Yada Yada Yada

I am finding it quite difficult to write on this blog just for the sake of writing. I am not sure what it is but posting pictures of Isabella sitting around or talking about what I ate for lunch are suddenly uninteresting even to me! I guess it could be because of all the real things going on here. Not that Isabella sitting and lunch aren't real, but there is just a new level of realness in life lately.

Our small group meets on Thursday evenings and it used to be most of us listening to one or two others talk. Over the Christmas break something changed and now we all talk a tonne. We have been watching the NOOMA video series. So far we've watched 'Rain' and 'Sunday'. It got us talking for real about the real struggles of being Christians. Like what you do when you're in a storm of life, or how fake we sometimes feel church is.

At LMO I joined a group doing a study called "Conversation Peace". It was commercialed as a study for ladies who find themselves gossiping too much or not using much Christian language. I decided to join it because I was feeling a great sense of inadequacy when it comes to expressing what I'm really feeling. Like I use severely negative language for only merely upsetting circumstances or the like. I also thought it might help flip a switch on my internal dialogue. The first week we learned a very interesting fact: the average woman says 48,000 words each day! I was so happy when Nick genuinely said, "Um, have you said that many words since I've known you?". (Okay maybe that's not exactly what he said but he did tell me I don't talk that much and maybe I should talk some more). The little snippet to take away from the first lesson was that your tongue determines where you go. "Hi Amanda? Yeah this is God speaking. If you want to get from point A to point B start talking like you're already there." Point taken. I missed this week's lesson as the girls slept until 9:30am!! I'm learning a lot there though and wont miss more weeks.

Plus Nick is continuing to give me Thursday afternoons to spend with Angela, he is back in the throes of Alliance History and Thought which always brings about deep discussions. And some of our fervor for the ministry has returned to us. It seems that as soon as I had the courage to press into deeper conversations with people, God blessed me immensely through what they had to share. In my post "Embarassed No More" I think I came across as wondering where the material and financial blessings were in my life and feeling kinda gyped that I didn't see them. What I meant was that I wasn't feeling any internal blessings, (like energy and confidence and perseverance), and I really felt I was alone in that. But, in the last week I have had so many people share with me the real side of their lives, and that is so encouraging to me!

So, I know I'm not unique in not blogging each day, but I thought I would join the ranks of explaining why not. And as a little aside, if you have access to a group of Christian friends and you want to take your relationship to a deep level, I highly suggest watching the NOOMA videos together. They're very short and put together kinda like music videos. They come with question booklets but really the questions and sharing and discussion just flow out of you. A really, really great non-intrusive way of getting to know the REALNESS of the christian life as lived by your friends!!