Gift basket give-away!

This time we are giving away a basket full of pampering goodies as a thank-you to all of our readers! Each of our blog readers has contributed something special, and this basket is full to overflowing with fun items!

Check it out:

• "Jesus Calling" by Sarah Young, a book of daily devotions.

• Burt's Bees Hands and Feet kit containing a pumice stone, cuticle creme, small tins of hand creme, lip balm and a tube of foot lotion
• Manicure set, including nail brush, clippers, metal file, cuticle pusher, tweezers and mini emery boards.
  
•  4 oz.Vanilla Caramel scented candle (which smells AMAZING. I keep opening it to take a whiff as I type this up!)
  
•  A bar of Kirk's Original Coco Castile body soap.
  
•  Sheer Mauve Revlon nail polish.
• Apple Cinnamon soap bar.
  
•  Hand-made bracelet by ThinkVictorian (thinkvictorian.etsy.com yes, I'm taking this moment to shamelessly give my own store a shout-out ;-P )
  
• The basket itself... embellished with bead bangles.
  
• White exfoliating gloves.
• Lavender Blosson bath gel. 

Is that everything??? *digs through basket* Well, I'll throw in some tissue paper and red
crinkly basket filler for no extra charge. Now, how does this work?

To enter, just leave us a comment! Tell us how you think we are doing with the blog, what you like/dislike about it, what kinds of things you like to see in future posts, or any questions you might have for us. Now, you are only allowed to enter once, unless you give us a shout-out on your own blog/LJ. Link back in another comment, and your name will be entered twice. I was going to say that for a third chance just drop me a check for $5 in the mail, but then my concience got to me. Maybe next time.

You have until next Friday to enter. The winner will be announced one week from today.

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Longing for Home

There's more that rises in the morning
Than the sun
And more that shines in the night
Than just the moon
It's more than just this fire here
That keeps me warm
In a shelter that is larger
Than this room

And there's a loyalty that's deeper
Than mere sentiments
And a music higher than the songs
That I can sing
The stuff of Earth competes
For the allegiance
I owe only to the Giver
Of all good things

So if I stand let me stand on the promise
That you will pull me through
And if I can't let me fall on the grace
That first brought me to You
And if I sing let me sing for the joy
That has born in me these songs
And if I weep let it be as a man
Who is longing for his home…
- Rich Mullins
Sometimes, life surprises me with its beauty. Days go by and I don’t notice the sky as much. I used to see the leaves on that tree across from my office and admire them every day, the green against vivid blue. How long has it been since I stopped looking up?

One day, I look up.

And I am surprised, once again, by that sudden and intense ache in my chest. I’m not so much surprised by the beauty, but rather by the ache. It’s a sudden rush of joy, yet homesickness, too, combined into a most bittersweet of flavors.

Beauty does that to me, when I truly notice it. I’ve written about it before. I find myself smitten and homesick, nostalgic for things I’m not sure I’ve ever seen or known. “Do I dream of heaven?” I ask.

I think I do.

Recently, while reading Things Unseen by Mark Buchanan, I found myself once again pondering my homesickness and wondering if these pangs are longings for a place I cannot see or experience yet. A heavenly Jerusalem.

“When God wants to carry a point with his children,” Emerson said, “He plants his argument into the instincts.” Our deepest instinct is heaven. Heaven is the ache in our bones, the splinter in our heart. Like the whisper of faraway waves we hear crashing in the whorls of a conch shell, the music of heaven echoes, faint, elusive, haunting, beneath and within our daily routines.

There you are, standing at a window, watching oak leaves flutter down from dark boughs, and without warning your whole body fills with a longing for something you can’t name, something you’ve lost but never had, that you’re nostalgic for yet don’t remember. You sense a joy so huge it breaks you, a sorrow so deep it cleanses.

Or in line at a store one day, you turn and look at a child who doesn’t notice you. The skin on her face curves down flushed and smooth along her cheekbones and creases into delicate folds at her eyes. There is a wild hope in those eyes, and her beauty pierces you in a way you don’t understand.

Or you listen to Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and somehow it is both laughter and mourning, spring and winter, homecoming and exile. It makes you feel supple and playful and young and yet old, with brittle bones and trembling hands. And you wonder, How can this be?

This is how: You want to go home. The instinct for heaven is just that: homesickness, ancient as night, urgent as daybreak. All your longings—for the place you grew up, for the taste of raspberry tarts that your mother once pulled hot from the oven, for that bend in the river where your father took fishing as a child, where the water was dark and swirling and the caddis flies hovered in the deep shade—all these longings are a homesickness, a wanting in full what all these things only hint at, only prick you with. These are the things seen that conjure in our emotions the Things Unseen. “He has set eternity in the hearts of men,” the writer of Ecclesiastes said, “yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (3:11).

I think I’m finally beginning to understand it.

Yes, I dream of heaven. I’m homesick, homesick for a place I’ve never known. My loyalties aren’t to this earth, but to a kingdom to come. I love this world, this shadow kingdom, but it’s a love that makes me ache, which is just as it should be.

And there's a loyalty that's deeper
Than mere sentiments
And a music higher than the songs
That I can sing
The stuff of Earth competes
For the allegiance
I owe only to the Giver
Of all good things
I want to always notice the beauty and always ache with the hope of what is to come someday, someday, one day when all things are new and all is well with the world, the whole, whole world.

