The Difference Between Good Books and Great Ones

So anyone who knows me knows I read a lot. Today, I would like to discuss the difference between good books and great books. I'm not going to tell you the difference between good books and great ones, because I honestly don't know what that is. What I do know, however, is that when you read a great book, you know it, and when you read a book that's only good, you know its only good and not great. As a pastor to be, I run into the problem of what to spend my time reading all the time. Think about it. Its hard to find very many Christian - especially reformed - books which couldn't be classified as at least "good." There are a bunch of worthless books, of course, but there is also a ton of good ones. There are like 800 different commentaries on the book of Romans, for instance. I bet only 100 or so of those are either heretical or just aren't very good. That leaves at least 700 commentaries that are good, in the sense that they are at least somewhat insightful and edifying, and are theologically correct. Nonetheless, there are not very many great commentaries on Romans. People are going to disagree on this, but there are probably only 5-10 great commentaries on Romans, maybe even less. I'm always asking myself, "Is this book worth my time?" I wish I would only read great books, but sometimes I read good books as well. I would say that in my life, I have probably read under 40 great books. I have read parts or all of about 1000 good books. Great books just have the ability to get over the hump, to give that extra 10%, to go the extra mile, that seperates the men from the boys. When you climb the summit and reach the top where great books reside, there's only so much room, and down below you, in the vast abyss, are about 50 million good books, and off in the distance you can faintly see the 500 million worthless books that have been written. Now again, I recognize that everyone has there own set of great books. But for all of us, we're tyring to reach that summit, trying to read as many great books as we can. I can't describe the difference between a great book and good one in much detail, but if I might borrow from another saying, I know it when I read it. How many great books have you read? Here is one example of genuine great book I am currently reading.

How Nice It Is To Drink Coffee

Josh and I have very recently resurrected the habit of brewing a pot of coffee in the morning before work. We used to have coffee every morning with breakfast, and then I always took some to work in a little travel cup (the very essence of adulthood and sophistication in my estimation). That all came to a screeching halt when we found out about the existence of Baby Desch, both for the sake of excess caffeine consumption and the sheer fact that it made me want to throw up. But all of that is past now- we make a compromise on the caffeine by using half decaf and half regular, so Baby Desch isn't thrown into an acrobatic frenzy inside the womb, where he/she has less and less space to move.

I think that a brewing pot of coffee is one of the most pleasant things in the world. I owe my love for coffee largely to my friend Richard Feero, who taught me about the joy of coffee during my last year at Covenant. I don't know why this started, but he issued the "coffee challenge" one day when we were sitting in Greyfrier's, a local coffee shop. Maybe it was because I said I didn't like coffee, but I had always wanted to. Greyfrier's was probably not the best place to start drinking coffee, because like Starbucks, I think their coffee is a good bit too strong for the average consumer. I remember my first taste of coffee, which was at least a year before the beginning of the coffee challenge- I couldn't believe that someone would drink that bitter, vile substance willingly. To me it seemed like something Jack Bauer would pour down your throat in the torture chamber. But Feero began to cultivate my love for coffee, little by little. The coffee challenge was simply taking sips one at a time. He took a sip, and I took a sip. At first, it was bad. But in a few months (the coffee challenge moved to the Great Hall, where we did it frequently), coffee began to take on a pleasantness that surprised me. When did I actually start liking coffee? I don't know. But I know that my liking had its roots in the coffee challenge. Thank you, Richard Feero- I owe it all to you. Without you I'd still think that coffee was a clever torture instrument.

Another step along the road to a real, genuine coffee love was the latte/frappucino step. I loved coffee that was decorated in some way. For example, at Covenant we used to pile in someone's car (usually Kelly's, Tricia's, or Sparky's) and go all the way down the mountain into Chattanooga to Starbucks, where I would get either a pumpkin spice latte or a caramel frappucino. I love those memories!! These trips were usually quite spontaneous and always took the place of something more important, i.e. homework. At this time I don't think I would have drunk black coffee and enjoyed it, but I definitely enjoyed the decorated coffee. I still do, but now I've reached the stage where I'm perfectly content with plain old black coffee instead of the fancier drinks.

Now I love to hear that coffee brewing and hear the machine beep when it's done. I love to grab a steaming mug and drink it either with breakfast or at work. It has such a gentle, friendly way of helping you to keep your eyes open just another minute when you're struggling to wake up (this attribute of coffee is especially helpful to Josh, who has serious issues in the morning). Coffee, how I love you! Thank you for standing beside me in the hardest of mornings, with the sweetest of desserts, and the most pleasant of times in a coffee shop.

