My friend Debra wrote about her Tuesday night Bible study experience last week. I asked her to let me share it with all of you and she was sweet enough to say yes. Debra was the photographer who made the Inheritance slide show for our blog last spring. I appreciate that she’s helped me convey what our Tuesday night Bible study is like in photographs and now in written images.

Houston Girls, this is in honor of you and everything you do to make it to Bible study. We know it isn’t easy. We love you!

A Little Late

I was running a little late to bible study last night.

And so were some others.

In the midst of the craziness I could not help but smile from ear to ear.

The drive for me is about 30 or so minutes. Not too bad. I was super excited when somehow, even though I left late, I made it by 6:30 (start time). Then I realized that I was not the only one who might have gotten a late start. The car line was long and all my normal parking spots were full. The music went up, a quick “I am here” text to Lindsee was sent, and the wait began. All was going fine until the dreaded moment that my bladder started speaking to me. And please read speaking in a LOUD voice. Maybe even loud with a little screaming tension. Another text was sent to Lindsee: “Please pray my bladder holds up.” I am pregnant. I started to really worry about my, uh hem, problem, and the walk from wherever I would end up parking.

I rolled down the window and asked the Mr. Nice Police Officer about the nearest restroom. The look in his eye was almost enough to laugh about. I am guessing his reaction came from the dead serious plea in my very own eyes. “Uh, ma’am…” and basically with his eyes he said, “Nowhere close…” My best bet, he says, is to get out of line and go to a fast food joint a couple blocks back. I do it. And I laughed a lot. All by myself, laughing my head off, and trying not to go.

Uneventfully, I made it to the restaurant. And then I made it back to the line that I had waited in for 45 minutes. By now, the praise and worship portion was over and Beth was teaching. The line was still long. The women were still walking up in their fast-as-I-can-walk-in-heels pace. Finally, I made it to the last parking garage. The police officer comes to my window to share the news that the garage is full. Full, as in there is NOWHERE else available to park. No more garages to drive to or to wait for.

I spot a bunch of cars heading into a neighborhood. I decide to follow. I park along a street, making sure to obey all traffic laws, I hope. Finally I am there, sort of.

Grab the purse, Bible, and lock the door. As I started walking I noticed the people in front of me and behind. Some where on their cell phones, some chatting with friends, one crying over a bad day, but all headed in the same direction.

Together, we walked the blocks to the church. Time did not stop us. Full garages did not stop us. Even bushes did not stop us.

As I finally reached the church my smile was the largest it had been in some time.

I LOVED just being in this place where God pulled so many hearts together. It was all about Him. This generation of women are hungry for their God. It was crazy. It was beautiful. It was a lesson all on its own. My heart was happy just to be in the presence of these fellow crazy women who would come laughing and crying, hungry and tired. We were not going to a concert, we were not even going to see Beth, as lovely as she is, we were going to meet with God, to praise with our sisters, and to be reminded that yes, indeed, He LOVES us. And we love Him.

Beauty.

Today I am sporting some blisters from wearing my happy shoes. Every time I feel them I smile and remember the sights of last night.

I made it to my seat at 7:30. It was an adventure, for sure. Note to self: next week, don’t be late. All is well. I will treasure the moments and the lesson.

*I’m so sorry that the blog has looked wonky for the last couple of days. I wasn’t sure what happened to it, but I tried removing all the bold sentences from this post and that fixed it. Thanks for your patience, sweet siestas!*

Top ten reasons to ditch Houston in August and head to Jackson Hole, Wyoming

1. There are days when the temperature will make you wonder if it’s December. And you will start singing Christmas carols without realizing it.

2. Instead of dead armadillos on the road, they’ve got these guys.

3. There are no billboards, no skyscrapers, and no sidewalks so hot you can fry eggs on them.

4. Your man might go for a hike and come back with something like this.

5. You won’t have to wait until February to go to the rodeo.

That is my son drinking hot chocolate in August.

My future cowgirl and me.

