It's A....

Tim and I drove our daughter Hannah and her husband to their ultrasound appointment...

....a little bit of a hike to the doctor's office...

Hannah decided to tell her mother and father-in-law by baking cupcakes with either blue filling or pink filling inside the cupcake!  Guess what color icing was in this delicious dessert?

Yes!  Our very first grandbaby, who shall be named Timothy Paul McConnell, is doing very well! 

::squeal::

IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!!!

Dear Timothy Paul,

It seems to me I've loved you since the day your mother was born.  I am beside myself with  gratitude and joy!  You are being born into what is becoming a long line of Bible teachers and preachers.  Your great grandfather Gilreath , your grandfather Atchley, your daddy (a Bible teacher in the making)...and now you.  You truly have "a goodly heritage". 

Should the Lord tarry, I plan to live to be a ripe, old age.  I love you now, and I will love you even more then.  My prayer prints have been all over you, since before you were conceived.  Soon, I will hold you for the very first time.  You may have been a surprise to your parents, but I've been expecting you for almost as long as I can remember.  We are going to have a ton of fun together.  Hope you like to be read to.  (And fish, and shoot guns, but those are papaw Atchley and papaw McConnell things...)

I can't wait for you to meet all my friends.  They are all excited to know you are on the way.  I can't wait to see your momma and daddy bring you to your church, that very first Sunday.  I can't wait to see you take your first steps, hear you say your first words, hear you preach your first sermon.  And play your first song. 

I am blessed and highly favored.  Take good care of yourself, and we'll see you sometime during the Christmas season!  

I love you to the moon, little man!

Grandmommy

Guess Who Has Photo Shop?

My honey got me Photo
Shop! 

I've already had a brief, basic tutorial this evening after worship practice, from son-in-law Jonathan.  Hannah can also teach me a lot, from her days as merchandising manager at Goody's...she did all sorts of cool stuff with this program every day!

I'm sooooo excited.  This is one of the pictures I've worked on so far...all I did was make the background black and white, and re-color my daughter Sarah and I, on her wedding day.

This is a learning curve unlike any other.  Whew.

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow, we find out whether our first grandbaby is a girl or boy!  Hannah asked me to accompany her and Justin to her ultrasound appointment.  Can't wait, can't wait...

Of course, I'll be jumping on here to tell the world!

"The Trouble With Scotland..."

...is that it's full of Scots!" (line from the movie Braveheart)

Actually, we love Scotland and her Scots. This precious man and his equally precious wife will be staying with us here at the cottage all of next week. This time, the blessing is mine!

::cheers, confetti::

I'm preparing what is, in this case, a literal "prophet's quarters". Knee deep in meal planning, guest room fluffing, birthday preparations (my girls' birthday is Saturday) and preparing my own message for the Master Builder's International Conference next week, I am busy in a blessed-and-highly-favored sort of way.

All the way from Scotland, Joe and Yvonne Ewen will be at Harvest Church on Sunday, August 8th. If you are anywhere within the vicinity, you won't want to miss it!

Mid Life Constancy

con·stan·cy . n. 1. Steadfastness, as in purpose or affection; faithfulness. 2. The condition or quality of being constant; changelessness

More than once, my husband and I have shook our heads at someone who recently turned 45 or 50. The whole "mid life crisis" thing. Believe-you-me, it is real. There but for the grace of God, go I! So many people lose their flippin' minds when they hit about 50.

They think they are hearing God, and they aren't. They think they're entitled, and they're not. They think they need to change things up, and they don't. They need to dig in and practice constancy.

The surest predictor of a mid life crisis is the soul-withering boredom that can set in. After all, it isn't how you begin that counts. It isn't how you end. Those two points in the process are exciting. It is what you do with yourself in the character-defining middle that totally dictates your finish line. It is easy to begin a race.

Almost all races are quit in the middle.

More spouses and churches and friendships and families and careers are left in mid-life than eleventy-hundred people can shake their collective sticks at.

I promise you that, smack dab in your middle, there will be a "tree of the knowledge of good and evil". There will be the awareness that nothing is turning out quite like you imagined. You will feel the urge to prove yourself. You will feel the urge to quit. Or to do something silly like move for the sake of moving, leave for the sake of leaving, buy a sports car or motorcycle, build a McMansion you can't afford, start a band, or raise Nubian goats.

Change! Any change feels like it might do the trick - it might make you feel alive again. Let's spiritualize it, while we're at it, and say we "feel led of the Lord".

Friend. Friend, friend. Sit down here beside me and have some Tension Tamer Tea. We are so in this thing together. I feel it, too.

Your enemy (who, by the way, is not me. Ahem.) will always approach you one of two ways. Only one of two.

Your enemy will either attack you, to try to get you to retreat...or he will try to get you to make peace with him. It is the making peace part that worries me. It is very tempting to make peace when you are so exhausted from the war. It is very tempting to change course abruptly, at the next sign of crisis, and then justify your retreat.

You will find yourself making every excuse in the book for why so many of your relationships are a wreck, for why you do what you do, for why your passion is gone. Every excuse is a justification for making peace with the enemy. The children of Israel were faced with this very thing in their "middle"...that place between Egypt and the Promise. (Ex. 34:11-14)

Beware of that sense of mid-life entitlement. When you don't live daily outside your comfort zone, when you make personal peace and affluence your idol, you end up making a covenant of false peace and false provision with an enemy.

You started out serving the Lord with abandon. Let me tell you - the same grace that saved you, is the same grace you absolutely must function in every single day. Notice I said "function". When there is no apprehension and appropriation of grace, there is dysfunction.

You began well. Stay the course. Don't let the heart ache and disappointments and exhaustion of the middle make you dull and cynical and jaded. Tap into the newness of life that is yours in Christ Jesus!

Underlined Bits

"Despite God’s call to be free and His earnest admonition to resist all efforts to curtail it, there is very little emphasis in Christian circles today on the importance of Christian freedom. Just the opposite seems to be true. Instead of promoting freedom, we stress our rules of conformity. Instead of preaching living by grace, we preach living by performance. Instead of encouraging new believers to be conformed to Christ, we subtly insist that they be conformed to our particular style of Christian culture. Yet, that’s the bottom line effect of most of our emphases in Christian circles today.

For example, many people would react negatively to my quoting only part of Galatians 5:12, “You, my brothers, were called to be free.” Despite the fact that this statement is a complete sentence, they would say, “But that’s not all of the verse. Go on to quote the remainder: ‘But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.’”

The person who reacts this way has made my point. We are much more concerned about someone abusing his freedom than we are about his guarding it. We are more afraid of indulging the sinful nature than we are of falling into legalism. Yet legalism does indulge the sinful nature because it fosters self-righteousness and religious pride. It also diverts us from the real issues of the Christian life by focusing on external and sometimes trivial rules.”

– Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace, pp. 121-122

Summer Flavors and Fragrances

A pile of these were shucked today...

Then grilled...

...and became this...

Fry up lots of this...

Add diced red potatoes, red onion, celery, milk and cream...grilled corn chowder! The fresher the corn, the better and sweeter this dish. YUM!

Serve with home made bread.

I'm typing away with my laptop, sitting propped up on pillows in my bed. These sheets and pillowcases were put back on my bed, fresh from the clothes line, just a couple of hours ago. I promise you, I can smell sunshine. The fragrance is unbelieveable.

Have a blessed weekend, friends! Enjoy summer's fleeting delights.