Looking Back: My Photographic Year in Review

my favorite houseguest!

Playa del Carmen

Taylor’s here!

Viva Mexico

Cowboy!

Tay is (nearly) 1!

Nate’s 3rd birthday

We went to Chick-fil-a :)

my birthday party

side trip to Laguna Beach!

Magical view

This rules!

Girls’ trip to Mexico!

My 29th birthday

Easter eggs – “because Jesus is alive!”

“Theresa and Debbie” at Buena Vista Social Club

Working in California :)

my best guy

on the go

Tia date

Just a tip.

Happy New Year!

I have to confess that I’m not that big on New Year’s Resolutions. But… someone may or may not have recently lumped me into the “pushing 30″ category in casual conversation, so I guess times are a-changing and this year I’m thinking about some resolutions. Among other things, I have resolved to read more, which I realize is terribly un-original, but work with me.

So I have to share something with you that is a carry-over from 2011. The Westminster book store is offering 50% off of their best-sellers of 2011. One of my FAVES is on there – so I had to let you know.

Enjoy!

Woo-hoo! SALE!

Let the waiting begin!

Friends, it’s upon us! Advent has begun!

I confess that it got away from me and I just pulled out my special advent book tonight – and as you can tell, I’m pretty fired up about it. I started using this book during advent a few years ago.

Click to buy Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus at WTSbooks.com

The first reading starts with a bang as George Whitefield reminds us of how our time and energy ought to be spent during this season (and every season really). Here’s a snippet just to whet your advent-appetite:

I entreat that your time may be thus spent; and if you are in company, let your time be spent in that conversation which profiteth: let it not be about your dressing, your plays, your profits, or your worldly concerns, but let it be the wonders of redeeming love. O tell, tell eachother what great things the Lord has done for your souls; declare unto one another how you were delivered from the hands of your common enemy, Satan, and how the Lord has brought your feet from the clay and has set them upon the rock of ages, the Lord Jesus Christ…So let Jesus be the subject, my brethren, of all your conversation.

from “The Observation of the Birth of Christ, the Duty of All Christians; or the True Way of Keeping Christmas” sermon by George Whitefield.

Happy waiting and celebrating!

I’m one in (two) million?

November is National Adoption Month – how will you celebrate?

I’ve spent 29 years thinking about adoption in one way or another, but in recent years, I’ve been exposed to more adoption stories that are not like my own. My adoption was a closed, domestic adoption through a private adoption agency. That was basically the norm in 1982 and I wouldn’t change anything about my adoption experience. But many people living adoption stories today have open adoptions, foster-to-adopt, or international adoptions (like my magical nephew, Nate).

Adoption can take many forms. That’s the beauty of it – and that’s one of the ways it so clearly reflects the gospel. No matter the complexity of the situation, there is hope in adoption. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy, but is hope always easy? Hope can be scary and messy and risky, but it also paves the way for more than all we ask or imagine.

It turns out that as of the 2000 US census, there were 2.1 million adopted “children” living in the US. I am so pleased and blessed to be counted as one in TWO million! But there are many more would-be adoptees that need our prayers, encouragement, and our action.

In this article, Ryan Bomberger of The Radiance Foundation points out:

In 2008, out of the 463,00 children in the foster care system, 111,225 are waiting for adoption, according to the most recent statistics from the Department of Health and Human Services. The Pew Research Institute reports that Evangelicals and Catholics make up 26.3% and 23.9%, respectfully, of the US adult population. Census Bureau data indicates this would amount to 117,751,128 adults. (I’m using the two largest religious affiliations to show how only a portion of our nation’s religious make-up can eradicate the orphan crisis here in the United States.) That’s 1058 adults for every single child that’s available for adoption through foster care—sounds like a pretty good ratio.

Here’s some more adoption information/resources you might enjoy:

Resources:

 

• Together for Adoption
• Our Mission: Together for Adoption exists to provide gospel-centered resources to mobilize the church for global orphan care.
• Gladney Center for Adoption

 

 

 

 

 

Woo Hoo! (5 obscure, good things about today)

Sometimes it’s the littlest things that can make a day. Here’s a list of what’s got me going at the moment:

• It’s the Lord’s Day – official soundtrack:  O Day of Rest and Gladness
• I just ordered an updated, personalized self-inking stamp with my return address on it for all my adorable correspondence. I even did some online digging and got it on sale! (I also changed my name to Susan Dillon and moved to Dallas, btw. Not really.)

