Hey, Darling Things. Let me blurt out from the beginning that you guys are so dear to me. I genuinely love this community with a heart full to the brim. Your comments to Sunday’s post drew me in, made me smile, and some of them made me laugh out loud. Per the question, how far was I from the little farm house when the rancher saw me and reported me in certain peril to my man, several miles. Keith and I are still amused by it but we are thankful for such good neighbors. Just when we think we’ve gotten a little more normal, something reminds him and me that we are caricatures that could be fodder for the weirdest sitcom on network television. Shiver. I’m just picturing my character’s hair. And the size of her Bible. And, eewwww, the accent. And picture the double barrel shotgun in Keith’s character’s hand. But, if they show him without a shirt, cry foul because that’s not my man. Never, I do mean NEVER would my man go without a shirt outside the shower. Nor does he respect a grown man that does. (Unless he’s in his swim trunks and those better come nearly to the man’s knees.) He also gives the stink eye to a grown man that wears his shirt open two buttons. That’s not cool to Keith. And if the man has on a gold chained necklace, you best keep him out of Keith’s path all together. OK, Lord, have mercy. How do I get off on all this stuff? It’s y’all that bring this out in me.

Here’s the reason why I’m posting today. I’m looking to my favorite community for insight regarding this weekend’s event and maybe, if any of it pertains, for insight toward the taping for James in May. (Much more on that later because I really, really want to enlist your prayers.) These are my two questions and please notice that they pertain to two different groups among you.

1. To anyone in our blog community: This one’s wide open. Have you ever experienced a painful breakage in a close relationship you had with another believer? I’m especially talking about relationships that you believed at the time to be woven together by the bonds of Christ but something happened that resulted in a fissure. If so, WITHOUT DIVULGING ANYTHING THAT WOULD IDENTIFY YOUR PERSON, what happened? And here’s a really important part of it: did the relationship mend or did you go your separate ways? Please stick to one meaty paragraph because I want to read every single entry. If it’s too long, I’ll have to skip it. Remember, no names or pieces of information that people can track. We never want to dishonor anyone on this blog. So that I can differentiate between answers to this question and those to the next, please start your comment with the word “Relationship.”

2. Limited just to the people attending this weekend’s LPL in Little Rock, Arkansas: I’d love to already have a few of your stories in mind for this weekend. In a compact paragraph, would you please tell me your first name, your general age group, whether you are married or single, and your biggest concern or challenge right now? Please keep in mind that I could very well share it with the entire group as an example of the kinds of things we’re dealing with in our audience so your comment will act as your permission. Please, please don’t leave a comment I can’t share or I could end up getting it confused with the others and telling it by accident. Remember, you are entrusting your personal information to Blonder Than She Pays To Be. Also don’t make stuff up as a trick so you can get a kick out of it when I tell it. Yes, people do stuff like that on blogs and it’s totally lame. Don’t do it here. So that I can differentiate between this answer and the ones to the previous question, please start your comment with the word “Little Rock.” If you are also answering question 1, please do it in a separate comment. This will help me immensely as I peruse the survey.

You guys are rock stars to me. Thank you so much. May all of this information and everything else that happens on this blog ultimately bring greater fame to the powerful, healing, saving Name of Jesus Christ.

Our Lord.

And Savior.

Hey, Sweet Things!

My man and I are on our way home from cactus land and I thought I’d spend part of it writing to you. And you know what that means: rambling. Any time I just open up my Mac and start writing to you woefully free of all forethought, you can count on a whole lot of words about next to nothing. So, unless you’re bored to oblivion with what you’re doing, you might want to run for your life now and save the headspace.

As I write to you, I’ll keep you posted on where we are. You don’t think you care but, once you hear some of these names, you might feel differently. They’re nearly life changing. For instance, right now we are going through Hext, Texas (I do not know if the area has an ancient history of witchcraft or what. Nor do I know if, once you’ve been hext, you can be un-hext. But I feel like you can.) One good firm turn to the right will take you to London. In just a few hours, you could be in Paris. These are just a few of the reasons why many people here believe that the world ends at the Texas border.

We have now come to Koocksville. This is the street Keith and I may have been born to live on.

It was just across from this very sign that Keith showed me this proud display of dried catfish heads.

