Catch Up Post

For the last two weeks, I have been able to answer the Sunday Stealing questions and the Hodgepodge questions. I've tried to take a few moments to comment on other blogs (I'm still working my way around!). I realized that I haven't written anything about what is going on! On Sunday, January 4, we attended our last holiday party. It was mainly desserts so I didn't eat anything! Our cousin, Nathan, made the caramel cake below. It looked so good!

I received the amaryllis below as a gift. The blooms are beautiful!

On Sunday, January 11, our staff hosted two Leadership Receptions. We have a new campus in Hoover that will be opening later this year and our Senior Pastor announced who the new pastor will be at this campus.

The evening was catered by a local company and everyone seemed to have a good time. I was so tired when I got home on Sunday night! This room was filled with people at 3:00 and again at 5:00. 

On Monday, classes began!

On Tuesday night, the young professionals made PB&J's for the Outreach Hub. They made about 100. I love to "eavesdrop" on their conversations. They are so fun!

Fast forward to Saturday, the 17th. Our daughter and son-in-law had some business to take care of in our town so they dropped the girls off for us to keep. We had fun!

We built with duplo blocks - one granddaughter made a giraffe.

The other granddaughter enjoyed tearing down the things that Gran and her sister made.

We live on a park and we spent a LONG time in the park. The swings had a good workout.

Pops and the little one had fun, too.

A neighbor and his daughter came outside and she and our granddaughter played so well together. They were pretending they were panthers and they were after their prey! The little one wanted to be in on their game.

The towers and slides were used!!

The little one has a nasty ear infection and green gunk in the nose! I brought her inside and fixed a simple lunch. Pop and the older one stayed outside playing.

I took her upstairs and put on her sleepsack and turned on the noise maker and we began to "rock rock." She went to sleep in my arms and I sat in that chair for an hour and 15 minutes holding her while she slept. 

While she slept, her big sister and Pops (who the little one calls Bop) took the golf cart for a spin around the neighborhood and they checked out one of the other parks. After little bit woke from her nap, we all headed back out to the park.

Even Pops climbed up in the tower.

It was a fun, but very tiring, day!!

I worked on Sunday, taught our Sunday School class, and then Mark and I went to his twin brother's house (and wife!!) for lunch. Our niece, who was married in June, is moving to DC. Her husband is a patent attorney and his new job is located there. Grace was able to get another great job and they will live there for a couple of years.

Monday morning brought a "field trip" for work for MLK day. We visited St. Paul UMC in downtown Birmingham. This church is on the same block as 16th Street Baptist church where the four little girls were killed by a bomb on September 15, 1963. I was 5 years old at the time and I have no memory of this event. I did learn something new from the displays at the UMC - I had no idea that black people could not use the library where my sister and I spent many happy hours. I teared up when I read about the one library where they could go. I have no idea why that one fact broke my heart a little bit more, but it did.

Below are some pictures from our visit. Since it was a school holiday, several employees brought their children.

Look at the window below -- look at the "big picture" -- Jesus takes up the whole window and then all sorts of people make up the "body of Christ."

It was a gorgeous day, but it was cold!! We took one photo on the steps of the church.

We took one inside the church. I am smack dab in the middle in the red coat.

The photo below is from our church history book. Evidently there was a rumor that young black college men were going to try to enter white churches . . .and our administrative board passed this "recommendation." It is a horrifying piece of our history.

When we got back to the church, Brian wrote the following article and posted the above pictures on social media.

Written by Brian Erickson (my boss, friend, and senior pastor of our church)

Grateful to start the day at our sister church, St. Paul's United Methodist, hearing stories of moral courage from the Civil Rights era, with several of the Trinity staff and their families.

It is humbling to remember that, while Christians were marching from the St. Paul's sanctuary out into the streets to face Bull Connor (another Methodist from Birmingham), Trinity's administrative board was adopting statements instructing the ushers to bar anyone from entry they felt might cause a disturbance, and making sure they didn't show the children denominational curriculum that featured black and white children playing together. Those stories are important for us to remember, because they remind us that good people can do bad things, or at least fail to do the right thing.

History is such a frustrating mirror, because it is often just as complicated as the present moment, if not moreso. I remember hearing a Holocaust survivor once say that the worst mistake we could make was to imagine the Nazis all as monsters, because then we would miss the lesson about human nature in general. We can sift through history to find only the patterns that reinforce our perspective, we can ignore the past altogether, or we can acknowledge what it has to teach us that we don't particularly want to learn. In every edition of the human race, the heroes have never been perfectly heroic, nor have the bad actors been perfectly terrible.

But one day, we will be a part of the past, and someone else will decide what it is we stood for. May that awareness shape the moment we've been given.

Lisa writing again - y'all . . .my final words for the day -- we have to do better. we have to be kind and good people. we have to love God and love all people.