I got it here: http://www.thepaperclique.com/gillian.html — You should get one too and become my pen pal!

Now soliciting pen pals

• Today, the barista in the Starbucks drive-through handed me my dirty chai and said “Here you go, honey” – in the most endearing (strictly platonic and friendly) way – it warmed my heart and I may have giggled aloud as I exited the parking lot.

• My mums are blooming. (Asters, not so much.)
• Tonight, I am going to babysit my niece and nephew, whose collective cuteness is unsurpassed!

 

Falling hard

I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’m like a new woman now that fall is (sort of) here. Yes, it’s still over 100 degrees pretty consistently.

Exhibit A:

I’m suddenly crafty – I was so inspired by a wreath I saw on Pinterest that I made this:

 

 

 

 

Exhibit B:

I planted mums and asters on my front and back porches!

 

And finally:

 

Pumpkin muffins!

They were SO easy.

And through it all, I’ve been watching… Football! Well – in a way at least. I’m suddenly enamored of football after watching just a few episodes of “Friday Night Lights”.

Nevermind that I was a cheerleader in school, and I even had two “boyfriends” in middle school who are now in the NFL, it took this show to make me appreciate the game! I have found myself shouting “throw the ball!!!” and “sweet” during particularly fantastic scenes.

Happy Fall!

My brush(es) with greatness

This weekend, I got to meet and sit at dinner with Eugene Peterson. Yes – the one who wrote The Message: Bible in Contemporary language. But more importantly (for me at least) the one who shared the magical illustration of Uncle Sven I referenced a few weeks ago in this post.

Peterson meets several of my top criteria for favorite people:

+ old(er) – the man was born in 1932 and I say it in all deference
+ sweet as can be
+ his wife cracks up laughing at him

Also, I think he loved me back. I pretty much started gushing when I met him and I told him about how much I appreciated his writing and the Sven story in particular, and he said “So you liked Sven, eh?”. We talked about his former church near Baltimore and his current home in Montana, and it was basically magical.

Other celebrity sightings included Marvin and Susan Olasky from World magazine – I also gushed to them about being a World reader and the fact that I have a framed copy of an ad that we took out in the January 2011 Pro-Life issue of World for Heroic Media. They were also very gracious.

Pretty good weekend.

 

Plain and simple: Funding Planned Parenthood Doesn’t Stop Unplanned Pregnancies

Great highlights from an article by Eric Scheidler, published at lifenews.com.  No matter your opinion on abortion, the findings from Guttmacher (Planned Parenthood’s own research arm) make it clear that Planned Parenthood is not effectively reducing unplanned pregnancies. So what are they accomplishing?

 

Funding Planned Parenthood Doesn’t Stop Unplanned Pregnancies

by Eric Scheidler | LifeNews.com | 8/31/11 10:18 AM

Last week, the Guttmacher Institute announced the publication of an analysis of the rate of unintended pregnancy in the United States from 2001 to 2006. The report unwittingly makes the case for defunding Planned Parenthood.

Guttmacher reports that overall “the unintended pregnancy rate has remained essentially flat” during that period but that it “has increased dramatically among poor women.” Their conclusion: “United States did not make progress toward its goal of reducing unintended pregnancy between 2001 and 2006.”

The Institute was founded as a division of Planned Parenthood in 1968, and later named in honor of former Planned Parenthood director Alan Guttmacher when it became independent in 1977. However—as the two groups’ response to the new report shows—Guttmacher and Planned Parenthood continue to work hand-in-glove.

Predictable Response from Planned Parenthood

“The Guttmacher Institute’s new analysis of unintended pregnancy should serve as a national wake-up call,” declared Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards—and for once I agree with her. But we’re completely at odds as to what the wake-up call is trying to tell us.

According to Richards, “The take-home message is clear: We need to do more to prevent unintended pregnancy, and access to affordable birth control is one significant way to do that.” She goes on to laud the recent decision of the Obama administration to mandate contraceptive coverage without co-pays.

