Devotions of a High Heeled Warrior

My daughter has informed me that our family is weird.  Every teenager thinks their families are strange, so most times her statement holds no validity.  However, as I thought of the things we do in ministry, I realized she may be right.  If you have every been in a ministry position, you may agree with this.  When our church has a VBS, guess who dress as strange characters like the Hulk.  We do!  How about filming a reality show or goofy skit made to look like a Spanish soap opera in public for Christmas.  That's us, too!  This week topped them all. Our church is having a mission's banquet.  Our special guest speaker is a missionary to Africa, so we wanted to make him welcome.  My daughter came home from work to find me building a 3-D life-sized baby giraffe in our living room.   She immediately started taking pictures to show her friends how weird her mother is.  I asked her, "Doesn't everyone build baby giraffes in their ...

Do you have anyone in your family that loses everything they touch?  My husband is that person.  He is known in our family for putting things somewhere safe and then forgetting that "safe" place.  I usually find the lost things, but this weekend was a test of my abilities.  My husband bought a coke machine for our church.  After everything was in place to turn the machine on, he realized he couldn't find the key to open it.  We spent a lot of time looking for the key with no results.  Meanwhile, my son participated in a fundraiser at school selling t-shirts.  He received a check for his wares and put the check in his pocket.  Some of you are probably saying, "Oh no!"  You would be right.  Late on a Friday night, he came to me asking if I had seen a check anywhere.  That was when he came clean and admitted he had lost the check.   I searched his room, his clothes, his very cluttered backpack.  Nothing.  At this...

Yes, I have found myself locked out of my house for the second time.   Only a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the experience of trying to break into my own home.  This week, after my children went to their rooms for the night, I sat down to talk to my husband.  As we were discussing some frustrations, I followed my husband into our garage where he was washing clothes.  As we tried to walk back into the house after he was finished, I realized the door wouldn't open.  I had locked both of us in the garage!   I can normally pick the lock, but my tools were in the house.  We beat on the door and yelled our children's names to no response, not even our dog.  We lifted the garage door from inside, and I ran around to the front door in my fluffy, pink robe.  Luckily, the front door hadn't gotten locked yet.  My children swore they didn't hear us yelling their names.  They thought that the banging was us hammering something.  I ...

I have learned an important lesson.  I am not the bionic woman.   My husband and I have been challenged to live healthier, so exercise has become an important part of our life.  Normally, I go to the gym, but a couple of weeks ago, I was unable to make it.  My husband mentioned I could work out at his school's gym where he teaches.  After accepting, I realized that we have two different styles of exercising.   I run a little, lift weights, and do whatever I feel in the mood to do.  My husband writes how many sets he will do on a dry erase board, creates work-out routines, and does circuits.  In the first two minutes, I had rebelled against his forcing me to put my work-out plan on a board.   I sounded like one of the early women in America fighting for the right to vote.  I require freedom to make my own choices (of exercise equipment)!  My husband rolled his eyes and continued.  He pulled this really tall plywood box down an...

I have a question for you.  How many of you have ever locked yourself out of your house?  My family decided to go out to a restaurant after church, and I chose to stay home and rest.  I stopped off at the local supermarket, bought a light lunch, and drove home.  As I pulled into my driveway, a thought occurred to me.  I didn't have a key to get into my own home.  Just that morning, I remembered my key sitting on the table, but instead of turning back and getting it, I thought I would just use one of the kid's keys or my husband's key.  As I sat alone in my car, I realized that had been a bad decision because now I was locked out!  I didn't have the garage door opener in my car.  My spare key was loaned out, so I knew I would have to break into my house.   I have a lock pick kit that I bought myself for Christmas when I was feeling all spyish.  It works great to get into my kids' rooms when they lock me out.  Sadly, that sa...

Challenge: Can you spot the hidden item of clothing in the picture?  Neither could my son.  Why is it that 30 minutes before your child needs to be somewhere they suddenly realize they can't find something?  I even ask them the night before to get all of their stuff ready.  They respond, "I will."  And then, like clockwork, I hear, "I can't find my pants, or my belt, or my band shirt, or my shoes..."  You can fill in the blank with whatever your child can't find.  This causes you to spend the next crucial minutes with one eye on the clock and the other frantically playing hide and seek with whatever your child swears they had ready last night.   In case you didn't see it, my son's black belt is partially hidden behind my cat.  My cat can find it better than my son!  But, I have to say, it does make me feel valuable knowing my children still sometimes need me as they grow older.   Have you ever thought how valuable God is?...

I would like to talk about a subject very near and dear to me in this blog.  Raging hormones.  I f any of you have ever experienced a perpetual burning from the inside out, a walking zombie-like state due to lack of sleep, and an observation that you are totally over-dramatizing situations in your life, then you too may be perimenopausal.  This was a new word that my doctor taught me on my last visit.  I knew that I was getting older.  My children are all almost fully grown, but it never really occurred to me how fast time flies until I heard that dreadful word.  I am a very cold-natured person.  I carry a grandma sweater with me everywhere I go. So when I tell you that I thought I would internally combust from some unknown heat source inside of me, I knew something was going on.  They really frown on you stripping down to your underwear at your job, so I had to do the next best thing and stick cold soda cans on my neck.  Then came the emo...