I love reading other blogs.  Some of these people may see me hanging out there in cyberspace as a follower or whatever and wonder who in the world I am.  I have always been so interested in other people's lives.  My husband calls it "being nosy."  To an extent, that's some of it...I am naturally an inquisitive person.  : )  But, I learn so much from watching other women live their daily lives.  Now, some blogs are just full of the good stuff and the look-what-I-did-or-can-do stuff.  I appreciate that; however, I truly adore a blogger who is transparent -- who shares her struggles and her weaknesses with her readers.  Obviously, one doesn't want to continue to read a depressing, woe-is-me blog, but I think we do want to see honesty and authenticity in the people whose thoughts we choose to read.  I hope my blog is like that -- authentic.  I don't post about the really rough stuff very often and, if I do, I likely skirt around it to an extent.  That's really out of respect for the other members of my family.  I could care less if you knew about MY meltdown, but the other folks here might care if you knew about theirs.  FYI -- we probably average 3 to 4 really good meltdowns on a weekly basis here.  It could be any one of us and it could happen at any time and it is not pretty.

So, I'm going to share a few links that you might want to take a sec to look at, too.  This first one is to the iTunes store for some free downloads from Amy Edge.  Amy lives in Alabama and was a teaching director for her town's Community Bible Study.  I have never participated in CBS, but I do know that it's intense study that is generally focused on one book of the Bible at a time.  Amy is an amazing speaker and she's very transparent.  I didn't do the homework that goes with these, but I would imagine you could order the workbooks from the CBS website.  I just downloaded them and listened to them while I was mowing the lawn or moving rocks this summer.  (More on moving rocks in a later post...I'm about 2/3 finished.)  I've gone through Acts and Genesis with her and now I'm down to the final podcast on Genesis.  I'm really going to miss this woman who I don't know...


http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/amy-edges-podcast/id330690252

Another blog that I found this week and am in love with is The Stay at Home Missionary.  You just have to start reading Joy's stuff and I think you'll see what I'm talking about.  This blog would have been amazing to have when PJB and Molly were little.  She's such an encouragement and so wise for someone so young.


http://www.thestayathomemissionary.com/

So, there you have a couple of things I've loved lately.  I just finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest which really doesn't tie into the theme of these two links!  It was a great finale to the trilogy and I'm very satisfied with the way Larsson ended it.  Now I'm reading Beth Moore's So Long Insecurity because it was on the new releases shelf at the library and, well, it's Beth.  I'm not impressed.  It pains me to say that, but this book is just all over the place.  Oh well.  I have taken a few things from it so far.

I don't consider myself to be insecure by definition...until she started talking about false positives.  I can see that maybe I do have some insecurities there.  One would be weight or beauty (I think most women are, to an extent, insecure there) and another would be financial success.  Her list includes:  having a great man, financial success, popularity, beauty, power, prestige, credentials, and job certainty.  I think that I've probably had issues with all these at one point in my life.  For example, "credentials" was huge to me because I finished my bachelor's degree later than I should have (married at 19, had to work, couldn't move to get the degree I wanted).  I was embarrassed that I didn't have a degree at 25, 26, 28...  That's not a problem for me anymore.  Beth's personal stories are the best part of the book.

As I've been typing away we've had a nice little shower here.  My top yard desperately needed it as I cut the grass too short last time : /  Other than that, it's looking good.  The sweet potato vine I planted in the spring is beastly now and next year I'm going to plant it completely across the top of the wall.  It should stay looking good until late fall.  Speaking of, I'm ready for fall.  So ready!!!  Cooler temps, football, jackets, and jeans : )