Seven Snippets: Sarah Kate Auditions for Glee, I Reveal My “10 Books” and Real Rainbows I’ll Never Forget

— 1 —

Sarah Kate auditioned this week for Sound Waves, her school’s glee club, and she made it! I think the criteria for selection were lack of fear of singing in front of other people and a reasonable ability to carry a tune, but hey … she not only met, but exceeded (in my opinion!) them. Seriously. I heard her sing and she did great.

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The song she chose for her audition was “Thy Word” (the Amy Grant original). She initially selected (and practiced) something else, but on Monday when she was rehearsing we talked about my audition for the women’s chorus at Auburn University back in the day. I also sang acapella (by choice) and when she found out which song I chose, she started singing it and sounded even better. Ultimately, that’s what she chose for her own audition, 25 years after I sang it for mine.

— 3 —

Miracle Marathon starts Wednesday! Thanks so much to those of you who have joined Sarah Kate’s team or donated to her fundraising effort. We aren’t quite sure how she’s going to achieve that mile each day – possibly some of it will be by wheelchair – but she’s all in and looking forward to doing it with you.

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Everyone else is doing their “10 Books That Have Stayed With You” posts, either on blogs or on Facebook, so I guess I need to play along. 🙂 I’ll split it into two snippets – fiction and nonfiction.

Five Fiction Books That Have Stayed With Me:

• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell – I love this book so much that once my mom and sister had me quote the opening page of the book from memory to a guide dressed in a hoop-skirted frock on a “Gone With the Wind” tour in Atlanta. To tell you why would take too long. Don’t assume you know the story just because you may have seen the movie.
• The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards – I read it before Nathan came along, and the era in which the children were born fascinated me. One of these days I would like to read it again, but I fear I wouldn’t enjoy it as much now that having a child with Down syndrome is no longer an abstract concept.
• Marley & Me by John Grogan – Mr. Andi and I got a lab right after we got married. Enough said.
• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume – Margaret showed me that I was a seeker, way before I actually did any seeking.
• The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder – I have no good reason for this book staying with me, other than the concept of a winter of constant blizzard was incredibly foreign to this southern-raised gal.

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Five Nonfiction Books That Have Stayed With Me:

• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield – Everyone in the writing/blogging/creating realm should read it, though most of you probably already have, as I was late to jump on the ship. If I were the type of person who would consider a book “life changing” this one would be, but I can’t go quite that far.
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer – Mr. Andi and I both read this about a year and a half ago, and it was fascinating. We still talk about it – I’d say probably at least once a week it’ll come up. It’s especially interesting in light of current world events.
• Four Witnesses: The Early Church in Her Own Words by Rod Bennett – A truly eye-opening book for me while I was on my spiritual journey, prior to “crossing the Tiber” several years ago. I read a lot of books about Catholicism over a lot of years, but this one shone a light on the history piece that I was missing.
• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis – Lewis had an amazing gift for explaining spiritual concepts. He could do it with fiction and nonfiction alike.
• The Bible – I don’t need to explain this one, right?

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Have you heard about the Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle? When it first popped up in my inbox  I was kind of meh about it, because I don’t consider myself particularly green, I definitely don’t aspire to having chickens (!!!), and I can find plenty of recipes for natural cleaning products online. But when the list of ebooks in this bundle came out, I realized that if I used even just a few of them (hello, real food recipes!) it would be more than worth the price – and there are dozens of ebooks plus several ecourses and bonuses included which cover everything from essential oils to freezer cooking to fitness to natural beauty products to special diets. I bought the bundle for myself. 🙂

Here’s the deets: the Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle is just $29.97 (for the PDF version) or $39.97 (for the eReader version), but there’s a catch: it will only be on sale until 11:59pm EST on Monday, September 15, and there are only 30,000 bundles available.

Here’s what you need to know about the sale:

When? Now until 11:59 p.m. EST Monday, September 15

What? 73 eBooks and 7 audio & eCourses, PLUS over $200 worth of bonus products you’ll really use!

Where? Purchase the bundle HERE.

That’s it. My weaksauce sales pitch – it’s really just me sharing something with you that I think is helpful. If I was serious about salesmanship I’d have devoted more than just a single snippet buried near the bottom to it. 🙂

Click here for more info or to buy now.

Disclosure: Affiliate links included in this post. Read the fine print and see the frequently asked questions about the bundle.

— 7—

Yesterday, I attended the funeral of the mother of one of Sarah Kate’s friends. Nicole Teague was diagnosed in September 2012 with ovarian cancer and has spent the better part of the past two years showing the world what it’s like to suffer – and ultimately die – with grace, joy, and dignity. I knew Nicole well enough to speak, as Sarah Kate has been to their house and her daughter has been to ours, though we were not friends. It was the second funeral I’ve been to this month and though they were very different – my nearly 95 year old grandmother versus a 36 year old wife and mother of two that I didn’t know very well – they had one thing in common.

I saw a rainbow not once, but twice, in the afternoon following their funerals.

Last week, I thought it was a neat coincidence. This week, it seems like so much more. And you know what else? When my cousin died several years ago – in his 20s, of cancer – the family saw a double rainbow with two full arcs on the afternoon of his funeral. I don’t want to risk saying something theologically unsound, so I’ll just say this: Godspeed, Nicole.

Have a great weekend!

This post was inspired by and is linked to Conversion Diary‘s 7 Quick Takes.