the rule of seven... *muwah-ha-ha!*
i m-must do a m-me m-me, folks. that's all there is to it. sorry about the cryptic messages to get you here, but really...
claire made me do it! ;)
*ahem* okaaaay, not the cryptic stuff
so here i goes...
Here are the rules: Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their seven things, as well as these rules. You need to choose 7 people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they have been tagged and to read your blog!
1. i am a very indecisive person most of the time. i have trouble focusing on one task. that's mostly because i'm so scatterbrained, i usually have a ton of things that need to be finished...i can't concentrate on what i'm trying to do for seeing all the things around me that are undone. this drives me nuts and sometimes leads to a very ungood depressed episode fo rme.
2. my mother bases her whole opinion of you (or at least me) on how clean your house is and how well organized you are. at least most of the time she's that way. now i love my mom, don't get me wrong. she's the most loving, giving person you'll ever meet...but she can really make me a wreck when she's like worrying about what people will think. her mother never made a big deal about a super-clean house. they were poor and mom always felt like if she could clean what little she did have, then everything would be okay. so she cleans like... well, like rabidly! mom's always been very concerned that people think well of her and all of us. she gets embarrassed easily and over very trivial things. she's not like 'snobby' concerned, but worried someone will think we don't behave acceptably or dress acceptably, etc., etc., etc. all this kinda fussing is part of what made/makes me as nervous and such as i am, i believe. and there are other factors, too. i'm not playing the 'blame it all on the mother game' at all. this is just a fact about me.
3. for those who don't know (if there's anyone besides claire still reading here! lol!) i have had diabetes for 32 years. i'll be 40 in november. (you do the math. ;Þ ) most of my life. up until november 2, 2004, i was taking up to 7 insulin injections a day trying to keep my blood sugar under control.... and failing! that's when i got my insulin pump! i. love. my. pump! it has changed my life so much! not that it's perfect, but living with diabetes is sure a lot simpler, that's for sure and certain!! since march of last year, i've lost 30 pounds due to several different things...a] neuropathy/stress/nervous stomach causing me to be nauseated and not eat nearly as much for several months ... which lowered my insulin needs {more insulin = more food -- they must balance} and b] going on a migraine med which caused a lessening of the appetite, still losing more weight (which also lowers need for insulin {lower body weight=lower insulin needs} and c] basically what i just mentioned... the mere fact that i was losing weight, thus needing less insulin, was helping me lose weight! clear as mud? i hope not, but that's how i went from wearing a very tight size 14 jeans to a loose size 10. woo- and hoo! ;)
4. (man, this IS getting hard!) um... i love flowers and backyard birds and butterflies. right now, i don't have much of either because i haven't had the time nor money to spend on getting a nice area ready. i don't even have seed in the feeders, that's how awful i am. :( i have a couple of red knock-out rosebushes. one mom just got me this year, so it's blooming. the other she gave me last year. the bad cold snap got it, so it's had to grow back out again. i put out a couple of hydrangeas, but they look awful. should they do that after setting them out?? *worried face* my dream is to have a wonderful flower garden complete with a pond and small waterfall and no deer skull looking at you from the wall of the fort and no dog pen right in your face when you sit on the patio and no pile of car parts or big ol' trucks looking at you like a creepy monster either. just flowers and water and birds and butterflies. that's a l l ! ! ! hmph!
5. um... oh, here's another boring medical one. i have cataracts. yep. at 39. pardon my french, but .... they suck! diabetics tend to get cataracts earlier than usual annnnd they tend to not do very well with the cataract surgery (because they don't heal well) so i dunno what will happen in the future. of course mine aren't that bad right now. but they sure have put a damper on my reading. i absolutely cannot read a thing unless it's really giant print without my +1.25 drugstore readers. yep, i know those aren't even that strong, but i can hardly read a thing without 'em. urgh!
