To My Mother

My AMAZING Mom.

Everyone says that their mom is the best, but seriously. My mom is the best.

I'm having trouble even describing her - what do I say? She's funny? She's not funny. She's HILARIOUS. Everything she does just cracks me up. Like when she can't figure out how to change her profile picture on Facebook. Like that one time when she was walking up the stairs at church and another woman dropped her purse and my mom yelped. Like when she's running around the track and she's got this big smile on her face, like running is the funnest thing in the world. Like when she cracks up at her own jokes, now usually that's annoying in other people, but in her it makes you laugh so hard you cry. She's not funny, like a weird funny. She's a cool funny. ;-)

And she's beautiful. One of my brother's friend's dad commented to my brother that my mom was "pretty enough to be a super model." This married guy actually said that. My family teases Momma about that all the time. She has gotten comments from people, asking if she was a runner. And Momma is totally a runner. She can run a 5k with no sweat. She's hardly even breathing hard. No seriously. I'm not exaggerating.

Mom is so kindhearted and unselfish. She makes all the meals, and washes dishes with the same attitude she has when she runs. Like how can dirty dishes bring someone that much joy?

She's so godly, too. Her faith for God has inspired me so much to truly be the best person I can be. And she always comforts me, and lets me cry on her shoulder as long as I want. Whenever friends are being mean, or my faith weak and needing encouragement - she's always there. Defending me and making me feel so much better. A talk with my mom lifts so much weight off my shoulders. I go from being hurt and very angry to thankful and happy. I go from being devastated to free.

She is always there to laugh, to cry, to dance, to sing, to have water fights (remember that, Mom?), to be goofy, to make me happy when I feel sad, to read me verses, to pray over me, to kiss me goodnight, to give me advice, to bring me up in the Lord.

God has blessed me so much with my momma. I love you, Mom. :-) 

"You have to be sad sometimes, otherwise you forget what it's like to be happy."

Who can understand how God works? He knows all things, sees all things - His ways are perfect, flawless, and whatever He makes happen, happens for a reason.

Yet sometimes He is just so confusing. I know I can't ever comprehend Him - and He created me, He knows what is best for me.

I have been going through a lot - mostly all spiritual stuff. Relapsing into that valley of deadness again. Is there any end to this vicious cycle? Dead. Renewed. Dead. Renewed. Dead. Renewed. Over and over and over.

I've been talking with a few of my best friends a lot recently. A lot of them are going through so much trouble, and so much pain. When they thought their life was getting better, it took a terrible twist and both were left in shock. Wave after wave of bad things happened to them.

My friend said this to me one day:

Bekah, I want to go back to when getting high was on the swing and your biggest worry was what outfit to wear in the morning.

Those young days, four or five years old, eight or nine even. Filled with simple trust, innocent perspective, no cares in the world. If only we could regain that simple trust, that innocence. If only we could shake that anxiety.

I know so many friends who have said to me the exact same thing, different phrasing, but same core. "I want to go back, Bekah. I want to go back."

Jesus said the children would lead us, and I never truly understood until now. I look at my younger siblings and ache for what they have.

And I believe I can regain this simple trust, this innocent perspective. I believe I can shake this constant anxiety. How?

Prayer.

My friend had so much going on, much more than I did. She said to me she couldn't ever imagine how her life could possibly get any worse. Then she texts me one morning. She said she had spent almost two hours last night, praying. Praying her heart and soul out. Crying, yes. Feeling angry at God, yes. But praying to Him, pleading with Him to renew her, to change her life in a radical way.

And when she got to school that day? Her two dear friends who had turned their backs on her, who had gossiped about her, who had made up ugly lies about her and spread them everywhere, who swore at her, who blocked her on Facebook, who insulted her and then completely ignored her - they talked to her today. Saying their sorry, and wanting to still be friends.

My friend is still really hurt by what they did to her, but she gave them a second chance. She was willing to redo their friendship. To start over. Completely start over. She is my best friend and I can learn so much from her. God put her in my life for a big reason: to help me grow, to help me accept past mistakes, to help me become a better person.