Richard’s reaction echoed that of Guttmacher Institute President and CEO Sharon Camp declared, “[W]e must ensure that all women, and particularly those who are most vulnerable, have access to the education and range of reproductive health services and counseling they need in order to plan the pregnancies they want and prevent the ones they don’t.”

The subtext of Camp and Richard’s remarks is clear enough: by “access to affordable birth control” and “access to reproductive health services” they mean “access to Planned Parenthood,” with its huge $363 million taxpayer subsidy intact.

…

But whatever conclusions they may eventually come up with, one thing is clear: increasing goverment funding of Planned Parenthood had zero effect on unintended pregnancy. Over the period covered in this study, Planned Parnethood’s funding from government grants and contracts increased from $240.9 million to $305.3 million. At the same time, unintended pregnacies rose from 48% to 49% of all pregnancies.

What’s more, the unintended pregnancy rate went up dramatically among poor women—the very group that Planned Parenthood purports to help the most. Measured in the number of poor women per 1,000 or childbearing age, the rate went up from 120 unintended pregnancies in 2001 to 132 in 2006. That’s right: the more money Planned Parenthood got from the government—supposedly to help poor women—the more poor women got pregnant.

Of course, I’m not arguing that increasing government funding to Planned Parenthood caused unintended pregnancy to go up among poor women (though I can think or reasons that might be the case). But it’s crystal clear that Planned Parenthood utterly failed to reduce unintended pregnancy in that group, despite their massive taxpayer subsidy.

Planned Parenthood Is Out of Step

Another interesting finding in the new Guttmacher study is that the percentage of unintended pregnancies that ended in abortion decreased from 47% in 2001 to 43% in 2006. During the same period, Planned Parenthood abortions increased by 29%—from 230,630 abortions in their 2001 annual report to 289,750 in their 2006 annual report—even as the overall abortion rate was trending downwards.

It appears that the only things Planned Parenthood really excels at are seizing a greater and greater share of the abortion business, while securing a larger and larger goverment subsidy. As this new Guttmacher analysis unwittingly demonstrates, the time to defund this feckless organization is long overdue.

Read the full article: http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/31/funding-planned-parenthood-doesnt-stop-unplanned-pregnancies/

Hallelujah!

A few weeks ago in church, I had to resist a pretty strong urge to stand up and shout, “Hallelujah” at multiple points during the sermon. The introduction alone had me pretty much teetering between exclaiming “amen” and crying my eyes out.

I really, really recommend you take the time to listen to this sermon. Even just the first 5.5 minutes will give you a bite-sized picture of the huge and hearty gospel that gives us hope.

Here’s what got me.

The Pastor, Tim, shared a story from the book The Pastor: A Memoir by Eugene Peterson about his mother’s beloved older brother, a charming milk man at the turn of the century, who turned out to be an abusive, unfaithful husband who was killed by his wife (in self-defense on her part). The story begged the question of how we reconcile our most endearing, kind selves with our most overtly depraved actions. Here’s what Peterson said about it:

“…If the life of David, that comprised prayer and adultery and murder could be written and told as a gospel story, then no one in my congregation would be written off. For me, my congregation would become a work-in-progress — a novel in which everyone and everything is connected in a salvation story in which Jesus has the last word.”

Tim went on to remind us that “…the incongruousness of your life….can be accounted for by the gospel.  Your life … can be read as a gospel story in which the gracious and sovereign God is effusively loving toward you. And He is at work to rescue and to redeem the most unlikely of people in the most difficult of circumstances.”

Say it with me now — “Hallelujah!”

Listen Now! Sermons (The Lord Of The Plagues – Tim Frickenschmidt) | All Saints Austin.

Blogging Genius

I consistently like Kevin DeYoung‘s take on things. I LOVE his book, The Good News We Almost Forgot , which I once described as follows:

First, for deeper moments, or at least a window into some, is a weekly look at the Heidelberg catechism.  I’m not that far into it, but I have trouble not skipping ahead to the next Lord’s Day to get my reading in.  It’s surprisingly witty…which is a little weird/great.

More of what I specifically love about that book is here.

But the latest stroke of genius I’ve found from Kevin is the blog post that follows. Sometimes you just have to tell it like it is. And he does:

Kevin DeYoung blog: An idea whose time has come.

Love it, Kevin. And congratulations on the birth of sweet baby Mary Idelette Young!