Weekend News

Josh and I had a wonderful weekend. Friday night we hung out and did nothing, which was really nice. Saturday was a crazy, crazy day... Josh helped some friends at church move, I had a baby shower with the church ladies, we had a picnic for Josh's softball team, and then we celebrated for a little while with one of the girls from the youth group who graduated on Saturday night. It was all really fun, but we were pretty wiped out yesterday afternoon!

Well, Baby Desch is in his/her 5 week countdown!! June 24th was 5 weeks from yesterday! I can't believe that his/her arrival is coming so soon. It seems like the last few months have just flown by. That's really good in some ways- I'm looking forward to getting back into my normal clothes and not having this huge bump. Josh had to help me put some shorts on yesterday because I can't really bend over- the bump gets in the way. Long ago I abandoned tying my own shoes. But I'll also miss having this sweet little person inside. It's so much fun to feel him/her stretching and kicking, attempting to move in a space that grows increasingly smaller. I'll miss that silent companionship. But of course it will be wonderful to actually meet this little being and have him/her in our house instead of in my body. We're really looking forward to his/her coming!!

Meanwhile I am growing increasingly confident that Baby Desch is indeed a boy. Not only do I have a gut feeling, and have ever since we found out that the baby was coming, but Confucius say we're having a boy, and I've also been dreaming about Baby Desch for the last few nights and he's always a boy. I'll be thrilled either way, with a boy or a girl, but I might pass out if Baby Desch turns out to be a girl, just since Josh and I have been convinced for the last 8 months that we're having a boy. The good thing is that you can't go wrong. A little boy or a little girl will be just wonderful. It's fun to not know what we're having! Makes the labor all the more exciting.

I posted lots of pictures on our flickr page- follow the link and enjoy! Have a wonderful Monday!

The Best Burritos EVER

Josh and I are on a major burrito kick. Burritos are little rolled up packages of goodness. Inside their tortilla outsides are hearts of gold. We started eating burritos one day when we didn't have anything for lunch and had to go to the store to find something. Let me tell you about our very favorites.

Somewhere there's a lady named Amy who makes really good foods found in the freezer section. I've had Amy's pizza, macaroni and cheese, and now her burritos, which are the current object of our obsession. Today we had a burrito filled with black beans, rice, and tomatoes. Wow, it was good. Just wrap it in a paper towel, pop it in the microwavel, and 3 minutes later a masterpiece of delight emerges from the microwave, steaming and ready for your enjoyment.

I think the reason that burritos are so nice is that they are kind of an all in one deal. Inside holds some protein, some carbohydrates, maybe some vegetables if you're lucky... it's a one stop shop. If you're ever hungry and don't know where to turn, remember Amy and her burritos. You won't be sorry.

Josh and I are going to have to get us some popsicles this weekend. Now that the kids are out of school and summer is officially kicked off, I'm craving those frozen sticks of goodness that remind me so much of lazy summer days. I'm planning on sitting on our little porch and racing against the clock to lick the popsicles into oblivion before they melt into juice and get all over my shirt. With Baby Desch growing as much as he/she is, juice wouldn't have far to go before it would fall on the shelf that is our baby and stain my shirt.

Enjoy your weekend!

A Blast From the Past that I Look On With MIsty Eyes

I was sitting in my chair thinking of what I wanted to blog about today, and a story came to me, a story that many of you have probably heard and/or were a part of, but one that is worth retelling none the less. This story is about me and Josh's quite interesting beginning as a couple on the path that would eventually lead to marital bliss, but at the time of this story's occurrence, that possibility wasn't looking too great.

Josh asked me to be his girlfriend on April 13, 2005, and I said that would be great. I had never had a boyfriend, and Josh and I had liked each other since the previous spring, which made for some pretty awkward encounters. But mind you I had never had a boyfriend, so I wasn't quite sure how to begin this endeavor of "boyfriend-ing," if you will.

One day in the Great Hall serves as a particularly good example of my psychoses related to the recent acquisition of a boyfriend. I was sitting with some friends eating lunch in the Great Hall, and all of the sudden we all see Josh come through and swipe his card for lunch. I immediately panicked. I didn't want to have to think about talking to him in front of all of my girlfriends because I knew I'd sound stupid, and I didn't want to talk to him anyway because I knew I wouldn't have anything to say, so I hit the deck. Literally. I crawled under the table until he was gone into an area where he couldn't see my table anymore. My friends all thought this was a really strange way to act when you saw your boyfriend, but it was all I could do. When they told me the coast was clear, I hightailed it out of that room faster than you could say the word "boyfriend." I escaped unscathed from that near encounter. This pattern continued for a couple of weeks. It went pretty much like this.

