One of the decisions I’m trying to make right now is whether we should start a “reward” program in Twinkle. For those of you who are new to the blog, Twinkle is our program for girls in grades 3 through 5.

Here’s what we’re thinking: we’d send a small box to each school program filled with small trinkets (mini bottles of nail polish, bracelet charms, etc.) that the girls would get to pick from on occasion. We have a lot of questions surrounding this idea, so I thought you all might be able to give us some advice. Here’s what we can’t figure out:

1. What do the girls have to do to get a prize? “Bringing their Bible with them” is definitely out as most of them don’t own a Bible; wouldn’t be allowed to have one in their house; etc. With that said, it wouldn’t really seem fair to have them memorize scripture to earn the prize, either. Should we just do it based on attendance? Maybe every third time they come to the program, they get to pick out a prize?

2. Is it wrong to associate rewards with something like what we’re doing? What do you think about rewarding children with physical prizes?

3. What types of things have you seen that would be good prizes for this age group? And yes, we get every single Oriental Trading magazine that they put out!

And, since ya’ll are so smart, a different bonus question:

What kind of cute stuff have you used, done, etc. at an Ice Cream Social? We hold a big one (think 200 - 400 college freshmen girls) each August to promote Starlite and recruit volunteers. Do ya’ll have any ideas for cute invitations, ways of serving the toppings, giveaways, etc?

Ready… set… go! To the comments, that is.

I called our local Habitat for Humanity office a few days ago and let them know that I had some things I’d like to donate from my old townhouse.  They said they’d pick it up this morning and, sure enough, they were right on time.

As the men began loading up my boxes of discarded items, I decided to look through my kitchen closet one last time to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.  And that’s when I saw it: my picnic basket.

Looking back some seven years later, I realize that it was a ridiculous purchase for an incoming college freshman.  While most of my peers were buying twin bed sheets and boxes of Ramen Noodles, I was looking for the perfect picnic basket. 

You see, I had this idea in my mind that I was going off to college to meet the love of my life.  And, for me, that translated into late afternoon picnics in the park down the road from my university.  And so, for weeks I searched until I had found all the needed supplies: the perfect basket, the cute utensils, etc.  The night before I left for college, I lovingly packed each thing into the basket and then put it in the front passenger seat so that it would be beside me as I drove to my new dorm.  That basket didn’t just have cute picnic supplies in it; it had a lot of dreams tucked inside, as well.

And yet it remains unused.

Of course, I went on dates in college — but nothing progressed to the picnic stage.  And yet, every year, from dorm to apartment to townhouse, I lugged that picnic basket with me, quietly telling myself that I’d get to use it one day.

When I saw it in the back corner of my kitchen pantry this morning, I instantly felt like that 17 year old girl again, just walking through the Target aisles looking for the perfect pieces to put in my picnic basket.  And, if you want to know the ugly truth, I was angry. 

At myself.  For being silly enough to have thought that I would see that dream be realized.

I swept that picnic basket into my arms and marched it right out to the truck waiting outside.  “Here,” I said, without a moment’s hesitation.  “I won’t be needing this anytime soon.”

The man seemed confused.  “Are you sure, ma’m?  This is a really nice basket.  It doesn’t even look like it’s ever been used!”

“It hasn’t.”  And with that, I turned and went back into my townhouse to get my purse and head back to the office. 

I decided to go out my back door, via my porch, to make sure I hadn’t left anything out there that I wanted to take with me.  I hadn’t been out there in months, but we’re always better safe than sorry, right? 

As I began walking down my porch steps, I noticed that a hanging basket I had put up last summer had fallen and spent a year on the ground, unnoticed by me or my old roommate Katie.  Everything in it, all the pretty flowers I had planted back then, were long gone leaving some dirt and withered leaves.

Except for the one gorgeous flower growing in the very middle of the basket.

I walked over to where the basket lay, confused about how a flower could have grown in the basket again.  After all, the dirt was old, the seeds were long gone and we hadn’t even bothered to water it in over a year.  But still, the flower grew. 

And then, suddenly:

“I can grow things in places you thought were dead, Amy Beth.”

I’m sure you get awfully tired of hearing me talking about not wanting to be alone.  I’m sure that there are some of you who want to tell me to quit looking so desperate, to stop wanting something that will come in time.

I understand that.  I’ve read some of your emails.

And yet, please remember that we don’t ever know everything inside the hearts of those whose blogs we read.  What may come across as desperation to you might simply be a God-placed response in my heart to my childhood.  There are reasons that the theme of having a family, even being a part of a family, is so important to me.  Read between the lines, my loves.

We don’t know if the woman writing about her latest miscarriage is writing that she’s doing just fine while secretly hoping that someone will realize that she’s not fine at all.

