Who knew making a salad was so fun AND those "Ziplock" Commercials are true!!!

So it's Tuesday July 17 and I've been rushing around all day trying to get things around to leave on tour tonight. The band is headed out to New Jersey to play a couple camps and then to North Carolina to play a couple camps. I've been looking forward to this trip for quite a while even though it's going to be ultra complicated and fairly stressful. What else is new though.

So at lunch time I was feeling health and money conscious. When I'm headed out on the road for a week or two I never pick up groceries cause they'd just sit in the fridge and go bad. Because of this I usually eat more fast food than normal which reminds me that I don't have a lot of money and also makes me think about gaining more weight. Luckily my fiance is going to be living in my house while I'm away so that she can take care of Henry, my basset hound.



Well since my fiance was going to be moving in she had already started stocking my fridge with her kinds of food. Girls eat strange things like fruit, vegetables, and chicken (as compared to my diet of coffee, ego waffles, and cereal). Since I had already eaten the last of my waffles and cereal, I decided to tap into her food reserves in the fridge. There was lettuce, leftover grilled chicken, salad dressing and cheese. I seem to remember eating something in a restaurant that had these ingredients. Yes, actually I used to make them when I worked at Applebees. A chicken ceaser salad! Not only is it free, it's probably healthy.

Once the menu has been decided on, I commence the wrangling up of a bag to put the ingredients in and shake them up (like I've seen on TV in those salad dressing commercials). As I'm doing this I think back to those ZipLock commercials where they put spaghetti sauce in a ZipLock bag and a generic back and then threaten to hold it over someone's head, and then make them choose which bag they really want to use. They were pretty intense commercials, but it's just advertising right?

Once the ingredients are in the bag, I commence the shaking (I like the word commence cause it makes me feel like a fighter pilot.) 2 seconds into the shaking, the zip seal of the bag pops open like ZipLock warned me it would if I used a generic bag instead of their name brand. The salad and chicken and dressing and cheese flips out of the bag in every direction. All over me, the counter, the floor, and mostly on the dog, who was faithfully at my side at the time of the salad making.



Thankfully Henry was helpful in cleaning the mess off the floor, though he didn't seem to realize he had salad dressing all over him that I later had to clean off. I salvaged what was left on the counter and ate that for lunch.

I'm pretty sure Henry will get excited from now on when I make a salad, and I'm pretty sure that from now on I'm buy Zip Lock brand zipper bags.

I'll be praying for you...

I've heard it said that the lie that gets told most often is "I'll be praying for you." I think of this almost every time I tell someone I'll pray for them, knowing that I really won't. Recently I've made it a point to say a quick prayer shortly after I tell someone this, just so that I won't have told a complete lie. I'm also working hard at remembering to do it at least once more within the next week. It's still just so difficult.

I don't know why it's so hard to pray for other people. I'm sure it's got something to do with the fact that we human beings are focused on ourselves and rarely do anything that that doesn't give us some sort of immediate gratification. Praying for someone is cumbersome. I'd rather be thinking about what I'm going to have for dinner later tonight, what's going to happen on Grey's Anatomy, or if that smell is coming from me. Praying gets in the way. It's a shame though, cause if anything, this world could use a lot more prayer and I'll tell you why.

I've read that a good way to look at the God to human relationship is like a piece of paper with a line drawn on it.





_________________________________________.__________________





The paper resembles God and the line resembles our life path. We exist at one small point on the line. This point is constantly moving forward but can never move backwards. The line has a beginning and an end. God on the other hand, as the piece of paper, is dwelling in our past, present and future, all at once. He is omnipotent. Not only is He every place, He is every instance. He is helping me through stuggles as a 5, 10, 30, and 50 year old at the same "time" he helps me through struggles tonight. This makes His grace and forgiveness even more amazing to me considering He is witnessing the total summation of my sin from the past, present, and future constantly; from the beginning (is there such a thing?) into eternity.

With that being said, my mind is numb. I've never considered myself a theologian, so this may just be the ramblings of a mis-informed fool. But if this correct, is it possible that I can pray for someone or something, or a certain instance from my past and have it mean the same as if I had done it back then? God is not constrained by time, and if prayers are direct communication with God, the whole God, and not just a tiny section, then really, my prayers should echo throughout eternity, for all eternity, past, present, and future, simply because that's what God is.

For me, this puts a new perspective on prayer. For someone so concerned with leaving a mark on this tiny world, I find it exhilarating that a simple prayer can leave a mark on eternity.