regularly. It is a heartwarming story that had me hearing that older story/song A Touch of the Master’s Hand.

Enjoy this lovely story.

“There was an elderly grandfather who had dementia and was in the last stages of that illness. The grandfather lived with his son’s family. One of his grandchildren was a girl of about 10 years old who loved her grandfather very much and couldn’t understand why he said things that didn’t make sense. She didn’t understand why he would yell out words in the middle of the night and wake everyone up. She didn’t understand why he didn’t know who she was. She didn’t understand why he changed and didn’t laugh and joke with her like he used to.

One day the granddaughter was exploring her grandfather’s possessions that were all stored in the attic of their home. She opened one of the trunks that she thought appeared to be a ‘pirate’s’ chest. To her surprise among other things it contained a violin case which she immediately opened. No her young eyes weren’t trained or she would have been able to recognize the caliber of musical instrument that this violin was.

From that time and for many days she would sneak up to the attic, take the pristine violin out of it’s case and hold it. One time she actually took the bow and ran it across the strings, which produced a squeaky sound. From that time on she kept practicing on the violin’ She was cautious to play softly so that no one would hear the ‘out-of-tune’ sounds she made on it and take it away from her.

The grandfather’s health was deteriorating rapidly and this was hard for the little girl who deeply loved her grandfather or “Papaw” as she called him. The girl’s name was Sierra. Sierra had been told that her grandfather was very sick and that she wasn’t to go to his room unless her mom or dad was with her. One day she decided to break those rules. Sierra decided to go into the grandfather’s room with her newly found violin and play him a song, howbeit she knew no cords but she could make noise” …

To continue this story click http://rogertharpe.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/.

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Simon Says, “Did You Eat the Choir?”

Posted in WONDER, tagged Britians got talent, did you eat the choir?, gospel choir, gospel singers incognito, Patrick George, Simon Cowell, simon says on April 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »

simon-says_std_t_nv

This is a treat … and a super surprise for both the judges and the audience.

Enjoy!

(just click on the YouTube link)

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The Atheist’s Dilemma

Posted in WONDER, tagged christianity today, Christians, existence, GOD, lee strobel, the atheist's dilemma, the case for christ, Truth on April 23, 2013| 1 Comment »

God

This was an interesting read recently from Christianity Today. The story of an ardent atheist, who, like Lee Strobel (author of “The Case for Christ”) studied and investigated to prove her belief was true, until …

Click at the bottom of this snippet for, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story …

“I don’t know when I first became a skeptic. It must have been around age 4, when my mother found me arguing with another child at a birthday party: “But how do you know what the Bible says is true?” By age 11, my atheism was so widely known in my middle school that a Christian boy threatened to come to my house and “shoot all the atheists.” My Christian friends in high school avoided talking to me about religion because they anticipated that I would tear down their poorly constructed arguments. And I did.

As I set off in 2008 to begin my freshman year studying government at Harvard (whose motto is Veritas, “Truth”), I could never have expected the change that awaited me.

It was a brisk November when I met John Joseph Porter. Our conversations initially revolved around conservative politics, but soon gravitated toward religion. He wrote an essay for the Ichthus, Harvard’s Christian journal, defending God’s existence. I critiqued it. On campus, we’d argue into the wee hours; when apart, we’d take our arguments to e-mail. Never before had I met a Christian who could respond to my most basic philosophical questions: How does one understand the Bible’s contradictions? Could an omnipotent God make a stone he could not lift? What about the Euthyphro dilemma: Is something good because God declared it so, or does God merely identify the good? To someone like me, with no Christian background, resorting to an answer like “It takes faith” could only be intellectual cowardice. Joseph didn’t do that.

The Cross no longer seemed a grotesque symbol of divine sadism, but a remarkable act of love. Christianity began to look less strangely mythical and more cosmically beautiful.

And he did something else: He prodded me on how inconsistent I was as an atheist who nonetheless believed in right and wrong as objective, universal categories. Defenseless, I decided to take a seminar on meta-ethics. After all, atheists had been developing ethical systems for 200-some years. In what I now see as providential, my atheist professor assigned a paper by C. S. Lewis that resolved the Euthyphro dilemma, declaring, “God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God.””

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/march/atheists-dilemma.html

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Dancing Naked in the Garden

Posted in WONDER, tagged Craig and Dean, dancing naked in the garden, Garden, God's story, Jared Anderson, Philips, stuff, the great I am, wallowing, Wonder, Worship on April 22, 2013| 2 Comments »

After the rains, when the sun’s rays were shining across my back garden, I made a mistake …

a big mistake!

I slipped on a pair of shoes, and walked out to see what was emerging through the sun-warming soil.

