Hey, Siestas! We will do our random drawing later today as promised and, if you don’t mind a little delay, post our biography winners within the next forty-eight hours so we can leave time for you to respond to this post. I learned something new about you over the previous post: YOU ARE READERS. And I love that. Get a load of the number of comments to that post! Of course, it makes sense when you think about it. Blog readers usually are…well…readers. I have already ordered several books from your recommendations and others of you mentioned titles that stirred up great memories of biographies past.I am a dyed in the wool book nerd so this totally spoke my love language.
I’ve been thinking about something since AJ’s recent post about stepping back from her LPM job for the sake of her family. In that post and in the one that followed, we hashed over the painful truth that, actually, no one can do everything and, unless our all is Jesus, no one can have everything. We have limited resources of time, energy, and ability. But, I thought it would be fun to list a few things (dreams, if you will) that we’d each do…if only we could. If only we were not limited by time, energy, and ability, or money, for heaven’s sake. How would you complete the sentence, “If I could, I would…?” Here are the ground rules: YOU CAN ONLY NAME THREE THINGS. You have to choose. Keep in mind, these aren’t regrets. (i.e. “If I could, I would…live my whole life again without making that stupid choice.” We all have plenty of those and they’re not likely to encourage others much.) The things we’re listing on this post are wishes! Dreams can say a lot about a person and reshape how we picture one another. For instance, maybe I’ll find out today that Moose Mama secretly wishes she could sky dive, or katiegfromtennessee has a long standing dream of being a zookeeper, or Sister Lynn has always wanted to take tuba lessons. You see, this could change everything. OK, well not everything. Not even much. But, for crying out loud, wouldn’t it at least be a little fun in a grueling week? Here are three of mine:
If I could, I would…
1) Travel to every country on earth.
2) Teach elementary school Sunday School.
3) Learn sign language fluently.
OK, how about you?
1. Be a reverse tither
2. Write a devotional book
3. Have a little house in Asheville, NC
What’s a reverse tither? I am probably thinking to hard about it…
It means to tithe 90% & live on 10%. 🙂
If I could, I would…
1. Move to Applegate Oregon
2. Go to Bible College Full Time
3. Plant and tend a vegetable garden
I sure understand the desire to move to Applegate – What a great fellowship they have there!
If I could, I would:
1. Take my Mom on a trip around the World, then travel anywhere my husband and I wanted to go.
2. Finish my Master’s Degree in history.
3. Write childrens books.
I am so moved by other’s comments! If I were dreaming I would wish to
1. Speak fluent Spanish, French, Chinese!
2. Somehow have my children and their spouses and my grandchildren have a hunger and thirst for the Word and love Christ more than anything in this world!
3. Have a strong, healthy, painfree physical body for my God-loving husband.
Thanks for inspiring us to think about our priorities! I love your blog and your ministry.
Oh! I would like to say.,..not in that order!!!
1) Fly my children and grandchildren to my house almost every Sunday afternoon.
2)Make up 2 flower arrangements from my own yard everyday, one to keep one to give away.
3)Write a really good Sunday school curriculum for children and parents that would teach them the truths of God and encourage them to put their confidence in God.
If I could, I would…
Travel home right now to see my family
Travel the world fluent in each language. Then I could enjoy getting to know the people better.
Try cooking a new dish every day.
I’m so practical – ha ha. So this is good for me. But on the other hand, there are so many! Only 3???
If I could, I would…
1. I’d love to see a baby being born. ( I was a bit busy when my own two came into this world and I want to enjoy it from a more relaxed state of being!) HA HA
2. Be a syndicated columnist or have a regular freelance writing gig that pays.
3. Meet Beth Moore and spend an afternoon alone just talking, sharing, and laughing. (And maybe eating some Mexican food. 🙂
Oh, yeah, I like #3 except that it is noooo maybe on the mexican food. That is a must!
If I could I would:
1. Be fluent in several languages
2. Change careers and be a hospital chaplin (instead of a nurse)
3. Learn to play the guitar
1) I was going to say “lose 20 lbs” but then I thought “Oh wait. I can do that.”
So……
1) Go with Hubby to Italy. And eat much there. (hmmm. see above #1…)
2) Meet and hold and love on each and every one of our kids sponsered through Compassion.
3) Speak to a large group of young moms about what I’ve learned about mothering. And it would be set in the 80’s so that my 80’s styled hair would look actually modern.
