Out of the Depths

I'll bet I've washed that dish a million times! My kitchen sink seems like a hole that I keep falling into and I can't escape from. I wonder how many spoons and forks I've washed in the last ten years? And the laundry basket. It's perpetually full! I'll bet I could go to the dryer anytime, day or night, and find at least ten ragged towels, six wrinkled shirts, and twenty-three socks, five of which have no mate. Who cares?

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. (Psalm 130:1-2)

Am I in the depths? Is this utter despair? I don't think so, but it is definitely uncomfortable. I'm having the blahs.

Out of my blahs I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice; Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.

That's my translation! Sometimes I have trouble relating to the trials and tragedies that drove God's people of the Old Testament to cry to him for deliverance. The make my own trials seem unimportant in comparison. But today I think God is telling to to stop comparing and to realize that the depressions and setbacks I experience are just as important to him as the conflicts and moral dilemmas faced by people in the Bible times. They were is children, and he heard their voices and led them out of the depths. I also am his child, and he hears my voice and will lead me out of my depths. Go dis as eager to hear my pleas as he was to hear theirs.

My Lord cares! He cares when I feel like a failure. He cares when I feel as if all my education and training have led me to nothing but a sinkful of dishes. I think he smiles when I mop up spilled milk at each meal. I think he smiles when he hears a resounding "Yuck" in response to a new recipie I tried. He smiles and give me gentle words of encouragement.
- Janice Kempe

How fitting for a day of house work at the Gibson residence.

The Temptation

So I had the biggest anxiety attack of the year on Saturday, right before Riki's wedding. Imagine being in a room filled with people on "Andy's side", Jonny and I being forced to co-parent with Andy and his fiance at the same time as them. When we walked into the church I swear I heard everyone whisper at the same time "Is that Leah?". I nearly threw up. But you know what? Literally as soon as the wedding was over and all throughout the evening we had aunts, uncles and grandparents coming up to us, greeting us with hugs and how are yous. The dance was not uncomfortable at all. When introducing the wedding party Alanna was even introduced as Alanna Denise Ollivier Gibson (even though her name change is not legalised yet). Jonny and I felt very well respected. Thank you to Riki and your family!

More importantly, the wedding was beautiful. It was really great to see one of my good friends from high school get married. Congratulation's Riki. Riki's dress was absolutely stunning. And if I do say so myself, and I do, Alanna was absolutely adorable. I, of course, forgot my camera so I might have to convince Riki to send me some pictures (I'm sure someone there had her camera) so I can post them.

HA HA! I'm watching the Megan Mullaly show and there is something dreadfully wrong with the reception and everyone sounds like Jack's impression of Cher. If you watch Will and Grace you'll understand that. It's like a train wreck, I just can't stop watching.

One thing that has being weighing heavy on my heart lately is that there has been a lot of people that knew the "old Leah" that seem to just not get the fact that I've changed. I have to say that it is not easy being a Christian in today's world. Especially for me, I feel. I feel like if I was to tempt myself and go to the places that I used to frequent it would be all too easy for me to revert back to the "old Leah".

I'm going to use pieces of a story I once read. You should know the whole story.

Satan is very clever. Always his strategy is to confuse reality, to make evil seem good. he knows Eve is living in all the splendor of Eden, with all of her needs met. How do you get at someone who is contented with good?

I suppose the temptation has been replayed again and again in the history of the human race, and probably in each of our lives. The specifics are different, but the strategy is often the same. How many times has the serpent tempted you to think, "A good God wouldn't keep me from this, would he? Here take this apple and eat it." The serpent won his encounter with the woman. She took the fruit and gave some to her husband. It will be a long time before another one will say, "Take and eat,".

Satan uses an occasion or a person to tempt us to fall; God uses the same to try us and make us stronger.

On that note - A shout out to my girl Jenn on getting baptised on Sunday. In your renewal with God, my faith was renewed as well.

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

Last night at was Emerie's baby shower at Lisa's house. Thank you soooo much Lisa for hosting it. I had such a good time. I really like getting presents (especially for baby). Alanna was tickled pink that Ethan, Grace and Jachin had thought of her and bought her a little gift as well. Alanna was so well behaved at one point I actually forgot that she was there. It's true, some of the other ladies had to ask me if I was intending on feeding Alanna. In my defense I have been feeling sick this week and am not completely myself. I'll talk more about this in a second. Back to what I was saying though, we didn't here a peep from Alanna the whole night except for when she caught her hair in a tent zipper and Shawn came and asked me if we should cut her hair or not. Luckily her hair did come out of the zipper quite easily. Jonny and I are going to the wedding as well. I'm excited to see Riki get married. She will be the fourth person (to my knowledge) who has gotten married from our group of friends from high school. Also I always love a chance to show off my fabulous family and my fabulous life to old friends from Melfort. They are always soooo surprised to find out that I am a Christian now.

