Easter in Atlanta

The week after going to the baseball game I only worked 3 1/2 days. Friday was good Friday and Thursday i took a half day so I could drive to Atlanta to spend Easter with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. Chaleece and I drove up on Thursday and Tine drove up on Friday after work.



Friday we all just laid around the house. The basement is basically like an apartment and he bedroom down there is amazing! The bed is so soft and comfortable and there are no windows so it is pitch black with the lights off. You have no way of knowing what time it is. It was so nice. Savannah, Katie, Challece, and I ran a few errands with aunt Barb and when we got back to the house we dyed Easter eggs. will admit that on the outside I was rolling my eyes doing the whole "I'm 23 and WAY to old to be doing this." But on the inside I was squealing and had a stupid grin on my face. So the 4 of us girls dyed eggs and Savannah managed to spill orange dye all down her leg and her foot was that color for a few hours.

Tina arrived around 11pm as everyone was heading to bed. The next morning we all got up and along with a friend of Katie's went to the World of Coke. It was really cool. It had been many, many years since I had been there and they had done a bunch of renovations. Chaleece was in heaven running around touching and looking at everything :) It was really cool. They had a 4-D short video. I was a little wary at first because i was traumatized by the Honey i Shrunk The Audience movie at Disney World when i was 8. So I pretty much hate 3D movies. But I survived. Actually I just stared at the bottom of the screen and kinda watched the movie through my eyelashes. haha

So we headed back to the house and just spent the evening watching movies and relaxing. Sunday we got up and went to Dunwoody for church. Tina, Chaleece, Savannah and I went to Sunday school with Savannah. It was a good message. It was great people kept asking what grade we were in and what school we went to. Plus most of teh room was full of adorable, awkward middle school boys. So the 3 of us went to big people church and then home. My mom had called my aunt and told her to get me chocolate bunny since she didn't get a chance to. My aunt made a basket not only for me and her kids but for Chaleece and Tina. It was a wonderful surprise. A Friend of Aunt Barb's came over and we had Easter dinner. Again the rest of the evening was spent relaxing there was a house wide nap at one point which was wonderful :)

Savannah recently got a recording studio type computer program and basically has a recording studio in the basement. A while back she said she would help me put music to some lyrics that I had written. So the two of us spent a few hours playing around. Then a friend of Savannah's came over and we were about to eat dinner when Aunt Barb starts saying "oh no we didn't have the egg hunt." So at 7:30 with the last bits of light Chaleece, Tina, and I hid Easter eggs and Katie went looking for them. There were 47 eggs I think and we hid them all. By the time Katie got outside though it was pretty much dark so she couldn't find all of the eggs. It was decided that she was going to go looking for them the next day. I'm not sure if they have found them all yet.

Monday morning Chaleece, Tina, and I got up early and headed off to the retreat center, which we had to get there by 4pm. it was a wonderful relaxing weekend. I got to sleep in, I didn't have to worry about work, or cooking, or cleaning. It was wonderful mini vaca. Plus I love spending time with my family.

Love and miss you all

A Visit, A Funeral, A Bar, And A Baseball Game

Ok this is the next week starting with Saturday night.

So I got home around 6:30pm that night and unpacked. My parents and sister were flying in to spend the week in FL. They got in around 7 and I met them at the condo where they were staying for the week. I got there and we ordered pizza and just relaxed. Everyone was tired. The next day Em and I slept in until 2pm which was SO wonderful since I had not done that in forever and just had two nights where I was up until around 3am. We spent Sunday hanging around the condo and went grocery shopping. I ended up going back to my house since I wasn’t sure what the traffic was going to be like to get to work. So while I was at work Monday the family just laid around the pool and dad went fishing. I went over to the condo after work that night and we were making dinner when we got a call from the nursing home that my grandma had passed away. At that point all hell kind of broke loose. Tuesday Dad and Emily came and painted the intake bathroom and Mom and Emily came on Wednesday and the three of us went shopping for towels and such. The bathroom is gorgeous and Jane is absolutely thrilled with it. I am in the process of doing something similar in the intake room and the walls around the reception desk.

