Rebecca Homecca

A couple of weeks ago during the sermon our minister brought up gossip. Normally when I hear someone preach about gossip it’s about talking about someone or what to do if someone wants to tell you some gossip. But he brought up gossip magazines and the like.

I don’t get any gossip magazines, but I do have E! online and People Online on my My Yahoo page. Which I read everyday.

I though, I should probably not read those.

But come Monday I left them on my page, with the reasoning that I like to see American Idol & Grey’s Anatomy “news”. Which isn’t really gossip.

Of course, it’s not like those are the only two things they talk about on those sights and even just reading the headlines, you can get most of the gossip that is going on with Sandra & Jesse or Lindsay.

Then I started thinking about Beth Moore’s fruit. And I thought, is reading this really making good fruit?

No. It’s not.

So I finally deleted it off my page.

Now in full disclosure, I was able to put on there the Watch with Kristin section from E! on line that only talks about TV show stuff and not the personal lives of the stars. So I can still get the scoop on my shows.

Is that good fruit or bad fruit? I don’t know. But it’s a step in the right direction. Like Beth says, it takes time to produce fruit so, we’ll decide on that later.

So the American Idol finale is tonight and I could not be less vested in either of these people. It has been no secret that this is the most boring season of American Idol ever.

They completely jumped the shark with Ellen being on there trying to say funny things that are not funny. Unless you are five.

No, I take that back, still not funny.

And I am so tired of Kara talking about feelings. It’s a singing competition, not an emoting competition.

So anyway, I am mildly rooting for Lee. I lost interest in Crystal ages ago. But the judges are still attempting to convince us that she is the greatest thing since Kelly Clarkston.

I question her song choices tonight, they seem very predictable. She kicked butt on that last song though. Not sure if it’s a number one hit, but she sang the pants of that song.

More than anything, I am really questioning her outfit choices. The first one looked like a bag lady, the second dress reminded me of a homecoming dress I wore somewhere around 91.

I missed Lee’s first song, but I thought he did good on the two I did see. The judges kind of dissed on him. But that’s just because they have been convinced that Crystal was going to win since day one, and want to make sure that happens.

Well, I need to go take my blood pressure. I hope all this excitement didn’t raise it too much.

Saturday’s Beth Moore lesson continued on that tree theme, but in a little bit different way.

We were in Matthew talking about recognizing trees by what kind of fruit they bear.

Basically, look at things in your life and see what kind of fruit they are bearing. If it is an activity that bears good fruit, feed that and nurture that. If it bears bad fruit, starve that and kill it.

The other point of this that I thought was good, was that it takes time to bear fruit. So something might seem like good fruit at first, but it isn’t because it hasn’t had the time to make any fruit. Given some time, it may turn out that thing may actually be producing bad fruit.

Is this making any sense or are you just getting hungry for some apples?

Well, it makes sense in my head. I guess that’s why Beth Moore gets paid and I do this for free.

If what you are doing is good, good things will come from it. If it is not good, bad things will come from it.

Well, I guess I could have just said that in the first place.

The other part of this lesson is that our personal fruit, the fruit we will bare, comes from what we store up. What we take in. If we are not taking in good things, we will not produce good fruit.

And that bad fruit will come out, it will show itself to others. You can only hold on to false front for so long before what is in your heart comes out. Or maybe we don’t even put up a false front and just spread our bad fruit around.

The same is true for baring good fruit. If you are storing up good things, if that is what is in your heart, people will see that too.

Those are the things I took away from the conference. I’m sure all 7200 of us would have different posts about it.

Beth Moore had said that when she was studying and working on what to talk about at our conference, she kept coming across these passages that involved trees in some fashion. They stuck out to her and when Travis called her to see what the plan was, she told him it was going to have something to do with trees. He was kind of like, Um…OK…

So before they headed to Michigan she did some research about our state. She said she knew about all the economic trouble we were having just from watching the news. But what she didn’t know was that 50% of our state is covered in trees and we are one of the biggest growers of Christmas trees.

So she called Travis back and told him, These Michigan people, they know trees.

So that was our theme. Trees.

The first part we talked about was from Judges, and how we have a need to ruled over and sometimes we try to find things other than God that rules over us.

She talked about The Olive Tree, The Fig Tree, The Vine, and The Thornbush and what those things might represent in our lives. Things that we look to to rule over us.

When she got to the thornbush, it started to hit home. She mentioned that it could be any number of things, this thornbush. It could be anger towards someone, it could be just being in a bad situation, like a bad job or something else that just takes over our life.

Wait back up…a bad job that takes over our life…
Been there.

When I was at my old job it was not a good situation and it was taking over my life. It was affecting parts of my life that had nothing to do with that job. It was ruling over me.

Which is why I left. When people ask me how my new job is going, I tell them not only is my job going well, my whole life is better.

Not coincidentally we have started going to church regularly again too. That was by no means the only thing affecting that situation. But I can tell you, I was so exhausted from dealing with that job that I didn’t have the energy for another thing.  At that time church just seemed like another thing I would have to do. Another thing I would have to deal with.

But once I was could see straight and didn’t have that negativity consuming my life, I wanted more positivity. I needed to find a church to go to every week.

That’s the thing negativity breeds more negativity and the same goes for positivity. But more on that later…

What if instead of 2 or 3 there are 7200?

