The Swandive

this just in...

Life, is good.

I know - I know. Lame post you say. I say, I believe this to my core.

There are all sorts of signposts out there that will tell you its not, that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Today, I choose to ignore those signs, I am not buying it, I will no longer drink that Kool-Aid.

Life is good. Believe it, live it, feel it. Rock on Jeremiah.

Oh beloved blessed F5, how I have missed you

And this 5 comes from Sally, someone whom I adore and am so grateful for her popping in on me from time to time. Its a goodie - so here we go!   

Here in the UK we are struggling with floods, other parts of the world have similar problems without the infrastructure to cope with it, still others are badly affected by drought.... My son Jon is in Melbourne Australia where apparently it has been snowing ( yes it is winter but still!).... With crazy weather in mind I bring you this weeks Friday 5...

1. Have you experienced living through an extreme weather event- what was it and how did you cope?

I have and I can't believe I can't find any pictures to share! It was the Halloween Snow of 1991. I mean it even has its own link! I was working for this bar that was in a tiny town, Lillydale, next to a bigger town, Mendota Heights, just up the way from downtown St. Paul. You never would have guessed it was so close to downtown that night and day though. It easily could have been someplace like Embarrass or International Falls, MN.
I was the FOH MOD (front of house, manager on duty, yes even restaurants have Office Space'isms). Outside there we people pulling up on 4 wheelers, snowmobiles and sleds. The snow came so fast, we had what seemed like over 5 feet in places - with snowdrifts.
We had an impromtu employee / bar regulars party, and stayed up all night, playing whipped cream baseball, shooting pool, and made some of the the coolest colorful (food coloring and jello) snow angels you ever did see.

2. How important is it that we wake up to issues such as global warming?

I can't think of anything more important, as I believe it directly impacts so many other issues, like poverty and hunger. Caring for all of God's creations: the earth, the things that crawl, walk, slither upon it, the air, the water - its all a web of interconnected life. What I am amazed by is how many people don't care, or feel nothing when it comes to this issue.

3. The Christian message needs to include stewardship of the earths resources agree/ disagree?

Ummm... agree.

And because it is summer- on a brighter note....

4. What is your favourite season and why?
Fall. The colors, the smells, the crisp air, the newness of each sweater that I re-discover. It is a season of glorious transformation and death. But beautiful, glorious, life turning, cycle shifting death. I love the squash and the Minnesota State Fair, I love fall.

5. Describe your perfect vacation weather....

Any weather is perfect vacation weather. For me, its about choosing to have a good time, no matter where you are and what God serves up for climate. Sometimes getting snowed in is just the right thing. Sometimes, driving along sheer cliffs in driving rain in Ireland brings the most laughter and smiles. A shower a day (the 10 minute rain shower) in the Virgin Islands is what keeps everything so lush and green. A perfectly sunshine day, always starts from within.

birthday wrap up

Thanks for the birthday wishes everyone!

I am now officially older. Here are a few things I have learned about myself, and life in general along the way in these 36 years I have lived.

1. I am good enough, and smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. (Thanks for helping me to remember.)
2. People are funny. Sometimes they are funny ha ha, and sometimes they are funny like a crack across the face. Either way, I am trying to love them and me, all the time.
3. Friends come and go. That's ok.
4. Being a Debbie-downer is not as much fun as seeing life through the lens of optimism, abundance, and love.
5. Family is more than blood relations, but the blood ones are real real good in my life. I am blessed.
6. Laughing is as important as crying.
7. It is not about location, location, location. It IS about balance, balance, balance.
8. People can disappoint, hurt, and frustrate you. Don't forget to look in the mirror next time that happens, and do a self check to see how often the person looking back at you has done that to someone else.
9. God is good.
10. I love comfort food. Yeah - its not always "good for me" but it is always GOOD for me.
11. Water, I need to drink more of it. It makes me go pee more than I like. I am going to get over that.
12. I like blogging. There - I said it.
13. My friends inspire me.
14. I actually like church.
15. Karen is amazing. I am blessed.
16. Smoking is bad. I started back up when things were a little rocky for a while there. I will quit again, cause it is smelly.
17. Flowers make ones surroundings that much more beautiful.
18. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.
19. Every once in a while, its a good idea to treat yourself, whatever that means to you.
20. Money comes, money goes. Knowing that makes my relationship to it that much easier to bear.
21. Trying is better than not.
22. I love a good book.
23. I have good, really good, amazing, stupendous, crazy cool friends. I wish I could spend the rest of my life just spending time showing and telling them that.
24. I am a blog lurker more than a blog commenter.
25. My deal breaker in relationships is hard drugs. Yep - just say no.
26. I really do not like my little red friend that comes once a month.
27. Tigger, my kitty, has been the longest relationship I have ever had besides my family members. I love her.
28. I think I am going to try and make this list go to 36, which is not what I was intending, but as long as I am most of the way there - I might as well.
29. I think that one day I will win the lottery. I have felt this way ever since I was 8, filling out my mom's publishers clearinghouse envelopes.
30. I love traveling. By car or plane, anywhere.
31. If I had to do it all over again, my life, I would not change a thing. I believe this because I like who I am today.
32. The concert that is still on my must see list, which may somehow someday someway become a possibility, would be Yusuf Islam.
33. Every day I still miss my mom. Every day. I don't think it will ever change, and its ok.
34. I wonder who reads this blog, I wonder about it a lot. I hope you like visiting here, and that you'll say hi sometimes.
35. I love flip flops. A lot. It is my one material addiction. I call shoes "foot prison."
36. I think I could actually keep going, but I won't. Long blog posts are boring, and I still have not figured out how to do that one thing where you can do a "teaser" I think they call it. You know, the read more.... thing. I would love another typepad user to tell me how if you know.

