Who would you invite?

I saw a "top ten" list on the Dirty Jobs website and it gave me the idea for this. If you could invite ten people, living or dead, to a dinner party; who would you invite?

I'll start with my top ten, then you comment and let me know who yours would be.

In no particular order:

1. Henri Matise
2. Ronald Regan
3. Johnny Depp
4. Jesus
5. Abraham Lincoln
6. Art Buchwald
7. Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
8. Brother Yun (Read the book "The Heavenly Man")
9. Warren Buffet
10. Opa (my mothers dad)

Okay, your turn.

Someday

Someday I want my craft room to look like this - (only with more fabric, beads and embellishments instead of the art supplies)




and in that same house (dream) my office space will look like this -



Yes, in my dreams my house looks like the Pottery Barn catalog.

Because I Said So!

Did I really say that? I vowed as a kid to never say that to my kids. Famous last words. Now I've said it. Just yesterday in fact was the first time. In the 7 1/2 years we've had Amy, (she was one year old when we adopted her) I have managed to come up with a different answer, usually an explanation of some sorts. But yesterday, it finally came out.

Ack! I've become my parents.

Don't get me wrong, I love my parents. They are wonderful people, they have taught me a lot over the years, and I know I gave them a lot of grief over the years too. But when you are a kid you always think I'm going to be different than my parents were. I'm not going to have those same battles, I'm not going to say the same things.

But now it's out there. Will I say it again? Probably.

Authenticity

Are you being authentic? Are you being real? It is my hope that through this blog, the writing I do touches you in some way, and that you realize this is the real me. This is who I am. Not perfect (I never claim to be), not a best selling author (maybe someday?), sometimes not a good mother or person (hopefully these days are few and far between - but they do happen), but that I am being who I am called to be. It is on my heart to write and to share what I've learned about life - the good, the bad and even the ugly. And through all that I am trying to be authentic.

I looked up the definition of authentic and here is what I found:
Genuine, not false or copied, being trustworthy, original, the real thing, and real not fake. (Gee almost makes me feel like a bottle of Coke.)

So I hope through my writing I can convey things that are real, sometimes silly and not always serious, because that would just be emotional overload. And if it impacts you, let me know. Comments are always welcome.

**Edited** I had to add a link to this specific blog:
http://babybloomr.com/?p=282
She writes some amazing things. Some of it you may agree with, some of it you may not. But it is a great example of someone else who is being authentic.

Read These

It never ceases to amaze me what you can find on the internet. If you're not careful you can spend hours in front of that screen and never leave. But this will be a short post. Check out the list to the right "Read These Blogs". I have been reading some of these today and each one has reached me in a different way. But they are all so amazing. Hope you enjoy them too.

Who's right?

I read this in another blog post this morning "When did we decide the church should dictate, control, or mandate the direction of our culture?" (http://www.leadingsmart.com/leadingsmart/2008/07/another-boycott.html) and thought who are we to say that we have it all "right" and everyone else is wrong?

I was having a conversation about something similar to this with my 8 year old the other day. She was questioning why other people call things by something different than what we do. In fact the specific item in question was a tortilla. In her mind anyway, that's what it was. In a classmates mind it was called something else. And my daughter just kept insisting that this classmate was wrong, despite how many different ways I was trying to explain it. Looking back on it now, it's pretty funny to me that we spent almost fifteen minutes discussing the difference between a tortilla and flat bread, only to come to the conclusion that it was the same thing.

But we all are guilty of doing this with our opinions, views and thoughts too many times. We think we are always right, that our rules are the ones that everyone should live by and that everyone else is wrong. If things don't go our way then we get upset, or we pout, or we retaliate. In some cases we even cut off those that need us the most.

We have to realize that there are many different personalities, views, backgrounds and experiences that go into making up a person and our society. We can not be so black and white in our judgments. The only authority that can do that (in my opinion) is God. You on the other hand may think differently. We have to accept the fact that there are gray areas, that there are times we will disagree, and that we are not all clones of one another. Otherwise we run the risk of alienating everyone and finding ourselves in a very lonely place.

We have to live our lives as we are called to live them. We don't have to condone a behavior that we disagree with, but we also don't have to force feed our views on someone else. We need to share with others in a loving and non-judgmental way, and lead by example. Then maybe people will be willing to listen and follow what we have to say.