Archive for March, 2007

On the other end of the leash…

…was a very bad dog named Beckham Jones. We’d had one fiasco after another just trying to get to the park, including him getting out of his collar while I was being a good neighbor (picking up his business from someone’s yard). Then he took off after two squirrels and I went airborne before skiing behind him through some wet grass. When we finally got to the swing set, all the children in the park squealed in unison and came RUNNING over to visit with him. They were sitting all around him, which is why I didn’t have many pictures of Beckham to choose from for the blog. Here you have it – the Vice President of the Bad Club. Beanie is the President Emeritus.

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Super Granny

Specializing in nap management and creative dressing solutions. Additional services include hair styling, preoccupying Baby in the car, allowing Mom to eat her meal while it is still hot, changing atomic diapers, teaching Baby new tricks, and being the human swing. References available.

Pebbles for Granny.

Pebbles in the air.

Pebbles everywhere.

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Rodeos and Babysitting Lil Partna

Hey, You Darlin’ Things! So sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you! I got in from Israel just in time to love on Melissa for 48 hours then hop on a plane and head to San Francisco. Then I got back, loved on Melissa 24 short hours before she jumped on a plane and headed back to Chicago. THEN, I studied all day Monday and Tuesday and taught Bible study last night. WHEW!!!! Like most of yours, my life is crazy but not usually that crazy. This morning was the first morning I’ve felt vaguely normal and time-adjusted in two solid weeks. Anyway, enough of the boring excuses.

I don’t know how long I’ll get to write because I am babysitting Little Mister Jones. He’s finishing up his afternoon nap while his mommy is on her way to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo to see Rascal Flatts with three buddies from our home church. (Keith and I get to have Amanda and Jackson all week because our dear Curt is ministering with a team from their church in Honduras.) Amanda looked so cute and youthful when she scurried out that door in her cowboy hat, jeans, and boots. If she’d only had a horse tied up to the rail on the porch, the scene would have been perfect. BUT, if she had to take wheels, at least it was a Suburban instead of some foreign model. That would be a sacrilege in a rodeo parking lot. The sight of Amanda heading to the rodeo pushed the rewind button on my brain to a time when she, a young adolescent, and her handsome, rugged Dad and Granddad did the 2-day trail ride on horse back. (At her insistence. Not theirs.) After riding themselves bow-legged, they made their coveted destination on downtown Main Street with all the other trail riders to take part in the big parade leading up to the most celebrated annual event in Houston. Such fun memories. Till his mommy gets home late tonight, Lil Partna will just be “riding little horsey down to town, whoops little horsey, don’t fall down” on Gran-Bee’s knees. (No, he hasn’t started calling me anything yet. Believe me, you’ll know when it happens.)

I haven’t forgotten that you want to hear some things about the Israel trip and rightly you should! You put in some serious prayer! I just haven’t had the moments of concentration I need to write it. I’ll tell you one thing now if Lil Partna will let me. We had a few minutes off while we were in the Old City in Jerusalem and I asked the team if I could have a little while to pray at the Wall. Of course, I could only go to the women’s side, well partitioned from the official side where numbers of Orthodox Jewish men prayed. Dressed in black coats, slacks, and hats with ringlets dangling in front of their ears, they rocked rhythmically and reverently, reciting their prayers. The sight is always very moving to me somehow. After preparing my heart for a few minutes, I stepped up between several other praying women and pressed my forehead against the cold stone. As I called out to God, I realized it had been exactly seven years since the last time I prayed at that Wailing Wall. In those few minutes, I recalled the searing pain that pierced my heart those years ago and how I cried out for healing. Fast forward seven years, I marveled over how God had heard my cries and restored my shattered soul. Life has never gotten easy – and much of the time it’s dang hard – but I realized my heart had received restoration I really didn’t think was possible. I thought I’d hurt just like that for the rest of my life. Other hurts will come. But Christ will also come…with healing in His wings. You don’t have to go to Israel to find a Wailing Wall. Any place will do. Just cry out to Jesus.

I am now typing with one hand. Lil Partna’s up. Got some grannying to do!


We felt it was right fittin’ to take this photo in front of Pa’s prize buck.

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San Francisco

Recently I talked about one of those times when it’s hard being Beth Moore’s daughter. But 99.9% of the time it is a huge blessing. For example, I have literally been all over the world with my mom because of this ministry. Last weekend Jackson and I got to go with her to San Francisco for the Deeper Still conference. San Francisco is the most beautiful city I’ve ever laid eyes on. My spirit was in perpetual praise the entire 36 hours because everywhere I looked the glory of God was shouting out at me. From the blue sky to the green mountains, the beautiful architecture to the sparkling ocean, it was magnificent.

