Solid Rock

We sang this at church today, and it really encouraged me. I love great old hymns like this one.

1. My hope is built on nothing less
   Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
   I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
   But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
   • Refrain:
     On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
     All other ground is sinking sand,
     All other ground is sinking sand.
2. When darkness veils His lovely face,
   I rest on His unchanging grace;
   In every high and stormy gale,
   My anchor holds within the veil.
3. His oath, His covenant, His blood
   Support me in the whelming flood;
   When all around my soul gives way,
   He then is all my hope and stay.
4. When He shall come with trumpet sound,
   Oh, may I then in Him be found;
   Dressed in His righteousness alone,
   Faultless to stand before the throne.

The Phantom of the Opera

I just finished watching it. Such a wonderful movie. I know some of you wonder if I ever cry and what the heck could make me do such a girly thing. Well….. Phantom almost always makes me cry. You’ve Got Mail makes me cry. Casablanca makes me cry and so does Anne of Green Gables. *Sigh*

So there you have it. Lyndsay cries. Occasionally. And only when she’s by herself 😉 That’s my exhaustive list, what’s yours?.

Old news…new to me!

I know that probably none of you who read this will care one little smidgen about this (except Matt and Kevin) but since it is MY blog, I’m gonna write it anyway! I was SO excited today when Josh called me to tell me that the Braves had signed Glavine during the off-season. I don’t have any sports channels, and besides checking the official MLB site occasionally, I usually don’t get much news until the season starts. So when he called I looked up and read some articles about it and the best one I found you can read here. I hope any of you who care will enjoy it too. I just can’t say how great I think it is that good ‘ol Glavine is back and will be pitching with his good buddy Smoltz.

I love that he never left (moved his residence) from Atlanta. I love loyalty like that and I appreciate anybody who appreciates Georgia or the Braves.

I am so siked (yes, siked) for the season now! So, who wants to go to a baseball game?!

Spring at the Smoak House

I know this looks kinda sloppy but I couldn’t get Picassa to work! These are pictures I took of different areas of my yard just beginning to blossom!

Critic Learns a Lesson

This is my second post, if you haven’t read the first one, it’s below!

I had a great Easter weekend. Josh and I had alot of fun with the Passion Play he was in. I’m glad I went every nite, I think I really got alot out of it, spiritually speaking. I’m not sure I would’ve thought much about it if I’d just gone to see it once. I’m a critiquer, and so the first nite I think I mostly focused on what should have been done this way or that way. By the Friday nite, things went really smoothly and I was able to relax and take in the story. Josh’s family was there Saturday nite, and since most of them are lost, I spent alot of time praying that somehow this play would make an impact on them. I think it helped me to see the whole story in a new light. I tried to imagine that I didn’t know the crucifixion story that well (like perhaps his family didn’t) and attempted to take it in with new eyes. There were two things that jumped out at me. First of all, the whole Peter situation has already always made me feel a little better about myself, if you know what I mean. But I don’t know if it was the guy who played him, or the song he sang, or if it was just God giving me a glimpse into the reality of what happened with Peter, but I was able to clearly and tangibly see how much Jesus really does love us unconditionally even with all our unfaithfulness and wishy washy ways. Jesus loved and forgave Peter, one of his closest followers and best friends, for rejecting him and denying that he even knew him. That would have hurt me so badly that I would have never gotten over it, let alone forgive him. I can’t put into words how realistic this part of the story suddenly became to me, but you’ve probably all had similar (or even the same!) epiphanies so I hope you can just imagine what I mean.

The second thing was seeing “Jesus” all bloody and hanging there on the cross made the whole story just seem more real again. I’ve seen many passion plays in my time (some of them good, some of them bad) but sometimes, every once in a while, they just really somehow help me believe a little more. I guess maybe it’s because I’m a visual learner. I think I was more willing to be less critical this time because Josh was in it and a really good friend of ours was playing Jesus. I am far too critical most of the time and I think with passion plays I usually sit back and think things like “oh yeah, that did not look real at all” or “dang that guy can’t act” or whatever. I am thankful that I was in the position to have to sit back and watch 3 nites in a row and try not to be critical and also to be focused on what I hoped Josh’s family would get out of it. So anyway, I hope these things are also what his family gleaned from the play, and of course any other lost person who may have seen it. Not to mention other lifelong Christians like me that sometimes just take for granted what Jesus really did that day on the cross.

You probably won’t see to many religiously-charged posts by me so savor this one while you can. 😉

“I’m not much on rear window ethics.”

Welcome to my blog site, home to future posts about my life, experiences, household projects, movies, cats (don’t roll your eyes) and various other subjects.

My reason for titling this blog as I did was purely to acknowledge a quote from the 1954 Hitchcock movie Rear Window (site’s name sake). “I’m not much on rear window ethics” is a line from the movie that a character says to express her discomfort in spying on neighbors from a window in her boyfriend’s apartment. If you haven’t seen this movie, or even if you have seen it but don’t love it, I suggest watching it (again) soon. The story itself is wonderfully intriguing and twisty, but besides that, the restored color from it’s original Technicolor roots is nothing short of stunning. The colors and lighting and camera angles captivate me every time I watch it. It’s definitely my favorite Hitchcock film. I haven’t seen them all, but I can’t imagine another rivaling my affections for this masterpiece. But anyway, I thought it made for a cool name. I made the header picture from a picture I took of a neat old window in our shop building.

So enough about that! On to another subject entirely, I will soon (March 31st- keep me in your prayers haha) be without my beloved HGTV due to our not continuing service with our current satellite carrier. So I have been exploring other ways to occupy my time and also keep my creative juices flowing, and I think having this blog will help. I hope to be motivated to get more projects done so that I can post about them. I recently bequeathed my old dining table to a good friend of mine and so right now I am working on the solid wood dining room table and 4 chairs that I recently acquired from (my favorite!) Goodwill for just $30. It will require ALOT of time and elbow grease to get the chairs in the condition I want them to be in. They are sturdy but the finishes on them are all wrong. I also have 4 more chairs that I got from my grandmother that will need to be refinished too but will not require nearly as much work. The table, I think, is great as is. So all that will definitely keep me occupied for quite some time.

Well, that’s all for now, folks. Thanks for reading and please come back again!