Almost everyone always says the same thing — “Be thankful for the time you have while you’re single.  You’ll never have this time with just you and God again.”  To be blunt, I’ve always found that to be a bit annoying and a fantastic opportunity to give a bratty response in my head: um, hello, I’m well aware of all the time He and I have alone together.  It’s glaringly obvious each night when it’s just me and Him.

A few weeks ago I started to realize that, while I might be aware of it, I certainly wasn’t being thankful for it.  I began earnestly praying for Him to show me how to be thankful for this time with just me and Him but just couldn’t find the thankfulness no matter how hard I tried.  Instead of being thankful for the now, all I wanted was the future.

And then, today, everything clicked.

I had been up throughout the night with a sick little girl.  I wanted to sleep in, but instead was woken up by two little girls bouncing on my bed (in addition to having MacKenzie here with me, at the last minute I also got to bring my baby cousin along for this trip).  I fixed breakfast, cleaned up spills, picked out bathing suits and headbands.  I fastened car seats, held little hands while crossing the road and threatened time outs.  As I finally had my first few moments of the day alone while I watched them play on the swings in the park, I said a silent prayer without even thinking about it –

“I wish I could spend some time alone with You today.”

I finally got it.  I finally got why all of you are telling me to treasure this time when it’s just me and Him because it’ll never be like this again.  One day they’ll be a husband sleeping beside me, children crying in the nursery down the hall.  One day I’ll have bottles to fill and lunches to pack and more laundry than I could ever imagine.  And as wonderful as all of those things will be — and yes, they will be wonderful — I feel certain they’ll be a time when I’ll find myself wishing I could go back to these days of it just being me and Him.

There are good days ahead for me, days filled with voices of a mate and children.  Those days are ahead for me, surely.

But there are good days here now, too, filled with just His voice and mine.

– — –

It’s amazing what you hear when you finally start listening.

I was all prepared to make a list of things I had done on this perfect Fall Break Friday, but then I realized that, really, one of them just completly outweighs the rest of them and I do believe it deserves an entire blog post of its own:

Your girl ABB is about to sleep IN A KING SIZED BED.

I don’t think you even understand what a big deal this is but try to imagine having slept in a twin-sized bed almost every night during the last 1.5 years and maybe you’ll get a little idea of how excited I am right now.

In related news, I’m never coming home.  All future blog posts will be written from right here in St. Simon’s Island, GA.

Or, perhaps more accurately, all future blog posts will be written from this very bed since I have no plans of leaving it anytime soon.

It is 11:59 p.m. on a Wednesday evening and my little twin bed is awfully full at the moment.  In addition to myself there happens to also be a couple of puppies named Snuggles y Cuddles, a stuffied pig named, well, Piggy, and a little girl you might know as MacKenzie.

I drove to her town to pick her up after I got off work tonight and, when I arrived at her apartment around 8:30 p.m., she (along with her suitcase) were waiting for me on the doorstep.  In addition to the suitcase, we also loaded a car seat, duffel bag, large bag of toys, baby doll stroller and a plethora of actual baby dolls into the back of my car before starting the 1.5 hour drive back to my house.

Tomorrow morning she’ll be going to work with me and, around lunchtime, I’ll be strapping her into her car seat and hitting the road.  You see, Miss MacKenzie and I both happen to have a couple of days off for a little thing called Fall Break and we, my loves, are going to use that time wisely: I’m taking my girl to the beach…

… for the first time in her life.

(And if that wasn’t enough, I get to play baby dolls for the next several days.)

(You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for an excuse to play baby dolls again.)

(Let’s just say it’s been a long time coming — like 15 years.)

(Be still my beating heart.)

I’m in a really strange season of life right now.

I’m changing, all the time. Actually it’s everything around me that’s changing: friendships are evolving and fading; relationships beginning and ending. When everything around you begins to change, it’s almost inevitable that you begin to change, too.

I’ve been quietly thinking for awhile about how what’s happening right now — I’m talking today, tomorrow, this week, this month, this year — is changing me forever. It’s hard to explain it to you, since I don’t share everything that’s happening in my life. All I know is that I’m smart enough to recognize that this may very well be one of the hardest, best seasons of my life and I need to protect it with everything in me.

So this is what I’m doing.

