Please come to a free concert this Friday night, 1 May 09 from 7:30 PM to 10:30 PM at our church, CFC, at 21673 Beaumeade Circle, Ashburn, VA 20147.
A CD will be available there too!
What was once used to groove in New Jersey dance clubs is now used to celebrate God! Please come, you just might see Dave bust out in his f-i-n-e robot moves and I may bust out my non-perfected running man!
PS: Big hair is optional, but it is still an option! 
Thankfully, Dave arrived home Wednesday from an unexpected two and a half month business trip overseas. Disappointed with the short notice trip, we adjusted and got to it.
“We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust the sails.” (Author Unknown)
Adjusting to life’s winds, and gracefully so, is what God desires from this Jersey gal.
While away, I received flowers from a very romantic man…
Hello…I’M A MARRIED WOMAN! What would my husband think about this suitor of mine?
A suitor who just so happens to be royalty,
and maintains a mean fro’ under that crown of his,
while sailing his yacht,
in between football practices,
while being a Viking too!?!?
WOWZERS, do Jersey girls know how to attract the exciting suitors or what?!? Some days I thank God for giving me a hubby who constantly keeps me on my toes and other days….
While separated, the web cam via www.skype.com was the limit of our face to face communication. We “adjusted our sails” to do what we needed to do to keep connected. This is sweet victory as in years past when we both traveled a lot in the military, we didn’t make communication maintenance a priority. It happened when it happened. And, wow did our marriage suffer the consequences of that neglectful maintenance.
Dave downloaded a program to adjust the entertainment “sails” and the boys L-O-V-E-D their Dad’s “costume changes” and I just pretended not to be entertained! The boys sat at the screen and clapped. Skype helped keep us connected. Though I hated having to “schedule” our daily talk time (a seven hour time difference can do that to ya!), we’ve realized great marriages don’t happen on accident.
Being married is easy-schmesy. Staying married and connected, not always so easy. To be honest with you, some seasons Dave and I have felt more like passing ships in the night forget about adjusting the sails, for we weren’t even in the same boat!
Winds blow and storms come, and eventually settle again. Sometimes storms require repeated adjustments and other times, it’s just simply, hang on for dear life!
“Don’t pray to avoid storms, learn to dance in the rain!” Anonymous
Learning how to adjust the winds in the storms and dance in the rain are skill sets I’ve yet to master. But with God, the sky, not Skype, is the limit!
Work with what ya got and leave the rest with God. That sentence was not easy to type but it is the truth!
This Easter, Skype was the limit of seeing Dave, but with God, the SKY is the limit for my marriage, and yours too!
What is your choice today? Will you choose to adjust the sails and dance in the rain with your current storm?
This was my LIFL Day by Day devotional bible verse for today,
Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak. Mark 14:38
I decided to conduct an experiment of my own. Once at my goal weight, I wanted to see if
I could, as some experts advised emotional eating addicts do, to no longer weigh myself, but go by how my clothes fit.
This theory is contradictory to what other experts advised, that successful weight management occurs with a daily weigh in. And so I wanted to see what works for me. Do I really need Lucy in my life? Can I trust myself to gauge my weight by how my clothes fit? Will that satisfy me and my weight maintenance goals?
For the past two months, clothes fit monitoring was my experiment. The experiment halted when my “skinny-day-shopping-spree capris” felt snug. Yesterday I stepped on Lucy (who’s been doing nothing but laying around these days) and found a SIX pound weight gain.
I won’t lie, I was angry and disappointed. The difference in yesterday than from years past is this. I’m smarter and I’ve got “skills”. The biggest skill this crazy, Type A, control-freak, Jersey girl gained the past six years is the practice to turn the disappointment and struggle over to God and not spazzing.
My natural skill of I won’t quit with my learned skill set of, turn it over to God already sets the stage for victory! Oh yeah, and I refuse to live in the chains of defeat. Know why? Because my Daddy told me that I’m “more than a conqueror” so since He doesn’t lie, “I yam what I yam.”
My LIFL devotional has been such a source of comfort this morning and was needed for focus and encouragement, “It is not declaring defeat but, but becoming a spectator of God’s power as we work the keys of surrender and acceptance from the sidelines. It is letting go of our own feeble attempts at control and truly living by God’s own power…Now our energy goes into practicing ownership of our problem, following our plan of eating and exercise.”
So since I am more than a conqueror (meaning, no longer a victim!), here’s Scientist Steph’s plan. Keep doing what I have been doing with one modification. I’m smarter now, trying to do five new tactics just overwhelms and sets me up for a defeat and frustration. I will not fret because I’ve tried that route, and it didn’t burn enough calories! 
I learned from Look Great Feel Great by Joyce Meyer to change just one thing. Just one. I can do more, but I’m not.
I determined the ONE thing, after “Q” time with the Big G. He revealed
my very sloppy pattern of nighttime snacking returned. Now that Dave’s
back home, I’ve asked him for accountability and shared that while he
was overseas the past 2+ months, I started snacking at night. And not
on garbage, but you know what? Healthy food has calories too! Imagine
that one! I snacked when not hungry so it was emotionally, not
physically based. Yuck. Sister, I’m not going around that mountain again. God’s brought me too far!
The one habit I will change is that I will not snack after 8:00 PM. And, I will continue doing what I’ve been doing. Just that simple. Complicated plans just leave me frustrated and nutty, kinda like a MAD SCIENTIST!
I will RISE UP and keep doing what He told me to do.
I rose up today and went for a three mile run with Jess. Despite both of us swallowing two different bugs only five minutes apart, (yeah, some sexy heebie-jeebie hacking up was present!) it was a great run!
I rose up to my private time.
I rose up to share my struggle and pursuit with you sister.
So if you gained, plateaued or lost weight this week, celebrate that you did in fact learn something this week. It is all about learning who we are in Christ. I’m learning about who I am, meaning where I struggle and where I triumph. Exercise is rarely a struggle for me, but snacking is.
I will not quit and my clothes will fit better soon.
This past two month experiment I learned a lot about who I am and how I operate. For me, I need my friend Lucy, for accountability, daily or at least a couple times a week. I learned that I cannot just trust myself and how my clothes fit because a six pound difference told me I’m not real good at the monitoring process. So not only did I gain weight, I gained wisdom about who I am in Christ today.
What I’m really interested in is how you monitor/maintain your weight? Do you go by how your clothes fit, weekly weigh-in’s or some other method?
