Jennifer Womble

For starting out today with very little planned, I think I ended up having a great first day of the Memorial Day weekend. Thanks to Crystal Watson, I got to kick it off with a perfect pancake breakfast…I just don’t think it gets better than Saturday morning brunch with friends. I also got to check a few things off my “to do” list. Not my clean the bathroom, do the laundry to do list, but the “fun things I plan to get to when I have time to do list.” The first being, I got a few summer herbs planted.

I’ve been planning to get some herbs planted for weeks now and every time I’m at the store and pay $3-4 for some fresh basil or thyme I remember that I want to get this done. Today, I got started with some sweet basil, french thyme, and dill. In addition to being herbs I seem to use often, dill and basil are supposed to freeze and dry well, which is why I picked those two. The dill was the most difficult, I actually never found a dill plant but was doing good by my third nursery to find some dill seed, so hopefully that’ll work just a well, it’ll just take a little more patience to get the finished product. I learned a few fun facts about basil that, being the novice herb grower that I am, I didn’t already know…

This was the beautiful basil selection at one of the local Green Hills nurseries:

First, basil is an annual, so it will only bloom for one life cycle and then it’s gone. You can lengthen it’s life by trimming any blooms as soon as they show up. Second, the suggestion of the nursery owner was to plant basil seed alongside my basil plants so that about the time the plant dies, the seed will be grown and ready to go. Pretty smart!

My herb “garden” is the definition of starting small, but at least it’s a start…

With the herbs planted, the roommates and I headed over to check out the Nashville Food Bloggers Bake Sale for Flood Relief, the adorable poster alone was enough to get me to come:

Upon arriving, we found an array of delectable goodies and everything was priced at $2, it was too good to be true!

Chocolate and banana cupcakes:

Vanilla almond blackberry goodies dressed in pink:

Everything was baked and donated by local Nashville food bloggers and all proceeds whet to Second Harvest of Middle Tennessee. So smart and delicious, for the full story, click here.

To top it off, I finally got to see Iron Man 2 tonight, and if it’s possible, I’m pretty sure it was even better than the first. The perfect summer blockbuster.

Now for some sweet sleep…I can’t wait to see what tomorrow holds.

I love summer, especially in Nashville, with the one exception being that we’re at least 6 hours from an ocean. Ignoring that glaring omission, summer in Nashville is always so fun. There is something musical, outdorsy, or artsy to do almost any night of the week.

One of the first signs that summer has arrived in Nashville? Outdoor movies. Friends will host movies on big screens in their back yards, starting June 2 The Nashville Scene will kick of Movies in the Park with a showing of Where the Wild Things Are, and tonight, a group near and dear to my heart, Front Porch Ministry, kicked off their Friday night Movie Night. Despite rain, mud, and sever weather threats, the movie night went on anyway and I’m so glad it did.

There was plenty of popcorn…

and frozen ice to go around.

If you’d like to spend a Friday night with a fun group of kids watching a great movie on an outdoor screen, this group will be getting together every Friday evening at 7, now through August.

A few weeks ago (5/2/10 to be exact), Nashville was hit with some historical flooding. Houses were devastated, cars were ruined, lives were lost, and most people in our city were affected in one way or another – either you experienced some amount of flooding yourself or your knew someone who did. It was everywhere we looked – TV coverage, radio fundraisers, facebook, twitter…everywhere Nashville looked, all we could see was flood damage for many days.

Now that a couple weeks have past, the story that has left the biggest mark on me hasn’t been the flood damage itself, but the way I’ve seen people give of themselves, over and above what they had to. I have witnessed this community act, and act fast, for the good of their neighbors. The desire to give financially, physically, and emotionally has been nothing short of remarkable. Even people I know who suffered a great deal themselves have put their needs aside to assist those who were worse off. Churches have stepped up in astounding ways, the local music community has jumped into action to organize fundraisers, artists have created posters and t-shirts in record time, people gave up bathing and shaving for days at a time to conserve water, and businesses have encouraged employees to take time off work to go out and serve. Just now I heard about how comedian Jerry Sienfiend gave all the proceeds from his Nashville show last week to flood relief – incredible, and not the first story of someone not from our community giving in ways they didn’t have to. Again, the immediate and heartfelt respose is like nothing I’ve ever seen. I am amazed and blessed by people’s hearts to serve and encouraged by the willing generosity. While I never fully understand why God brings devestation into our lives, I do know that he uses these times of suffering to show us how little stuff we need and how much we need each other.

