...

It's been a rough week and a half, during which I learned:

1. Benadryl and a Grandmother's love can cure a rash.

Livvy was sick with a rash and fever for about a week and a half. By the end of it I was out of my mind. We were going to take her to the hospital if it didn't improve by Monday night. Nan took care of her on Monday and she was 100% improved by Monday night. It helped that I had half the Christians in the midstate praying for her, including a very Pentecostal prayer in the store. Thanks Jeanine, Billy, Lisa, Mommi, Nan and God. :)

2. I am better at defending my faith than I was at 14.

I was so obsessed with apologetics when I was 14. I used to go on-line, run up our very limited CompuServe hours (long before the days of Yahoo!Groups and MySpace), and debate theology with other teenagers. I sucked at it, and I got downhearted from losing all the time. Then I mostly lost interested in defending my faith and kept it to myself. Well, the Lord has put me in such an interesting position now. I know part of the reason he has me chasing after Catholicism is to break me out of my comfort zone. Lee says it is my little rebellion, and even though he doesn't agree with me at all, he is proud of me for standing up for something on my own. (Thanks, chief.) Anyway, at work two friends were talking about how stupid it is that people would have their babies baptised. One friend is an ex-catholic (she's only 17 or so so her family must have left the church when she was quite young) and the other is a college-educated, ministry minded young man of my own age, give or take. The normal me (not the family me who is a loud mouth but the public me who doesn't argue at all) would have just let it go, but the slightly braver New Me actually stopped to explain the Catholic position. Not only did my friends listen politely, but they even said they understood where I was coming from - go figure. See, I always thought that if I "came out", all my friends would think differently of me, because they have such strong prejudices - instead I am changing the way that they think. WOW. GO FIGURE.

3. I want to go to Creation.

Lee and I went to see MercyMe and Audio Adrenaline in concert. It was AWESOME. It will be the last time we ever hear Audio Adrenaline live because they are retiring due to medical issues with Mark's voice. It's so sad. But the concert was awesome, a great time of praise for me. I realised that I do want to go to Creation - I want to take the kids with me, because I don't really have fun in life when they are elsewhere. An evening with Lee or two hours at a movie is one thing. But I want to camp in the dirt with them and take them to see other people praising God. That's what I want. Will I get to do it? We'll see.

Well, we are getting ready to go to the circus - we look almost presentable, don't we?