margaret thatcher

this is a video of margaret thatcher's granddaughter, amanda thatcher, reading from ephesians 6:10-18 at her grandmother's funeral a few weeks ago. amanda is a devout christian and her reading at the funeral caused a stir among the british media. her parents are divorced, and amanda and her older brother, michael, live in texas with their mother and were margaret thatcher's only grandchildren.

 {source: google images}

i did not know much about margaret thatcher before her death, but since then i've been reading a bit about "the iron lady." she was the first female prime minister of the united kingdom, and resisted totalitarianism internationally. her devout christian faith was the foundation for her politics, which included conviction for less government, more freedom and greater personal responsibility. she has my respect and admiration.

Said about Thatcher:

“People may differ about her politics – and she divided opinion as any politician does – but there is no doubt that she transformed Britain, she brought back respect, gave us a backbone and she fought for us." [Lord Carey] 

{source: UK Vogue}

Quotes by Thatcher:

"We must not profess the Christian faith and go to Church simply because we want social reforms and benefits or a better standard of behaviour; but because we accept the sanctity of life, the responsibility that comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ."

"If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time and you would achieve nothing."

"It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake."

"I am not a consensus politician, I am a convictions politician."

 “The truths of the Judaic-Christian tradition are infinitely precious, not only, as I believe, because they are true, but also because they provide the moral impulse which alone can lead to that peace in the true meaning of the word for which we all long… There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves. Political structures, state institutions, collective ideals are not enough. We parliamentarians can legislate for the rule of law. You, the Church, can teach the life of Faith."

gangster squad

last night lance and i watched gangster squad, starring the gorgeous emma stone and ryan gosling. (if you haven't seen crazy stupid love yet, you should! they were both amazing in that.) to understand the following conversation, you should know that sometimes people tell lance he looks like ryan gosling.

chelsea: "they are so cute together."

lance: "maybe they'll get married in real life."

chelsea: "no. he's too cocky."

lance: "i would be too if i looked like me."

... and i thought ryan gosling was cocky?! yikes. oh my husband.

the best part of the movie was the ending: ryan gosling, emma stone, together, with a bulldog (my dream pup) wearing a hat at the beach. epitome of happiness. it was a good movie as action movies go, but too much violence and sadness for me. thankfully lance keeps me laughing no matter what.

grocery shopping

i could write an entire post on "things my mom was right about." it could also be called: "things i said i would never do when i saw my mom do them but do now and will most likely do them forever, and happily." 

for instance, when i was a teenager i could not believe my mom would wear the same outfit a few times.

"mom you just wore that last weekend." 
"that was with different people, these people haven't seen it yet." 
"but i've seen it. that's so weird. i'm never doing that."

mind you, i made it a goal in my junior year of high school to not repeat an outfit. and i think i might have even done it. i definitely repeated ITEMS, like my fave jeans worn lots and lots, but would wear with a different top or whatever. i don't know what i did, i obviously had too much time to think about what i was wearing.

we all know the quickest way to do something is to say, "i will never ..."  and naturally now i do what my mom did.

i pick an outfit i like and wear it out with lance, to church, to shop, to hang out with these people, then those people. then i have to find a new one - with much less enthusiasm than i apparently had in high school. and without the joy of a clothing allowance from my parents, or hand-me-downs from my stepsister who was always decked in adorable jcrew. but she is still a size zero (and i am not) and she ditched jcrew about the time her clothing allowance ended, so those handouts are long gone.

but i digress.

because the habit i acquired from my mom since being married has to do with grocery shopping.

i never understood when i was younger why my mom would bag her own groceries or make a point of telling the baggers, "i like the least amount of bags possible."

i remember whining when i was carrying the (then) heavy bags and asking why she couldn't just get more bags. "here i'll just carry it, chelsea."

