Video Clips Available

Okay, you can finally view some of my most requested topics on YouTube.com (and this blog spot if I did everything correctly)! Tell your friends and forward this blog as I putter along putting together clips, videos, podcasts (next goal!), and writing to help get you a little bit further down the road.

On Our Marks, Get Set...Here We Go!

My daughter has two tattoos.

One following the gentle curve behind her left ear inked with Greek letters conveying the sacred meaning of her name: anointed. The other an elaborate Assyrian cuneiform script imprinted upon the rib cage of her right side, its ancient prayer marking body and soul:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit in me.”

Despite my “tat” request imploring Kristen to refrain from going, “Totally Angelina,” with this not-so-new form of self-expression, I unashamedly admit she wears her convictions well.

Which led to my thinking...well, you know.

Thus, my puncture wounds (hence hypothetical nature of this conversation) would be ensconced delicately between my shoulder blades and read:

“Running after Jesus—lead, follow, or get out of the way.”

While certainly less poetic than my daughter’s (but self-explanatory, perhaps, as to why I have never sought nor acquired gainful employment within the official constructs of pseudo-political church leadership) such fervent & unapologetic declaration articulately summarizes the holy trinity of my past, present, and future: The life-long pursuit of Jesus.

This is all I've ever done; running, sometimes walking, skipping, and limping, towards the One of whom I first sang about in a late-60s paneled classroom; intently marching on its cheaply covered indoor-outdoor carpet, while singing, "I'm in the Lord's ARmeeeeeeeeeee!"

This is what I've known & been inextricably drawn to for thirty-eight years.

This is where I belong.

This is who I am.

Utterly and thoroughly, "Jesusey."

Welcome to my new blog spot cyber-surfer, doubter, believer, mother, daughter, and friend. I believe you'll find it to be broader in nature; allowing me to write, opine, wallow, post links, revel in my skewed quirkiness and thus, explore with few limits, the all-together messy and gloriously complicated nature of the life lived in pursuit.

As times goes by, Running will meld with the design look, nature, and purpose of my website, www.juliebarnhill.com. But it's been three-months since I set out to get that all accomplished and I'm tired of waiting. (As are/were many of you as your emails can attest. Thanks for the, uh, butt-kicking encouragement to "do something about your new blog idea!") So, here it is--a work in progress as I continue to enthusiastically amble my way towards Jesus.

The Times They Are About to be Changin'

Oh, my.

It's been THAT long since I last posted?!

Forgive me...again. I've been pondering why I seem to shrink from this portion of communicating and have come to the conclusion that I need to break this blog out a bit wider. To allow myself (and your comments in response) to cover a broader gamut of thought, opinions, advice, humor, and over all personality.

So that's what I'm going to do in the next few weeks.

Set up a revived blogging spot by which you and I can talk shop. Confer. Opine. Pontificate. Laugh so hard we (nearly!) wet our pants. Okay, so some of you may choose to opt out regarding that. So be it.

Nevertheless, the goal is to meld the varying aspects of life, faith, kids, relationships, failures, dreams, questions, convictions, marriage, and everything else that makes up this life--our lives. And to get through it together.

Thoughts on a Tabloid Mom's Story

Just finished reading, Through the Storm, and I appreciate and commend both Lynne and Lorilee Craker for filling it with informative reality-check content.

Reality Check: Lynne wasn't some whacked-out Baby Jane stage mom. (But you sell more tabloids if you say she is.)
Reality Check: Lynne never "cashed in" on either of her daughters fame. (I never knew she was a school teacher and ran her own successful daycare until the book. Yes, Britney built her the home she now lives in but last time I checked LOTS of wealthy and famous children had done that happily for their parents).
Reality Check: Lynne made choices she regrets. (Well, what mother or father among us reading this blog hasn't done the same thing?)
Reality Check: Lynne was, is, and will continue to be a Christian whose faith weaves in and through the multiple dynamics of her life. (This seems to be a tough pill for the world to understand and some Christians to accept).
Reality Check: Lynne loves her children.

Lynne didn't do everything right. Heck, none of us have! She admits to passivity and blind, naive, trust with manager types which you and I will probably never see the like of. But through the real and very public storm of her life and children's choices she proved to be One Tough Mother strong.

Here, I'll let Lynne speak for herself (page 164), after refusing to bend to family and Jamie Lynn's managament team's pressure to send her (Jamie Lynn) to a Christian-based residential facility in Tennesse...

"I cannot do this," I said. "This is not what she needs." To say I was raked over the coals would be like saying Louisiana is a tough muggy in July. Jamie, especially, did not mince words, yelling and ranting and accusing me of being co-dependent, among other things. But those lions could roar all they wanted--I would not budge...Standing my ground was not easy. I'd been so passive in so many ways for so long, letting managers and agents and executives decide the paths my children would walk. Not any longer. Not while I was still their mother."

Mother Prayer

Please read and pray for the healing of Stephanie, a young mother fighting one tough battle for her life. Who among us reading this can do so without tearing up and drawing our little ones (and big one) closer to our sides and heart? If you have a sister who loves you like this...stop reading and pick up your phone or drive over to her house and tell her how much you love her.

If, like me, your relationship with a sister (or sisters) is unconventional or perhaps strained or non-exisistent, it's okay, bow your head (as I am doing as I type) and give thanks for what it is and who they are. It is what it is I often tell my children, but I'm learning as each calendar year rolls around to give thanks to God for everything and everyone He has allowed to shape me.

Family rarely resembles the cheesy shows from my youth nor the irreverent and shameless caricature crap emanating from the "New Kind of Family" channels illuminating the family rooms of our home. Rather, family with all its glorious and gut-wrenching highs and lows is the petri dish of the holy and difficult; the mundane and self-less.

Some Thoughts

I can't believe it's nearly the end of October. Ugh. I really don't know how those of you reading this post who blog and work and parent and travel and carry responsibilities in a dozen other areas find time to do even the simple essentials.

I'll be cruising along when I realize a month has gone by since I last spoke with my online comrades. Or fixed a home-cooked meal. So I'm going to settle into a routine today and tomorrow and do my best to post a quasi-profound missive her at One Tough Mother Talk.

Time, The Grand Equalizer

Okay, so I'm totally addicted (in the most healthy of ways, mind you) to Facebook and all those other networking connects online. My kids think I'm weird and granted, they have a point, as I squeal out time and again from my office computer, "Oh, my gosh! I can't believe I found ....!"

In the past four days, I've talked with Jeff A. whom I first got to know in 1982 as a seventeen-year old girl desperate to find a way to stop living a double-life as a Christian(i.e. drinking like a fish on weekends and telling jokes, admittedly funny jokes, that would make a sailor blush).

I got a chance to do just that while working with Jeff, one of the "old" adults (um, he was probably all of 24 or so) on an organizational team for an area-wide youth rally in Moberly, MO. This was an opportunity to put my actions where my faith was supposed to be and I dove in for all I was worth. A couple of years later I saw Jeff at Hannibal LaGrange College and then, like so many people in our lives, he went somewhere with his family and that was that.

Fast forward 26 years... a quick facebook search...and there's Jeff with his still beautiful bride Sherry and their now grown (and married) sons. Like me, Jeff has a few pigment-challenged hair follicles on his head. Laugh lines. And I'm sure more than a few stories of failure and success. But as I look at the photos he posted, all I could really think about was the multiple pure expressions of love, affection, joy, and faithfulness on his face. He may not "look" 24 anymore and heaven knows I threw off 17 a long, long, loooooooong, time ago, but in the grand scheme of life, we stand equal.

A bit older.
A bit wiser.
And thankful for the faithful love of our family and Savior.