Thursday, December 18, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Playing Tag
1. Finish my Master of Divinity degree at Fuller Theological Seminary
2. Teach the Bible at a small Bible college
3. Be a loving Grandma to at least 4 grandchildren (!)
4. Go to England, live there for 6 months with my husband and have all of our family visit us
5. Fly first-class to China on someone else's money
5 Things I can do...
1. Make a home
2. Help sick and hurting people feel better
3. Make a garden
4. Make children laugh when I read a book
5. Charm strangers into conversation, especially lonely ones
5 things I can not do...
1. Play the piano like Nancy Grueneveld <: (
2. Dance (please don't try to tell me otherwise!)
3. Snowboard
4. Speak another language fluently
5. Listen to BevMo commercials--they get on my last nerve
5 things that attract me to my hubby
1. His soulful English eyes
2. His rock-solid, inviolable integrity
3. His selflessness
4. His love of books, music and all that's new and interesting in the world
5. That he prays with me, real prayers, filled with faith
5 things I say Most Often
1. "I expect that_____is going to turn out just fine".
2. "Thank the Lord!"
3. "Hang in there!"
4. "I am so proud of you" (which tells you how many kids I have and how often I talk to them)
5. "I'll pray about that with you" (ditto the above)
5 Celebrity Crushes
1. Hugh Jackman
2. Michael Tilson Thomas
3. Brian Brown
4. Jack Black
5. George Clooney
I tag...
1. Megan Voos
(Everyone else who reads my blog has been taken)
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Fuller Theological Seminary
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Thanksgiving Greetings!
If you came to our house for Thanksgiving this week, here is what would greet you at the door. We want you to know that we give thanks to God for all of our blessings at the Thompson home...and you are one of our blessings! We thank God when you come to see us.
We also thank God for you when you are far away.
When we miss you and are thinking about you, here is how we pray:
"We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers.
We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ."
"We ought always to thank God for you, [family & friends], and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing."
I Thess. 2:2-3 & II Thess. 1:3
Happy Thanksgiving, Pilgrims!
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Happy Birthday, Jonathan!
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Musing about marriage
Mom and Dad's marriage is an example of a traditional marriage, the kind we more conservative people want to defend these days. They are one man and one woman who made a vow to stay together for a lifetime and raise a family that would have both a father and a mother present.
Now there is this huge struggle in our state about whether two men or two women can marry and make some kind of a family together. In the wings there may be even more reconfigurations of marriage waiting to be revealed. Those of us who never imagined marriage could or would be redefined in this way are struggling with what we consider the erosion of an essential institution.
However, as I have been thinking a lot about how the concept of marriage got to be so elastic and twisted, I think it began about 40-50 years ago. It started with the rising acceptance of divorce as a solution to unhappiness in marriage. We didn't know as much as we do today about how to help people make peace with each other. We didn't understand the devastation of various kinds of addictions and dependencies. Divorce was often seen as the only way out and it got easier and easier.
Broken marriages led to children of divorce whose trust had been broken. Those children matured and some of them introduced the idea of having no marriage at all, just choosing to live together "without the benefit of marriage" to see if they were compatible.
That put us on a slippery slope where living together became a matter of convenience and self-gratification with less and less expectation of commitment for the long haul. More and more children were born out of wedlock and the concept of the single parent became acceptable.
Once we accepted singleness in parenthood, it wasn't so strange to see people who had no intention of ever marrying becoming parents. If a single person could be a parent, why shouldn't he or she share a home and children with someone they loved, regardless of marriage? Once we had cobbled together enough homes where children were growing up with non-biologically related adults raising them, we were just a short step from gay couples adopting and raising families. If they could do that, why in the world couldn't they get married and be a "real" family?
And here we are today.
What baffles me is that the straight community, who has systematically eroded the concept of marriage for so many decades is now appalled that gays want to marry. The gays are in the curious position of promoting marriage as a desirable institution to a "straight" society that has increasingly disdained and forsaken it.
I am not in favor of gay marriage, but I am also not in favor of heterosexual marriages that break apart and leave children in the lurch. I am not in favor of heterosexual relationships that are based on narcissistic self-gratification with no intention of commitment for a lifetime. I am not in favor of "easy outs" through divorce, or of parents abandoning their kids because they are not personally happy.
In short I am not in favor of the way this society has watered down and made a joke of marriage generally. Why are we so incensed about gay marriage when we have allowed our country to become a disaster area of failed heterosexual marriages and distressed, confused and abandoned children?
We should have started a long, long time ago defending marriage. We should have protested and voted for marriage when divorce became so prevalent, when adultry became so "normal" and when playing house instead of building a lifetime commitment to one another became acceptable.
When having sex became the reason for getting together, engaging the heart and mind and soul went out the window. When the heart, mind and soul were abandoned we lost our way as human beings. Now we don't seem to have a compass to get us back to sanity.
