Britany’s Blog

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!!!

Well, I’ve been busy working on my new home improvement project, which is simply to have access to certain parts of my home that have been inaccessible since we moved oh, say, nine months ago?

Yes, I could have had a baby in the amount of time it has taken me to finish moving into our house.  But then we would be having a totally different conversation, wouldn’t we?

So here’s the “before” picture.  And, if you can believe it, this was not even the worst the room looked.

Media room - before...

Obviously, we mistook this room for an indoor storage unit when we moved.

Then, in a moment of lunacy well-planned ingenuity, I offered our home up for the Sunday School Christmas party.  I did this because I totally underestimated the amount of work it would require I knew it would force me to finish unpacking.  And so, here are some pics of what we have accomplished.

Showing some improvement...

The media room was the first obvious goal, so here it was as we worked on it.  You can see in the pictures, I always have two busy hands to help me

Almost done!

This picture is about how it looks right now (except without the vacuum cleaner in the middle of the picture.  I believe the vacuum has migrated south to my bedroom.)

Now on to the other exciting room – the game room!  I’m not going to post the before pictures, but here are a few recent pics:

After we cleared out some space...

...and organized the bookshelves...

...we moved one of our many tables upstairs...

...and the kids continue to use the old table. Of course.

I’ll post more pics as we proceed.  Next on ye olde ‘to do’ list is to move the green couch upstairs to the media room.  Then it will not just be a ‘media room’; it will also serve as another guest room (as the couch pulls out into a bed).  I love anything with a multi-purpose, don’t you?  Know what I don’t love?  Moving furniture up and down stairs.  Which is why ye olde husband will be hiring ye olde nephew to move the couch.  Okay, I’m done with ye olde-isms.  See ya on the flip side!

I just got an email I had to share.  I have deleted the personal details but here’s the body of the email:

I wanted to see if anyone has noticed or seen a little grey cat in the neighborhood over the past week.  She got out last Friday and we have not been able to find her.  This is her 3rd time to get out of this house and in 13 years…she has never been outside before.  If you have seen her or even have her…please let me know.

She is a very small/very thin grey cat and her name is Ruthie…she is not the nicest cat and probably would not let you pick her up.

Please let me know if you’ve seen her!

Geez, I better go check my garage…

Good morning.  It is currently 6:32 am (!) and I am feeling overwhelmed with something I read during my quiet time this morning.  So I’m going to regurgitate it here for you (isn’t that a lovely word picture for such an early hour?).

Thanks to the encouragement of a good friend last night, I decided this morning to pick up my No Other Gods Bible study book and start working through it again.

It was amazing.  The story Kelly Minter had us read was 2 Chronicles 32:1-23.  If you don’t have time to read it for yourself, I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version.

The story begins with these words: “After these acts of faithfulness Sennacherib king of Assyria came and invaded Judah”.  The “acts of faithfulness” are outlined in the previous chapter, 2 Chronicles 31:20-21: “Thus Hezekiah…did what was good, right and true before the Lord his God. Every work which he began in the service of the house of God in law and in commandment, seeking his God, he did with all his heart and prospered.”

So at the end of Chapter 31, we’re applauding Hezekiah for being a good king.  Then we read that after all those acts of faithfulness, Sennacherib decides to invade Judah.
To quote my brother-in-law, “Whaaaaaat????”  I thought God REWARDED the faithful!!  But hold on – the story isn’t over.

So Hezekiah gets busy and starts fortifying cities and stopping up the water wells and preparing.  Then he encourages the people with these words: “Be strong and courageous, do not fear or be dismayed because of the king of Assyria nor because of all the horde that is with him; for the one with us is greater than the one with him” (v.7).

By the way, isn’t it interesting – Kelly points this out in the Bible study – how similar that verse is to this one:”greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4)?  I guess that might be considered a Biblical theme, huh?  (See with what ease I put those 4 years of seminary into use?!!)

