The closest I can get to the experience in San Antonio is Il Sogno. Chef Andrew Weissman comes exceedingly close to "the real thing." I encourage all of you to experience pizza as it was originally intended in one of San Antonio's finest restaurants!
I am signing off for now. The Emmy's Red Carpet show is on and I am having a very hard time typing and actively analyzing the outfits. So far...LOVING January Jones! Happy Sunday dear friends. This week will be a very busy one, thank goodness. I welcome the "busy-ness!"
The inception of this blog is no secret. I needed to mend a broken heart and find my purpose again. I had to find a way to FORCE myself from traveling down Avenue Bitter, permanently and instead make a left hand turn onto Get Up Off Your A** Drive! This blog was step one, campaigning was step two, reading The Shack was step three, forgiving was step four, Bible Study Fellowship was step five, Children's Bereavement Center was step six, The Story was step seven, Janie Worth was step eight....
The composting is finally a success! A winning combination of dead leaves, plants, coffee grounds, fruits, vegetable, egg shells, compost starter, a little moisture, a big plastic storage bin, a drill (the BEST part), patience, daily mixing and lots of friendly advice has led to the infancy of beautiful, brown, earth-i-ness. I can't wait! I was so proud I called Ciara (my composting goddess) and she said, "You must be good at turning rotten stuff into good stuff!" My response was, "Let's hope both literally and figuratively!" I know most won't understand the simple joy of my compost bin but this week's success has brought me an inordinate amount of joy. During tough times, it really is the little things, isn't it?
I am no longer an active participant in the world known as Facebook. For numerous reasons it is best I lay low and keep the account deactivated. As a result....this is my one and only forum. So....for my 10 readers (the only 10 of you I was allowed to enter as update recipients) I must warn you I have had Gilmore Girls on a CONSTANT loop lately. (This is code for "Tough Times!")
Our conversation this week about children born through artificial insemination was very close to home for me.
I’m one of the tens of thousands of women who became a mother using a sperm donor.
With the high range of estimates finding that 60,000 American kids are born through donor conception each year – representing less than 2 percent of all births - I had hoped it was still too rare to draw the kind of Fox News debate that rages around issues like gay marriage. And so I’ve watched this issue become a hot topic in the culture wars with dread.
But that didn’t stop me from reading “My Daddy’s Name is Donor,” the report compiled by our guest Elizabeth Marquardt and her organization. It’s crucial for me to have the best possible understanding of the situation I’ve brought my innocent child into, so when it was first released, I spent hours reading every word, checking every number, studying every comment. And it confirmed that bearing and raising kids this way would be tough. But it also confirmed on every measure of dysfunction, a majority of these children turned out just fine.
As a consequence, I’m not sure why there are so many grave predictions for families like mine. And I reject the idea that most mothers conceive this way because they’re ignoring the difficulties. When I decided to have a child using artificial insemination, I knew I would have to find a way to deal with all those old fashioned folks who believe that a happy marriage provides the best home for raising children. That was especially tricky, because I was - and am - one of those people. I know what kind of challenges children face in single-parent homes. I was raised in one.
But I also know that being married when your child is born is no guarantee of a stable, two-parent home forever. Before I decided on artificial insemination, I pictured my alternatives: going on a mad hunt for husband with a one-item agenda and a stop-watch; or trying to convert a friend into a baby-daddy, a life-time partnership with no rules, blueprints or history of success. And even if that search panned out, I saw a 50/50 chance of ending up in the exact circumstances that faced my mother and so many other single and divorced moms: raising a child with a ghost dad.
For me – and for so many other kids I knew whose fathers weren’t around - what did the most damage was the emotional whiplash of having your dad there one day, and gone the next. On your 5th birthday, he’d swoop in for a weekend of ballgames, movies, gifts and pizza, and then do nothing for your 6th, a card for your 7th, a gift for the 8th, and back to nothing for the 9th. The suspense injects a little bit of poison into every celebration, every milestone, and every holiday.
If on one of those occasions, my mother had handed me a folder and said, “Listen, the reason your father didn’t show up is that - before you were born or even conceived - he signed this piece of paper agreeing to have no contact with me or with you until you turned eighteen,” that would’ve been better than what I had. And even with those issues, my mother provided a good home and raised my brother and me to be good and decent people.
