Please note – the word depicted in this photo is not intended to be offensive to anyone with any kind of disability.

Shel is a creative soul He and his big brother Aiden are cranky at me for not letting them spend their pocket money on Lego during term…..we have a rule in our house that they are only allowed to spend it during the school holidays. Shel is the kind of kid that will obsess about something like this and let it fester for a couple of days, and his whole world is black and he storms around sulking and leaving creative little notes like this one. He is trying to get me to hate him….s’not going to work. I tell him that I still love him even though he is being a little snot, and he just cannot understand that at all. He tells me straight up, “But mummy you are supposed to hate me if I’m mean to you.” So I tell him, “No Shel, it doesn’t matter what you do, I’ll still love you.” He doesn’t understand it, but I hope the message gets through.

Shel is a handful at times but I love him to bits. For those of you who read James Dobson’s books, he’s the quintessential strong-willed child, but I believe this kid is going to be a leader one day. He is strong, he is disciplined (with those things he’s passionate about at the moment ), he is intelligent, and he is a strategic thinker, and even though he gives me a fair bit of grief, he is the more affectionate of my two boys.

It’s so hard not to laugh out loud when these little gems pop up

Did you give your oldies a hard time?

Michelle

Today I am starting an experiment. I am going to write out the book of Hebrews longhand (not typed) as part of my daily quiet time with God. Here’s why…

This year I am privileged to be able to share a preaching series with the congregation at Woden Valley Alliance Church …my series is called “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Spiritual Growth” and I’m looking at practical ways we can grow and become kick butt followers of God. Later in the year I’ll be looking at creative ways to study the Bible, and writing out great slabs of scripture is one of those that I have discovered in my research, and now I’m having a go at it to see what benefits there are to be gained by writing out the word of God.

I have decided to write by hand because it is forcing me to go slow and allows me to meditate on the words as the flow from my brain out onto the paper.  I could have typed it, but I can type the words I see on a page without thinking too much about it, so that’s not what I’m after.

I have chosen Hebrews because that’s the one that popped into my head when I came across the idea in Luann Budd’s book. I took that as God whispering in my ear, so that’s the book I’m doing.

Today I did the first chapter…lots of quotes from the Old Testament about how Jesus is at a higher level than the angels. The final verse of the chapter is an interesting one.

Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? {NIV}

I wonder how they serve, and what that ministering is? How do you suppose it is different to how the Holy Spirit works in our lives? What do you think?

Stay tuned and I’ll let you know how my experiment goes.

Michelle

This is the first in a series of weekly posts where I tell you completely random things about myself.

I love all things purple. It’s completely irrational and completely girly…which is so not me…I’m not a girly girl really. I have purple drink bottles, purple folders, purple leather gloves…even a purple car. I like the royal purples rather than the electric purples. I don’t quite know why I’m so passionate about purple…but it always makes me feel comfortable and brings a smile to my face

Here’s something totally gross I just discovered about my favourite colour…

The word ‘purple’ comes from the Old English word purpul which originates from the Latin purpura. This in turn is derived from the Koine Greek πορφύρα (porphyra), name of the dye manufactured in Classical antiquityfrom the mucus-secretion of the hypobranchial gland of a marine snail known as the Murex brandaris or the spiny dye-murex.^{[4]   {Wikipedia}}

It originated from SNAIL SPIT!!!!! Euuuuwww! Gross!

What’s your favourite colour? Why?

Michelle

I’m a regular lurker over at Ragamuffin Soul…this guy’s site is refreshment for my sometimes weary worship leader’s heart…his latest post brought to my attention a new song by the Hillsong mob that I hadn’t heard yet. I visited the site that includes a couple of videos that talk about the story and testimony behind the song and I am sitting here crying like a baby. The song is called “Healer” … go check it out. God is powerful. God is faithful.

Michelle

Ok, so here’s a bit of background…I have been very overweight (borderline obese if you believe those BMI thingys) since my boys were born, and I’ve been on a rollercoaster ride of stupid diets and attempting to lose it for the last nine years. Early last year I hit my highest weight (92kg) and was horrified that I had pretty much doubled my weight on the day I was married.

The dreaded "before" photo...yikes!

So I started back on the Sureslim program and got motivated to lose a stack of weight because we were taking a family trip to Fiji and I didn’t want Greenpeace to come and haul me back into the water .. te hehehhehe. This year I have taken a different approach, and while I have maintained my weight loss and not really lost any more on the scale, I have changed shape quite a bit (started lifting weights). This year I set a fitness goal rather than a weight loss goal. I decided that I wanted to be able to run 5km without stopping by the end of November 2008. Today I hit that goal! Woohoo!  I ran the bridge to bridge run around Lake Burley Griffin. 

Here I am all sweaty and stinky after my goal breaking run!

What’s next? My buddy Rachelle talked me into doing the MS fun run in September…that’s 6.5km around Lake Tuggeranong…so that’s the next fitness goal…but I have a weight-loss goal again now too. In 9 weeks we are off on a road trip to see our families in Queensland (read…lots of hot weather and I’d like to swim without humiliation) …so my goal there is to get under 75kg by the time we leave. I’m at 79.9kg at the moment. So that’s do-able I think.

This post is part of the Ragamuffintop Challenge over at Carlos Whittaker’s blog (fellow worship leader and all round nice guy)…I think he weighs in on a Saturday (US time) ..I usually weigh in on Fridays (yeah I know today is Monday…I’m still figuring out my blogging routine )  Why don’t you join me…weigh in via the comments tab…or join the Ragamuffintop mob if you have a blog to link to.

Weigh in here! Let’s encourage each other.

Michelle