Two weeks ago we went on a holiday to the Gold Coast. While there we went to a TimeZone [a game arcade place] and there was one of those pain-in-the-butt claw machines full of Nintendo characters. Well, Luigi from Mario Bros is Jasons fav all time game character. Followed closely by Mario. Jason wanted one of those toys SOOOOOOO bad that he prayed earnestly to God that he would get one from the machine that day.
Well he didn't win one, John didn't win one for him, and i couldn't win one. But Rose, using her own money, won him not only a Luigi, but a Mario as well.
That was a great lesson for Jason, and i hope he remembers it!
If we ask God for something, he will answer. He knows the desires of our hearts and wants us to be happy. And he usualy doesn't answer in the way we think he will, and if his answer is in our favour, more abundantly than we expect.

I'm sure God was smiling on this face :o)

I was conversing with a friend via e-mail earlier today, and we got onto the topic of immaturity in me.
I responded with this....

"I know people see me as immature and/or annoying and that's perfectly ok with me. I don't really have any people skills and i find that unless i'm being "funny and silly", hence amusing people, then i have nothing valuable or worthwhile to offer the table. It clouds my lack of knowledge, conversation skills, and intelligence. It's a long standing habit now.I think John is the only person who has ever seen the "real" me.I know that sounds dumb but that's why i find it difficult to believe it when awesome people like Glenda say that everyone loves me.

I've never said or written any of that down before.I've never actualy acknowledged it. It actualy hurt to say it, a lot!
How bizarre
I better go and eat something, drink something, or create more clutter to bury that emotion back into huh? :o)"

I don't even know why i said all that to this person. But i had such an outpouring of emotion. I cried and cried and it probably took me half an hour to write that little bit. [They haven't responded to that e-mail yet]
It was like God had opened a can of worms inside me and i needed to get it out in order to deal with it. But now i feel a desperation to eat something or quickly get into a movie [or write a blog post] so i don't have to think about it.
I appreciate it when God points out that something in me needs to change. But this is different somehow and i don't think i'm ready to look at it.

My mum died about 10 years ago, and i've been angry with her ever since, to a certain degree. I know i shouldn't feel the way i have, but i sorta can't help it, or more to the point, didn't want to address it.
At the moment, the women's group in our church is doing a study on the "mother heart". And in part of the study, we were asked " What did our mother do for us, that we are thankful for?" Well that was a bit in-your-face for me. I've been thankful for her giving me life, raising me, feeding me, yadda yadda. But this was different. What one thing are we thankful for?

Well, it's no secret that i'm a bit odd. Anyone who knows me will tell you that. I've always been odd and i've never seen things quite like anyone else does.
My mum has always been aware of my oddness and embraced it. When i would come home from school crying, because i just didn't fit in anywhere, Mum told me that everyone else was missing out by not being my friend. I never quite 100% believed that [still don't], but it was awesome that 1 person accepted me for who i was, and she actually enjoyed my company. She made me feel like, as long as she appreciated me for who i was, everyone else could go jump!
Mum made it ok for me to be weird. She taught me that being myself, being true to myself, was important.
Now i'm 38 and still the odd one, but i'm comfortable with that. I accept that i'll never fit in anywhere. If i haven't by now, i'm never gonna! And it's ok :o)
It's been the story of my life, and once i realised that it was the one thing that i am extremely thankful to mum for, my heart toward her started to soften.
I am grateful to mum for giving birth to me, raising me, feeding me etc. But i'm REALLY grateful for her teaching me that it's ok to just be me. That is a lesson that i keep learning from as i get older.....

I found this "secret" over at Post Secret and it has really inspired me to do the same thing, to random people and in random situations. So thank you to the person who sent this secret in, thanking the person who wrote it [eer yea] :o)

<---About 2 years ago we borrowed the DVD "Sponge bob goes prehistoric". Jason has every Sponge bob DVD as he adores Sponge bob and we don't get to see him on tele.
But when we found that he didn't have the mentioned DVD and borrowed it, for some reason i decided to illegally copy it.

I'm not into copying stuff as a rule. In fact i openly oppose it. DVDs are cheap enough these days so there's no reason to "steal" them.
The only reason I'm happy to burn a movie is if it can't be found to buy.

So i don't know why i decided it was a good idea to burn the Sponge bob DVD. Maybe i felt that we'd bought every other one so we deserved a freebie? I don't know. But this DVD haunted me! As soon as we burnt it i regretted it. So in my head i promised God that i will buy the DVD when i see it in a store.
So a couple of months goes by and i see it in K-Mart, but I'm kinda short on cash so maybe next time...
Then a while later i see it in BigW, but I'm in a hurry so maybe next time...
Then i see it again in K-Mart. I look at it, feel guilty, but walk away anyway.
Each time i feel more and more like crap when i walk away. The little voice in my heart says, "You made a promise..."
A couple of weeks ago Jason, Rose and I were in BigW. I saw the DVD and this time i couldn't leave it there so we bought it.
We have a lot of DVDs, but i gotta say that this one is now my prized one!

Isn't that a weird little story? lol

I have a few Christian themed T-shirts that i wear for what i call "token evangelism". I didn't wear any to work for the first 6 weeks as it's a close environment and i wanted people to see me as the relatively easy going, every day person i am rather than be afraid to speak to me at all because i look like a bible basher.
I wore my shirt with the above print a week ago. People were a little taken back by it and most tried to pretend they hadn't even seen it, even though i knew they had just read it [either that or a lot of people checked out my boobs carefully that day lol] And i came home happy to know that i'd let people know i was a Christian without a word being said about it.
Then i went back to wearing my usual one liner T-Shirts.
Today i wore the Christian shirt again. Just before the first break i said a little prayer in my head, "Please God, people should feel easy enough around me now. Let my shirt stir curiosity and let people feel comfortable and willing to bring up the subject of you and let me have the right words to answer them."
Then we went to our break and afterwards i moved to a new item to pack [Coz i was bored with the previous item. We do it a lot] Less than 5 minutes into it, the woman [about 21yo] next to me [who i've only spoken to briefly once before, and about the town tart] said to me, "Have you heard of Hillsong?" I said i had and i'd been there once. And she said " I grew up in Hillsong. My parents pushed that way of life onto me so much that now i just don't want anything to do with it." I said " What do you have the most problem with?" And she said "Well for starters, i just don't get the 10 commandments. They are impossible to keep." And i started with "Ok well that's where Jesus comes in......." And the lady packing behind me started listening in too, but tried not to look too obvious.

I was really surprised at how quickly that all happened. I'm still a bit taken back by it.
Thanks God, for the opportunity. That was awesome and i can see a few doors opening there! WooHooooooo!!!

Today i worked really hard. I moved the product faster than I've ever moved. I missed my second dose of pain killers for the day and i worked for 8 hours on my feet.
Now i am home. My feet hurt, my back hurts, my knees hurt, my fingers are numb and I'm tired...so tired.
But praise God i have a job, a good job with good, honest pay and I'm going back tomorrow to do it all again! Bring it on! *
*
Seriously...it's totally awesome! :o)