creating a left brain.

   Fortunately they love to create as much as their auntie. It's like story time at the library and happyday at a daycare all wrapped up into one. Since the girls are here all day we have the chance to create some stuff that needs to dry, but then finish the project in the same day. That is the real whipped cream! No glitter in the car, red paint on the floor.. pictures laying in the sun..heck there isn't even a time frame I need to worry about!  Taking home finished works of art is so much more fun than "the hurry up.. it's the process, not the product" fun that I often get to do with littles. 

I sit, almost every morning after my run. Painstakingly trying to develop the left half of my brain. A book lay open on my lap.. and I read the Word through the looking glass of redemption. It takes all that is in me not to skim, get the just, and move onto something a bit more right brainy. Where lines aren't straight, and colors mingle dangerously close to each other, a place where I love to live.

I'm comfortable in my right brain clothes. I bend. I mend. I process through the wavy and the muddle mess of life with my gift of creating.. and I accept that the Creator made me like that.  I think mostly because He's like that.  He creates. that's what He does best... right?

There is a whole realm of beings that control and rule this world that I want nothing to do with. They don't create. They destroy. They take what was once good and perfect and make it horrible and ugly. The ring leader is Satan himself, and he wants you to believe that you have no hope. No chance. No life. No beautiful... and he wins often in the heart and minds of those who don't acknowledge him.  Simply knowing Satan's 100% for you to be as far away from God as possible, is as important as using butter instead of margarine in baking homemade cookies.

While I read and study the bible in light of our redemption.. I can't help think that God created structure to save me from the ugliness of life.  A completely right brained idea to send a Savior in a manger for all people to be saved.. that's hedged inside a great big left brained structure that's laced with rules and structure to the core for our benefit.

Developing the non-dominate side of your brain is completely scary, yet opens your world up to so many more possibilities of the depths of love that God has for us. A love that really knows no bounds. A love that conquers all. A love that's as fragrant as the flowers... and just beautiful. A love that is structured and meant to be legally for you. God intended us to live with both sides of our brains alive and fully active. 

 In learning to use the other side of your brain it is defiantly about the process, not the product but without the hurry up.  Kinda like art at aunties. 

wondering induced by paint fumes.

I wonder if all the marriage books ever written are wrong. I have read a bazillion of them, they all say what to do and what not to do. There's everything from knowing your love language to how you are like food. Generalizing? Totally. Sorry? Nope.

What if you only have one marriage book, and the title doesn't even have the name of a planet in it? The only book your ever allowed to read is inspired by the One who created marriage in the first place. Wouldn't you do everything you could to get you hands on that book? The book with all the inspiration you need to be a great spouse? This book that will snap you into a reality that you never even knew existed. A whole new playing field in the life of your marriage. The book of course is the Bible.

However, it's a big book, so let's pretend you can only read Revelation. Yah, the confusing one at the end of the book, in my opinion, marriage is sometimes confusing.. so reading Revelation with your "marriage" glasses on isn't a far stretch.

Let's start with the groom. He officially comes riding a white horse and bears a name on His thigh.. "King of kings, and Lord of Lords."  He's dressed in full war regalia and he's got one thing on His mind... Claiming what is His, and that's us.

Us. All of us who are called. From every corner of the world, in every language and in every color. His bride is the Church.

I have friends who I look at and wonder, "those two are so opposite, I don't know how they ever were attracted to each other."  In fact, there is truth I'm sure to the whole " you marry your opposite." or even "opposite attract."  statements.  Eve was created when God felt the need that Adam needed a helper... right?

I wanna be be be like Jesus.. know that song? Isn't the whole culture goal of Church nowadays to be like Jesus in every way? Living Inside out? Dying to self, allowing Christ to live in you.. it's all the same. An effort to live life thats not of this world. I confess, its a daily struggle, to be like Christ.

If the goal is for the Church to be like Christ, spotless and blameless, so the wedding can happen... Wouldn't the goal of an earthly marriage be defined as becoming more like each other through Christ? To celebrate what makes us the same? Individuality may have no place in a marriage. Just as it has no place at the wedding of the ages between the King of kings and His bride, the Church. It's the lives of many being one together, despite the outside differences.

Perhaps I ask too many questions and then get lost in the details of fleshing the answer out. Perhaps the paint fumes of creating lovelies have gotten to my brain cells.

Or perhaps.. I'm just now after 16 years of marriage learning to be married, for the right reasons.
 

turning blue for you to know.

He's 9 years old and he has never wanted to learn how to ride a bike. 

Two years ago, the Lead Singer and I bought him a bike for Christmas, hoping that it would peak his interest in riding on his own. It didn't. That shouldn't have surprised us. He didn't even want to ride a trike at age 3. So, in an effort to boost his skills a bit.... we took him for a bike ride.

I'd like to report to you that he loved every minute of it. He didn't. At one point, the Lead Singer was offering him 10 bucks... to be put into a safe place only to be used for a trip to the Bahamas each time we went on a ride together and he didn't whine.

He simply said.. he'd be 80 years old before he had enough money. 

As a mom, I want to tell him that biking riding is fun, and something you will never ever regret knowing and learning how to do. He just doesn't see it. He itches, He sweats, He has to work. It just doesn't come naturally to him. He gives up a ton, and walks. 