Chris in Canada
If I could I would
1. Go fishing almost every day.
2. Grow from 4′ 10″ to 5′ 8″ (my husband is 6’3″) 🙂
3. Buy any and all the books I wanted.
If I could, I would:
1) Move back home to Idaho and start a church in a pioneer area with my sister and her husband.
2) Run a Bed and Breakfast.
3) Spend a some time every year doing foreign missions
If I could, I would,
1. write a children’s book
2. Homeschool my two children
3. go to the Holy Land and then Hawaii!
If I could I would:
1) travel the world
2) speak fluent italian
3) earn my doctorate
I realize this is adding, but the LORD put it on my heart – IF I HAD NO LIMIT!
If I could, I would: SHUT THE PORN BUSINESS DOWN!
1.) Learn to play the guitar
2.) Adopt a few girls from China right NOW!
3.) Have a pause button to pause everything so I could get my work done and then hit “play” when I was ready so I didn’t feel like life was passing me by while I try to keep up with all my housework and responsibilities!!!
If I could do anything I desired, I would:
1) Sing like Travis Cottrell (& NEVER TALK JUST SING EVERYTHING 🙂
2) Travel all over the world and meet the most interesting people
3) Be a professional dancer (& dance my heart out)
If I could …. I would…
1 Scrapebook all the many pictures that are sitting in storage containers and drawer.
2.Write a book
3.Own a bookstore like the one in “You’ve Got Mail” I think it was called the Store Around the Corner.
If I could, I would . . .
1) Go back to school full-time to finish the degree I started near the end of finishing my other degree that I use each day at work
2) Spend the rest of my life vounteering to teach people how to study and apply the Bible to their lives
3) Devote my time to helping people who have been hurt by the church or people in the church and walked away, find healing of that hurt and their way back into a local community of believers
If I could, I would…
1) Learn to ice skate backwards and crossover
2) Understand north east south and west!!
3) Run my fingers through a lion’s maze!!!!
OK, how about you?
I WOULD GO TO HAWAII RIGHT NOW IF I COULD!
If I could, I would…
1. live near the water (ocean or lake- it’s killing this Minnesota girl to have been land-locked in Iowa for the past 15 years!) or somewhere with a warmer climate!
2. teach elementary kids in a foreign country
3. own my own coffee shop
If I could I would….
* learn sign language
* walk the appalachian trail
* learn to take great pictures
Thanks Beth this is so much fun. Can I just sneak in another one?
* Meet all the siestas!
Love you all much!
Lyn
Number 3: Figure Skate in the Long Program at the Olympics.
Number 2: Climb Mount Everest wearing all bright pink.
Number 1: Go to Narnia.
Stephanie
If I could, I would…
* know how to play the piano and/or guitar
* own a quaint, self-sustaining book shop (like Meg Ryan’s character in “You’ve Got Mail” – although, hers was not sustaining)
* reach a healthy weight… PERMANENTLY!!
1. Star in an episode of “Little House on the Prairie”
2. Train those dolphins that help kids with disabilities.
3. Have prettier handwriting– mine is more like chicken scratch!
1. Write a Bible Study
2. Travel all through Europe
3. Go to Culinary School
Mine first two are more ‘Lord, if it is your will I really wanna…’
1) Give up my employment to go into part-time ministry telling anyone who’ll listen, in the area I grew up, about Jesus.
2) Down-size financially and get a small house that we can make our own and gradually redesign it as our children grow.
and then my daydream momement…
3) One day, some day, hire an RV and let my man take me all over the US on an extended (3 month?) vacation
If I could, I would:
1. Travel to every country.
2. Own a Bed and Breakfast on the coast of Maine.
3. Take dance lessons.
I would if I could:
1. Invite Chris Tomlin over for dinner and afterwards toast marshmallows under the stars while he sings his beautiful songs and I sing harmony with him…
2. I would be a pilot for my hot-air balloon and every day I would take up people I want to spend time with. My first guests would be Beth Moore and Travis Cottrell. We would soar over the Grand Canyon and watch wild miniature ponies race across the plains.
3. I would attend the LPL in South Dakota this year, staying in a one-room log cabin with a log-burning fireplace and a tall featherbed piled high with soft, handmade quilts and white ruffled sheets. The bed would be so tall I’d need a stepstool to climb up into the bed. And it would have a sleigh and horses to ride through the snowy countryside. And I’d have cinnamon rolls for breakfast with chocolate-raspberry coffee and sweet Italian creme creamer. Lunch would be fresh fruit and homemade vegetable soup with crusty cornbread. Dinner would be a grilled steak with a perfectly baked potato swimming in butter and sour cream on the side.