On through Mason.

Over Comanche Creek.

It’s Sunday just before noon and we’ve been in Mesquite country since Thursday. The heat index could turn an ox-blooded man to Jesus. It’s too early for this furnace but who am I to say? God is in control of the thermostat and I’ve become convinced He considers the heat an effective evangelism tool. Keith and I have had so much fun. Simple fun. Like long walks in the morning but not without snake boots…

…and long rides in the evening in the old golf cart. The steamy mid part of the day takes us into town to eat at one of two restaurants in the small community. The second day we eat at the one we missed the first day. They are both so incredibly good that we think about them when we’re back home in the food capital of the universe. We’ve made our second home in this land long enough now for some of the locals to talk to us when they see us. Deeply satisfying to two dyed-in-the-wool city souls who long for the country. These folks around here are the salt of the earth sort. They work hard and forego fancy. Impressively, one of the two restaurants has free wifi so, call them small but don’t call them disconnected.

I love being on a road trip with Mr. Ivan Keith Moore, son of Marcell John Moore, the plumbing legend of Houston. My man is a history fiend. He knows where every battle in Texas history was fought and where the cattle were run and who the cowboys were that ran them. I love to hear the story of how the buffalo were taken from the JA Ranch in Palo Duro Canyon (near Amarillo) all the way due north to Wyoming and, every time we’re in that great State and see buffalo, he likes to tell me that those hefty beasts bleed Texas blood. By no means does he disrespect Wyoming. Nay! It is, hands down, his favorite state second only to – put your hand on your heart – the land of his great, great grandfather’s birth.He just somehow thinks that what he loves most about Wyoming is that it reminds him of Texas…but with mountains. Big ones.

While we drive these long roads, Keith tells me stories about men like Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, cattle ranchers that Keith believes were prototypes of the characters on Lonesome Dove. Loving made Goodnight swear he’d bury him in Texas but wounds from an old fight wouldn’t heal and ended up killing him slowly with gangrene until he gave up the ghost in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. More practical than sentimental, the folks surrounding him when he breathed his last hastened to put his rigid body into the ground before the animals ate him. A man of his word, Charles Goodnight returned from a trip to Colorado, had his friend’s body exhumed and hauled it back to Texas in a pine box packed with charcoal. I don’t suppose you’d want me to also share tales about a man named Shanghai Pierce who went from a stowaway on a ship in New York harbor to owning some million acres in the Lonestar State.

We take these roads to cactus country to get our heads on straight. We go to hear ourselves think. We go to hear what God might say if you shut up and let Him do the talking. We go to see the black night skies light up with ten thousand stars. We go to hear the birds sing and, this time of year, watch dozens of hummingbirds migrate right through our property. I wish I’d been able to capture six of them at once with my i-Phone but they move like lightening.

We go to sleep late…and to sleep good. I planned to work while I was there for four days but I never did. My bones said, “Just sit and smile and rest.” So I did.

Driving now through Llano. Beautiful Llano. We were going to stop at Cooper’s BBQ but the line was literally out the door and down the sidewalk. Sure smelled good.

“We’re a third of the way home, ‘Lizbeth.”

Keith always keeps me up on the progress. To my man, a road is not something you take. It’s something you conquer.

Lunch here in Burnet, Texas.

Got to meet a darling young couple that serve at a church in Liberty Hill and their six and a half year-old Savannah who was missing one tooth. I do love me a six year-old girl child about more than anything on this earth. Except a certain five year-old boy and two year-old girl that I am particularly partial to. Can’t wait to get home to them.

Keith can’t get a good country western station to come in right now so he just turned up “Staying Alive” by the BeeGees. Out of the corner of my eye, I’m seeing that college boy I danced with under the disco ball 33 years ago. Just when I think I’ve got the man figured out, he goes 70’s on me. We’ve gotten to the part of the song where Keith doubts the singer’s manhood. “Ahhhhhh-oooooohhhh, I’m going nowhere. Somebody help me…”

Well, my man and I are not going nowhere. We’re going home. No place like home. The best part of going on a road trip. And, lucky for you, I’m almost out of battery. All this rambling means nothing if you don’t have Jesus. He’s life to me whether I’m in the city or the country, in plenty or in want, in pain or so tickled I can’t sit up straight. He’s kept Keith and I ring-fingered for 32 years. He keeps life adventurous for two souls that get bored easy. He keeps our boots on tight and our tires rolling. I love Him so much.