Thursday mom, dad, and Emily went to epcot and I worked. Then Friday I went over to the condo after work. I was going to fly home with them on Saturday for the funeral. On Saturday our check out time was 11 but we didn’t need to be at the airport until around 4pm. So we just laid by the pool for several hours. It was nice. I got some sun. Well I got sunburnt actually. So we flew home and mom’s friends picked us up at the airport. The next 6 days were a whirlwind of plan making, people and pretty much stuff that I didn’t want to deal with. Monday I had the chance to spend a few hours with my good friends Lauren. We met or lunch at Paradise bakery, then went shopping, and got our nails done. It was wonderful to see her. I miss her terribly and it was a nice distraction from the events. Afterwards I went over and hung out with Kami for a couple hours and talked with her and saw her kids.

The funeral was absolutely beautiful and def what my grandma would have wanted. She did plan it all herself after all. I said two verses at the service and then read a poem at the graveside. I flew back to Orlando on Thursday and went back to work on Friday.

Friday night, Lauren, Chaleece, Chaleece’s cousin, Amanda, and I went to a piano bar in downtown Disney. I was a dueling pianos thing. People wrote down their requests and put them along with a tip on the piano and the guys played the songs. The guys playing were hilarious and they played some really good stuff. We all had a lot of fun and didn’t get home until 2am. Saturday Lauren, Amanda, Neal, and I went to Tampa. Lauren, Amanda, Neal, and Jonathan went to Busch Gardens and I stayed at home and was a couch potato. The next morning the 5 of us drove to Ft. Meyers to see a Twins vs. Red Sox spring training game. It was fun, I’m not a big baseball fan but I enjoyed the company and the weather was nice. We drove back to Tampa after the game dropped Jonathan of and then drove home. In all we spent a total of 7 out of 24 hours in the car and since we took my car needless to say I was sick of driving by the end of the weekend.

MOVE Conference

I need to get better with my blogging. I now need to play catch up since a whole month has passed a very busy one at that and I haven’t blogged about any of it. I’m going to start at the beginning of March and probably to a couple posts on the month so that each post isn’t to horribly long. So here is the beginning.

The second week of March I had the opportunity to go to a two day conference that To Write Love On Her Arms was putting on called MOVE. It was in Coca beach. I got a room for two nights and was so excited to go. I ended up getting hooked up with this girl named Rachel who wanted to share a hotel room. She lives in Orlando so I suggested we meet and carpool down saving money. She was cool and we had fun chatting on the way down. We went Thursday night and got there around 8pm. We ended up just hanging in the hotel room. Friday morning we got up and went to the conference room. I was nervous about meeting all the new people and the TWLOHA interns and staff. I walked up to the registration table and was warmly greeted by Kaitlyn and one of the interns. I was welcomed by everyone and felt at ease instantly. The first day our speaker was Aaron Moore; a licensed counselor who has a practice with his wife in Orlando. He presented info on depression, anxiety, and addiction. As far as information presentation goes I felt a bit like I was back in psych class. But it was different. From the very beginning everyone made it clear that this weekend was about dialogue. The speaker as well as the interns and TWLOHA staff wanted to hear from us. They wanted to know our stories. What we had seen work and not work. I thought it was a wonderful way of talking about the topics and getting info out there. As the day was winding down we were informed that there was a surprise. Well in walked Damion Suomi and Lauris Vidal. I was so excited and tried to keep my fan girl squeals to a minimum J the guys each played 2 songs and we were dismissed when they were done.

So that day’s sessions ended around 5. Rachel and I went back to our room and just hung out and ordered pizza. Damion and the Minor Prophets and Lauris were going to be playing a show at a local bar that night to raise money for a trip to SXSW in TX. So Rachel and I went. Other than us there was only one other person from the conference there so the three of us hung out with the TWLOHA interns the whole night. Rachel ended up wanting to leave around 11:30 so I quickly took her back to the hotel and went back to the bar after that. I had an absolute blast that night. I got to know the interns listened to some amazing music and just laughed. I was talking with one of the girls Brandi and I mentioned how much I would love to be an intern. How my dream job would be to work for TWLOHA. But I felt like I had to be an adult and couldn’t do a 4 month unpaid internship. She really encouraged me. She said if it was something that I was passionate about then I should just go for it. It can’t hurt to apply. So that is exactly what I am doing. I am in the process of applying for the fall internship. If I were to get it then I would be staying in FL until December. Anyways I had a lot of fun and I got to know some pretty amazing people. I didn’t get back to the hotel until around 1:30am and didn’t go to bed until 3am.

