IT’S BASKETBALL SEASON AGAIN! I can feel it guys. This year is Phoenix’s year. We are not going to be knocked out in the first round of the playoffs this year. We have a good team. Nash is still fantastic, as always. Shaq is starting to keep his mouth shut for a week at a time. Grant Hill is still old, but playing wonderfully. And Amare? He is just the man. Plus we have Raja Bell and Leandro Barbosa. Even the new rookie Robin Lopez is like 7 feet tall and doesn’t suck. This is so exciting.

Just a thought, is there anybody other than me in the entire world who still watches basketball fanatically? Who do you guys go for?

Updates: My boys won their season opener last night, beating their evil rivals the Spurs, 103-98. Good job guys!

So I have noticed this trend lately, and it kinda bothers me. Before I get too much further, I will put this disclaimer out there. I am a woman, and I love women. Women are strong and intelligent and capable of doing anything. I am all for women’s rights and lib and whatnot.

But what is happening to husbands and our marriages?

Let me explain. Today at the office, a bunch of ladies were talking. Married ladies of all ages. They were all sitting there, essentially bashing their husbands. Here is some of what I head…

“Well in my house, I do not allow my husband to….”

“If my husband weren’t so dumb….”

“The next husband I have will be like….”

This really shocked me. When did ladies stop respecting their husbands? It isn’t just the ladies in my office either. How often, on TV or wherever, have commercials or shows portrayed the husband as being stupid, fat, lazy, and incapable? Homer Simpson. Peter Griffin. Ray Romano. These are all “typical” husbands portrayed on television. Seriously? I mean, everybody has their problems, but I am pretty sure there is NO husband out there like Homer Simpson.

Here is what really gets to me. Even if your husband has problems, which all of them do, why on earth would you go into work and talk to an entire office about how stupid, or fat, or lazy, or clueless your husband is? Does it never occur to these women that the people in their office will one day likely meet this guy? How disrespectful. And sad. And just mean.

Listen fellow chicks. Your husband isn’t perfect. We all know that. Neither are you. But at least respect your husband and your marriage enough to not publicly bash him. Sure talk to a friend about him if you need to vent, but really, does everybody in your office need to know that you think your husband is an idiot? Respect him and love him, because he is yours. For better or for worse.

Give your husband a hug today, ok?

So I have had a ridiculously busy week. This has not left me enough time for blogging, Sorry about that. Let me tell you a few quick highlights…

* Work is exploding. People can’t afford to buy stuff, so they rent to own now. A lot. And when that stuff breaks, which is does, it comes to us. Hence, work exploding.

* I had a dream last night that I had a baby boy, and he was very tiny and had to wear a tiny baby helmet to protect his head. I did not know what to do with a baby, so I called Mama Whatley, and she told me what to do with a baby. This is weird, because I know all about babies. Hmmm…

* I hate my cat.

* I could really use like 12 hours of solid sleep.

* I am working on our Halloween stuff for Trunk or Treat. It could either be awesome, or a disaster, depending on how quickly stuff ships.

* I have been eating slightly more healthy food. It sucks.

* I would like to go fishing. Anyone wanna take me?

That’s it. I have some blogs coming up that should be better than this. Sorry.

So 30 days ago, I challenged myself to read the Bible everyday. Whatever I wanted, however I wanted. I was just gonna do it my way and read at least some part of the Bible everyday. I thought that it would help me get into it and make me want to read it more if I knew that I didn’t need to read it in any particular order or any particular amount.

I was very wrong about this.

Let me tell you about the past 30 days. At first, I cheated. A lot. I would read like, one sentence of the Bible a day and giggle. “HAHA! I read some of the Bible! I did it, technically, so I can’t get into trouble.” Right. I cheated. By the end of the first couple weeks, I had not even finished a page. I probably couldn’t have even summarized what I had read. I learning nothing. So, after deciding that I probably should not cheat God out of His time, I picked up my old Bible that we bought like, a year ago. It is the Message Remix, and it has the Bible divided into sections that you read daily and it asks you questions and stuff. It’s very simplistic, but also easy to read and understand.

I prayed about it. I asked God to help me get in touch with Him through the Bible. Then, I picked up this Bible and I started reading it. And I kept reading it. A lesson a day, everyday. And before I knew it, something had caught fire inside of me and I love it. I have been waiting for years to fall in love with the Bible and become interested in it, and it has finally happened! I am so excited. I have been reading like, 3 days worth of “lessons” at a time. The past couple of weeks have been going great. I have read all about creation, and the garden, and Noah, and Abraham, and Issac and Ishmael, and Jacob and Esau, and this other guy by the name of Jesus.

Get this:

For the first time ever, I am reading more about Jesus than I am about Harry Potter.

I will update you again in 30 days. I am excited about this.

…about the time a middle schooler made me feel dumb? Ok, so not dumb. But sort of jealous of how cool he is. Let me tell you the story.