But what happened to my friend at school that day: PRAYER did that. Letting God in on the daily struggles, in on those friends that are being cruel - He will HEAL it. He granted my friend forgiveness and willingness to give her friends a second chance. Shutting Him out solves nothing.

Pray. That is the only advice that I have for those many friends that run to me when their life is ruined. Pray. Pray. Pray. The power of prayer is beyond our comprehension. Prayer works in many ways, some unseen and some seen. Prayer gives us strength to continue on, gives us God's heart and God's ways.

God has blessed me in so many ways. I just have to say that. My dear friend wrote me this card. I would post a picture of it, but it's on my phone. In it she said, among other things, "If you live to be a 100, I will want to live to be a 100 and 1 day so I will never have to live without you." My other dear friend wrote this to me: "You listen to me and try to explain stuff to me, even when you hardly know what to do yourself, and like even when I dont know what to do, and we are like in the exact some place in life, you always help me and say "yeah, I know," or "I love you" and you just help me alot, and help me make right decisions." I am seriously SO blessed by my friends. By my family.

Who can look at this and say they're not blessed?

An Amazing Giveaway for My Amazing Chums (and a chance to get in on another one!)

I have been wanting to host a giveaway for a while - you guys are such amazing followers, chums and commenters that you deserve some fabulous stuff. And guess what? A beautiful Etsyian donated a seriously breath-taking gift.

You ready to see it?

A $50 MYSTERY basket from NewFashionedWhispers!

Her stuff is seriously GORGEOUS. Vintagey and soft, unique, feminine - I look at those necklaces and they take my breath away. How fun would it be to wear them? And it's a basket, so you could get multiple jewelry from her. She's just so talented. And it would make a GREAT Mother's Day gift, don't you agree?

How To Enter:

1. Leave a comment telling me you want to enter.
2. Go visit NewFashionedWhispers and tell me what necklace you would absolutely LOVE to get. And seriously. You won't regret it. I LOVE her stuff.
3. Post about it!

Please leave a SEPERATE comment for each entry. That makes it so much easier on me. And I want to make sure you all get your due number of entries and that I don't miscount or anything.

And the fun doesn't end here. Another one of my lovely chums, Carissa @ lowercase letters is having another beautiful giveaway over at her blog. She's giving away one of these beautiful clutches...

I'm not a big purse person, but I would TOTALLY wear it/use it if I won. I've been trying to find a cute purse to carry my cell phone in...carrying it in your back pocket causes skin cancer, you know. ^_^

Anyways. I always regret saying this, because more entries lessens my chance of winning: but go enter! I say it every giveaway but I want to stress it this time, because those clutches are so dang cute!

Mad Monopoly Playing, Forgo the Top whadda ya get, Garage Sale, and that thing is ANNOYING!

(I accidently clicked publish before I was done - I hate when I do that)

Monopoly. A very long, very fun interesting game in which you wish at least a dozen times that the Monopoly money was real (I know I always do). But when you play Monopoly at our house, it turns into a game not of making each other broke, but bailing each other out of debt until the game goes on for weeks.

And we never play regular ole Monopoly. We play....

...Lord of the Rings Monopoly. Oh yes, quite a shocker. We have some die-hard LoTR fans at our house.

I won. I was amazed. Usually I lose. Miserably.

Look at the board closely - see all the hotels? Those were all mine. Ab and Peter were broke right out of the gate, but I kept lending them money 'cause I felt kinda bad...yeah. That's how it always goes. Peter keeps going, "Abby, we're never gonna be able to break her!" Haha. What a funny kid.

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While we were playing Monopoly, Momma was making lunch - soup (it's REALLY good). She was blending the vegetables in our beloved VitaMix, buuuuut forgot to put the top on and it started blending with its serious high-speed choppers and the soup exploded everywhere. Mom has a burn on her forehead from the boiling soup.

                           

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Moving along from one subject to the next... (couldn't think of any relevant transition for this one ^_^). We are having our very own garage sale this weekend. I'm amazed at how much junk we have around our house - well I don't want to call it junk 'cause we're selling it, but you know what I mean. Our whole dining room is clogged with an array of different items.

