not enough time...

I just got back from the prayer meeting that Karissa started on Fort Lewis on Wednesday nights, and I was thinking on my way home that I was having an "after prayer high"...which I think happens sometimes when you are able to pray and see the Lord moving in peoples lives almost immediately!!
Its worth TWO exclamation points at the end of that sentence.

The other thing that I was thinking was that I feel like there are STILL so many opportunities opening up for the Gospel here at Fort Lewis, opportunities to get to know ladies and to help them on their journeys as Army Wives or Military Women... and I actually feel frustrated to think that in a month I will no longer get to be a part of it here. Yet, you know what? There are such opportunities EVERYWHERE. I can hardly think straight thinking of the communities in this country that are FULL of people who are lost or hopeless or just need a friend....*sigh* I am so thankful that I get to be a part of such things where ever we go.

see and hear

Hahaha! So today I filmed myself doing the message that I was sharing at Bible Study tonight-so I could time it, and also make sure I made sense. Sadly the last few minutes got cut off-but still...you get the idea. So, here's my first video post.






P.S. I know I sound weirdly fake in this video...who knows why? But just roll with it...hahaha!

in just one moment

So, I'm currently reading Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, which incidentally is one of the greatest books of all times. I have read it multiple times and every SINGLE time I get something new out of it and I am usually so terribly convicted that I can only read a chapter at a time-otherwise I go away feeling as though I have eaten way too much chocolate cake ( i.e. good, but a tiny bit OVER FULL).

Just a minute ago, I was struck by this little sentence or two:

So simply, so without observation, do we turn the corner of the road of life, but as yet we did not know that we had turned the corner.

How often has this indeed held true in each our lives? Something that seems really inconsequential turns out to be a rather big deal in the larger scheme of the very definition of our existence.

Perfect Example: if I had not gone to that rather last minute New Years Eve Party, would Brett and I be married today? Such was an event that, at the time, and even for many months after-was just a mere blip on my radar...yet, it turned out to be a rather a giant propeller that ended up flinging me into a huge new road of life....


Yet looking at it a different way, sometimes we make a choice that we know will change our future-and yet, we have no way of knowing exactly what the "right" direction to take really is ( in fact, WAS there a right answer?)....When Brett left for Afghanistan I was left with a rather interesting position of having no place that I needed to be. I had no job, no one in the Army cared where I was, I had no children or position of any kind drawing me one place or another-and so, seemingly* without reason, I chose to come back to Fort Lewis, Washington where I have been for the past nine or ten months.

Now, looking back, I cannot imagine an alternative. My life here has been so incredibly full that I am now having a difficult time grasping it all in one fell swoop. It has been beautifully full of struggles and friendships and life changes and revelations and adventures and tragedy and joy- How could I have known that this path would turn out so?! I couldn't have known...and yet, the Lord knew, didn't He?!

You make known to me the path of life
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forever more. ~Ps 16:11

* I say "seemingly" but, the decision was largely based on an underlying feeling that my work here was not yet done. I also felt like I had much more to learn from the Navigator Ministry here. That seemed like a good enough reason as any, and I think that to follow such keys in the future ( 1. Go where you can be useful in the Kingdom. 2. Go where you can learn more about Christ and how to better serve Him. 3. Go where He tells you to go. ) will not go amiss.

It's Fall!

Appreciated (??)

So, you REALLY know its getting close to the time that your hubby is coming back, when you start getting boxes of his stuff in the mail that he can't fit in his rucksack....and I can't tell you the level excitement that brings me to....especially, when I get to share in all the great LOOT that people have sent him. ( seriously, you guys are the greatest).

In this particular box there was a bunch of notes that his sister, Emily put together from a bunch of her middle school students... and THIS was my favorite:



The question marks added a depth to this note that I can't get enough of...

SURPRISE ENDING

So, I was on the very first flight from Houston to Seattle that Alaskan Airline has even flown today. It was annoying. There was loudness and business men and political figures getting in the way of my "travel calm".

Thank goodness there was free cake that I pushed some small children out of the way for, or it would have been a total bust.
( seriously, you'd think people had never seen food before and that we were all starving to death in africa the way people attacked the free food.)

