Linville Gorge Wilderness Area

James and I went camping at Linville Gorge this past weekend with my parents. It was a brief trip, just two nights, but it was a nice chance to get away. Usually the area is pretty cool during the summer, but we had highs in the lower 80s all weekend. We did some day hiking on Sunday and the view was simply breathtaking. So anyway, here are some pictures.

Church Customs Every Episcopalian Ought to Know

The following is a pamphlet published by the Forward Movement.

Entering an Episcopal church for the first time can be daunting. Episcopalians do things that can seem odd to those familiar with other churches or no church. Why all these changes of posture, gestures, and moving about the room?

Perplexing as these customs may be at first, there are reasons for them. Some customs are matters of courtesy. Others are outward expressions of spiritual truths. A few simply enhance the beauty and reverence of Episcopal worship. Customs vary from place to place, but here are some church customs observed in many Episcopal churches.

The One Year Apron!

It only took me fifteen months, but I finally finished my first apron project! For those of you who don't know (or don't remember), I embarked on my apron-making experiments last year while James was deployed. After about twelve hours of hard labor, I had to give up on my original apron project and settle for a half-apron instead. I had never worked with a pattern before and I made the mistake of picking one with rounded edges and a gathered ruffle. Anyway, I stuffed the finished but unattached top-half of the apron in a drawer, vowing to one day to back and put the damn thing together. Since then, I've been using the bottom as a half-apron and that's worked pretty well. Today I felt inspired to finally put the two pieces together once and for all. Here are the results:

Before

 

After

Hooray for being finished and being able to check something off my pre-moving to do list! 

The Wrist Rosary Project

During Lent this year, I took up reading the Daily Office (morning, noon, evening, and end-of-day prayers). Since Holy Week I have completely lost all the discipline I built up during Lent and it makes me very disappointed in myself. Why should I only observe this practice of daily prayer for 40 days out of the year? I recently discovered The Daily Office online and signed up for morning and evening prayer to be sent to my email every day. It simplified the process for me by putting together the daily Psalms, lessons, and prayers as given in the lectionary. I've been faithfully reading morning and evening prayer for a week or so now (I did it sporadically for about two weeks before I got my act together). I also bought a copy of The New Oxford Annotated Study Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version so I could better understand the context of my daily readings, and I've enjoyed that.

In addition to daily readings, I really wanted to get into the habit of daily prayer. We say a blessing before we sit down to dinner, but we don't always remember to say one before breakfast or lunch. Some days, after I've read morning prayer, I sit on the couch with my cup of coffee and pray a rosary. I always keep a couple rosaries in my purse (you never know when you might need to whip one out), but they've fallen into the trap of out-of-sight-out-of-mind. So I decided to start making wrist rosaries (a single decade) that I could wear on a daily basis to remind me pray. So much of my time is spent just sitting around waiting for something, when I could be praying instead.

So my new craft project is to make wrist rosaries. LOTS of them. Enough in different sizes, colors, and designs that I can wear one with every outfit and not have an excuse to leave it behind. I might even make a few five-decade wrist rosaries to resemble multi-strand bracelets. Here are some photos of the one I made just this afternoon. The Our Father and Hail Mary beads are Chinese Jasper and the spacers are glass beads I bought in a multi-pack from Wal-Mart.

New June Adoption Update

Today was a bad day. I spoke to our agency this afternoon about our upcoming move and all the ridiculousness surrounded by it. In short, we're moving to a new state in roughly two and a half weeks. When we move, our current home study will expire. We can't officially start our next home study until we have a place of residence because we have to be assigned a social worker. Social workers are assigned by proximity. The home study agency can't pick which social worker is going to be closest to us because we don't have a place to live yet. No home study and no home study in progress means that our agency can no longer present us to potential birthmothers. That means, basically, that we're going to have to put the whole adoption process on hold until our house sells. Our only other alternative would be to move into a small apartment until we sell the house and can move into a new one. The problem with that is how do we afford it? We're a single income household. And although we don't live paycheck-to-paycheck right now, we don't really have enough money to pay for both a mortgage and an apartment either. Because we have a (ginormous) dog, getting an apartment is going to be more expensive than if it were just the two of us. And there's no way we could leave Piper behind with my parents. She gets separation anxiety when we go away for a week. Leaving her for a month or two (or more) would be too traumatic. I just don't know what to do. I don't want to put our file on hold because I'm afraid we'll miss out on a match opportunity. But I don't want to bankrupt us for the sake of starting the new home study because then we won't be able to afford the legal fees for the adoption, let alone offer any financial support to a birthmother. I feel like no matter what decision I make, it's going to be the wrong one. I feel like nothing is going right, like nothing is ever going to be right, and like there's nothing I can do about it. I am a proactive person. It's not in my nature to just sit by and let the sugar hit the fan. But I feel so helpless right now. Everywhere I turn there's just more trouble coming my way.