Popcorn Phacts

Thanks for tagging me SCL and Katy at MY NUT VILLAGE. I am supposed to post the rules of tagation, so here they are:

1) Link to the person who tagged you. (already am)
2) Post the rules on your blog (copy and paste 1-6). (check)
3) Write 6 random things about yourself (see below). (check)
4) Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them. (I don't know six : (
5) Let each person know they have been tagged and leave a comment on their blog. : (
6) Let the tagger know when your entry is up. : (

I have never been good at games!

Six random Popcorn facts:

1. I love my name(s). My real name, (Melanie)(thanks mom) and my alter-name, Popcorn.

2. If I were to choose a new career it would be interior design or library science (deep down I am very nerdy)

3. Popcorn is my favorite, top # 1 food.

4. I am a slob, though I like things neat : 0

5. I am afraid of squirrels.

6. Vacations longer than 4 days start to bore me. After that I miss my routine, my animals, and my house and I want to come home.

Sunday Snippets: Spiritual Oneness

Sunday's marriage devotion was on spiritual oneness. I think the desire to have this with another person is why we all get married in the first place, isn't it?. But what is it anyway? According to my research, it is a state in which a married couple is tuned in to the most minute details and rhythms of each other's day. What hurdles area they facing? What are the immediate needs looming large on their mind? Characteristics include encouraging your spouse each day, praying for him, telling him you are praying for him, and of course, praying together. Nothing gives me just the lift I need more than Mr. Popcorn telling me he is praying for me about something I've mentioned to him. It communicates to me that despite his schedule, he has time for me and thinks what I think is important, is. It's validating and comforting and I know God hears his prayers! Keeping this area of the marriage humming along will provide automatic maintenance in all other areas. It's the WD40 for marital nuts, bolts, and hinges. This is not as easy as I have made it sound and many times nurturing this aspect of married life gets shoved to the back burner. I don't know about your lives, but in our lives the fast forward button seems to be hung. Each day is cram packed full to overflowing with commitments, jobs, classes, church youth group (fun!) events, cooking, working out, running, making a CD, cars in the shop, shopping for clothes for new jobs, attending church, drivers' ed, Veggie Tales camp, birthdays, graduations, Christmas picture taking, purse parties, phone calls that need making and returning, friends to check in with.....grocery shopping, lunch making. Our tongues are hanging out at the end of every day and sometimes before the end! We "take it upstairs" earlier and earlier and fall into bed with Frasier and Seinfeld before dozing off into a dead comatose slumber. But finding the time and making the effort(even if it is over the phone during a check in phone call) to keep tabs on our mate's needs and concerns, a thread of closeness will bond you together. And then when you pucker up for that goodnight kiss and your heads hit the pillows, all will be well with your soul despite the tornado called life.

Popcorn's Post Nuptial Ponderings

Mr. Popcorn likes for me to lead a short devotional in our adult Sunday school class each week. Last Sunday the devotional was from a little book called Making a Good Marriage Better. The average length of marriage in our class is about 17 years, Mr. Popcorn and I skew it a little with our 28 big ones. The couples in our class have good marriages apparently since they are still intact after many years, and who doesn't want to make it better? We discussed that in Genesis 2:24 we are told that two shall become one flesh. Walking around as two people with two personalities, two intellects, two this and two that, as one flesh? Is this possible? Well, yes, it is. Is it hard? Yes, so hard. For the Popcorns it is something that fluctuates all the time. Sometimes we feel like one, act like one, are one. And sometimes we don't. Yep, that's right. The marriage pendulum swings wide, doesn't it? Each moment a certain balance must be met. A teetering seesaw whose fulcrum is all at once physical, mental, and spiritual attraction packaged in our actions, our glances, our words, and our touch. As long as that balance is maintained a marriage can flourish. Keeping our mate's needs above our own is the secret to maneuvering as one flesh and keeping the seesaw in play. As humans, we can't do that without lots of prayer and giving up ourselves to Christ daily. Only with His help can we keep both sides of the seesaw suspended allowing all four feet to dangle joyfully during the ride.

Popcorn's Preview: Concert Save The Date!