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Does tech ever drive you insane?! It seems like my laptop is out to get me - like seriously. No exaggeration there. See this thing?

It never goes away. The Windows Task Manager refuses to be closed or removed in any way, and stays there on my screen like an obstinate canker, driving me crazy.

Then sometimes (I minimized it so it would take up as little screen-space as possible) it goes like this when I try to move it:

And when I try and close tabs, it freezes, like this:

And it takes FOREVER to send a single flipping email!

My laptop is old. And I think it's running out of steam - as well as memory space. Did I tell you Gimp aborted on me twice within the span of ten minutes? I better stop saving up for Photoshop and save up for a new laptop (though I think daddy would pay for it...maybe).

Speaking of  Photoshop, I got the 30 day free trial, and am having tons of fun editing pictures. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Photoshop CS5. Ahhhh. Comparing it to Gimp is like comparing frozen pizza to stir-fried pea pods (yuck). And that was a weird comparison, but I'm in a weird mood.

I love Photoshop.

Dare to Learn...

...more things about me. (Hehehe, that didn't make a lot of sense, did it? ;-) My dear friend Awel is have a lovely blog party at her beautiful blog inspired designs (such a pretty name ;-). The prizes are amazing, and the questions are fun, so could I resist entering? Nope. Of course not. You should all go enter - seriously, the prizes are fantabulous.

1) What's your all time favorite blog/blogger?

Don't pull that one on me - I have so many. I'll give you top three, is that fair? 1. Lynnette's Dancing Barefoot 2. Ab's Rear Window and 3. Hannah's Aspire.

2) How do you personally define forgiveness?

Forgiveness? It is when someone wrongs you in a deep way, and it hurts - and you go from hating them to actually loving them. That act of relinquishing your heartache, forgetting the deep wrong, and becoming willing to start over with that person - that is forgiveness.

3) What object of your possession has the most sentimental value in your eyes?

My pair of headphones - it symbolizes new life, new faith, and new love.

4) What song do you consider your personal theme song?

I have many theme songs with many of my different friends. Give Me Your Eyes by Brandon Heath is Hannah and me's "song", while Lucy by Skillet is Jenna and me's "song". (I have a feeling I made a few grammar mistakes in the last sentence. Hm.)

5) Do the opinions of others about you really matter to you?

It depends on who those "others" are. If they're like one of my best friends, than yeah, that person's opinion matters.

6) Do you ever make up words?

Are you kidding me? Yes. I do. I also mispronounce SO many words. My friends still tease about when, a few years back, I pronounced ignorant "ig-NOR-ant."

7) Off the top of your head, do you know what your middle name means? (You can look it up though! :)

Nope. My name, Rebekah, means captivating. I looked up what "Grace" means...well, read it for yourself.

The name Grace is a word that is used to depict Man's relationship with God (God's grace) in the form of blessings and favors as also the physical aspect of beauty seen in one's manner and bearing. The Latin word gratia means favor and as such the name may be considered to be of Latin origin. The variants of the name are Gracey, Gracy, Gracia and Gratia.

I guess that explains it then.

8) What's is something that never fails to make you smile?

My little brother. :-)

9) What person has touched your heart the most?

Oh. Man. My momma, I guess. Does God count? Hehe. Just had to ask.

10) Give a scene in a book where you really understood what the author was trying to convey.

Uh...mindblank.

11) What do you think of HTML? Is it the ENEMY or your friend?

Friend. Definitely. Don't know where I would be without it.

12) What person comments the most consistently on your blog?

I don't like picking favorites, but Memzie at The Rebuilder does the most. I love you, Memzie! :-)

13) Who is your personal hero/heroine (fiction or real, or both)? Why?

My fiction heroine is Emily of New Moon - she is just so crazy awesome, and is exactly like me in so many ways. And then my real-life (haha, like book characters aren't real-life) heroine is my momma. Of course.

14) Are you curious or are you satisfied knowing that "that's just the way it is"?

You give me "that's just the way it is" and I will drive myself crazy wondering about it for the rest of my life.

