3 Things You Didn't Know About Me

1st Thing: I once lived in a dining room.

For 6 months while in college. I was graduating early, in December, and our college town apartment complex would let you sign either 9 month or 12 month leases, so when my roommate and I were facing the end of our lease in May, we couldn't get another 2 bedroom apartment just until December when I'd leave, so we did a 1 bedroom that she'd live in for the full year until she graduated the following May and I'd live in the dining room until December.

It worked out well, actually! We both saved money. There was just enough room for my twin bed (positioned right under the cheap-brass-apartment-issued chandelier) and desk. We got a room divider to section the dining room off from the living room. We had never really used our dining room in apartments past because we mostly ate our macaroni and cheese on the couch in front of the TV watching Friends (ahhh, the college life!).

2nd Thing: I have 10,119 emails in my Inbox, 4,343 of them unread!

The sad thing is, this is 1 of 3 email accounts I have. This is my main personal email I'm talking about. I also have a junk email account I use whenever I buy anything online and give out to places like the zoo to send newsletters. I also have another account devoted to my blog email. How did these crazy numbers happen, you say?

5 years of not properly filing and deleting emails.

Now that Yahoo! Mail has an incredibly large storage limit, there is no urgency in getting this cleaned up and the problem is too huge to ever solve unless I just deleted everything and then I worry I'd need to reference an email and not be able to find it. And believe it or not I can find things now, eventually anyway! My email is all there by date and I just roughly remember when the email I'm trying to find went out, like Fall of 2008 and then I can just page through until I get to that period of time and I'm golden. My organizational skills? Are superb, you see?!!

So my tackle for the extreme disaster that is my email Inbox -- Let it go!! I read the newest ones, who cares what mountain of trash they are sitting on!


3rd Thing: One of my strangest answered prayers came in the Sam's Club.

Back in the days when we had only 2 children, my husband and I would occasionally wonder/discuss whether we should have a 3rd child. One morning I had been thinking about the pros and cons of adding another child to our family and was frustrated with the lack of a clear answer. There were good, compelling reasons on both sides of the equation.

I prayed a short prayer asking God to show me what we should do, and then I took my 2 kids ages 3 years and almost 1 year to Sam's for some shopping. I had let my 3 year old son dress himself that morning and he looked hideous, but we were only going to the warehouse grocery store, so I let it slide. Then they were giving away free chocolate chip cookies, so each of my kids got one and proceeded to completely coat themselves in crumbs and chocolate from head to toe.

As I pushed that big cart with them sitting next to each other in the side-by-side baby seats I've only seen in Sam's carts (but they are super!), I passed a middle-aged man who was doing typical man shopping, meaning he had no basket and he was walking quickly in the likely direction of the one and only item he'd buy in his shopping expedition.

I didn't see it coming at all because I was used to women commenting on my kids in public, but not men and my kids were looking really rag-a-muffin and pathetic at this point, but this man stopped me and said something to the extend of, "Your kids are adorable, but you have to have a 3rd!"

My jaw dropped open as it was so eerily obvious this man was serving as God's message to me in response to my prayer less than an hour earlier! The man went on to say things about how much kids learn growing up with more than one sibling, negotiation skills, etc. I asked if he had kids and he shared about his 4 grown kids and the wonder of raising them.

Can God answer prayers in this way, in the Sam's Club? I believe absolutely yes. I am grateful and sure that God is present and working in our world in this day and age, even among the mundane aspects of life. I know others will disagree, maybe throw around the "coincidence" word. But what do you think?

Find more Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers, Tackle It Tuesday at 5 Minutes for Mom,Talk About Tuesday at The Lazy Organizer.