I'm mad at my blog

...bet you can't guess why!

My blog went crazy. It's ugly. Horrible. Gross. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating and being a little picky but I am very annoyed with all the formatting issues you may or may not see. On the home page (but not other pages) the links are all messed up.  I have my template set up and have checked the HTML but blogger is not reading the template for some strange reason. Even in "preview" it looks correct, but on the blog it's wrong. I've spent far too much time today trying to fix it, but I write all this to say that I'm now seriously considering other blog platforms. HELP!

Suggestions?  Ideas? Help for fixing this?

BLOGROLL: Encouraging Reads [Part 2]

I posted [Part 1] several weeks ago... a few encouraging and helpful websites for women in ministry and Christian young women in general, but it doesn't stop with the bigger sites...

The Internet is flooded with great blogs from women who love the Lord and seek to be a resource to others. I couldn’t list all of them, so here are JUST A FEW that I've found helpful:

KemMeyer.com – Communications Director at Granger Community Church.

MarlaTaviano.com – A speaker/writer who seeks to reach young women with her blog.

MessyCanvas.com – Mandy Steward, pastor’s wife and artist, offers a unique perspective on life.

SarahMarkley.com – Sarah and her husband have a remarkable story of redemption.

LindseyNobles.com – Lindsey is Corporate Communications Director for Thomas Nelson Publishing. 

What other blogs to you love to read? What women would you recommend reading, listening to, and/or learning from? 

Do We Measure Up? [Link Love]

This month I had the opportunity to write about another exciting but convicting topic at myMISSIONfulfilled.com...

This is just a snippet, so follow this link to read more. I wrote this for the great site I mention often, www.mymissionfulfilled.com. Comment and tell me what you think!

Surviving Saturday

We did it! Nic and I finished the 5K on Saturday. Thanks to general March craziness and travels over the past SEVERAL weeks, we definitely didn't train as we wanted to.  So, in the end, we decided to just have fun, enjoy the day, enjoy running/jogging/walking together, and finish whenever (as long as it wasn't last). So, with those expectations, we definitely survived. I learned several things along the way:

1. I'm far too competitive with myself. Seriously, I always want to do better. This can be a good thing in some instances, but many times I'm my own worst critic and far too hard on myself.
2. A running playlist can make or break my mental game. I always try to run with music and it definitely motivates me to keep going.
3. Having a running buddy is awesome. I loved running with Nic by my side. He could have easily gone ahead, but in sticking together we were able to encourage one another and keep each other going. It was much more fun this way!
4. I didn't realize how important our training was, until I hadn't trained. We literally had not run at all in 3 weeks... and we could certainly tell once we started the race. Next time I will FIND and MAKE a way to keep on training. I'm glad we set low expectations before we started!

If you're reading this, please pray for Emmett and Wendy... the reason behind the whole Team Emmett 5k. Read their blog to see how you can specifically pray for them.

For you runners out there, any advice for improving my pace? According to runkeeper I generally jog at about an 11-minute pace... I know, super slow! :)

Let's be honest

I tend to say, "let's be honest..." quite often. Lately, I've been thinking about this a lot. We (yes, me included and no, you are not off the hook either) tend to exaggerate a LOT! Think about it. Frankly, it's way too easy to exaggerate, to make things sound "better" or "worse" than they really are. Two words we use more than any, when we exaggerate or try to make something sound good, are more and less. 

I have an idea. Let's be honest. Shoot straight. Tell the truth. Instead of saying, "We have more than 2,000 people at our church," just tell us how many you really have. Is it 1,987 or 2,001? Instead of saying, "It costs over $73." Just tell us it costs $73. No more or less needed. Have you ever thought about how often you stick a "more than" or a "less than" in front of a number when it really has no business being there? It's addicting. We somehow think it makes us look better, right?

Infomercials are the worst. Just watch one and count the number of times they say, "MORE than," or, "LESS than." It's fascinating.

I hope you will step up to the challenge with me. Can I call you out for exaggerating? Will you call me out, please?