7 Quick Takes Friday

Here are my 7 Quick Takes for this week. Actually, there are only six, but I didn't want to change the name.

1.

I went to a movie this past week, and I started thinking about the days when David and I would go to movies when we were dating. Did you know your choice of movie seats is basically a relationship-o-meter?

There is a special seat in most movie theaters that is intended for use by a person who, um, needs a bigger seat than most. It's basically a seat and a half, usually found right behind the place where there is a seat left out for a wheelchair. This super-sized seat was mine and David's favorite when we were dating. We could sit in it together and watch the movie like the cute and cuddly little lovebirds we were.

Then we got married.

While that is still our favorite seat in theater, we don't share it anymore. We fight for it.

2.

The movie I saw was Duplicity starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. It was not a mindless romantic comedy. If it is possible to have flashback-induced migraines, this movie gave me one. It was a good story, but really, was it necessary to have 128 flashbacks?

3.

Good news and bad news on the Operation Get Becky Surgery front. Good news: Dr. Burdette has agreed to render his services free of charge. This seems very much like an answer to prayer . . . how often do surgeons operate for nothing? (His exact words were something like, "I've already extracted my pound of flesh from her." Yeah, in more ways than one, dude.)

I figure I provided an opportunity last year for him to perform a surgery that has never been performed in Columbus, Georgia. It was standing room only and is likely going to be written about in a medical journal, thus furthering the careers of my physicians. If that doesn't earn a person a free surgery, I don't know what does.

Bad news: the hospital does not feel such charity toward me. They called with their price quote yesterday, and let's just say it's a lot more than one pound of flesh. In fact, after I've paid this, I should have about one pound left.

4.

Conversation with Lauren before gymnastics on Wednesday:

Me: Are you going to do the balance beam today?
Lauren: Si!

I think someone's been watching to much Dora.

5.

I was reading my Bible in bed the other night (you know, since sleep is an elusive quest these days), and I came upon some verses that my mom shared with me when I was in law school.

"I will go before you and make the rough places smooth; I will shatter the doors of bronze and cut through their iron bars. And, I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden wealth of secret places, in order that you may know that it is I, the Lord God of Israel, who calls you by your name." Isaiah 45:2-3



These verses were meaningful to me at that point in my life as I was taking law school exams and needed God to give me the "hidden wealth of secret places" as I tried to divine what my professors were looking for in their exam questions.

(FYI, in law school, you take one exam per class. You spend an entire semester studying a subject, and at the end of the semester you take an exam, and that is your grade for the class. So, at the end of the first semester, I was in a panic getting ready to take a Contracts exam, having no clue whether I could succeed at this whole law school thing or not. That is when my mom shared this verse with me and told me she was praying that God would reveal the mysteries to me, so to speak.)

These have become sort of "life verses" for me.

They apply in parenthood as I encounter questions and challenges that seem as difficult as if they were doors of bronze or iron bars.

They apply in marriage as I follow my husband to a far-away land, knowing that God has gone before me.

Right now, they apply because I have been in a dark place lately. This passage reminds me not only that there ARE treasures of darkness, but that God will give them to me. Right now my spirit waits.

6.

Isaiah 42:16 is similar: "And I will lead the blind by a way they do not know; in paths they do not know I will guide them. I will make darkness into light before them and rugged places into plains."

How much comfort I find in that right now.

7.

Sorry, only time for six today.