Read between the lines.

We aren’t sure that the woman writing about the funny comment her husband made to her a few nights ago isn’t sitting up way too late wondering why her husband isn’t home yet, again.

Read between the lines.

We have no way of knowing that the woman who posts a Bible study each morning is so deeply wounded that she can’t begin to dream that the promises she writes about could be for her, too.

Read between the lines.

This time I had handsome Sam as my model! I’m friends with Sam’s mom; she and her husband adopted Sam and have been blessed to have him in their arms since his very day of birth.

A few minutes ago, right after I crawled into bed, my cell rang. It was Allie, also known as the female half of The Most Awesomest Couple Ever.

“Hey, are you awake?”

“Yeah… what’s going on?”

“Well, I’ve got a gift card for Roomie and wanted to give it to ya’ll tonight. Can you come outside?”

Lo and behold, both members of The Most Awesomest Couple Ever were in my driveway. We made small talk for a minute and then, without warning, Allie said the sentence I’ve been waiting to hear for awhile:

“Well, we also wanted to tell you a little something… WE’RE ENGAGED!!!”

I’m not sure what happened next because I was hugging her, then Ryan, then back to her and then Ryan again. What can I say? News this great calls for Major Hugging Action.

They came inside and I went up to Roomie’s bedroom to get her downstairs so we could have round two of engagement shareathon. She is a bit more reserved than me but I did notice some Minor Hugging happening (even though she’ll probably never admit to it). She and I lived across the hall from Allie during our sophomore year of college, so it was pretty exciting news for all of us.

Now, because most of ya’ll are girls, I must tell you how it went down:

Ryan had planned to propose this Friday, since it will be Allie’s birthday. Late last night, as they were sitting on his porch, he asked her to dance (still not planning to propose that night). It was raining outside and, as they were dancing, Allie said “Do you remember the first time I told you that I loved you? It was raining outside just like this…” Without warning, Ryan pulls her out into the rain, gets down on one knee and asks her to marry him. She said yes and then he said “Really? You’re really going to marry me?” When she said yes again, he jumped up and said “Hold on a second — I’ve got to go get something from the house!” The ring was upstairs and so he left poor Allie standing in the rain, sobbing (when Allie cries about something, she really cries). He brought the ring out and ta-da! They’re engaged!

I tried to get her to let me take a picture — especially since she was wearing her Starlite t-shirt. I mean, what kind of great campaign is that? I can see the posters now:

“Come volunteer with us while earning your Mrs. degree!”

I wasn’t a PR major for nothing, you know.

I shall now reveal item two that the Lord asked me not to have in this week.  If you thought the whole “Ye must drinkith 90 ounces of waterth each dayth this weekth, thus sayest the Lord” was tough, you might want to buckle your seat belt for THIS one:

No fried food.  At all.  In any form.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: “Why, this wouldn’t be difficult at all!”

You, my former friends, are sadly mistaken.

I want you to listen closely to what I’m about to tell you: I have never met a chicken nugget I haven’t fallen in love with.  In fact, I am sad to report that I probably eat chicken nuggets more than any other food.

Yes, I am the same as your four year old daughter. 

And french fries?  Do I even have to remind you that my BFF’s nickname is, um, French Fry?  And she didn’t get that name on her own, folks.  I have often partaken of said french fries with French Fry (confused yet?).  But only to further cement our friendship, of course.

After all, friends are friends forever if the french fries are shared between them.

Oh no.  I feel a Michael W. Smith sing-a-long starting up in here!

“And a friend will not say never, ’cause they french fry goodness will not end.

Though it’s hard to let them go, in the trash can I know,

That a lifetime week’s not too long…

… to live without them.”

Farwell, my little nuggets of chicken-y goodness.  I’ll see you next week.

Hopefully.

By writing the following sentence, I am risking my very life at the hands of all you lovely mommy-bloggers but I am prepared to suffer your wrath at my admission:

I don’t drink water.

I don’t mean that I just don’t get enough water; I simply don’t drink it. Ever. Don’t believe me? How about if I told you that, over the past week, I had ONE glass of water in seven days?

Yep. You’re furious. I knew you would be.

The truth is that I don’t drink a lot of anything. I’m like a cactus or something… I just don’t drink. I can go a full meal without having anything to drink — and then turn around and do the same thing hours later when I have my next meal. In fact, as horrible as this admission will be, I often go days without having anything to drink at all.

Horrible. I know.

Before I could even really wake up this past Sunday morning, I instantly heard the Lord say “Hey, AB? Think you could do three things for me this week?”

I, of course, said no.

Just kidding. I said no and then I said “Just kidding” to Him. Unfortunately, I don’t think He found it that funny.

