You know what, we should really just call a spade a spade around here and say that when my life gets crazy, my blog gets quiet.  I’m a writer (wow…feels weird to say that) but before that I’m a liver (and not the kind in your abdomen.)  I want to LIVE and hopefully lately, I’ll get around to writing about all that life happening around me.

So….alot of life has been happening around me.  Like this….

These are some of the crazy peeps I call my friends.  Not a one of them lives in my town, but I tell you what….my heart is knit to theirs.  These are some of the world changers that I had the chance to spend 4 days with at Allume in Harrisburg, PA last week.

In case you missed it, I had a load of stuff to do for Allume.  I was in charge of hospitality for the conference of 400+ people, mostly women, who all love Jesus first, and mostly all blog as well.

Here’s a little sneak peek of something I did (with the help of my incredible friend, Darlene and my new and super-powered friend Carey.)  The Allume stage.

This photo was taken by my sweet new friend, Mandy, from Biblical Homemaking. Oh my words…this girl, aside from having a heart of gold, has the most incredible hair I’ve EVER EVER EVER seen. I could have hair like that maybe…for like $700 worth of extensions….but then they’d fall out, and I’d be worse off.  Nevermind.

The table decorations were pretty awesome too….but you know what…I don’t have a picture of those either.  I’ll find one though….

Ya’ll….I didn’t have time to take a single picture beyond a bunch of silly ones in the Smilebooth.  I had too much to do….too many little details to take care of, too many tiny fires to make sure never got fanned to flame, and then honestly….I just had too much real life connection that needed to happen. One day I’ll take more pictures in the midst of too much fun….one day!  To make matters worse, my phone isn’t an iphone, so I don’t have instagram!  I know….and really, if you want to know what a tekkie fossil I am….I still have a hotmail account too.  Will you all still be my friends? 🙂

So let me tell you what happened at Allume that kinda knocked my socks off.

The first night I was set to give all of the announcements.  The boring kind though.  Stuff like….”please don’t take the table decor”, “if you need a special meal and didn’t sign up for one…sorry about that, but too bad”, “if your baby cries…it’d be awesome if they could do it outside of the room where there’s a speaker”, “some sessions are switching around a bit”….stuff like that.  None of it exciting, but all of it important.

Well, a funny thing happened while I was at the farm (what is that quote from?)  Somewhere in the announcements, I suddenly realized people were laughing at me.  Literally laughing.  My mind kinda jumped around to places like….is there broccoli in my teeth, is there toilet paper on my shoe?!  And then I had this strange moment where I realized that people thought I was funny…apparently really pretty funny because they kept giggling.  Let me just say that you don’t NOT notice when a room of like 450 people are laughing at you.  I think I even exclaimed my surprise out loud at how funny I thought it was that they thought I was funny. More laughing….

I have absolutely no idea….no earthly idea what I did or said that was so funny, so I just kept on doing the announcements.  When I came back to the table, Sarah Mae (my friend and one of the conference hosts) said that she thought that I was funny and that I just HAD to do the announcements the rest of the conference.  So I did.

And ya’ll, it was so stinking fun!  I had absolutely no idea that I’d enjoy speaking like that in public.  And somewhere in there, I found my “element.”

My friend Tsh said last year at the conference during her keynote that, “when we’re in our element, we feel the Lord’s pleasure on us.”  Another friend after the conference said how much he enjoyed watching me “do my thing” on the stage.  Ya’ll….I had absolutely NO IDEA until this past weekend that I even had a “thing.”  But there it was….

I never once felt stressed about the decorations, about the food, about any of the details that go into making an event beautiful, because I knew I could do that part.  And the best thing about all of that was that people noticed.  Not noticed in a “give me accolades” sort of way….but people noticed and felt loved.  Good food and pretty spaces make women feel special, and my heart felt full that I was able to do that for this group of amazing women.

I spoke in a session on Saturday, and I nearly threw up before I did.  I was SO nervous.  I’ve never spoken before, and now suddenly I was funny to all of these people for the past 2 days.  God had given me a real word to share though…one that was serious, and I was suddenly afraid that funny might not be able to do “for real.”  So I prayed with my friend Laura (who was speaking at the same time,) and I cried because I was so nervous, and then I went in and led a session.

And I think it went pretty well.

It’s not up yet, but once the audio file is uploaded, I’ll post here to let you know, so that if you want, you can hear what I had to say.