6. There are good burgers to be had beyond our state’s borders.

Oh, Billy’s Burgers, how we heart you.

7. When life slows down, funny things happen.

That’s a bagel in Jackson’s mouth.

Annabeth’s thumb sucking + our occasional heater use in the cabin + much drier air than we’re used to = a very raw hand. Bless her heart, we had to put ointment on it and cover it with a sock at night.

She fell backwards and landed right in her brother’s lap. He was so tickled.

Annabeth fell asleep while we were at a cookout. She had to have her thumb, of course.

8. Your hair may go bump-it in the night.

You are looking at God-given bump-it, siestas.

9. You might see a grizzly bear. Preferably from your car.

(This is zoomed in – we would never get that close.)

10. Yellowstone National Park is like the Disney World of Nature. You cannot believe how much cool stuff is in one place.

We got there early in the morning in hopes of seeing more animals.

Behind Curtis and Jackson you can see everyone waiting to watch Old Faithful.

And there it is.

I’m not sure what this is. Maybe Jackson was excited about the dirt on his hands.

Jackson and Curtis with the Upper Falls in the background (I think).

Can you see the rainbow?

River water going over the Lower Falls.

This picture makes the bottom of my feet hurt. Does that happen to anyone else when they look down from up high?

After seeing it from close up, we drove down the road and saw the Lower Falls from a distance.

Top ten songs from our vacation playlist

1. “Just Wanna Say” by Israel Houghton
2. “My Brightness” by Charlie Hall
3. “Glorified” by New Life Worship
4. “You’ll Come” by Hillsong Live
5. “Light of the World” by Watermark
6. “A Grateful People/Bless the Lord” by Watermark
7. “Glory to God Forever” by Fee
8. “Since the World Began” by Matt Maher, Amy Grant, Ed Cash, and Mac Powell from Glory Revealed 2
9. “He Will Rejoice” by Trevor Morgan from Glory Revealed 1
10. “Waters Gone By” by Shawn Lewis from Glory Revealed 1

*More pictures than you ever wanted to see coming soon!

Oh, my, my, my. It is a HAPPY BUSY DAY at Living Proof. We launch our community-wide, interdenominational Tuesday Bible study this very night. We feel like this is the prime thing God ordained this ministry to do. We are discipleship freaks so, as much as we love going into cities and doing weekend events, our highest calling is to walk with a group from Point A to Point B to Point C in a particular book of the Bible or subject matter over a course of several months. We are PUMPED.

Very early this morning while I was at my breakfast room table working on my notes for tonight, I got a call from Melissa who sounded like she was in the first grade. She was on her way to orientation for her second Master’s program (Th.M. in the area of Biblical Studies). Her classes will have her in at least four different books of the Bible so she’s all set for an intense semester in the Scripts.

Amanda will be right there with me and the rest of our hardworking staff as we launch Bible study so that covers the 3 Moore girls. What about all you marvelous Siestas? You may not be starting your Fall Bible studies this week but we surely do hope you are planning to engage in a Bible study of some kind this semester and, hopefully, sooner than later. All our enemy needs is a little time with an idle mind. Around Siestaville, holding each other accountable to the healthy pursuit of Christ is a big priority. So, here’s your chance to sign on the dotted line! What are your plans for Fall Bible Study? In your comment, give…

Your first name or blogger name
The Bible study type (BSF, Precept, etc.), name or subject matter
City and State
Specify solo or group

I always love these kinds of posts. They build up our faith and remind us that a very powerful community of active Christ-pursuing, Scripture-poring sisters is out there. We have different personalities, gifts and styles of worship in Siestaville, but we are of one Spirit and one Body. Let’s celebrate it!

My Dear Sisters,

The information I am about to share will only involve those of you who have attended a couple of recent events because I never shared it on the blog. At the same time, this is the most public forum I have for making a public statement so, with your cooperation, that’s the purpose of this post. At the Albuquerque Living Proof Live (July 10-11) and the Greensboro Deeper Still (July 31-Aug.1), I told a story and read an excerpt from a biography entitled “Hannah” that, unknown to the author, was a stunning fabrication. We just had it confirmed last night.

