rainy day, please stay.

there is just something about this song that's hard to describe. so, so beautiful. simple. it is by far my favorite song by death cab. it sort of fit in with the calm climate of today--

encouraged, because God cares for me and anticipates my needs,
tired, because my body can't seem to fall asleep lately,
peaceful, because of the rain,
content, because i know that, even when things are ambiguous, they're not to Him,
thankful, because even though Colin is far from perfect, he's sure perfect for me.


grace and peace,
the wife.

that 70's shirt.

I am seriously all about some swagbucks. for real. I was perusing my google reader today and came across this top at kendi everyday...

to die. since i had a pile of amazon giftcards for just such an occasion, i purchased and am super excited. love the 70's vibe that's going on. it's part of the tucker for target collection. they have so many awesome things in this line; target always makes me so proud! thank you, swagbucks (sign up here if you're interested)!

by the way, each and every one of your comments on our last post made me smile SO big. i loved it. thanks, friends!

grace and peace,
the wife.

sick day.

1. y'know, being sick isn't half bad when you:

a) have netflix and can watch hoarders all day.
b) are allowed to sleep in way late and not feel guilty.
c) have a super duper husband who takes care of you (and even cooks!).
d) don't have a job/school to worry about.

2. also, random thought: i have never, ever experienced the sponsored/weirdly decorated crown vic thing until moving to Columbia. As of now I have seen a tweety bird car, a starburst car, a tony the tiger car, a milky way car, and... Colin and I's favorite.. a Child's Play Chucky doll car. yes. this man has two possessed Chucky dolls hanging out of the back windows of his car. cool, right? anybody else seen any good ones around Columbia?


3. i love to cook. i never really had the chance before and didn't know how much i love it, but i do. one of my favorite things is finding a new recipe that sounds good and just doing it. i love the type of recipes that are quick and easy with few ingredients as well as the more demanding ones (like many indian dishes, which require grinding your own spices and all of that). i will say, though, for beginners, the pioneer woman has been fantastic help since being married. first off, she is hilarious. second, she details the cooking process as well as posting pictures of what each step looks like. this woman can cook for sure! here are some of the things we've made of hers and enjoyed:

Chicken Tikka Masala by Pastor Ryan

Simple Sesame Noodles

Marlboro Man's Second Favorite Sandwich

Garlic Cheese Bread

Spaghetti with Artichoke Hearts and Tomatoes

Penne a la Betsy.

4. also, i know you read this blog. yes, you. not by name, necessarily, but we get a good number of hits on this thing so don't be a creeper and lurk around without saying something. not only that, but a lot of people come up to us in real life and say things like "i read that on your blog"...etc. so, like i said, don't be a creeper! make your presence known! we love comments!

i leave you with this. my favorite song by one of my favorite artists.



grace and peace,
the wife.

Gnosticism and Dishes

Colin here.
I knew that title would draw you in. As my lovely wife does, I'm just going to put down some numbered thoughts in no particular order. Some serious, some even more serious!

1. Rachel and I had quite a busy few days last week, and as they love to do, the dishes piled high. I'm bragging on her because in one fell swoop, she beasted those stone, glass, and plastic adversaries! Go Rachel


2. Gnosticism was the Church's first large scale heresy, and was a problem for the first two centuries of the Church's life. In short, the rub with Gnosticism is their emphasis on secret cultish knowledge as the key to salvation, their unbiblical dualism between matter and spirit (the former being inherently evil and the latter good), and the subsequent sexual immorality that ensued when you see your physical body as a dirty prison that doesn't affect your inner "divine spark."

I bring this up because I have the privilege of leading a small bible study on Wednesdays with some great guys. We're studying 1 John. John is obviously combatting Gnostic doctrines in his letter. Right off the bat in chapter 1 he lays the sensory verbs on thick: heard, seen, looked upon, touched, seen, heard. This isn't rote rhetoric, he is saying one thing, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was in space, time, and flesh. The Gnostics held that since flesh was evil, the Son of God could not have obviously been physical, and was therefore an apparition in the form of a man. John says, NO!

This meets you and I today in that our faith is not built on fables and wishful thinking by some followers of a dead Jewish mystic who had a spiritual experience of their teacher post-mortem. Rather, Jesus "became incarnate...and was made man...and was raised from the dead." One day we will look upon Him as He is. Amen

3. Two strange events happened today. First, while listening to a "classic rock" radio station at work, a musical tragedy soared through the airwaves. Sandwiched in between Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd was "Maragritaville" by Jimmy Buffet. ?

Secondly, and even more strangely, I listened to a co-worker explain how he had weird dreams last night because he had eaten ribs for dinner. no lie. When I countered with a comment about my having dreamt weirdly the night before without consumption of ribs, he plainly asked if I had eaten any type of pork for dinner. ?

the end is near.

4. This still elevates my heart rate...



Til next time, grace and peace

five things.

susanbranch

1. i am not ready to say goodbye to summer. I love autumn, but sadly enough it lasts all of two weeks in the south. i'm not ready for winter. please, no!... at least we'll get to say "hello" to summer again in October... in the caribbean!

Norwegian Cruise Lines

2. one of my favorite small pleasures is when you're washing the dishes and you squeeze the detergent bottle and the tiny little bubbles fly out everywhere. i remember my mom washing dishes when i was little and loving the tiny little rogue bubbles.

3. seriously, HOW adorable is Janelle Monáe? saw this when i was getting my haircut at paul mitchell a while back.