15)List the your top 5 favorite songs. Do they have anything in common? Why do you love them?

1. Lead Me by Sanctus Real. ('cause I just love it. Makes me get all teary-eyed) 2. Lucy by Skillet. ('cause it's me and Jenna's song. And it's so SAD!) 3. Tears Fall by BarlowGirl. (it makes me feel so sad about abortion )-: ) 4. Superman by Five For Fighting. (SO sad and beautiful. And it's in the perfect key so I can sing it at the top of my lungs.) 5. Empty Chairs at Empty Tables in Les Miserables (again, it's so sad, and low enough that I can sing it really loud without having to go into falsetto). Ha, I guess I must like sad songs.

16) Do you ever get into arguments with...your characters? (that's if you write a book :). And if you don't write, do you think you would?

Um, yeah. All the time. I sometimes hate my characters.

17) While reading a book or watching a movie, were you ever blown away by an unexpected plot twist? What was it and how did you react?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Harry Potter. Harry Potter. Harry Potter. Oh, and Beyond the Summerland by a somebody Graham. I threw the book across the room 'cause I was so ticked.

18) What's your personal opinion of i-designs? (orignal, I know, but I really want to know! :)

Bee-yoo-ti-ful.

19) What's your favourite color combinations?

Teal, teal and more teal.

20) What's your favourite comic book series?

I haven't read comic books since second grade.

21) What is the oldest book you've read? How old was it? (By old, I mean, like antique books...the manuscript doesn't have to be old, just the copy of it. :)

It is Girls Who Became Writers and it was like, early 1900s? I think?

22) What character in any movie or book, would you say is the MOST like you?

Emily of New Moon.

23) If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

Not a very nice question, but I would change the fact that I'm so gullible. It's annoying. My friend once told me that if you "poke" someone on Facebook, the system alerts an employee, who actually runs to the person and POKES him/her. And I believed her.

24) As a child, what was one thing that always frightened you? This could be something real or imagined! :)

The dark. I used to be so scared of the dark.

25) What's your life motto?

Job 8:21, I guess. (Go look it up, hehe)

26) As you're sitting in café, you're given a note: "It's in your best interests to meet me at 7 P.M. tonight, alone, at Pine and 4th." How would you react?

I would go to Pine and 4th, totally!

27) Name seven of your favourite books.

The seven Harry Potter books. I'm a die-hard Harry Potter fan. (I'm married to Ron, by the way. Just so you all know.) :-)

28) Name your absolutle favorite font (you can have more than one though)!

Oh, that's tough. I like SO many. Okay, I'll through a few out there. Usenet, Geosans Light, Roman Fatal Serif, Century Gothic, Miama Script, and any Pea font.

29) Have you ever cried over...a book or a movie?

Are you kidding me? Yes, yes, yes.

30) What's something that's brought you so much comfort?

My Bible. Sounds kind of sappy, but it's true.

31) Describe what you would call a perfect moment.

Experiencing the flash.

32) What's the fastest you've ever read?

Oh I don't know. Look for my name in the Guiness Book of World Records. (hehe, just kidding, I don't read that fast)

33) What's your favorite book/movie genre?

I can't stand mystery. I like romance, fantasy, and anything that's slightly spooky.

34) Do you say one word a lot just because of the way it sounds? If so, what's the word?

Phlegm. Haha. PHLEGM!

35) What's something you thought you'd hate, but ended up loving?

Running, I guess. :-)

36)Do you prefer British or American spellings of words (ex: the British favourite to the American favorite)

American, of course.

37) List a few of your favourite names.

Brittany, Luke, Emily, Joanna and Nicholas.

38) What is your favourite movie?

The Matrix. :-)

39) Imagine you're writing a story, and one of your characters keeps something buried in a box where no one will find it. What's in the box and what's its significance?

The box holds all the secrets of the world, and the character is trying to keep it hidden so the "bad guys" can't find it. The box is found, the character is terrible at digging.

40) Was this boring? (be honest! :)

Oh yes, it was terrible. I'm kidding, obviously. It was a blast. :-)