Hinged women's retreat - Most impactful

Grace Pres is on the big side of small churches - about 70 people on a Sunday morning.  So to have 19 of our ladies attend a weekend women's conference is a big deal.  Off the top, half the church is male and half the church is kids, so this was a big portion of the eligible demographic!  (Kudos to the men who stayed home as involved parents... and remember, it's not babysitting if they're your own kids.)  The biggest collective takeaway, I think, is that we need more women's events for us to get together and know each other better.  Stay tuned.  I have an idea at the end.  And if you were among the ladies not able to join us this time, please know we missed you and want you to come with us to future events!

Friday we had 5 local speakers over dinner, and I took pages of notes before losing my workbook (I think it got cleared when dinner got cleared.)  But the closer said to look over our notes and write down one single thing that most impacted us, so I remember this:

We are all broken people, born broken into a broken world.  So be compassionate.

And if that's all I've got, that's pretty good.

Saturday we spent the day in Ephesians, which, having grown up at CPC under Allen Harris, I always consider time in Ephesians a wink from God that I need a refresher and a reminder and to just dive back in.

Most impactful:

from Melissa Kruger, on It Matters What You Know, Eph 1:3-23

(CPC's mission statement drew from Eph 1:16-23: To know Him, to know Our Hope, and to know His Power.)

It matters what we know to be true.

Prayers reveal our hearts.

What do you think about when you're not thinking?

And a super-cool Oprah-based illustration:  If Melissa handed out $100,000,000 inheritance checks to each of us but we couldn't cash them until next month, how would that change how we lived today?  Where would we eat?  What would we do?  What would we give to?  It changes our decision-making.  

But then if she started handing out pennies for today, and one got 50 and another 200, another 5, and another 5000, would you fight and complain over "you got the best portion"?  I like her car better.  I like her house better.  Her family has it all together and mine's a mess.  What we have on earth is just pennies!  Don't compare your house/job/situations!  (I'm satisfied with just a cottage below/A little silver and a little gold/But in that city where the ransomed will shine/I want a gold one that's silver lined!  I've got a mansion just over the hilltop/In that bright land where we'll never grow old/And someday yonder we will nevermore wander/But walk the streets that are purest gold.)

What am I trying to do? 

& what am I praying about being able to do?

What happens when we don't have hope?

What happens when we don't think we have riches?

What happens when we think we're powerless?

We have RESOURCES AVAILABLE to us!

WHAT DO WE BELIEVE?

Courtney Denton on It Matters Who You Are (Eph 2:1-10)

The importance of BUT GOD.

We were dead, and the dead cannot save themselves.  BUT GOD!  A one-way love, that relentlessly pursues us, with a love we do not earn but we desperately need.

Words do not cause faith, but faith is manifested in good works, just as thunder contributes nothing to lightning but is a result of it.  

God could not make Stradivarius violins withiut Antonio Stradivari.  ~Antonio Stradivari

We get to be part of the process!

Karen Hodge on It Matters How You Walk (Eph 3:14-4:16)

We BECOME what we BEHOLD (worship), and we are continually BECOMING what we will BE (walk).

God's love surpasses knowledge, but I want to know all I can.

Magnitude, in all directions:

1) Wide enough for all nations

2) Long from eternity past to eternity future

3) Raise us to the heavenly places 

4) Deep to reach from heaven and reach us

5) Filled up to overflowing

There is no neutral in life, we're always moving on a trajectory. 

1) What are you beholding?

2) How are you growing? 

3) How are you going to step into worship this week?

So...

Again, the biggest collective takeaway seems to be that we need more women's events for us to get together and know each other better.  So here's my idea:

Girls' Night Out

for intergenerational ladies: Depression-era, Boomers, Gen X-ers, Millenials, and that weird micro-generation that I personally self-identify with, the Oregon Trail generation.  From let's say middle school age up thru "not dead yet".

Save the date: Friday, March 13, 6-8:30pm.  We'll get a table, maybe two or three, at Sing Into Spring, which I admit is also a benefit dinner for Heart of the Triad Choral Society.  Tickets are $20 (less for kids), and we will also have a silent auction which you are welcome to but not obliged to bid on things.  My goal with this is to get together with some of you and just share our lives together!  

What most impacted you?  And who wants to come to dinner?

