Of Kids And Playdough

    A couple weeks ago, I babysat two little kiddos. At one point in the day, we all sat around the table and played with Playdough (can you say awesome, and nostalgic!? :) Anyways, I wowed them both with my mad Playdough snake rolling skills - it was a hit. I'd roll them each a snake, they'd play with it, and give it back to me when it needed to be mended.

    Now, I realize some of you reading this may not be proficient Playdough snake rollers, so let me explain one thing: to make a good snake, you take some dough, and squish it together, making sure all the flaws (cracks and such) are out – then you'll be able to roll a nice long snake that will be more resilient to little hands :)

    So, back to the story: a funny thing happened, the smiling 2 year old would give me his cracking/breaking snake to fix; knowing I'd made it, so I could fix it. I'd then take the snake and mush it all together into a fresh ball again. When he looked over to see his snake being crushed, his little face would distort into a look of confusion and unhappiness. Motioning at me to roll it, not break it he seemed to say, “What are you doing, I wanted you to fix my snake, not kill it!?”. I tried to assure him that everything would be fine, but he just kept his eyes on the ball of dough, and did not smile again till he saw a snake being rolled out once more.

    This process happened several times, it made me laugh. How could he forget so quickly that even though I was destroying his snake, it was for the purpose of building him up a better one? Why wasn't he trusting me? I mean, he had seen me do it before for him... It hit me later, that I am the exact same way with God. I'll give Him things in my life that I want to be made better, asking Him to fix it. Sometimes though, God has to tear down, to be able to best rebuild. Then, like the little 2 year old, we forget all of God's faithfulness to us from before, and stay so focused on the things falling apart that we forget to keep trusting God's abilities to take the broken things in our lives, and heal them – even if we can't grasp how the process works.

    I decided I should take this Playdough lesson to heart, and next time I feel like God is allowing something to fall apart, to remember that He knows better than I, and life doesn't always have to make sense to me - I simply need to have faith that God is in control of life's changes. That should always be reason enough to not fret.

    I am a “fretter” though, so this is something I know I will have to continually work on.

Hebrews 13:5 - “...be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.'”

Dinner For Two - And Guest

    I've been contemplating what my first real Blog entry should be about (the “hello” one doesn't count you see). After tonight, I now know exactly what I'd like to write about. Dinner.

    My sister Sarah and I got some Chili's gift cards from our neighbors in return for watching their cat periodically whenever they go on trips and such. After a week of trying to figure out when to use them, we finally got around to it today. It was lovely. Just the two of us going out to dinner together, something we realized doesn't happen that often (unless you count Chick-Fil-A or Taco Cabanna trips). This was a rare “sit in a nice restaurant and dine” experience. Our waiter obviously didn't care too much about us being there though, since throughout dinner waiting for anything always took FOREVER. Now, I can understand when a restaurant is hopping and people are just too busy to get things done right away, but this was different - there was hardly anyone else there! I played waiter “I Spy” and found that he kept going to the other side of the place to talk with his friends. Even sat down too – not ok. Well, once everything was eaten, we were waiting (ha, what else is new!?) for the check to come, when Sarah suddenly announces that there is a big fat roach, a couple booths down from us, on a “Presidente Margarita” sign. Uh oh!

 *Let me interject that Sarah has one of the worst roach phobias of anyone I know. Therefore, my initial concern was for the restaurant, and how they'd handle a screaming customer.*

    I could tell Sarah was ready to sprint out of there the moment that roach might decide we were more interesting than the sign and fly over. (She had slide from sitting near the window of our booth to the far side near the walkway). I started to get nervous when I saw our little roach friend flutter her wings – ick! Sadly we still had to pay, and couldn't really leave without saying something, if only for the sake of the other diners.

    We managed to get an employee who was cleaning tables to come by, since who knows where our waiter was. We proceeded to tell him about the roach, to which he really didn't show that much surprise. Actually the only emotion he displayed was dread, like he was the unlucky one that now had to do something about it. He just stood there just looking at it, then finally spoke, “Man, that's not good” he said, “I mean, roaches in the kitchen that fall in your salad that's ok – but out here, that's bad. Haha, I'm just joking!”

We were not impressed with his joke.

    Our waiter came back around (he probably was nervous we were telling on him) and when he realized what was going on all he had to say was, “Y'all didn't see that...”

Uh huh.

    The unlucky employee went over to the roach with a broom. Not wanting to be around to see how that approach would go, we gave our waiter the meal money and left lickety split. I felt bad though, because there were two girls sitting across from our booth who looked less than pleased at the turn of events, especially since they had just received their food. Yum.

    Moral of the story: avoid eating at Chili's in the Alamo Quarry – unless you are partial to big ole' bugs coming over to ask you how dinner is going.

Hello Blogging World!

    Before this Blog relationship begins, I must let you know that sometimes I will forget to Blog, but never take it to heart. My Blogging absences are not because I do not care, rather probably because of one of two reasons:

1. Nothing of interest has happened and I don't want to spam any of the followers I may be lucky enough to have.
2. Too much of interest has happened and I haven't gotten the chance to sit down and share right away.

    Either way, I hope you'll stick with me - through the lengthy posts, and the nonexistent posts. Most of all I hope that this Blog is used by God for something bigger than I could ever plan.