I have faith I can do the same.
As an African-American child of a single mother, I’ve been hearing about the inevitable failure of my family and everyone in it for years. And thanks to endless web of relationships, I’ve gotten a front row seat to dysfunction that can develop despite the best of circumstances, and success that can grow, even under the worst.
Given what I know, I believe I can give my child a life worth living. And if I can do that, I don’t think it’s the government’s – or the culture warrior’s - business to tell me I can’t. http://www.npr.org/blogs/tellmemore/
Tonight I opened an email from Max Lucado. I recently subscribed to his daily inspirational messages. This arrived on Sunday. I quickly glanced at it, thought it was too long, and closed it out. It’s one of the most compelling narratives in all of Scripture. So fascinating is the scene, in fact, that Luke opted to record it in detail.
Two disciples are walking down the dusty road to the village of Emmaus. Their talk concerns the crucified Jesus. Their words come slowly, trudging in cadence with the dirge-like pace of their feet.
“I can hardly believe it. He’s gone.”
“What do we do now?”
“It’s Peter’s fault, he shouldn’t have … ”
Just then a stranger comes up from behind and says, “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help overhearing you. Who are you discussing?”
They stop and turn. Other travelers make their way around them as the three stand in silence. Finally one of them asks, “Where have you been the last few days? Haven’t you heard about Jesus of Nazareth?” And he continues to tell what has happened. (Luke 24:13-24)
This scene fascinates me—two sincere disciples telling how the last nail has been driven in Israel’s coffin. God, in disguise, listens patiently, his wounded hands buried deeply in his robe. He must have been touched at the faithfulness of this pair. Yet he also must have been a bit chagrined. He had just gone to hell and back to give heaven to earth, and these two were worried about the political situation of Israel.
“But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.”
But we had hoped … How often have you heard a phrase like that?
“We were hoping the doctor would release him.”
“I had hoped to pass the exam.”
“We had hoped the surgery would get all the tumor.”
“I thought the job was in the bag.”
Words painted gray with disappointment. What we wanted didn’t come. What came, we didn’t want. The result? Shattered hope. The foundation of our world trembles.
We trudge up the road to Emmaus dragging our sandals in the dust, wondering what we did to deserve such a plight. “What kind of God would let me down like this?”
And yet, so tear-filled are our eyes and so limited is our perspective that God could be the fellow walking next to us and we wouldn’t know it.
You see, the problem with our two heavy-hearted friends was not a lack of faith, but a lack of vision. Their petitions were limited to what they could imagine—an earthly kingdom. Had God answered their prayer, had he granted their hope, the Seven-Day War would have started two thousand years earlier and Jesus would have spent the next forty years training his apostles to be cabinet members. You have to wonder if God’s most merciful act is his refusal to answer some of our prayers.
We are not much different than burdened travelers, are we? We roll in the mud of self-pity in the very shadow of the cross. We piously ask for his will and then have the audacity to pout if everything doesn’t go our way. If we would just remember the heavenly body that awaits us, we’d stop complaining that he hasn’t healed this earthly one.
Our problem is not so much that God doesn’t give us what we hope for as it is that we don’t know the right thing for which to hope. (You may want to read that sentence again.)
Hope is not what you expect; it is what you would never dream. It is a wild, improbable tale with a pinch-me-I’m-dreaming ending. It’s Abraham adjusting his bifocals so he can see not his grandson, but his son. It’s Moses standing in the promised land not with Aaron or Miriam at his side, but with Elijah and the transfigured Christ. It’s Zechariah left speechless at the sight of his wife Elizabeth, gray-headed and pregnant. And it is the two Emmaus-bound pilgrims reaching out to take a piece of bread only to see that the hands from which it is offered are pierced.
Hope is not a granted wish or a favor performed; no, it is far greater than that. It is a zany, unpredictable dependence on a God who loves to surprise us out of our socks and be there in the flesh to see our reaction.
From God Came Near: Chronicles of the Christ
Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 1985, 2004) Max Lucado