not only did susan's habit help give her the buff arms she still has today that give her the body of a 35-year-old, but it was saving the earth. and preventing a lot of clutter. i hate waste and clutter. when i see how many plastic bags are used at grocery stores it's like, well let's all just go to the beach and beat baby seals to death or set a bunch of trees on fire because clearly we don't give a rip about mother earth.

after a few trips to the grocery store and being totally annoyed at how many bags they used to pack my groceries, i started using a big reusable bag i remembered i had in my trunk. that helped. then i bought another reusable bag at target, and was delighted to find out you get five cents back every time you use that bag at target - awesome!

when i left the commissary last week and again this week with just a heavy reusable bag on each shoulder and jug of orange juice in my hand, i was thrilled. (thanks mom!)

it took me a bit to get the hang of grocery shopping but (oddly enough) i look forward to it now. 

publix, an amazing grocery chain in the south, has a sweet app that organizes your grocery list ahead of time according to what aisle each item is in. i really only stop there for a few sale items each week, but it makes it so nice and easy. i'm starting to catch on to coupon blogs and apps, and if i were lance i would probably be annoyed by me always telling him, "this was such a good deal because ..."

i have yet to find any good farmers markets, which is a bummer. i passed a roadside stand (by "stand" i do mean a truck with a tent, some produce, and some dogs milling around) today when i took a wrong turn and ended up in a pretty ghetto neighborhood, i didn't feel safe getting out of my car so i didn't know that the produce could be trusted either. so i will keep looking.

friday favorites

imagine if you had to describe your own beauty to someone. could you? would you know where to start? most of us can't see our own beauty, but the people around us can. we constantly underestimate ourselves.

this video is from the dove beauty sketch ads. an fbi-trained forensic artist sketched seven women who were hidden behind a curtain, using their self-descriptions as the basis for his drawing. before the session with the forensic artist, each woman spent time with a stranger without being told why. the artist also drew sketches of each woman based on the stranger's description.

the results are pretty revealing. remember: you really are beautiful! quit being so hard on yourself.

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{source: ashley hempel photography}

i'm not a huge fan of maternity photographs, but this one is so funny. to clarify: maternity photos are fine, it's the naked belly shots i am not into.

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 {source: auntie anne's}

i also think prom proposals are a bit over the top - but what's not to love about this?! adorable.  one of the ladies in my small group told us the story of how her son asked his date to prom last week and he really hit it out of the park too.

he got a police officer to pull over the girl he wanted to ask when she was driving home from church and pretend she was in trouble. eventually the officer brought a huge paper - not sure if it was supposed to be a speeding ticket or a bill of rights - but on the paper the guy had written: "isabelle, will you go to prom with me? -zach." HA. of course she started crying and said yes.

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 {source: google images}

Girl reportedly guarded by lions- NBC News
i love this miracle! there is still good in the world and news - look for it. and the supernatural is real - welcome it.

and speaking of lions, does anyone else imagine God looks like a lion? i picture God in all sorts of different ways, but when i googled images of lions i was reminded of how much lions remind me of God. i find lions absolutely beautiful. they are just stunning creatures with piercing eyes, but they also terrify me. and i think God is like that in a way. not that we should be terrified of him all the time, but we need to have that healthy fear of him. and play by His rules. or it leads to destruction like we see all over the earth more and more.

people wonder "why does this awful stuff (fill in the blank with any number of recent shootings, bombings, other tragedies) keep happening?" "what is wrong with people?" HELLO. our nation has blatantly turned against God for a very long time! pretend that doesn't have consequences, pretend you're invincible, pretend secularization and being politically correct will improve the world and save us all, but nothing will save us all except for turning back to God! we all desperately need Jesus! He is the only answer.