1. See Josh walking toward me from across the room.
2. Turn around very quickly before he could notice me and walk the other way.

I know, I know!!! This is the strangest sort of behavior possible when you're finally getting to be in a relationship with someone you've liked for a year!! My friends April, Rachel, and Kelly had to talk me out of dumping Josh a couple of weeks before my graduation- they told me I was crazy. Can you see why they thought that?

Yet through all of this Josh remained as patient as can be, and as insistent as ever that he wanted to be with me. Eventually I came around. Now all of that is behind us, and I relish the job of loving him with my whole heart. For some reason that story came to my mind, and I thought you'd enjoy it.

Staring Down an Empty Refrigerator, Once Again

As I was saying yesterday, our trip was just wonderful. I'm so thankful that we got to go. Marnie and Chris are now living it up in Italy, and the rest of us are back to our normal lives.

We returned to an empty refrigerator. Ever since we moved out into the country our refrigerator seems to have been in a perpetual state of emptiness. I know I said this when we lived in our old apartment, but now I really mean it. This morning we were trying to scrape something together to take for lunch, and let me tell you what Josh came up with: green beans (with a can opener of course), the leftover half of a Rice Krispie treat from the best bakery in the world that happens to be in Peoria, IL (if you were at our rehearsal dinner you ate these... we call them bricks because they're like 3 inches thick.), about 3 Paul Newman little sandwich cookies, some really old grapes that had reached the nasty squishy stage, and some spinach. Doesn't that sound HORRIBLE? I said that we were going to have to buy something for lunch, because that clearly would leave us both hungry and disgusted. We ended up getting our favorite frozen burritos that you make in the microwave. So you can see that we need to go grocery shopping.

While we're on the topic of food, let me tell you about the incident which was eating the top layer of our wedding cake on our first anniversary. We celebrated one year on Sunday, May 13th, and it was a wonderful day. It really was, even though we were in the car from about 10:30 AM until midnight. We saw my family in the morning as we headed out from Texas and then saw Mr. and Mrs. Desch in the evening, since we stayed at their house on Sunday night on the way back to Augusta. My mom had brought down the top layer of our wedding cake, which had been in frozen hibernation since our wedding last year. It stayed in a lump of aluminum foil until we arrived at the Desch house in Peachtree City, when we eagerly unwrapped it and got ready to cut it. There was a mysterious wet sheen on the frosting, but other than that it looked pretty normal. The frosting was still pretty. We cut it open (a moment that was caught on the camera), and fed a bite to each other. To my surprise it was quite tasty!! I'm not sure what I was expecting... probably some kind of severe freezer burn. But it wasn't freezer burnt at all. I thought, "Wow! This is pretty good for a cake that is one year old!" Then we asked Josh's parents if they wanted some, and eagerly cut little pieces for each one of us. I bit into my piece and to my disgust found it soaking wet. That is one of the grossest tastes in the world, let me tell you. We're talking so wet you could have wrung it out like a sponge. Josh and I were given false hopes for the whole cake by the dry piece that we cut first, but most of the rest of the cake, pretty as it was, was severely waterlogged. I don't know if that resulted from uneven freezing, or just how it thawed out, but it was pretty gross. I'm thankful for that good first bite, and at least we can say that we attempted to eat the top layer of our cake.

I am so thankful for Josh. Being married to him is such a joy. My dad was joking around on Sunday morning and asked if we had had our first fight yet, and I was like "Dad, you don't even KNOW!!" We fight practically once every hour, but we are so happy. It's wonderful to be in a relationship where it's OK to have total meltdowns, knowing that the other person will be there to pick up the pieces and help put you back together. I have learned so much about how making sacrificial choices is actually one of the most fulfilling things possible. Seeing Josh's happiness is honestly so much more gratifying and exciting than experiencing my own. Josh is a wonderful, wonderful husband, and I am so thankful for him every day that goes by.

We're getting excited about LOST tonight!!

Oof... Back From Our Ramblings

All three of us made it back from Texas in one piece, and a wonderful time was had by all. That includes Baby Desch, who was patted by each one of his/her aunts and other friends as well. Josh and I made the long drive in two shifts, and wow, it was long.