Early this morning, I quietly deleted my Twitter account and very soon I will temporarily deactivate my Facebook account. I’m not hiding; I’m trading. I’m going to take the time and focus I would usually put into those things and put it towards some other things in life instead. Yesterday I made an actual list of people I’d like to spend more love on, and in order to do it, I need to draw time and resources from some other place in my life.

I’m going to change the way I blog as well. After today, I’m closing comments on my posts indefinitely (I promise to open them up every so often, but it won’t be a regular thing). I know that a lot of people aren’t going to like it, but I think that, after you see how much it will free me up, you’ll like it more than you thought you might. Let me explain.

As it’s been so far, you could pretty much expect a new post every morning, Monday through Friday (as well as random Daily Peeks thrown in). Starting now, I’m going to blog regularly — but when I feel like it. So there will be posts in the morning, at night, whenever. When it’s time to write, I’m going to write.

I think you’ll see that I’ll be writing more frequently, more in-depth. I’ll still be writing in my diary, but as I go through the process of change, I think you’ll see more of that experience on the screen in front of you. In essence, this will become more like a diary, something I’ve felt a pull towards for awhile now. They’ll still be certain areas of my life I won’t write about, simply because it won’t be appropriate. Those things will remain in my personal diary; the rest will continue being here on my little pink corner of the world. The idea that a lot of you come to read each day makes me nervous; I think one of the benefits of doing it this way will be that it’ll help me keep pretending that it’s just you and me on here each night.

Like I said earlier, I’m certainly not hiding. I’ve updated my contact page with my new email address as well as my postal mail address since I get asked for it a lot. I’m still here, still able to be contacted when there’s something you need to tell me. You know that I love your emails; you know it.

So there you have it, cupcakes. Twitter isn’t hard to live without, but I can’t believe I’m giving up my blog comments and Facebook. This is going to be tough.

But I bet it’ll be good, too.

A couple of weekends ago, Nicholas and I found ourselves sitting at Starbucks on a late Saturday night. He had a paper to write and I had an email inbox to tackle, so for the next little bit, we worked in silence (except for all the times I interrupted him to say “LET ME READ YOU THIS BLOG COMMENT!”).

All of the sudden — and without warning — he said a few magic words that caused one of my life dreams to come to pass right before my eyes:

“Would you want to cut my hair?”

Y’all, I swear to you that I slammed my laptop shut, grabbed my purse and headed for the door. Would I like to cut his hair? I mean, really, what kind of question is that? OF COURSE I WANT TO BE GIVEN PERMISSION TO PLAY BEAUTY SHOP!!!!!!!!!!

I know what some of y’all are thinking: why in the world would Gosling ask me to cut his hair? The answer was simple, my friends: he had been invited to go over to hang out with some friends (read: GIRLS) later that night and he wanted his hair to look good so he could impress all the ladies. Given that it was late at night and all the local barber shops were closed, he had but one option left and her name was Amy Beth, Hairstylist to the Stars.

Now, to make what you’re about to see even funnier, I need to give you a bit of a back story. Earlier that week, I had mentioned to Nicholas that I used to work in a HUGE hair salon. I didn’t go into specifics, so Nicholas just assumed I used to cut hair — when, really, I used to work as a receptionist there. I didn’t know he thought that though, so whilst he thought he was getting ready to get his hair cut by someone who used to cut hair for three years, I thought he just trusted my innate ability to cut hair for the first time ever.

If you think the story is funny now, just wait until you see the pictures.

We got to my house and I made him sit in the kitchen and put one of my darling towels around his shoulder. He LOVED having a flowered towel wrapped around him!

Since this was a full-service beauty salon, I served snacks whilst he waited for me to assemble my tools. Remember, this is the face of a boy who thinks he’s about to get a haircut from someone who used to cut hair in an upscale salon.

I took a picture of the back so you could see what atrocity I had to work with that night. All I have to say is Nicholas must live by the idea of business in the front, party in the back.

Now, in my defense on the whole salon thing, I think Nicholas should have figured out what was going on right around the time I pulled out my pink kitchen shears instead of real haircutting scissors. But lo, he did not and so, really, it’s not like I can be held responsible for what happened next.

