Lauren Sparks

The Sparks Notes

See Ya, September!

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Boy it’s been a busy month!  From your comments I know many of you think all my months are busy, but this one takes the cake.  Especially for the teenager in the house.  So even though it’s my birthday month, I’m okay with saying, “See ya!” to September.

 

So far I can describe Allie’s senior year in two words.  Fast and Furious.  She is the President of her High School’s choir participating in two choirs herself.  Musical theater, PALs (Peer Assisted Leadership) and 4 Advanced Placement classes round out the rest of her school schedule.  She is also President of Students Standing Strong (a Christian club), in She’s the First (another club), involved in Spirit Sisters (a pep organization), Student Council, National Honor Society and leads worship at church.  Oh, she has a part time job too, and I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten a school club or three.  I’m not sure how she keeps up with it all.

 

She does most of her homework after the hubs and I go to bed (I think), and we probably average seeing her 15 minutes a day.  I guess that will prepare us to see her 0 minutes a day next year when she’s in college.

 

What’s Taking Up Our Time?

 

Noises Off filled up the bulk of Allie’s September calendar.  She committed to practices 5 days a week and an extra day for tech to play the role of Brooke/ Vicki in the slapstick play.

 

Labor Day weekend took me down the highway to Waco, Texas with my sister for the funeral of an old friend’s mom.  In high school and college we spent many hours enjoying the hospitality of this dear lady.  We hung out at their house, swam in her pool and ate lots of her food.  It was bittersweet to get to say goodbye to her while also reuniting with friends who held important places in my life during my formative years.

 

Since we were in Waco on game day, my sister and I decided to take in some Baylor football.  The temperature was boiling, but we won and saw some more friends there.  The following Saturday, my Bears didn’t kick off until 9:15pm.  Almost my bed time!  But Chuck and I tortured ourselves by staying up until 1am to watch us lose in overtime.  And the next weekend, we went to see my parents and grandad to watch the game with them.  Baylor football is a festive occasion for me!

 

More Goings On

 

The city REC center where I work closed for their annual cleaning and maintenance week.  So instead of teaching yoga and working with seniors, yours truly ended up on her hands and knees polishing chrome in an elevator – among other things.  That’s a commitment to clean you definitely won’t see at my house!

 

In other news, I somehow talked my talented sister into taking Allie’s senior pics.  I feel so fortunate to have her on the job.  I watched the two of them work together with a heart full of joy.  Beauty in front and behind the camera.  Erin is still working on editing, but here is a sneak peak.  I can’t wait to see the rest!

 

My church life group started back to Bible study mid-month after a summer break.  Our teachers chose the book of Deuteronomy to go through together.  I learned about these Bible journals from them and am enjoying this resource as we dive in.

 

Chuck, Shelby and I got to go see my nephew play defensive tackle for his freshman football team and enjoyed a mild evening hanging out with sweet family.  Now that the evenings aren’t hotter than Satan’s pocket, I hope we can go watch him play again.

 

September’s Diversions

 

I read Dreams of Savannah by Roseanna M. White and am currently listening to the audiobook The Magnificent Lives of Margorie Post.  She was the Post cereal heiress.  I recommend both, especially if you enjoy a period piece.  For a non-fiction read, I have That Sounds Fun: The Joys of Being an Amateur, the Power of Falling in Love, and Why You Need a Hobby by Annie F. Downs going.  The author covers more serious ground than the title lets on.

 

My husband and I are currently being creeped out (in the most fascinating way) by Steve Carrell in The Patient on Hulu.  The Netflix documentary Untold:  The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist creeped us out on a whole different level.  Whether or not you already know the catfishing story of Manti Te’o, this deep dive is worth a look.  We also watched a special on Queen Elizabeth after her passing and are enjoying the She-Hulk series.