I was looking for wonder, but what I found was wallowing.

As I walked through the calf-high (not a baby cow, although I am trying to shed a few pounds) fresh spring grass (that needed to be cut three weeks ago …), wonder began to fade. My garden is growing, and it needs my attention.

But, alas, the bills need to be paid, the kids need to be driven, the meals, the laundry, the demands …

What I needed was a week off work to get caught up on the things of house and home … or a different home, with a small garden.

I began slouching, feeling the weight of maintaining our ‘stuff’, losing wonder and wallowing in self pity.

Then I came inside, and sat at my computer to write … writing can force me to move my focus to less Earthly, more heavenly things.

I opened YouTube, to research the lyrics of a song I had been hearing more lately.

The writer of this song is Jared Armstrong, previously of Desperation Band, a worship leader and song writer. It has been recently recorded by Philips, Craig and Dean, and is playing on Christian radio increasingly as it’s popularity rises in churches and homes.

Jared says this song came from a desire to be a part of the action of worship …

that the baggage of this life would fall away …

it is just about God’s story, not his/our own stories.

He spoke of wanting to not just stand on the sidelines of worship, distracted or disengaged.

As I listened I felt the weight of my Earthly responsibilities, my garden, my stuff … fall off, relieving me of the heaviness that comes from allowing myself to be heavy laden.

I felt stripped of this world until I was naked and unashamed, and drawn in to God’s story … free to dance naked (like David, so many years ago) in the garden of my Creator.

cherubs-dancing-in-the-garden-of-delights

“This song brings back the desire to be connected to the greatness of God.”
Jared Anderson

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When Love Leads

Posted in WONDER, tagged affair, confession, david and marlena, Divorce, Forgiveness, guest post, healing, Marriage, restored, video, when love leads on April 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Today I am featuring a video from Vimeo called, “When Love Leads.”

“David and Marlena, on the brink of divorce, discover where true Love and satisfaction are found in this story of redemption and forgiveness,” is the description that Vimeo has of this video, of their story.

Their story is thought-provoking.

As there are many people who read my posts, from as many different individual circumstances, I want to encourage those of you who have walked the road to divorce, from a marriage where you suffered abuse, or where the choice to divorce was made for you, this is not a guilt trip. May healing and wholeness be in your future.

Great+Love+Great+Sacrifice

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The Curse of Being Leader

Posted in WONDER, tagged followers, Gift, haunting, Hubby, leadership, Son, the curse of being leader, wishes, wishes for my son on April 19, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I believe that there are blessings and curses in life, and that they often co-exist in the same event. That is the case for what I have been pondering for a number of days.

Our son had the privilege of going on a three night, four day school sailing trip. It is an annual trip for grade eight students at our school, and one which does not fail to impress, and live in the memories of it’s participants each year, and for years to come.

I was eager to re-unite with our son when he returned, to hear his stories of hilarity and memories made. To hear the stories that will go on, and even expand, as the years go by.

When he arrived, his teacher met me (before I was able to embrace him publicly, in front of his peers …) and said something to the effect of,” your son exhibited great leadership though-out the trip … he showed what a true leader he is.”

I smiled, because it is always nice to have a teacher tell you anything that is not negative … I am more accustomed to hearing, “your son did not do his homework” or “your son is falling behind in …” But the words of my son’s teacher were positive words … right?

Those words have been haunting me ever since.

Yes, I said, “haunting” … first+last

As the days have past, and those words have past through my mind, I have been hearing the story I heard when I was first dating the man who would forever become ‘hubby’ for me. The story of how his mother responded to his decision to pursue ministry leadership …

“are you sure there isn’t something else you could pursue?”

My mother-in-law knew and understood the risks of leadership. She understood that to be a leader (any leader, in any area) is to live a life of high (pedestal) expectations and opens the door to much heartache. She understood that leadership is not necessarily the best future, she understood that leadership requires followers, and that followers can be … fickle.

I now understand why my mother-in-law wished something else for the future of her son, because I wish similarly for my son.

I do not wish for him to grow up as a leader …feeling the responsibilities and expectations of others.

I do not wish for people to follow him … it adds such weight to the walk.

I do not wish for him to lead … what if he leads in the wrong direction?

I do not wish for him to be in the front … in the open one can be so vulnerable to being taken down by the enemy.

But …

I do wish that he use the gifts that God has given, and for him to use them to their fullest, utilizing every bit of talent crafted within him by his Creator. And so, I will try to modify my wishes for him. Instead of wishing he not lead, I wish that God would protect him from the curses that can come with such a gift, that he will be a blessing, and that he is able to feel more blessed than cursed by that which God has dealt him …

and that I, as his mother, would pray for him without ceasing.

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