To the religious right:

I don’t know why you are under the impression that pledging allegiance to the flag, that yammering constantly about America, that voting for so-called Godly men (or women), that preaching Republicanism from our pulpits, that maligning people who are different from you, that physically assaulting other members of our society, or refusing to look at all the facts presented are a good way to make our nation turn back to God. That is, if our nation even needs to turn back to God.

I’ve been thinking specifically about the way so many of my, theoretically, brothers and sisters treat homosexuals. See, even if homosexuality is a sin, I cannot imagine that being so hate-filled toward someone engaged in said sin is a good way to get them to convert. Because, religious righters, I tend to stop hanging out with people who treat me like crap; I imagine this is not an unusual thing. In addition, whenever we read about sin in the Bible, it’s spoken to people who have already signed up to be Christians. It’s not our job to legislate our morality onto people who have not signed up to play by our rules. Jesus maligned the Pharisees in ways he never came close to repeating to lepers or the woman caught in adultery. Paul wrote Romans Chapter 1 to members of the church in Rome. Even the passages in the Old Testament were written to men and women who were already members of the Jewish faith.

So stop. Stop treating people like crap. Stop acting without at least a modicum of intellectual honesty. Stop using churches as bully pulpits for policies that harm our nation’s (and the world’s!) poor. Stop putting your faith in a government that is so obviously corrupt, particularly when you claim to be men and women of faith in Christ. Stop treating people in churches who are not members of the Republican party as pariahs, idiots, and the like. Just stop. Act like Jesus. Act like Mother Teresa. Act like Ghandi. Act like Martin Luther King, Jr. Act like any one of a thousand people who are not who you are acting like. Read the Bible. Remember what we have been called to. And just stop treating people who are different than you like crap.

Sincerely,

Kristi Greene

Christian, Liberal, Wife, Cat-parent, and woman who simply wants to be like Christ

I realized about 2 weeks ago that if I’d like to have children someday, then I might want to be healthy when they come along. And then I got a nice lecture from my gynecologist at my yearly exam.He blamed it on first year of marriage. I appreciated the nicety, but I blame it on being lazy and failing to eat appropriate portion sizes. Of course, he’s nicer than I am. And so then I decided to do something about it. I’ve decided to no longer be appalled by the number on the scale, the size of my jeans, and the clothing store I have to shop in.

In all seriousness, I’m not that concerned with the number on the scale, or the number in the label on my jeans. But I realize I’m not exactly going to be a spring chicken when our kids come along as it is and I’d really hate to not be healthy enough to keep up with them. And, I wouldn’t complain about smaller jeans or the ability to shop in the other size section of Target.

So that brings me to the advice section of today’s post. As in, does anyone have any advice? Any favorite recipes that are not ridiculously calorie laden? And favorite work-outs? Any favorite work-out music or videos? Anyone else on My Fitness Pal and want to be friends with me there? My username on MFP is KristiG917. My first weigh-in is tomorrow. And thanks to a rather lackluster performance on Saturday and Sunday, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be too thrilled with the results.

Fast forward one year and two days. We’re still married. We’re still at a loss for how to be married a lot. We’re still in love. We’re still best friends. And I’m still so glad I married the best person I know. As ubiquitous as it is to hear coming from Christians, I’m impossibly blessed to be married to him. He’s taken a part-time job to pay off debt that I brought into the marriage; he loves my cat; he just smiles and listens when I’m crazy; he holds my hair back when I’m sick and leaves the house late at night to get Tums. I think I’ll keep him.

You know, marriage is supposed to be a reflection of Christ’s relationship with the church. I know so little about marriage, but I do know this: we are forgiven all the time. And we are loved all the time. It would never work otherwise. I’m blessed to be married to a man for whom forgiveness is a natural pattern. Unfortunately for him, he’s married to a woman who has to work a little harder at it. However, she can cook and she loves football, so I imagine that’s got to help. In all seriousness though, in our desire to have a marriage that glorifies God, I keep being taught so many things about forgiveness. The only thing I know to be true about marriage is that if you’re going to be remotely happy, you have to forgive. I’m thankful that Stephen does. And I’m thankful for what marriage is teaching me about forgiveness.