I would never in a million years knowingly mislead the people I have the privilege to serve. In a ministry of this kind, you can imagine that we’ve had many fraudulent stories come through the ministry and most of them never make it to second base. For extenuating reasons beyond what we can share here, this particularly well-crafted one got past us. We did not stumble on the book or the message. We were very much pursued – not by its author but – by its contriver.

I am so sorry, ladies. We would like to do everything we can to offer recompense for our mistake. If you purchased the book based on hearing me tell the story, we want to cover your costs. If you will send the book to us at the address below, along with your name, the event you attended where you heard the story, how you got the book (for instance, Amazon, bookstore, etc.) and how much you paid for it, we will without hesitation send you a check covering that amount. If you happen to still have a receipt or documentation (for instance, from Amazon) stating the amount you paid, if you wouldn’t mind including it, that’s even better. We did not distribute the book nor carry the book on our list of resources but we still feel responsible for those who purchased it. We want to make sure that we bear the expense for our mistake instead of you. Here is our ministry address:

Living Proof Ministries

12131 Malcomson Road

Houston, Texas 77070-2381

Again, remember to include the requested information so we can keep our accounting ducks in a row. I know that you must really be curious and you may be tempted to call or email for more information. We must leave it at this because the story is in constant flux. Based on how things have transpired over the last five days, I fear that the moment I told you one thing, another would surface to contradict it. In order to guard ourselves against perpetuating any further misinformation, we are wise to stay with the most basic facts as we know them. The woman’s story was a lie. That’s what we know. For that same reason, I think we better leave the comments closed on this one so that we don’t raise more questions than answers. Since attention was sought at the disposal of truth and integrity, the best thing we could do is limit the attention it gets now. Thank you so much for your understanding and cooperation.

Well, my dear Siestas, as you can see, we’re still living and learning around here. We want to believe, love and trust so badly as we serve the public and we want to be highly discerning without twisting off in the flesh of cynicism. The enemy is often very good at his job. You will never waste a prayer on us.

God is so faithful! So worthy of our absolute devotion! So entirely believable!
Thank you for your patience and support. I surely do love you.
Beth

Hey, Darling Things!

It’s late afternoon on Friday and we’ll close up the ministry in just a little while for a three-day weekend. I thought I’d say hi before I pulled out of the driveway because I’ve come to love you so much and, like many times during the course of a ministry week, you are on my mind. One way you can tell when people are truly getting close is an unexplainable interest in the utterly trivial and otherwise unbearably mundane. (An interest in the trivial alone doesn’t cut it. Celebrity gossip would qualify for that. To legitimately become intimate friends you must also care, for instance, that it looks as though she might be using a different hair product or could that be a new pair of shoes she’s got on today?) Hence this post. But it may be one-sided, of course. Maybe I’m just perceiving that we’re close. But in hopes that it’s a two-way relationship, below are a few random things from the average life of your own Siesta Mama. In response I’d love to know one completely random thing from your life right now.

1. Keith and I went grocery shopping together a couple of nights ago. He was pushing the basket. He asked me to please walk down the paper aisle and grab a 12-pack of toilet tissue then, as I walked back toward him, proceeded to take off almost running so I’d have to chase him through the store with it. Can you spell M-A-T-U-R-E? And don’t think I’m just referring to him because I was laughing so hard I almost needed to use some of it. The person at check-out asked us how long we’d been married because we were still so amused by one another when we got there and because I was hitting him in the arm with my fist (a well-known flirting technique). Imagine her surprise when we answered 30 and a half years. By the way, we’re really in love right now. I’m so glad I let him live through last year.

