Good Reads on Good Friday

Let them eat cake!!!

Chocolate cake for breakfast = weight loss!. (Please please please please please let this study be true?!?)

I’ve said for years that chocolate is clearly a vegetable. I mean...hellooo...cocoa BEANS!!!  Need I say more? Now, there is scientific evidence to prove I’ve been right all this time.  Everyone make a note...this is one time I can say (whole heartedly and with feeling) I love science! 

Oh...and there is a sentence in there somewhere that says it can be psychologically damaging to avoid sweets entirely. Yeah...THAT explains a lot. I know a few people who should avoid dieting for this reason alone.

True Facts about Bottled Water that Science doesn’t want you to know

And we’re back to hating science! 😆 Yes...short lived, I know.

This information was released by the True Facts Institute of America, so it’s gotta be true! Right?!?  From now on, I will only drink water that originates in Heaven.

Thanks again, Internet.

Extreme Parenting 101 : Why you shouldn’t shoot your daughter’s laptop

Ok...I’ll be the first to admit...there have been times I was pushed to the edge of chunking my laptop out the front door while screaming explicatives loud enough for all the neighbors to hear...and my neighbors aren’t that close. But seriously...firearms never crossed my mind. Really!  But hey....to each his own, right?

Snails....They’re not just for lunch anymore!

I’m sorry...snails remind me way too much of leeches with shells to allow this to happen.  Much less to PAY them to do it. I mean...can’t they just find snails out in the woods somewhere and try it at home...for free? Just weird.

An employee gives a medical-cosmetic massage to a client using African snails at a beauty salon in Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk March 23, 2012. The beauty salon is the only one in the region using the snails' method, which is believed to help in speeding up regeneration of the skin, eliminating wrinkles, scars and traces of burn marks, according to the owner Alyona Zlotnikova.   REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin

I had NO idea Obama was a cat person!

Sooo many headings I could put on this picture...sooo little space

MOSCOW - President Dmitry Medvedev reassured Russians on Wednesday that his cat Dorofei was safe after reports that it had run away made him an object of satire on Twitter.  - 28 Mar 2012

Ok...I would love to hear the captions you come up with for this photo.
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As for a few Good Reads that will carry you through the weekend, here are a few books that might be something to check out.

If you're up for a real life "haunting" I recommend:

220 Fifth Street by Patrick Meechan
A terrifying true story of a seemingly ordinary house in a small mid-western town, 220 FIFTH STREET rivals the all-time great novels of its genre. This time however, there is no Hollywood hype. The story is entirely true and will have you on the edge of your seat, rethinking what you thought you knew about the spiritual realm. Finally, a haunted house story of truly Biblical proportions!

For a feel good, love is in the air but no one wants to acknowlege it story, I recommend:

Bloom by Julie Anne Lindsey
(I plan to read it in its entirety this weekend.)
In a town filled with her past, she never expected to find her future….
Seven years ago Cynthia left Honey Creek with a broken heart. Three years ago Mitchell arrived with one. Now Cynthia’s come home, and these two hardened hearts can’t stop arguing. If they’d only take a break long enough to find some common ground, they might be surprised to find love can grow anywhere.

If they let it, love will find a way to Bloom.


And...as if this book isn't already popular enough...

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
(It really is better than the movie!!!)
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.


So....that concludes my Good Reads for Good Friday post. I've been blessed beyond what I deserve, and I hope & pray each of you are as well on this Easter weekend.  

Happy Easter!!

What NOT to do

Ok...this blog is a little different than what I typically have been throwing at you. It’s about friendship. It’s about being there for someone when they need you.

I've been writing about friendship. And I have friends. And something sparked this thought this week, so here goes. 

Ask yourself this....

Have you ever had a friend in crisis?  Didn’t really know how to react, what to say or do for them? I’d bet we’ve all been there and could really use some pointers on what to do in those situations. Unfortunately, I don’t have any straight forward answers, but I do have some insight into what NOT to do and how to learn from that. 

These “what not to do” moments of clarity have come from personal experiences and can also be found abundantly in a rather popular NY Times bestselling book a lot of people like to call The Bible.  More specifically the Book of Job. (pronounced "Jobe" , rhyming with globe or robe

Ok, here’s the scenario (which can be found in Chapters 1 and 2 of Job in case you'd like to see if for yourself). There’s this guy named....well...Job. Job lost everything: his children, livestock, even his health. So, Job has these friends. These “friends” decide they are going to give him some advice, try to cheer him up, you know…a little friendly intervention. Now, I’m guessing in their minds these friends had good intentions and all, but boy were they hitting the head of that nail just a bit left of center. Without a doubt, these friends had a questionable view of friendship, and I’m not even going to mention their excruciating lack of tactfulness…ok, maybe I am. They really needed a little sensitivity training.