So back to the story.  It gets worse before it gets better.  Sennacherib starts out by saying (in my own paraphrase), do you really think your God is going to be any more effective in your case than the gods of all these other people I defeated?  To quote Sennacherib, “Do you not know what I and my fathers have done to all the peoples of the lands?” (2 Chronicles 32:13).  He’s trying to intimidate them.  Then he sends his people over to “talk trash” to the Israelites living in Jerusalem.

I particularly love this part, because it really speaks to me: “They called this out with a loud voice in the language of Judah to the people of Jerusalem who were on the wall, to frighten and terrify them, so that they might take the city.  They spoke of the God of Jerusalem as of the gods of the peoples of the earth, the work of men’s hands” (2 Chronicles 32:18-19).

I find it particularly interesting that they used the “language of Judah” to call out “with a loud voice”.  So many voices are constantly screaming at us for attention.  And the ones we tune in to, the ones that are able to defeat our built-in filter, are the ones that “speak our language”.  And who speaks our language better than our closest friends and family?  Therefore they are the ones who have the most influence over us.  That can be particularly difficult when they remove God from the equation of our lives, which is what Sennacherib’s servants were doing.

But Hezekiah resisted: “But King Hezekiah and Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, prayed about this and cried out to heaven” (2 Chronicles 32:20).  He turned to God, and in his case, the results were astounding.

“And the Lord sent an angel who destroyed every mighty warrior, commander and officer in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned in shame to his own land. And when he had entered the temple of his god, some of his own children killed him there with the sword”(2 Chronicles 32:21).

Okay, so maybe it doesn’t always happen that way, but it did this time.  God took Sennacherib’s words personally, and He killed him.  And then it goes on to say the Hezekiah was exalted among the other kings and enjoyed peace and prosperity.  There’s more to Hezekiah’s story, but at least in this case, the ending is a good one.

What really struck me about this story, however, was that it is an example of how desperate things can look when you’re in the middle of the siege.  And how easy it is for us me to get mad at God for my situation.  In fact, it speaks volumes to me that Hezekiah was doing everything right when Sennacherib attacked.  But I think God was waiting to see if Hezekiah would continue doing everything right during the attack.  And he did.

Good for him – I usually don’t.  But maybe next time I’m under siege, my Bible will open to this story and I will remember that there will always be an end to the storms of life but God is watching to see how I react to the stress.  And maybe that will be enough, but if it isn’t, I can be sure there will be another storm a’coming.

Maybe it’s the Albuterol in my inhaler talking, but it just seems like everywhere I look there is bad news, bad news, and then the always popular bad news followed by a “things are just going to get worse” commentary.

Is it just me?

As I was thinking about all of this and pondering how a counter-cultural Christian should respond, my thoughts wandered to a time when all Jesus seemed to be getting was bad news.  The Jews were against Him, His teaching turned from popular to offensive overnight, and then – the kicker – “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (John 6:66).

I have somehow always found solace in the next verse.  Jesus, speaking to the Twelve, says “You do not want to leave too, do you?”.  It reminds me that Jesus was human.  He experienced loneliness and sorrow.

But I love even more the response of Peter in verse 68, “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  It was like Peter almost laughed at Jesus and said “Go?  Where are we going to go, exactly?”.  But when I thought about it earlier today, I realized that just like Peter, the place I have to go right now is to those same “words of eternal life”.  What a gift of God, to have His thoughts recorded for all posterity, available for me to pick up and read whenever I feel overwhelmed.

And so I did it.  I picked up my worn-out NIV Bible, a gift from Papa and Sadie in 1987 (I know this because I asked them to sign the front cover for me), and I carried it upstairs to the game room, to read out loud to the boys.  I figured, if I can’t get them to be quiet long enough for me to read to myself, I’m going to read it out loud to them!

And because I had no idea what to read, I just started flipping until I found Psalm 63:

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.

Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.

I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night.

Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings.

My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.

They who seek my life will be destroyed; they will go down to the depths of the earth.

They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals.

But the king will rejoice in God; all who swear by God’s name will praise him, while the mouths of  liars will be silenced.

