that I’m having computer issues again? (I’d link back to the spring post when I spent a nary fortune on this stupid laptop and got completely screwed in the deal, but if you understood how slow my laptop is, you wouldn’t subject me to something as trivial as linking.)

I’ve tried to go into my startup applications list and to eliminate some of the nightmare programs that are running in the background all.the.time, but my computer would like to speak to the manager and doesn’t seem to understand that I AM THE DOGGONE MANAGER. Seriously. If I weren’t intimately aware of what a pain it is to rely on the library for the internet, this dear Dell laptop would have long since sailed right through the patio window.

So, if there is anyone out there who can offer advice, or who might have a word with my not-so-inspiring Inspiron and inform it that I am, indeed, as it were, the ADMINISTRATOR, and that should I so choose to click on some options it needs to LET ME DOGGONE IT, I would greatly appreciate a stern voice and a swift hand.

In the meantime, if you’re awaiting email from me, it might take awhile as Yahoo has joined in the fun and refuses to let me delete, move or start a new email. It’s such a remarkable pain.

Or maybe it’s just trying to convince me to finish my NaNo novel already. Do you suppose it knows I use email to procrastinate? Hmmm…

So yesterday was Part I of the two-part drive to O-hi-O to meet up with LM’s grandparents. It’s really sweet of them to meet me halfway and take him back to Pittsburgh so he can spend the holiday with his dad.

En route, I decided LM and I could at least take advantage of the time and write our Christmas letter. It’s lame but has a certain cuteness to it (sorta. Work with me here.) The whole time we’re writing it, LM keeps adding in little jokes about learning to dance the Tango. I’d say, “Okay, so now we need your goals for 2008.” Without missing a beat, he’d say slowly as if he were writing it down, “LM intends to learn to dance the Tango.” Or, I’d say, “What other interests do you have besides reading, trumpet, Star Wars and the like?” and he’d say, “You mean, other than the Tango?” Maybe you had to be there, but it really was funny. It was all in his timing and how he kept working it in.

When we finished with the tango, I mean, the Christmas letter, LM resumed reading his Tom Clancy Novel, “Red Rabbit”. He says, “You know, Mom, it wasn’t until just this last time when I started reading again that I realized why Clancy named the novel “Red Rabbit”.” (Having absolutely no idea what Clancy’s intentions were or what the novel is even about, I asked for the reason. “Well, ‘rabbit’ is code for a defector and ‘red’ is a communist symbol. The novel is about a Russian defector.”

Um, yeah, okay, I knew all that.

A few miles further down the road, LM asked me what the Greek god, Apollo, was a god of. “LM, I honestly have no idea. I know I should know, but I had a horrible time with mythology. For some reason, I want to say he’s a god of war, but I might not even be close on that one.”

“I think you might be wrong, Mom. I think he’s the god of peace. I mean, think of the word ‘apologetic’. That’s a word about peace and compromise, not about war and I think it comes from ‘Apollo’.”

Um, yeah, okay, right, wrong or otherwise, you can’t say the kid doesn’t make a sound argument.

“Mom? What does KGB stand for?”

“Russian Secret Service.”

“Yeah, I know that, but what does K. G. B. stand for?”

“Oh, um, something in Russian?”

“What does U.S.S.R. stand for?”

“United States of the Soviet Republic?” I totally guessed. I realize I’m way off. History was not my strong subject.

“Mom, do you know anything?”

“LM, it would appear I do not.”

I suck at it. I suddenly don’t know what to say. I forget everything. I’m inarticulate. I’m flummoxed. I’m struck dumb. And stupid. I cannot support my point with any credible evidence or data.

I cannot share the gospel well.

In particular, I have an unsaved friend who weighs heavily on my heart. He knows where I stand spiritually and we’ve always allowed for the difference. But lately I’ve been trying to press the situation, to get to the heart of his belief of lack thereof. But I go about it all wrong.

For example, we get into the conversation easily enough. He’ll allow me a certain amount of rope and then he’ll promptly let me hang myself with it. Tonight I spoke about how I hope that some day he marries. And he readily admitted that he has baggage and stated that he just isn’t ready to let go of it yet.

Ah ha! I thought, an opportunity!

And so I spoke about how he doesn’t have to bear that baggage, he can hand it over to someone else. And he knew, of course, exactly the WHOM to which I was referring, and said that no, he feels it’s his to bear…blah, blah, blah.