Here's to another day, another month, another year. *clink*

July 20th, 1974.

just in case you needed a close up

Here you go.
Its almost birthday time, its almost birthday time, la la la la la la, its almost birthday time.

For sure better angle on the bow. And yes, my hair was at least two inches off my forehead.

More later since this photo is not exactly a reveal, so much as another angle.

Whats up with you? Check in in the comments.

pretty pretty birthday girl

So, one of what I consider to be the most amazing things about my life in faith is that I chose to get baptized the day after my birthday. It has only been in my adult life that I learned celebrating someones birthday and baptism birthday is kinda cool. (OK - wow that was so Lord-dorky - I guess its cool for me, some people I know, and my Godchild)

So here is me, my first picture taken for the church directory, and me in my baptism / birthday dress, circa 1984.
Oh, aren't I a sight to behold.

On the left, you can't really see but my hair, swooped up with the help of a comb for teasing, aqua net and a giant bow clip holding it all back. The outback red shirt, the big baggy look, turned up collar, wow - I was the shiz-nit.

And on the right, we have brace face, freckled, little house on the prairie-esque, but still the Farah Fawcet flip me.
I wonder what kind of commentary I'll have on myself in 20 years, looking back to today. Hopefully, I can look back and say "yep - that's her - radically in love with life and God. You can see it - see? Its there in her eyes."

t-minus 3 days and a wake up

Ahhh... the old polaroids. No red eye reduction in those ol' things.

This is me, just after I graduated high school, in 1989. I was like 115 pounds for real (not the 115 pounds I was on my drivers license for the nearly 10  years after this was taken).

DQ ice cream cakes with the fudgy crumbly goo in the middle were all the rage. And apparently so was white jeans, the mellowed out Joan Jett hairstyle, and mock turtlenecks in July.

Fun to look back at all these old photos. My grandma, Lu a.k.a. Grandma Lettuce, snapped this doozy.

More tomorrow, and the big reveal to come on Friday. Stay tuned friends.

its birthday week

Friday - the big 36 birthday. I kinda like the idea of 36. It seems like a good number, divisible by itself. Three (a good trinitarian number) plus three is 6. One of my favorite memories of math as a younger person was doing the multiplication song... and Six! times Six is do de do Thirty Six!

So this week I thought I would take a look back at some of my past moments, fashions and hairstyles. Nothing like some humor to be "keepin' it real yo."
This was my I think 7th or 8th birthday. I got my first record player, and my first album, the soundtrack to The Muppet Movie. My next album would be the Grease soundtrack. I wonder what these choices say about me today? I still love the song "Rainbow Connection" and "We Go Together" and sing my heart out every time I hear them.

I keep looking at this photo, looking for some insight and all I can come up with is tears. This was a particularily difficult time in my family history - right around when my parents divorced. You never would be able to tell here, with my little round face, my cute overhauls, and my long locks of hair (which you will see as I post all week, my hair has only been long when I was a little girl).

Later in life, I remember finding the song, Rainbow Connection, as sung by Kenny Loggins. I was over at my moms house and wanted her to listen to it with me. She did, and cried.

I wasn't sure why she did, but now with her gone I think I have a glimpse. It represented a little girl, her daughter, in a time where life had not gotten her down, life had not started to beat up on us the way that it did and would. It was a hopeful time. Yeah - the divorce was difficult, but she had her girls.

