Bad hair days and crooked tiaras...ALL righted by God's grace!!

In my last post I wrote about the adventure that my friend, Stephenie and I recently had in Birmingham which led us to a fancy little gourmet hamburger restaurant.  This super trendy restaurant, called Flip Burger Boutique, is known as ' fine dining between two buns.'  At Flip Burger  you don't just get a  plain old burger, instead you get a work of art.  Whether it is the crab burger with green curry coconut sauce or the Kobe beef burger with portabello mushrooms and red wine jam, you can rest assured this is not your run of the mill burger joint. Just walking in the restaurant is delightful with its swanky decor which  features red carpet, white leather banquettes and aluminum chairs along the bar. The atmosphere is as fun as the food.  After taking in the atmosphere and a burger we realized  the restaurant was also popular for  liquid-nitrogen milkshakes.  The ice cream used in ...

Last weekend my friend, Stephenie and I went to Birmingham to a Women's Conference. Numerous road trips in which the GPS led us astray made us decide to use an internet search engine's map and directions to help us reach our destination.  A few months earlier we had traveled to Birmingham and had great success using the same method-this time however, was a somewhat different.  One time we were trying to get to an outlet mall in Leeds (a nearby town) but instead the directions led to us to a completely different area.  Although it was not our intended point we found a delightful surprise - the unintended destination had a fabulous gourmet burger restaurant. Our attempt to travel to our hotel on Thursday night was an adventure-to say the least. If you have never traveled downtown Birmingham, let me tell you the streets are crazy. The street numbers are strange and most all were one way. The directions to the ho...

Recently several friends have been working on the "Couch to 5k" plan.  This training program is designed to help you go from a couch potato to a runner in just 2 short months.  The program claims it's secret is to get the body moving, starting off alternating between walking and running and slowly building up until the person is able to run 3 miles or 30 minutes non-stop.  Although I admire them for their discipline, I have chosen to not participate in the program.  Let's be real here- the only time that I am going to run non-stop for any length of time is if I am being chased by a mass murderer like Freddie Kruger.  I have no desire to jar all my internal organs around.  Let's face it, at my age I have enough bladder "issues"  without adding to the problem.  About 15 years ago I trained and attempted to run a 10K and was surprisingly alarmed at the difficulty of such a race.  It was all that I could do to complete it.  ...

When I was 5 years old, my grandfather purchased a pony for me.  Initially, I was so excited about my new pony, Flicka, but somewhat afraid of her too.   In an attempt to help me  feel comfortable in the saddle my Daddy designed  a fake horse out of saw horses and a barrel and  placed the saddle atop the barrel.  When I got on that fake horse and settled into the saddle, I felt like a real cowgirl!  Unfortunately, I was NOT a real cowgirl.  I never really warmed up to my pony and rode her very infrequently.  It was always more comfortable for me to be on the fake horse  than the one that was real.  How often are we more comfortable with the fake than the real?  What about in our own lives?  Is it easier for us to be fake or be real?  As Christians we sometimes don't want to be real-we want people to think that we have it together, that we are "super spiritual", that our lives are going ...