And so we got talking about God and specifically to the heart of what it is that he believes or doesn’t believe. In a nutshell, he said, “I think I’m a fairly compassionate individual and I would never willingly condemn someone to the hell as it’s described, why would a being with infinite compassion condemn nations of people to hell then?”

I, uh, I mean, um….well, it’s like this…you see, there’s God….well, I mean….

Yeah. Great response, Ames.

And he talks about how it’s really a power trip for this God to want everyone to worship him and that the churches are really just brain washing all of us believers…

And I talk about how God created the Garden of Eden to be perfect and for us to be in perfect fellowship with him, but because of the right to free will, (which inherently gives us a choice) we made the wrong choice. And I spoke about how having the ability to choose means there have to be choices, and God is one of the choices.

Blah, blah, gobblygook blah.

I make no sense. I have no argument. I see his point. It actually makes sense. And I have nothing with which to refute it. So I try to get on solid ground. Remember all that education about how to share the gospel. People are not good enough, we must need God’s gift of salvation.

And so I ask him about heaven. Well, he doesn’t really see heaven like some people do, and frankly, if it’s some big party that only a few get invited to, then he’ll be damned (literally) if he’s going to give in to that power trip just cause the big man himself says it needs to be so.

Yeah, well. Okay. Point taken.

But he doesn’t really believe in hell either. I mean, again, loving God? Condemning people for eternity? Doesn’t make sense to him.

And now that he mentions it, to me either.

I know, I can hear my Christian critics saying “the devil is trying to keep you from saving this man! He’s trying to turn even YOU against God.”

But yet, I have such a hard time sometimes. I believe, I do, but I can’t really make it make rational sense all the time. To me, the big bang theory is just a little too hokey. But what if I thought it actually made a bit of sense? Then where would my faith be?

I know I can’t make this man believe. I know that. I also know that I’m ill-prepared to even try. But when the sound argument comes back at me, I just find myself sitting down and admitting defeat and saying, “You know, I just don’t know.”

But that doesn’t get the boy any closer to God.

It doesn’t get me any closer, either.

I fear that I turn more people away from faith than to it. Suggestions? Help? Ideas?

I turned on the games after church today. LM camped out in the living room with me albeit with a laptop in hand. When the first game started, LM demonstrated his growing football knowledge by reading the team abbreviations on the score graphic. “So this is the New York Giants and the Detriot….?” I waited to see if he would figure out “Lions”.

“Seahawks?”

“LM, is Detroit anywhere near a SEA?!”

“I don’t know. I have no idea where Detroit is.”

Well, one step forward, fourteen steps back.

This week the focus shifts from football back to geography. SP, wanna jump in here?

LM spent the night and all of Saturday at my sis’s house last weekend. Tonight, we went for dinner and a movie and he’s bunking with the kids again. When I called him downstairs to say goodnight before I left to come home, he said, “Thanks for coming tonight, Mom.”

Um, where exactly does this boy live? (And if he lives at their house, how come I just spent $100 on groceries for the week?)

If you remember, LM and I do “H.A.L.T.” every night at dinner. It’s our highs and lows and thanks for the day. I already spoke about the good news on my certification for this week. My low for the week would 3 of the last 4 sub days. From the day I subbed in a second grade, first grade and Kindergarten all in the same day to the second grade MONSTERS I had yesterday, it’s been an exhausting week. My high? Today’s class of third graders. I can’t even tell you the 100 ways in which they were remarkable. They were just incredibly awesome and I had the opportunity to tell the teacher so at the end of the day.

And my thanks? That today was payday but better yet was that I won my battle with the cable company, and since I didn’t have that bill to pay this month I stocked up at the grocery store. (This morning, our fridge literally held condiments, filtered water, lettuce, an egg and one can of Pepsi.)

How about you? What are you highs, lows and thanks for the day or the week?

I’ve talked about my move and how all the pieces just fell into place at the perfect time to make it happen. I’ve talked about how perfect it was that I held a teaching degree and that I feel so comfortable in the classroom because if I weren’t substitute teaching, we’d be starving and living in my car. I’ve talked about how just putting my faith in God’s plan for my life has truly made all the difference.

And yet, I still have my moments when I panic. (What can I say, I’m a slow learner.)

I can still hear my ex mother-in-law telling me years and years ago to never let my teaching certificate expire (she had made that mistake and had kicked herself for years over it.) And for years I kept up with it. But trying to remember exactly what year your teaching certificate needs to be renewed and then remembering to do so after June 30th but before July 31st of that year (by sending it back to Illinois to the regional office you were once affiliated with) somehow slipped my mind in ’05. And my Illinois teaching certificate expired two years ago. Which didn’t matter until recently when my heart started to skip a beat at the idea of teaching on a more permanent basis.

