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I feel as if I am about to bust! All of the sudden I am completely beside myself about what is getting ready to happen at The ROCK on December 16th. Over the past 24 hours I have watched in amazement as every available nook and cranny in the church building has become home to props, presents, clothing, stars, flyers, posters, postcards, Christmas trees. It’s everywhere!!!! I have had 3 people walk in my office today, eyes big as saucers saying how they really had no idea the scope of what was happening with Imagine Christmas.

We are down to the last 3 weeks. Now is crunch time for rehearsals and promotion. Today I have been printing 3,000 flyers for Leslie Averitt to be inserted in Good Life and distributed all over Wilmington. Our copier has a tendency to chew up quite a few copies, and I bought all the blue paper Staples had. It was only exactly enough and no more for what I needed for Leslie. As I sorted the misfits from the acceptable, throwing pieces of ragged paper in the trash, I began to deeply resent what I was doing. I began to see each scrap of paper as a person; someone who is a ragged, crooked, crinkled up mess who feels like they’ve just been thrown away; someone who has believed the lie that they are not good enough for God to love unconditionally; someone who has been damaged by life and is desperately, perhaps secretly, needing peace in their heart — or else. No lie, I teared up as I looked at the copier and growled out loud, “stop it!”.  i haven’t lost a piece of paper since then. I’m really not making that up - - that amazes me. I wish I would have done it 2,000 copies ago.

I ordered 1,000 more invitation cards today because the 1,000 I bought 2 weeks ago are just about gone. People have been inviting their friends and co-workers, putting up signs up in their workplaces and all over town. I’ve ordered almost a week’s worth of radio advertising on WGNI. (My Cumulus sales rep says he wants to come with his family ). 12,000 Postcards are sitting in my office sorted and ready for saturation mailing. It’s going to happen, ya’ll. I have no doubt after what I have seen the past week or so, that we are going to have more people at The ROCK for Imagine Christmas than we have ever had for any service before.

So, are you ready?

Yes, we have been preparing. Yes, we will be ready with all the logistical elements, bells and whistles. But that is not what is going to change people’s lives when they walk through our doors. Did you hear that???? Fancy lights, great music and awesome talent will not change people’s lives. What will change their lives is pure, honest and sincerely authentic love. So, are you ready? How will we love our visitors? I am challenged today more than ever to be on my knees asking God to make me salt and light; to show Himself in all His glory through each and every one of us; to fill us so full of His love that we ooze compassion and excitement; to be so real through us that our guests will leave challenged to imagine their lives with Christ in it. What a gift.

So - -are you ready?

P.S.
OK - - 1,000 Blue sheets just ran crinkle free. I’m printing 500 more on white paper which are about 3/4 of the way through printing. I just have to. It’s only paper. Who cares if it’s blue? I don’t like colored paper anyway.

- - hang on - - let me go check…

Nope, no cast offs (except for the one I messed up pulling it off the copier).

I hope some crinkled up misfit gets one of the white ones and thinks it’s special - just for them.

1. putting a full blown 2 side, full color insert in the newspaper is peanuts in comparison to one, itty, bitty, teeny, tiny 2 x 7″ black and white ad in the local section.
2. i costs a boat load of money to put one little sticky note on the cover of the sunday paper… but it’s still a better deal than that one lonely little ad.
3. i now know how to re-set the frequency on our sennheiser wireless units (i thought i already knew that - i’m sure i should have already known that).
4. my beloved wordpress can, at times, be completely evil…
5. one of our click tracks for imagine christmas has the click in both sides of the track… hmmmmmm. how shall i fix that?
6. if the stage lights stick - try the other wall dimmer. that will work. (after dancing with those lights for this long you’d think i would have figured that out sooner too).
7. time warner cable’s channel 4 telephone number. the phone number that alluded me for a full week - - took me 2 minutes to find today. go figure.
8. the intelix box in the middle of the stage all these years was waaaaaay too easy of a fix for me to just be figuring it out now.
9. 9+6=15; 425-1375≠a postive number; (2+4+1)-2=5; (oi! math… bluchk!!!)
10. imagine christmas is going to be awesome!!! tell everyone you know!!!!!!!! invite a friend, a co-worker, a neighbor!!! (i’d love to tell you to invite them through therockchrismas.com, and that you can even go there to check out the podcast of the first message in our Imagine Christmas series - - but alas… see #4. maybe tomorrow.)

468 Hours and 2 Minutes till Imagine Christmas… tic - toc - tic - toc… You can find more amazing numbers at therockchristmas.com… check it out.

Kem Meyer introduced this guy’s blog a few months ago.  he made my must read list by his second post.  Now he’s up to 6 and it drives me nuts that he doesn’t blog more.

So, start your day with a good laugh and go read his post about having text and our textual relations (yes, it is exactly what it sounds like).  Not only is it funny - it’s spot on.

BTW - might as well read the other 5 posts too.  They’re worth it.  Start with 1 - it’s name is blog so you know what he’s trying to do.

You’re welcome.