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Vital signs

I want to live my life.

That sounds a bit “well, duh!” doesn’t it? By definition you do live your life. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be living.

But I want something more than just vital signs. I want to experience my life fully. To feel the wind rushing against my face. To bask in the first sunlight of spring. To know the glory of God whatever I’m doing.

And that’s the rub. Because things catch us up in their net and all of a sudden here I am thinking about the paper I need to write, the room I need to clean, the tickets I need to buy, what time do I need to leave to get to class on time, why doesn’t anyone ever reply to my e-mails, do I really have to call that person to get an answer? And I’m not living anymore. Not really.

It’s not like I don’t need to do some of those things. Papers must be written. Rooms must be cleaned (especially mine). Tickets to La Boheme will certainly make me happy. Getting to class on time would be a plus.

All the time I’m worrying about those things, I can feel part of me crying out for something more. Some beauty, some moment of sheer wonder.

Sometimes I need to stop and think and listen and be. Notice the crocuses on the walk home. Thrill to the flight of the bird by the Tube station. See the beauty hidden in the everyday acts of our lives. I don’t particularly feel the need to go climb Mount Everest or something extreme like that. But I do need to avoid getting caught up in the cares and worries of the world and forgetting about true life—the life that experiences every day and in everything the wonder and majesty and love of God.

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Ordinary Beauty

“Real women have curves.”

“Thin women get all the guys.”

“Gentlemen prefer blondes.”

“Tall women are stately and elegant.”

“A girl shouldn’t be taller than the guy she is in a relationship with.”

The world tells us that if you are not beautiful, you are worthless. It tells one girl to lose weight or she’ll never find a man to love her. It tells another that because she lacks the typical ‘womanly’ figure, that she isn’t a ‘real woman.’ Blondes are ditzy, but they still get the guys – or so says the world.

The world plays with our insecurities and tells us, taunts us that we’ll never be beautiful unless we fix ourselves. Actresses and celebrities on the television, on the covers of magazines at the grocery store, on the internet are held up as examples of feminine ideal: curvaceous, slender and perfect…and airbrushed.

How can an ordinary girl ever measure up?

We are convinced of our ugliness, certain the world sees the flaws that we see. We want to be beautiful, but we just…aren’t.

In the world, there is such a palette, such an array of different people. Tall people. Short people. Women who are slender, women who have curves. Brown hair, black hair, blonde hair, red hair. Skin with different pigments. Girls with freckles, girls with curls. Women with dimples, women with small ankles. Women with thick ankles and no dimples.

There is no one look that defines beauty – God created each and every one of us to be different. To look different. Does that mean that I, with freckles and big feet, am ugly in comparison to my sister with an olive complexion and elfin ears?

In a word, no.

No. No. No.

God created us to grow up into godly women. We may never feel entirely comfortable with how we look. We may never feel like Cinderella at the ball. But…we are, each and every one of us, beautiful.

We are beautiful because we are different. We are beautiful because we are not all the same.

There is a fairy tale by M.M. Kaye that I have loved since I first discovered it on the corner shelf at our library, tucked behind newer, more popular paperback novels. The Ordinary Princess. In this story, Amethyst, the heroine, is born the seventh princess in a royal family. Her older sisters are the ideal of princess beauty: tall, slender, regal, blonde and beautiful. Amethyst is a beautiful baby, and so it is that on her christening, all the fairies bestow wonderful gifts on her: wisdom, grace, charm, wit…

And then a forgotten fairy shows up, with a special gift of her own. “You will be ordinary,” she tells the beautiful princess.

With that one gift, the princess turns from blonde, blue eyed and rosy complexioned, to a very ordinary baby who grows up to be a very ordinary-looking princess: gawky, with mouse-colored hair and freckles. Just plain out ordinary. At the same time, her other gifts stuck around: wisdom, grace, charm, wit and all the rest. Yet, in spite of these, not a prince in the land wants to marry her.

Amy doesn’t mind, however. She is comfortable with herself and doesn’t mind being ordinary. She lives her life, not caring that every prince in the land, upon meeting her, remembers an appointment he needs to attend far away from her. She climbs trees, reads books and lives.

I don’t want to give away any more of the story, but let’s just say it ends quite happily.

Most of us don’t fit into the ideal of the fairy tale princess. But…that’s okay.

We’re not Sleeping Beauty or Rose Red or Snow White.

We're Ordinary Princesses. We don’t stand out. We have our flaws. We…are…ordinary.

In the story, Amy is said to be ordinary and her sisters are said to be beautiful. But from the very moment I first discovered this story up until this very day, I have always thought Amy to be beautiful. She is – but not in a glamorous, princess-like way.

She is beautiful because she is ordinary.

It’s true. She’s not like the other princesses. She is unique and that – that is beautiful.

Ordinary princesses, don’t listen to the world that tells you a certain body shape or look or color is ideal. God has created us to be different, to be unique and to be beautiful according to His ideal. Crooked teeth, straight teeth, blue eyes or brown…whatever.

Yes, YOU are beautiful. Ordinary princesses are beautiful.

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