Just a few last shots for anyone who’s hung in here by a thread:

Don’t worry, Keith saved it from becoming Dog Dinner. Me on a long walk. A rancher saw me from afar and hopped in his truck to go tell Keith that my car must be broken down and he’d better go fetch me. He couldn’t fathom that a woman with any sense would just be strolling around out there.

A peek at the gorgeous, grass-green San Saba River really close to our place. Keith and I float on inner tubes in this spot in the summer.

Cucumber Cactus. So shockingly gorgeous amid all the gray and green.

A spider sack attached to our porch screen. More spider babies than you can count will start crawling out of that thing in a few days. Most of them will probably crawl into the house but I’ll deal with that next time we come.

Gentle evenings and maybe the number one reason why we come.

You guys are such great sports. I’m crazy about you. Thanks for chatting me home. I wish every single one of you were in this blue Ford truck with my man, our two hounds, and me. We’d try to show you a good Texas time.

No time to proofread! My laptop is sho-nuff shutting down! Talk to you soon.

Hey Ladies,

I was just missing you and thinking of you all and thought I would do a quick catch-up on my life since it has been so long.

Life for Colin and me over the past few months has been a bittersweet transition, a combination of missing our first home together in Atlanta and fully embracing this new season God has for us with both hands.

Here are just a couple of reasons I miss my life in Atlanta:

Friends.

Friends

Friends

And, friends. Especially friends who can cook like this one:

Here are just a couple of reasons I love my life in Houston:

Getting to know my Aunt Gay again after many years. The purest redemption I have ever witnessed.

Sunshine with Mom.

Jackson.

Watching Amanda transform into an impromptu barista at Bible Study:

Fighting with Mom over our favorite coffee cup at work.

Wearing my favorite slippers at Living Proof. They’re really feminine, right?

Tex Mex.

Tex Mex.

And, oh my goodness gracious, Tex Mex.

Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Thank you, Roxanne Worsham.

Watching Jackson bond with his lizard who he first named “Lizard” and then, later, “Longtail.”

Annabeth Jones.  She is too busy and wiggly to take pictures but here are a few.

She is the cutest thing on two legs.

Also, she has taken to domestic life. Who knew?

Generations before and generations after.

My Pawpaw and Memaw.  My Pawpaw is in his hard hat with his house plans watching his new house get framed exactly like he wants it.  The two of them were sitting in folding chairs watching 6 men work.  A classic moment.

And here is one very good reason I love my life no matter where I am:

In addition to the big move from Atlanta to Houston, the biggest change in my life is that I am back at the Living Proof offices writing some small segments for the James study with Mom. I was joking on Twitter the other day that I am able to write about one sentence per every fifty pages Mom writes. It is a slight exaggeration, but not much. I am a very slow writer and Mom is a machine. She has to repeatedly tell me, “Remember you don’t have to say everything to say something.” This is probably the best piece of advice I have gotten since I started the project. I think about it multiple times per hour.

Over the past several years I have grown quite comfortable with working at the research level. It is nice and convenient. I can remain detached from the conclusions and implications of the data with which I am working and can’t be held responsible since Mom is the author and I am not. I am smiling right now because I know Mom would be smiling at that comment. But, seriously, writing is a different beast. It is vulnerable. I feel stripped and exposed. I am finding that it takes a whole lot of courage. The ugly truth is I am inordinately afraid of making a mistake. And this is not humility, folks, but a very sneaky and dark form of pride.

In Madeleine L’ Engle’s reflections on writing, she quotes a few lines from Anton Chekhov’s letters that have been restorative to me in this new process: “You must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don’t let that concern you. It’s your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite quietly, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable, and for failures” (Anton Chekhov quoted in Madeleine L’ Engle, Herself, 72). Just reading that is liberating.

While I obviously think writers and teachers should think carefully through content and style, perfectionism really is incapacitating. And it can become an idol. All that to say, I am practicing the art of being patient with myself.

So, that is me and probably a lot more than you wanted to know.

How are you?