My new favorite reality show....

I have grown totally disgusted with reality TV...from the "Real Housewives (real according to whose reality?)" series to "The Hills" and of course Jon the D-Bag and Kate the Shrew Plus Eight Little Destroyed Lives...my stomach is sick seeing how poorly people treat each other and how utterly self-absorbed people can be.

There's a reality show on CMT that totally LOVE..."World's Strictest Parents." The premise is two troubled teens from different households go stay with a family where two Gestapo parents attempt to change their crappy behavior. Amazingly, the kids do have a change of heart after a week at the strict home. It gives me hope for the future to see that kids can still become productive, caring members of society.

These kids learn that life isn't about their constant comfort and happiness...life takes hard work. Yet in the midst of hard work, they learn a very important lesson that they never knew: accomplishment feels great!

Here we go bye week, here we go!

Cowboys get a break this week, and so do we...from utter mediocrity and half-a**-edness. I have listened to a lot of people expounding on the subject of the 'boys, and most have the common themes as follows:

1. Wade needs to go.
2. Romo needs a smack upside the head (Agent Gibbs, are you listening?) and to leave the blonde girlies alone for a minute. Troy Aikman did not ever cavort and trust me, he certainly COULD have.
3. Jerry Jones needs to focus on talent for his team, but not just ability, but how they fit in the organization. We need some tough-minded guys with lots of heart...not ballers, pimps, and playahs who like to "make it rain" at strip clubs.

Jerry has focused more on the Death Star than his team and baby, it shows.
4. If a player is not performing, or getting penalized over and over (Flozell) time to ride the pine. Yes, the player still gets paid, but he is missing something even more important....making numbers and stats. When it's time for contract negotiations or free agency, guess what coaches and owners look at...numbers and stats. Jimmy Johnson thought nothing of putting someone on the "asthma field" or benching a superstar if they weren't performing at the level they were hired to perform.

I'm not giving up on them, (YET)but if some of those guys in that plush locker room don't start sounding more like "the buck stops here" instead of the current excuse-making and finger-pointing, then the season is over. Done. Kaput.

It's wake-up time...let's see next week who's still napping.

Yeah, I don't think that Bible camp is gonna make it.

Summer is almost over (well, at least the part that doesn't have school) and we are in full swing getting ready. Lots of activity the next few weeks. I don't know what I was thinking giving birth to my child the same week school starts. Every year it's the same thing. Get uniforms ready, buy school supplies, get cake ordered, make party plans, etc etc etc. But deep down, beyond all the craziness, I love it. I love my daughter with a white-hot mama bear kind of love that should scare anyone who would ever dream of messing with my cub. My cub is very nervous and tied in knots about starting a new school (and she also starts middle school.) I have tried giving her all my sage advice, but it all boils down to one simple thing...she has to learn to solve her own problems. I have always been there to untie her knots and pull back the silver foil on the yogurt cup. I have also been there to guide her through the grief of losing all of her living grandparents (my dad died way back when I was 13 years old) in only 6 months. Now is the very beginning of the letting go process that I embrace and repel at the same time. The thought of letting her try her fragile wings almost takes my breath away. But, in order for her to find out God's will for her life and live it, I have to hand over the reins to her, little by little.

I also started a new job back in April, which has been a great blessing. While it is still handling claims, it is truly refreshing. And it can be stressful, however not nearly as bad as the stress level I had a few months ago.

Here's my prayer focus for August: forgiveness and letting go of the past.

Spring Break!

Our lives have been turned upside down in the past 6 months...Jeff and I officially now have no living parents. We both feel like orphans, and we are not moving in the right direction with our grief. I hope and pray that we will. Neither of us can see past our own pain...maybe this is a time in our lives where God wants us to lean only on Him and not look to human help. We need a lot of help communicating...it seems we both want to communicate but neither of us understands each other. So, there's the direction my prayers will go. Seems like one of us is speaking in a foreign tongue, so naturally one of us needs the gift of interpretation!

Prayer for 2009

I can't predict the future, nor can I change the past. All we have is NOW. So many times the enemy robs us of our blessings, our joy, our peace...because we don't live in the moment. I tolerate most of the children's animated movies because I love my daughter, so we go together to pretty much every movie I feel is appropriate. I never dreamed I would have the Holy Spirit speak to me so clearly in one of these movies, but He did. In the move "Kung Fu Panda" one of the "wise" characters is teaching the bumbling Panda about this very theme. He used a wonderful saying, which I repeat to my daughter often: "Yesterday is history. Tomorrow, a mystery. All we have is today--it is a gift. That's why it's called the "present." "
We heard a similar message at church right around the same time from Dr. Jimmy Evans--a powerful message about living for today. God has tomorrow in His loving grasp, so we don't need to worry. We should pray for our leaders, pray for spiritual revival, and mostly that 2009 will find us faithful.