well, not exactly.

Me: "Phoebe, do you know what the Civil War was?"

Phoebe: "Oh, yeah. It was a war that was civil."

It's a good thing there's "no charge for awesomeness." Because everyone who knows Trey would be really poor.

Hey, look! One of my bros is having a birthday!

Trey, I love you - even though you married my sister instead of me. It broke my six-year-old heart, but I seem to have recovered splendidly.

Thank you for always being there for me, whether the lawn mower is broken, there's a superduper big spider in my room, a mouse on the sticky trap, AnnMarie desperately needs entertaining, I need to learn to drive stick shift, I'm having an emotional upheaval, or any of those precious times when a big brother really comes in handy.

I'm so very, very grateful that God put you in our family, and that you live right next door so we can "holler if we need anything." (Trey's standard parting from me and mama.)

You're the bestest of the best.

Happy Birthday, big brother.

Dear Courtney,

You remember the morning we made waffles together after our first spend-the-night? When I stirred the waffles with my hands, (because the lumps just wouldn't come out with a whisk,) and you didn't run screaming from the house, I knew we were going to be best friends.

And I was right.

Happy Birthday. I love you.



-Me

in the [very probable] case that you are comfortably taking almost everything you have for granted...

... read this.

Read it in your nice, cool living room. Read it and think of the well-stocked fridge a few steps away. Read it and put your loved one's face in place of those girls.

If you have an ounce of compassion in your soul, you'll want to DO something. I can't tell you exactly what that will be, but you can pray that God would show you some tangible way to help, and you can most definitely pray for these beautiful, REAL people. Shame on you, shame on me, if we don't pray and do for them.

the windows of Heaven opened - and the rain came tumbling down.

Rain is gushing down in wild torrents, so solid they look like sheets of some thin fabric flapping about in the wind.

Silvery grey puddles are all over the yard, making rainboots and toy boats seem like the most fun ideas of the summer.

Most of all, for the first time in months, it isn't unbearably hot. Warm, yes. But oh, such relief for grass and trees, flowers and birds, animals and people, is this rainy day!

The fat drops hit the asphalt looking for all the world like fairies dancing, and if I didn't have a headache, I'd go out and join them. But it's wonderful to sit at the window, cup of tea in hand, and just watch the tired, sagging, hot earth be renewed and refreshed.

I'm so grateful I wasn't born before the Flood, because how boring and uninspiring would it be for mist to rise from the ground and do all the watering? I imagine that even the people who were about to die couldn't help but admire the magnificent first rainfall. Maybe that was the moment they actually believed in God.

But for Noah and his family, safe in the ark, with the hand of God protecting them, what a gloriously sad sight the first rain must've been. What a fulfillment of promise! For surely some of them had, at one weak moment or another, allowed a creeping bit of doubt to enter their minds about the validity of God's statement and command. After all, they and their parents and their grandparents and on and on had only known the quiet moisture seeping up from the earth. Water from the sky? Massive amounts of water breaking open the earth? Enough to engulf the whole world? Likely there was a tiny bit, (or a large bit; we aren't really told,) of incredulity in some of their hearts.

And then, aboard the ark, they witnessed, or at least felt, the "windows of Heaven opened and the fountains of the deep broken up."

God had fulfilled His promise, and if there had been skepticism in any heart, I bet it was banished in the twinkling of an eye, and the man or woman who had doubted the Creator of all felt very foolish.

Maybe there will be a pale, watery, but absolutely beautiful, rainbow this afternoon, calling to mind God's promise to never flood the whole earth again. And we can rejoice, as countless generations before have rejoiced, that our God is a God who keeps His promises.

a memory, and some thoughts which sprang from it.

As I walked home the other evening from Mamaw's, on the path leading from her house to ours', I was vividly reminded of sundry other late-night walks home on that very same path... walks which were accompanied by the genius of an over active imagination.

When I was Quite Young, whenever the need arose for me to walk home after dark, I was terrified, yet old enough to want to prove myself brave and fearless.

Ha. Now I've just accepted the fact that I'm not brave and fearless and moved on.

So off I'd go, in mortal terror of drifting off the path and into the sewer that was close beside, and in total dread of something Getting Me. Now, what exactly was going to try Getting me was hazy, but that's where my stellar imagination came into play. Oh, yes. I could think of hundreds of animals, bugs, and evil people who might be lurking in the cornfield through which the path ran, ready to pounce.

My solution?

Well, you have to realize that I was a somewhat superstitious child who half-way believed in faeries and probably would've made an awesome Catholic.

So, I would make sure I was safely past the sewer, squeeze my eyes tightly shut, and take off like a rocket in the general direction of home, reciting the 23 Psalm out loud all the while. No joke.

I was apparently laboring under some delusion that prayer would automatically keep me safe, and that reciting a Psalm was easier than actually making up a prayer as I went along. I also remember thinking, "Maybe if a bad guy hears the 23 Psalm he'll leave me alone."

Yes, I was that sort of child.

I'm not really sure what sort it is, but it's definitely a Sort.

As I walked home the other night, (walked, not ran-with-my-eyes-shut, yelping out Psalm 23,) I enjoyed the cool grass under my bare feet, I whispered secrets to the crescent moon hanging low in the sky, and I listened to the pleasantly scratchy sound of the cricket orchestra in the grass. And as always happens when you're in the dark long enough, my eyes grew accustomed to the night, and I could see the path in front of me.

I thought of all the lovely things about the velvety night I missed when I let my fear get the better of me.

That applies to life, too, you know. Are we so intimidated by the dark and the sewer that we try to gingerly rush through whatever-it-is that's going on? Do we choose blindness and "safety" rather than trust God to give us eyes that see in the blackness? What about prayer? Has it, the act of praying, become something you lean on rather than Christ?

I should never be content with fear and trembling.

I have a Heavenly Father who cares for me.

I suppose I should be flattered.

Me: "Isaiah, maybe someday you'll have a puppy."

(Only if aliens come and drastically reconfigure Anna's DNA, but I didn't tell him that, since I don't want to shatter his little castle of dreams.)

"What will you name it?"

Isaiah: "Uh, Katie!"

Okay, so...

I don't usually talk a lot about friends' blogs. There's a list of 'em over in the corner, and I just leave you to find out their respective awesomeness for yourself.

But.

This is my friend Julia.


She loves cheesy, cheesy, cheesy puns and jokes. Like, they make her absolutely burst out laughing. She likes the Beatles, and she can speak Spanish. She cooks yummy food. Ellie and I rolled her room with toilet paper, (because we didn't want to roll her yard since it was December and therefore we would've been freezing,) and she was totally fine with it. Well, mostly fine.

Uh, Julia? Do you still love us?

Anyhow, she's pretty cool. (Get it, "cool" because she's holding a fan? That pun was specially designed just for you, Jules.)


And she's started a blog. So, hop on over here, and read what she's written so far. I'm just gonna say that you'll probably need to go ahead and follow her, because you'll definitely want to keep up with the fount of wisdom, brilliance, wit, and love spewing from her pen.

Or keyboard. Whatever.



p.s. yep, that's a tombstone in the first picture. we're the kind of friends who pose with unique tombstones.