Okay, back to me being a bad parent. Yesterday I woke up not feeling very well and Emerie had, had not such a good night of sleep. She was so cranky during the night that I actually moved Alanna down to the couch so that she would not wake up from the sounds of her sister. I am now babysitting during the day once in a while and yesterday was once in those whiles and in all the commotion of the morning I completely forgot to make Alanna a lunch for school. I ended up having to call Jonny's mom to make Alanna a lunch and bring it to her at school. I felt like such a tool.

Today we wake up for another not so restful night of sleep and Emerie and Alanna are now sick as well. Emerie clearly has a stuffy nose but I can't see anything to get out of her nose so she just sounds very flemmy. I'm not entirely sure how Alanna is sick because she isn't really showing any symptoms of anything but I suppose it is possible for her just not to feel well. There is no school today and so I am expected to entertain her. I always feel kind of bad when I just stick her in front of the tv all day because I just don't have the energy to do anything. Maybe if I take her grocery shopping she'll think that is fun.

This picture was sent to me by my mom. Apparently she likes to play with her photoshop and this was her creation. I know this because I phoned her and asked her if it was supposed to look like that. Yes, it is supposed to look like that. I think Emerie looks very Gerber babyish.

T-Mobile

BOO YAH! Please see below for where this picture should show up. I'm just happy about this because the only way that I could get this in here is by using my amazing Edit Html techniques.
Just one note - I just saw Fergie on The View singing London Bridge. I don't think I care for that song at all.

Anyways, so this weekend was the youth retreat at Quest bible camp at Christopher Lake. It rained ALL weekend. I don't mean it was spitting so we didn't want to go outside. It was raining so we couldn't go outside. Okay so the kids were outside for literally five minutes and in the lake no less. Crazy teenagers.

As it turns out God really knew what he was doing, the rain was such a blessing. I feel like I got to know each and every student on some level. There were some students that I had some really good heart to heart conversations with and feel like I really connected with, which I didn't get to last year. Because we were cooped up in the cabin all weekend we played a lot of games, including the four hour game of risk that I got second place in. This was my first time ever playing risk and I thoroughly enjoyed it. During this game of risk I called one kid by the wrong name throughout the whole thing. You think anyone corrected me? Not until the end.
So PS's message was about truth (T-Mobile aka truth on the go) which if you ask me is entirely appropriate. My cell group starts up tonight. In theory. It's a lot harder to get teenagers to commit that you'd think. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to my cell this year. It gives me a chance to address issues with the students that may not be appropriate to talk about in a larger group or around those stinkin' boys. Let's face it, boys are the root of most of our problems, right ladies?

I did end up bringing Emerie with me to the lake. Like I had the option to leave her. She did a lot better than I expected her to. She slept through the night both nights. I'm sure Danica, Alishia, and Kaylene were pleased with that as they did share a room with me. (For those of you who don't know these people they are Grade 12 students). I wonder what Emerie thought of all those crazy teenagers running around this weekend?

ARGH! I have a cute picture of Emerie that I wanted to insert here but for some reason it will not let me upload the picture. I'll keep trying to post it in future blogs.

Question of the day - Why is it that when other people make coffee it smells so good but when I make it, it smells like tar?

Microwaved Marshmallows

So yesterday I learned that you should never, ever, under any circumstances microwave marshmallows. Why I never heard that this was a bad thing before I do not know. Would you believe that instead of the marshmallow melting into a gooey delicious sundae topping it grows bigger and bigger until the inside of your microwave is completely covered in a yucky mess. And it is not easy to clean by any means. If you take a rag and try to wipe it off all it does it latch onto the rag (while still holding on to the microwave) and stretch so that your mess just grows. I seriously considered just buying a new microwave.

So my drapes from E-Bay finally arrived yesterday. Exciting? These were the blinds where I won the auction while Chapmans and Barnstables were over and we all cheered. I believe this was like a month and a half ago, at least. I thought it was enough time to receive them in the mail before we moved. We received the receipt for the purchase but we never saw anything come off the VISA for them. I really did get to the point where I thought they were never going to come. And honestly I stopped caring. But low and behold we get a phone call from the new tennants of the apartment saying that we had some mail to pick up and what, what - A parcel? The only dilemma I have now is that I have put my old drapes up in the living room and I kind of like them (for now). So I think that I'm going to put them up in the bedroom, which means that I need to rework in my head how I want my bedroom to look ultimately.

