Is there more than one creation story?

That sure sounds controversial to me! Maybe not......

I am taking an old testament class and it has turned out to be quite interesting. I have had some questions about certain things or approaches that my teacher has taken at times. So when he mentioned there are two different creation stories in Genesis....ding, ding, ding....red flag! However, after clarification and discussion, I found it to be something I really had not thought about in this way. By two "different" creation stories, he actually means two different perspectives.

The first is in Genesis 1:1 - 2:4. This is what I have mostly thought of as the creation story. Genesis 1:3 "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." Genesis 1:4 "And God saw the light, that it was good". God simply said....it happened....it was good. He didn't have to work at it, have help, discuss it, etc. He just said!

The second creation story begins around Genesiss 2:5. This is the more "personal" creation story that may have been quite obvious to others but really caused me to have a light bulb moment. As Lake once told me, "Aunt Lisa, you are a slow learner".....out of the mouths of babes! It is not as much that I hadn't heard it before, but I "heard" it in a different way. This passage shows God actually coming to Earth, forming "man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." (Genesis 2:7)

I immediately got a more intimate picture in my head of God picking up a handful of dirt, molding and forming man, holding Adam in his hands, they were face to face, lip to lip, with God literally breathing into Adam. Adam did not have life until God breathed His breath into him. I'm not sure I have ever really had such a vivid picture come to my mind. This presents such a beautiful picture of Adam becoming a living soul. God didn't create an ape or some other form of an animal. He created Adam as a perfect man, innocent, sinless and in a right relationship with Him.

In the "first" creation story, God said "let there be light", God said "let the earth bring forth grass", God said "let the earth bring forth the living creature". Yes, God took time to create all things in the universe. It was only with Adam (human beings) that he made a personal and intimate connection. This emphasizes the fact that God created us with the purpose of having a personal relationship with him.

Throughout time, there have been (and continue to be) many different versions of the creation story. Even though this is basic Sunday School stuff, we sometimes need to go back to "in the beginning" to be reminded of the true creation story which only God could accomplish.

Girlie Wisdom

The following is certainly not an original piece of my work since I am not that funny. If you are like me, you can truly identify with some of these. Even the men can appreciate them! They say laughter is the best medicine! I sure laughed at some since they hit pretty close to home! Enjoy

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Women over 50 don't have babies because they would put them down and forget where they left them.

A friend of mine confused her Valium with her birth control pills....she has 14 kids but doesn't really care!

One of life's mysteries is how a 2-pound box of chocolates can make a woman gain 5 pounds.

My mind not only wanders, it sometimes leaves completely.

The best way to forget your troubles is to wear tight shoes.

The nice part about living in a small town is that when you don't know what you are doing, someone else does.

The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight because by then, your body and your fat are really good friends.

Just when I was getting use to yesterday, along came today.

Sometimes I think I understand everything, and then I regain consciousness.

I gave up jogging for my health when my thighs kept rubbing together and setting fire to my knicker's.

Amazing! You hang something in your closet for a while and it shrinks 2 sizes!

Skinny people irritate me! Especially when they say things like "You know sometimes I forget to eat!"....Now I've forgotten my address, my mother's maiden name and my keys, but I have never forgotten to eat!

The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing and then they marry him.

I read this article that said the typical symptoms of stress are eating too much, impulse buying, and driving too fast. Are they kidding? That's my idea of a perfect day!

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Live Simply.....Laugh Often.......Love Deeply

All About Me

The title is deceiving. To tell you all about me would probably be pretty boring. My sister Beth, the one I call "the professional blogger" would probably call this a random post. I don't know what to call it since I am just going to write whatever I am thinking of and maybe in the process you will learn something about me and/or my family.

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I am currently going back to school to get my bachelor's degree. It is not an easy process since my brain doesn't work like it use to and my memory is always failing. A full time job, three teenagers, a husband, and school are a lethal combination at times. I should (I repeat "should") graduate in December if I don't fail or have a nervous breakdown between now and then. This summer I am taking Old Testament and New Testament. These classes are strictly from a historical perspective rather than a faith based perspective. I just took my first quiz online. I did miss 2 of the questions which on the surface doesn't seem too bad. However, considering I had the book open in front of me, you would think I would not miss any! (See what I mean about the brain!) It was a timed test and yes I do crack under pressure. I had one hour to take the test and I used 56 minutes and 6 seconds....the pressure~!