I thought it was especially appropriate of God to mention the “watches of the night”, since I spent most of last night tossing and turning and thinking I heard rats scratching through the walls.  Maybe I’ll be sleeping with my Bible open to Psalm 63 on my nightstand tonight!

I’m grateful to say I am still standing.  Well, sitting at the moment, but you know what I mean.  There were times today when the dizziness threatened to send me crashing to the floor.  I don’t know why, exactly, but after a nap this afternoon, I was good to go.

And when I say ‘nap’, I really mean I practically passed out in the guest bedroom, thanks to all the folded laundry on my own bed.

That lasted until Sl decided he was a big boy and no longer needed a nap.  Or to obey directions to stay in his bed.  Or his room, for that matter.

I was so sleepy, I just put him in the bed with me and fell right back to sleep.  He was content to lie there next to me for about a nanosecond.  Then he started telling me how much he loved my mouth.  My ears.  My eyes.  All things that are nice to hear, of course, except when accompanied by tiny toddler fingers, wet and sticky touching my eyelids, mouth and worst of all, inside my ears.  At that point, my nap was over.

As it turns out, it was a good thing he came down when he did.  The alarm I had set to make sure I didn’t miss picking up the kiddos from school had been set to “silent” – on this, my first day to drive carpool for the neighbor.

We just made it in time.  Thank you, Lord, for sticky toddler fingers!

Eye candy: here are some older pics I found on my cellphone a little while ago…

My favorite cough medicine is now is now dead to me.

Tussionex – my all-time favorite, formerly known as “the yellow cough medicine” – is no longer my friend.  I took a normal dose at about midnight last night and what proceeded from there was a 16 hour blur of nausea and chills and that drugged feeling that, rather than leaving you happy and slightly loopy, made me unable to stand for more than 2 seconds.  Miserable.  I am so disappointed in my Tussionex.

When I finally came to, I struggled to dress myself and drive to the Legacy acute care place (can’t remember the exact name) where they took my info, took me back, then said “Wasn’t your husband just here yesterday?”  I said “Yes” and they said “Okay, we’ll just give you the same drugs we gave him.”  I said, “Fine, but NOT the Tussionex.  It’s now dead to me.”  So he gave me a prescription for Levall instead.  And a Z-pack.  And an inhaler.  Then he said the nurse would be back with my shot.  Hubs got a shot of steroid in his arm.  Okay, I could live with that.

Imagine my surprise when the nurse showed up with TWO shots.  Whhhhaaaaaaaattt?  One in the arm, one in the BUTT!  I haven’t had a shot in the butt since I visited the quack shack at A&M with my boyfriend and we both had strep throat.  But that’s a different story.

So I asked what in the heck the shot in my butt was for and she said it was Rocephin.  Not sure I spelled that right.  Not even sure what happened wasn’t all just a bad dream, but then, I have band aids to prove it actually happened…

So my question now is, why did I need a Rocephin shot AND a Z-pack?  Was this a mistake on the part of “Dr. Woody”?  Should I trust a doctor who works at an acute care place that goes by the name “Dr. Woody”???  And isn’t Rocephin the stuff they gave my kids to kill ALL the bacteria, good and bad, when they had had like a bazillion ear infections???  As I remember it, Rocephin was the last thing they tried before surgery.  Am I at risk for having surgery for bronchitis?  Do they sometimes consider removing your lungs, or bronchial tubes?  Am I perhaps over reacting due to the large quantities of medicines that are now coursing through my body?!!

Maybe that.

Oh you only thought I was done with this topic.   But today I have been obsessing about it and reading various posts on frisco-online.  Someone there referenced the DMN story, so I finally was able to google it:http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/102608dnmetrats.1498aabdb.html.  Once again, can I just say EWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I run away screaming in horror.

I have a healthy fear of spiders.  And roaches.  But rats?!!  I think at this point, my healthy fear rises to the level of NEUROTIC.  I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight.  Maybe I’ll keep posting about rats.

That should help.