I had fun making this one… enjoy!
Taylor Swift “…Ready For It?” lyric video
I had fun making this one… enjoy!
Why dogs curl up when they sleep
What do you get when you’ve been dog-sitting through Rover.com for almost 2 years? A lot of stories! I’ve had a wide range of big dogs, small dogs, wide dogs, long dogs, young dogs, old dogs, fun dogs, hot dogs… wait, what?
I’ve had all kinds of dogs of all ages but one thing I’ve seen so much of is also a stereotypical trait of dogs. When they decide to lay down, they walk around in a neat, tight circle about a hundred times before plopping down. Why do they do this?
What I’ve found is that it’s an instinctual behavior (like rubbing on dead insects or one dog peeing on another dog’s pee) meant to keep themselves warm and protected.
I have 2 dogs, Piper and Asia, and they do this all the time. I’ve also observed that after they circle around and lay down, maybe 20 or 30 minutes later they sprawl out. I haven’t asked them about it, but my guess is that it’s not very comfortable to sleep in such a tight position and once they feel safe and warm, they loosen up.
Dogs were domesticated thousands of years ago, but I love when a bit of that wild wolf comes out in them. Even if they’re curling up on a king-sized mattress under a light breeze from a ceiling fan. You go wild dogs, go on with your bad selves!
-Out of the Wilderness
That time I won the lottery
I grabbed the slip of paper from the store clerk. After she read out what was printed on it, the customer behind me declared, “You won the lottery!
The rest of that week I was on cloud 9, but I wasn’t any richer. Because I didn’t actually win the lottery, it was even better. The receipt the CVS store clerk handed me had a coupon for 40% off any one item in the entire store.
THAT’S ALMOST HALF OFF!!!!!!!
For a few days, it felt like Christmas. But then it was Friday night, the special coupon expiring the very next day.
Excitedly, I parked my car, practically skipping through the sliding entrance doors around 8pm. I carefully shopped through the tech section. The pet section. Heck, I even browsed through the senior citizen section. I had no idea there were so many different styles of adult diapers. I could by some FOR 40% OFF!!!
The store was closing in 15 minutes. Where had the time gone? My forehead beads with sweat. Anxiety ramps up. I’m so indecisive. So with thousands of products to choose from, I narrowed it down to….
…this.
And that was my Friday night.
-Out of the Wilderness
Trusting God to sustain
…at times the path way has been steep and rocky, sometimes treacherous even, but by going to Him in prayer, in medication, in reading His word, He has sustained me EVERY TIME.
Grand-daddy Davis
My grandfather wrote those words to me in 1991, not knowing that 26 years later his grandson would be self-employed and learning what “sustain” really means. And I love that he capitalized “EVERY TIME.” It’s like having a best friend that never can’t hang out, that won’t ever decline to show up. I also love to think about God using this definition from dictionary.com…
That’s what God promises to do for us. Amazing! It’s so much farther beyond just the physical (money, food, etc), too. It’s also emotional, spiritual, sanity, temper, fear, anxiety, worry. This whole interest in God as sustainer and provider really gained traction this year, 2017. But I guess the story dates back to when I was laid off a couple years ago (early 2015). That year flew by as I rode out my severance package. 2016 was an adventurous year as I pursued less traditional forms of income (I wrote a book!). When 2017 rolled around it was a lot like the previous year, until tax season.
You dropped a bomb on me!
I didn’t realize how much I’d owe till I totaled up everything from 2016. And I also tithe around tax season, so my checking account was about to take a hefty hit. Thankfully, I survived… though there’s a water line on the wall of my checking account, much like when a flood recedes. This line here is how much you used to have… now, you’re waaaaaaaaay down here.
So as I was monitoring my accounts more closely, I began praying more earnestly. What does the Bible say about who to trust, who will provide, and all that? Well, the answer is easy: God. But I guess when I was on a salary, I never really thought about that sort of stuff. The checks go in automatically, the health coverage is taken care of, there’s not a scramble to make ends meet.
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
Matthew 6:26
This is the year of trusting God to sustain me, like Grand-daddy did. The first real example was tax season, like I mentioned. But then not too long after that, my computer froze up. One Apple computer later, I was actually excited to get to trust God for a way to keep working (I edit videos as part of my income) and at the same time, not losing my mind out of frustration!
Don’t get me wrong, I have a long way to go. It’s a daily thing, and often I’m like:
But I love Proverbs 23 and 30 that have two great advices…
“Don’t wear yourself out to get rich; stop giving your attention to it.” Then in chapter 30, “Give me neither poverty nor wealth; feed me with the food I need. Otherwise, I might have too much and deny You, saying, ‘Who is the LORD?’; or I might have nothing and steal, profaning the name of my God.”
I think we all have an opportunity each day to trust God to sustain us. And it’s amazing, SO AMAZING, when we recognize Him doing it.
-Out of the Wilderness
Taylor Swift’s first music video?
I had just moved to Nashville and one of my first paying jobs was as a production assistant for a music video. I was so excited! I don’t remember many of the details that day, but I do remember The Jordainaires, and a tall, curly-headed blonde girl that I walked by a couple of times. She ended up being part of the music video along with a choir of singers and songwriters…
…but I had no idea who she was. You wouldn’t have known either because this was BEFORE her first album came out! Scroll down to check out a 17-year old Taylor Swift starting around the 2:10 marker in the Wayne Warner video “God Bless the Children.”
Out of the Wilderness 