Cody, Costanza, and More

Happy Tuesday, friends and fam!!

 

So getting back to the lighter side of blogging here, I was curious about what Dan Levy looked like as a child, and thanks to Google, I found these adorable pics of him and Sarah.  The side-by-side comparison of the top left and the right pic make me happy, as do his famous Levy eyebrows in the toddler pic on the bottom left. lol

I'm taking this as a sign that my strength training is going really well! lol

I've seen a couple people share this on FB, then I thought, sure, why not!?

Hooray for my new personalized gym towel!!

And yay for getting an early start on 2022 goals brainstorming with my PowerSheets from Lara Casey!  Also, why do colored pens make things so much more fun!? lol

Pro tips for work success from George Costanza, who is undoubtedly my favorite and most quoted character on Seinfeld:

I cooked one last meal on my stove last night... (shells and cheese for the win). lol  Then the plumber came by and disconnected the gas line today, so I'm excited and ready for them to deliver the new one on Thursday!

This has become a Monday night tradition lately. lol

The 55.2K members of the #BooCrew group have Cody's back.  He brings joy and fun and motivation and encouragement, so everyone's pretty on board to support him with all the votes!

And he's doing great... here's their latest performance, which he dedicated to his mom, Cindy Rigsby (who I feel like I know from all his stories on the bike)... and which earned them two 10s and two 9s from the judges, and a spot in the Semi-finals next week!

Mmkay, that plus the sermon quotes (which became so long it clearly demanded its own post) is all I've got for you today.  Hope your week is off to a lovely start!

My Spirit Remains

For anyone in a season of mourning that's beginning to feel more like an unrelenting spiritual attack than a valid grief or trauma response... or for anyone who's struggling to focus with hope on what lies ahead of them, I recommend reading the following and maybe listening to this sermon online HERE.

(*The podcast was oddly quiet this week - something was off with the audio where I really could not hear it, but that made me suspicious that someone might be trying to keep me from hearing it, so I looked it up online, and I'm thankful I did!)

"The word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai. 'Speak to Zerubbabel... and to Joshua... and to the remnant of the people.  Ask them: 'Who among you is left who saw this house in its former glory?  How does it look to you now?  Does it not seem to you like nothing?  BUT NOW, be strong, Zerubbabel,' declares the Lord.  'Be strong, Joshua... Be strong, all you people of the land,' declares the Lord, 'and work.  For I am with you,' declares the Lord Almighty.  'This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt.  And my Spirit remains among you.  Do not fear... The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,' says the Lord Almighty. 'And in this place, I will grant peace,' declares the Lord Almighty."  ~Haggai 2:2-9

Quotes by Pastor Steven Furtick in his latest sermon over the text above:

"Is wishing for something you don't have keeping you from working with what you do have!?"

"Commitments can be broken, but covenants cannot, especially when one of the parties is the One who cannot lie... God said, 'Speak to the remnant.'  A remnant can represent a fragment.  If I'm the enemy, I'm going to try to get you so focused on who left that you don't see what's left.  There is a remnant... even if it's a fraction of what it once was, there's still a remnant!"  

"This is what the Lord said to me -- He said:

If you keep focusing on who left and what's lost,

you are never going to see who's lost and what's left."

"For everything that left your life, God has made a covenant with you: I am with you to this day (and to the end of the age!).  If God is for us, who can be against us!?"

(He's paraphrasing 1 Samuel 16:1 when Samuel was grieving over King Saul's failure here...)  "How long will you mourn over what God has rejected?  Fill your horn with oil.  David is in the field."

"He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it, but you've got to be strong and do the work.  You're not working on your own.  It is God who works in you to will and to do according to His good pleasure.  So maybe God brought you here to remind you what you're working with:  that there is a remnant.  That God has left everything in your life that He intends to use for this next season...  He's bringing you from glory to glory.  What's coming is better than what is gone.  The glory of this present house will be greater.  What God is doing right now shall be greater!"

❤❤❤

That was super encouraging to me and felt like a word from God in this season.

Keep pressing forward, friends!

Be Near Me... Stay Close

The song on my heart over the last few days has been the second verse of Away in a Manger: 
"Be near me, Lord Jesus.
I ask Thee to stay
close by me forever, and love me, I pray.
Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care.
And take us to heaven to live with Thee there."