I started snipping and jerking and pulling and, somewhere in the middle of it, Nicholas mentioned something about my having cut hair before. I froze. Then he froze. And then, in one horrible moment that seemed to last forever, he figured out that I had never cut hair before.

Do you see the tears forming in his eyes? And the redness coming into his face?

I told him to suck it up because he was starting to make the beauty shop game not fun. He said that I had to stop calling it the beauty shop game and I replied by placing a warm, wet towel across his face. That’s how we do men’s haircuts at Amy Beth’s House of Beauty, you know.

Once I had the towel in position, I began gently beating on his face and head because I think that’s what they do in the movies, you know? So there I was beating and for some crazy reason he didn’t like it and, well, the beauty shop game ended far before it had even reached its prime. I mean, he totally missed on the facial! And the eyebrow wax!!!

I’d love to show you a finished product but, to be honest, his hair kinda ended up looking awful and by awful I mean there were three little — TINY — bald spots and okay, maybe they weren’t exactly tiny but it wasn’t like they were huge, maybe just average sized and, anyway, I can’t figure out why he was so upset about them because, hello, it isn’t like his hair won’t grow back fast.

Wait, right? It’ll grow back fast, won’t it?

I sure hope so, ’cause my scissors are ready and waiting, Gosling.

P.S. – Yes, that’s why you saw his head shaved in the picture included in this post. Can you believe he had the nerve to shave my artwork off his head? Jerkasaurus.

P.P.S. – A couple of my college girls were still at my house last night when the topic of Gosling being on the blog a lot lately came up and they began to lament how he gets far more blog time then they do. I walked back into my kitchen a few minutes later to find Honour at the table doing the following:

That’s right: she was using pebbles from a bowl on my table to spell out “No more Nick!”

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

The trouble with having this huge, action-packed weekend is that it’s awfully hard to blog it when you get back because it’s all FIFTY MILLION PHOTOS and SERIES OF POSTS and, really, all we care about is seeing how high Beth wore her hair, right?

Ladies and the three gentlemen who read this blog, she did not disappoint.

Do y’all see that? I mean, really — DO YOU SEE THAT HEIGHT? I was seriously overwhelmed, especially when I saw her up close.

I realize that’s kind of a blurry picture of her, but it was the best I could do given the fact that she was close enough to walk to where I was sitting and say “Oh, hello, you look like you would like to touch my hair?” Except she didn’t say that but, hello, you can’t blame a girl for dreaming.

I’ll have you know that, for the record, I came prepared for her hair by fixing my own with a little thing I like to call the Bumpit.

Things we need to discuss about that picture:

1. Yes, I feel certain that in 20 years I will regret ever having admitted that I actually wore a Bumpit in my hair to make it higher.

2. I took that picture whilst sprinting through a parking garage because we were late.

3. If you don’t know what a Bumpit is, please allow me to educate you.

Now that we’ve got the important stuff out of the way, shall we continue?

When I went to meet up with the girls going with us, we added a couple extra to our group which meant we needed to add another car. We stopped at a gas station about halfway there and I cannot tell you how happy I was to walk up to the other car — which was filled with my college girls — and find this homemade sign in their car window.

After the Friday night sessions, we picked up some dinner to go and went to Kelly’s house. I hadn’t seen Kelly since my birthday, so guess what was waiting for me?

It’s kind of hard to see the color of them in this picture, but allow me to assure you that they match the border of this blog PERFECTLY. Isn’t that darling?

Kelly is really the hostess with the mostess, y’all. Not only did she open her house up for all of us to stay there, but she even got up early to do this –

AND this –

Saturday morning came early, so we came bearing gifts in the form of coffee.

I don’t have pictures from Saturday’s sessions, mainly because I was too busy crying and thinking “Oh, so this is why God wanted me to come here this weekend.” She hit all my big things — family of origin, singleness, choosing to believe that God loves you. I have a feeling that my diary is going to be seeing quite a bit of action this week as I think through everything from this weekend.

After some of my girls left to head back home on Saturday, Kelly, Melanie, Jenna and I headed to see something that I’ve been waiting an awful long time to view in real life.

Did y’all know that Williams-Sonoma has an outlet store? I was out of my mind excited, especially since I’m such a good cook and all.

I think Melanie’s face represents the utopia we all felt whilst in this store.