Especially a week ago. When I subbed in my sister’s school district – which I love – and the very pregnant teacher I subbed for asked after she watched me manage her class for the day (she was right outside the door doing assessments with the kids) if I’d be interested in her maternity leave long-term sub position. YES YES YES. But she was concerned about my certification. Because her principal is actually selecting the sub and she wants someone certified. Which I am, or I was, and I will be again, but…

And today, the substitute caller for her district spoke with me and said the principal had asked her about my certification (which means the teacher did indeed recommend me to her principal, who is now considering me for the position) and I tried to explain but this woman said, ‘but you’ll have it soon?’ and I had to say I really didn’t think ‘soon’ was the right word, exactly…

But it had occurred to me (which is my way of saying God worked through me to make me realize) that perhaps I should contact the state of Illinois and find out what the requirements would be to get my license renewed again because perhaps that might make it easier for the state of Michigan to then certify me. It was a shot, anyway, and so I sent off an email asking. And a reply came back today that said that all I needed to do was register it. And I was provided with an online link to register my certificate. And I clicked and typed and clicked and typed and entered in my debit card info and $25 and ten minutes later, I hold verifiable proof that I am registered and renewed in the state of Illinois.

One further in my celebratory dance, I reviewed the information I have ready to go to the state of Michigan (I’m just waiting my official transcripts) and it says, “Candidates for the Provisional certificate must pass the appropriate Michigan Test for Teacher Certification (MTTC). However, if the applicant holds a valid out-of-state certificate and meets all requirements for the Michigan Provisional certificate except for the MTTC, a 1-year Temporary Teacher Employment Authorization will automatically be issued as part of the application process.”

Now, I still have to wait to see if I meet all the requirements. And I still have to put together my information to give to the school principal on Friday. And I still have to pray that out of all the candidates, she chooses me.

But if all that comes together, I could have a long-term sub position very very soon, and hopefully get my foot in the door in a very big way with the principal and teachers of a building and district I would be ever-so-happy to teach in on a permanent basis.

If it doesn’t come together, I know without a doubt that God has something better in store for me. But at least right now, tonight, I can rest assured that I am so much closer to having that teaching certificate than I ever thought I could be right now.

God is soooooo good to me! (to you, too!)

just asked me (while he’s writing his NaNo story – he has 2,014 words to date!), “Hey Mom? How do you spell ‘ushin’?” I gave him that motherly blank stare that meant I’m going to need more to go on that just that. “You know,” he explained, “when two things happen simultaneously?”

Oooooohhhhh, you mean UNISON.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

This kid cracks.me.up.

(you can tell he’s a reader, can’t you? He actually does this quite often. He knows what the word looks like and what it means but he hasn’t heard it spoken enough to know how it’s pronounced. I’ll try to share these little gems when they come up as they often give me quite a good natured chuckle!)

No matter how good the class was last week, no matter how nice the women are, no matter the church is not two miles from the house, I am never excited about going to my Wednesday night Bible study. But every week, every single week, I am stopped dead and captivated by the speaker, no, not the speaker, by the message. We are doing a Beth Moore study called “Living Beyond Yourself: Exploring the Fruit of the Spriti”. We are only on the third video and have started exploring the actual Fruit of the Spirit” (Gal 5:22-23, ” The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Against such things there is no law.”)

Now I know, some of you are ready to stop reading. Hang with me. Just let it fall across your heart like it did mine tonight.

Tonight, in the video, Beth Moore discussed love and with that (and my paraphrasing will not begin to do her message justice) the one obstacle that prevents us from truly loving all and being loving to everyone and that is rejection. She reminded us all of the rejection scars we still wear on our hearts, how the wound of a past rejection left a void in our life that we filled with something (or some one) that we would not have chosen if we were in our right mind. She reminded us of the lengths some of us have gone through to fill that vacancy, or perhaps the continual chain of attempts we have made to fill such vacancies (i.e. the love of my life broke up with me, so I hooked up with some other man and ended up preganant; the man left when the baby came so I started drinking…) We tend to believe that we must either recover the rejected (get whatever it was back – the man, the job, the child) or we must reject what rejected us (to get revenge).