Jackson and I did not get to spend much time at the conference because let’s face it, a twelve-month-old is not going to sit there while Priscilla Shirer, Kay Arthur, and his grandma bring it for an hour and a half or more. But from what I heard, they brought it and most importantly, the Lord brought Himself. My mom couldn’t say enough about how much she loved getting to partner with Priscilla and Kay. They each taught on a different season in the life of David. Kay really bragged on the ladies at the end because they had been so willing to forgo doing the light thing and instead dive into some serious Bible study. The last session was a Q&A with the three speakers. Travis Cottrell pushed my little guy around in the stroller so I could listen. They got to lighten up quite a bit during that session. There was, of course, a lengthy discussion on lipstick. My favorite moment was when Kay said it was a sin. A sin not to wear lipstick.

San Francisco girls, we’d love to hear from you!

Golden Gate Bridge

Jackson and our friend Amy underneath the bridge

Jackson waving at the surfers

Some very sophisticated art

Lombard Street

At the Japanese Tea Garden

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The Sacred Recipe

NANNY’S CHICKEN AND DUMPLINGS

Gently boil five large chicken breasts with the skin on until cooked. Season the water lightly with salt and pepper. A bay leaf added to the water gives an even better flavor. Turn off the heat, remove the chicken breasts to cool but leave the broth in the pan. Draw out a cup of broth (making sure you get plenty of the fat in it for tender dumplings). After the cup of broth cools to lukewarm, pour it in a large mixing bowl and add three large eggs to it. Salt and pepper the mixture and then begin adding flour to it until it starts to get manageable. The consistency of the dumplings dough should be like bread dough: tender but neither sticky nor dry.

Bring the broth back to a gentle rolling boil. Roll out handfuls of dough to about a fourth inch thickness. Cut in strips of an inch or so wide and three or four inches long. Drop in boiling broth and stir gently to keep them from sticking on the bottom.

When all the dumplings are in the broth and cooked (only takes a few minutes), add one can of cream of chicken soup and about 1/4 can of cream of celery soup. Much of your salt will come from the soups so please don’t over salt your broth. Add pepper to taste.

Remove skin from cooling chicken, cut into chunks and add to the broth and dumplings. Stir and cook only a few more minutes. Overcooking will disintegrate the dumplings!

Serve and enjoy.

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Shalom!

Shalom, My Sistas!! To the great glory of our God and in answer to your profuse prayers, my man and I pulled up to the house a little after midnight last night after about 24 (virtually sleepless!) hours (total travel time) home. Melissa was standing at our front door, smiling ear to ear, throwing arms around us, and the dogs were jumping wildly and spinning around the yard. Keith fell in the bed immediately but I stayed up and threw clothes in the washer. Then, after a few hours of sleep, my eyes cracked open and I could tell the sun was up. Only a woman can fully understand this but I had to get up and be with my house and my yard. (And, of course, the Lord Jesus, who I’d also been with much of the way home.) It was a gorgeous morning and my birdfeeders needed filling. I know my bird-friends have wondered what on earth has happened to me. I should have left Melissa some instructions for bird feeding but I felt that she might go over the edge if I added it to the three typed (single spaced) pages on dog care. I am absolutely delirious (which in Moore terminology also means stinking hilarious) and I laughed so hard with Amanda on the phone this morning that I nearly threw my back out. I said, “My birds have missed me so much…” and she interrupted me with, “that they want to nest in your hair?” (Laughing again)

I have so much to tell you but I am jet lagged beyond intelligible words and, also, Melissa is sitting across from me, hasn’t seen me, and isn’t in the mood to share her mother’s attention. God was SO WITH US and I know so much of that was in answer to your prayers. I’ve been all over Jerusalem in the past 5 days for Psalms of Ascent and in research for Esther. My throat is sore from practicing my Hebrew. Those gutturals are heck. Imagine them with my southern accent.

I love you, love you, love you, love you. And thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I am so in love with Jesus right now. If there was anything I’d ever want you to pray for me, that, my Darling Ones, is IT. I’ll write you more soon but I wanted to let you know I’m home and deliriously sleepy and happy.

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Almost Home

Y’all, the eagle has almost landed. They made it onto their connecting flight from Newark. Praise the Lord.

