Category: Friends Stuff

Aug 30

The Top Five Lessons I Learned From A Dead Plant

Today’s blog post is by my dear friend Brooke – I know you’ll be as moved by it as I was. 

I was just starting my first day of work and my boss was giving me a bit of a tour.  She pointed and said, “Well, here’s your new office.  As you can see, we have the usual: Desk, computer, printer, phone.    Also, there’s a dead plant over there in the corner.  You can go ahead and throw that away.”

Little did I know that twelve years later I would be sitting here thinking about all the lessons that dead plant has taught me.  As it turns out, it wasn’t dead.  It just required a little love and attention; and just a little bit of faith.

At first I was clueless about what to do with it.   I had never had a plant; or for that matter, been responsible for any living thing.  I was only in charge of taking care of myself and quite frankly, I wasn’t doing a great job of that either.  But, I figured in its current state, the bar had been set pretty low.  How much damage could I possibly do?

That isn’t it, y’all. You have to click here to read the rest!

Mar 14

I am sure.

Last summer, God spoke to me. It wasn’t really an answer so much as it was three simple words. Not even an actual sentence, although each word was a verb. “Love, learn, lead.” Those were the three words He dropped into my heart at a women’s Bible study I was part of. I wish I could say that when I heard them, or more accurately, felt them, I dropped what I was doing, ran to the coordinator and told her that I would lead the group. But I didn’t. I ruminated on them for the hour and a half of the gathering. I barely heard the teaching, but I was in the middle of a lesson. And Jesus was my teacher.

At the end of the gathering, I got up, palms sweating, went over to my friend who was leading the study and said, “God told me I have to lead something. I will start with a small group for this study.” She looked at me and sort of tilted her head and with kindness in her eyes said, “Are you sure?”

That isn’t it, y’all. You have to click here to read the rest!

Mar 06

Andy’s Fight

She wasn’t there the day my oldest daughter was born. In fact, I didn’t know she existed. And when I held that sweet baby in my arms, I prayed for the future. I can’t remember my prayer, because I didn’t know Jesus then, but I know that I didn’t pray for her.

I met her at a McDonald’s one cold day after work, four years later. She was so nice, and she was different than I had pictured her. She was calm, and her words were deliberate. She was an open book to a nervous mom, and I left that meeting with a peace I hadn’t had in a long time. I liked her from that first day, but I had no idea the role she would play in my life.

Over the next few years, I would realize how impossibly different we were. She is calm and rational, organized and deliberate, quiet but fierce. In fact, we may have only one thing in common – an incredible love for that blonde haired, blue eyed girl. While mine may be biological, I cannot recall a single time where I doubted that the love she felt for that child was less than the love I felt.

That isn’t it, y’all. You have to click here to read the rest!

Jul 10

Help

I read a post by a friend the other day, in which she stated her excitement for the opportunity to help a neighbor who was sick and asked for help getting her kids home from school. I know that feeling well – excitement that a friend is asking for something they need, because I am much better at following instructions than I am at anticipating needs. It actually made me think of Toni, a woman who, while serving in the infant room, took a particular interest in Grumpy Preschooler. I remember Toni saying several times that she’d love to watch her for us, and I remember only taking her up on it once. I also remember being so overwhelmed with a demanding special needs infant and a husband who worked 90 hours a week that there were days I just sat and cried because I felt like I was drowning. And now that I serve in cradle, I know I totally mean it when I say I would love to babysit, and I know Toni meant it as well.

That isn’t it, y’all. You have to click here to read the rest!

Feb 15

Reflection

Get your popcorn, y’all; it’s long and it’s taken me 3 months to finish it.

I haven’t thought about this in a long time, which is why it seemed odd when it kept coming back to me, replaying itself over and over in my mind. Something tells me to write about it, so here we go.

I started this blog in 2012. At first, it was going to be about home renovation, and then it just…morphed into parenting and cooking and whatever else was on my mind. Back then, I posted about parenting and fixing the house, and I had more viewers than I thought I would. I attempted to cultivate a persona of what I thought wanted to be read, and I wrote to that demographic. I posted things that weren’t very politically correct, but I didn’t care because it was funny and it made people laugh. And I love to make people laugh.

That isn’t it, y’all. You have to click here to read the rest!

Aug 22

And now, a bathroom break (or a break FROM the bathroom)

Hubbin chose our vacation spot this year and I have to completely give it to him, he did phenomenal job. Browsing flipkey.com, he showed me a listing and asked if he was reading it right.

Listed was a “Castle in the Sky“, high in the Smoky Mountains, and located in Sylva, NC. Built on 75 wooded acres, it had exactly what I wanted…a pool. And not any pool — a private pool. No yelling kids aside from my own, a pool that overlooked what appeared to be paradise? And affordable. And available.

So he booked it for the

second week of August. With 3600 square feet and comprised of five bedrooms and as many bathrooms, we asked Jason’s best childhood friend and his family to join us, and they accepted much to our delight.

The drive down was pretty uneventful. We pulled over at an overlook and I offered to take a picture of a family for them, and they happily accepted and returned the offer. So, we posed, our little family of four, and it wasn’t until I got back to the car that I saw this picture and just…laughed. Grumpy Toddler strikes again. That poor woman was just trying to do a good deed and take our family picture, and Grumpy Toddler looked at her like she wanted to burn down her house.

That isn’t it, y’all. You have to click here to read the rest!