To Change or not to Change...

"Jeanne, you hate change. You fight it with every fiber of your being." Someone said that to me on Wednesday. And while it may have been a bit overstated, he wasn't entirely wrong. I hate change that doesn't make sense, or change that I don't like, or change that hurts.

There has been a lot of change in my little life recently. I have accepted a new position at the church I work at: I am now the Music Director (before I was the Celebration Arts Assistant). New title. New boss. New responsibilities.

It has been a long road filled with the sorts of change that I apparently work so hard to avoid. But I am finally here. And I am glad.

Better than the original

There are certain products that according to society (I don't know who in society...just people) you are supposed to like the original, not the imitation. And there are some products which this statement would be in line with. For example, never eat imitation cheese. I had to find this out the hard way. Summer of 2002 Corri Burns and I were driving back to IL from spending the summer in the Grand Canyon. In order to save money, we bought a bunch of food to make sandwiches and other stuff on the two day drive back home. Cheese can be kind of expensive - so we bought the cheap cheese. We didn't look at the label carefully enough. I think we were somewhere in New Mexico when we stopped to have lunch at a rest stop. We make our sandwiches and start to eat. Only something was terribly wrong...The cheese was by far the worst thing that we had ever put in our mouths. We take a closer look at the label and find out that it reads "imitation cheese." Not sure exactly what it was made of...but I do know that we left it at the rest stop and ate the rest of our sandwiches without cheese (or imitation cheese as the case may be.)
However, there are certain food products where I think the imitation is better than the original. I have two examples: 1) Cranberry sauce. I like the jellied cranberry sauce that comes out of a can. I think that real cranberry sauce is gross. Give me the molded jelly any day. 2) Maple Syrup. I do not like real Vermont Maple Syrup. I just don't. Never have. Which I know, being from that state, makes me a heretic. But I would much rather have the Walmart Great Value maple syrup that contains only 2% real maple syrup and the rest is imitation whatever.
Can you think of any other cases in which the imitation is better than the original?

The great unfinished...

I don't know how many posts I have started and then deleted over the past week or so. None of them have been worthy of publishing. Either they are too heavy, too trite, or just not what I have wanted to say. Words have not been my friends lately. The right ones escape me, and I am left with half finished sentences and incomplete thoughts.

I have two meetings tomorrow that are of the utmost importance. I can only pray that my battle with words will, at the very least, settle down for those few hours. Maybe in my sleep tonight I can negotiate a cease-fire with my vocabulary...

Wedding Pics

Brides do not get much more beautiful than this.

Resistance Shattered

I have been resisting watching the movie "The Notebook" since it was in theaters. I knew that it would be a good movie. But I knew it would be sad and I also knew that I would probably cry. And I just haven't felt like crying.

But I watched it tonight. And I was right. It was good, it was sad, and I did cry. But I suppose I am glad I finally relented.

Think Global

God is a global God. I know that I fall into the trap of thinking that God is in a box. As if He doesn't exist, or doesn't work outside my scope of influence. But God is global. He could use me here; He could use me somewhere else. God is global.

I confess that I am guilty of holding on tightly to WHERE I minister. But God is global. I wonder sometimes, that if God did call me to leave this place....would I have the courage to say yes? God is global...

Beauty

She was so beautiful. And so happy. I can't remember the last time I saw her this happy. It was worth it. All of it. I've been trying unsuccessfully to post some pictures. Hopefully it will work soon.