New blog!

I have a new blog now! I decided to combine with Josh to make more of a family blog (we'll see if he actually blogs;-)), so you will find all of these posts, plus several new ones by clicking on this link: http://crazyelliotts.blogspot.com Enjoy! This blog will self-destruct in....well...it will probably be awhile before I actually delete this blog, just to be safe, but all posts from now on will be on the other one. The end:-)

Knocked for a loop

It's funny how, no matter how busy we as human beings can get, that there are certain things that have the power to stop us in our tracks.

One is snow, and because of the random snowstorm in Oregon last December, MANY of us were stopped cold from our schedules during the busiest season of all and left twiddling our thumbs wondering what to do with ourselves. Suddenly, nothing on our crazy agendas mattered or applied anymore, because we simply could not do them.

Another...the FLU. I have been experiencing this ever since Wednesday. Now, colds are one thing. You can typically work your way through most of your "agenda" with a cold, especially with the aid of many over-the-counter medications available. But the flu...no. Kudos to those who actually attempt to carry on with their lives with the flu. I simply cannot do it. Call me a wimp, but the flu has the power to send me straight to bed and to cancel any and everything on my agenda, including MT clients, without a second thought. It also has the power to make me not care in the slightest that dishes are piling up in the sink, the laundry basket is overflowing, and used drinking glasses are being left in random places in the apartment (typcial pet peeves of mine). Even though I may not like what's on TV, reaching for the remote and changing channels requires far too much effort, so I'll just roll over and try to ignore it. The sun is out, you say? Who cares....the sun is bright and would only make my headache worse. Stupid sun..............you get the drift. The flu has a way of making you not care about much. It's evil.

I am finally over the worst, which is a good feeling. I like the sun again. Yay sun! But anyway, it really is funny (and also a bit comforting) that the busiest or most powerful of human beings are still oh-so-vulnerable to things like frozen crystals falling from the sky or an influenza virus tinier than the eye can see.

Perfect quote...truly.

Our pastor gave us a quote by Jerry Bridges today that I have no intention of every forgetting:

"Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God's grace."

I plan on going back to this whenever I am feeling heavily burdened with shame...which happens more than I care to admit sometimes... or if I ever become CLOSE to thinking that I am more worthy than another of God's grace. I am what I am SOLEY by the grace of God, and that is all. Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 15.

Quick side note: Our pastor has been going through the book of 1 Corinthians with us for over a year now. It's been awesome:-)

So anyway, back to Paul. Paul is someone I could honestly see as "ruffling a lot of feathers" back then. He was bold, stright to the point, and really seemed to always say exactly what he thought, with tact not necessarily a priority. Had I known him personally, I could see myself being very intimidated by him, since I am a person who can't stand even the idea of someone being angry with me. In other words, confronation of any kind makes me nervous:-)

That being said...even Paul, in the midst of a VERY bold and confrontational letter to the Christians of Corinth (read it, seriously. He reams them on a number of issues:-), quickly admitted to his sins and to who he was before he met Christ, as well as admitting he was NOTHING without the grace of God. Thanks Paul:-) Maybe you're not so scary after all! J/K.

I pray that I continue holding this belief close to my heart...as well as continuing to believe that God's grace IS enough for me.

Fun times

A word of advice...perhaps from personal experience:

When you go to the grocery store and are loading up your car with groceries...make sure you remove any items (like, say, a carton of milk) that you may have temporarily placed on the top of your vehicle before driving away. If you don't do this, you may just have to get out of your car at a stoplight to retrieve it with an audience of about 20 people watching you from their cars.

Just saying....

Peter & the Wolf

Depending on what my client schedule is for the day, I often spend a lot of time in the car, particularly on Wednesdays. Today, I got a huge treat. 89.9FM (Portland's classical music station) was playing Peter & the Wolf from start to finish. Remember??? It's a narrated story filled with musical interludes and each character is represented by an instrument or a group of instruments:

Peter= Strings
Bird= a flute
Duck= an oboe
Cat= a clarintet
Grandfather= a bassoon
Wolf= 3 horns
Hunters= timpani & bass drum

Hopefully that helped whet your appetite. It's pretty cool. I remember it was one of the first things to turn me on to classical music as a kid. It took one of the simplest stories imaginable and brought it to a whole new level of excitement and interest. Seriously, if there was no music, there would be nothing exciting or orginal about the story at all...and it would be over pretty quickly too:-) I love that. I love the powerful effect that music can bring to the simplest of things. It's one of the many reasons I became a music therapist. Another way to look at it...imagine watching your all-time favorite movie with all of the music taken out of it. I will end with that:-)

Happy Almost-Spring!

So I think I have proven to be a much better "Facebooker" than blogger, but I'll never stop trying!:-)

This past winter has been a huge blur of activity, change, and character-building. I won't go into details, but I WILL say that I learned a lot of powerful lessons. One was something that I think is hard for ALL of us. I was too busy...WAY busier than I even realized until after I quit one of my part-time jobs and scaled back to just my music therapy clients and being on-call at the hospital (and even THAT sounds kinda nutty). It dawned on me that I was just so USED to having my life crazy because I had done the work/school thing for so long. I remember feeling extremely antsy on one of my first weekdays that I had nothing going on...my first instinct was actually..."maybe I should find more clients....or pick up more shifts at the hospital". It sounds silly, but in a way, I was addicted to...or at least extremely stuck in the mode of... being busy. And while I do think it's good for us to keep at least somewhat busy...I am learning that (duh) it really is ok to not be running around like a chicken with no head and then collapse into bed every night. I know that there are periods of time where we all have to do that...but we should really only do it WHEN we have to. I now have time to keep our apartment clean on a more consistant basis. I am able to cook and bake, which happens to be a favorite hobby of mine anyway:-) I am able to spend more time in the Word and in prayer, and I have done NOTHING but benefit from this. I can spend more time with Josh...I LOVE spending time with Josh:-) Anyway...the list can go on and on, but my point is...my life is MUCH more balanced now and I certainly have no problem with that:-)

On another subject...Josh and I are in the midst of looking for a house! It's very exciting that this is something that is now a possibility for us, but we are also taking our time and trying to figure out the confusing market right now...and trying to see if the prices will drop even more. They say it's a buyers market now, which is true in a lot of ways, but it's also tricky because a lot of the options out there are either short sales or foreclosures, both of which have a lot of complications and possible hang-ups attached to them, so we are keeping an open mind but also hoping to find a good one that is NOT under one of these umbrellas:-) I'll definitely keep you posted on this...but for now, we are just looking:-)

Hope you're enjoying the snowy/rainy/hailing/cloudy/sunny/you-name-it weather we are having!

We have a winner...

Almost all, if not all couples out there will likely have lots of pictures taken of them as a "couple", even excluding all wedding photos. So chances are, you're going to have some bad pictures here and there. Well folks, Josh and I officially have our worst. If there ever is a photo of us in the future worse than this, I don't even know if I would want to look. So behold...

Now granted, we had been camping, my hair was wet, camera angle weird, blah blah blah. But still...this is beyond bad. We look like we have serious issues. But it definitely gave us a good laugh:-)

And now my challenge to you...find your worst picture ever and post it! Life's too short to not laugh at yourself sometimes:-)