 

This last documentary needed a paragraph of its own.  I stumbled across The Jesus Music on Hulu or Amazon Prime and took a trip down musical memory lane.  The film documents how religious music moved out of the church and onto the airways and concert venues.  It chronicles the Jesus movement of the 70’s to Contemporary Christian Music of the 80’s and 90’s to the worship emphasis of today.  The clips of the music and artists of my growing years sent me down a weeks long rabbit trail of looking up and listening to Stephen Curtis Chapman, DC Talk, Amy Grant, Wayne Watson, Randy Stonehill and Michael W. Smith.  And I’m not to the bottom of this hole yet.  My Spotify algorithm is turned upside down.

 

And We Also Went Out

 

The new threesome (since Allie stays so busy) of my husband, Shelby and I ventured to the movies twice this month to support Christian film making.  Lifemark is a beautifully affirming true story of adoption.  In fact, the idea for the movie came from a documentary shot by the subject’s best friend called I Lived on Parker Avenue.  So of course I had to see this 30 minute short as well.  You can find it for free on Tubi.  And I recommend it.  We also stepped out for Running the Bases.  This one had some pretty unrealistic moments, but the message was great and since it was about baseball, it held my Shelby’s rapt attention.

 

On my birthday eve I traveled back to Waco with my husband and Shelby for my 30th high school reunion.  Some days I still feel like I’m in my 30’s and others I feel like I’m decaying by the day.  But catching up with some friends who knew me when was tons of fun.

 

And as this publishes I am on my way to pick my best friend up from the airport!  She is coming in for our annual girls weekend to celebrate our autumn birthdays.  She and I are going back to Waco (Yes.  The third time this month for me.) for some more Baylor football and quality time.  Any time I get to spend with Patsy is a good time.

 

On that note I leave you with this message:  I love you, I thank you and I pray October treats you well!

 

And now for this week’s featured post from the link up.

 

Grace and Truth’s own Tammy Kennington wrote so beautifully about the things she’s learning from her weariness caused by fibromyalgia.  Although I can’t relate to that specifically, I can relate to being sapped by chronic back pain.  Do you have a pain (physical, mental or emotional) that is wearing you out?  You will be encouraged by Powerful Truths About Weariness.

 

 

The Link Up

 

1. Share 1 or 2 of your most recent CHRISTIAN LIVING posts. (No DIY, crafts, recipes, or inappropriate articles.) All links are randomly sorted.

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LISA BURGESS – Lisa notes
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Your Hometown…and Grace and Truth Link Up

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You may have seen on this blog a time or two that I watched the mini series Little Fires Everywhere.  I remain fascinated by it.  Brene Brown, a sociologist whose research I also find fascinating, recorded two podcasts about the show and the novel it was based on.  I downloaded and listened to them right away.

 

In one episode, Brown interviewed the book’s author.  The second featured Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, the lead actors in the Hulu series.  During both, the insightful host introduced an interesting concept – your hometown as a character in your story.  The author set the book in her own hometown, Shaker Heights, Ohio.  This picturesque hamlet is one of the first planned communities in the United States.  Designers thought themselves very progressive by voluntarily integrating before most of the rest of the country.  At that time, racial unrest and violence had already occured.  This dark past was pushed under a rug as financing became available for black residents to move into white neighborhoods and vice versa.  Buses carried white students to black schools and black students to white schools.

 

The self-satisfied occupants of Shaker Heights claimed to be color blind and ignored differences and previous history in favor of looking the part of an equality based utopia.  Because of this, the Shaker Heights community still struggles with the same issues of race and class we see in the rest of the nation.  It strives to maintain the picturesque facade with rules.   The lawns can be only 2 inches, and house paint color is regulated.  In the movie, Mia’s rent house displays the importance of appearance.   The duplex, from the outside, looks like a single family residence.  But physically and metaphorically, slapping a coat of paint on something without fixing the foundation makes for a problematic existence.

 

I realize that my family of origin, other people I surrounded myself with and many other factors helped mold my morals, beliefs and overall worldview.  But I decided to take a look at my own hometown and try to analyze how it might contribute.

