Here’s three quick thoughts while I am on my hiatus:

#1 - 75% of bathrooms on our trip did not have a hook for the purse in the bathroom stall. Strike #1 on the purse. And this particular purse with the drawstring top and the awkward to close snap does not make it easy to find keys in the bottom of said purse. Strike #2 for the purse. (This life change experiment is not going well.)

#2 - Dropped Caleb off. It was a little emotional, but we survived. This morning I read his blog and thought that if I had learned what he learned yesterday (at the age of 18 ) instead of getting to maybe 38 before I learned it, that a lot of pain and wasted effort would have been eliminated from my life. Read his blog here.

#3 Here are my results from the “personality” test. I am a contemplative, ascetic. Which I think is funny, because this sounds a lot like a person who joins a convent, and I told my dad that he could count on two things in my life. #1 I would never join the army and #2 that I would never join a convent. Now I just sit around and think, “Why won’t everyone just leave me alone, so I can go pray?”

Contemplative - Loving God through Adoration:
These Christians seek to love God with the purest, deepest, and brightest love imaginable. They want nothing more than some privacy and quiet to gaze upon the face of their heavenly Lover and give all of themselves to God.

Ascetic - Loving God in Solitude and Simplicity:
Ascetics want nothing more than to be left alone in prayer. Let there be nothing to distract them–no pictures, no loud music–and leave them alone to pray in silence and simplicity.

Going to take a small break for the next week or so as we send the boy off to college. Then I’m thinking about blogging on our identity in Christ. Got some ideas rolling around so hang on or comment as to what you think we should talk about.

Did you ever find personality quizzes in magazines? Ones that would tell you what kind of person you are by the colors you like, or what kind of priorities you have or what kind of person you should be looking for in a spouse?

I used to take all of them. A friend emailed me about a book she was reading that talked about how we are created in different ways and that those different personalities worship/reach God in nine different way. I was able to peg myself pretty quick. Below you will find the listing of the different types and then a link to the on-line “quiz”. Later on in the comments, I’ll tell you what I scored. See if you can peg yourself.

Sacred Pathways: Worship Style Assessment - Nine Spiritual Temperaments

Naturalist, ..they learn more from watching an ant colony than reading a book or listening to a sermon… ” they may find they enjoy parables and Psalms most in the Bible.
Sensate, they want worship to be filled with sights, smells, architecture, classical music, formal language, likely to be moved to tears at Handel’s Messiah
Traditionalist, they enjoy historical dimensions of faith, ritual, symbols, sacraments, and sacrifice, regular church attendance. They might find unstructured things confusing or unfulfilling.
Ascetics, they want to be left alone to pray. Solitude and simplicity. They get uncomfortable if they can not “listen to the quiet”.
Activist, they love God through justice, standing against evil, truth equals confrontation.
Caregivers, love by serving, what might wear someone else down charges the caregiver. IE: Mother Theresa
Enthusiasts, loving God through mystery and celebration. They don’t want to just know concepts they want to be moved by them.
Contemplatives, loving God through Adoration, loving the divine romance
Intellectuals, live in a world of concepts, likely to be found studying.

Free On-Line Quiz to determine your worship temperament.

I have decided to shake things up in my life. This monumental decision will contradict everything I have done in the past 44 years.

I am going to try to carry a purse.

I hate purses. My stance has been they are bulky awkward and a pain in the neck (sometimes literally) to carry around. Besides they are just way too girly for me. (Did you know that there are 494 videos on YouTube called “What’s in my purse?” and the vast majority are over 8 minutes long! Ladies, you just don’t need that much stuff!) Even the diaper bag pushed it a bit. I would look at the kid and try to decide how long my errands would take compared to the holding power of the diaper that he or she was currently wearing.

My keys, driver’s license and money used to all fit neatly into a little “wallet” and I was off. But now I’ve got the cell phone and the key fobs for the car doors. And somehow my pockets don’t seem to be as big as they used to, which has nothing to do with the fact that I also seem to be growing out of my pants. (Strange, I thought all that ended with puberty. Anybody want a brownie or peach pie while we try to figure out that one?)

So I’m headed home now. UPS was scheduled to deliver it to my house today. Sounds like a good place to enter some scripture passage about the earth trembling and mountains shaking, but the LORD is steadfast and firm.

We’ll see how long this lasts or if I just need bigger pockets

Wrestling with all kinds of questions this week; none of them fun or pleasant.

And while I wrestle with the flesh, I know in the back of my mind that I have to get back to the lessons that I’ve been in the process of learning over the past seven months. Chiefly this…no matter the circumstances, the feelings, the thoughts…if I can just get with Jesus, I can rest in his peace and protection.

But the noise of my personal feelings and the noise of living and operating in a fallen world, and the chaos of sin works so hard to lock me out of the presence of Jesus. But he is faithful when we cry out to him. So last night as I asked him how I was supposed to get to that safe place with him, these lyrics came to my mind.

I am a garden enclosed
A locked garden
Here where it is you and me alone
You hedge me in
I am your resting place
Christ in me - the hope of glory
So come into your garden

So back to the entry from Jan. 29 and I feel better this morning. Not that the problems are better or have disappeared, but I have found security in the locked garden.

Here’s the link to hear the song quoted above.

If these are not THE Last Days, they are your last days.

Psalm 90:12

Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 39:4-7

“Show me, O LORD, my life’s end
and the number of my days;
let me know how fleeting is my life.
You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Each man’s life is but a breath.
Selah
Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro:
He bustles about, but only in vain;
he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it.
“But now, Lord, what do I look for?
My hope is in you.

Psalm 90:10

The length of our days is seventy years—
or eighty, if we have the strength;
yet their span is but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

Kelsey Bohlender - Raising whole hearted kids in an anti-christ generation

Why is there a crisis of youth falling away from the church? Because the faith of their fathers has not become personal.

Young people want to marvel (because we were created to marvel at the amazing God who created us). We must steward our children’s hearts.

In the days of Josiah, the people of God didn’t even know there was a book. You must make scripture come alive and be relevent to children. We have many opportunities to outsource our children’s spiritual lives to others. (Sunday school teachers, the church, camps, programs, etc.) We must tell them the story of God (in the Bible and in our own lives) with accuracy and urgency.

Speak of the hand of God in our own personal lives. Teach them to ask God for their own stories in him. Teach them to declare everyday who they are in him.

Alan Hood -

The Father has fullness of joy over your life.

When you know the hour, you can sacrifice greatly.

David Sliker -

A pre-trib rapture is the greatest disconnect from God’s heart.

When we cry out to God, “Choose me, Choose me, Choose me.” Are we really ready for what that means? Because when God picks a man or woman, they are violently opposed by the world and frequently by the religious. (John 15:18-20, John 17:13-15, 1 John 3:12-14)But the glory is that a friend is only in this for love.

The church will be on earth in the tribulation, because God is going to do the greatest miracle - when all hell breaks loose on the church, belivers will stand with burning love for Jesus!

Lou Engle -

Even half-hearted, boring prayer begins to accumulate - and then to rumble!

Even if Nebuchadnezzer were elected president, the prayers of Daniel can change him.

The devil Hates the deliverers who are coming.

“Pornography is a demonic worship issue.”

Romans 1:23 - “they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.”