Hooray! I received an email from my auntie today and she tells me that my little cousin Scott (who is only a year younger than me) and his wife are now expecting their first baby! This is one of those moments where it really hits home that I'm no longer a kid. Do any of you have those feelings like your life isn't really real? I mean, it seems to me sometimes that my life isn't real and that I'm just playing dress up or make believe. Kind of like when you played house with your friends when you were a kid.

So it looks like summer has finally drawn to a close. Honestly my personal body temperature has been so out of wack since having Emerie. I finally feel like the weather had cooled off enough to allow me to be comfortable. Thank the Lord!!!

So I just googled the word temperature to make sure that I spelled it right. Did you know that there is a chat forum just about temperature? How much can be discussed about temperature that really requires a whole chat forum? It's like when you come home from work do you come in the door and say - you know what I need, is a good temperature conversation. I hope to get at least twenty different opinions about how rainy it is today. Oh please *SNORE*. You ask people about the weather when you don't have anything interesting enough to say to initiate a real conversation.

It's amazing what I can get myself worked up over.

9/11

I can tell you already I'm going to get in soooo much trouble for writing this blog. Just so you all know I have a bad habit of misrepresenting what I really mean to say by saying something silly (what I mean is, it comes out wrong).

Aren't you all kind of sick of hearing about this whole 9/11 thing? Don't get me wrong - this particular terrorist attack ranks right up there with one of the worlds most horrific events. But really are the terrorists winning by how paranoid everyone sounds during this time of year? Does anyone know the date of the whole Pearl Harbor thing? Does Rememberance Day get this much publicity? Even during Easter you don't hear any public announcements that the day only occurs because Jesus Christ was crucified and then rose from the dead. Granted 9/11 was only five years ago but honestly I never heard of the anniversary for the Oklahoma City bombing. I'm being completely incencitive aren't I? My opinion is that - yes, we all know that it happened, how could anybody forget it? There should be a ceremony at ground zero and of course a mention in the news and radio, etc., but do we need a week of movies and addresses to instill even more fear into people? Now, I feel I must say that I do not know all of the politics behind everything that is said and done in the states and so my opinion could definately be completely out of line. And of course I would probably feel differently if it was my family and friends that were involved but today just being me, this is my opinion. You all hate me now, right?

On a lighter and slightly less serious note - Big Brother ends tomorrow. Although I will be sad that it is ending it's probably a good thing (only because I'll come up with something else to obsess about in my blogs).

I have nothing else to write about. I think that I've probably gotten myself in enough trouble already tonight so I'll keep the rest of my obnoxious opinions to myself (or at least until next time).

Moving On Up

Anyone who has ever moved can probably rejoice with me in the fact that I am all settled in. I must say, I really enjoy my new place. Despite the few minor set backs that have come up since arriving here.
#1 - The old tennants did not clean the carpets. This sucked because they were smokers and had a dog. Yuck! But the landlord did hire professional carpet cleaners to come in and clean the carpets within three days of us moving in so that made that better. Oh yeah, because he couldn't get into the basement because of all the boxes he gave us the $30 it would have cost him to have that cleaned.
#2 - The old tennants left a heap of junk in the back alley. Now when I say a heap of junk I do not mean trash. I mean a BBQ, one of those old tvs which is built into its stand, a cab for the box of a truck, a dresser, a mirror, a shelving unit, a sand box, a broken extension cord, and sliding doors for a shower. Jonny ended up taking most of it to the dump himself with the help of Dave. The cool thing about this was that it would have cost the landlord $40 to hire someone to take it away so he just gave us the $40.
#3 - Alanna now has a new bus route, hence new bus driver. It only took a full week of school for them to contact us - correction for us to finally get a hold of them - to find out where her pickup was. It took me phoning FirstBus who told me to phone the school which I did (twice) who then told me to phone FirstBus again because apparently alot of parents where having this problem. So I phoned FirstBus again and THEN they had the bus driver call me. BUT, Alanna doesn't need to cross a single street to get to her stop so she can go by herself.
#4 - I bought a box of 48 ice cream cones and when I opened the box there was only 16 cones in the box. There is no positive outcome to this story, this one just sucks.

But all in all things are great! Thank you so much for those you helped move us and those of you who kept me occupied when I was trying to avoid packing, you have been such a blessing to us.