(oh, yeah.  kid warning - - you’re gonna find a few cuss words here… )

my brother, jesse…

fire fighter, mechanical whiz, soldier, brother… hero.

i am so thankful i got to share a turkey, tag team a big ‘ol pile of wood and stay up way too late talking to him.  i am a proud sister.   ya’ll please pray for him - he goes back to baghdad on friday.

these are my favorite….

the ones who know how to turn…

black
burgandy
red
orange
and watermelon (in the brightest most shocking hue of you have ever seen)

- - - all at the same time - - -

oh, how i want to know how to paint! and - - we need to plant a few hardwoods in wilmington. can someone please get right on that?

i would…

1. start a band, find our own style and write and play and sing songs that are all our own -  inspired by our own observations of life and god
2. go to school, major in graphic design and minor in business management
3. learn as many instruments as i want, take voice lessons, write and learn to paint
4. go to costa rica with ernie and cam for a year and learn spanish
5. buy a vacation home while we are in costa rica (with lots of acres and a coffee farm on it) so we can sell coffee, rent it to vacationers and go back whenever we want
6. bring my entire media team to c3 with us next year
7. teach basic design and blogging classes at GAFA for free
   
8. update my entire house… floors, cabinets, walls, furniture. all of it - - - gutted.
9. hire someone to clean my house every week
10. buy all good food and eat as healthy as i want without worrying about how much it costs
11. learn to surf
12. bring in a professional sound guy to teach me and my team everything he knows
13. buy a place for my dad and somehow persuade him to move down here and just start all over
14. send ernie to the school of his choice to get the degree of his choice to pursue the career of his dreams
15. buy what we need at The ROCK to do what we gotta do… all new lights, sound, sanctuary redesign, video - all of it…   right out of my own pocket… oh my goodness  - - that would be so stinkin’ cool.

what would you do if you could?

trees sopped in monet paint
hung against an ansel sky
van gogh elements
blow wildly across picasso lines

profit in drought
necessity in harshness
nothing is fully alive
as when it has died

adversity blooms in celebration
death desires a joyful dance
passion releases a hue unrestrained
purpose, in burning brilliance

change as certain as god unchanging
immortal life finds repose
a pause to re-purpose
tomorrow a new masterpiece to compose

i have been meaning to blog this story for too long.  i have to get it down before it leaves my brain forever.  this is my new cameron story from the county fair this year.

we were leaving the fair walking back to the car in the dark just chatting about this and that when cam said,  “hey, mom?” (he starts every conversation this way these days.  doesn’t matter how many conversations we’ve had in the past 30 seconds.  if it is a new topic, he starts off, hey mom?)  Anyway….

“hey mom?”

“yes.”

“did you know that steffan has already had lots of ex-girlfriends?”

“i thought you actually had to have a girlfriend before you could have an ex-girlfriend.”

“mom.”  eyes rolled with that duuuhhh look on his face.  “do you even know what an ex-girlfriend is?”

somehow i managed to stop my adult logic somewhere in the thin space between the tip of my tongue and my front teeth.  i reconsidered my first response in favor of… “what?”

“an ex-girlfriend is a girlfriend you don’t kiss!”

“ooooooh.”

(of course it is.   i really couldn’t argue.)

my mac has been really sluggish lately. i didn’t really know what the issue was until tonight.  i found out that i only had 50 mb of space left on my hard drive….

and, what happens when a hard drive gets too full? well - - everytime i would ask it to do something it kept spinning it’s wheels trying to figure out what in the world it would rearrange in order to squeeze in one more task.   simple things like opening a window or running spell check took - - F O R E V E R -  if they happened at all. i had no idea i had pushed poor old mac so hard. my ever-dependable, always faithful, mr. resilient was willing… but he just couldn’t get it done.   i was beginning to think it might be some big hairy scary issue… like bad hardware or a corrupted operating system or something awful. come to find out i just wasn’t paying attention. today mac gave up the crux of the problem very simply…

“my scratch disk is full.”

ooooooh! is that all????

so, it took be about 1 minute to dump about 5.5 gb worth of information i had backed up earlier. now he’s back to his perky self. ready, willing AND able to go to work.

i don’t need to spell out the personal parallel here, do i? ya’ll are pretty smart. let’s all just take a minute.  can we? not yet?  [[sigh]].  ok - but i’m not making any spell check promises until i get that minute.

This book just moved to the top of my “want to read” list and thus makes my Christmas list. This book has kept popping up on my radar… but I never read what it was about until this morning. Here is an exerpt from deadlyviper.org (which is a fabulously awesome site to look at, by the way).

“Deadly Viper is an initiative dedicated to beginning a strategic conversation on the issues of radical integrity and grace. Our focus is to develop leaders who are having intentional, transparent, and honest conversations about key character issues.

Deadly Viper is no-holds barred. It’s for the radical, risk taking, gutsy leaders who are kicking butt and taking names. Even if you’re in the middle of your finest hour, basking in a pool of success, there might be some personal integrity stuff you need to think about. It’s very possible your character weapons have dulled and your integrity muscles have become flabby and soft. And you haven’t even noticed.”

Sounds like it could hurt a little. Now I just gotta finish reading this big stack of wonderful books I bought with my birthday money this summer so I can make room for more! I’m about halfway there!