Location, Location, Location

We have a wedding location!!! Yay! This has been the most difficult part of the wedding planning process so far. It's obviously one of the first decisions, so I don't have a lot to compare it to, but I think in the end it will rank towards the top. The main problem has been that I am 7 hours away from where I'm getting married and churches in east Tennessee don't always have websites, and when they do, there aren't pictures. Also, churches around Benton are small. Like 100 person capacity small. And churches with 100 person capacity expect about half of that to show up based on the size of their parking lots. Also, I really wanted an outdoor reception. So, I needed to find a church that either had an outdoor area to have a reception, or was close enough to a place for an outdoor reception.

We looked at every church in a 20min radius of our house. It's the Bible belt - that was a lot of churches. Mom, Shannon, Cheryl, and I went driving on a Sunday afternoon. We stopped at every church we passed. We peeked in windows, tried locked doors, met pastor's wives, came across birthday party carryovers waiting for the evening service to start, sneaked in through a door that was open because a sink was being installed, and compared every church to our church and all the other ones. We especially looked at carpet colors. I think carpet stores give major discounts to churches who buy green carpet - the bolder the color, the cheaper the carpet. Mom and I also drove to an area 45min away and followed every little white sign hiding in the grass around stop signs that pointed to a place of worship. We saw a lot of interesting places. George (my GPS who speaks in the voice of George Bush) took us on some interesting shortcuts. But ultimately we found it true that the prettiest place is in your own backyard. Or your neighbors' backyard...
We are going to have the ceremony at First Baptist Church in Benton where my parents attend and the reception in our friends'/neighbors' backyard. Buddy and Cheryl live up the river from us and have a pretty place down the hill from their house with a pavilion by the river. So, I am very grateful they are willing to let us use it, and very excited we have that all settled. Now to the rest of the checklist.

As for other non-wedding related things, I've found some music I like. I first heard about Adele from one of my RAs when I came to interview at MC. Only recently did I actually listen to her. I listened through a concert of hers and these are the songs that stuck out to me. She has such a powerful voice and evokes strong emotions. As Cody would say, she's got soul.

The first song is Rolling in the Deep. I really like the video as well. The imagery communicates so much emotion - passion in the dancing, anger in the dishes, anticipation in the glasses, and the build-up in the city. I really love the progressions too - the powder on the floor and sparks on the paper city. The background vocals and percussion of the song are awesome too.

Also so good - Someone Like You

Another song I love is If I Die Young by The Band Perry. I love the essence of the song. Something about the whole sound just connects deeply with me. I really like the video of this as well. I think if I fully embraced the artistic, hippie, dramatic, free spirit part of me, I would be the girl in the video. I love the nature and vintage setting. Agh, it's just so good.

In other media news, I am reading the book Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott. She's been called the female version of Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz). Traveling Mercies reminds me a lot of another book I read recently called I'm Perfect, You're Doomed. I'm Perfect, You're Doomed is about a girl raised Jehovah's Witness. It's about her childhood in the faith and how she questions it and about all her exploits. She gets involved in a lot of bad stuff - drinking, sex, a terrible teenage marriage, eventual self-mutilation. She kind of leaves the Jehovah's Witness faith, but still is kind of attached to it. I expected the book to eventually describe some kind of turning point in her life, but it ends with her in pretty much the same situation, except divorced by the end, I think. It was a disappointment. Not that every autobiography needs to have the person come to Jesus, but at the end of the story you would kind of like to know that the author isn't going to keep drinking and cutting herself, or is at least going to try to stop or get help. This book didn't give any hope of this. So, I'm left with the idea of some lonely 20-something girl sitting in her apartment drinking herself useless by noon, cutting, and experimenting with comedy and beat poetry, while living off of royalty checks she gets from her book. But, I digress. The point - while these books seem similar, I'm hoping Traveling Mercies turns out better. It actually already is better. Anne Lamott does come to a point of being willing to believe in God and she stops drinking. Now she's exploring how God plays into the daily struggles she faces as close friends die and friends' kids are sick and her own son faces the possibility of a disease. I'll let you know how her story turns out.

Today in Sunday school we were talking about King Jehu (2 Kings 9-10). To sum up the story - God tells Elisha to proclaim Jehu king over Israel. Once Jehu is king he kills Jezebel, Ahab's family, and all of the servants of Baal as a cleansing of Israel, according to God's will. But, he doesn't stop the worshiping of golden calves. God tells Jehu because he has done his will completely regarding Ahab's household and other areas, Jehu's descendants will sit on the throne of Israel for four generations. After that Jehu was "not careful to keep the law of the Lord," but God still kept his promise and Jehu's descendants were on the throne for four generations. It reminded me of David. He was called a man after God's own heart, and yet had an affair with Bathsheba and had her husband killed. It's comforting to know that even the guys with huge faith and who pleased God screwed up sometimes. We feel like it's ok that we mess up sometimes, since they did. We can even feel better because most of us haven't had an affair, or murdered someone. We aren't that bad. But, how many of us have defeated Goliath or led an army to victory or carried out a risky mission for God? We might not have as low of points as David or Jehu, but we don't have as high of points either.

We live like this:
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

And David and Jehu live like this:
        /\                /\                /\
      /    \            /    \            /    \
    /        \        /        \        /        \
  /            \    /            \    /            \
/                \/                \/                \

Which does God actually prefer from us? Radical obedience and faith with occasional really bad mistakes, or small faith with small mistakes? Judging from these 2 guys and Moses, I would say the former.