I’d give you the highlights of the year, but you’re not interested in that. It was a good year though: Vegas, new car, gigantic fight that the cat puked in the middle of, Stephen saying funny things in his sleep, my inability to say no to anything free, trips to Jackson, Oxford, Little Rock, Russellville, New Orleans, and Hot Springs. And at the end of it all, I get to say this: I’m still convinced that there’s not any one person for any one other person. Marriage is just too hard for that. What I’m thankful for is that I’ve married someone who’s willing to do the work. And who’s fun and kind and smart and patient. So let’s have 60 more years.

But remember, honey, it’s only 25 years till I get my pony.

1. I’d like to get some sort of exercise every day. As I currently get none, any will be an improvement. This will often involve taking advantage of my gym membership. This will involve walking around our neighborhood or at the track or the park with Stephen. It will involve playing with small children at church or when babysitting. It’ll just be anything that’s not sitting. So, if you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. I don’t mind the gym, but I don’t live for it either.

2. I’d like to spend some time in the Word every day. I’m not brave enough to mention that I’m starting off on some grandiose study or gigantic chunk of my day. I’m not there yet. I love Jesus, but I struggle with daily devotions and Bible study. So I’m going to start where I am. That’s all I can do, right?

3. I’d like to have all of my debt in collections paid off by the end of the year. I’m not totally sure this is a possibility. I’ve not totally done the math on this. But it’s definitely something I’d like to not have hanging over our heads anymore. It’ll make me feel much better about tackling the debt that isn’t in collections with even more vim and vigor.

4. I’d like to do better with my eating choices. Fairly often I cook healthy meals. I generally get them from healthy places. And then I eat too much of them. Or when I have a no-cooking night, it’s not healthy eating out food or healthy snacking. It’s hot n ready pizza or Wendy’s or Cane’s. I’m not proud of this, but it’s true. I’d like to be healthy before we start thinking about getting pregnant so that’s it’s less of a struggle for me then and when I have small children roaming about my house.

Four is more than enough for me. Like I said, I’m not exactly queen of the big change. I’d just like to become more devoted to being more healthy in all aspects. I’m hopeful that these are good starts. Please ask me about them. Oh, and if we’re friends in real life, please feel free to make me put down the second helping of whatever. Or ask me to go play tennis or go walking or something. Or ask me what I’m reading. Just ask. It’s helpful, even when I look irritate with the question, I promise that at some point I’ll be thankful for it.

What about you? Any resolutions you’d like to share?

I struggle with side dishes. As in, I don’t have a large repertoire of them. As in, I don’t know exactly what goes together as a menu. That’s what would get me in trouble on Iron Chef America (that and a lack of skill level necessary to compete in Kitchen Stadium). I’ve got main dishes. I’ve got lots of ways to cook chicken and fish and beef and pork.

Could you help a girl out? Could you help her go from serving rice with everything to a varied menu? Cause as much as we love rice, even Stephen, king of the corn dog, is starting to complain.

Additionally, I crafted these for my office.

While they’re not perfect, I’m still very proud. It’s sort of a pinterest project, as I found all the info necessary on pinterest. There’s nothing quite like the satisfaction you get when you complete a project successfully for the first time.

1. Please, please, please, link to the actual blog post that the recipe/craft/organizing tip/etc is on. Please don’t simply link to someone’s blog and expect all the other pinners in the world to hunt down the thing they were looking for. It’s just the nice thing to do.

2. Please don’t write all the recipe instructions on the pin. Linking (pinning) the recipe/cleaning picture/whatever is sufficient. Really. Pinterest isn’t a blog; pinterest is simply a socially connected visual bookmarking site.

3. Please don’t leave hate mail on pinners posts. If a user you don’t follow is showing up in your feed, figure out how to stop it,contact pinterest, or just be thankful for the extra inspiration. That’s really all that’s necessary. Hate mail is definitely not necessary.

4. Please don’t post every single thing you pin to Facebook and your twitter account. It’s not necessary. The people who want to follow you on pinterest are, and the rest don’t care.

5. Pin lots. Pin lots of things. Try lots of things. Blog about things that work and things that didn’t. I’m going to start. I promise; I’m creating a series of blog posts that include both failed and successful pinned recipes, crafts, cleaning tips, and the like. This also gives me incentive to continue to use pinterest and helps keep my husband from screaming at me.

Thanks for reading all this. If you’re interested in my pinterest boards, you can find them here.