2. If perhaps you heard that Geli, our birddog, has been so sick that she nearly died, it is the absolute truth but she’s finally getting better. She was in the fanciest animal hospital in Houston for a solid week, much to Keith’s dismay on multiple levels. The diagnosis? Somewhere along the way she ate something dead and got food poisoning from it. It caused a bacterial infection that went through her digestive system and into her lungs. Of course, Keith and I thought that carnivores like most humans and canines were supposed to eat stuff that was already dead instead of eating it while it’s still alive and kicking but we are now better educated. Geli has a penchant for eating inappropriate things. A month ago we had to take her to the vet for eating a live frog. We informed them what had happened to which they replied, “That can’t be it. She must have a stomach ailment of some kind.” They took x-rays and, lo and behold, her stomach ailment had four legs and four feet. Perhaps that is why she then turned to carrion from which she indeed derived a very expensive stomach ailment.

3. I will list this one among the random though it is neither trivial nor mundane. I am leaving early in the morning for the wedding of our LPL praise-team drummer, Kevin and his beautiful bride-to-be, Ashley. He is the one who proposed on stage at an LPL in June. (Pittsburg) Our whole team will be there and we are super excited! Perhaps this seems to have come awfully fast in your estimation but, I assure you, it could not come fast enough for the two of them. From the moment I saw them lock eyes, I suggested we move ahead with the date. They are terribly smitten.

Oh, mercy! It’s already time for me to be downstairs saying goodbye to my dear coworkers for a long weekend and locking this sweet place up! I know you must feel so cheated that I can’t keep going! Before I sign off, how about a little news from the sublime category?

1. To the great glory of my faithful God, I finished the book on women’s insecurity and have even been through the editing process and, except for a few finishing touches, it is ready to be type-set and sent off for print. THANK YOU, LORD!!! I will tell you more about it later but the release date is February 2nd. I have never had anything besides Breaking Free and When Godly People Do Ungodly Things get to me like this one. God turned me every way but loose on this project.

2. Our Houston Tuesday night Bible study starts the day after Labor Day! We can hardly wait to be reunited with our home girls! We miss them like crazy all summer long. Picture them from every age, background and denomination. In fact, they are a cross section of this community in so many ways. They are so incredibly dear to me. We are going to share a lecture series on the Book of Revelation. We just thought we’d do something light for a change.

OK, I’m late! I better go! Have a fabulous weekend, Girls! I pray that God does something really wonderful to bring you Sabbath rest this Labor Day. I love you!

Well, it happened. Jackson came home with an assignment on his first day of preschool. The directions were attached to a large piece of white construction paper. I was supposed to help Jackson make a banner using our family name. We could trace our hand prints, glue things on it, use pictures, or do whatever we wanted to tell our family’s story. They kids would get to present their banners to the class. Having just been on a great vacation to Wyoming that produced tons of fun pictures, I thought we should put them to good use. I’ve always loved making collages, so this would be fun.

Then the questions started bombarding my mind. Does this need to look like a child did it, or do they really want me to do it? The directions said it would go on the wall, so maybe it’s supposed to be part of the room decor and it needs to look nice.

Being a first-time preschool parent, I’d never been faced with this dilemma before. BigMama’s stories about Caroline’s Fiesta float came to mind. If I err, do I want to err on the side of not good enough or too good? My perfectionist tendencies overtook my willingness to submit myself to my three-year-old’s creative genius and it came out like this.

I’m so ashamed. I did let Jackson pick out the pictures, though. And he sat beside me and cut scraps of paper while I did the work. Not that that makes it okay.

Curtis is the one who takes Jackson to school, so I called him just minutes after I knew he would have dropped him off. “Did you see the other posters?” I begged him to tell me they all looked like ours. He’d only glimpsed a corner of one and couldn’t tell. “The teacher said it looked nice.”

Nice. Is that good or bad?

As I entered the wing of classrooms to pick him up yesterday afternoon, I was faced with the humiliation of my life. There on the wall of the hallway – not inside the classroom as I had thought – the children’s artwork was prominently displayed. It took .5 seconds for me to realize that one of these things is not like the others. Every other poster had hand prints. Every other poster had evidence of a three-year-old’s art skills. Every other poster was right and ours was wrong! Wrong in big, bold letters, with brightly colored polkadot scrap paper and obnoxious Disney pictures. Wrong with our named spelled out for everyone to see! Wrong with the faces of our family, so that the horrible mother who is too OCD to do crafts with her son can be easily identified! Oh the horror!

