Tools for Bible Study

I work in the Bible, Reference, and Study Resources department of Thomas Nelson Publishers. Just a few weeks ago I heard this helpful breakdown of the types of reference products available for Bible Study.

If the title of the product uses the word:

• Handbook: it's an overview of each book of the Bible, in canonical order (the order the books are in in your Bible).
• Dictionary: it's word-focused and in alphabetical order.
• Encyclopedia: it's topic- and phrase-focused and also in alphabetical order.

Other types of Bible reference books include:

• Topical Bible: organized alphabetically by topic, a list of all the scriptures that apply to popular study topics.
• Commentary: A book-by-book and sometimes even verse-by-verse explanation of the meanings behind Bible texts.
• Concordance: A complete list of every word in the Bible, as well as where and how it's used (the popular Strong's concordance also shows the Greek and Hebrew words behind the English translation).
• Manners and Customs or Life and Times: Understand how Bible people lived and discover the smallest details of life in Bible times (like what they wore and ate, how they worshipped, and what types of homes, job, transportation, plants, and animals existed in Bible times).

Hope this is helpful! Since I'd never heard this kind of breakdown before, even as close as I am to the production of these products, it felt like a "best kept secret" of the Bible scholar world. I wanted to share it with all of you so you'd be in the know! Happy studying!

Rediscovering the Old Ways

We moved into our first house at the end of August and have ever since been looking for various things temporarily lost in the pile of boxes in our spare bedroom. Today's quest was for my family recipe book; the holiday season is upon us and there are just certain things that MUST be cooked, to honor family traditions as well as fulfill the anticipations of much awaited gastric delights.

Thanks to a wonderful computer program called Delicious Library, we knew it was probably in Book Box 18 with our other recipe books, so all we had to do is find said Book Box 18 among the 40 other boxes in the room. This wasn't as difficult as you might imagine thanks to some semblance of order in the way we had put the boxes in the room during an earlier organizing moment. Success was nearly immediate, and therein lay the problem. Mentally I had set aside, oh, an hour, to find the family recipe book. Success 10 minutes into the project meant that I was left with the feeling that I still had at least 50 minutes to "play" amongst the boxes.

This is a slippery slope, of course. First you just think that you'll peek into "Mystery Box of Crap from Howell" (yes, this is how I labeled some re-discovered boxes that never got unpacked after our move to TN 4.5 years ago), and then you start digging to see what's in the depths of the box, and the next thing you know, you've found random "treasures" and you're moving furniture around in the other rooms of the house to find places for your new treasures. And then your Sunday afternoon is completely gone and your house is a mess and you wonder how you got to this place when all you'd been doing was looking for one cookbook.

One of the treasures I just had to claim from the depths of the mystery box was an old wooden container of letters and visiting cards. I think I got this box from Les's Grandma Rollins' estate after she died, but I don't think I've ever really looked through it. Today was the day (but of course!). I lifted out each visiting card, most only containing a person's name written in lovely script, though a few had crazy tasseled borders or were tucked within a decorative, four-color paper card. There were a number of baby announcements, wedding invitations, and graduation invites, most very simple and all (surprisingly) confirming that we really haven't made any progress in invitation/announcement design in the past 100 years. I discovered a few Easter or Valentine's Day cards, though nothing was written on them, as if they were purchased to send and then never mailed.

My favorite piece in the box, however, is a dance invitation, simply because it provides a lovely snap-shot of life in 1907. I don't have my scanner hooked up, but it's quite a simple design, so I'll just type it up "as is" to give you an idea of what you might have gotten up to on a Monday night over 100 years ago.

Seventh Grand Dancing Party

will be given at Niedermeier's Hall, Newport, Michigan, on

Monday evening, February eleventh

nineteen seven

The presence of yourself and friends will add to

the pleasures of the occasion

Music by Finzel's Orchestra of Detroit

Music begins at eight thirty o'clock

Niedermeier Brothers

Admission 75 cents

Oyster Supper 25 cents

Special car leaves Newport for Rockwood at 12:30 and for Monroe at 1:00 o'clock

Imagine being out until 1 a.m. on a Monday night in February! Don't let anyone tell you they weren't living large back in aught-seven!

A Quote

I was reading Ode Magazine during lunch and stumbled upon this quote. I think it's too long for a 140-character Tweet, so into the blog it goes!

"I have tried, too, in my time, to be a philosopher, but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in." -- Oliver Edwards, quoted (with lots of commas!) in James Boswell's Life of Johnson.

I resonate with this quote because it describes the life philosophy I keep coming back to. There are many moments when I think I need to be more discerning, more critical, more thought-provoked, more responsive, more involved, more aware, or more serious overall about life and all that's going on in the world. But that's just not me. It feels like work for me to live that way -- unnatural, un-fun, and stressful.