Sunday morning, I was hanging out in PowerUp. Most of the kids had gone to small group, so I was sitting around on the orange sofa with a couple of kids who didn’t go to a small group. We were sitting around the coffee table, building Lego things (AWESOME!) and we somehow got talking about how girls are smarter than boys, which is true. Anyway, this boy/young man (I don’t know what to refer to 6th graders as. They get offended if you call them kids, but young men seems much too old), in order to prove how much smarter than me he was, asked:

“If you are so smart, what is the meaning and purpose of life?”

Naturally, I don’t know the answer to this question. I was in the middle of making something up in my head, so that I didn’t sound like a moron (It is very important to not sound like a moron in front of kids, apparently) when he made some ridiculous buzzer noise and said:

“That’s so easy! The meaning and purpose of life is to worship Jesus!”

And it floored me. Here is what I thought, in this order:

1) Your mother and father would be so proud if they heard you say that.

2) Why didn’t I think of that?

3) When did my brain and heart get so confused that I forgot what the purpose of our lives is supposed to be?

I was so amazed/jealous/inspired by this kid’s response, that he is my hero for the week. I am not going to out some 12 year old as an amazing person for all the blogosphere (Serious? Do I seriously use words like “Blogosphere”?) to see, but ask me who it is sometime, and I will tell you, so that you can be secretly jealous of him too.

There has been  something in my head lately, and I feel like I really need to share it.

I have been reading Genesis for the past couple of weeks or so. Reading about creation and how we came to be who we are. I have been reading about Adam and Eve and Noah and the Tower of Babel. I like reading this stuff, and it has been awhile since I have even thought about it. Everybody who knows me pretty well knows that when I read things, I READ them. Very intently. And that is what I have been doing.

At this point in the story, I should say that I was not raised in church and brought up to believe all of these  things. I have always loved science, and have been well school in evolution and the Big Bang theory. I never even thought about Adam and Eve and creation until I came to know Jesus. 

Here is my thing. Even though my heart is with the Lord, I still have this keen, questioning mind. I can’t help but question things; anything and everything. I have done this, to the point of annoyance, my entire life. So when I am reading Genesis, about creation, there is always this little voice in my head that asks, “How do you know this is true? Is there any proof that this happened? How do you know?” And it is always there. It’s not like I can be like, “Shut up now, little voice. I am sick of you.”

But here is the thing. I don’t “know” what happened back then. I don’t “know” how we were created. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it. Really, I don’t “know” anything about it. But I believe it.

Not that long ago, relatively, I made a choice. I choose that I was going to be a Christ follower. I chose Jesus. And when I chose to be with Him, I made a choice to believe. Knowing and believing are two very different things for me. Knowing means I have proof and can explain it all out to you and make my case. Believing is something different entirely. It really isn’t something I can explain to you. I could tell you why i believe in something, but it would never make sense to you. I believe because I believe. And when I choose to follow Jesus, I chose to believe that Noah built a giant ship and sailed it through a storm for a month. I chose to believe that there was a paradise that we lost. I just chose to believe.

I think this a choice that every person has to make at one point or another. And yes, I still have this obnoxious brain that asks all sorts of questions, some that I may never be able to answer. But I have faith in God, which means I have faith in my beliefs.

I love to write, and I can actually be pretty good at it sometime, but I hope that I delivered this well. This is something that God and I have been talking about a lot lately, and I feel like he is smiling at me for getting it all out.

What do you think?

Death is something that scares a lot of people. Well, it scares me anyway. I have never been a fan of the idea of leaving Earth and leaving my family and friends and loved ones behind. It just seems scary to me. I am totally not alone in this, I know. There are many people, even those who know they are going to heaven, who just do not look forward to death.

I have been reading Genesis a lot lately. Studying and stuff. A few days ago, I was reading and thinking about Adam and Eve and their kids, Cain and Able. We all know the story…Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were evicted. God said Adam would have to toil and work the land and stuff and it would be very painful for Eve to bear children. So they left and has kids and toiled. Cain killed Able out of jealousy, and his life pretty much sucked for him after that, from what I can tell. They had another kid or two, and eventually died.

Here is the thing. Do you think after Eve went through great pain to give birth to two beautiful boys, only to watch them destroy one another, she was thankful for death in the end? Do you think as Adam died after working the land for like, 900 years, he silently thanked God as he died, for the oppertunity to die? I think they probably were so grateful that God gave them the gift of death at that point.

I have thought a lot about this. I can imagine what it was like to be Adam and Eve. They had a taste of wonder and bliss in the garden. They had all the food they wanted, they could do what they wanted, they had a great life. And then God kicked them out for breaking the only rule they had. They were sent out to make their way in life, working hard and toiling and hurting. After having something so wonderful, being thrown out to the world that we all know must have sucked. I imagine that it might have seemed life hell to them. How happy must they have been when they died, knowing that they didn’t have to feel like that forever.

Fast forward to the future. Somehow, only thousands of years, we have grown accustomed to the toil and this work, so much that we are afraid to die. Has the living and the work just gotten easier, or have people changed that much?

I really don’t know.