Personally, I was most impressed with these bowls I found on the sidewalk. I didn’t get any, but you better believe I found about 87 different things in the store that I’d like to put on a wish list for a day when I’m worthy of having Williams-Sonoma items in my kitchen.

After hitting up a Saturday night church service, we headed to my friend Christan’s house for dinner. Do I not just have the hostess-y friends ever?

There’s so much more I’m missing out on telling you, but I shall leave you with one final snippet from the weekend. Late Saturday night, when we arrived at Melanie’s house to spend the night, I decided to take a quick bath before bed. Melanie, being the darling girl she is, lit candles beside the bath. When I got out, I bent over to blow them out and blew a little too hard, causing a large amount of hot wax to splash onto my face which further caused me to begin shrieking “HOT WAX IN MY EYES! HOT WAX ON MY FACE! HOT WAX IN MY EYES!” at the top of my lungs whilst jumping around her bathroom like I was on a pogo stick or something.

I just thought you would enjoy the visual.

The basics: still in Memphis; Beth’s hair was the highest I’ve ever seen it and the actual conference?  I’ll tell you about it whenever I get rid of the headache I got from crying my little eyes out during this morning’s sessions.  Let’s just say that God read my mail this weekend — email, postal mail, you name it.

In the meantime –

My neighbor Clay and I have been texting back and forth this weekend as he’s been back at the home front taking care of Snuggles y Cuddles whilst I’m gone (and in the middle of an awful set of storms in our town, too).  I was in a store this afternoon and saw something funny that I thought he’d like, so I sent a picture of it to his cell along with a little text asking him if he could guess what he was getting as a souvenir from this weekend.  His reply, knowing that I was at a conference with 13,300 women?

“Preferably a wife.”

So.

The plan was for me to go to Beth Moore’s conference in Memphis. A couple of friends there were going to come, too. I was going to head to Memphis yesterday, get settled in, spend some time with my friends. Simple, good weekend.

And then yesterday I was given more tickets so that my college girls could come along, too. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT JUNK?

So. A new plan had to go into place.

I made a call to my absolute favorite blogger in the world, Jenna.

Jenna and I met through blogging but are now friends. Raise your hand if you think that’s weird.

So I’m all “Jenna. Pack your bags, you’re going to see Beth Moore.” And Jenna’s all “Can’t. I have a job.” And then we lamented having jobs and responsibilities and stuff. And then we hung up the phone, sad that she was not going to experience Beth’s hair live and in person.

And then she called me back and said “Guess what?” and I yelled “DO NOT TOY WITH MY EMOTIONS, JENNA.” And she was all “I’M COMING TO SEE BETH.”

So she started driving towards a town in Georgia and I started driving towards a town in Georgia and we found each other in a Kroger parking lot and now we are reunited for Beth Moore’s hair, which Jenna has so graciously provided us with a picture of.

As if that wasn’t enough, I would now like to give you the entire line-up of attendees going with me to see Beth Moore’s hair:

Kelly, whom you may remember from the time she drove here and PACKED MY HOUSE UP AND MOVED IT FOR ME.

And then there’s Christan, one of my very first roommates from college.  She’s the one that lets me feed bottles to her babies.  Oh, and she also bakes the cutest Minnie Mouse cakes you have ever seen IN YOUR LIFE.

And then there’s Melanie, my darling friend from high school.  Let me tell you something: this girl and I go WAY back.  And she totally beats me when it comes to giving adorable gifts, too.

And then there’s Stephanie, one of my college girls whom you will remember from the time she infamously wore footie pajamas when I took the girls on a retreat. 

And Hannah’s coming, too.  She was one of the students who came on the trip to Egypt with me.  I do believe you might remember her from the night we accidentally made the washer overflow.

Y’all, I was excited about going to see Beth before now but NOW?  NOW THAT MY GIRLS ARE GOING WITH ME?  I’m out of control excited.  Like, OUT OF CONTROL.

But we leave in like 17 minutes so I need to go finish my hair.   You understand, I’m sure.

P.S. – Several of you had emailed me about meeting up at one of the blogger get-togethers, but I’m going to skip out now that I’ve got a crowd with me.  I’d still love to meet up with you in the arena though!  Please send me an email at ministrysofab AT yahoo DOT com and I’ll email y’all back with a plan for us to get together inside the arena!