I can't make him learn.  I can encourage till I'm blue in the face, and I did,  but really its a decision to risk changing that every person simply must make on their own.  Ultimately it's up to him to take the time to learn a new skill. Learning is most defiantly not the funnest part. In fact, many many many times it's the stinkiest part of the whole process. 

But if you persevere. You can and will wake up one day and the thing you struggled to do over and over again, will be like breathing and then you will, of course, turn blue for the person next to you.. so they can live...truly free. 

"and let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up."

Galatians 6:9

smiley things.

Every once in a while you have to just go out on a limb and carefully explain some things.. so here is my attempt to help you realize what made me smile in the Bahamas... enjoy! 

#1- the Lead Singer

Hands down the best man ever for me. I decided after getting in a knock down drag out fight the day we got back from the Bahamas that we are the best lovers and fighters I know. No one on the face of the planet could ever treat me as well as you do.. and no one on this planet could make me seethe like you do.... I just love you.

#2 I love love love to dance, but it always seems like I have to drag the always chatty Lead Singer away from a convo to dance with me, which he always does thankfully.. 

 However, this lovely couple was first on the dance floor.... and yes I followed. 

It was almost as much as dancing in the kitchen of my new local friends... almost.

#3- Goombay Smash's and squirrel food. 

(Did you know that there are no squirrels in Nassau?  shame..)

#4-  This man pictured in the most gorgeous shirt ever was from Indiana I think. He's a sales rep winner like the Lead singer only he has 10 kiddos at home. I have a great friend I haven't seen in 20 years and this man is his long lost brother.. I'm pretty sure.  He's super fun.. so was his sweet wife.

  

 #5- I love and adore the company that sponsored our trip that the Lead Singer won. I sat next to the head of the company one night for dinner. She's normal and I like that.  I however didn't like the matching shirts... but when it's free.. you smile and try to enjoy. right?

#6- Wine from a bag hand delivered to me. For me and only for me. and I didn't even spill.. I think.

 #7- Conversations about all the great things that can happen when your people watching.  Makes me want to grab some milk and cookies and sit for a spell.

#8 and #9- This woman is the whole reason we even got to go on the trip.

She's the one who filled all the paperwork, and when she tells the story about how she only wanted to hear the Lead Singer's name when they announced the winners.. she tears up every time.  I will be forever thankful to her and her gumption that allowed us to be blessed.

and you see that camera she's holding???

that's a D7000... I've been drooling over it for a while now and I had wanted to shoot one prior to actually getting one (as if that will every happen... haha) 

She let me play with it for a spell.. and it was good. So very good.

#10- not dying on a water slide... and having enough guts to go down this one. 

(ok that makes me smile today...) 

filling the family album.

I prayed and prayed that I wouldn't have to use  the line 

"What happens in the Bahamas stays in the Bahamas"

To bring glory to a God that saved me and created all 

even while on a free trip was my own challenge I laid out before God. 

I suppose that's what had me wondering aloud while tubing down

 a river what it must be like to be lost at sea.

All four of them actually live in the Bahamas. 

yeah.. like 24/7 all the time. 

Lucky ducks.

I met the boys briefly tubing down the river, 

as I wondered aloud what it must be like to be lost at sea.

Then they tried to convince me 

that I really needed to go up the scary belt thingy 

and plunge to my death in the Power of Tower.

um... nope. I bailed.... and thought them weird. 

Then it's as if God said... 

this friendship needs to happen.

We meet again in the lobby while sitting on hideous furniture that very night.

Seeing each other, we both think.

 Could that be them? Could I be that same lady floating down the river?

They call us over.. I bail to the bathroom... the Lead Singer stays and chats...the giggling starts. 

It never dawned on me that they might kill us as they gave us a tour of the island.

I laughed the whole stinking way as I learned that 

Radios are made different in foreign Fords (or maybe not?) 

  Walmarts are called Kelly's 

Front doors really need to be shut

She's gunna blow!!.. really doesn't mean your gunna die. 

 I giggled myself to sleep. 

The next day we were instructed to be at the 

"pool where everybody bees"

Yes, I know that the above pic is not it, but we didn't really know where "everyone bees.." 

but God in His goodness.. led us right to them amongst the sea of people.

and we giggled the whole day while getting wingie in the pool and the river.

That night we continued the fun.

They take the Lead Singer and I to a place downtown to eat. A local place... yummizilla.

It's here at a restaurant called Twin Brothers we pray.

It's here at the restaurant called Twin Brothers we all know we worship the same God.

and I personally know 

that God's plan for me while on this vacation  

was to enjoy His gift of His people.

Tears flowed freely when my new brother played and

 sang worship songs Bahamian style late into the night in his very own attic.

Same tunes... different words.... same God being praised.

God's gifts just kept coming and coming, and I at that moment felt 

very unworthy to even be a part of His gifts. His good and perfect gifts. 

The gift of a free trip to meet people who will forever be in my family album.

I missed them the moment they dropped us off, but I'm certain that maybe someday God would have us meet again.. somewhere... even if it's on the pearly streets of Heaven.  

I can't wait. It will be better than the Dairy Queen drive thru... 

a taste of the bahamas.

So much to tell you.. but for now I'm just gunna let ya wonder about a few things because the sun and sand are calling my name and who wants to blog when there is much more vacation to be had! 

Shut the front door! 

I may never come home... luv ya all!