Christians who understand and believe in the biblical concept of marriage are going to have to stand up with courage in the coming years. The pressure is going to be tremendous! I hope we are ready.
Monday, November 17, 2008
On Preaching
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Standing By...
Ha, ha! I called the schools in question first thing Monday morning and learned that since my records are stored on microfilm somewhere they would have to be hunted down, uploaded to a computer somehow, printed and mailed. Of course, Tuesday is a holiday so none of this is starting until Wednesday, November 12. What are the chances it will arrive by November 14?
I mentioned to Fuller that all of my academic records for the three community colleges I attended are in the transcript from College of the Sequoias, where I graduated, but they say that doesn't count. I asked if they could have let me know that a few weeks ago when I called them to check specifically on transcripts....
So, all I can do is wait and pray. If my transcripts miss the deadline for the winter quarter, my application will go into the pile for spring and I will have 4 more months of waiting to see if they will accept me as a student.
I have learned (again) that I lack grace when other people don't do their part. It gives me heartburn when I have finished everything I say I would do, met the requirements and then find that others dropped the ball. Grrrrrrrrr.
Anyway, this process has always been the Lord's hands and if I have a complaint, I have to talk with Him about it. He doesn't really care about my complaints since, once again, I don't even know how to ask the right questions. How do I know when (or if) I should start seminary? Only He knows.
I have a friend who is in seminary right now who never intended to go at all! She and her husband are both attending seminary, to their great surprise. A few months ago they were praying about what to do next in their lives, decided on a whim to visit Western Seminary in San Jose. They sneaked onto the campus to have look around, bumped into an admissions counselor "by accident" and before they left the campus that day, were enrolled in 3 classes each. Now she is up to her eyeballs in hermeneutics. She has no idea how she will use her seminary education, but she knows God wants her toget it. Go figure....
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
I Know!
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Happiness
We visited Grandma and Grandpa Carson to wish them early happy birthdays since M & K will be moving to a new apartment Oct. 18 when we gather for the real birthday party. (There will be a dinner at G & G's home that evening.) Rick, Diane, Amanda and Dylan came over and we had a lot of fun hanging out. Kevin is a Lodi guy and EVERYONE in the valley relates to him! There were lots of inside Valley jokes.
Matt & Steph joined us Sunday for Peets coffee after church, followed by lunch at our house. You may be asking, "Where are the pictures of these great events?" Well, I left the chip out of my camera and couldn't take pictures for most of it, then I got busy and forgot to shoot pics when I could.
So, use your imagination. Think about lots of laughter and good-humored conversation and you will pretty much know what happened.
We really missed Andy and Whitney. I was lucky enough to see so much of my family last week that it made their absence even more poignant. God bless our famly, far and wide!
Friday, October 10, 2008
I got to go and visit the Thompsons in Tigard
Tara, Jacob, Kristin & Susannah
More Photo Opps...
Cozy with Daddy.
Full tummy, happy baby!
Lots of love, lots of smiles and lots of hugs in this little family. It was a privilege to be there and help during this time of recovery from the loss of Preston. We who know the Lord have wonderful hope even in death, but there is still a great, big hole in everyone's lives. The community that was blessed to know Preston will be making adjustments for a long time to come. His warmth and joy still reverberate through Lake Bible Church and everyone misses him.
Jonathan and Kristin have stepped up to the challenge and responsibility of caring for and comforting people throughout the church. They are keeping all of the youth programs going, as well as meeting needs in the rest of the church as people grieve in various ways. They care for Tara and Jacob daily, just as if they are part of their own family. I was humbled by the tireless work these two are doing in their pastoral calling. It is amazing to see how God shapes people, turning tragedy to triumph so that the world may see how great His grace and love are!
Friday, September 19, 2008
Verses from today's One Year Bible reading...
Isaiah 32:17 - "The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever. My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest."
Isaiah 33:6 - "He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure."
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Tara speaks
http://www.katu.com/news/local/28491769.html?video=YHI&t=a
God, who leads us to our divine appointments, goes through them with us. Blessed be His Name.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
How Could He?
Then, as I was watering the garden this afternoon with the garden hose and my tears, I started to think, what kind of a God does it take to shape a man like Preston? What kind of a God did Preston believe in that made him so pure of heart, so humble and so faithful? Preston embraced kindness and goodness while most of his peers were out serving themselves. He lived a sacrificial lifestyle so that others might live, come to faith and know Christ. How does a 24 year old man become so wise and responsible? What kind of a God does that?
If we could hear Preston's voice right now he would tell us what kind of God He is because now he sees him. He would say it is worth everything to know this God and follow him. He would tell us that everything we hope for is true.
It's one thing to ask what kind of God takes the life of a wonderful 24 year old man in the midst of his young family. It's another thing to ask what kind of God shaped such a man to begin with. If Preston had lived to be 124 years old, he would not have been more ready to go home. By God's grace may we all let the Lord shape us through this disaster and may we all come out as golden as Preston did.
