New Believers Gettin' Baptized.....

Sundays are by far my favorite day of the week. For starters I absolutely love going to church. I have never looked forward to church as much as I have over the past year. I have the most amazing church family in the world and FINALLY, I have truly learned to worship. Church is always followed by going out to lunch, which means I don't have to cook or clean up, and the Chambliss family Sunday routine includes a long nap - for all three of us- after lunch. What could be better? Sundays during football season, that's what. Even though my poor Jags were- well, poor- last year, I still love them. No matter how bad the season is going I have to watch. They're my home town team! The good news is that when football season is over we have NASCAR to entertain us/put us to sleep on Sunday afternoons. It's perfect!

Today the son of our dear friends Thad and Darlene was baptized. His name is Cole, he's eight years old, and he's the baby of the family. Because Michael and I work with the kids in our church we have grown extremely fond of Cole and have so enjoyed watching him grow from a three year old into an eight year old who truly loves the Lord with all his heart. After church this morning their family invited ours to go to lunch to celebrate Cole's baptism. On our way home I told Michael it must be a really nice feeling to know that all of your children have accepted Christ. To be the parents of three children who have made a conscious decision to follow Jesus has to be the most rewarding thing ever. We're a long way from that, obviously, since we only have one child, but I know that the time passes so quickly. Before we know it Lucy will be old enough to understand what it means to ask Jesus into her heart, and my daily prayer is that she will choose to accept Him and never look back. I realize how important it is that we start with the little things, like praying before a meal, which Lucy always does. Recently Lucy and I have started saying prayers at night and it's become one of the highlights of my day. It's simple right now. I tell her to say, "Dear Jesus, thank you for food. Thank you for my home. Thank you for my Daddy. Thank you for my Mommy. Please keep us safe. I love you Jesus. Amen." And she does it, in her adorable little voice. It melts my heart even though I'm telling her what to say. She may not understand it now, but one day she will, and I want to know that I planted the seed as early as I could.

As Craig Morgan says,
New believers gettin' baptized,
Mama's hands raised up high
I'm in a hallelujah good time,
A smile on everybody's face,
That's what I love about Sunday.

A Hodge Podge

Yesterday Michael had to fly to Birmingham to pick up a car that he bought from his cousin. His car finally died, as I've been telling him it would for the past five years. He's one of those people who will drive a car until it completely falls apart and it drives me nuts! His car had really started to look and sound pitiful and I was secretly praying that it would just break down on the side of the road so he'd be forced to buy another one- and it finally did! Since he got up so early to catch his flight and then had to spend seven hours alone in a car I thought he'd be too tired to do anything, but he called me and asked if I wanted to go out to dinner. I told him that was fine but we had plenty of food we could cook at home if he didn't feel like going anywhere. It's weird to me that we consider going out to eat less work than cooking. I mean, there are definitely days when I don't feel like cooking- and more importantly, don't want to clean up the mess- but is it really any less work than having to get ready to go somewhere, spend an hour deciding where to go (maybe that' s just us!), drive to the restaurant, and wait for a table?

Ultimately we decided to stay home for dinner. Michael said that he and Lucy wanted hamburgers and that he would grill some. I told him I did NOT want hamburgers but that I would be totally happy just eating leftover chicken and rice from the night before. Then I called my sister and asked if she wanted to come over since her husband was working. She came over and said she'd eat anything, and I took that literally. Our hodge podge of a menu ended up consisting of: hamburgers, french fries, chicken and rice, mac and cheese, cucumbers & vinegar, and yeast rolls. We obviously hate carbs.

This morning after breakfast Lucy went in my closet and found my Gator slippers.

Library

Today I took Lucy to the library for the first time. It's kind of pathetic that I've never taken her before, especially since there are at least three libraries within ten minutes of my house. I've looked online at the children's schedules before and there has never been a story time that would work with my schedule unless I wanted to go to the main branch, which would require me to park in a downtown garage- and that's not happening! Today I finally decided that there doesn't have to be an event going on for us to go to the library, and we might as well take advantage of something we pay for anyway!

This morning I told Lucy we were going to the library and she said, "Library? Go get books?" I immediately thought (for only the 1000th time in her life) that she must be a genius. I've never told her what the library is before. I just told her we were going. Then I quickly remembered an episode of Caillou we've seen several times- where Caillou goes to the library and checks out books. So much for my child genius theory!

The whole time we were in the car on the way to the library Lucy said, "We're going to the library, Mommy. We get books. I'm excited. " It was so cute, and she really was excited. But first things first. We had to get Mommy a new library card, because Lord knows I haven't had one since high school! While we waited for my card Lucy talked to the lady who was helping us and told her we were going to get some books. We went to the children's section and I let Lucy pick out three books- and I let her pick out whatever she wanted. We ended up with "Bedtime, Nelly", "Waiting for Gregory", and "Never Take a Shark to the Dentist".

I'm excited that Lucy gets excited about reading. I'd say on an average day we read no less than six or seven books, but it was fun to turn Lucy's love of books into a Mommy/Daughter outing- and we'll be doing it again soon, I'm sure.

Playing on the Chick-Fil-A playground- we never go anywhere without going out to lunch!

Proud of the first book she picked out at the library!

So excited!