Save the Date! Friday Night, Sept. 5 @ Williams Trace Baptist Church in Sugar Land, Texas

Cary Carroll aka mr. popcorn

CD Release Concert

Live In Your Love

Popcorn's Portrait

Family portraits....aren't they lovely? Posed, pretty, and everyone looking dapper. The sun just so in a cloudless sky, our faces awash in beautiful light. The long lens of the fancy camera capturing just the right glint in the eye and cock of the head. Freeze framing what we wish our lives looked like every day. But because we are frail creatures of dust, family pictures only tell part of the story. Life and love within the confines of family isn't as perfect or as easy as it appears in a thumbnail shot. Christ loves us unconditionally, no strings attached, even though we are vastly imperfect. I tend to attach requirements to the love I am willing to give because I am human. In a way, I require a certain element of perfection measured in relation to my needs. Do you bring me flowers? Do you whisper enough sweet nothings in my ear? Do you obey me? Do you make grades that I can tell my friends about and be proud of? Will you get into a college that will be a fitting reflection of my success? Do you make curfew? Do you wear what I want you to? Do I approve of your friends? Do you celebrate my birthday with enough fanfare? Do you do you do you??? Everything loops back to me me my my. God gives us the opportunity to practice loving others unconditionally starting with our family. He designed families as little worlds in which we learn things, important lessons about ourselves through our relationships with our beloved husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, sons, and daughters. Within the context of family we can keep on loving each other when we are disappointed, disgruntled, grumpy, moody, sad beyond words, filled with resentment, or just out of sorts. We can watch as a family member loses his temper, spends too much, makes poor decisions, wastes talent, or is just plain annoying and yet forgive. Isn't that what Christ does? Behind the camera's eye lie real lives with real sinners as participants brimming with opportunities to model the love, grace, and forgiveness we freely receive from Him. Family life is a laboratory of the Christian faith, a living, breathing analogy. So while the photographer's camera has snapped a flattering, picture perfect portrait of the Popcorns, we are far from perfect...but our imperfections are made bearable by living in His perfect love. 1 John 4:11 Dear friends since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and His love has been brought to full expression in us.

*****The Popcorns thank our friend and world renown free lance photographer Ken Childress and his assistant, Michael*****

Popcorn's Posse

This is one of my all time favorite pictures. This is the group of women I work with at this little gift shop. I love them, and their dogs. I have worked at Magpies for almost five years and have loved every minute of it. It smells good, lovely music is wafting in the background, it is fun, fun, fun. Magpies has been total therapy for me over these years. "Happy" therapy. The ladies (as we call ourselves, as opposed to the "girls" which are the young teenage girls that work there) share many things in common such as children the same age, four of us have college kids at the same far-flung college, husbands, and yes, dogs. The owner, pictured in the middle with Pearl the maltipoo, got married in May and we all traveled to her hill country wedding, wore boots, and celebrated with her and further bonded...Our biggest hurdle of the day at Magpies is "What color tissue do you think will look good in this bag?" or "What font should we use for this monogram?". One of us knows almost every person that walks through the door and people love that. Our customers say it feels like visiting some one's home when they shop at Magpies. We celebrate each other's birthdays with decadent cakes, we know whose having a root canal, we know who grilled last night, we know whose daughter has a softball game, we know whose mom is coming to town, (and whose mother in law.....), we share recipes for food and for life. These gals are my friends, my sisters, my counselors and my posse. I better go, I have to be there at 9:45...

****dogs and humans left to right****Jackson, Popcorn, McKauley, Raelynn, Lily, Zoe, Peggy, Queso, Sandra, Charlie, Michelle, Sonya, Pedro, Pearl, Megan, Maggie, Stephanie, Susan, Kai

Popcorn's Purge

Weird. That's what it is. Weird that I would blog on "stuff" yesterday and then today's sermon at church was, and I quote, "Connecting With God's Power: Power Over Greed"! Boy when the Holy Spirit wants to get my attention about something, this is what always happens. The topic becomes a recurring theme in everything I do, everywhere I go. Even a stroll through a favorite antique store became a classroom for the topic serving as a prelude, a heads up to the final whammee this morning. The gist of the sermon today was to make us aware of our tendency towards materialism. Our appetites for things that never seems satiated. The desire for things grows exponentially with the next acquisition. When we have things beyond our actual needs, the potential for being owned by things looms large. Then what have we got? A bunch of cars, houses, furniture, footstools, forks, plates, toys (big and small) serving as detours and roadblocks to the abundant life the Jesus offers us. Our littered landscape of stuff blocks our vision..physically and spiritually and causes us to lose sight of the satisfying life that requires no purchase, no spending, no sacrifice or compromise. Our path to happiness is clearer if not cluttered up with the possessions of life we think are so vital. So I'm having a garage sale, I'm making a Goodwill drop, and I'm bagging stuff up for someone that can use it. I'm on a stuff diet as of today. (can you hear Mr. Popcorn cheering and high fiving me in the background?)