A Thousand ???

Sometimes . . . okay, many times . . . well, there are times when I wonder why God bothers with me at all. I mean, really. I can get myself stuck in a bad rut faster than you can say "Quit spinnin' your wheels!"; I have missed my share of oppurtunities to do the right thing and generally have made many, many messes.

Then I have those times when I'm working with the kids at my church or I'm working on a writing project or am out with my husband or doing any of a myriad of things and I know, I know I'm where I'm supposed to be with Him, doing what He wants me to do.

The trick, I'm thinking, is to carry the lessons I've learned in the past and keep on moving forward without constantly looking over my shoulder. When I honestly and humbly come before God, admitting to Him my screwups and ask for His forgiveness and His help to change, I need to trust and believe changes will happen.

I'm blessed to teach Sunday School with a wonderful lady at my church, and today she did the coolest demonstration of how completely our sins are erased from God's record. What she has done is have the kids write their sins on a piece of flash paper she purchased from a magic store. Then she set it on fire and, being flash paper, soon it was gone without a trace. No ashes. No smoke. No record at all of the sins recorded on it.

And that's how it is when we ask God to forgive us. Our wrongs are gone without a trace. So when the devil or other people or our own selves try to bring those things up again, we need to remind them and ourselves to God, it's as if we never did those things.

And that can put a lot of ??? to rest.

Procrastinating or Smelling the Roses?

I caught the last bit of Ellen DeGeneres' stand-up routine on the Comedy Network a couple of Saturdays back and discovered she has the best way of looking at procrastination. It is simply the universe's way of telling us to slow down. So I have, therefore, not been procrastinating in regards to writing my novel. I have been stopping to smell the proverbial roses.

The only glitch with this is my instructor will most likely not buy it if I fail to send in my next assignment (ack! the third chapter!) by Wednesday.

siiigh

I'm thinking part of the problem I'm having is I really want this to be *perfect*. It needs to be funny, advance the story, show the reader what's going on and just be really good. It could also be I really did let too many people read what I have written to date, thereby opening myself up to more pressure in that now I have more people to (possibly) critique the thing. Or else I worry if they don't say anything at all. (Which is worse -- criticism or silence?) And is this whole thing just a hobby for me or something I really want to do something with (aka earn some money)?

Hmmmm . . .

A Week to Go!

Okay, I was excited about the release of season 3 of The Office on DVD, particularly when my pre-order arrived in the mail this past Friday, ahead of the Sept. 4th release date. It was an Office-filled weekend, to my husband's slight chagrin. (We balanced things out with some episodes of Invader Zim so it was all good.) If you're a fan of the show, I recommend picking this set up, if only for the blooper reel and episode commentaries. Good stuff.

But I think I'm getting a bit more excited for this Sept. 11th release:



Yessir, Paul Brandt's new album "Risk" is due out on that date and I'm really looking forward to it. His music has encouraged me many a time (in addition to having some really fun tunes to listen to), and even has been used as a soundtrack for my own creative endeavours. The video for the first single (Didn't Even See the Dust) is on You Tube and as I read in an interview with Mr. Brandt, is one that makes you want to speed, much as the single Leavin' from his previous release "This Time Around" is likely to do. Not that I have ever sped while listening to that song in the car. ;-)