My Fave Reads - 2019

Here's my 2019 favorites -- not necessarily titles published this year, although most are, but my favorite things I read this year.  I love that at Bookmarks everyone on staff, booksellers, store managers, and operations alike, gets a year-end endcap to group our staff picks.  I am not likely to hit my Goodreads challenge this year, but I did complete 44 books, not including rereads, and I might get a few more in before the ball drops to ring in 2020.  Curiously, this year was an exceptional year for me in audio -- five of my nine top picks I did on audiobook via libro.fm, which is an audio subscription that allows you to support your local indie bookstore with your audiobook purchases.  (I know there are only eight books on my endcap.  There is a separate libro.fm endcap in the store that we all got to contribute to.)

The Sentence is Death

by Anthony Horowitz

Mystery/Thriller

(Self-proclaimed) brilliant private investigator.

Screenwriter/middle grade author.

And a bloody, wine-covered corpse.

What could go wrong?

Me

by Elton John

Arts - Music

What’s your favorite Elton John song? 
I can’t pick just one!  But it might be Goodbye Yellow Brick Road… or Candle in the Wind 1997… or I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues...

The Parker Inheritance

by Varian Johnson

Middle Grade

White letters on black pages

Black letters on white pages

Black letters on grey pages

Different voices, different times, and a treasure to be found.  An intriguing take on the Civil Rights Movement

Over the Moon

by Natalie Lloyd

Middle Grade

also audiobook thru libro.fm -- the only audiobook I’ve ever know where they hired a composer!
Are you brave enough to dream?

WANTED

Brave and wiry young fellers (orphans preferred)

Unafraid to ride and race and fly in the fear of certain death!

Great riches await!

The Huntress 

by Kate Quinn

Historical Fiction

also audiobook thru libro.fm

I want to be Nina when I grow up.

She’s the last eyewitness to what The Huntress did when the Nazis set her on their prey.

And she’s one of Die Nachthexen, the Night Witches, the Russian female fighter pilots.

Every Tool’s a Hammer 

by Adam Savage

Science & Technology

also audiobook thru libro.fm; read by the author

Let’s hear it for the Makers!

Success principles work here too?  It’s not just business and self help books that have success principles.  Memoir by Mythbusters’ and Tested’s Adam Savage.

Tiger vs Nightmare 

by Emily Tetri

Middle Grade Graphic Novel

You can do it!! 

The Monster under the bed keeps away Nightmare, but what to do when the Monster needs Tiger’s help?  

A Place to Land 

by Barry Wittenstein, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney

Who inspires the inspirations?  

Mythos 

by Stephen Fry

audiobook thru Libro.fm; read by the author

We’ve all had a prof who was just exuberant about their favorite topic and excited to tell you *every*thing about it.  Even better if they have a great voice, or a British accent, or both.

Stephen Fry talks thru an enormous breadth of Greek mythology with all the delight of a child and the word nerdery of a gleeful etymologist, drawing sometimes-ridiculous links between the stories and word origins and English cognates.  It doesn’t make sense that it would work, but it is a joy.

News & Notes 2019

A New Day

This is the beginning of a new day. 

God has given me this day to use as I will. 

I can waste it or use it for good.

What I do today is very important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it. 

When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, 

leaving something in its place I have traded for it. 

I want it to be a gain, not a loss; good not evil; 

success, not failure, 

in order that I shall not regret 

the price I paid for it.” 

– Dr W Heartsill Wilson

written in 1954

original title "A Salesman's Prayer"

Best dessert

<I take a passing glance at the dessert menu (just one for the table) and pass it to my niece and her bf>

<They glance at the menu and exchange an extended significant glance that almost looks like an exchange of Ha (breath) and also almost looks like a head-to-head>

me: Ummm... that looks like a "you know what I'm going to say but I'm waiting for you to say it to see if you really know what I want."

niece: What I want and what he will want are not the same thing. 

me: You can each get something...

bf: We can get yours and share it.

me: So... which is it?

niece: The creme brulée.  

me: Of COURSE the creme brulée!

<discussion continues and I make Big Frog tell his story about Mexican food>

me, in passing: I wonder what creme brulée is in Spanish.  ¿Como se dice creme brulée?

