the commercial

confession: i love watching tv.

i know, i know. there is nothing good on. tv turns your brain to mush. tv is bad. blah blah blah blah blah.

i know there is trash on tv. but really i just love the food network and qvc. i love demonstration tv. i love being sold or convinced of something. i am a marketer's dream.

it is very difficult for me to go to sleep without watching a little tv, much to brent's dismay. he would rather be listening to mix 92.9. please don't tell him i told you that.

i get really irritated at people who say, "oh, i am just too busy to watch tv." or "i just don't like to waste time watching tv." oh please. i think it's impossible to say "i don't watch tv" without a really holier than thou tone. just shut up. it's fine you don't watch tv, but don't act like i am headed straight through the wide gates because i enjoy an occasional (or nightly) demonstration of kitchen shears or bare minerals make-up.

all of that to say, i very much enjoy watching tv. i'm ok with it.

so now that you know this about me, it should not be a surprise to you that a TV COMMERCIAL was what nudged my heart into wanting to adopt. (i told you i was a marketer's dream!)

i remember exactly where i was when i saw this commercial for the first time. i was sitting in my parent's living room, in my dad's "spot" on the sofa (which is a real no no in our family...that makes 2 confessions for this blog post). i don't remember the exact date, but it was in the fall of 2000. i was in 10th grade.

i saw this commercial, which is for jcpenney, and as soon as i saw it i thought, "i am going to adopt one day."

i have done numerous searches for this commercial on youtube. i knew it had to be out there, but i COULD NOT FIND IT! i have been trying for months (seriously).

and today i found it. it was even better than i remembered.

i am not really tech savvy enough to have a little screen embedded into this post to show the commercial (maybe i should spend more time learning about computer stuff instead of watching tv...), but i can share a link. i hope you will watch...

the commercial that started it all

it's amazing what God will use to prick our hearts.

every time i look at a picture of little miss ethiopia i think, "i am so glad i love watching tv."

i just got schooled.

four things i've learned:

it's really easy to compare ourselves to others. just today i was reading a blog of someone whom i have never ever met who doesn't live anywhere near me whom i will most likely never meet and with whom i probably have nothing in common (except that we are women who have blogs), and i found myself thinking, "i wish i had a life like hers." i should have been thinking, "shut up satan."

our world wants us to want more, be more, do more, have more, spend more, eat more, work more, relax more, earn more, covet more. and God wants us to love more.

loving someone else really has nothing to do with their feelings towards you. i totally, completely, wholeheartedly, and unconditionally love someone who doesn't even know my name and may not even like me when we first meet. but i love her anyway.

when we are sad, we want someone to reach out to us and lift us up. but sometimes we don't get the comfort we're looking for. in those times, reaching out to someone else and lifting them up provides more comfort than we thought we would ever get.



i feel that God is schooling me right now. is that ok to say? that God is "schooling" me? really He is always schooling me. it's just that sometimes i am sitting in the back of the classroom and i think that i have Him fooled and He doesn't see that i am totally not listening because i can't listen to him and talk to my bff at the same time. but right now i am listening. mainly because He got fed up with me and my bff and he moved me to the front row. i am listening but i'm embarrassed for getting moved and i am trying not to make eye contact with Him.

in grad school (have i mentioned i went to grad school?), when talking about how to deal with students who are misbehaving, we were told to use the "proximity" technique. most students will pay attention to you if you are standing right next to them with your hand on their shoulder.

so basically i think God is using the proximity technique with me and trying His hardest to get me to pay attention.

a friend of mine who might possibly read this post will probably be confused. i was emailing with her yesterday and told her that i felt so far away from God. she might wonder why i said that and am now saying that i am in the front row of His class with His hand on my shoulder.

i felt far away from God because i felt scared and sad and confused. but i realized today that when i am being schooled by God, those feelings are totally natural. of course i am going to be scared and sad and confused! God is trying to show me things that go against what my human nature believes and wants! He is trying to show me that He knows better than what i know and He knows what i need and what brent needs and what little miss needs. and i have been moping around because i thought God had forgotten me, and really He has brought me to the desk right near him.

the four things i wrote about at the beginning are just some of what He has shown me over the past few weeks.

so, i just got schooled. thank you God.