4. I would work at Starbucks making every known delicious, extravagant coffee ever made! For fun, I would make fresh flower arrangements.
I have more…but I’ll stop with four.
Could I please stay with you in that “delicious” sounding log cabin?
You do NOT know how much I would love that, yummy Yolanda. I want to be there for some unknown reason.
What to make some plans for a trip?
I want to join the worship service with you and Chris Tomlin! Can I, can I?
Shellie, I have already scooted over for you. Here’s your stick with a marshmallow. Chris is singing one of my favorites right now…
listen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkO-D0fatRQ
Oh, thank you, thank you! I enjoyed that so much. Never seen any of his videos. Pretty powerful! Sorry, Beth, I turned you off to listen to this youtube video. I promise I’ll listen to that message again later. Not that I don’t already have the book lol (SLI)
If I could I would,
1. Live in Israel
2. Spend a year at the Smithsonian
3. Have a beach house on every beach on the planet
If I could i would
1) Be done with college already!!
2) Be a nurse in a rural orphange (but take all my friends)
3) Swim with the dolphins
–We can all dream big 🙂
If I could, I would….
Be healthy
Live in my country dream home
Write children’s books
1)If I could, I would take singing lessons
2)If I could, I would lead mission trips all over the world
3)If I could, I would backpack across Europe
1. Write for a living
2. Find a cure for peripheral neuropathy
3. Travel, travel, travel
1. Write a book and have it published.
2. Visit Israel.
3. Live in a log cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Ooo, only 3? If I could I would:
1) Travel the globe.
2) Sew, sew and sew some more. -My current addiction that there is never enough time or $ for. 😉
3) Be fluently bilingual. Ok, maybe trilingual.
If I could, I would . . .
1. Travel the world with my husband (and kids sometimes).
2. Have a house big enough to have foster kids, or have people stay overnight, or even fit my extended family for Christmas.
3. Act in a movie that would change the world for Jesus Christ (and I never was even in a school play 🙂 )
If I could, I would:
1. Find a home for all 147 million orphans (keeping a couple for myself of course!) so there would be a wait list TO ADOPT, not BE ADOPTED.
2. Have the money and resources to provide every single person on this earth clean drinking water.
3. Here’s one for me- Live in a big lake house and never have to worry about money ever again!
If I could, I would:
1) Go to school for biblical studies, then teach, teach, teach!
2) Leave in a house on the beach down in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
3) Go to Italy and have REAL Italian food!
1. Visit all 48 contiguous states with my husband and 11 children at home.
2. Learn Biblical Hebrew
3. Live in the Country
If I could, I would…
1. write a book
2. open a yarn store/cafe
3. go to Bible College (maybe someday after the wild man is older!)
I would travel!
I would adopt more children!
I would take dance lessons!
1. Study God’s word so that I could be an effective Women’s Bible Study leader.
2. Enough money to travel on a whim.
3. The power to cure my husband’s rheumatoid arthritis.
* Play the cello
* Become multilingual
* Have a BSF class in my town (it’s 1.5 hour drive one way).
1) Open my own clothing and home decor store!
2) Take my entire family – husband, 2 girls and all grandparents on a long cruise…first class all the way!
3) Meet Beth Moore and tell her how much her Bible Studies helped turned my life around at such a low point in my life and brought me closer to MY LORD!
If I could, I would:
1. Go to college for my early elementary degree and teach.
2. Travel more. Oh the sites I would love to see…
3. Be a stay at home mom and be able to volunteer more of my time to my church and church family.
If I could I would : 1. Become a veteranarian when I retire from teaching in four years! 2. Fly on airplanes to every place I’ve ever wanted to go! 3. Own a huge ranch and have as many Golden Retrievers as I could handle and give my love and atention to!
If I could I would:
1. Build a new Crisis Pregnancy Centre that would have medical services, lifeskill training rooms, a great office for our director, comfortable teaching rooms, babysitting rooms and plenty of parking(lol we don’t much now)
2. Find a cure for cancer
3. Learn to play the piano
Sweetie, I assumed you did play the piano, that surprised me! <3
If I could I would: write a book, adopt, find a way to help the kids stuck in foster care.