One Year ago....

...I was kissing my son good-bye as the surgery team wheeled him into surgery.

To read more about my most memorable NYE visit my blog www.godsgroovygirl.wordpress.com.

I HAVE MOVED

Dear Loyal Readers,

Due to tough economic times, I am being forced to move locations for my speaking website. Boo Hoo! My new site will take on the form of a blog site, with more tweaks. My new site where I will be blogging specifically about my speaking is www.godsgroovygirl.wordpress.com. I will be changing is to godsgroovygirl.com...minus the "wordpress" soon.

I will still be writing on here from time to time, but any speaking/acting news will on the groovygirl site!

Out of sight...out of mind!

Sooooooo.....I'm blogging. Yup, it's me. It has been a while and I know the five of you have been dying to know what has been going on in my life that has kept me from blogging. Well, here it is in a nutshell.....
August 14th through November 17th.....

Spoke at a Women's League Training
Mother-in-law's first visit in 18 years (1 week)
Brother-in-law and wife, 3 kids and her cousin visited
I left town while they were here...went to the lake for a long weekend
Came home
Joined Facebook
Kick off week! I spoke at Cedarcrest Church, Grace Community Church, Cobb Vineyard Church and West Cobb Church
Rested for a day
Brother came for a week
SEPTEMBER
Started a Bible Study in my house
Started weekly facilitator training in my house
Redecorated our school room
Quit Facebook
Rested for 3 days
Mom and Dad came for a week
Rested for a day
Started school...not going well
Started building a Speaker Team
OCTOBER
Sunday night services...didn't miss one
Speaker evaluation
Started basketball practice for Tahd (6 hours a week in a parking lot waiting for him)
Planned and ran a retreat
Kelsey's Birthday
Made a quilt
Ruby's 60th birthday
10 billion other birthdays
Started a new curriculum for Kelsey
Tahd's retreat
Working on a huge presentation for TWL for our Speaker's Bureau
Halloween
NOVEMBER
Kelsey got a bunny
Presented my presentation
Wyatt sick
Levi sick
Me sick
more birthdays
my Bible study ended
basketball games start
working on a teaching for Winter/Spring Kick off's
Doctor appointments out the wazoo
Made a quilt
baby shower
basketball, basketball, basketball
started Dave Ramsey
first free Saturday in months...I raked the yard!
Wyatt sick...strep throat
More doctor visits

Today....drove to Tahd's school and back 4 times, home schooled, cooked at the church for Night of Hope, and went to the chiropractor. I fell asleep to Dancing with the Stars. Woke up to Jay Leno asking a guest if they have ever Googled himself. I googled myself, found my blog after 3 months and here I am.

Good night!

When I Grow Up....

Wyatt has been playing Levi's electric guitar and trying to do everything that his big brother Tahd can do on the guitar. He works very hard at mimicking him. He comes to us all the time to show us the latest music he made up or mastered.

Tonight he said, "Hey mama! Listen to this." He played a little somethin' that he heard on "School of Rock."

"Wow Wyatt! That was great," I said.

"Yup! Pretty soon I'll be on the Worship Team," he responded.

"Is that was you want to be when you grow up...a guitar player on the Worship Team?" I asked.

He responded, "No, I am going to do that soon. When I grow up I am going to be a Ninja."


What did you want to grow up to be?

I wanted to be a wife, a mom and a teacher. Check!

How about you?

PITIFUL!

Pitiful describes many things about this week:

1.My ability to update my blog.

2. The amount of time I have spent building a website!

3. Our unexpected visitor.

I wanted to take one day at a time and write about my She Speaks trip. Well...I got all the way to Thursday! Pitiful!

Instead of filling in my blog I decided to build my website http://www.godsgroovygirl.com/. Part of my She Speaks training was on marketing myself and catching the attention of people through a value statement and a tag line. Why should people want to hire me and what value will I leave with their church or organization when I leave them? I want to be known for more than, "She was a nice speaker. I liked her outfit."

So I thought about what I bring to the stage and what I leave there. I HOPE that I leave a passion and a desire for women to start a new trend in being in tune with God, following after Him, life change, getting into the groove He has made for them to follow. There was my tag line! The domain was open and I went for it. And you want to know what was cool? As I fretted over buying the domain and building the site and the cost, I prayed that God would give me clarity that this was the right thing to do. I added up what it would cost to build and run the site for 3 months and then I checked my checking account which had my donations for She Speaks in it. (I knew I had just a little left over from the trip.) It was exactly the amount plus 1 cent! I couldn't believe that I had the exact amount through donation! So thank you to those who donated to my trip. You helped pay for my new website also.

The last thing that was just pitiful was our unexpected guest on Thursday. On Wednesday, I heard this dog in my woods just barking its head off. I had not heard this dog before and after it went on for 1/2 hour straight through my quiet time, I decided to find the dog and rip its head off. Just kidding...sort of. But I did go down to see if it was stuck or what. As soon as I called for it, it ran off and I went back to my quiet time. The next morning, during my quiet time AGAIN, the same dog was back and he brought a buddy to join in the barking. This wasn't normal barking ...it was as if it was barking AT something . Visions of baby deer and defenseless, adorable kittens flashed through my head. I went back down the hill and the dogs took off. I decided to search for a bit to see if I came across anything. I felt a little like Nancy Drew as I pieced together clues like trampled plants, muddy footprints, muddied water...and then I saw it! Laying in the creek bed, almost completely covered with mud, was an Opossum. It appeared that it had fallen into the mud which acted like quicksand and trapped it. By all appearances, I think it had been there for days. I thought it was dead, but upon further investigation, she was barely breathing.

