“People do not, will not, drift toward holiness.

Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, and obedience to Scripture, faith and delight in the Lord.

Instead, we drift toward compromise and call it ‘tolerance,’

toward disobedience and call it ‘freedom,’

toward superstition and call it ‘faith.’

We cherish the lost discipline of self-control and call it ‘relaxation.’

We slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism.

We slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves that we have been liberated.”

to this

and this

and this.

Happy Monday!

… for several reasons.

1. I have a new favorite movie…King Kong.
[I can hear you laughing at me, you know]
But it really is a ridiculously good film with a stellar cast–Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, and Colin Hanks to name a few.

2. I now have a celebrity crush on Adrien Brody [I figure it’s time to give Ryan Reynolds a break]. This is painfully embarrassing for me because I had (previous to seeing him in this film) thought of him as awkward, looking either…

always on the brink of tears…

or always on the brink of insanity–per his character in The Villiage…

or slightly anemic…

but in light of this pic and his performance in King Kong, I confess to have been completely wrong in my judgment of Adrien.

The secret is this: he is un-freakin-believably talented as an actor in motion… his still shot pics can be misleading–well some of them.

3. i love watching movies in the Cardio Theater Room at the gym–which is how I happened upon Adrien today and my whole opinion of him shifted in an instant.

4. The way that he kisses Naomi Watts in a scene in King Kong makes me blush. How embarrassing is this: here I am, going to town on the elliptical–nothing new here–and all of the sudden the movie gets serious, even ominous, and I blush at a kiss and am forced to avert my eyes!

NOTE: For those of you who’ve spent any amount of time in Europe/ around European men, you’ll know what I’m talking about–the rest of you: book a trip to Europe immediately.

Adrien has this very European way–looking at her, holding her gaze, pausing, tentatively, and then taking her–of both longing for her and yet passionately having her at the same time… and this is just a kiss, people. No love scene. Nothing scandalous. But the intensity of it, the simultaneous reverence and fearlessness, his awe and acknowledgement of her femininity and yet his unreserved and bold masculinity–well, it’s overwhelming… in a good way! And in that moment, there’s this undeniable sense that thing will never be the same again. (whatta kiss!)

To be able to communicate all that in a very simple expression for a few seconds on a screen… well, it made me blush.

Now where the heck is my husband… I need to get my arms around him immediately. 😉

As many of you know, I recently had a quick, no-nonsense “procedure” to remove some melanoma from my chest area.

When we got the first pathology report back–from a sample scrape in a dermatologist’s office in Huntsville–the diagnosis was “a mild case of pre-cancerous melanoma” meaning that there were melanoma cells and that it was “medically necessary” to remove them before they turned cancerous and spread into full-blown skin cancer.

I had a plastic surgeon at Emory remove the “atypical nevus” in her office and then got the stitches out and path report back on Friday.

GREAT NEWS!

All the boarders of the removed biopsy were clear–meaning no melanoma cells present or spread–AND, there were NO MELANOMA CELLS AT ALL in the removed section!!!

This is great news because 1) I’m in the clear (was never worried about that part), and 2) we specifically prayed for complete healing and that (if surgery was necessary, which turned out, it was) the surgery would only prove that God had completely healed it from the inside out–which the results did!!

Grant and I have marveled at the list of things God has done for us this past year. And if He never blessed us again, still we would say, “blessed be the Name of the Lord!” but it sure is fun watching Him do what only He can do. Amen!

ps. my scar is healing beautifully!

This year, the “anniversary post” has run into 3 (and may run into even 4) posts. Enjoy 😉

So Sunday we got up and headed out to the Harpeth River. [Side Note: we listened to a Matt Chandler podcast on Colossians…AMAZING. He is quickly becoming one of my favorites as he voices what I think no one else in the American church will.] We canoed 14 miles of glorious river–me and Grant, Zach and Steph, Matt and Benji, and 5 other girls in 2 canoes (friends of Keef’s). It was fun to haphazardly join up with one or two other canoes at a time and float down the river together. It was both incredible to imagine exploring the area like a native and yet unfathomable to see to what level the water had risen and to what extent some of the damage still remained due to the floods in Nashville–awe-inspiring and fear-inducing at the same time. pretty awesome.

One of the girls’ canoes flipped at a little rapid at a bend in the river and Grant (my hero) saved them. It was fun to work as a team and help them quickly figure out tipping, draining, and resurfacing the canoe–a little camp counselor came out in me and we almost broke out into song (almost). Alice the Camel. Anyone? Anyone. …Bueller.

Anyway, we both love nature so much and the added bonus of friendship and quality time in such incredible surroundings did wonderful things for our hearts.

After we canoed (and conquered) the river, we headed back to Matt and Benji’s to cook out: chicken and corn on the grill, baked beans and fried green tomatoes (covered with pimento cheese–amazing!) in the oven. Quite a delicious treat. This weekend was as much about food as it was about friendship, as it turns out. We stayed until after 2 then rode back the four of us to Zach and Stephs–this time we did break out in song… well, Steph and I kinda did in a tired state of delirium in an attempt to keep each other up as the boys slept in the back seat… what the heck, I think we sounded great.

Today was another embarrassment of riches in the way of food: pancakes, eggs, sausage, and bacon for breakfast (thanks, Zach!) and home-made wings on the grill with fries and onion rings–ridiculously good. Steph and I saw Sex and the City 2 (that’s a whole ‘nother post, people. very very good.) and the guys watch the Braves. It was almost 5 before we realized that we should probably start to pack things up and head home.

All in all and excellent weekend and certainly a nice celebration of the 2 best years of my life: food, friends (who have become family), and fun. Thank you, God!