Things to Put on the Fridge Door of Life

Dear Friend,

How are you today?

I'm feeling grateful. My husband has been out of town working on a project for the last two weeks. Yesterday he returned home to five jumping kids, a beaming wife, a tail-wagging dog, a clean house, his favorite dinner, and an apple pie.

Life is good.

The kids and I watched a balloon launch at the park on Saturday.

Lately I've been thinking about a few special links I'd like to share with you. This isn't just random good stuff that I've stumbled upon around the web. These are links to content I'm proud of, content which belongs to friends who have come alongside me in my life journey and blessed me with kindness. These are things to place on life's fridge door, so to speak.

A few weeks ago I met a precious kindred spirit, Emma Teller, for coffee. We talked for four hours. I never do that! But it was amazing. The time went by in a blink, We haven't seen each other in a very long time.Thirteen years ago Emma was my piano student. Now she is an exquisite artist. (I smiled over the smudge of red paint under her forearm.) We talked about faith, the creative life, and the mercy of God. I was blown away by her humility and wisdom.

No matter what you do or who you are there are so many ways we can do this - leave the world more beautiful than we found it - and that is what I hope and try to do with my paintings and with my art.  

Emma has a blog. Though she's not there often, it's a good place to view some of her work. Go here for still lifes and here for portraits. You can also follow Emma on Facebook.

Tim Fall has been called the "Barnabas of the Blogosphere" because he's relentless with encouragement. My whole family has been blessed by his friendship. While fishing in the Rockies recently, my husband used Tim's method for making pan fried trout. My kids have enjoyed listening to some of his cowboy stories that I've read aloud during our evening bonfires. Over the past few years, Tim has taught me to be liberal with encouragement and to pray for opportunities to build others up.

We have a God who is the Comforter -- who comes alongside us with the comfort, so that we can then be the ones to come alongside others with the comfort God has given us.

Tim blogs at Just One Train Wreck After Another. Two of my recent favorite posts are Problems with Unbalanced Grace and I've Never Been on a Road I Haven't Taken. And while you're there I'd be delighted if you'd read my recent guest post, People's Looks and Covers of Books.

Tim was recently interviewed by talk radio host Doug Bursch on "Live From Seattle." You can listen to that interview here. (Tim's segment starts at the 12 minute mark.)

Next, I must give a shout out to my faithful friend Christine. Last week she and I had a rare opportunity to have a day out together without kids. She knew I had been wanting to visit the Harriet Beecher Stowe house with her forever. There are nine kids and two husbands between us, so the stars have to be aligned just so in order for the two of us to be able to take a day trip alone. We realized our special day was set to happen only one day previous. The problem was, our free day (a Thursday) was a day the museum was closed. Christine got on the phone and coordinated a private tour. (They typically only do tours for groups and rarely on short notice!) I can't wait to finish my research so I can tell you all about our experience. Christine no longer blogs, so I don't have a link to give you for her, but I can't talk about things to put on the fridge door of life without mentioning the remarkable gift Christine pursued for me.

And last but certainly not least, I would love to introduce you to my virtual fairy blog mother, Jeannie Prinsen. Jeannie is a deep well of wisdom and intellect, yet she is delightfully approachable. Each Monday she shares a "Monday Morsel" -- a quote which she has come upon in her reading. I always try to square away some quiet time to sip my coffee when I visit Jeannie's Little House on the Circle. It would be wonderful to live near her and savor morsels with her in person.

 Life is not about being fast.  It's about doing what we're called to do and not stressing about the outcome.

I nominated Jeannie for a "Liebster Award" on my birthday this past year. She joined in the fun with this post in response.

Love her tributes to her son: You've Got a Friend in Me and Never Mean.

And this one: Slow: Tortoise Crossing


Recently Jeannie participated Anne Bogel's "literary matchmaking" blog event at the Modern Mrs. Darcy. Jeannie told Anne the types of books she likes/dislikes and Anne made selections for her based on this profile. Readers are invited to join in with the matchmaking and the result is lots of TBR list enrichment!

What are some things you'd like to put on the fridge door of your life today?

Peace & Joy,

Adriana

Cyber-Samplers for Just One Train Wreck After Another

My friend Tim Fall over at Just One Train Wreck After Another has posted a couple of my designs today. I'm so excited! 

I like to call my quote pictures "cyber-samplers" because I used to create needlework samplers as gifts before I discovered the internet. The process of creating quote pictures feels similar to me. I get a thrill out of matching a quote to just the right image. And it's really fun to create a cyber-sampler surprise for a blog friend after he or she posts an especially quotable quote. I'm learning as I go! I'm sure I would benefit from some lessons in computer graphics; if you have any experience with such things, I would appreciate your tips!

The following two images are not the cyber-samplers I made for the Train Wreck; they are the photos I started with. I took these photos in a town near my home. Tim is asking his readers to vote on the images at his blog today. So please go over to the Train Wreck and vote, then read his great post on lust that inspired me!

All The Days of My Life in a Single Moment: Guest Post by Tim Fall

A couple months ago Tim Fall posted this piece on his blog, Just One Train Wreck After Another. I loved it so much, I asked him if I could re-post it here along with a few of my Classical Quest pictures.  I'm grateful to Tim for allowing me to share it with you today! Enjoy!

Ian McLeod loves his son Cory. There’s nothing unusual about that. But he showed that love by taking a picture of him every day of his life for 21 years. Every single day. For 21 years. And then he created a video of what his son looked like from Day One on.

It’s fun, in an unnerving sort of way, to see Cory grow up before our eyes in mere moments. Yet it also opened my eyes to understand better how God sees me. Every day of my life is constantly before God in eternity. It’s as if he is always seeing them all in a single moment, but not really because that puts eternity in the language of lapsing time; I think God experiences these things differently than do we who experience life merely sequentially, a series of events one after the other without the ability to return to any moment passed.

C.S. Lewis describes it this way in Mere Christianity:

Almost certainly God is not in Time. His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty – and every other moment from the beginning of the world – is always the Present for him.

If Lewis is right about prayer and eternity, then it stands that it applies to our entire lives and God’s ability to see us in eternity. He doesn’t see us in a fast-moving sequence from birth on, like Ian shows us his son in the video; God sees us in all moments all the time (there’s that troublesome word time again).

What really gets me excited as I write this is realizing that God loves me more than I can imagine and therefore actually enjoys seeing all my moments in that eternal-always. I’m excited about that not only because of the love I’ve experienced from God, but because of the love he has allowed me to experience for my own children.

I don’t think I could handle experiencing all the moments of my children’s life at the same time. I don’t think I can handle experiencing even just the wonderful moments I’ve had with them (and I admit some of the non-wonderful moments are much more my fault than theirs). I think it would overwhelm me to experience the love I have for them all at once, with no sequence, no shifting from one experience to another with something else in between.

But God can handle this, of course, because:

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. (1 John 4:16.)

And that’s how it is, now and for all eternity.

Tim Fall is a California native who changed his major three times, colleges four times and took six years to get a Bachelor’s degree in a subject he’s never been called on to use professionally. Married for over 25 years with two kids, his family is constant evidence of God’s abundant blessings in his life. Tim blogs here.