<niece types>

me: Are you Yelping already?  <knows that usually would be me typing>

niece: I'm Google translating.  <pause>  Flan.  Of course it's flan.



This weekend I discovered the joy of having an adult niece, from drinking (responsibly!) together, to my positively pressuring her to get Fairy Hair (she did, in a very professional matches-and-shines, flashes-in-the-sunlight color, whereas I put Easter-egg-colored sparkles in mine), to late-night tabletop gaming.  And Biltmore.  You've met me; you don't even have to ask.  Better believe we went to Biltmore.  Getting to walk around downtown Kernersville this morning on a sunny, 60F+ day?  Love it.  C'mon... move South!

Buddies are important

QOTD

(finishing up lunch at Deerpark, at Biltmore, with our niece and her bf)
me: And next, on to our buddy Steve the Blacksmith.
Big Frog: Or Dave the Blacksmith.
me: Also our buddy.  But it's Friday, should be Steve.
Big Frog: And when I retire, Big Frog the Blacksmith.

Heels

I finally got over my fear of heels.  

Not a phobia (those who know Mike Pressler's story know what I mean when I say phobia), just a fear.

And frankly, not heels like you were probably thinking -- if my feet (and ankles and knees) would let me, I would love to wear stilettos.  Might be the only way I could be tall, other than stiltwalking (which I have also considered).

Nope, for me it's sock heels.

I started a pair of toes-up, two at a time socks on circular needles size 2 well over 2 years ago.  I made it as far as the instep and it said to start the heels. I know anecdotally from knitters and even fictional knitters (I read a lot of Anne of Green Gables and characters like her when I was a kid, and girls in that era made things.  Even Molly in the American Girl series knit and got frustrated by it.) that heels are tough in the making and mentally tough.

So although I asked my yarncraft expert - pattern-creating - oil painting - palette knife acrylica - plein air - former potter friend to walk me thru the pattern before I went to Germany so I could actually turn the literal corner on my socks, and she who usually does cuffs-down, one at a time, double pointed needle socks graciously parsed it out for me, I did nothing.

Ok, not technically nothing.

I went to Germany in Oct 2017.  (Loved it. Would definitely go again.)

I bought wool there to make MORE socks to commemorate my trip.  Beautiful sock yarn from real German sheep.

And over the course of 2018 I crocheted 11 afghans, most of them baby blankets for friends who had babies or started fostering a family of 3 under the age of 4.  (Crochet faster! You don't get 9mo lead time when the foster agency says, “So, what are you doing on Wednesday at 7?” God bless social workers and foster parents.)  And crocheting I've done since 8yo and it goes fast for me, especially in comparison with knitting, which I'm comparatively new to (really learned in 2015) and which always takes longer to show progress, unless you're arm knitting (arms make very big knitting needles) or just freakishly fast (you know who I'm talking about, Stitchers).

But as far as progress on these socks, nothing.  Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Until now.

And I'll admit, in part that's because I threw it in my bag as a 2nd project if I got a lot done on my Hawaii afghan (which I’m keeping for me, to remember the colors and warmth and experience of Hawaii) and either ran out of yarn or it got too big to lug around.  We're close on the former and far past that point on the latter.

So out came the socks.  First time since Oct 2017.  Counted my stitches about 18 times, getting many different numbers (why do you do that, yarn?), tried a line of the pattern, tinked it (tink is knit spelled backwards and means un-knit), tried again, dropped some stitches, my LED light ran out of juice and I had to find charging cords, and finally got two rows done.  And I feel ok enough with it to bring it on tomorrow's bus trip in hopes of actually making progress. (Really didn't want to lug the afghan. Been there, done that. Took 2 to The EDGE last summer.)

Most important thing is, I'm doing something with it.  It's still a UFO (unfinished object) OTN (on the needles) but I've gotten out of my own head.

I'm growing as a person.

Tomorrow's gonna be fun.

(The bus trip is to the Polynesian Cultural Center.  I brought a bunch of stuff to anchor me in this trip so I could remember Hawaii every time I look at my Hawaii afghan or Michelle Obama's Becoming.  But God has a sense of humor. Pink and purple wool socks. And a library e-copy of Craig Johnson's latest Longmire novel, Depth of Winter, set in Absaroka County Wyoming.  Those will remind me of Hawaii too.)