And while she spoke on all of this, she shared passages of Scripture that remind us that Christ was rejected (and still is! “The entrance test to hell is to simply reject Christ”) but that didn’t seem to make the wounds I carry feel any less. To know that in some way I can relate to some small portion of Christ’s sufferings does not make me feel any better about my own suffering.

But then Beth Moore reminded us of the Sovereignty of God; that not only does God have a plan for our lives (my life verse, Jer 29:11) but that he has a plan for the REJECTION in our life. He uses the rejection. Sometimes he appoints rejection so that we don’t for less than the best He has in store for us. (Think back, ever get upset over a rejection but now you can say that was a good thing it happened?) She reminded us also of the Supremacy of God; that God can handle everything – including our rejection.

She made the point that if we had never known what it was like to be rejected, how could we truly embrace what it means to be chosen?

We concluded the night by reading I Cor 13:8, “Love never fails”. Beth spoke to the exact thoughts arising in my head, “yes, maybe God’s love never fails, but I have loved someone before and it was not enough. My love has failed.”

And then she translated “fails”. The Greek translation (ekpipto) means: “to drop away, to fall (away or off). And there was an incredible visual scene they played out that shows us that every time we have loved and the recipient of our love let our love drop, or rejected our love completely, our love did not fail…it did not drop away…it never hit the ground….while it may not have been caught by the one we intended,

it was caught by God.

And He is holding onto it for us, and will give it back to us in His glorious kingdom.

Not only did I realize tonight that my wounds from past rejection will forever taint my life (and not in a good way) if I do not turn them over to God; not only did I realize that God has used those rejections for my own good; not only did I realize that God has the power and the desire to take away the pain of those wounds; but that every time I thought my love failed in the past, it went to God. He caught it. My love has never been lost on anyone, it has always gone to God. And He is holding it like a treasure and will return it to me when I am in His presence.

I can say little more tonight than an AMEN and a heartfelt Thank You God.

So a few weeks ago I mentioned to J (LM’s dad) that LM had this Friday off of school. I had thought we might go visit grandparents in Illinois, but J thought maybe he would come for a visit. Since I moved his boy 12 hours away, I thought it only fair that I give him first dibs. I offered the apartment (I would stay with my sis) and my car and anything else he needed for his weekend here. Didn’t hear another word. Until a week ago when LM’s grandpa called to ‘finalize the plans to get LM to Pittsburgh’. Um, wha? It would seem that J never actually looked into flying, just decided we could ALL spend 12 hours on the road (and $120 in gas) so he could see LM for three days. So I spent Thursday substitute teaching and then flew home to shove stuff in the car (including the dog) and drove 3 hours one way to meet up with the g’parents and exchange the boy. And then I drove 3 hours back home. And then I got up early to sub again on Friday. It’s a good thing I was subbing at George’s school and that he was so darn cute to see throughout the day (no, he wasn’t in the class I had) as it helped to keep me happy when I was otherwise tired and beat.

So I basically did little more than collapse on Friday night.

Other than try to check my email and check for sub assignments for this coming week. Only I couldn’t because LM TOOK THE WIRELESS CARD. Not that he needed it, he just forgot to leave it behind when he got into Nana’s car. So I can’t blog. I can’t check for sub jobs. I can’t balance the check book. I can’t email. I can’t change my fantasy team lineup.

Yesterday I actually sat down and wrote about 6000 words to get caught up on Nano. Even though LM took the notebook with my notes in it. (Have I mentioned his short life span?) And I made thank you notes for George’s birthday party (since I made the invites, I wanted him to have matching thank you’s). And I cleaned out the calcium and lime deposits in the dishwasher that have caused it to leave GUNK on all our dishes for the past two months.

And today I earned a jewel in my heavenly crown (at least I better have!) I did not stay home and watch the biggest game of the year (Pats v. Colts for those of you living in a cave). I drove to Ohio again to pick up my dearly beloved son. And I sat and had dinner with my out-laws at Bob Evans. And I drove home listening to Larry the Cable Guy (okay not really, but it sure sounded like him) announce the Pats v. Colts game on the radio. And I was a nervous wreck the whole time (and not just because I was afraid the car would break down in Indiana and no one would help me since I was wearing a Pats jersey) but because I needed about a million points from Brady and Moss to make up for my wretched defense choice (um, 44-0 is going to leave me with negative defense points. Thanks Denver.) But I’m so thrilled that the Pats pulled off the big win and that LM had a great weekend with his grandparents.

But I’m 8000 into Nano, my boy is home safe, my Pats are 9-0 and I have internet access once again so I can keep tabs on sub openings.

Life is indeed good.