A talented friend noticed and captured this spirit of generosity in the video below…it does a great job of showing off many people who felt they had no other option but to sacrifice their time and energy for their neighbors in need. It’s a beautiful thing to watch! (Props to Ben James for an awesome video).

If you are in the Nashville community and are looking for groups to serve with, I would suggest the following:

• http://www.crosspoint.tv/
• http://www.hon.org/
• http://www.fellowshipnashville.org/flood-response/opportunities/

If you live outside the Nashville community and want to help in someway, I would suggest the following:

• http://www.hon.org/
• http://nashvilleflood.myshopify.com/
• http://www.coolpeoplecare.org/

While I don’t think it even needs to be said, I would encourage you to keep serving Nashville, keep giving back to your community and caring for your neighbor. We are a shining light for the world to see what it looks like when you care for others before yourself. It’s a beautiful sight indeed!

“The big thing is to love reality. Not live in the imagination, not in what could’ve been or what should’ve been or what can be.” – J.Vanier

I don’t know about you, but I often have my clearest, most inspired thoughts in the middle of the night. The perspective I get may be about any number of things concerning life, but most recently, it was a sense of urgency to fully embrace my life story…right now, as it is, not as it will be, or should be, but to be fully present in the now.

It is incredible how often I lose sight of how incredible life is, every part of it. The hard, the fun, the challenges, the small victories, the people, the moments…they can all be so beautiful and enjoyable if you’re only paying attention.

Now even as I write all these thoughts out, I know of a good friend who is in the midst of a very difficult family situation, something that is completely out of her control but that she must walk through. I’ve also recently been assigned the task of reading through hundreds of women’s stories and many of them are absolutely heartbreaking. Even in my own life I’ve walked through some very difficult seasons that made it challenging to embrace joy and the full depth of God’s grace and goodness. So I don’t want to pretend that everyone can just turn off the pain they are dealing with, think on the bright side, and everything will be rosy, that’s just not how life works. In Ecclesiastes 3 we read the following:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…

a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance…
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

I don’t want to ever make light of the pain and sorrow that life can inflict. There are most certainly times in life where you need time to just be numb. As Ecclesiastes says, a time to weep and a time to mourn. But I think what I’m learning can apply even in these times. Once you’ve allowed yourself to be numb as long as you need, then look to your friends, to people you trust to carry you. And when you’re ready, start to fully embrace the here and now again and grow through the pain.

My new worst fear is to get to the end of a day, month, or worse year and look back and not really know what happened with the time. I pray that I can be fully present in each moment, fully embracing the joy and sorrow of life that I’m in the midst of right now. Not waiting for life to start after I’ve paid off all my bills, bought my first house and ‘established’ myself. Rather, wrapping my arms around where God has me now and living each day intentionally and with purpose. It’s a challenge to say the least and something that I will likely struggle with on a daily basis for some time, but something that I pray will come more naturally over time.

Two weekends ago I took a rather dramatic spill while sledding and while I’m a little late in blogging about the experience, I’ve had enough questions about what happened that I thought I should post the details for the world to see.

Two Fridays ago, Nashville got a thorough covering of the cold, fluffy, white stuff. It was the most respectable snow fall we’d seen in years and after about 12 hours being cooped up inside while it all came down, Nashvillians flocked out in droves to play.

This was our front yard after a day of snowfall:

All day Saturday, I kept hearing about the great hill at the State Capitol that everyone was enjoying. So, when I got the call from my roommates on Sunday afternoon that they were playing at the hill, I couldn’t resist…I headed straight over. People were “sledding” down the hill on all sorts of homeade rafts…ironing boards, trash can lids, deflated water floats…anything that could carry them down the hill at a high rate of speed. Here’s the hill…

My roommates had a big blue inter-tube that was made of really slick plastic…perfect. Since the snow had now been sitting on the ground for a good 24 hours and since this particular hill had been put to such good sledding use by the time I arrived on Sunday afternoon, it was like a hill of solid ice and we flew down with no problem. It was awesome and breathtaking. Here I am catching my breath and trying to find my stomach again after my first trip down…

One minor problem with our hill, that I failed to notice, was that enough of the snow had melted so that the curb of the street at the bottom of the hill was now visible. It was only my second trip down the hill before I was abruptly made aware of the problem. I hit the curb at full speed and flew a good 6 feet into the air. All I could think about was my back…hoping and praying that I hadn’t done permanent damage. All the same, I kept noticing that my teeth felt weird, I couldn’t place what was different, they just felt wrong. It wasn’t till I made it to the car and checked out the mirror that I discovered the problem, I had chipped TWO TEETH! I laughed, at first, at the craziness of the whole situation. People had been sledding down this hill for two days with no trouble and I take two trips down and get injured. Then it sank it that these were MY TEETH…my front teeth at that, I started to panic. Would a dentist be able to patch me back together so that I would look good as new? And almost more frightening a thought…how much was this going to cost me?