6. we had revival at our church last week. i know. usually people will say, "we had a revival at our church" which i guess basically means the same thing. and i'm not picking at anyone out there, i'm just generalizing here, okay? i guess when you say "a revival" it kinda sounds like something you take outta a box, ya know? anyhow... even if we did say "a revival" our church and community was revived. Dr. Stan Frye was the 'evangelist'. it's in quotes because he's not actually an evenagelist. he's a missionary. he's been pastor of some giant churches, some that started out tiny...and for years, he's been going over to africa on these trips. not your average mission trip. he went to places that mission boards weren't sending people. you can read more about it on the website. but the man is fascinating. i don't think i've ever met anyone so on fire and literally anguished for lost souls. he was in a wreck over there at the very beginning of setting up this missions organization, when there really was no one to contact, etc.... and his best friend died in his arms. he told the story to us and it was traumatic to me just to hear him tell it through his tears. he preached without fluff, without apology and without caring whether he was going to hurt your feelings. he told you what you needed to hear. that i'm not doing enough for God. that i'm not focused on what's really important and one day, i'm going to have to answer for that. that i need to put the Lord first in my life and let the rest of it fall into place (and it will). he really "socked it to me". and i really needed that.
7. and in that spirit, i'm going to tell you some of the things the Lord has done for me. first off, he saved my soul from eternal damnation. that's probably not popular to say, but it's the truth. i was eight when i went up after the preacher's daughter came back to where i was crying (everyone else was!) and asked me if i wanted to be saved. (well, of course i did! i didn't quite understand what that was at the time, though) i went on and got baptised and thought i was all okay. really, i never gave it much more thought, being a snot-nosed kid and all. but during an evening service one night when i was 11, i felt something. i didn't know what it was, though. when i went to bed that night, i couldn't sleep. i tried and i tried, but i just couldn't. something the preacher said was making me wonder if i was really saved or not. i went crying downstairs to my parents' bedroom to get some help... for some reason neither mom or dad would wake up fully (unusual) and so i had to go pray it out myself until i felt this gigantic weight lift off me.
the next morning (at that time, we did saturday night & sunday morning services) i went up during invitation. i guess they misunderstood me again because they treated like a rededication and at the time, i didn't know for sure if that was what it was or not. but now, i believe that's the night i got saved. not when i was eight.
*heh* how's that for confusing? :)
God kept me safe through my school years. being a kid with diabetes was probably a lot more dangerous back then than it is now. we didn't carry meters to school because they were too expensive! my blood sugar probably stayed way too high most of the time! but i never had any bad complications til after i had both my kids.
speaking of kids... if you can believe it, i occasionally still get the "i didn't know diabetics could have kids" remark. even in the 'twenty-aughts"! lol! God gave me two healthy, cuddly baby boys who've grown into two healthy, handsome, intelligent young men. what a blessing!
He saw me through the horrible depression that followed having my thyroid gland completely destroyed when I was diagnosed with grave's disease. having your thyroid levels go from 5x above normal to zilch? um... not good! that was a dark time, but God helped me make it back to the light.
God pulled me through the nightmarish Stevens-Johnson syndrome. go. read. keeping in mind that before i was finally admitted to the hospital for my two week stay, i'd already been to the e.r. twice in the past 10 hours and sent home. *sigh* see how much the Lord's brought me through?
for some reason, He keeps me around down here. and what a poor example i am. *hangs head in shame*
this past week has rekindled my thirst for the Lord. it's brought our family to church when otherwise, we wouldn't have gone. it's put a desire in us to go at times when we haven't been. i just pray that we can stay close enough to The Fire that we don't let our flame die down.
okay...tag seven people? i'm not sure i even know seven people who still remember me anymore! *siiigh* lemme think a minute.... *think, think, thi...* OUCH! ahhh, okay. how's about marty of not to scale, k8 of two wild monkeys (if she ain't off havin' a baby already), michele of coffee soups, moni of tuff toenail (if she ain't off havin' a baby already), dia of diamonds in the rough, linda of linda's lunacy and osray of being there. ha! i did it!
now...let's see how many-a them do it! hmmmm.....