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{source: pinterest}

a must watch

please make time to watch this.

it will make your stomach churn, but it is something everyone should be aware of.

the lack of media coverage for this case is wrong - just like everything about what was going on at the clinic run by dr.kermit gosnell in philadelphia was wrong.

i couldn't stop thinking about this. i feel like someone who is letting another holocaust happen. remember after the holocaust in germany, the disgust for the people who stood by and let the injustice happen?

i feel just as guilty when i think about abortion. to me it is not a matter of God "letting it happen" and wondering "how He could let it happen." what? no! we are the ones letting this happen. whether by living in our safe boxes and not reaching out to people, by forgetting and ignoring it, and by not doing anything to help. human lives are being snuffed out every day and i feel so guilty for letting that happen, but i want to move past that place of guilt and into action.

did you watch? what do you think? what can we do?

the canyon, the mirror and zumba

we look forward to the weekends so much because we get to spend a lot more time together. lance had a lot of late nights last week, and this week will be even more. (for instance, today he didn't have to go in to work until 11 a.m. but he won't return until after the sun comes up. not exactly sure what time. boo. but i am proud of what a hard worker he is - he puts in crazy hours.)

every weekend has been packed full of amazing memories since we've been married, and i love it. this saturday we went to providence canyon state park, which is about a 45 minute drive away from us and known as "georgia's little grand canyon."

the weather right now is PERFECT, so we are trying to do as many fun things as we can outside before it gets disgustingly humid for the summer.

i really am sitting on the ledge of an overlook at the canyon here, not photo-shopped in like it looks. i should probably take some pictures of us not hiking or hanging out at home so you don't get the impression i always look completely disheveled. i also do not wear black all the time. in fact i've started wearing more bright colors, because that's how southerners roll and i like it.

lance LOVES a good pun. any pun, really.

when we hiked to the bottom of the canyon it looked like it was going to be really sloppy, muddy, red georgia clay that we weren't sure if we wanted to walk through - but it was actually just a firm damp sand. phew.



hmm, already tired and our adventures had only just begun. ha. driving home from the hike i suggested we go pick up the floor length mirror i'd spotted on sale at a store. (i didn't buy it at first sight because i wanted to make sure lance liked it.)

lance loved it and thought it would probably fit in our car. it's about seven feet high and three feet wide, so lord knows it would fit in a truck or suv just fine, or maybe even a decent sized car. but not a dodge neon. 

i sincerely wish we had video to show you the process of us trying to fit this thing into the neon, because i was cracking up at our clown car antics.

we rolled the seats down and slid it through the trunk- not fitting. pushed the front seats all the way up ... and it was still sticking out the back. off with the cardboard protectors on the ends. closer, but still hanging out. "if we just had our bungee cords or some string to close the trunk ..." "what about my hair tie!" so mr. knot-tying-expert finagled the trunk shut with only a wee bit of the mirror sticking out.

 we could barely fit in the front seats and i laughed nearly the entire ten minute (usually only five but we had to take it slow) ride home.

to top off the adventure, while we were unloading the mirror to carry it inside to our apartment a woman was puking in the parking lot.

now at last, the mirror looks lovely in our living room. were it a video-recording mirror i would already have clips of lance doing lots of push-ups and me doing zumba moves in front of the mirror. we are goofy.

i only did zumba a few times in lancaster, but i've been getting into it here and going a few times a week. i am the ONLY white girl at zumba here. do you know what that's like? it is everyone suddenly being an instructor, trying to help you. and it is getting cheers from the rest of the people in the class when you finally start catching onto the routines. you feel silly being new at zumba in the first place, but among a group of all rhythmically inclined dancers the silly feeling is more than a feeling. sure, some white people can dance, but i am not one of them.

lance said i'm getting a lot better. but i was showing him this one move that i cannot get the hang of, and when i looked over he was practically not breathing he was laughing so hard. i mean i knew i looked ridiculous but i had no idea it was that bad! yikers.

here's to being goofy and trying new things anyway - because it's fun! and now i have a way to make lance laugh in an instant.

in the middle of the night

i couldn't sleep last night, so i was sitting out on our couch reading. suddenly there was a loud banging on our door. it was 2:30 a.m. and our couch is maybe 15 feet away from the door, so i just about jumped out of my skin.