Thankfully, God took good care of me. I got some excellent dental advice as to what I should do and my own dentist did a superb job fixing me up…in fact, you can’t even tell it ever happened. Best of all, insurance covered most of it. I still owe the chiropractor a visit to check out my back. Between this spill and another fall I took last summer, my back could use some attention. Fortunately, my good friend Missy Zahn is just as accident prone as I am, if not more, and she already has a good chiropractor in mind for me.

Here’s our group of sledders…

And to speak to the title of this post, the quote come from a darling coffee mug that my sister gave me that I drink out of almost daily. When considering whether or not to post this story, I noticed the quote again and laughed, it was a fitting enough blog title for this post that it fixed my decision that I had to tell this story.

This morning I got to pick up 5 pieces of beautiful hand-painted pottery, all products of a fun little day I got to have last Saturday. I am privileged to work alongside a wonderful inner-city ministry, Front Porch Ministry, which I hope to blog about in more detail in the near future. It’s been through my time spent with this ministry that I’ve come to know some special young ladies who live in the neighborhood where Front Porch is based. Last weekend, I was able to introduce a few of those girls to some of my close girlfriends during a Saturday outing that was centered around pancakes and pottery.

Eleven of us somehow managed to get a table at the very popular and always busy Nashville favorite, the Pancake Pantry. After eating so much that we were all groaning from being too full and vowing to not to touch food again for several days, we literally ran across the street to get out of the frozen air as quick as we could to arrive at the warm and inviting All Fired Up.

The older girls took much more time deciding what we wanted to paint while the younger ladies quickly made up their minds, picked out pottery and paint, and dove right on in. Some of them were practically finished by the time some of the older girls were just getting started.

Most of the girls picked boxes to paint, each a different size or shape.  Chasmine, above, chose a small, sweet heart box.

As much as a tried to dissuade her, once Scottesha laid eyes on this skeleton box, nothing else would do:

Lauren chose to paint a perfectly pink piggy bank for her new niece Tirzah:

In the end, both young and old had a blast…it was a perfect winter day activity. Here is most of the group, we lost a few after breakfast:

Here are the pieces I was able to pick up this morning…which includes my War Eagle mug and the boxes that the four girls painted. All the older girls stayed for many hours into the afternoon, long after I’d taken all the younger girls home, painting their pieces to perfection. I can’t wait to see how all their pottery turns out!

Steve Jobs with the Apple iPad

So it seems pretty evident at this point that the iPad isn’t exactly going to break any sales records its first week out the door. Too much hype and an underwhelming product showing has left even the biggest of Apple enthusiasts at a loss for many good things to say about the new device. This past weekend I was discussing thoughts about the new iPad with friends when the question came up about whether or not it will change the world of technology as we know it, the way the iPod and the iPhone did. And for me, since I work for a book publisher, my thoughts went to how it will effect the written word.

It’s no secret that books are going digital, just like music did. The question on my mind? How soon before there are more people reading books digitally than the good ‘ole printed version that we all grew up with. Sure the Kindle, the Nook, and others are garnering some attention, but I don’t think there’s anything out there yet that is really changing the cultural norm. I lack a real need for the Kindle and other digital readers becuse none of these divices let me interact with my books any more than if I was holding the actual book in my hands. Do I really need a device that can carry around hundredes of books for me at once when I can only read one at a time? No. But what if there was a device that would allow my books to be interactive? What if I could listen to interviews with the author while I read, watch videos that brought the characters in my story to life, or listen to a soundtrack that was timed to enhance my reading experience? Now you’ve got me interested. And that’s where the iPad could take us. It’s not there yet, but I it’s a step closer.

With newspapers and magazines rapidly becoming obsolete in their traditional format, it appears that these outlets are being forced to lead the way in going digital, and in the process, giving us a glimspe as to what’s to come in the book world. I recently saw a video put together by Sport Illustrated, it was shown by Mike Hyatt, our company President, at our last all-employee meeting. This video truly excited me for the future of publishing. While you will notice that the video shows the “new” SI on what appears to be the new iPad, I found the vision and creativity coming from the folks at SI much more exciting than the unveiling of the latest Apple brainchild. I think I resonated with this video futher, becuase it falls into line with where I think books are headed.

Check out the video below…get excited for what’s to come, and let me know what you think.

