MY BLOG POSTS

School starts for my kids and me tomorrow morning. Call me crazy, but I love the first day of school. Always have. I love buying school supplies. Love the piles of fresh paper, the smell of new pencils, the shiny highlighters full and ready to be used.

As you can see, my daughters did not inherit that love…

Not that I loved the actual academic part of school. That didn’t come until college. But I liked the new start that came with each new year. It was like White Out – I could cover over what I didn’t like and make something better. I still get that feeling as a teacher – new year, new start, a chance to do better this year than I did last year. My New Year’s Resolutions happen this week, not in January.

But even as I think that, I am reminded of Lamentations 3:22-23 “The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.”

I don’t need to wait for a new school year to change what needs to be changed. Every day that I wake up is a new day, one filled with God’s lovingkindness and compassion. I can “start over” every morning – with God’s help, for his glory.

“Therefore if anyone is  in Christ,  he is  a new creature;  the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” I Cor. 5:17

Here’s to the new!

I grocery shop once a week.  And I almost always manage to end up in the line where there is a price check, or where the cashier is being trained, or where one is trading with another and the switch-over requires a manager’s help…you get the idea. I spend a lot of time waiting in line at the grocery store.

Grocery stores know people have to wait their turn – that’s why there are all those magazines at eye level on every aisle. And sometimes I’ll grab one and catch up on the dating and/or dieting lives of the rich and famous. But a lot of the times, I make up stories.

It’s fun.

I look at the carts of those around me and I make up stories about those people’s lives based on what they’re buying.

Someone with lots of fruits and veggies might have a 500 pound teenager at home and is trying to get his/her weigh down. But there’s a twelve-pack of Twix bars hidden underneath the carton of strawberries that gives her away — Mom can’t say no to her big baby. And she’ll be back in line tomorrow with food the kid will actually eat.

The guy with the cart full of Slim Jims and Root Beer? Just broke up with his girlfriend of three years. He’s sad to have lost her and all, but really happy to be reunited with his favorite snacks.

You get the picture. So  much more fun than hearing the latest drama about Tom and Katie, don’t you think? Give it a try next time you’re waiting behind the lady with the twenty bags of cat litter that are all supposed to be priced half what is coming up on the register…:)

I read a book about prayer yesterday. The take-home message I got from it was, “Find some big thing you want God to do and pray until you get it.”

It’s a message I’ve heard often, one that can be supported with biblical examples. The Bible is full of stories of amazing things God did – parting the Red Sea, knocking down the walls of Jericho, keeping Jonah alive inside the belly of a whale. God often works out the impossible in the lives of his people just so we know it is Him at work and not us, His power being demonstrated most effectively in our weakness. I can testify to that in my own life time and time again. So I’m not knocking the idea that God does great things and we should pray for Him to accomplish great things.

But as I was reading this book, and my mind began to wander to the “great things” I’d like to see happen – that my novels sell, my school grows, my husband gets his dream job – I felt God saying to me, “Really, Krista?”

All the “big things” coming to mind were external. But over and over again, I see in scripture that God is far more concerned with the internal. He wants a pure heart, a hunger and thirst for righteousness, He wants me to love others and serve Him with everything I have.  And in the grand scheme of things, how many books I sell really isn’t going to matter. But how I loved my family, friends, and students as I was writing – that will matter. How I lived the Christ-life as I went through the ups and downs of life – that will matter.

So I decided I would start praying for the big things, praying until I got them. But the big things aren’t external. The really big, really important requests, involve a change on the inside. So I am praying God makes me more like Christ. I am praying my selfish tendencies be replaced by selflessness. I am praying that my discontent be replaced by thankfulness, that my complaining be replaced by rejoicing.  I am praying that I think of the needs of others far more than I think about what may or may not be my own needs.

I am praying for big, huge things that will, hopefully, not just change me, but will be used as an agent of change in the lives of those around me. And I won’t stop praying for those, believing by faith that God will answer them, and knowing those answers will be far more satisfying than any external “things” could ever be.

Last night was 80’s Night at youth. My daughters were very excited. So for their “research” they asked me all about it. I felt like a fossil being unearthed by eager archeologists.

I hit my teen years just as the 80’s were coming to an end, so I am certainly not an expert. But in case you, like my daughters, want to know more about this totally awesome decade, I will share with you what I shared with them:

What did you wear? My friends and I loved neon. And matching. If I had a neon green shirt, I would also have neon green socks, neon green earrings, several neon green bracelets, and, of course, neon green eyeshadow (worn all the way up to my eyebrows). I wore jelly shoes – several pair in all different colors — penny loafers, Keds and Reebok hightops (the rich kids had a pair of Reeboks in every color, too, but our family wasn’t rich, so I had to just accessorize with my extra-thick layers of colorful socks).

What was up with the big hair?? Big hair was a status symbol. I would go through a mini-can of Aqua Net aerosol hairspray every week. The goal was to have bangs so high and so hard that the whole thing could be lifted up and down like the hood of a car, could go through a hurricane and still look exactly the same. I would get perms twice a year. “Poodle perms” that made my already thick hair super thick. And then I’d gel it, spray it, scrunch it and tease it. When I wore it up, it would be in a banana clip so the “poof” could still be exposed to the max.

What did you do? The 80’s introduced cable and music videos, so those were still relatively new and limited. Personal computers were rare and did very little (thanks to my dad, though, I did know how to run a program that made my name scroll diagonally down the green screen of our Commodore 64). There were some video games, but I wasn’t into those. I remember the first time I ever heard about a CD – Mike Seaver (Kirk Cameron) was desperate for one on one episode of “Growing Pains.” It would be the early 90’s before I got an actual CD player, though. My music came from records and cassette tapes, played on a huge boom box with removable speakers I kept on my shelf, next to my Caboodle full of make-up.

What was “in”? All the girls I knew wanted Liz Claiborne purses and Liz Claiborne perfume – we carried little triangle shaped versions of the latter in the former so we could reapply our perfume every time we reapplied our Aqua Net. Guess jeans were cool, as were Polo shirts – those were often worn doubled, collars up, with matching socks. Our heartthrobs were Micheal J. Fox, Ricky Schroeder, Rob Lowe, Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Robert Downey, Jr…to  name a few. Favorite musicians – I liked Christian music, oldies, and Broadway, but the Top 40 stuff included Bon Jovi, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Wham!, Tina Turner, INXS, Cyndi Lauper…this list could go on and on. But you get the idea.

It’s hard to fit a whole decade into one blog, and this has really just scratched the surface. There’s much more to the 80’s than this. My “older” readers — let me know what you remember about this decade. And my teen readers, what questions do you have about this totally tubular decade? And what would you love to see make a come-back?