The next day the speaker was Michelle Moore. She presented eating disorders and self-injury. Then we did a basic QPR training. QPR stands for Question, Pursue, and Refer. It gave info on recognizing the signs of someone who is suicidal, the questions to ask, and how to get them help. It was really helpful and I hope to someday be fully qualified in suicide prevention response, so I can work a hotline or even take part in TWLOHA IMALIVE program. So Saturday’s sessions ended around 3. I bought some t-shirts said goodbye and Rachel and I left for Orlando. I was sad to leave my new friends, but I left invigorated and excited about a possible future and a reignited passion to help.

You Are Not Naked

Found this on one of my favorite blogs stuffchristianslike.net and wanted to share

Easter is about grace. And when I think about grace, one of the things that stops me short of believing in it is shame. This post, written last year, is about shame and grace and the reason we’re not naked.
I don’t want to brag, but I’m pretty awesome at applying band-aids. And make no mistake, there is an art. Because if you go too quickly and peel them the wrong way, they stick to themselves and you end up with a wadded up useless mess instead of the Little Mermaid festooned bandage your daughter so desperately wants to apply to a boo boo that may in fact be 100% fictional.
Half of the injuries I treat at the Acuff house are invisible or simply wounds of sympathy. My oldest daughter will scrape her knee and my 3-year old, realizing the band aid box is open will say, “Yo dad, I’d like to get in on that too. What do you say we put one on, I don’t know, my ankle. Yeah, my ankle, let’s pretend that’s hurt.”
But sometimes the cuts are real, like the day my 5-year old got a scrape on her face playing in the front yard. I rushed in the house and returned with a princess bandage. As I bent down to apply it to her forehead, her eyes filled up with tears and she shrunk back from me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I don’t want to wear that band-aid.” She replied.
“Why? You have a cut, you need a band-aid.” I said.
“I’ll look silly.” She answered.
Other than her sister and her mom, there was no one else in the yard. None of her friends were over, cars were not streaming passed our house and watching us play, the world was pretty empty at that moment. But for the first time I can remember, she felt shame. She had discovered shame. Somewhere, some how, this little 5 year old had learned to be afraid of looking silly. If I was smarter, if I had been better prepared for the transition from little toddler to little girl, I might have asked her this:
“Who told you that you were silly?”
I didn’t though. That question didn’t bloom in my head until much later and I didn’t understand it until I saw God ask a similar question in Genesis 3:11. To me, this is one of the saddest and most profoundly beautiful verses in the entire Bible. Adam and Eve have fallen. The apple is a core. The snake has spoken. The dream appears crushed. As they hide from God under clothes they’ve hastily sewn together, He appears and asks them a simple question:
“Who told you that you were naked?”
There is hurt in God’s voice as He asks this question, but there is also a deep sadness, the sense of a father holding a daughter that has for the first time ever, wrapped herself in shame.
Who told you that you were not enough?
Who told you that I didn’t love you?
Who told you that there was something outside of me you needed?
Who told you that you were ugly?
Who told you that your dream was foolish?
Who told you that you would never have a child?
Who told you that you would never be a father?
Who told you that you weren’t a good mother?
Who told you that without a job you aren’t worth anything?
Who told you that you’ll never know love again?
Who told you that this was all there is?
Who told you that you were naked?
I don’t know when you discovered shame. I don’t know when you discovered that there were
people that might think you are silly or dumb or not a good writer or a husband or a friend. I don’t know what lies you’ve been told by other people or maybe even by yourself.
But in response to what you are hearing from everyone else, God is still asking the question, “Who told you that you were naked?”
And He’s still asking us that question because we are not.
In Christ we are not worthless.
In Christ we are not hopeless.
In Christ we are not dumb or ugly or forgotten.
In Christ we are not naked.
Isaiah 61:10 it says:
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness.
The world may try to tell you a thousand different things today. You might close this post and hear a million declarations of what you are or who you’ll always be, but know this.
As unbelievable as it sounds and as much as I never expected to type this sentence on this blog:
You are not naked