So, at the end of the day, I just keep defaulting to trying to have a cheerful disposition within each day and to help people see the fun and positive in their story as well.

Next step: Laughter therapy?

A Month of Compliments

I just finished a Twitter/Facebook status update series called "Lisa's Morning Compliments," wherein I typed up a compliment to the world every morning. I thought someone might like to see all the compliments collected in one place (or might need 31 compliments in a row), so here they are in the order I posted them:

1. You've always been one of my favorites!
2. You are going to be super-awesome today -- I can tell just by looking at you!
3. I've never seen you so relaxed! The weekend looks good on you!
4. We are all getting older, but YOU look like time is standing still (or reversing). Amazing!
5. For many, Monday's "M" stands for "madness." For you, the "M" stands for "majorly-awesome." Have a triumphant day!
6. It makes me feel happy when I see your smiling face before I head to work. Starts the day off right!
7. Your personality sure is sparkling today! Way to brighten up the middle of the week!
8. You're looking confident today and it's Thursday. You've got this week in the bag! I knew you could do it!
9. You did a great job keeping it all together this week! Enjoy your TGIF in a big way!
10. You are having a great hair day! Even you baldies have a nice shine going! Enjoy the looks of admiration!
11. You lead such an interesting life! I love hearing about all your adventures!
12. Did you get some sun this weekend? You're positively glowing!
13. I love your eye-color!
14. You're a great friend! I always feel cared about, whether you're far or near!
15. Three words describe you today (courtesy of my Peggle game): "Cranking the awesomeness." Bring it!
16. You are so cleverly humorous!
17. There is a simple elegance about you...
18. You make any party feel even partier! You're so fun to be around!
19. You eat Monday for breakfast! Consider yourself triumphant before the day even begins!
20. You use your powers for good, not evil.
21. You're good enough, and smart enough, and gosh darn it, people LIKE you! (thank you, Stuart Smalley)
22. Your "charm" dial goes all the way up to 11!
23. You rocked this week! I now know what an "A+ game" looks like, and it's pretty amazing!
24. You've never gotten older, only better. You seem to be eternally-youthful!
25. You have great taste in music. I've learned about so many cool bands, thanks to you!
26. You're young, you're fly, and you're gonna stay flashy till the day that you die! (with a nod to my favorite CD from Girl Talk)
27. You've got a chilled-out kind of vibe going. Way to bring summer into your mid-week life!
28. One of my favorite things about you is your unique perspective on life. You aren't like everyone else, and that's a good thing!
29. You are full of WIN!
30. Your own struggles and triumphs in the realm of personal independence inspire me -- emotional, financial, physical, social, and so much more! Stay the course and celebrate your achievements!
31. I though you used all your sparklers yesterday -- yet you're still sparkling today!!

Takeaways from this exercise:

1. People really seemed to respond to the compliments, even when I sometimes doubted that I was able to convey the right complimentary tone in a sincere way. Sarcasm was NEVER my intention, but after 31 days of writing up generic compliments, I sometimes wondered if I was pulling it off.
2. I get the impression that a lot of people need to hear more positive words. Bring the praise, people!
3. I got a lot of compliments in return. This was an added bonus surprise!
4. It was kind of hard for me to come up with this many compliments and I had to cheat by quoting songs or pop culture icons sometimes. I felt bad about that, thinking my creativity is more amazing than it ended up being, but it was all worth it to bring the compliments to the people.
5. I wasn't sure what people would prefer to be complimented on -- wit, looks, work ethic, vibrancy, etc. I never knew what would resonate with people or what wouldn't. The comments on Facebook were fun and surprising to read.

Spreading some positivity daily was a happy thrill for me. I am trying to think up a new series that will accomplish something similar, but haven't struck creative gold yet. Any ideas?

Checking in

Making my every-six-months stop here at my blog to see how things are going. All seems quiet on the blog front...

Random updates from my world:

(1) My social life is still active on Facebook, though I did go through and delete all the friends who I didn't really know. Amazingly, that was only about 25 people.

(2) We are thinking of buying a house. Well, we have gone one step further than that and have given notice to our apartment complex that we're moving out at the end of July. This is SO exciting to me. And so scary, too. How will we know which house to pick? There are so many choices! But it will be nice to have a home that feels more permanent. Maybe I'll even decorate (ha!).

(3) We went to our first Roller Derby meet. We stood rink-side and it was awesome! We are so thankful for our friends who introduced us to this sport. I want to go again. Have you gone? It's a big time in Nashville! Sell-out crowds! Does anyone want to go roller skating with me? I promise not to slam you.

(4) I'm suffering from running injuries. It's totally annoying. I feel a million years old. I went to see an awesome doctor and it got a little better, but not completely better. Staying healthy as a runner seems to be a lot of work.