 

I was born in Waco, Texas (which refers to itself as the Heart of Texas) in 1973.  Waco occupies space about halfway between Dallas and Austin.  I could get to either one in about 90 minutes by car.  So even though the population measured just a little over 100,000 in the town proper, big city attractions sat in easy reach.  Now, years later, Waco is it’s own attraction thanks to the rise of the Gaines family and Fixer Upper.

 

The name Waco comes from the Hueco Indians, an arm of the Wichita.   They occupied a village there until white settlers drove them out.  In 1912, a prominent citizen brought back a group of the Hueco to participate in an exhibition of the city’s annual Texas Cotton Palace Exposition and Fair.  (The Cotton Palace Pageant still exists today.)  Event planners fabricated a village of teepees for them to live in, taught them war dances to perform and dressed them in a strange conglomeration of modern and native clothing.  In 2014, over 100 years later, city leaders and historians invited tribal leaders back to work on restoring connections and developing better relationships.

 

With these racially nefarious underpinnings, I wanted to research Waco’s historical relationship with black Americans.  In 1916, a black teen confessed to murdering a white woman and was tortured, mutilated and burned to death.  In what is now called the “Waco Horror”, 15,000 spectators watched including police and the mayor.  Officials made strides toward repentance 100 years later by finally publicly condemning the lynching.

 

In spite of these things, people of different colors lived harmoniously all around me.  The north side of town (my neighborhood) was a former air force base.  The military originally established the school I attended for air force families and was, therefore, integrated many years before other schools in the area.  And until 1990, Waco was home to Paul Quinn College, the oldest Historically Black College west of the Mississippi.

 

Waco is also home to Baylor University – the oldest and largest Baptist school in the United States.  It’s nickname?  Jerusalem on the Brazos.  And churches of different denominations line the streets there.  It’s no surprise that my Christian doctrine leans toward the conservative.

 

I could explore much more here.  From the serious – this mostly middle class area did not prepare me for the challenges of living in a more affluent area with a more affluent mindset.  To the silly – Dr. Pepper was born there.  I worked at it’s museum and love the sweet beverage still.  It’s all more than you would care to read.  But my introspection begs me to ask if you’ve ever considered your hometown as a character in your story.

 

Can you think of one characteristic of your hometown that may have shaped who you are or something you believe?  I would love to hear about it in the comments.  Please.  I’m bored here in quarantine.  😉

 

And now for this week’s featured post!

 

I don’t know what it’s like to have Fibromyalgia, but I do know what crippling disappointment feels like.  Maybe you do to?  Especially right now?  Click over and read what Jennifer Ross of teawithjennifer.blog has to say in the post Layers of Disappointment.  Her experience + the encouragement of God’s word spoke to my tired, frustrated soul.  Thanks for ministering to me, Jennifer.

And thanks for sharing!  Here’s a button for your blog:

 

Grace and Truth_Rules

1. Share 1 or 2 of your most recent CHRISTIAN LIVING posts. (No DIY, crafts, recipes, or inappropriate articles.) All links are randomly sorted.

2. Comment on 1 or 2 other links. Grace & Truth linkup encourages community.

3. Every host features one entry from the previous week. To be featured, include this button or link back here on your post (mandatory to be featured, but not to participate).

 

Grace Truth_Button

Grace and Truth_Meet Hosts

We encourage you to follow our hosts on their blogs or social media.

MAREE DEE – Embracing the Unexpected
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

HEATHER HART & VALERIE RIESE – Candidly Christian
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LAUREN SPARKS
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LISA BURGESS – Lisa notes
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Now Let’s Link Up!

 

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Click here to enter

Sharing is caring! If you liked this post, do me the huge honor of using the buttons below to share it to your favorite social media accounts. And if you want to get these essays emailed to you once a week, subscribe!  Lastly, my posts may contain affiliate links and I earn from qualifying purchases. If you buy anything from one of these links, I will receive a few pennies to help offset the cost of this website at no additional charge to you. Thank you in advance for your help.

 

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