Annnnyway, I scored a free keychain, a free tin of breath mints ( random) and a free luggage tag....and my flight was uneventful. Got a beautiful view of Mount Rainier as we flew over and I got this HUGE wave of sadness that I will shortly be leaving this place, possibly forever.

And then I got home, and I wandered around the apartment, happy to see my bed and my couch all waiting for me to snuggle in again. ( I'm such a homebody)....and since I've been gone, the weather has changed into the most beautiful crispy fallish feeling that I LOVE MORE THAN ALL OTHER SEASONS.... And it started to sink in, that in a months time, the Army will come in and pack it all up and I will leave Washington and a brand new adventure will begin.....

And I was JUST about to feel really awful about all this, because we all know I HATE CHANGE and I DON'T LIKE MOVING and I DON'T LIKE MAKING NEW FRIENDS....

and then, a friend texted me about some exciting news in her life, and it was like a little whispered reminder of what I already know....

Life must change, for how else will it get better? Change can also bring along with it beautiful surprises that you would not have gotten to experience if you had been too afraid to face the newness coming your way...


For instance, in just a little over a month I get my husband back. After 348 days without him, HE WILL BE BACK! ( These are the types of changes I can get behind.)

ALSO, in a little under 9 months....my sister is going to have a BABY!

Talk about a good change, huh?!

So, even though I'll probably complain a lot in the coming days, I am looking forward to the end of 2009 and 2010 with MUCH anticipate. I know the changes that it will bring, will also bring unspeakable joys-some of which we don't even KNOW about yet!!!

Super hard...

Put on then as God’s chosen ones:
compassionate hearts...
kindness...
humility...
meekness....
and patience....
bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on
love, which
binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Col 3:12-14


I'm pretty sure I have not mastered any of the characteristics listed above, but tonight I did forgive. The embarrassing part is I didn't really know that I was holding a grudge until the Lord flat out showed it to me! Wow.

SECRETS

This past week has been consumed by secrets. Non-bloggable secrets ( I figured I should specify, hahaha!)...and therefore its been REALLY hard to think of something to write about, because, honestly...my mind is wrapped up in one of two things that make me really happy at the moment.

One of those things should be coming out for general consumption rather soon-so check this space, saaaaay, around Sunday. The other piece of information, may never come out...but then again, its really none of my business anyway-it just shows that I'm DESPERATELY trying to come up with things to do to distract me from the fact that....In about 55 days * Brett and I will be finished with this deployment!!!!!

In a lot of ways, my mind is EVER on this fact, and its important for my mental health ( i.e. not going crazy) that I try to focus on other things...LUCKILY people have been nice enough to let me into their own private lives and I've been enjoying the fun of living vicariously through others for a while now....

It should also be noted that, when, several months ago I decided to book a random trip to Texas I had no REAL good reason to do so, it just "felt like a good idea at the time, " and now I can't THINK of a better time for me to come...life in Washington was pretty hectic and sometimes it is just nice to deal with OTHER people's hectic lives for a little bit! I'm glad I have several more days here in East Texas, and then I will look forward to my last little time in Washington ( trying not to think about saying goodbye there, just yet)...

* Give or take a day or so, since HA! If you think the Army gives more exact information...

A Really Good Day.

I'm going to remember Sept. 14th as a really good day. First off, my dear friend Katie had her baby! Morris was born early in an emergency c-section and weighed in at a bit over 3lbs....but I talked to Katie this evening and she and baby are both doing well! YAY! Still praying for baby Morris to gain weight and for his blood sugar to stay at normal levels....

I'm so excited to have yet another friend enter motherhood. Its super exciting /mind blowing.

I also had a really great day with Tabitha... who has been visiting me from Vancouver this weekend. Sure, I had a silly Army briefing this morning that took up time-but it all turned out great in the end, and we had a really great day in Seattle.


AND...I'm going to Texas tomorrow for a week with my family. Its gonna be great! I've been looking forward to this trip for several months now, and I know that its perfect timing to take a little break from life here and hang out with some of my very favorite people!