(5) I did a tiny bit of HTML work on my church website. Tricky, but hilariously fun. But not fun enough to do more. One time was all I needed to feel a great sense of accomplishment. I am still congratulating myself.

(6) We're really into playing Settlers of Catan. We are joking that we need to have two kids so that we can play this game all the time without needing to have people over. It's that addicting! People might have kids to flesh out their home team!

(7) I have a new job. Sadly, my sweet boss left our company and my position was eliminated. Happily, a new position was found for me. I am amazingly thankful and having a blast learning all sorts of new things (and new acronyms!).

(8) Summer is here. We haven't planned any vacations. It's weird. What will we do? Where will we go? Must. Have. Summer. Fun.

(9) I have an iphone, and I love it. I read lots of books on it and can't believe how much I love an ebook. Never thought I would. Proved myself wrong (again).

(10) Sparkly Wednesday is still a phenomenon. We have a group on Facebook. It's 200-members strong. Join the sparkle-ution!

(10+1) I am so proud of myself for coming up with a new screen name based on my initials: LMR. My new screen name is Elemar (for the slow among us, El = L, em = M, ar = R). I also thought of LMKR = Elemkayar, but that's long and looks like an abbreviation for Elementary Kayaker. Try it with your initials! It's fun!

I have had flashes of blog ideas in my head. What else is new? But I haven't sat down to flesh them out yet. What else is new? The ten-plus-one-point update is a start. Hope you're well. Much love. Miss you.

Me, a marathon-runner?

This past Sunday, my husband and I completed our very first full marathon (that's 26.2 miles for those of you who aren't familiar with this type of thing) in San Antonio, TX. We finished it in around 6 hours and 15 minutes.

If you know us or met us, I don't think you'd ever believe we could or would run a marathon (though a nun I met recently said I have "a runner's body" -- she was being SO generous! I didn't think nuns were supposed to lie. ). Les was an asthmatic kid who often spent at least part of the exciting Christmas season in the hospital getting help-me-breathe-again steroid shots, and I was a "bookish" girl, more interested in reading and letter-writing than running around outside. Yet, somehow we found ourselves on a marathon course, running, running, and finally finishing.

As I stood in my corral, waiting to start my very first marathon, I felt remarkably calm. My past race experiences have not been as good, leading me to say more than once that I love the training much more than the actual racing. I generally get too wound up during the pre-race wait in the corrals and want to bust a move and pass everyone once we start. Then I get annoyed when my husband insists on sticking to our 145-155 heart rate pace, and I spend a few miles feeling grumpily frustrated, like a dog straining at a leash. Because this was the longest distance I've ever run (ever!), I think I found it easier to sit back and pace myself and just enjoy the race as it progressed along. I was very aware of the possibility of running out of gas around mile 20, and wanted to save enough energy to make it across the finish line!

We had our ipods with us in case musical motivation was needed, but only listened to them for about a mile total -- the rest of the time we chatted with each other or looked at the scenery or the other racers or the supportive friends and family members along the sidelines (favorite signs I saw: "I thought you said 2.62 miles!" and "My feet hurt because I'm kicking so much ass!"). We were running at a slow pace, so we were able to enjoy the race more than some who are trying to finish in a certain time. That was a great way to experience our first marathon, and I would recommend it to all first-timers.

Overall, I found that the experience was somewhat emotional (though some would say I'm just an emotional person overall). Running a marathon is the only thing I've ever really worked hard for in my entire life, and as the miles passed easily beneath my feet, I began to realize how much all the work and time and planning and training was really paying off. It was the first time that I felt that I could see the effort = results equation in full-effect. By mile 21 (the longest distance we'd run prior to this was 20 miles, so getting past that point was a big deal!), I really had a feeling of accomplishment and awe. By that point it seemed real to me that we were actually going to complete a whole marathon. Us. Really.

We had started training in earnest with our great trainer Terry Coker at the end of May. Before that, we had honored our New Year's resolution to get in better shape and had been steadily training for April's Music City 1/2 Marathon on our own. We had gone from "couch-potato-ness" to being able to run five miles by the half marathon. Although we had made good progress on our own, training with Terry really made a huge difference for us because he kept us from overdoing it and helped us build our stamina slowly and carefully. During our training, we had the same challenges and difficulties that most runners face -- cold weather, hot weather, busy schedules, various body aches, illness, lack of energy, boredom, etc. -- but we managed to power through all of that and stay on track. Somehow we also managed to develop the mental stamina to settle down and just run till the race was done. As a person who loves to get something done quickly and move on to the next thing, the development of any kind of mental stamina still seems like something purely magical to me, but it was real and it was there when I needed it.