i ran back to our bedroom and flipped on the light, hoping that would wake my husband (quite a sound sleeper) up quickly as i frantically whisper-yelled, "babe! babe, wake up! someone was banging on our door!" he mumbled, "are you serious?" (do i play that many jokes and act like such a maverick that you think i would honestly wake you up in the middle of the night pretending someone is banging on the door?! yes i am serious!)

but before i could answer there was another incredibly loud banging on the door, and lance got up and went to answer the door. i walked out behind him, debating if i should grab a knife or call 911, and I listened as he talked to the person through the chain. they asked for someone who (obviously) does not live here.  they were shining a bright light in dear lance's face and i felt some relief thinking maybe it was a cop. but after lance finished talking to them he said it was not a cop, but maybe a repo man.

lance fell right back to sleep and i stayed up googling repo men ... wondering how they got into our gated community at that hour of the night or even at all ... and being really, really thankful lance was home! i got the feeling that if we had not answered the door this man would have broken it down. s-c-a-r-y!

procrastinating

i am procrastinating on writing a freelance article that is due ... today.

every time i get a freelance assignment i think, 'this is easy money, i need to do more of these ...' but when i'm in the thick of it i realize you totally earn what you're paid. writing is hard. sure it comes fairly easily for me, but it is such a process.

they name the payment and i think, 'easy, i'll do it in one hour.' (hence the figure sounding large in my mind.) that never happens. especially when you have to interview multiple people. people who generally do not seem to grasp the concept of deadlines, which adds to the procrastination.

someone shared at my new "women in the word" lunch group about how convicted they feel about not being outright lazy, but being slack.

"slack habits and sloppy work are as bad as vandalism." [proverbs 18:9, the message]

"one who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys." [proverbs 18:9, niv]

it so resonated with me, as she talked about how she can get by in most things with putting them off and not working as hard as other people might. that's me. which makes me think - if i put 100% effort into this, how much better could it have been? how much more could i accomplish in life if i gave 100% instead of being lazy or holding back?

i don't think of myself as lazy. but slack definitely hits it. 

i get involved in things, get things done, and i feel like i've accomplished a lot by 25. but at the same time, i know there is so much more i could do. i know i have so much more talent and potential to maximize and i need to. i want to do the best work i can do and not slack.

of course on the opposite side of this, there is the importance of rest. but believe me, i get that. i am pretty great at resting. (such a skill to brag about, i know.) now is a time to kick my butt into gear. 

which i am doing a fabulous job of as i write a blog post instead of finishing my work. (to top it off i got a phone call while i was writing this and accepted another freelance article opportunity - can you say irony?)

but blogging helps me to get my thoughts, word vomit, whatever you want to call it, out of my system. it gets my wheels turning and writing juices flowing. so this is like a stretch before a workout, if you will.

the ladies lunch group i joined at my church is nice and laidback, and every week i am totally energized when i leave. which is funny because i kind of drag myself there like, 'oh do i really feel like going to this and being around all of these new people?' which is totally the devil, because he must know that when i go i get majorly encouraged and leave praising the Lord for how awesome He is.

each woman has an amazing testimony. there is someone with aspergers, an ex-stripper, someone struggling with depression for years, one whose first husband was abusive to the point of holding her at gun point, someone from south africa - it's just wonderful. 

and each week someone new shares their "story." 

stories are one of my favorite things in life, right up there with God, Lance, family, good food and the beach. mmm. half the time i tear up listening to the person sharing. it amazes me how God reaches each of us. it is different for every person, but always powerful and life changing. 

we serve a mighty God who is able to reach every person on earth, no matter where they are, where they have been or what they have done. nothing we do can make God love us less. that's amazing! that's something to not only rejoice about but to be constantly grateful for! who wouldn't want to serve a God like that?!

i also love that the group is mixed ages. some of the women who have been married longer dished out advice today - i am a sponge for that stuff, listening and soaking.

so here is my takeaway ...

