Who painted it?

Sunday night has become hang-out-Christie’s-house night every week. People from church truck it all the way down south to my home to have loads of fun. Sometimes we do karaoke, sometimes we play a game, and sometimes....we paint! Below is a picture of some of our paintings, and I want you to try and guess who painted each painting. I know some of you blog readers don’t know these people, but feel free to guess anway.

The artists are Christa, Jaimee, Lisa, Mandy, and me.

Everyone Overcome!

Here are some pics from our Easter presentation, "Overcome." I didn't get to take very many because there were no breaks where I could leave the stage. So some of them are from rehearsal.

The Nightmare Before Easter

It's 3:33 am. I have barely had any sleep. I went to bed at 11, expecting to sleep until 4:30. Then I was going to wake up, get ready for church, and be at rehearsal by 7.

So I went to bed, all nice and tired, and all I heard for a half hour was the neighbor's dog barking. For crying out loud. If you're going to own a dog, don't keep it outside at night and let it bark. It barked non-stop. After beeping my car horn with the keys a few times, and even yelling out the window at it, I gave up and turned our bathroom fan on, hoping to shut out the noise. It worked, and I fell asleep. Whew!

Then the dreams started. Now, usually on Saturday nights before church, I have church dreams. Since I sing on the worship team, they're usually about stuff going wrong during service, or just weird stuff happening. Sometimes they're funny :-) But not tonight. Tonight were evil nightmares that I've never had before. I kept dreaming about just evil. I can't explain it, really. And then after a few minutes, I would see this very bright, blue flash of light and then I'd wake up in a panice, feeling like I have to puke.

This happened several times. Then Craig texted me at 1am to tell me that he was stranded at his wedding in Taylor. His car was dead. The weird thing about that is I have my phone on silent while I sleep, but as soon as he texted me, I sat up in another panic and looked at my phone and it was lit up. So I called him and he reassured me that friends were on the way to help, and that he would be home soon.

I went back to sleep. The nightmares still happened, but now some of them were about Craig being stranded, bad things happening to him, and him doing bad things. Just evil crap.

He just got home, and now I'm sitting here, not wanting to even go back to sleep for that last hour. So I'm blogging until it's time to jump in the shower. Craig and the kids will have to go to church with me at 7 and sit through all 3 services now, because his car is dead.

I'm exausted, and creeped out, but I will Overcome, right ;-)

Let's talk about......

Soup! Just kdding!

Love! Your love! What does it look like? What is your love language? Our latest series at church has been all about love. I happen to love love and been thinking about it lately.

I've never read the Gary Chapman book about love languages, and I'm not really talking about the love that you have for your spouse, or boy/girlfriend. I'm speaking of love in general. How do you show love to the people you love?

I'm trying to get myself to say "I love you" more. Unless you're known to be a big fat liar, it's probably the easiest and most efficient way to let someone know you love them. I think they are powerful words. Think about all the times you said "I love you" to someone for the very first time. It can be a scary thing to say! But it can also become routine...like the love-yous that often come at the end of a phone conversation with your spouse, or a relative. Sure, the love may still be there, but the words are routine.

Which leads me back to the question, what is your love language, besides using english language (or whatever language you currently speak!)?

Personally, I love to give. I love to give things. Material things...which is strange, because when someone gives me a thing, I don't really interpret it as "I love you." I know. I'm weird. I'm a love hypocrite!

I also love to give my time, and I also like when time is given to me. I think that people value their time, and to give your time to someone is special. For Valentines Day, I'd rather sit around and watch a movie with Craig than to recieve flowers from him.

Another one of my languages is play fighting. Joking around. Pretending to be mean, but not really. ;-) This one worries me, because I often wonder if people really think I'm being mean. I was always told that when the boys pick on you, it's because they really like you. Maybe that has stuck with me.

Zoe's love language is touching. That girl loves to cuddle. She loves to touch my face, and my hair, and she loves to kiss me on the cheek. I get more kisses from her in a day than I can count. Daphne's language is time. She wants your attention. In fact, she wants your attention 24/7 ;-) Xavier loves to give compliments. In fact, when I put him to back to bed tonight after his last coughing fit, he groggily told me I was gorgeous before drifting off to sleep. What a sweety. Craig's love launguage is cleaning. Nothing says I love you than organizing drawers and hanging his clothes in order. I'm not kidding. Unfortunately, this is how he shows love as well. I say unfortunately because his idea of clean and organized is not my idea of clean and organized. So while he's proud of the fact that he collected all the junk and lined it up nicely against the wall for me, it's just not clean to me! Ok, so we have a language barrier I guess.

So....I'm just curious about how others show love. How do you show love? How do you like to be shown that you're loved?

Tomorrow, we'll talk about soup, if you want.