Since I left you last, we have had Thanksgiving, our first first wedding anniversary, a trip to New Orleans/Diamondhead, MS, and reorganized the pantry. Perhaps one of those things is of no interest to you. 

I hate the first holiday after a loved one is gone. It’d been a few years since my grandmother was integrally involved in food prep for Thanksgiving, but she’d been there, laughing and listening to her family enjoy each other. I missed that this year. I’m hopeful that I can learn to be a bit more like her and just enjoy my people.

The weekend of December 9th, we were supposed to go to New Orleans with some friends of mine. They got sick and couldn’t make it. We decided to go anyway. We stayed with some friends, toured the coast, toured New Orleans, ate at the Acme Oyster House, played Quelf, and just generally enjoyed ourselves. We’ll reschedule with Harrison and Morgan later. And I’ll eat more bread pudding at Acme.

We had our first first wedding anniversary. See, Stephen and I had our marriage license signed on December 17th, 2010. We did it for tax purposes. It happened in a friend of mine’s playroom and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t even in the room when it happened. We did it entirely for tax purposes and I would not have called us married till January 8th, 2011 when we had the big fancy dress ceremony and the whole wedding night bit. We were well behaved until then, I promise.

Christmas came and went with surprising little fanfare. It was our first married Christmas. We went to the midnight service at our church, just like last year. Because of my husband’s second job, it was the first time we got to worship together in two months. We had the distinct luxury of sitting together during Christmas day service too. It might not happen again for awhile. I’d forgotten how much I liked that.

I also organized our pantry. And might have gone a bit overboard and created a spreadsheet to tell me what’s in it. And then found an app for my iphone so that I can access it at any given time in order to plan my grocery lists. Because I’m a gigantic nerd.

If you drudged all the way through this, let me know. There’s a prize in it for you. It’s a real prize too, not just 10000 “Whose Line is it Anyway” points. I promise to do better at blogging. This way you can all have a readily accessible cure for insomnia.

8. I was thankful for my husband’s job. I miss him a lot as he’s out of town a lot, but it’s a good job and it has some excellent benefits.
9. Thankful that Rickey, my favorite maintenance man, brings us breakfast on Wednesdays.
10. I was thankful that they started laying the new floors in my office, that moving offices went smoothly, and that Denise brought us all Frosties.
11. Thankful that my husband got to start his new, swanky, part-time job with the blessing of his current employers.
12. Thankful for fun in Oxford and a big Tech Bulldogs win.
13. Thankful for safe travel home, Nutella cheesecake, and clean laundry.
14. Thankful, impossibly thankful, that my car, Hedwig, was so safe.
15. Thankful that Stephen’s car didn’t break down until I got to work and that there were rocket scientists there to look at it when it did break.
16. Thankful for an easy day at work, for a fun project (I’m redoing some chairs), and for Lori Lynch, who loaned me her car when both of ours were broken.
17. This is harder. But today I am thankful that a totaled car in an at-fault accident is not devastating to us. That we have jobs, and a bit (albeit very small) of money, and that in a few months this will all be OK.

I can absolutely confess that despite my blessings, and there are many, this thankfulness thing has been hard, especially this week. Monday I was in a serious car accident where the police officer was dismissive; Tuesday the brakes went out in Stephen’s car, and today I found out the accident has been ruled my fault. It wasn’t, but you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit, right? Or maybe you throw a small fit at your house where no one can see you. Or only your husband, cat, and potentially intern can see you.

Honestly, sometimes being thankful is hard. This week was a good reminder that in all things, God is good. He works for good. And that our jobs are to glorify him, not to wait around while he provides ways to glorify ourselves. I needed the reminder. And I need to be less hard-headed. I’d prefer for the next reminder to come somewhat more gently than a Ford Edge barreling into my beloved Saturn Aura.

So, on Sunday I was thankful for the Wesley Foundation at Louisiana Tech University. I was not a student at LA Tech. I was not a Wesley student at LA Tech, but my husband was, and he credits that ministry with helping shape his life into something good, and I love him, so I’m thankful that this group exists on that campus to help effect change in the lives of college students.

Today, Monday, I’m thankful that there are two short work weeks in November. We are off for Veteran’s Day and then the Thanksgiving holidays are approaching. I am thankful for them.

I’m also thankful that the TV was muted during that terrible Napa Auto Parts commercial where the cashier sings.