“I want you to do these three things for the next seven days: {thing one here}; {things two here} and drink at least 90 ounces of water a day.”

Now, here’s the thing: thing one and thing two aren’t that dramatic, but if I started writing about them, we’d be here all day. Just a couple of areas that need some refinement (and when I say “a couple of areas” I mean “a couple of areas out of approximately 256 in my life that need refinement”).

I, of course, answered in complete submission. Because I’m, like, the very definition of submission.

“Um, God? I think you might have messed your numbers up. Ninety is a little high.”

“Nope. Ninety.”

“Well, how about we start out slowly? Today… well, today I’ll have a glass of water!”

“No.”

“I’m going back to sleep and hope that this is just a bad dream.”

It wasn’t, of course, and so here I sit with my ginormous water bottle, just chugging down 32 ounces every few hours (I’m actually having 96 ounces a day compared to the 90 He put as the requirement). I was feeling pretty proud of my 96 ounces until a little research (thank you Twitter followers) unearthed some dreaded info: you’re actually supposed to take your body weight, divide it in half and then drink that many ounces of water.

I’m going back to bed.

After church and a quick lunch yesterday, Roomie, Allison and I headed out to set-up some baby registries.  It was quite obvious that Allison and I were far more excited about this than Roomie, as she isn’t the type of person who like putting a list of things out there for people to buy for her. 

Allie and I insisted on registries, however, and so off we went.  We wanted to conquer all three places yesterday but only made it to Babies ‘R Us and Target; we’ll set up the Wal-Mart one as soon as we gather up the courage to face the crowds of people at our Wal-Mart. 

Since I’ll be the main person helping Roomie with Baby, we registered for a couple of things twice — two car mirrors, two headrests, etc.  You’ll notice that we didn’t register for a crib or car seats — those have actually already been provided for us. 

And so, as I promised, I wanted to give the registry info out to those of you who wanted to help Roomie.   But first, I get to tell you what she’s having…

…

…

…

A BOY!!!

That’s right — in just a few weeks, we’ll have a bouncing baby boy in our house!  He’ll obviously be around a lot of estrogen (think every single leader in Starlite Ministries fighting to hold him) so Ryan of The Most Awesomest Couple Ever fame has already agreed to take him to do “man stuff.”  With Ryan and Imaginary Boyfriend in Baby’s life, I’m sure we won’t spoil him too badly.

Roomie’s registries are both listed under the same (fake) name: Judy Star.  “Judy” is from an old nickname for Roomie and “Star” is obviously from Starlite (and no, I had nothing to do with picking out this name).  The state on the registry is TN and the date of arrival is listed as October 25.  You can see Roomie’s Target registry here and her Babies ‘R Us one here.

Several of you have already started asking me where to mail the gifts to or if you can have them directly shipped to us from the websites.  We’re asking for all gifts, cards, etc. to be sent to the Starlite office since our home address is unlisted.  That address is:

Starlite Ministries

2251 N. Ocoee St.

Cleveland, TN 37311

If you need a contact phone number for shipping confirmation, you can use our main line — 423.476.2727.  All of this information is also listed on our lovely website.

Another question that I’ve heard a lot over the past few days is “Can I just send a card to Roomie?  Or a card with a gift card in it?”  The answer is, of course, yes!  Please don’t feel obligated to send anything.  At the same time, for those of you who are wanting to help her, I really don’t know what words to use to describe what a blessing this will be to her (and to me as well).  We don’t have a lot of time left before Baby arrives so we’re going to be doing our best to be ready to welcome him with open arms.

Until he spits up on me, that is.  I don’t do spit up.

P.S. - Several of you have asked about the colors for the nursery or themes that Roomie will be using because you’d like to make a blanket or outfit or so forth.  The colors are classic blues with dark brown and tan.  As far as theme, we don’t really have one yet but stay tuned.

_________________________________________________________

What You May Have Missed Over The Weekend…

Sunday Afternoon Drive

If A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words…

If We Were Married, We Could Share Hair Products!

I’m not sure if there’s such a thing as loving too hard, but if there is, I’m guilty of it. I’ve only been in love once, so I had no idea that perhaps I was loving too hard.

I met him on my first day of college when he sat down at the desk behind me. Over the next four years of college, we hit all the high and low points — from not being able to go a few hours without speaking to going 1.5 years without a word passed between us.

And then, the evening after I walked across the stage to receive my master’s degree, he called. By the time we ended that call, I knew we would give it one last chance together.

I just didn’t expect to fall in love.

But that’s exactly what happened. For the first time in our 5+ year relationship, I knew that I really loved him. And he loved me, too.

Perhaps that’s why it was so hard to end things only a short time later. It won’t make sense to you, since you don’t know the whole story, but I knew that God was not pleased with me staying in the relationship. And, for the first time that I can remember, I defiantly disobeyed Him.