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I really enjoy working with deaf people. I have worked for the past several years improving my sign language skills. I still learn new signs everyday and probably will for the rest of my life.

I will blog a little later about the deaf community and some things I have learned. It may not be interesting to everyone but there are alot of cultural differences and things everyone should know. I do get to interpret in our church services and Sunday School and really have enjoyed it.

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I definitely like reality TV. This is the complete opposite of my husband who hates reality TV and loves Sci-Fi. We both like to watch movies...I like chick flicks and he likes action/sci-fi.

You ask how we ever sit down to watch anything together?

My husband works for the railroad as a conductor so he is gone frequently. He has a very strange schedule and is very often leaving for work as I am coming home or coming home as I am leaving for work. I am off on the weekends and they prefer that he work every weekend. It does make things difficult at times. We are waiting for the day that he can work what we call a "regular job" with weekends off at the railroad. Everything is based on seniority so he has to wait his turn. I know it is very difficult for him to be away from home alot and have such an odd schedule. He works very long hours (sometimes 16 hr days) but he does it for his family.

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I work for a Home Health Agency as a Billing Supervisor. This is a fairly new job for me and a totally different industry so I have spent alot of time "learning". It has been a very challenging thing for me but I am feeling more confident in what I am doing which makes life easier!

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I did want to thank everyone that has posted comments. I haven't figured out how to respond to your comments but I will. My plan for the weekend was to get a lesson from the "professional blogger" when I was at her house. I wasn't feeling that wonderful this weekend so I didn't have an opportunity. I will have to schedule a training session with my sister.

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Let's try some visuals:

My husband and I:

My oldest son Brandon - 22 yrs old

My daughter Anna - 20 yrs old

My youngest son Zachary - The baby - 16 yrs old

Here they are together!

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There are two more members of our family...Allie and Jeremiah....the Golden Retrievers!

I will have to post their pictures later. I don't have them saved to my computer yet.

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Not a really exciting post but gives you a little insight into my family.

Happiness...many, many questions????

Do you know people who just seem to never be happy with anyone or anything? Please do not ask them how they are feeling because you may get more of an answer than you were bargaining for! Are they capable of being satisfied and happy?

What is happiness? What REALLY is happiness? Situations around me right now have brought this question to mind. The dictionary defines happiness as "the quality or state of being happy" or "good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy". (I still stand by the fact that my Dad wrote the dictionary no matter what Beth says)

Happiness is an emotion but what causes that emotion to manifest itself? We see people laugh and smile and appear to be "happy" in life but are they really? It seems to me that true and lasting happiness always comes from within. Isn't that what most of us really want? Just to be happy and content. Oh we have many different goals to pursue that we think will make us truly happy. Some people think that money will make them happy, or that big cars, fancy houses, jewelry, etc. will make them happy. I'm guilty of thinking similar things and getting sidetracked thinking "if I only had a million dollars I would be happy" or "if I only was able to stay home and not work my life would not be as stressful and I would be happier". My immediate thought is if I could just go to the beach for a couple of weeks I would be sooooo happy! (I still think that might really work....or at least put me on my way! :) Unfortuntely, this thought process, prompted by Satan, deceives us into believing that "things" and "people" make us happy. I would argue that this is very far from the truth.

True happiness is from within. God talks about being happy in the Bible. In Psalms 41:1, Happy are those who consider the poor; the Lord delivers them in the day of trouble. In Proberbs 14:21, Those who despise their neighbors are sinners, but happy are those who are kind to the poor. Can we derive from these scriptures that what WE HAVE does not actually make us happy.... is it in reality what we give to others that contributes to our happiness?

We cannot place our happiness in someone else's hands. We are in control of our own happiness. It is the choices that we make in life that determines our future happiness. Ultimately, without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ one cannot be truly happy. Jesus told the parable of the rich man who was happy in his earthly life and suddenly dies to find that earthly happiness was only temporary. He had no eternal happiness because he did not have Christ in his life. Surely Jesus implies that true happiness is not to be found in earthly treasures.

