Legend of the Guardians

Last night Matt and I watched "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole". It was beautiful, it was mystical, it was magical, it was good versus evil, and it was Australian! As the owls began to speak in the movie I said to Matt, "They sound Australian". The next animal they ran into was a Tasmanian Devil! The movie takes place in Tasmania, who knew! I've really wanted to see this movie for a while, but I was even more excited when I found out where they were.

I absolutely loved this movie, and encourage you to watch it. There were so many fantastic parts in the movie, but one quote in particular stuck out to me. There is an old owl talking to the young, lead owl about being a hero (in a sense). He says, "This is what it looks like when you've actually fought in battle; it's not glorious or beautiful, or even heroic. It's merely doing what's right, and doing it again and again". He's talking about the good owls fighting against the bad owls, but in the grander scheme he's talking about the fight between what's good and what's evil. In one sense, this could not be truer. Fighting against injustice for the cause of good in this world is not glamorous, it's a dirty and never ending job. You're often not thanked, and you often feel like you're working in vain. Satan is tricky, and is quite good at making things seem hopeless at times. However, I do believe that good will always triumph over evil (when it's all said and done). The journey to get there might not be glittering with all things wonderful, but the the end result will be awesome.

However, I see another aspect to this whole "fighting in battle" thing. I firmly believe that God has exceptional, exciting, fantastic things in store for every single person who seeks them. The problem is, our world has disillusioned us to what is in fact exceptional, exciting, and fantastic. We think life is boring unless we've made it onto a reality television show. Don't believe me? Then why do you watch them? Something or someone has led us to believe that the people on those shows have something spectacular happening in their lives because they're on television. I hate to break it to you, but that's just not the case. Now I won't deny that I think the fact that I'm moving to Australia is a pretty stinking cool adventure. Although we're making a lot of sacrifices and this journey is going to be heart breaking and horrible at times, I can honestly say that I think this is an exceptional call that God has given my husband and me. However, I look around and see how other people are doing exceptional things all the time and might not realize it. Take, for example, my husband. On Saturday we took our dog to the dog park, only for him to be called out to a grass fire a few moments after. Since I was with him, we drove to the fire together. I sat in the car for about thirty minutes while he helped put out a fire that had taken over a portion of land very near to someone's house. From the outside his job did not look spectacular, he was pointing water at the ground to put out a fire and spent time talking with the owner of the land who was trying to dump buckets of water on the ground to put the fire out. However, the job my husband and his fellow firefighters did was exceptional. It was dirty, hot, and slow, but it kept a man's house from burning down. Had they not come, the fire could have spread to other houses and destroyed other people's lives. I don't tell my husband enough, but his job as a volunteer firefighter is exceptional. Or how about this? I know a girl who was convicted that young adults in Africa deserved a decent education. She and her friends carried change cans around and collected money for months, until they had enough to send at least one young adult to school. That might not seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but they changed a person's life in another country that they've never met. That is exceptional.

I think sometimes people give up on trying to do the right thing because they just can't see it making a difference. I would like to encourage you to do what's right, do it again and again, and trust that what you're doing is exceptional.

Flooding in Australia

Many individuals have asked us about the floodwaters that are overtaking areas of Australia at this time. Matt's family lives in Brisbane, and we have friends in Ipswich and Toowoomba. So far, the individuals we know are safe. However, to date ten people have lost their lives due to the flooding, and many more have had to evacuate their homes. A third of Ipswich, the city we'll be moving to, is expected to be under water by today. We encourage you to visit the link below to learn more about the flooding in Australia. Please keep the people there in your prayers as you learn more.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/

A Day Without Work

Today I am working through the second day of "not working" as some people are calling it. I don't know if I would call it "not working" so much as "changing jobs". As some might know, I quit working with the state of Texas so that I can do some of the things that we've had a hard time doing both working full time jobs. Although I had much better health insurance costs, I did not have better pay, so Matt won the "stay at your job" game. I am now working 16-20 hours a week at the martial arts school I attend, and the rest of my time is spent working on that ever growing, probably never ending list that I've started. Here's a run down of my first day away from the state, which was yesterday.

I woke up at 7am (my goal for wake up time)...then really got out of bed at 7:30am. Okay, not too bad a time to wake up given that I could have probably slept until about noon. I then took Bane for his routine morning walk. My step mom has this uncanny way of spoiling our dog. A few years ago when she came to visit she took Bane for a walk every morning. After she left he expected it, so that led to our daily walks to the mailbox. We have a community mailbox; I'm not so lame that I just walk him down to the end of the driveway! Anyway, when she came this time she took him for these incredibly long walks above and beyond the old distance! Needless to say, Bane and I could both use it. Therefore, I'm now walking him a little further than I was.

After the walk I got ready as if it was a normal work day. I cleaned up, changed, and put on make-up. I figure I could get in the habit of staying in my pajamas all day, but that would probably lead to some bad habits. After getting ready, I had some quiet time before starting the rest of the day. After that, I started the to do list on the iPod. So far it consists of:

finish visa application

get Bane ready

call possible financial partners for an update

change our bank

iron a stack of clothes the size of Rhode Island

clean out our family filing cabinet

put up Christmas decorations

do my scrap book

get overseas bank accounts sorted out (not Swiss, don't worry)

rake up the leaves and clean out the flower bed

clean out the front closet

Besides the things on this list, I've tried to make a commitment to keeping the kitchen clean, keeping up with the clothes washing, etc. It's amazing how far you get behind in life when you and your spouse both work full time jobs, and you don't have older kids to enslave to house chores.

Okay, so after making the list I got my visa application and Matt's citizenship stuff in order. Matt received his citizenship last year, but we just kind of threw papers together when they all came in instead of organizing them. I got all that and my application better organized so that I can finish my application before the end of the month. Sometime during the course of the day I cooked a few small meals for Matt and me (we eat five meals a day on our eating plan). I also cleaned up a few emails and folded a little laundry.

After that I got ready to go to my other job (see, I'm not sitting around eating bon bons). I taught classes and helped out around the martial arts school from 3-8pm, then ran to the grocery store to pick up a few things. I don't know what happened from there, but between getting groceries, putting them up, enjoying a little ice cream snack (don't tell anyone), and taking a shower, I didn't get into bed until after 11pm! It's not exactly my plan to be up late every night, because I tend to get rather grumpy late at night. I'll have to work on that.

I have a few kinks to work out on the daily schedule. One is multi-tasking. I hate to brag, but at my state job I was awesome at doing seventeen things at once. I might have been working on what I needed to be doing, but then I'd be asked by many people to do random things at any given time. I think I'm still in that mode, and I need to focus on one thing at a time. I'm sure there will be many more changes to the new work plan as I go, and I look forward to figuring out the best way to spend my time. I also look forward to continuing to enjoy sleeping until at least 7am every morning. :)