One of my favorite parts of any race is seeing all the encouragement that comes from the sidelines. It's a faith-restoring experience for me. You see spectators who are playing cow-bells, holding hand-made signs, crying, yelling, and jumping up and down as their runners go by. You'll see the same people in multiple locations along the course because they've moved from one spot to another to give maximum encouragement. Then there are the spectators who don't seem to know anyone in the race, but have just come out to cheer random people on (sometimes they even hand out treats at the end of their driveway or play music from their cars to encourage us all to keep up the pace). Those are my favorites! Being encouraged by someone you've never met, someone who just saw you running by and thought, "That girl needs a shout-out!" makes me feel that there is so much good in the world and in humanity. The opportunity to be a great cheerleader is the one thing that would keep me from being a runner! It just looks like so much fun and I know how much it's appreciated by the people running by.

Around mile 22, I began to feel that the whole thing was over too quickly. My husband lost his stamina around mile 23, so he walked the rest of the way and I jogged alongside him to the finish line (I tried to walk, but my muscles weren't able to adapt to the pace and workout change, so I had to keep on running). That helped stretch out the last few miles, but I still felt that the time went by too fast.

We don't have our next marathon scheduled yet, but there is definitely another marathon in our future! I think I've got the marathon bug!

Missing my blog!

I haven't blogged for forever, but I do think of blogging and miss it from time to time, so I thought I would stop by and say hello.

At the moment, I'm distracted by the instant gratification of social interaction on Facebook and Twitter. You put something out there and people respond, sometimes immediately. It's a much easier way to share photos (in albums! imagine!) and you can keep up with lots of people all at once. It seems more effective than email, text messaging, and blogging. I've reconnected with people I haven't talked to in years and am getting caught up on all their missing history. I have friends who are pretty spotty with emails, calls, and letters, but are pretty consistent with Facebook. It's opened my whole world and made distances between me and my friends seem almost non-existent. I never thought it would happen, but I guess I'm a web 2.0 convert!

It's not that blogging doesn't have it's own appeal, however. Write a long note on Facebook and see if anyone comments on it. Generally, none of us have the attention span to read through a whole multi-paragraph note with such a tempting buffet of interactions just one click away. If you have something longer and more thought-out or thought-provoking to say, a blog still seems to be the place to do it.

Of course, this brings up the questions: "But is anyone reading your blog anyway?" and "If no one is reading it, does it matter to you?" and "If it does matter to you, is there any way to get more of a connection with people?"

I feel like communication and social interaction is in a really bizarre state right now and no one really knows which direction it will take. Will people who feel they need more human interaction start going to open mic nights instead of posting stuff on their blogs? Will people revert back to mailing letters because it feels more authentic than sending an email or "poking" someone on Facebook? Will we start putting limits on the amount of updating we're doing online because we suddenly wake up one morning and think, "Who cares that I'm brewing coffee? I'm spending so much time telling people what I'm doing that I am not really even doing anything!"

And what would encourage me to start blogging again? I feel like I have things to say, but I don't feel like I have the time to sit down and write it all out. Could I be less wordy and more frequent? Could I just throw stuff up here and not agonize about spelling, punctuation, or content? Is less more? Or is less just less? And does it really matter? Maybe I shouldn't even be thinking about stuff like this.

Such is life in the modern age. Strangely, I love it.

Get Your Sparkle On!

For the past year or so, I have been participating a weekly, self-created holiday known as "Sparkly Wednesdays." On SW I wear at least one obviously sparkly thing, although something shiny (like silver shoes) can be substituted for something that actually "sparkles" in a bejeweled kind of way.

It began accidentally. I don't have a lot of clothes and so I tend to wear the same things in a regular sort of rhythm. Mondays I dress up a bit because I'm usually in staff meetings with VPs. Tuesdays I usually wear a long skirt so I don't have to shave my legs again in the summer (sad excuse, but true). Thursdays tend to moving down the path to casual Fridays, so I wear linen pants or something relaxed. And Fridays are "jeans day" at work so (of course!) I wear jeans.

Wednesday had nothing to define it. So, probably out of boredom, I found myself wearing something bright or fun or interesting. For me, "fun" is frequently defined as "sparkly." Because I usually wear black or other somber tones, these sparkly outfits would stick out and people felt compelled to comment -- "Wow! That's some shirt!" I began to notice that I was usually getting comments about my outfits on Wednesdays, so when people would comment, I started to respond cheerfully with "Well, it IS Sparkly Wednesday!" After a while, the idea just stuck and the official, weekly holiday was born.

It seems to be catching on. People have started to wear sparkles on Wednesdays around the office and will come over and show me their outfits for my approval. I have told a few friends about it outside the office and they've seemed interested in participating from afar. I've been meaning to start up a group on Facebook where people can post photos of their sparkly awesomeness. Slowly, but surely, it is building momentum. Come sparkle with us!