• if you can, stay home with your kids. it is exhausting, but that time goes by in a snap. no one takes care of your babies better than you. and you can't "do it later" when it comes to stuff with your kids. when they go to college you can't say, "well now we can go to the park every day" or have play dates. you want to be able to look back at their childhood and think about how much fun you had together.
• let go of high expectations for yourself and for others. don't expect it and you won't be disappointed. particularly when it comes to your in-laws. accept that they may not think like you, or have the mentality you wish they would. don't try to give them advice or fix things they complain about - just listen. remember that they brought your spouse into this world, so there really is something good there. and they are his people - he knows how they are and he doesn't need you to tell him.
• "families who pray together, stay together." apparently one in four marriages in the united states fail, but of couples who pray together, that number drops to one in 10,000. if you're praying with someone on a regular basis, it is difficult to stay angry or fighting.

what fascinated me about the woman who shared that last bit about prayer, is that she said (after listening to some horror in-law stories from the group) that she felt like she needed to go home and just thank God over and over and over, because she could not imagine having better in-laws. 

now she wants to be the best mother-in-law possible to her new daughter-in-law, "because she is the best thing that ever happened to us." um, wow! who wouldn't want to be loved like that?!

the cycles we are capable of creating when we love others are incredible. perhaps her in-laws came from a long line of great family and in-laws who treated their children and in-laws with respect and love. or maybe they were the first to go above and beyond in doing so. 

either way, they made a huge impression by loving. 

that impression, their love and respect, has set the bar for someone else, who now wants to go above and beyond that. 

it reminds me of going from glory to glory, and from character to character as we grow - we can go to greater depths as we build upon those who have gone before us, or as we set new foundations. let's not stay in shallow water, let's go deep!

"but we all, with open face beholding 

as in a glass the glory of the Lord, 

are changed into the same image from glory to glory, 

even as by the Spirit of the Lord." 

[2 cor. 3:18 kjv]

dreams, keys and adulthood

after telling lance about some weird dreams i had the other day, he said that he never remembers his dreams. a few days later he said excitedly, "hey! i had a dream the other night that i actually remembered!"

me: "oooh what was it?"
him: "well, we were trying to get in the apartment and i started freaking out because i looked down at my keys and realized i hadn't turned in my barracks key, even though i thought i had-"
me: "THAT WASN'T A DREAM! THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED AND I WAS STANDING RIGHT BESIDE YOU!"
him: "what? no. are you sure? then how come that key isn't on my keychain now?"
me: "probably because the other night you were holding MY keys and i have more keys than you do! but i didn't think about that then."

we started laughing hysterically.

and i remembered the time i was out with my dad somewhere and he could not get his truck to start. he just kept turning the key and nada. after much frustration and not knowing what was wrong with his truck, he called pappy shank to pick us up. almost immediately after placing that call, he realized the problem was that he was using the wrong set of keys for the truck.

since it was before the days of cell phones, we had to wait for pappy to get there and tell him. which was apparently agonizing for my dad who swore and worried about what pappy would say. i think i started laughing then and my dad did too, and he said something about needing colby with us to keep us in line. i forget what pappy said when he showed up, but i am fairly certain my dad just pretended he figured out the problem and got it to start. ha.

have you ever mixed up keys and created a situation like this? or had someone tell you what they thought was a dream but you are listening to them thinking, what the what, THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED!

one of my weird dreams last week was about grocery shopping. even weirder was that i was actually excited to go grocery shopping yesterday. i told lance about this, and how i was excited to plan meals for the week and to invite people over for brunch. never thought i would look forward to stuff like that.

he knew exactly what i meant, and said that he was actually having fun changing the oil and putting air in the tires of our cars.

apparently we are growing up and liking it. go figure.