RAINBOW CONNECTION
Kermit the Frog

Why are there so many
Songs about rainbows
And what's on the other side
Rainbow's are visions
They're only illusions
And rainbows have nothing to hide
So we've been told and some chose to
Believe it
But I know they're wrong wait and see

Someday we'll find it
The Rainbow Connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me

Who said that every wish
Would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that
And someone believed it
And look what it's done so far
What's so amazing
That keeps us star gazing
What so we think we might see

Someday we'll find it
That Rainbow Connection
The lovers the dreamers and me

Have you been half asleep
And have you heard voices
I've heard them calling my name
Are these the sweet sounds that called
The young sailors
I think they're one and the same
I've heard it too many times to ignore it
There's something that I'm supposed to be

Someday we'll find it
The Rainbow Connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me

Continued part 2 tomorrow...

Smack dab into Goal #3

MDGs.
The Millennium Development Goals.

Oh yeah, its all the rage in my church. Its almost "hip" to be a part of the "movement." (Yes - I intentionally used the quotes added lameness factor.) I used to sit on the task force (oh no - not a committee, a task force, 'cause thats different), then I dropped out, but I am back in again (I think). I know, I know, I could not make my cold cold heart sound any more hardened and sarcastic. It gets better. Keep reading. I am not a total jerk.

Then someone pushed just the right button in me, you know the ones. It's like "Hey! You would be really great at this one thing I have in mind just for you, and the thing is I can't imagine anyone else who could do it like you." and/or "lets get together and have coffee because there is this one thing - I just think you could really be X, Y and Z for it." You get the point - butter me all up and get me in my soft spot. What can I say - other than OK God. Don't know what you are up to with all of this - but I'm in. I'll bite.

Seemingly unrelated, I am on my way home tonight, listening to what else, MPR / NPR. I just got done meeting with someone planning and dreaming up youth ministry at the new gig. (the meeting was awesome and inspiring) What was on was The Story from American Public Media. The story was about Demetria Williamson, a recipient of a micro-credit loan to make her dream come true - being a small business owner. She has an amazing story, one that there is no way I can give credit to by jotting down a few words. She makes a hybrid wig/hat, for women and young ladies who are dealing with the changes and effects of cancer. Her story is here, and here. Listen to it here.

What struck me in her interview with Dick Gordon was she kept giving thanks to God for what she has, and how blessed she is. She is a woman, who was beaten and battered, moved into womens shelters with her kids, came up out of very difficult sketchy life situations, and was given a micro-credit loan to meet the goal. What goal?

Goal 3. Promote gender equality and empower women

The story was so inspiring, so amazing. And who knew even I could connect, really understand, get even the whole MDG thing. I feel like all the time I was doing it before was all "fake it till you make it" kind of thinking. I had not been convicted. I had not heard this Gospel, this need, in my own native tongue I guess.

Now let me be clear - I know that a great deal of the movement is about places that are not in the good ol' US of A, the land of abundance and prosperity. The MDGs focus on places like Palestine, Africa, Malaysia. But somehow, I can't help but believing that Mitakuye Oyasin (we are all related). My sister in New York, my brother in                 Senegal, each one precious in our Creators eyes. So let them be in mine.

I am ONE. I get it. One baby step at a time.

God, thank you thank you thank you. For being so patient with me. For speaking my language, for showing up, for opening my heart and eyes. I'll probably fall off the wagon and forget again, so I'll keep my eyes peeled, looking for You, probably in all the wrong places.

Chimera?

So this comes to you fresh from Max, I am catching up on reading my blogging friends. I've just started - again. Like exercise (what - I can pretend I know something about exercise) it just takes getting back on again. So I am back - sort of. Back to what I am not sure. I've been a little lost - a little mis-placed in my world.

The highlights would be

• Seeing friends this past weekend for dinner
• Finding a new, ridiculously welcoming place to worship and just rest and be
• Finding my strength on Saturday - in the most odd of places - a meeting
• Reading my new book from Jason (so awesome)

The lowlights are just too low to even go there right now. Still tender, still fresh, still unsure of my self and direction.

I am doing some updates here, a little check in here - a little reading there. Next thing you know I will be back at the Friday 5 again.

Anyway - this quiz is strangely good. Thanks for not letting me totally go friends. See you soon.

You Are a Chimera

You are very outgoing and well connected to many people. Incredibly devoted to your family and friends, you find purpose in nurturing others. You are rarely alone, and you do best in the company of others. You are incredibly expressive, and people are sometimes overwhelmed by your strong emotions.

What Mythological Creature Are You?