So, these friends are “cheering” him up, but they made a couple of mistakes in their attempt to do so. Their first mistake was one we all make at times. They assumed they could relate to Job’s losses. AS IF! I mean, this guy just lost EVERYTHING. Not just his home, not just his ten children at once, not just a part of his health... ALL OF THESE THINGS…EVERYTHING! And these friends acted as if they understood. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t know how Job felt. I wouldn’t even be able to begin to imagine how it would feel to lose everything.

On top of that, they made light of his pain. Seriously?!?! These friends tell Job that if he would just repent to God then maybe he would be vindicated. Wow. Really??? So, essentially they were just telling Job that they KNEW he had to have done SOMETHING to bring this upon himself. What kind of friends were these people?  They may as well have just said “Job, stop lying. You know you screwed up, just admit it so God will forgive you already.” 

Is this something you’d want YOUR friends to say to you? Yeah, me neither. If I had been Job, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t consider any of them a friend after all that. 

Which brings me to the phrase: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” 

I would dare say they are words to live by. In my house, they are words to live by (I find myself sounding like a broken record repeating them to my kids sometimes). In my Mom’s house, they were words to live by. And if I were a betting gal, I’d be willing to bet they are words to live by in homes the world over. That many moms can’t possibly be wrong, can they?  (Kids...you aren’t allowed to answer that until you have your own children.)

I guess the point I'm getting to is this…as friends we will never be perfect. After all, we ARE human. However, we CAN treat our friends the way we would want them to treat us in a similar situation. With love, compassion, understanding and a strong dose of sensitivity. Probably a little humor and sarcasm if you're my friends. 

There will be times when we're faced with a friend who is suffering, a friend who is hurting, a friend who has lost something or someone and maybe we can’t truly relate. Maybe we can’t know how they really feel…but we can be there for them. We can pray for them and with them. We can show them the kind of love that God shows us when we need comfort and understanding. Take a lesson from Job’s friends (a what NOT to do lesson, that is) and do for that friend what you would want a friend to do for you. Making the world a better place really only starts with one small act of kindness.

Thought for the day:

True friends develop a private language that outsiders find utterly baffling. You can communicate everything from extreme boredom to a desire to escape a social situation using nothing but a micro-expression, a slight eyebrow twitch, or making weird eye contact from across a room.

Life....does it get in OUR way, or do we get in it's way?

Apologies for the light (ok, ok...nonexistent) blogging lately. I've been preoccupied with personal matters and haven't been able to give much attention to this blog -- or, unfortunately, my writing in general.  Sometimes, life runs perfectly...just like you imagine it should (maybe not MY life...but I’ve heard it happens. I think this is how Urban Legends get started). Sometimes...life can be chaotic at best -- kids need a little extra attention, the dog decides to go off the deep end and drag everything not bolted down in the neighbor’s yard to your porch, you have 200 errands to run and only 2 days to run them. You get my point. Then, throw in the roller coaster that your emotional life can turn into and you just don’t know how to make the danged thing stop. 

Thing is...I love roller coasters. I remember a trip with the youth group at church to Bush Gardens one year....it was late in the season, the park was fairly empty (which is the best time to go) and the Loch Nest Monster coaster was a free for all. You got off the ride, walked around and got right back on. It was GREAT! 

Life isn’t always like that.  Sometimes, the coaster is just not so great. Though, I can see how life works that way.  You get off the roller coaster....sometimes maybe a little sick to your stomach, maybe a little dizzy from the ride....but you have to walk around and get back on. You can’t let the side effects of the loops and turns keep you from riding.

I honestly don’t know how people do it when they don’t have God to lean on though. I know I haven’t mentioned my faith much in my blogging thus far, but I am who I am. I believe what I believe. We are all entitled to that. I don’t judge anyone for their beliefs...as a Christian, that sooo isn’t my place. But if you don’t have somewhere to lean, someone to lean on...what do you do when life feels like it’s just too much? When the roller coaster feels like it isn’t ever going to stop long enough for you to catch your breath, get your bearings, and get ready to get back on? 

Anyway...I’m catching my breath, getting my bearings and preparing to get back on the roller coaster...hopefully for a more enjoyable ride. I’ll be back to posting soon. Until then....

I pray your roller coaster is going at just the speed you like.