Monday, March 17, 2008

Christ As A Light

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! To celebrate, oh and I do so love to celebrate every possible holiday, I wanted to post the prayer of Saint Patrick, himself, here on my blog. I only know it as the exquisite song by John Michael Talbot that we played at our wedding. It is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. Do yourself a favor and go to iTunes and purchase his song "Christ As A Light (The Prayer of St. Patrick). I guarantee it will be the best 99 cents you spend all day.

Anyway, like I said I wanted to post the prayer of Saint Patrick today and I figured it would be more proper to post his actual prayer than to simply post the song lyrics I love so much. My Google search for the actual words, however, came up with many, many different versions. Being neither Irish, nor Catholic, I had no idea which version was the real prayer of Saint Patrick! So I am posting JMT's lyrics, which I am more than happy to do. These words were the prayer of my heart on my wedding day three and a half years ago, and continue to perfectly capture my longing that Christ, Himself, would both surround and pervade all of me, and that my service as a wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend would be nothing less than service to Him.

Also because this song always happily reminds me of my wedding I am going to throw in a little wedding picture for free. One of the three snapshots I still have after my hard drive crashed last December. (It's not as bad as it sounds. I still have all the photographer's pictures and I know our parents have tons of snapshots too.)

The Prayer of Saint Patrick
According to John Michael Talbot


Christ as a Light illumine and guide me.
Christ as a Shield overshadow me.
Christ under me.
Christ over me.
Christ beside me on my left and my right.

This day be within and without me.
Lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.
Be in the heart of each to whom I speak,
In the mouth of each who speak unto me.



Monday, March 3, 2008

Comma Confession.

I don't know where commas belong and where they do not belong anymore. I used to think I had a pretty good understanding of the proper usage of the English language. Not so much anymore. Lately, I am stumped by commas. I just can't remember all the rules. I wish there was a class at the library or something that I could take to help me remember. I think the fact that email doesn't require punctuation may be the reason I can't punctuate correctly anymore. I just realized that until I started this blog the only writing I have done since college has be in the form of an email. So there is my confession. I have no idea where commas belong in a sentence. I want to know though, so if you have any tips please send them my way. I just needed to get that off of my chest.

Triumph Of The Old-fashioned Cup



You are looking at the cup that has done what none of the fancy cups I have purchased in the past several weeks could do. It allowed Afton to drink without soaking herself! I am so atonished because this is the exact kind of cup I used to drink out of when I was a toddler over twenty-five years ago!

When my mom sent me this kit a few weeks ago, I immediately dismissed the cups for the time being, thinking if Afton can't drink out of the state of the art cups they are making now, there is no way she can drink out of these old school cups that are the same design as my mom used to give me! Much to my surprise, about a week later when I gave her these dishes to play with, she picked the cup up and put it right to her mouth like she was drinking. Her form was perfect, better than with any of the other cups I had tried.

Very interesting I thought. I popped her in her high chair, filled the cup with water, recapped it and gave it to her......and she drank it! Perfectly! It was amazing. The cup was small and easy for her to hold. It was shallow, so it didn't require lots of tipping. It worked like a charm for her! Who would of thought the same cup I drank out of when I was a little girl was the cup that would do the trick for mine!