Left Brain/Right Brain

I did this little quiz online to tell you if you are left brained or right brained. I think I could have guessed my results. Candy had blogged about this and I thought it would be fun to do the little quiz.

You Are 15% Left Brained, 85% Right Brained
The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning.
Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others.
If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic.
Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet.

The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility.
Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way.
If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art.
Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.


I wish I knew how to add the link. I need to get better at this computer stuff.

Too Much

The past few weeks have been too much. We have had too much activity...too much emotion...too many changes...and too many challenges. We have a new challenge this week. The house that we have under contract has some issues that we are not sure that we can live with. It has some structural roof problems. We love the house and are excited about it. It is close to friends and has big trees and feels a little more East Coast than most of Abilene. Perfect for us. We are waiting to talk again with our realtor. We may back out of our contract if they won't fix the roof. That will make me sad.
I am ready to nest again. We have been renting for 2 years almost and I am ready to be able to do my own thing in my own house. I love for things to be a little bit funky and I don't feel like I can do that to someone else's house. I had already started to think about decorating in our new little cottage. I will try to be patient and will try to allow the right thing to happen...not just what I want to happen.
Tonight is my first night with the 6th grade girls. They have had two classes and one sleepover without me...can't wait to join them tonight. We are talking tonight about the Messiah and about how it was part of God's plan for us to wait for the Messiah...to anticipate his arrival and be so hungry for him that we just couldn't stand it anymore.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

We have had a crazed 10 days. I have driven to Nashville and back twice. Our daughter spent three days at Lipscomb and then came back to start at ACU. Long story...just know that it was the right choice and feels more right as each day passes. We have also bought a house. We weren't planning on doing that in the midst of this crazy time but some friends from church called and said there was a house near them that was having an open house. We went to the open house and fell in love with the house. It is a 1938 cottage. Adorable. Can't wait to live there.
I promise I will blog more often. So few blog entries in August....just too busy. Looking forward to September.

My Favorite Man

I have worked the last two days and I am exhausted but I wanted to blog anyway. I have not been sleeping well. Two big issues on my mind. I will share them later, when I am less tired.
I wanted to blog because I meant to blog yesterday. Yesterday was August 21st. 23 years ago yesterday Tim Danley proposed to me. He asked me to marry him. Tim and I had been friends for many years and I had looked up to his spiritual maturity for a very long time. We dated one summer but I went back to ACU and he went back to Houston to teach. 23 years ago I was 22 years old, a single mom, and not very sure about the direction of my life. I was shocked that he wanted to marry me. We had only been dating again for about 3 weeks when he asked me to marry him. I had fallen so completely in love with him in those 3 weeks. I was sure that I wanted to marry him but still surprised that he asked. I didn't think that I deserved him. How do I describe Tim to you? Probably not very accurately but what I see, I see with my heart. He has intensely blue eyes that are always sincere. He is tall and thin and his bones are sharp. He loves to play...ping pong, volleyball, softball, golf, ultimate frisbee.... He is respectful to everyone. He is a patient husband and a loving dad. He knows scripture well but especially the new testament. He has a mellow bass voice that I love to sing with. He makes goofy puns and makes the rest of us groan. He misses his parents and loves his siblings. He loves children and teenagers. He watches sports and the news. He has a messy car. He is slow to decide. And he loves me.
I would marry him all over again. We have many great memories together. We have laughed and we have cried. We have welcomed new friends and said goodbye to others. We have had babies together and nurtured them together. The safest place I can be is in his arms. We talk and talk and talk about life, God, church, our children, our friends, our past, our future, and our right now. Sometimes we get on each others' nerves but I wouldn't give any of it up.
Tim, I would say yes again.

Favorites and Unfavorites

Things that I love:

West Texas sunrises and sunsets
my patient husband
my amazing children
my beautiful granddaughter
a clean house
conversation with old friends
deep conversation with almost anyone
tears...for joy or for sadness...just love that something is being expressed
well-written books
scripture
clean cool sheets
worship
communion...the body of Christ
reunions
water...ocean, lake, river, creek, waterfall, or just a swimming pool
great blue herons
light in the eyes of others
friends who listen when life is tough
singing alone in my car

Things that I don't love:

service people who are grouchy
children who are far away and not happy
air-conditioning that doesn't work
long boring explanations
excuses
pretentiousness
promises broken
parents who think their children are perfect
fussy clothes

Transitions

I am sorry that I have not posted for a long time. I just took Mary Kate to Lipscomb and it has been difficult. Pray that she begins to like it there...her liking it there would make it easier on me. Too much emotion right now...will write more later.

Vacation

I am currently sitting in an internet cafe in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. It is late and I am very tired because we got up to see the sunrise. It was really too cloudy to see the sunrise but it was a great way to start the day.
Rehoboth Beach...many summer memories from childhood until now. Mark and Gina Lewis, wish you were here and we need to plan on next summer or the one after that. You need to relive some memories here with us.
This trip so far:
lots of sunscreen, Tom and Maureen and Chris spending Sunday with us, sun, sand, talks on the porch, glasses of wine, laughing, watching Lucy and Sofie in their quiet moments of conversation and puzzle working, Lexie and lipstick, Emily and the waves, Mary Kate and Lexie giggling on the blanket with their heads together, lots of alternative lifestyles, Sue-the amazing domestic goddess, snatches of time with Ann, bike rides and surrey rides, a long walk, ice cream and gelato, fantastic pizza, shopping, boys and their rubberband guns, scooters, and some whining, sandwiches with just a little sand, cold water...and there is more to come.

War

I just started reading a book of essays by Barbara Kingsolver called Small Wonder. She starts off the first essay with something real that seems impossible. A toddler is lost in Iran and is lost for so long that hope is just about drained dry...but they find the toddler in a cave being cared for by a bear. This bear is not only keeping this child warm but nursing this child also. Wow. Barbara Kingsolver:
"What does this mean? How is it possible that a huge, hungry bear would take a pitifully small, delicate human child to her breast rather than rip him into food? But she was a mammal, a mother. She was lactating, so she must have had young of her own somewhere-possibly killed, or dead of disease, so that she was driven by the pure chemistry of maternity to take this small, warm neonate to her belly and hold him there, gently. You could read this story and declare "impossible," even though many witnesses have sworn it's true. Or you could read this story and think of how warm lives are drawn to one another in cold places, think of the unconquerable force of a mother's love, the fact of the DNA code that we share in its great majority with other mammals-you could think of all that and say, Of course the bear nursed the baby. He was crying from hunger, she had milk. Small wonder."
How do we feel as mothers about war? What about the mothers in Iraq and Afghanistan and now Lebanon and Israel? How do we feel when we see footage of people running in the streets to escape an attack by the U.S.?
Kingsolver again:
"Maybe that's why I'm comforted by the image of a small child curled in the embrace of a mother bear. We need new bear and wolf tales for our times, since so many of our old ones seem to be doing us no good. Now we're finding that it takes our every effort of will and imagination to pull back, to stop in our tracks as hunter and hunted, to halt our habit of killing, before every kind of life we know arrives at the brink of extinction."

Just a little bit of information...this is my 100th post.