360 degrees

Another amazing couple of days are happening now! This weekend our two oldest girls are attending a state wide Christian Conference! I'm so excited that they are there that I'm busting at the seams! It just so happens that my kids youth minister and my current church minster use to be in a band that performed at the VA Christian teen convention that I went to as a teen! How crazy is that??!!!! Talk about your life doing a 360! I have a bootleg copy of that Convention CD that I got from my best friend; mentioned in the previous post! I'm sure I told her at the time, "Hey, buy this CD and I'll give you some money!", and I never did! Opps! Hopefully during our 17 years of friendship I've paid up, maybe not in money but in laughs or friendship! :) So leading up to this weekend I've been praying for the girls to grow in their relationship with Christ and to form great friendships, either with each other and/or someone else. I mean who knew, in another state, that I would later attend church and help with setting up a new church with people I met as a teenager?! Our church just celebrated our 5 year anniversary and on our way to a permenanent building! Our church has been in several locations during this 5 year span, which is kind of a new concept for Eastern NC to have a "church" not be in a "sanctuary". Coming from the Hampton Roads area of VA it was nothing for me to see a church pop up here and there in movie theaters and in gyms. It truly was a blessing when we found our church because we had been looking for awhile for the right "fit" since me and my husband got married. We would either like the church and the girls just felt uncomfortable with the teen setting, or visa versa. I truly couldn't tell you how many we attended. I felt all kinds of emotions during that time, such as, well maybe we shouldn't go because if God wanted us at one we would know by now, to "what's wrong with me?! It's no about me, us, you... it's about God." Anyways my best friend contacted me during this time and said "Hey remember the guys from the band at VCTC? They are setting up a church in your area?" My response, "What? Here?!" I said, "Ok, where, when, how... we're ready!" The rest is history and now the girls are away at their own teen conference! Craziness! 

Also, I got my jewelry in today and can now start selling away! I'm so very excited and my youngest is parading around the house saying "$5 dollar, $5 dollar!" I also got to join my husband at his work conference he is in charge of. The food was "Amazing" with all kinds of fresh aquaculture. Oysters, talipa, beer battered catfish, prong... That's just to name a few. I was stuffed but most importantly got to put faces to names of people who have donated leave to me during my illness and who especially think highly of my husband. It brings me so much joy for people to reaffirm what I already know. Also, his girls were missing him some kind of bad this week. All three are "Daddy's' Girls" and truly needed a detailed internary for his absence.  My reassurance of "He's at work" was not enough info for them. 

When I got home from work, out on my front porch, was my packaged jewelry and then a fairly large rectangular box from FedEx. My immediate thought was "oh, No! What did I order??!!!" "I don't remember ordering anything that would be in a package like that?!!!" I rushed to find a pair of scissors and destroyed the box! Inside was a canvas print of me with my husbands sisters, my sisters in laws, from a St. Patricks Day spent in Atlanta. This picture holds sooooo much sentinmental value. This was the first time I met his sisters, the first and only picture I believe of all three of us and my first and last time drinking Gusiness, lol! When I first started talking to my husband, within the first month, he made me talk to his oldest sister. At the time, I was working a hour from home, and talked to her the full length of time plus more. From the moment I left work, from the time I pulled into my parents driveway. I still remember the spot I picked up the phone to talk to her and pass by it on the way "home" from NC to VA. I didn't have a chance to spend much time with her because cancer took her way too soon. But the moments I do remember, the way she talked about her brother and threatening me if I hurt him and his kids, listening to hard rock Irish music and cruising the Atalanta highways on St. Patricks Day ( she was mad at me :) ), drinking hott Gusiness at 8am before they would allow us into the bar, her kissing and "eating" Madison's toes when she was a baby and walking the Relay for Life Race with my husband pushing her in the wheelchair (my Dad still talks about her til this day about how upbeat you were)!  Thank you for the surprise canvas ( you know who you are) because I was just thinking to myself "I need some St. Patricks Day decorations" and now that picture fills the void and more!