Now, if only this pesky sore throat that has shown up the past few days would jet, things would be roses.

Kingdom Come

It has been the craziest week. SO many bloggable things happened that most of them didn't get blogged ( isn't that just the way?)...and then, just like, that it became Saturday and here I am getting ready for a party and a guest ( both today) and a trip to Texas ( Tuesday).

And through all the crazy, I did have a moment to sit on my balcony and do a Quiet time this morning-So much is on my mind right now, so many things to lift up in prayer-so many things that I want so badly to happen. So many really wonderful blessings that I can only dare to hope for...and that's when it hit me, like a tiny little whisper coming over the railing of the balcony.

"Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done."

And then all those prayers, all those blessings and hopes that I am praying so hard for...why, it hardly matters! Because I know, that whatever DOES happen-whether the answers to my prayers are "yeses" or "nos"- HE will be glorified! HE will be honored! So, I suppose my prayer now is just that I was desire His will more than my own silly hopes. That His will, will also be my own wish, my own prayer.....

Oh, and just as a reminder-

I wrote this blog post almost a year ago ( seriously?! Wow! It doesn't seem like its been that long!) when my friend, Tabitha started blogging:

Go read it here!

In a lot of ways, I'm really proud of what I wrote there-I think I was able to capture some of my feelings about Tabitha pretty well in that post, although, I have found that even though I love to write-I quite often feel as though words fail me when it comes to describing my feelings about people, especially the people that I love. Anyway, nevertheless, I like that post, so you should go read it again if you haven't already. hahaha!

So, right, I bring this up again, because Tabitha, is coming to visit me this weekend! And I'm very excited! She is definitely one of my friends who, as the years have progressed, I have appreciated her thoughts and opinions more and more when it comes to my decisions in life. I know that she is seeking God in her own life and therefore I am always up for what she might have to say about my life too! ( selfish, I know!)

Lately, we've also been talking about turning some of our correspondence into a book...and so I've been going back through the archives of our friendship, so to speak, and its really REALLY amazing to see how far we have both come. I very much look forward to what the future will bring for us both!

Spoken in monotone

Today I went to a briefing where I was suppose to learn how to fill out the paper work for our move to Georgia in a few months...it took two hours real time, and 9,000 hours of my life-depending on how you look at it:

A sampling of the wonderful dialogue:

"If you do not fill out Block 7-a. properly, than you will be getting a phonecall in the midst of your transfer and then you will have to move all your property yourself. This will, of course, get in the way of your plans to visit Mt. Rushmore or Disney Land.....or....stopping off at Grandmas....or your visit to.....what's that place in Florida?"


And it was about THAT time that I lost the will to live.

Hazards

The reason, dear readers, why you have NOT heard the end to the fridge nonesense is because the saga is ON GOING...and I kept hoping that it would end in a nice and tidy "And then they all lived happily ever after in their non-smelling apartment, with their perfect fridge." Sadly. This is NOT a fairy tale ending...

In fact, its not an ending at all...

As I type I am sitting out on my balcony. Why, you ask? Well, otherwise I might die.
The fumes inside my apartment have reached epic proportions and they have affected the following: my head ( headache), my brain ( confusion), my tummy ( you don't want to know) and my life ( as you will soon see...)

So, lets rewind and let me take you back to yesterday morning at 9am. The night before I had been up late ( who knows why) and I was enjoying the first sleep in that I can actually remember when the doorbell rang. So I jumped out of bed, knowing full well that it was the dear little I-never-talk-but-I-like-to-ride-around-in-a-golf-cart apartment handyman who I had left a message with the night before. So I put on my "I've been awake for hours look" and opened the door.... and he said,
"Oh! Did I wake you?"
and I said, "Oh no!"

( a few minutes later while he was at work, I checked myself in the bathroom mirror, something I had not done before, and found that I had a GIANT GRAND CANYON of a crease on the side of my face that declared me a liar.)

Anyway, so I let Rides In a Golf Cart Quiet Man into my apartment to look at my smelly fridge to see if he could 1. Locate the smell. 2. Get to the smell.