Random, yes, but perfectly fitting and comforting to me when it came to mind... because He IS always near, and He always loves us, and He will bring us to heaven.

I am determined to finish this year well, and I'm working toward that goal in a few different ways.  For me, food can be a comfort thing and an emotional numbing agent.  So whenever I focus on healthier eating and not allowing myself to indulge in everything I want, it has an extra layer of difficulty in that I'm suddenly *really feeling* a few things I've held at arms length for a while.  That dynamic (of being forced to deal with my emotions and confront the places that feel scarily empty inside me) means it's also an extra layer of becoming healthier as a person, so I'm trying to embrace that and press in with God on both fronts... but I won't pretend it's not challenging.

Okay, so the gaslighting and the childhood part of the meme below doesn't apply to me, but the tendency to over-explain and over-share in response to soul trauma rings VERY true.  I can talk about it and write about it for days and still feel mostly misunderstood and disconnected, right when I'm craving connection more than ever.  Anyway, this one really hit me when I read it, and I'm praying about how to best respond.  For right now, I'm trying to keep at the forefront of my mind that God always hears me and knows my heart and values me.  Meditating on that truth, having compassion for myself, and grounding myself in reality any time I feel hints of panic.

I went for a delightful walk at Crescent Park yesterday morning.  It was refreshing and fun and good for me, and a nice day to spend time outside.  Hopefully next time I go, the trees will be sporting their fall colors! =) 

This random pandemic meme was posted in an Introvert-themed FB group, and it really made me laugh!  ...It's not wrong.

And one last thing I saved lately... a good reminder for me to consider the situation and have grace and be compassionate with myself and my family and others. ❤

Lots of intense content here, but look how I used a fun font. lol  ...I promise my next post will be lighter in tone, but thanks for being here either way!

Hope you've had a lovely weekend.  ~LCM

Reminders

 God loves you.  He sees you.  He cares.  He has not forgotten you.

You cannot change others.  But you are responsible for your actions 100% of the time.

There are cute, innocent, cuddly babies in the world.  
Their lives and the joy they bring is a gift from God.

God's will trumps our will, and God's glory trumps our happiness.

Life is really hard or just really monotonous sometimes...

There will be better days ahead.  Keep going.

We have an unshakeable, eternal hope through Christ.

That hope is real, and it matters deeply.

Happy Thursday, friends.  This is all I've got for today... just some things my heart needs to hear and remember.  The mental and emotional toll of rejection/indifference is not a small thing, and I have to keep seeking God's grace and pressing into joy and hope in hard moments. ❤

My song for this week = Wanted by One Repubic... I'm feeling these lyrics, and I'm kinda loving Ryan Tedder dancing his way through the video below. lol  I appreciate that he writes things most people feel but don't always have the courage to express.  Yay, One Republic!

Memory Lane

On this day last year, I met the Fulton fam for a delish brunch at Red Rock... and they gave me a card announcing that Sarah was pregnant with baby Katherine Claire!!  So exciting! ❤

On this day way back in 2009, I posted this pic of precious young Chet, Sarah, Eric, and I.  I don't actually remember why Eric was with us or what we were doing that day, but I know we went to Starbucks here, and they had "Collaborative Journals" where they put a topic on the front cover and random people who came in wrote stories or quotes or memories that go along with that topic.  A really fun idea, and I'd love to go there alone sometime and read more if those still exist anywhere! =)

And finally, on this day in 2019, I came by with donuts to help celebrate as the Fultons bought their first home - YAY!

And later that night, the Miss K was the Kindergarten kid in CHA's Athletic Homecoming!

So lots of fun November 1st memories that I decided were worth posting and reminiscing over! =)

I'm almost done for today, but here's one more random meme that also brought back memories... we totally had this when we were little!

In the super random category, I got very cracked up when I was taking my vitamins and tilted my head back to swallow them and saw this creepy view of Joseph looking down at me from the countertops. lol

And finally, Lindsay's podcast episode was released today, and you can listen HERE if you'd like! ❤  Her story is full of resilience and hope after tragedy... very encouraging and worth listening to!

That's all I've got for today.  Make it a great week ahead!

Halloweekend Fun!