I got gloves, a box, and a towel and pulled the poor, pitiful thing out of the mud. To this day, I have never seen such a pitiful sight as her. She was caked with mud and skinny as anything....see for yourself. This is our guest after I washed her off with 3 gallons of warm water to remove the mud.

It seemed as though her back may have been broken, so we called the Humane Society and they sent Animal Control. During our wait, she started coming out of her "playing dead" mode and her little nose started sniffing the air. We offered her a little snack and she devoured it. She ate a whole hot dog and a can of cat food before Animal Control came. The lady assured my kids that they would take care of her and a vet would check her out. If she was OK, they would get her strong and then release her. She even said she would contact us and release the opossum in our yard if she did recover.

I know not everyone would have rescued this baby, but my dad taught me that you do what's best for any animal you can. So little Miss Pitiful at least got a chance and my kids got a chance to help one of God's precious, all be it ugly, creatures.

Day two of She Speaks will have to wait another day!

She Travels!

She's Home!!!

I've decided to tell you about my trip one day at a time. Too much to say at once.

My girlfriends picked me up at 10 am and off we went. 3 Sanguines and a Phlegmatic make for a lively trip...at least 3 of us were loud! The trip was perfect, no problems! We loved the surprise text from Skyler letting us know that Mr. G was arriving the next day. We all did a "Praise Jesus" Happy dance in our seats!

Lots of potty stops and lunch at Zaxby's. Yum!

We arrived and threw our luggage on a Dolley and then realized how pitiful we all were...we over packed just a bit.

Our hotel room was magnificent. It was as big as my entire downstairs...a 2 bedroom suite. Mmmm...my own comfy bed. First order of business was to set up the coffee maker and then off to dinner at the Rocky River Grille in the hotel. Here is where the first "issue" with Jodi's food began. I had read that this placed had incredible mac'n cheese so decided to try that with my dinner. My dinner arrived and the mac looked yummy! I was excited. I took a bite and I guess I made a face that said, "What the heck is in this?" I couldn't quite place the odd taste, but they definitely didn't make it like Aaron makes it. I tried one more little bite to find it FILLED WITH ONIONS! Yuck!!! God blessed the women I was with by not letting me puke in front of them, but it was close. My side of coleslaw was HOT...gross! The food took a long time to arrive so they gave us free chocolate cake. At least that was delicious! Make note...a trend in bad food just started.

Leaving dinner I ran into one of my favorite people, Amy Carroll. She is a P31 speaker and was my evaluator last year. She is also my mentor when it comes to speaking. I love her to pieces. It was great to see her right from the start and we enjoyed some time together the night before the conference started.

We headed back to the room and Christie and I read through our teachings to Kim and Denise who were not being evaluated as speakers. Then off to bed to get ready for that 6 am alarm.

She Sleeps!

My Bags Are Packed!

Well, my bags are packed.

They are filled with my favorite outfits,

shoes too uncomfortable to wear to a conference but too stinkin' cute to leave at home,

directions, schedules, my coffee maker and favorite coffee since my Starbucks runner(AKA Chad) is not coming this year, make-up, hair stuff, jewelry, earplugs(never leave home without them), toothbrush and paste, notepads and my Bible.

Tucked inside my bags are two precious pieces of paper that will be pulled out and shared with a group of strangers... my teaching and testimony for evaluation time.

I have fretted, prayed, written, erased, tweaked, crumpled up, started over, timed a hundred times, and had critiqued...two little crisp sheets of paper. Memories flood my head every time I think about my testimony. This 3-minute version is about my brother and his car accident that took the life of another and marked our "Fisher" name forever. This was probably the most painful part of my childhood, but here I go, spilling my guts in the name of Christ and what He has saved me from. One thing is for sure, my story won't be the worst one shared. There will be stories of unimaginable hurt, but complete victory in Christ. Like the story of my evaluator, who was brutally raped and beaten on her graduation day.

Coming with me are the prayers of precious people who think I should do this thing called speaking, people who believe in me and want to see me better myself. They have contributed to my funds, paid for my hair to get all pretty, will watch my kids and pets on this trip, have helped me by critiquing my teachings with love and all in all just told me to go for it. This is the precious thing that I couldn't leave home without.

Two more things in my bag...2 pictures that Wyatt drew for me.

The first looks like a scribble. This was our conversation when he gave it to me:

M-What's this?

W-A map.

M-Oh, to where? Where am I going?

W- I don't know.

M-Then where will I know where I am going?

W-You just walk and follow it and you will know when you get there. Oh and bring a shovel.

I sure don't know where I am going on this adventure of a ministry, but God does. Wyatt may have just been playing, but he spoke life into me that day. I just need to follow the path God has placed me on and I will know when I get there.

The 2nd picture is one that Wyatt drew of me and him with a heart in the middle. He gave it to me last week when I was heading out for another conference. As I was getting into the car after saying good bye to all my kids, I wondered if they understood what their mom was doing. I wondered if they believed that this was OK...for mom to leave a lot and do this ministry. Did they support me...especially Wyatt because he is so young? When he came running out of the house to catch me as I was pulling out of the driveway to bring me that picture, God told me, "He does."

Only a few more things to do:

Enjoy my last day with the family

Drop off my dogs and doggy day care

Finish packing my boys

Drop off the little boys with Jen

Kiss everyone good bye

Wait for my ride

and have the time of my life!

See ya!