We set out from Augusta on Thursday night with a goal of stopping for the night in Tuscaloosa, AL. I drove the first leg since Josh was really sleepy from our lack of sleep the previous nights. I for some reason had energy, so I volunteered to take the first shift. We rented a car from Enterprise to spare our Honda Civic the nearly 2,000 mile round trip. (Our Civic deserved a vacation in the driveway for the long weekend since he puts up with the demands of serving a one car family.) We climbed into our Kia Spectra, which was a good bit bigger than our car, and headed out to the interstate. I got the car up to a good cruising speed and started to look for the cruise control button. It was nowhere to be found. I asked Josh to get out the instruction book so we could find that elusive little button, since my foot was already starting to hurt with only 10 minutes of driving behind us (I know that's pathetic) in what turned out to be a 15 hour journey. Josh got out the book and found where the cruise control button SHOULD be, but the catch was in the phrase "in equipped models." Yes folks, that's correct. The cruel people at Enterprise sent us on a 2,000 mile journey in a car with no cruise control. Needless to say that was not the ideal beginning for the trip. I LOVE cruise control. Actually having to push the pedal on the interstate? That is so 1950. So as I drove, my speed ranging anywhere from 60-85 mph because of my foot actually having to do work and forgetting/overcompensating. Anyway, I eventually got over that. The Kia did come equipped to plug in ipods, so I guess it was a good trade-off.

We had orders from our doctor's office to stop every hour and a half and walk around for 10 minutes. Since I am starting to enter danger zone as a walking time bomb, we took their advice seriously and stopped often. Besides, my bladder can't make it much longer than that anyway. I can't remember if I've blogged about my cankles or not, but I am now finding myself the embarassed owner of cankles. For those of you who don't know about cankles, it's when your calves sort of run into your ankles and feet in an unpleasant way, and you don't really have ankles or calves anymore by themselves. The culprit of this unpleasant phenomenon is swelling, which plagues pregnant women of every stage, but it seems to get worse and worse. My feet were so big at some points during this trip that they looked like you could pop them with a pin. My sister Emily, who is about 24 weeks pregnant, referred to her feet this weekend as "sausages." The problematic cankles are worsened if you don't change positions frequently, such as getting up and moving or getting off your feet if you've been standing. Hence the instructions from the doctor. So needless to say the trip was a little slow going, but we enjoyed getting out at sketchy gas stations and running around a little. In the process of stopping we got somewhat of a tour of bathrooms of the South, which was quite alarming at times.

One of our favorite moments from the drive was going through Chunky, Mississippi. That's right, the name of an exit off of the interstate was Chunky. There didn't seem to be much to Chunky, which is a shame. I would have liked to stop in a town named Chunky. We also drove through Talledega County in Alabama, the home of the famed Talledega Superspeedway. I could almost feel the Nascar excitement in the air. There is also a Talledega National Forest, for your information.

We ended up getting into Lindale, Texas around dinner time on Friday night. We waited for the rest of our family to show up, and finally everyone did trickle in. My sister Emily and brother-in-law Rob were the last ones to arrive, having driven for the last 22 hours. Yeesh. We all stayed at these cabins on the property of the country club where Chris and Marnie were hosting the festivities. Now let me tell you about these cabins. It is generous to call them "rustic." They looked like they had been built in the 70s or so, with no updates since then. Suffice it to say that we weren't exactly staying in the lap of luxury, but we had such a wonderful time anyway. I am still reminded of those cabins right this second because my feet seem to have found their way into a fire ant nest in the parking lot, and those ants went crazy on my toes and ankles. Silly fire ants. They must just bite to be spiteful.

We had such a wonderful time. Marnie and Chris hosted a truly delightful weekend. We enjoyed meeting Chris's very large, crazy family, and we both loved hanging out with my sisters, parents, aunt, grandmas, and cousins. It was such a blast. Saturday night Marnie and Chris hosted a beautiful dinner at the country club, after which of course there was some crazy dancing... oh man, that was incredible. My feet hurt so bad for some reason on Saturday night, but the music was so good that at points I just couldn't quit dancing. I think the awards for best, most long-lasting dancing have to go to my sister Emily (keep in mind that she's pregnant too, which makes her achievement even more remarkable), my sister Jennie (she's always a machine at anything involving dancing), my sister Carrie (just give her "Chattahoochee and she'll go to town), and my cousin Adam. Let me pause to talk about my cousin Adam's shirt. He definitely won "Best Dressed." He showed up in a beautiful, bright orange shirt and black dress pants. The shirt reminded me of the walls in our old apartment. It was definitely a show-stopping outfit. Way to go, Adam. You're an inspiration to us all.

There is so much more to say about this trip, but this will have to do for now. It's good to be back in the blogging world.

Have a wonderful day!