Here I was, loved for the first time and God was asking me to hand that over to Him? Well, no. I just wasn’t going to do that. And furthermore, how dare He try to take love away from me?

If only I had of known what He was trying to protect me from.

It was only a few days later that certain things began to come to light that proved just how right God’s instructions to me had been. The details aren’t really mine to share, so there’s no way for you to understand what a grave mistake I was in the process of making through my disobedience.

One night, while driving to his house, I turned off on a different road, one that lead to a church in my town that had their sanctuary open all night on that cold Friday evening. I slipped inside and found a quiet corner of the room for myself.

And then I stayed for five hours.

I knew walking into the sanctuary that I was walking in with the feeling of being loved by someone. And, I knew that when I walked out, I would have left that comfortable feeling at the altar. It was my own Isaac being sacrificed at the altar, except I knew that God wouldn’t tell me to stop as He told Abraham all those years ago. My sacrifice would be accepted that night, no matter how many tears it took to place it before Him.

Even though it was in the middle of the night when I left the sanctuary, I drove straight to his house because I knew that I had to be done. I couldn’t stand living in disobedience to God for even an hour longer.

It ended as you’d expect it to — tears, anger, disappointment, resentment and bitterness. Some of that was mine; some his. When I saw him a few months later, he told me that he was fine, that he had moved on from it.

I hadn’t.

It wasn’t him that I couldn’t move on from — it was the sense of being loved. When you come from an abusive background like I have, you desperately need to be loved by the hands of God… and by human hands, too.

I know that isn’t what we want to hear. We want to tell others, to tell ourselves, that all we need is the love of God. That we don’t need human love.

But if that’s true, then why… well, why did God send Himself in human form to show the greatest display of love the world has ever seen?

I think He wants me to have that human love. I believe that He has someone for me. I believe that I’ll get to experience that lifetime of human love. Someday. Not today, but someday.

But until then, I still have Sunday afternoons when I’m alone. I know that, if I chose disobedience, my Sunday afternoons wouldn’t be lonely. He and I shared them, you know. That was supposed to be our day together each week. It was ours.

And so, when I was driving home this quiet Sunday afternoon alone, I was surprised to hear a holy voice that I recognize as His ask a question that only He is entitled to at this time in my life.

“Would you mind taking the long way home, Amy Beth? I like spending my Sunday afternoons with you.”

Just got to see this picture that one of my Starlite leaders, Magen, took of me at a sleepover we had for middle school girls earlier this year. There’s no telling what I was saying to the girls… it was taken right before we took them into a church service, so I was probably telling them that I had better not see anyone falling asleep during the sermon.

So, obviously, I was a little embarrassed when I nodded off.

Happy Sunday, ya’ll.

Several months ago, I met a guy named Tyler when he showed up to fill a last minute vacancy in the band that plays for Starlite’s sleepover events. Well, I didn’t actually meet him that night, but we were on the same stage together and? Hello? That’s pretty much the same as meeting someone.

We’ve become friends since then and I have a hard time believing that there is anyone who could make me laugh as much as Tyler does. I’d marry him for that reason alone except for the following facts:

1. Tyler has never asked me to marry him.

2. Tyler regularly posts Facebook statuses that include some version of “All you hot girls out there… we should date.” While I fit into many categories, “hot girls” is unfortunately not one of them.

3. Tyler has never asked me to marry him.

From what I understand, Tyler occasionally checks the blog and — if you’re a very faithful MinSoFab reader — you may have even seen a few comments from him.

Yesterday, however, Tyler had a bit of trouble posting a comment to the Fetus Friday post so he emailed his comment to me. And, because it is a prime example of why I’m ready to marry him the minute he asks (did I mention that already?), I decided to share the wealth with you.

And now, Tyler’s response to Fetus Friday. Keep in mind that Tyler is a single male in college:

Well, Amy Beth — I know exactly what you’re going through! I tried the whole buy ahead of time thing and found zero success. Then I decided to buy the diapers one at a time after I got the baby and after it had already used the bathroom on itself.

Now, for the right kind of diaper: the baby isn’t the only one that will be using them… YOU WILL BE TOO!!! You’ll learn to use them for fixing leaky houses, pet toys, for cooking and for yourself on long road trips.

You’re gonna want to buy them from your local flea market. If you go to a store to buy them, only get the Pamper’s Sea Salt ones.

A couple of diaper recipes for you:

1. sloppy floppy lime cakes

2. tooth brush bonanza balls

3. siamese cupcake twists

4. honor roll egg rolls

5. “hey that should go in there” chili

All of these recipes can be found on my website. Best of luck Amy Beth!

He’s funny. He has great hair. What more is there to want?