God didn’t stop there though….because He’s just bigger than all that we dare to hope for.  He’s given me the opportunity to pour into Allume even more next year and to be more involved in all that goes into this amazing thing.  So this coming year, I have more work to do for this conference that has taken residence in a place in my heart…and I couldn’t be more excited!

So if you’re an Allume attendee, if you hope to be, or if you’re a reader here in this space, I’d sure love your prayers as I take on more responsibility to be a part of making this conference happen.  It’s a space where writers come together and get filled up so that they can pour out.  And I love every single thing about that.

Here I am, with Darren Rowse, aka ProBlogger on the final night.  He’d shared a really amazing story that morning about a mudcake that turned out to be one of those profound moments in life (my friend Elizabeth Esther shares really eloquently about the story HERE.)  We had a mudcake made for Darren and presenting it to him may have been one of the highlights for me of the conference….I do love a funny moment!  Darren got to have his cake….and eat it in front of everyone too….forkless!

I’m rambling now.  I woke up at 2:30 and won’t go back to bed until tonight.  My mind is racing and my heart still feel so so full.  God is so much fun, and as my friend Wendy says, sometimes he just shows up as “Jehovah Sneaky” and surprises us with something we’d never have thought of ourselves.  I found my element friends….and now I sure do wonder how the Lord will use it!

I’m back from PA with loads of greatness to share about the weekend at Allume, but I just can’t go into all of that greatness without first sharing what woke me up in the middle of the night.  In fact…I’m going to pay the respects that are properly due and not even share it all in the same post.

At 3:30 am, I jolted awake in a panic.  My heart was pounding and I had to flip on the light to make sure that the place that my mind had just been as I slept wasn’t in fact my reality.  Whew….it wasn’t….for me, but it was for some.

My sister lives in New Jersey and all I could think about were the massive trees lining their yard with wind howling all around and water flooding over the banks of the river into homes there.  I thought about my new friend Darren who got stuck thousands of miles from his family (who are in Australia, no doubt worried that Daddy is stuck in the middle of one of the biggest storms in history.)  I thought about all of the incredible friends I made at Allume who couldn’t get home because of grounded flights, and I worried for my new friends who actually live in the pathway of this “Frankenstorm.”  I worried…..and panicked….and reminded myself that my God is big enough to calm the raging seas…even if he didn’t this time.

Four years ago, my family’s Christmas card picture was taken from this park that now looks just like a part of the river.

It was so real ya’ll….this dream I had.  I was at the beach in Florida with my family.  My husband often doesn’t come down until later because he has to work, so I was there with my parents and the boys.  The condo where we stay is right on the beach, and so when a hurricane warning was issued, my spirit went into get-out-of-dodge mode.  For some reason in the dream, my parents thought we’d be ok to stay, but it didn’t sit well with me, so I threw my boys in the car and started to leave the island.  The storm got worse and we eventually had to stop.  From the looks of things by the road, the random restaurant where we stopped seemed to be away from the edge, so we went in and took cover with the restaurant owner.  I looked out the window of the restaurant only to realize that it was even closer to the water’s edge than the condo where my parents were was.  I saw waves swelling to stories high and water already at the edge of the building.  We were worse off than if we’d never left at all.  I tried to call my husband, but the signal was down.  I clung to my 2-year-old who doesn’t know how to swim, and my 6-year-old knew that things weren’t good.  The water came in and the building began to fill up.  It was like that scene in Titanic where the ship levels are filling and people are trapped below.  We were about to drown…..

And then I woke up.  Panicked.  It wasn’t real.  It’s not real….it’s not real….calm down…pray.  And then I pulled out my computer because somewhere out there I knew that waters really were rising and buildings really were flooding.  And then I prayed.  And prayed some more.  I spent an hour in the middle of the night praying peace over those living a nightmare last night.  Prayed peace and supernatural wellness over babies carried by hand from the NYU hospital whose secondary generator failed.  Peace over parents who suddenly found themselves fighting for their tiny PICU and NICU babies’ lives.

Why didn’t God calm the storm?  Why is creation raging?  Why are homes lost and lives destroyed?

And the only answer that I can muster is that we live in a fallen world, but I do know…I KNOW THAT I KNOW that God is good….and he isn’t called Redeemer for nothing.

Join me in praying peace, blessings, and prosperity over the lives affected by this storm over the next few days and weeks?  I stand with the confidence that the God who created the seas can most certainly redeem the havoc that they wreak.

And tomorrow….tomorrow I’ll tell you about Allume.