4. This took the words right outta my mouth. Ten Words You Need to Stop Mispelling. :)

5. Also, I love my CotA Bible Study girls already and I very much look forward to Wednesday nights! woo hoo! I've never met a group of highschoolers so ready to encourage and affirm one another.

grace and peace,
the wife.

the best prayers have often more groans than words. -john bunyan

Camon Sushi.

so i really should have mentioned this in the previous post, but it was long and i was distracted. but, in an earlier post we talked about sushi in columbia, and where the best place to get it was. Colin and I have been everywhere-- Inakaya (pretty decent), Miyo's (great, but we have worn out that menu for sure), Tsunami (trendy, mediocre), Sushi Yoshi (no.)... but never had we ever been to Camon on Assembly. we had heard rumors that it was "by far" the best in Columbia, that it was authentic and quaint... but because of a few horrible reviews and cries of "it's way overpriced!" we never went.

but oh, we went on friday for my birthday! seriously, guys. i keep thinking about it now.

i liked the atmosphere. you walk in the first door and you have to slide a traditional japanese paper door to the side. you get a sense when you sit down that the people eating there have eaten there many, many times before. at first glance the menu may seem too expensive or overpriced, but you have to wait until you see the rolls to judge. their dragon roll, which was BY FAR the best sushi roll i've ever eaten, is $15.50. that sounds like a lot, until you see it. it is MASSIVE. it's a traditional dragon roll (only about 2x the size), but the reason it's extra special and yummy is that they put a little bit of cream cheese and then some softshell crab in it. gah. another plus? it was just the right temperature. i hate cold sushi. it needs to be a little warmer than room temperature (not the fish, but everything else) and melt in your mouth. accomplished. Colin and I also ordered some edamame (of course), the rainbow roll (deeeelish), the sashimi platter (deelish, and so, so fresh), and it came with a seaweed salad (which was just right), and we shared two large Sopporos. they even brought out a complimentary few pieces of a crunchy, spicy tuna tempura roll with spicy mayo on it, which was awesome.

all in all, we were super impressed and fell in love with it, basically. the service was so-so... but we're really low maintenance, so as long as we have our food and our drinks we're set. our bill ended up being the exact same (maybe a little less, even) as when we go to MVista for sushi, so that solves that debacle. if you are a sushi lover, go to Camon, bottom line. and get the dragon roll!

some random coffeeshop ponderings.

1. i am sitting in cool beans with Colin, writing our lessons for High School Bible Study tomorrow night. it struck me as we were sitting down that this is bliss-- going to a coffee shop not completely bogged down with the multiple papers i have to write or chapters of books i have to read by the next day. sigh. i knew graduation would be sweet. i haven't felt this measure of rest in so many years. so here we sit-- he with his mango smoothie that he got for free for helping the girls here move a huge refrigerator, me with "the perfect man", and our massive ESV study bibles, compliments of CotA. we decided to teach through the life of David, which i'm super excited about. God's faithfulness through the Old Testament.. ah.

2. Celebrated my second married birthday this weekend. married birthdays are so much better than single birthdays! 22 years old, and i think for the second birthday of my life i feel every bit of it, and thankfully so. i almost feel like my years need to catch up sometimes with all that i've grown in and learned over the past few years. the 22 that i'm experiencing is so vastly different from the 22 many, many of those around me are experiencing (and vice versa, obviously). it's interesting. Colin spoiled me, as did my wonderful family. My birthday was spent in beautiful Charleston with my parents and Colin. What a wonderful place! If you've never been to the spice and tea exchange in Charleston, check it out next time you're there. Colin bought me some Bombay Chai that i'm really excited about. such a cute little place if you're a tea lover like i am.

3. yesterday night i heard Colin laugh a laugh that is literally a privilege to hear-- those of you who know him know it. it's the ear-piercingly loud "UH-HUH!" that causes him to double over (and in this case, writhe on the ground) for a good five minutes, incapacitated, until he's able to get up again. he literally broke Katie and Oliver's folding chair in all of the calamity. Kudos to Oliver, for telling one of the funniest stories we've ever heard. we love the Thompsons.

4. and, keeping with the recent theme of posting videos, listen to this song by A Fine Frenzy. she is wonderful and i love how she rocks the red hair. ( i would post the original video, because it's super cute, but it wasn't allowed.)



grace and peace,
the wife.

oh, the perils of social networking!

one of the things about social networking that i dislike and am wary of is misrepresentation.

i've come to see that, on the internet, we are free to put forth our "best" face, thoughts, opinions, whatever, for the general public to see. Because of the overall impersonal nature of the online world (facebook, twitter, blogger..etc.), we can be who we want others to perceive us as, and alter our appearances accordingly. we can be more friendly and personable, wear our best outfits in the pictures we post, post Bible verse after Bible verse (or john piper quote after john piper quote) because we know that it's a basically unadulterated version of ourselves. someone goes to your facebook and they see your picture-- one that you picked out, and it flatters you. they see the slew of people sharing love and saying "hi" and telling you how amazing you are because they miss you. they see your music section (where, of course, you post only the coolest music that you want people to know you listen to), and all of your interests that make you, well, interesting. but what they don't see is the fact that you're stubborn, or not truly pursuing the Lord in your personal life, or that you're the world's largest procrastinator. they don't see that you idolize your relationship with your significant other, that you are knee-deep in a serious sin struggle, or that you don't actually look like you walked out of an anthropologie catalog 24/7.

i do not want to be that. it's so easy to (knowingly or unknowingly) put the message across that life is "perfect"-- that your marriage is dream-like, that you are walking a walk with Christ that never falters and are some sort of spiritual powerhouse, that you don't struggle with sin, or that you don't have down days (or weeks). Not that it probably isn't at times, that's not what i'm saying. i'm in no way trying to be cynical, but what i want to say is... what about when it's not like that?

i guess this is just a reminder to myself and the few people who actually read this that i...we... are striving for authenticity, because it's conducive to Truth and real community. so i will keep this in mind as i'm tempted to blog through the good times and not the hard.

picture found via paper tissue.

grace and peace,
the wife.