Seriously, I’ve never been more embarrassed. All I could say to the teachers was a mild thank you as they returned my boy to me. I didn’t dare make eye contact in case I was about to get in big trouble and have to go to the principal’s office. I scurried away as fast as one can with a baby on the right hip and a leaping, bounding child holding the left hand.

I have no idea how long those posters are going to greet every single person who passes through the hallway, but I am praying to our merciful Lord that He will see that I’ve learned my lesson and let them come down soon. I don’t know how long I can bear to face my public shame!

Please, someone, comfort me in my time of trouble and tell me I’m not alone. Did you do something really dumb when your kid was in school?

I called my mom as soon as I got in the car. She was both embarrassed for me and pleased to have been given such a great laugh at my expense. I had just been to my first Motherwise meeting that morning and she said, “Honey, one day when your kids are grown and you’re helping lead something like Motherwise, that’s the story you’re going to share.” She’s probably right. But if anyone would like to go ahead and learn my lesson now, then be my guest.

This will be our last post about the simulcast; we certainly don’t want to drive off everyone who wasn’t there! I do have good news though. We’ve decided to offer the videos from last weekend as digital downloads! After the messages have gone through the whole production process, “The Heart of Our Desires” will be available in our online store. I don’t know how long it will take, but I will let you know as soon as the videos are available.

Living Proof Live – Simulcast – Green Bay WI from Rich Kalonick on Vimeo.

Thanks, Rich, for another great recap video!

Good morning, fellow Scripture-memory nerds! It’s the first day of September and we in the great Gulf Coast have survived yet ANOTHER scorcher! Hottest summer on record in Houston. I LOVE SEPTEMBER. Come, Fall! Please come quickly!

I am deeply grateful for the many invitations you’ve given us for praise over what God has been accomplishing in your lives. In particular, we were tremendously encouraged that the Holy Spirit overtook cold and awkward technology and met with many of you at the simulcast. We took much time in Monday staff prayer to boast in our God. We always rest assured any time something that complicated gets accomplished that God alone could have done it. He gets every ounce of praise. He could not have given us a better on-site host group than the one we had in Green Bay. I knew they would be warm and engaged but I didn’t know if they would be loud enough to lead the rest of the groups effectively in participation. That on-site group is absolutely critical to the experience. They exceeded every expectation I had. We went crazy over them.

You know, I have no memory of actually living there. We were transferred with the Army back to Arkansas when I was only two and that’s where I grew up so I understandably associate the piney woods with my upbringing more than any other place. My older brothers and sisters remember Green Bay very well and have told me many things about our family’s time there in the last several days. I came away from Wisconsin so incredibly honored to call it my birth state. I also came away from Wisconsin with a lot of cheese. You should see my refrigerator. By the way, I was crowned with cheese (you might have seen my crown at the end), which even I thought was probably appropriate. Queen of Cheese indeed. In my personality. In my enchilada. I love y’all so much. Smiling so hard that my morning face is getting a good stretch.

OK, now for our verses! I am continuing on with my portion from last time in Psalm 145:8-12. It is a very wordy five-verse segment and I just don’t have the memory work mastered yet. Too busy these last few weeks. So, I am going to do what I recommend you do. I’m going to hold up and get my last verses down before I add another set to them. If I don’t, I’ll get discouraged and overwhelmed and that’s the graveyard of all Scripture memory work. We want each verse to make it all the way to the marrow, not just sit on top of our skulls.

Now, how about yours? Name, city, and verse! We’re getting closer and closer to our celebration! Hang in there and keep sharpening that Sword!

I am so honored to be among those who journey with you as we “go from strength to strength till each appears before God in Zion.” (Ps. 84:7) You are a dearly loved part of ministry at Living Proof. I send you tons of affection from all who grace these doors. Every person who labors here knows to say the word “Siesta” with joy and esteem.