A New Look

Beware of the dust and watch your step. I'm making some renovations, but after spending 2 hours on it tonight--way past the time I should have gone to bed--I'm still not done and I'm not going to be tonight.

So pardon the mess (hey, it's like everything else in my life!) and hopefully things will be back to rights soon.

The Next Stage of the Journey

About time I updated my blog, huh?

I’ve been trying to get settled and everything (I know, it’s taken me long enough) so updating my blog hasn’t been my top priority. But one day during church I had an epiphany on my blog name. So of course I wrote it all down on the bulletin. And, also of course, now I can’t find it. Sigh. But I do remember the gist of it.

But before that, here are all the wonderful suggestions I got for my new blog name. Some are serious, some are laugh-out-loud funny.

Hoosier Mama
Hoosier Horizons
Coast to Toast to Wheat
Desert to Deluge
Heat to Humid
Jordan to Jericho
Desert to Dairy
East of Jericho
Camping at Gilgal
Cows and Bees
Cheese and Pollen
Dairy and Apiary
Lait et miel
Beginning of Months
Indiana Initiative
Jen at Work
Côte à griller au blé
Hot to Humid
Chaud a Humide
Out of the frying pan and into the cornfield
Out of the frying pan... into the corn
Out of the frying pan... into the snow
Out of the frying pan... into my thermal underwear

Both Jenny’s Phil and Jeanne Damoff deserve credit for their terrific suggestions.

Back to my epiphany. One of my on-line devotionals was on 2 Samuel 22:20. “He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me” (NIV). This was exactly one week after I’d been in Indiana. Something about the passage was familiar. I was thinking one of my Beth Moore Bible studies had included that verse. But I didn’t think too much about it.

A few days later I was sitting in church and we opened that same passage. So, I know God is trying to tell me something. Then I look at what verse it cross references. Psalm 18:19. Now I know for sure God is telling me something. I studied Chapter 18 in depth the first summer I moved to Arizona. I spent weeks in that one psalm, looking up Hebrew words. It was there that I learned the word ‘rock’—used so often in that psalm—can mean a fortress, a refuge, a place of safety. Or it can mean a sharp edge, like a cliff or a flint used for circumcision.

For about a year before God brought us out of Arizona, I had a feeling our time there was ending. Our desert years had been very real desert years for us, a time of testing and trial, a time of digging our roots down deep and drawing only on Living Water, a time to trust God and God alone. Those lessons were for a purpose I don’t fully understand yet.

So when I read that verse, the one that so eloquently bookended my desert years, I knew I had a title for my blog for the next stage of this journey. Thank you all for joining on it with me.

The Big Announcement

I’ve never been much of one for following the crowd. In fact, I rather like swimming upstream. So since a lot of people move to Arizona from the Midwest, I decided to move from Arizona to the Midwest. Besides, last year at the ACFW conference in Dallas, Dave Long of Bethany House Publishers called me a cream puff for never having lived anywhere it snowed. Well, I couldn’t take a challenge like that laying down. So, we’re off to Indiana. Take that, Dave.


(Okay, yeah, I know there's not snow there right now, but I didn't take any more pictures last time I was there when everything was green. The first one is a deer track in the snow.)

Things I’ll miss about Arizona:

The water out of the tap is hot. Probably 95 or so. The pipes get really hot in the summer. And the toilet water is hot. You can lift the lid and have condensation. Kind of like giving your rear end a facial.

Not many mountains in Indiana

Amazing and dramatic views.

Dust devils the size of small tornadoes

Warm (okay, blow-dryer hot) afternoon winds.

Warm nights

Monsoon season with amazing thunderstorms.

Colorful Mediterranean plants


Things I’m looking forward to:

Seasons. I’ve heard rumors there are four but I’ve only seen two.

Snow. Not sure how I’ll survive. But I’ve never seen a real snowflake. That should be fun.

Greenery.

And plants like peonies and lilacs and bulbs. Stuff that doesn’t grow anywhere I lived.

Things that are the same:

Lots of two lane roads through corn fields.

Trains blocking those two lane roads

Bright, starry skies.

Here's where you come in.

The name of this blog is Sonoran Saga. Um, guess that's not going to work anymore. So I'm up for suggestions. I also need to change the little description box up at the top. Right now, the only thing I've come up with is Jen at Work and putting 'Caution:...." in the little description box. But I need more stuff to choose from. So, give me your ideas and if I pick yours you can come over to my house and help me pack. Wait, that doesn't sound like much of an incentive. Um, okay, how about this? I'm getting rid of a bunch of books, so I'll give some of those away.