New Project

Tara and I are working on a project together. It is a writing project we have talked about off and on for a bit and I brought it up again a couple days ago and when she asked what I had in mind I started typing it out in a text message and I saw the little "..." that she was typing too. I clicked send and then almost got a simultaneous response from her and I'm pretty sure we both laughed pretty hard. They pretty much said the very same things.

I had made a couple inquiries about this project that morning and kind of got the low down on what we needed to do etc. I shared what I had found out with Tara and she sent me a picture of some things she had written down. That was it, step one was done.

I think this is a big project for us. We are busy people. Not like too busy to do it but I think this will take some time to complete. I have work, she has school and together we have three children that require and deserve our attentionkjmnr6b5d5dcffth87yntfygbhj <===== Tara did this....

LIKE I WAS SAYING, we have many responsibilities and this will take some time but I will say it has been fun so far. This morning I excitedly told her I had 3 paragraphs done and she looked at me with the most serious face and then broke into this weird excited happy dance thing she does when she is being a brat.

I cant wait to share more with all of you but for now this is where I am going to leave it.

Hope everyone is having a great start to their weekend.

--James

Of course I came by to update my blog post today, and stumbled across this gem!  My Darling Husband and I see eye to eye, and yes say the same things, a lot!  But we are still soooooo different.  Plain and simple, I'm a nerd, and he is a geek ;)

This project is a very large one,  and I did not do a happy dance when James proposed it to me.  Seriously, I go to school full time, and am raising a redheaded Hulk baby!  But you know what, it is something we can do "together".  As long as he can survive my snarkasm and my very awesome happy dance we will be just fine.  And uh....  he has never complained about my happy dance, he loves when my inner nerd comes spilling out of me in a very snarky way.  This will be fun, in the rip the band-aid off fast kind of way.  I sure am glad I have a good project buddy to work on this with.

-- Tara  aka: the tiny dancer ;)

Highs and Lows Part 2

Yesterday I talked about using "James Math" or "Matt Math" to multiply your high points to outweigh any low points you may have had to make sure you end up on the plus side of the equation.

I understand that this is way easier to say than do and live by. Its something that I deal with on a daily basis. I get called a grumpy guss on occasion and sometimes even have problems applying my own mathematical  equation  to make everything come out on the plus side.

There are things that "bug" me sometimes and its almost as if those low points get their own little special multipliers. They really shouldn't though, and I should make it a priority in my daily life to make sure that they don't.

For instance....

Dorrie, our 500 year old child barks, a lot, at the wind or a tiny ant 4 miles away. Her bark pierces my ear drums. She barks, i say Dorrie. She barks some more louder and quicker and I say Dorrie louder and with more force. Sometimes that is enough and sometimes this repeats itself until I get up and make DIRECT eye contact with her and say DOOOOOORRRRRIIIIEEEE, She stops sometimes for a few seconds sometimes a couple minutes. Tonight I skipped the DOOOOOOOORRRRRIEEEEE and went to this sort of growl thing that was described to me by Tara as something Shrek said in one of the movies. Something about an onion and not a cake. Now, to her credit, she has gotten way better and I don't know exactly what I would do if Dorrie wasn't here.  

Tara posed the question last night how do you think Jesus would respond to being asked about his highs and lows?

I think thats a fair question and one that required some research for me. Yes there are plenty of low points a person could pull out really quick. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Mark 15:34 (NIV). Jesus is having a really bad day here. Jesus math may even have a hard time with this one. But finding the high points, the specific high points did not come readily to me. There isn't really one spot I can think of in NIV where it says, "And Jesus smiled from ear to ear." but there are plenty of places I could think of where He should be smiling ear to ear. Luke 8:29, Jesus heals a demon posses man. THATS A GOOD DAY AT THE OFFICE!

The Book of Luke is full of highs and lows. Stories of healing and of Jesus' rejection. Highs and Lows. Luke 4:15 "He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.", you can imagine Jesus saying to himself, "This is going good! People are interested in what I'm laying down here and I''m in the groove." This is what I would consider a high point for Him. Now, its closely followed by a low point where its the intention of the crowd to essentially toss him off a cliff in Luke 4:28-29. This would be a low point. However, with application of Jesus Math, in Luke 4:30 he brushes it off and walks away.

There are many examples of Jesus' highs and lows and I encourage you to search them out for yourself. Basically the whole Book of Luke is about highs and lows.

Ill end this post with a simple challenge. - Challenge yourself to make your day full of highs. If you hit a low, shrug it off as Jesus did in Luke 4:30. Don't let your low ruin the potential highs that the rest of the day may hold.

James