It's Good to Own Land

We have our house!!!!! We are now officially homeowners!

That's so nuts. Only grown-up people have houses. What am I doing?!

It's lots of fun! We went over last night briefly (we actually move on the 5th) and while Steve was tinkering around with the network jacks, I just laid on the floor, and hugged as much of the floor that I could, saying, "My house! My house!"

We totally need to name it. I checked out this website called We Can Think of a Name, and my favorite was "Hippo Pools". I also liked "Lindisfarne Manor " and "Sha Tanze" and "Two Hoots."

Enter Chai and Lady

The cats were giving me some sweet photo ops yesterday. Yes, I dearly love my cats, and if I were allowed to, I would probably have about 30. I'm pathetic like that.

WANT.

Chai tends to be a little dumber than Lady. But at least she doesn't hiss at everyone who comes over. Maybe being a black cat gives Lady a little more edge on being evil.

Belly kitteh sez MORE FUD PLEEZ

"Honor, virtue, and courage mean everything."

I was sick yesterday, so I stayed home and watched the movie Secondhand Lions. Even though Haley Joel Osment is as annoying as Michael Caine and Robert Duvall are awesome, I still love the movie. And - spoiler alert! - I cry every time the lion dies. Two great lines stood out to me. 1) "She died with her boots on." and 2)

"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most: that people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love, true love, never dies... No matter if they're true or not, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in."

I like the idea of living with honor, courage, and virtue being the hallmark of who I am, and of course, the goal of going out with a bang. (Steve and I joke about hiring a plane when we're 90 and crashing into a mountain - not unlike how the two old uncles kick it in the movie.) But it's hard to imagine being courageous when I spend about 40% of my day sitting in front of a computer. I did protect Steve from a stick-snake once, and one time I killed a bee that was about to dive-bomb a friend. I'm hardcore.

Sometimes I wonder when my moment will come, when I will find out if I really am courageous, honorable, etc. Maybe that's the point of BEING all that - you don't have to wait for your moment.

I always wanted a pet tiger, but I'd take a lion, too.

Losing Faith

No, I'm not, but apparently, a lot of people are. CNN did a story several months ago on the number of people leaving the church, and the theme of this month's issue of Mission Frontiers magazine was "Losing Faith: Is there a cure for this ongoing problem?"

First of all, I think it's awesome that the faced this issue head-on. Honestly, I felt a little threatened by the CNN story - just the idea of more and more people turning away from God for so many reasons. Feelings of insecurity with others' loss of faith was one of the issues Ruth Tucker raised in her story in the magazine called "Great is Thy Faithfulness: Some Reflections on the Loss of Faith." Ruth tells the story of a man who made the decision to turn away from God, and received a letter from his pastor that clearly showed how insecure and threatened he felt by James' disclosure of his disbelief.

"It is not his [the pastor's] responsibility to argue or to shame James back into his faith. He should not have reacted so sharply, but instead encouraged James not to make any final decisions right away. He should have urged him and Allison to allow the children to continue their church activities and for the whole family to continue sharing in social outings. And James, he might have said, we just can't get along without you playing shortstop again this year."

It just reminds me how easy it would be to just cut off ties with someone who had declared his or her unbelief. But that's not what God calls us to do.

We have our closing date!

And it's June 24! But the fun part is that two days later, we fly to North Carolina for Steve's cousin's wedding, and then when we get back, the next weekend is the Fourth of July weekend. So no one will be here to help us move. Bummer.

But the cool thing is, God is bringing people to help in a really nifty way. One of my good friends from my B-desh days is just "happening" to drive through Indiana that week, and she's going to stop by and help for a couple days. Which is AWESOME!

So we're not worried. And we're thinking that the gradually-move-a-box-or-two-over-at-a-time thing might be an interesting change from the usual stuff-everything-in-a-big-truck-then-pile-it-in-the-house-altogether way we've usually moved.

At any rate, we are now at the stage where we're using up all the weird foods you buy and then forget to use. We're going to be eating Falafel mix, three cans of cranberry sauce, and 10 packs of jello for the next three weeks. Fun stuff.