My sister Laura, my roommate Lauren and I had the most fun making homemade heating pads this weekend. If you’ve got an aching back or just want a warm pad to put at the end of your bed on a cold night, and you’ve got the slightest hint of a knack for craftiness, then this is a perfect project for you. Laura got the idea off a great blog that she keeps up with, check it out for the exact details of how to make these delightful sachets…they are great to keep for yourself or to give as a gift - flythroughourwindow.com. As the author of this blog notes, THIS IS A BEGINNERS project and very fool proof…I agree! To get the essence of what is involved, check out our photos below:

First you cut out your fabric. This, for us, was challenging only because our cat Aubie wanted to be in the middle.

Laura tried to put Aubie in his place.

With out best efforts to wrangle him, we were at least able to back him off a little so we could cut. He still wanted to supervise though.

With the fabric cut to the designated size, iron it in half, inside out.

Sew two of the sides completely, and the third sew most of the way, leaving room to fill it with rice. Then reverse out the fabric so it is no longer inside out, then again, iron flat.

Measure out 4 inch pockets and mark them with pins. Then sew along each of these pin lines, but don’t sew them all the way, leaving room to fill with rice.

You will likely need a funnel to get the rice in. Measure out the rice and fill one section at a time. We added a bag of chamomile tea to each section to give them a better scent then just rice scent.

Sew up each section once it is full of rice.

In the end, we made 8 of these…they are just that quick and easy! Plus, once we got started, we realized how fun these things are and how great they will be for gifts.

Any of you that are sewers and are used to following good patterns, I know that my descriptions are lacking. I recommend you check out the blog where we found this idea. She gives a much more thorough outline of what to do. Have fun and enjoy this fun winter project!

I’ve got three books that I hope to read over these last couple winter months. I love to read, but I sometimes also have to give myself goals and deadlines for reading otherwise I may never get a book finished. Here’s what I have in mind…be looking for my thoughts on each of these once I’ve finished them.

First, I’d like to finally read The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, a book that has been on my bookshelf for quite sometime now, but that I’ve been too intimidated to start. As much as I respect Lewis, I sometimes have a hard time starting one of his books for fear that it will be too over my head and I won’t have the motivation to finish it. I read all of The Chronicles of Narnia and thourally enjoyed those books, but they were also written for children, so right up my alley. I started Screwtape this morning though, and I’m excited by how approachable it seems to be. And more so, how relevant it is! Originally published in the early 40s, you would expect it to be out of touch. But, 40 pages in, I’m already learning from it and amazed by how much I relate to it.  I can’t wait to keep reading.

Second, I’d like to re-read The Broken Hearth by William J. Bennett. This may seem like an odd choice, but it’s a book I read about 5 or 6 years ago and remember really appreciating Bennett’s insight and reasoning and feel I could use a refresher on what he had to say. It was recommended reading to me when I was training to be a counselor at Rocketown, and it describes, with a great deal of well-grounded understanding, the breakdown of the American Family, what Bennett describes as the fundamental crisis of our time. Bennett, host of the nationally syndicated radio show Bill Bennett’s Morning in America, is also the Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute and, most impressively to me, one of the only conservative regular contributors to CNN.

Last on the list is The Search for God and Guinness, by Stephen Mansfield. Mansfield is an author I have really enjoyed working with in the past, promoting some of his other books. But, this is not a title that I had originally intended on reading. While the subject matter seemed intriguing, I wasn’t sure that it was something I wanted to dedicate my time to finishing. Then I got to listen to Mansfield give a talk about this book at one of Dave Ramsey‘s staff devotionals…and that is when I got interested. The story of the Guinness family, and the mission behind the beer empire that they built, is one that I think will be not only interesting, but also personally motivating and inspiring.  Mansfield is a great story teller and has a knack for digging up good historical tales, I look forward to making time for this one.

I’d love to hear what you are reading…and would gladly welcome suggestions for my Spring reading list.

My great aunt Delores passed away the day after Christmas.  She has battled cancer for several years now, but had been in remission so it was still unexpected when she had to go into the hospital and never came out.  The funeral was simple yet beautiful, there were numerous wonderful things to say about the life she had lived and how many lives she had impacted for the good.  It was at the funeral that many of us learned for the first time that she was also a talented poet.  A booklet containing many of her poems was distributed to everyone before we left the gravesite.  It was full of her beautiful thoughts about life.  The one that really stuck with me though, was the one that was read during her funeral service.  It’s chock full of meaning that the average reader would never perceive and in many ways was a very personal message to her family, words they can hold on to for years to come. I’ve enclosed the poem below.

From Death to Life