Image Source :FoxNews.com

So, today is the last day of my Birthday Week giveaways, and ya’ll….it has been fun!  I’ve loved sharing the week with you.   Introducing you all to these phenomenal people and artists I’ve featured this week has been just the most fun!

I met Randy, the Critter Keeper, recently at a friend of ours’ son’s birthday party. Ya’ll….this was THE MOST FUN boy birthday party I have attended to date. (I’m sorry to all the incredible moms of other boy birthday parties we have been to.  Yours were fun, but this one was seriously, incredibly cool.  I’m even confessing I liked it more than parties I’ve done for my own kids.  So there…does that make you feel better?)

Randy has a knack for critters.  In my world, most of these critters of Randy’s belong in the “no way in hell that’s coming into my house” category.  But Randy brings them into your house….or your yard….and kinda makes you like them.  Now, I’m still having a few night terrors about roaches the size of a newborn baby’s foot, and watching my son holding a scorpion, but by the same token, I have found myself feeling kinda proud of the fact that I held a snake so large that when it squeezed my hand backwards, it hurt for the next 30 minutes.  Yes friends….I totally was chosen as the adult helper, and I got to hold the bulk of a yellow Burmese Python named Julius Squeezer.  Julius did squeeze…and even as I type, I’m feeling a bit of glee at recollecting my own general awesomeness to hold and to be sore from holding a snake this hard core! (PS. You’ll have to forgive that the pictures I have are totally cruddy….I didn’t realize we were going to a party that would be this cool, so all I had was my camera on my non-iphone phone.)

The official write-up about it says this….

The Critter Keeper provides memorable entertainment, education, and reinforcement of traditional values to children of all ages through “bug”-themed birthday parties, classroom presentations, and other venues where children can be introduced to critters. Kids love meeting Julius and Cleo, the albino Burmese python and boa constrictor; Flash and/or Skid, the iguanas; Mr. Beasley, the large Australian Bearded Dragon; Clyde, the Savannah Monitor; Rosy, the Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula, as well as other reptiles and arthropods from all over the world. Entertaining and exciting, surprising and sometimes a little scary, the Critter Keeper will captivate your children with interesting facts, entertaining stories, appropriate life applications, and of course, all his critter sidekicks.

Look at the kids’ faces above!  I know it’s a bad picture, but seriously, you can tell how engaged they are!  Let me just say this…

It was SOOO Fun!

All of us moms and dads there were just as captivated as the kids by Randy’s hilarious tricks and fascinating creatures.  I learned things I didn’t know before.  He taught us about snakes (did you know that on their markings if “red touches yellow it will kill a fellow?!),”  showed us bugs the size of your hand (which have been the source of my own personal eww-factor), as well as entertain the kids with magic tricks and general funness!  I watched almost all of the kids overcome their fears and hold scorpions, snakes, and even pet a hedgehog.  And then….I earned serious cool factor with my own kids as the grown up Python holder.  I AM AWESOME!  I hold pythons!

I just had to share about the Critter Keeper with ya’ll!  I realize that this giveaway isn’t going to work for you if you don’t live in Upstate SC, because Randy only does shows in the Upstate (think Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson metro areas.)  Honestly though, I just personally had such fun at this party, my kids had a blast, and it’s so much different than anything I’ve been to before as well.  I think it’d even be fun to have a bunch of families pitch in and have Randy come for a super special surprise for your kids and a bunch of their friends too!  Normally, to book a party with the Critter Keeper is around $250.  He spends a solid hour entertaining and teaching, has time for kids to pet and touch a lot of the animals, and also spends some private family time before the party with the birthday boy or girl (so they can investigate the critters a little more closely before the festivities begin.)

Randy has agreed to give away 1 party to a lucky Life for Dessert winner at a hugely discounted rate!  Instead of $250, he’s allowing me to give a party away for just $125!  50% off of the regular price.  Now, I realize all of you like winning something completely free and clear, but Randy has to feed and care for these animals, and transporting them is no small feat either.  It’s a big deal to haul all these guys around and to put on the incredible show that he does!  You will LOVE the Critter Keeper…and $125 is a steal for this fabulous show!  Enter to win below!!!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

PS.  The winner from the Rustic Elegance giveaway is Taryn Jones!  Congratulations Taryn!  Looks like you need to figure out a space to put the Salvage Chic Message Board that you loved!!

Also, I’ll be announcing the Red Letter Words and Critter Keeper giveaway winners on Tuesday.  Ya’ll all have a happy Labor Day holiday weekend!