Now....I'm not going to bore you with the details, readers, but lets just say they included listening to Quiet Golf Cart Man gag ( embarrassing! This is my fridge!), several phonecalls that included one that I will intitle "If it doesn't stop smelling you'll be responsible for a $500 fridge" and a near nervous breakdown....but the end results where that there is this teeny tiny space at the base of my fridge where a piece of metal is attached to a piece of plastic, and this is where a certain piece of chicken that was defrosting the fridge decided to leak...a leak that had been cleaned up quickly, and yet...how WERE we suppose to know that some of the juices had run down into this little inconsequential crack and cultivated such an amazingly horrible smell that Trolls, Goblins and maybe three Zombies would run and horror at the very thought?!?!
And you might ask me if the piece of metal that's attached to the plastic comes off?!? Well, NOT FOR LACK OF TRYING THAT'S FOR FREAKIN SURE.

*sigh*

Anyway, after being threatened with the $500, Lindsay and I took drastic measures and moved the contents of our fridge to one of the Navigator guys houses, and proceeded to pour an entire bottle of Arm and Hammer Carpet Cleaner into the crack ( we figured we'd drain that baby out) and when that didn't entirely do the trick, we borrowed some bleach from the guys ( why do guys always have large quantities of bleach handy?!) and poured THAT down the crack as well....

Thus our apartment should be seriously considered a danger zone.

We think the smell is mostly gone, but that could be because we're loosing brain cells by the second.

Everybody nose

I don't know if you know this about me, but I have a sensitive nose.

Even as a small child I was always the first to announce the arrival of an uninvited smell by yelling out, "EWWWW WHAT'S THAT SMELL!?!?"

Yeah. I was a joy to have around as a child, no doubt about it.

Anyway, so you can IMAGINE how upset I got a few days ago when this weird smell started coming out of my fridge.

So I threw out the eggs.

And two days passed and I thought it was over, but still...when I'd open the fridge I'd smell something "off" and I started to feel seriously unhinged.

And that's when I started taking things out of the fridge and taking long inhales of breath over each item. But it was difficult going, because basically the bad smell was TAINTING the air and nothing smelled particularly WORSE than anything else.

So then I started taking everything out and cleaning the inside of the fridge like a mad women. The freezer was the first to be emptied and scrubbed...followed shortly by the fridge and by this point I was starting to feel light headed because I'd taken too many deep inhalations combined with the over use of cleaning product and yet still to KNOW AVAIL.

And that's when Lindsay, Jennifer and Tina moved the fridge to see if there was a dead rat under it. Which happened at the exact same moment when I went outside to DIE...because the idea of facing a dead rat was TOO MUCH TO BARE.


However, who would have thought, that NOT finding a rat under the fridge is, in some ways, much worse...because now the smell remains and I can only be lead to believe that there is something still inside the inner sanctum of my cooling unit.

I left a haggard message on the apartment managers voice mail saying that I need DRASTIC MEASURES TAKE. And SOON.

After all, Tabitha's coming to visit on Saturday...and we can't have her coming into a dead-rat-smelling apartment can we?!! NO WE CAN NOT. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that I WILL NOT BE ALIVE to welcome her if the smell is not taken care of in the next 24 hours, since every few minutes I open the refrigerator door and take deep breaths to see if its still there ( it is.), and I don't think there will be any oxygen left in the room if I keep it up.

Labor Day

Then Jesus said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Matt 9:37-38

This is my Labor Day prayer... That we as believers would see ourselves as these laborers, the ones who go out into our day to day lives and Harvest in the lives of those around us. I have had the priveledge to be around such laborers on a day to day basis and I am continually encouraged to see how the Lord is faithful to those who desire to serve Him. We are ALL called to be ministers and missionaries of the Gospel... And this Labor Day I pray for us all:

"And I pray that the sharing of your faith may becoming effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ." Phil 6

Making my Saturday night...

On my mind

Well, the party was a success! By the time I got home I was exhausted beyond belief, but it was good knowing that we'd given about twenty-five wives who'd had a horribly tough month, a little bit of reprieve.