I have had plenty of times in my life where I felt I wasn't happy or things could be better, etc. When I look back, I understand that these were times in my life where my focus was not on Jesus Christ. My focus was on earthly things and earthly people. I was not following God's will for my life.

Why talk about happiness? So many people are unhappy because of circumstances in their life. The choices they have made are affecting that happiness as well as others happiness. They are looking in all the wrong places for this emotion and blaming others when they cannot find it. Lives are being destroyed, homes are being destroyed, marriages are failing all in the name of happiness...."You do not make me happy"....."I am not happy with you"....."When I am in school I am not happy".....these are nothing more than bogus statements that satan places in our minds to distract us from the truth and deceive us.

God does not command us to be happy. He does, however, command us to be holy. I think there is a coorelation between happiness and holiness. We have been commanded to be set apart by God for a relationship with him and to serve him. As holy people we are to live holy lives. Living holier lives brings greater joy. It keeps us from seeking momentary pleasures that end up destroying our true deeper joy.

I am not saying that we always get to choose our own happiness. Although we have more responsibility in this area than we think. God calls us to holinesss and tells us that true happiness is to be found through holy living.

So does God want us to be happy? Of course he does. But the way to happiness isnt found in trying to be happy. It is actually found in hearing the call of God to be holy just as he is holy.

Sorry for the rambling. This is really something that affects us all. So many people around us are battling depression, struggling with feelings of loneliness, emptiness, no direction in life, etc. They are wasting time looking for happiness when it is freely offered to them if they will only look in the right place and choose to accept it.

Are you truly happy? What is it that is making you happy?

My First Blog

Since this is my first blog, I'm not really sure what it will be about so bear with me! I am 41 (soon to be 42 years old). I find that very scarey to say. I have never been able to understand my parents who could not remember how old they were. It was a whole process to them to think back to the year they were born and subtract that number from the current year. Then they came up with a number "they thought" was their age. While I still don't understand why it happens, it obviously happens and it is now beginning to happen to me! It is a very difficult process at times just to discover how old you are.

I have been married to my husband for 23 years. We have three children...Brandon (22), Anna (20), and Zachary (16). All three our flesh and blood with very different personalities.

• Brandon is in College (we hope) at Tennessee Tech University. We sent him to college to learn and become smarter. Instead it appears he is slowly losing brain cells and has no idea what he wants to do in life. One thing he is pretty sure of is that he is tired of school and really wants to quit. We are in daily prayer for him that God will show him his will for his life and he will be receptive to that. In the meantime, he needs all the prayers we can send up for him!
• Anna just graduated from a Community College with an Associates Degree in Psychology and is going to be attending East Tennessee State University in the Fall. She is still very open to what God has planned for her. I know that he is planning great and mighty things for her and I see him at work everyday in her life.
• Zachary will be a Senior in High School in the Fall. He is obsessed with golf and Michael Jordan tennis shoes. He is working at his dream job at the golf course washing golf carts! The great part is he gets a free membership but now is experiencing less time to actually play golf. Hopefully that will change soon when summer comes and school is out.
• As I said, I have been married to my husband for 23 years and we both love each other very much. We are finding ourselves in new territory since our children are growing up. Our whole lives have been centered around our children, their ballgames, church activities, and school activities. We found it is easy to forget what we were and what we love about each other. We are focusing more on each other now and to spend time with each other as much as possible. We love to go places together even it is to Lowe's, or the movies, or out to dinner. We have our little pop-up camper and love to get away in it for the weekend.

If you have decided to read this far, I just want you to know my goal today was to tell you a little about my family and what we are like. We are involved in our church and our children are very involved in the Youth Group. My passion at church is working with the deaf ministry and interpreting for our worship services. We currently only have 2 deaf people attending regulary but are praying that as our skills improve, God will lead more deaf people to our church as well as hearing people who are interested in working with the deaf. We are very excited that Anna and Zachary are leaving in 51 days to go on a mission trip to Nicaragua. I am a little nervous about them leaving me and going out of the country. I can't get past the fact that I know God is going to do great and amazing things while they are there. I wouldn't want them to be anywhere else. I am very anxious to see what GREAT THINGS GOD WILL DO!

Since it is getting late, I will wrap it up now and say goodnight. I look forward to talking to others and learning this blogging "stuff". As soon as someone can tell me how to get my pictures on here I will put some family pics.