I attended the Beth Moore Living Proof Live event with some friends this weekend. They had predicted 4000 people would come.

We were actually part of a crowd of 7200 women and a few brave men.

Friday night opened with some great worship led  by Travis Cottrell and the praise band. It was pretty awesome to hear 7200 voices singing to the Lord. It was also a little strange because when it’s all women singing, there’s no bass, no low notes.

Then Beth came out and she is a high energy sassy Southern lady.

Did I mention high energy? Because she is Energetic with a capital E.

I had heard of her and of Travis Cottrell, but I wasn’t really sure what to expect. It was a big ‘ol bible study. We didn’t know that so none of us brought bibles.

Oops.

So Saturday morning -bright and early (which did not effect her energy level. May have even brought it UP a notch)-some of us remembered to bring our bibles.

I was not one of them.

Did I mention the bright and early part? On a Saturday? I’m glad I remembered to bring myself.

We weren’t sure what one person could talk about for 3 hours on a Friday and another 3 hours on a Saturday, but she has so many words to get out she actually ran short on time.

There were some great lessons (more on that later) and something for everyone. There is no way you could come away and say none of that applied to me.

The other thing I liked is that it isn’t a canned, over rehearsed thing. She has new lessons for each event she does and goes on tangents depending on how things are going. It seemed a little all over the place at first, but after a while you get it.

I wasn’t quite sure if a big thing like this would be for me, but I was with a great group of ladies and as one of them said- It’s pretty awesome to be gathered together with this many believers.

My new routine now is to take my blood pressure in the morning, again in the evening and sometimes before bed (depending on how ugly the numbers were that day).

We took it when we got home and it was 156/115 (a disappointment after my 132/99 in the morning). We went for a walk tonight and for fun we took it right when we got back.

Exciting right? So much so, I’m telling you about it. Don’t get too excited, I wouldn’t want your blood pressure to go up.

Anyway, I was expecting it to be through the roof, not that we pushed ourselves very hard, but there are some good hills to get the heart pumping.

It was 156/115. The same as before we left.

This is good news for me. I was a little anxious about working out because I was afraid of raising it too much or having some sort of incident at the gym. I feel better about going there now and not having to worry so much.

I know working out is good for lowering blood pressure, but I was a little freaked out. So one less thing to worry about is also good for the blood pressure…

Guess where we went today?
The sun was out and they have snacks there. What else are you going to do?

This morning I had Wildflower Class for my nature program. We had a lot of wind and rain last night so everything was pretty beat up and we didn’t get to see as many blooms as we had hoped.
We did see Trillium, Wild Ginger, Wild Geraniums, Jack in the Pulpit and more. I’ve got a few pictures on flickr (click on the pic).
The teacher was the real highlight. I was told she was in her eighties, but she had more energy than any of us, that’s for sure.
She grew up in that area when it was farm land (it’s all built up now) and used to play in the woods where the nature preserve is. She was working in nature education with the public museum and took a group of kids to that woods. They ran into the owner of the woods and got to talking about what his plans were for it.
So she worked with him on creating the nature preserve in the 1960’s. Apparently people thought they were starting a nudist colony because nature preserves were not very common at that time.
Over the years she has worked in various capacities at the preserve, including director. She is “retired” now, but teaches classes and is responsible for getting a new meadow area put in.
Since she has spent her whole life on that property she knows every tree, every wild flower patch, every secret spot where flowers might be. She can name plants just by leaves and probably has a story to go along with it.
The class was interesting and I learned a lot about wildflowers, but the instructor was definitely the thing I’ll remember the most.

Made it in to work today. Felt fine for the most part, other than the fact that I am coughing a ton and stuffed up. Oh and not allowed to take anything for those two things.

My back and ribs are actually getting a little sore from all the coughing.

Pollen you are my enemy!

I’m also probably making my blood pressure go up by being hyper aware of how I am feeling. I’m like -do I feel weird? Am I feeling dizzy? Am I too hot? Too Cold?

Good Night Irene. You are making yourself crazy.

I successfully freaked out every one at work along with my whole family, so there’s that.

How often does someone go to the dentist and end up in the emergency room? I’m guessing not often.

But that is exactly what happened to me today.

I just went for a routine cleaning so I wasn’t expecting all this excitement. They started this new thing where they take your blood pressure at the beginning of the appointment. I always thought it was kind of strange that the dentist would take my blood pressure but whatever.

So this morning she took mine and it was more than a little high. She took it again at the end to make sure it wasn’t a fluke and it was higher.

So she told the doctor and he told me to call hubs and get to the emergency room. It was that high.

So we spent the morning at the hospital. They gave me some medicine to get it down and we set up and appointment with my regular doc to find out what’s up. They think it might be at least partially due to the allergy meds I have been taking.

Which means I’m off the allergy meds all week. TBD after I see the doctor on Friday.

Except allergy season isn’t over, so I am miserable. But my limbs aren’t all floaty and the rest of me is back to normal-ish. So I guess I’ll deal with the allergies.

I felt a little funny all weekend, but just chalked it up to these allergies. Guess it was more than that. Good thing the dentist takes blood pressure!

After the ER hubs dropped me off at home and I’ve just been taking it easy the rest of the afternoon. It was a lot of excitement for a Monday morning.