Guest Blog: No Greater Love

Kat of Toulouse Confessions returns with her guest post on "resurrection" today...

Today’s prompt from Drama Mama was “resurrection”. Pretty obvious why, although she made it clear that I in no way had to actually use the word in my post. I thought about trying to be overly creative and write about something other than Easter as by Monday morning we will all be suffering from belly aches over eating too many eggs, both deviled and chocolate, but I am not going to. Instead I am going to get something off my chest that I have been thinking about for awhile now.

I grew up in the church. It was labelled as Non-denominational. I had no idea what that meant while I was growing up and now that I am grown up I am pretty sure it just means they couldn’t come up with anything to call themselves. That isn’t really here nor there. The point I am coming to is that I grew up with Easter dresses that we showed off AT church, sitting through the plays and songs and the other usual things that churches do on Easter. I was told that Jesus came and died and then rose again and that was Easter. Well, that and an Easter basket….can’t forget I’m talking about being a kid.

When I was in high school stuff starting happening in my family life that turned my world upside down and the church wasn’t there for us. So much time was always spent talking about “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16) and yet it seemed like the message my church was giving me was: “well, God’s love for you should be enough” because they certainly didn’t have any for me or my family. They left us high and dry, judging a situation they knew nothing about because they couldn’t even be bothered to ask from afar until we left. Which seemed to us exactly what they wanted us to do.

I left the church behind when I started college, although I never stopped believing in God or basing certain decisions in my life on the guidance of the Bible, but when we found out my nephew had a rare genetic disease that wouldn’t allow him to live pat 2 years old I went back to my roots. Not to that church that left me behind, but back to the Bible and to a church that seemed to have more love.

To keep a story short, becoming a mother only made my thirst for answers greater and lately I have found great teachings and consolation from a certain preacher who has everything on the internet for me to listen to. I am learning about the LOVE of God, the love that I never really understood because it was never taught to me correctly. My conclusion as to why is that for many people who never really have anything BAD happen to them like death of a child or brother/sister/parent, cancer or some other health issue or the kind of divorce that rips out the insides of the people who live it. The list of BAD things could go on, but there are certainly people out there who never really live anything TOO bad and for them just repeating John 3:16 and going on with their lives is enough. For the rest of us, it isn’t just enough to repeat that verse, we need to see it.

I have learned to see it in the day that we call Easter. Because it isn’t just about Jesus died and rose again….let’s eat some chocolate. It is more about love that most churches want to admit or preach. That God loved ME, He loved YOU with the kind of love that we have for our children and yet hundreds of times more because the definition of God is: LOVE. He loved us so much that He sent his Son not only to just die and rise again, but to conquer death, sickness, poverty and everything else that is BAD. By dying and rising again he conquered anything that can be considered a curse so that we don’t have to live with it. He LOVED me….so that nothing BAD ever has to happen to me again.

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Thanks, Kat, for such a gorgeously written post. I'm excited to have you hanging out at the Poop today.

Did everyone have a great Easter?

BSOW: Big Dreams

Today, my ice cream gets to travel all the way to France. So exciting!! At least my ice cream is getting around.

She has 2 daughters born in 2 different countries.She writes about her motherhood experiences,  giving birth in countries that are not her own, and how Europe introduced her to her soul mate. She talks about dealing with meeting family whose customs are different from her own, the bane of generic diapers, and the horror of going to the doctor.

She's got an interesting story and a way with words. Today's Best Scoop of the Week is Kat from Toulouse Confessions!

I asked Kat: "If you could live in any era, what era would you choose and why?"

First I have to thank Drama Mama for having allowing me to be on her Scoop of the Week. I am so excited! My prompt for today was to write about what other era I would live in if I could choose. This was easy-peasy for me and soon you will find out why!.....

I must have been about nine years old when I attempted to write my first book. I remember we were living in the house on Twilight Trail and I was still sharing a room with my sister. The afternoon sun shone through my big windows as I sat in my open closet, my secret place. The notepad opened in front of me had the names of four women. Next to their names was a list of what their character would be in the book and whether or not they would die.

Hmmm, well that sounds a bit morbid, but I left out one important detail: the book was set in World War II and the girls were nurses on the frontline. I had just finished reading a book about a nurse during WWII and now I was determined to write one like it. I would love to find that notebook somewhere among my stuff at my mom’s house, but it was probably thrown away in one of our many moves. I remember getting through quite a few pages and then deciding to drop the whole thing because no one was going to publish a book written by a child. Geez, so pessimistic!

Ever since I can remember I have been in love with the WWII era. From the time I was little I loved watching black and white movies from the 1930’s and 1940’s. LOVED them. Better than cartoons. Better than modern movies. My mother wouldn’t let us watch any movies that had swearing or a trace of sex in them, so my selection was definitely bigger from the old movies, but even when I was older, even now, I love to watch those old movies.

Watching so many of them, especially the war movies, made me wish I had been born at that time. Everything seemed so much purer and innocent and safer and …romantic. Now a grown woman I can see that there isn’t anything romantic about a war, but the movies certainly made it look that way.

But even if war in real life is full of heart ache and loss of innocence, I still wouldn’t mind having been born at that time. I love the fashion. Wouldn’t it be cool to wear hats? And I love the theater and arts of back then. The idea of hitch-hiking out to Hollywood and trying to make it as a star would have been so much fun. I have read almost all of the biographies of the stars of that time and all of their stories were filled with romantic encounters and wonderful tales of travel, etc. Yes, it helps that they were rich. But I would have been too, right?

The only thing that would totally ruin being born at that time is having to live through the end of the 1960’s and through the 1970’s. Blech. Not my cup of tea. The time machine would have to bring me right into the 1990’s or maybe already in 2000. And it would certain stink to live in a time before the tampon was invented. Or Mydol. Could I live without them? Probably not. I would have ended up not coming out of my house for four day each month. But wearing the hats would have made up for it. Of course living in a time were there were no gyms to go to kickboxing class might also be a downer, but the drinking martinis at 5pm as a norm would make up for that one. So, really, there wouldn’t be too big a down side to living back then.

Sigh,….I would have married Cary Grant and had beautiful English children with him……Ah, well, in this life I have my Spanish Principe and Spanish children and they too are beautiful. And I can watch Cary Grant anytime I want and always day dream of what it would have been like being born at that time…..

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I wish you all a happy Easter and don't forget in the midst of all your festivities the real reason to celebrate this weekend. Could you imagine giving up one of your kids to save the world? I can't.

Come back Monday and hang out with Kat as she guest posts on "resurrection".