I’m about to do some laundry (fun!) and watch One Night With the King. It’s a new movie about Esther. Maybe it can hold us over until the study comes out. I’ve heard it’s great!

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On the Way Home

My parents will be at the airport in a few hours and start the journey home. Yay! After a layover at Newark Airport they will arrive in Houston around 10:30 Tuesday night. My dad will be very happy to be back in Texas. He doesn’t like to be gone from his roots very long. He actually called me today because “My Papa Was a Rolling Stone” was being played in the streets during the festival. That’s one of our songs. I’m not sure why, other than that he used to sing it a lot when I was growing up. And also “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd.” He always has a strange song in his head. I don’t really have a good grasp of what has been going on for the last two days, so we’ll have to wait and hear it from Bethie. It’s a good thing I’ll be with her in person next week because I have to wade through tons of questions about Jackson before I ever extract one story from her! These things take time!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for praying. May God bless you and your precious families for interceding for my parents and the film crew. And for all of you who woke up to pray in the middle of the night, I really wish I could take you to Starbucks and get you a good caffeinated drink.

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Give it Up for the Pregnant Lady

All this talk of chicken and dumplings is reminding me of a not-so-shining moment I had while pregnant. I say “This is my favorite thing my mom makes,” about several different things, but this is the real deal. I mean it this time! It fills not only my stomach but also my love tank. (Any fans of The 5 Love Languages?)

So we were in the mountains for Thanksgiving ’05. It was perfect weather for “C’s and D’s” and my parents were cooking up a storm. Mind you, I was like 7 months pregnant and had been smelling the aroma of the soup cooking for a long time before it was ready. I was anticipating having several bowls of it. You know, I only get it once or twice a year, so I have to make the most of my chance. Then my mom gets a phone call and says we have some guests coming over and they may be staying for dinner. What?!?! Her exact words were, “You can each have a mug full.” That’s not what I wanted to hear.

So I looked in the cabinet and found the biggest mug of all time. For you Sonic fans, it was the Route 44 of all mugs. It could probably hold 3 cups of soup. And I filled it to the brim. I had to walk very carefully to keep it from spilling over. I was that selfish. And the worst part was I didn’t feel bad about it at all. I thought someone else, maybe a couple of someone elses, should give up their portion for the poor pregnant lady who spends all year looking forward to this one meal. I totally got caught on my way to the table. Everyone shouted in unison, “That’s not a mug!” I should have just gone down to the basement and eaten it in secret. But that would have signaled that I had a problem. So mom made me pour a third of it back into the pot. And even then I had twice as much as everyone else. I promise I was not bitter at all.

We didn’t end up having to share the soup. In the end, the pregnant lady got her fill. But she will never live that one down.

*Update: I do not have the recipe but I might be able to post it when I’m home with my parents next week.

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Saying Goodbye to Winter

Did someone say chicken and dumplings? Don’t make me have a craving for my favorite winter food! Well, spring is going to be here any minute. At least in Texas. My oak trees are already budding and we’ve had the AC on for the greater part of the last two weeks. Although now it’s back to being cold again. Last week I decided to make my other favorite winter food one last time before winter is gone for good. If you don’t have a recipe for Winter White Chili, this is a good one.

What do you like to make when it’s cold? Feel free to post your recipes. Don’t forget to save them in Word before you submit your comment!

Uncle Wayne’s Winter White Chili
1 tablespoon of oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon of cumin
3 chicken breasts, boned, skinned and cut into bite size pieces (already cooked)
2 cans of white beans (about 14 oz. each)
1 can of white corn (about 12 oz.)
1 can of cream corn (white, if possible, about 12 oz.)
1 can of chopped mild green chiles (4 oz.)
2 cups of chicken stock
1 tablespoon of died oregano
1 tablespoon of chili powder
1 can of redi-cut tomatoes (15 oz.)
3 or 4 tablespoons of mild salsa verde (or to taste)

Optional garnishes:
Sour cream, chopped cilantro, shredded cheddar (smoked cheddar’s great) or jack cheese, tortillas or tortilla chips

Cook onion, garlic, and cumin in hot oil in a dutch oven, uncovered over medium heat. When onion and garlic are tender, stir in chicken. Then add the whole list of other ingredients down through salsa verde, and stir to blend. Cover and cook over low heat until flavors blend, about 30 minutes. Put the garnishes on the table and let everybody dig in.

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