Preston
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The Last Paragraph
The next day I read part of a letter that a writer sent to a committee to explain why her writing assignment wasn't completed yet. She said that she had written a long, meandering draft of it, but it wasn't until the last paragraph that she finally discovered what she really wanted to write. Now she could toss the draft and write about what had appeared in the last paragraph. Oh, how I identify with that!
I think it is the latest paragraph of our lives that really matter. We do a lot of drafting of ideas along the way, but when we stop and look at the "last paragraph" we lived, quite often we find IT -- the thing we are really trying to say. Sometimes the trick is to realize that we are actually at the last paragraph of a line of thinking. For instance, I think Matt has been drafting stuff about working out and running, etc., for a while now. Then he "wrote a last paragraph" on his HTC run and now he has great new material to work with. Running went from a mental and physical discipline to a passion.
Instead of worrying about what we are doing with our lives everday, we might like to look at the way we live as writing a draft that is leading to an amazing paragraph. In that paragraph we will finally know what we are really trying to say about life.
I personally do a lot of "drafting", and not just at my drawing board. I have a big box of journals that have thousands of pages of drafts AND last paragraphs in them. Now I see how important they have been in helping me get to do what I really want to do in life.
It's OK to meander around for a while, drafting what you want to say. Eventually that last paragraph will appear and you will take off from there.
"Wonderful Baby, livin' on love..."
http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/d/don_mclean/wonderful_baby.html
Monday, August 25, 2008
Christopher and Alexandra Atterbury!
Alex's dress looked like vintage lace...
The bridesmaids wore black with bright orange sashes.
Alex designed the centerpieces using pearls and shiny beads.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
The Integrity Quilt
My rough definition of Integrity is all of the pieces coming together to form one whole. The more the pieces harmonize, the better the quality of the final product.
When I taught Sunday School, once upon a time, I explained integrity as the pieces of a quilt. The various blocks, sewn together, create one blanket and the quality of the blocks make up the quality of the quilt. The more the blocks agree with a beautiful central theme, the more beautiful the quilt becomes.
Quilting is a craft that is at its best when the quilter relies entirely upon her own imagination and vision to make the quilt. Some are crazy and others are highly structured. It is the quality of the vision of the quilter, her personality and the materials she uses that makes it beautiful and unique.
It is an adventure in itself, discovering the theme for my life and choosing and trimming the blocks. I want the blocks of my life to harmonize around one good, central theme. I want it to be the most beautiful theme I can find and I want to use "blocks" (how I use my time, what I read, who I hang out with,etc.) that are as beautiful as the theme itself. What I hope, finally, is that anyone who approaches my life from any angle will find something beautiful to look at.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Lightning...then Thunder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdwX2-jsrKU
Friday, August 8, 2008
Hear the Music
http://www.corliss-lamont.org/apg.htm
Applying myself
For YEARS I have lamented the fact that I spent my college years chasing around from one Navigator training situation to another, mostly at my parents behest, and finished four years of scattered education with just an AA degree. I always told Bern that if I had gotten my undergrad degree I could have gone to seminary. I felt sad and regretful....
These conversations usually ended with Bern saying that perhaps a seminary would recognize my life and ministry experiences and give me credit for them. Ha! I thought, who would do that?
Then my daughter had the brilliance to marry Kevin Martins who is a born researcher, as well as a kind and considerate son-in-law. Kevin, in the midst of applying to Fuller himself, discovered that there is a track called "Special Student" which accepts people on the basis of their life and ministry experience.
WooHoo! So now I am applying to seminary!
Why would a grandma like me want to do this? There is nothing I love more than seeing the light come on when I help other people understand the Bible. I have been teaching it for years, but if I really want to do it "professionally" I need some credentials. An M.Div. will help me with that. Also, I am really looking forward to testing myself in an academic environment.
Sometimes people ask the question "When you were a kid, what was your favorite day of the year?"
Most people say Christmas or their birthday. My answer is always, "The first day of school!" I loved that day every year, the new classes, the new books, pens, pencils and paper. I loved my school clothes and the new shoes that were going to rub my heels raw for a couple of weeks. I loved being with other kids and meeting a new teacher. Summer was my least favorite time, when there was nothing new to learn and the days were long and boring.
So maybe, pretty soon, I will have another first day of school. It will be different this time, but I look forward to it anyway, maybe more than ever!
By the way, now I know the immense value of the time I spent with the Navigators in those early years. Everything they taught me has been useful and there has never been another time in my life when I could have gotten that rich and wonderful training. I thank God for my parents' choices for me and for the Navs who invested in me in those years. My life has been deeply blessed because of them.
Almost all of those Navigators were self-taught lay people whose only motivation for teaching others was their passion for Christ and desire to obey Him. They did not teach what they did not practice, so I learned as much from their examples in life as I did from their teaching.
It was probably the closest I will ever get to how the Early Church functioned and it was truly a gift to my life.
I was blessed then...and now I am being blessed again!