This post = a gazillion photos I took this weekend... because cute kids and creative costumes deserve to be documented!  (And because life in general deserves to be documented in my book.) ❤

On Friday night, Kristin and I met for dinner and cheesecake at Olive Garden + a 3-hour chat, which I always love!!  I'm super excited already about getting to go to the Bedlam game with her at the end of this month - it'll be my first bedlam game, and as JEM has informed me, it's a pretty big deal this year!!  (Plus we can take cute OSU vs. OU pics, as if I'm super invested in who wins! lol)

I met Elizabeth at The Mule for lunch on Saturday... we had a good time catching up on all the things. I failed to take a photo of us, but she was in a delightful t-shirt with Dwight's outline and the word "FALSE" in all caps! lol

Charlene also came over for spaghetti + brownies + a fun movie night with me and Mom and Dad that night... we watched The Man Who Knew Too Little + Beverly Hills Cop!

JoBug invited Rach and J&K to come Trick-or-Treating in the Gaillardia neighborhood... they had a lot of fun and got tons of candy, and they came by the house to see us afterward! =)  J's costume was an inflatable knight riding a dragon... it was a little big and cumbersome, so he took it off partway through their night.  K's costume was "a nerd," but she just looked like an adorable preshface to me! lol

Get out already with this much cuteness!!!

❤❤❤

These colorful clip-in extensions were super cute in her hair... I took these random pics of her on Sunday as she was making Jace a drink, drawing on her dry-erase board, and grabbing a straw... which goes to prove that there's almost nothing she does that doesn't register as cute to me!  And that I'll probably take a concerning amount of photos of my child someday. lol  ;-)

I sent this to Rach as a possible future costume option for her and J&K. lol  Really any of Moira's looks would be fun for her to recreate!

Before I came back to Tulsa yesterday, Mom and Dad and I walked through the Edmond Hyundai dealership to see the colors on these cars... the green is my favorite, and I'm excited about that - yay for new things!  In other news, this is how my mind works:  green for growth, Genesis for new beginnings, GV-70 - the 7 standing for completion and wholeness.  And also, the car itself is really nice.  But in my heart, I'm always thinking metaphorically. lolol  (*I love the look of the front of this car, but the sun was only hitting the back of them yesterday, so that's the only photos I took for color comparison.)

After fighting my way through a crazy traffic jam to enter the FBC parking lot (people ❤ their free candy!!), I was rewarded with this cuteness!! =)  A moody-looking Harvey Lane and smiley Parker Elizabeth both being adorable.

And I put in a quick order for a cookies-n-cream shake with Tate, the Chick-fil-A worker in training!  (His candy bag was also a Chick-fil-A sack.)  He was able to join us since they take Sundays off. lol

The Moss fam joined the fun, as well... JEM and Ellie were part of The Wiggles crew, and danced it up during a few fun JT songs! =)

"Trunk-or-Treat" events have become super popular, apparently!

The kid in the cowboy hat hanging out on the K made me happy. lol

The Wilson fam... Chick-fil-A cows, a Chick-fil-A worker, and some CFA sauce! lol

The Shoemakers came as Bert, Mary Poppins, and an adorable penguin! lol

I was happy to get to see the Moss fam twice in one week!!

And join them for a photo booth shot where I look four feet tall! lol

I pushed the stroller when Parker wanted to be carried for a bit... and I had Chet take this pic of me and the Shoemakers bc I felt cute pushing a stroller! lolol

The Weatherfords and Wilsons at the photo booth!

The themes of the different trunks was entertaining... there was Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, Skittles, Spiderman, and so many more... including the following two pizza-themed trunks. lol  "God the Father's Peace-A-Ria" was cheesy perfection. lol

I thought it was cute that he grabbed the candy as if it was pizza coming from a brick oven!

And speaking of delicious pizza, we went to Hideaway for dinner after the Trunk-or-Treating fun!  They told us it would be an hour wait for food, but we called their bluff, and it wasn't a bad wait at all.  Chet Lee bought our dinner, which was very kind, and I got to hold sweet Parker Elizabeth for a bit, and she was captivated by all my jewelry!  It was fun times as usual with the Wilsons and Shoemakers, and a fun weekend all around for me getting to see so many of my favorite people in a 3-day period!

I'll end with this photo, which feels like a great pre-adoption photo for me.  Someday I'll do a side-by-side collage with me pushing my baby in a stroller, and that's a lovely and hopeful thought!! ❤

Happy Monday and happy November, friends and fam!  

I hope the last two months of 2021 treat you well!! ❤