Well, would you believe that the whole weekend thing got worked out? Of course you would, O Ye of Greater Faith than I.

When I wrote that post yesterday morning, I was trying to be lighthearted about my disappointment seeing as the mechanics had told me to expect a $600.00 bill when I left my car with them. I knew if it really ended up being that much that I would need to skip going out of town this weekend, which was totally okay of course — I mean, my car working comes before traveling. Quite literally, now that I really think about it.

Later on in the morning I got a call from them saying that the new estimate was $1,275.00 which is right about when I began suspecting that the single, young girl with a thick accent and double name carrying a hot pink purse might be experiencing a little thing we call “being taken advantage of.” A couple of phone calls confirmed my suspicion and, skipping a very long and boring story, I’m happy to say that my car is driving perfectly for now and it did not cost me $600.00 nor $1,275.00.

By the time all this had been worked out and I was ready to buy the conference ticket, a sweet blog reader named Heather had left a comment AND emailed me to tell me that she had a ticket that she had been trying to give away for awhile now and that, if I still hadn’t bought my ticket yet, she’d love to just give it to me. I sent her an email back telling her how much I’d appreciate it and gave her my cell number so we could chat last night about getting the ticket.

Would you believe that, when we spoke last night, one of the first things out of her mouth was “I don’t just have one ticket for you… I have FOUR tickets to give to you and your friends!” It turns out that her mother-in-law had extra tickets that they didn’t want to sell — they were just asking God to give them someone to bless with the tickets. Like, praying for four girls to give the tickets to — seriously. None of my friends going with me had bought their tickets yet, so you can imagine how happy everyone was when I called last night to tell them we had been given free tickets!

Oh, but the good news doesn’t just stop there, my friends.

I COOKED DINNER LAST NIGHT! AND IT WAS EDIBLE! AND MAYBE EVEN DELICIOUS!!!

What you’re seeing there is some straight up chicken, potatoes and green beans that I seasoned with olive oil and lemon AND WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE COOK NOW, PEOPLE?

I bet you’re wondering who I lavished this goodness on, now aren’t you? I believe you know them as Gosling and British Boy.

The boys, bless their hearts, showed up on my doorstep with not only regular lemonade but PINK lemonade as well. Somebody raised these boys right, girls. I’m just sayin’.

Clay came down after dinner and the four of us headed to Starbucks to do the following: math homework (British Boy); emails for work (Clay); various homework (Gosling) and diary entry for Bible study (me). I’m doing this new study called Loving Well because, well, I need to love better. But love can wait because right now?

Now I need to start packing my hair supplies because I think we all know that one must have good hair in the presence of The Great Haired One.

Well, I am a wee bit sad this morning. I was supposed to head to Memphis tomorrow to see Beth Moore (or, more accurately, her hair) at a conference there this weekend but it’s looking increasingly like I won’t be able to make it for a variety of reasons with the main one being the fact that my car started making a bad noise last night. I took it to the auto shop early this morning and, as I type these words, my fate is being determined by the hands of a rather cute mechanic. Somehow I have a sinking feeling that I’m going to be paying for car repairs instead of conference tickets this weekend.

I’ve been looking forward to this trip for a very long time now, especially since I was going to get to see three of my favorite friends in the world while I was there since they live in that area. Plus, there’s the whole thing of seeing Beth’s hair live and in person. Y’all, I totally wrote her a letter (penned during math class, no less) and sent it to her last week. I know other people send her letters to tell her how much her Bible studies have helped them or how they appreciate her books, but me?

I sent a letter asking her if she would wear her hair real big this weekend. I believe a direct quote was “like real, REAL big, Beth. Please?”

I went on to explain that she is my hairspiration and admitted that I’ve been trapped in a vicious cycle on ponytails lately, but that I knew that seeing her hair real, REAL big would help me break free. And now to think that the only hair I might be seeing this weekend is that of a repairman as he ducks back underneath the hood of my car.

I never thought I’d let anything come between me and Beth’s hair, but there’s a first time for everything, I suppose. I do still have a wee bit of hope that they’re going to call me to say it was an itty bitty tiny repair.

But that hope is starting to drain like an oil leak.