Onward Hoe!

As long as I'm ripping off SNL sketch titles, I may as well say that I haven't been able to catch the beginning of it since the new season started, so I don't know if Ann's still in the opening credits playing cards with Horatio what's-his-face. Are you still in the mix, Grant?

Second, my toilet attacked me last week. I don't know what happened. The clog must have been slowly backing up down there in the depths of the pipe system somewhere until one final t.p. wad was enough to stop 'er up for good. I flushed once and noticed that it was unusually slow. I decided to make sure everything was well on its way to the ocean with one more flush. And that was my mistake. Not only did it overflow, it wouldn't stop running. By the time Whitney suggested turning the water off, there was a good inch or two of standing water in my bathroom with towels creating a sopping-wet dam, a feeble barrier between the rising floodwaters and the carpeted areas in the rest of the apartment. With the help of Brooke and her 9,000 towels, we got the situation under control. And the floor needed mopping anyway, so it was a good motivator to clean up before our...

Quasi-Mexican Fiesta! Yeah, dude. Saturday night was rockin'. We started the evening off right with dinner at El Rodeo. Then we returned to our place (along with about 20 of Brooke's friends from Sunday School) for a private screening of "The Three Amigos." A classic. As the film progressed, about 10 more people showed up. We were glad none of them were the fire marshall because if you've been doing the math, that means that there were around 30 people in our living room/dining area/kitchen. Granted, this apartment is about four times the size of the shed, but the shed could only fit about 8 people, and we had 30 in a space that didn't include either of the bedrooms, bathrooms or Brooke's ginormous closet. Luckily we have all those couches.

Following the movie, several people left, making it much easier to navigate one's way through the crowd, we mingled while Paulina Rubio and David Bisbal serenaded us in the background, and when there were only about 6 very cool people left, we put together my 300-piece, poster-sized Ricky Martin puzzle. It's glorious. We're considering gluing it together and framing it.

On Sunday I went to the airport to pick Whitney up. As we waited for the plane to find a gate, I circled the airport while talking to Whitney on the phone. When we realized how late we were going to be to church, she asked, "Which fruit of the Spirit are we talking about this week?" "Patience," I replied, and we both errupted in laughter.

The biggest thing I've realized through this Fruit series is that all of it is active. I always thought that the fruit of the Spirit was a lot of waiting and receiving and allowing God to do stuff in you, but what I'm beginning to see is that none of it, including peace, is passive. Tyler referred to patience as "a relentless thing." And while I had never thought of it before, and while it sounds a little strange at first, it's so true. It's a choice that we make, and we have to make it moment to moment if we are to maintain it. The instant we let up on patience is when we lose it. He also talked about James 5:7 (See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains) and how if the farmers planted or harvested their crops too early (before the rains), they wouldn't be as good or the harvest wouldn't be as big. We, too, have to be patient, waiting for the right time to do things...in their seasons, so to speak. And how do we know when the time is right? Just like you know when it's raining outside (you're either getting wet or you're not), you'll know when the time is right to "plant" or "harvest" in life. So don't rush it.

And finally, what the heck?!