There is this symptom that I have, though, that right before any party that I throw I start to freak out that I have not planned enough food...and then, then when the time comes and its all said and done, there is WAY too much food ( which, really isn't that big of a problem) but still...I can, in know way, figure out how to tell myself that what I have planned will BE ENOUGH. *sigh*

Today I slept in. And it was wonderful I don't think I've mentioned this, but I've been going to be later and later and getting up early and early, and its just not pretty. Abigail needs her 8-10 hours or she starts talking in the third person, and nobody needs that. Either way, its been pretty awful-I'm not sure why I've been sleeping so badly but whatever the case, I was really really happy for the sleep in.

Tomorrow I'm getting up at the CRACK of dawn to take Amy and Baby Dave to the airport. I'm not sure Starbucks makes a strong enough coffee for this...

Julia Child FAILURE

So, as you all know ( because I remind you in every post), I'm throwing a party tomorrow...and a lot of people are coming and I'm starting my usual "Will we have enough food?!" freak out.....but ultimately everything was going according to plan and we were going to have everything under control.

And this evening I was planning on taking my frozen cake out of the freezer, dip the little pre-cut squares of cake into icing and then let them 'drain' on a rack and then sprinkle mini chocolate chips over the top and BOOM! You were going to have beautiful peti-fours to wow everyone with...

In my mind they would look something like this:



Instead I dipped the pieces of cake into the icing and they immediately crumbled...awful. Sure, the cake was frozen, but if anything it just dried it out more and made it MORE crumbly!

But, I was NOT to be deterred...I figured that even if the recipe got this part wrong surely the fact that the icing would pour over the sides of the cake and thus make smooth icing around the sides would still work....
So I decided to squeeze the icing onto the tops of them....and what happened?!

The icing did in fact slide off the cakes...but it slid TOTALLY off....

Peti-Fours FAIL!!!

Side effects may include laziness.

I've got a headache. I decided to not have coffee yesterday and then my neck got sore from sleeping funny the night before...and BOOM! We were all on the verge of another "Abigail's got a migraine" period of life. And no one wants to go there. No one.

So I got a half-caf double shot soy latte instead of the usual full strength. Which isn't cheating, right?
*sigh*

Self-control was never my strong suit.

I think Washington got the memo about it being September, because there has definitely been the hint of autumn in the air the past two days. To be honest, I'm mildly happy about this, for one thing I really like the changes of season. There really should be FOUR. DISTINCT. SEASONS. But so far I've only lived in places that had a grand total of two. But there is always hope....
However, this change in weather ( which may also be a source of this headache action) has made me put on my "comfort hoodie"* and it has given me the STRONGEST URGE to just stay in bed and read a book.....with maybe another latte ( mmmmmmmmmmm!)
Sadly a day in bed with a coffee is a luxury that I cannot afford for there are parties to be thrown and business to be taken care of, girls to think about and then tonight Lindsay and I are going to help the boys clean out the Guys Pad ( they are all deploying or moving so it is truly the end of an era), which is possibly the grossest thing ever. But, I feel strongly that I need to give them a helping sisterly hand...After all, this is one of the few ways I can "give back" to all the guys who have helped me move over the past few years. Lifting things up over my head-no. Cleaning-maybe. ( you were excepting a yes! hahah!)

* My security blanket hoodie has played this special roll in my life for a while now Proof and proof and again.

You're turn....

So, I've been reviewing books that I've been reading for a little while now, and now its your turn. Sort of.
Basically, there was a book on my list that, once I started it I realized I wasn't that interested...and then I realized that life was too short for me to force myself to read the whole thing. So I took it off my list. And now 16. over in the sidebar is sadly lacking....

And here's where you come in...

Give me some book ideas people! Give it a ponder, what books have you not been able to put down? Left an impact after reading? And start namedropping book titles in my comments...

I can hardly wait!
I can't believe I hadn't thought of this sooner!!

(for those of you who are late to the game, you can check out the books I'm planning on reading and books I've already review-click on the books that have lines thru them and it'll take you to the link of my review...all of this is located in my sidebar)