Friday, April 24, 2009

life lessons from "my name is earl"

today is the day we find out if the baby is a boy or a girl. hopefully the baby will cooperate so we can see! little buddy had himself on display for the whole world, the doctor didn't even have to go looking. he put the ultrasound wand thing down on my stomach and there he was, announcing to everyone he was in fact a boy. this baby seems much different than little buddy already so we will have to see. if you haven't voted in the poll yet you better do it now! tomorrow i will be announcing the good news!

allergies have totally been kicking my rear the past few days. which is really weird considering i have never had allergies before. my nose itches, i'm stuffed up, my throat hurts and is full of junk and i just hate it. those of you who routinely deal with them, i have a new found sympathy for you.

life here just seems to be getting harder and harder. remember how my grandma was really sick? well she's still sick, but at least she is home. we found out a few days ago that my grandpa (on my mom's side) was admitted to the hospital. he was diagnosed with leukemia last summer. within the last month his white blood cell count has tripled and the cancer seems to be spreading very quickly. my parents made a spur-of-the-moment trip to see him, driving 11 hours or so to get there.

and things on the housing front aren't going well. our house still hasn't sold and we most likely won't be able to move where we originally planned, so we are stressing majorly about finding a place to live that we can afford and is in a good neighborhood.

stress. stress. stress. i could use a break every once in awhile, ya know?

last night though, we were watching that show "my name is earl" and he said something that really stood out to me. for those of you who haven't seen the show, it's pretty darn hilarious. earl used to be a petty criminal and did all kinds of stupid things to random people. he went to jail and saw some talk show on tv where they were talking about karma and decided he was going to turn his life around. so he carries a list of people he hurt while in his bad days around with him. when he finds them he apologizes for whatever he did and does what he can to make it up to them--thus crossing them off his list. anyway...last night the episode was about a preacher he had done a lot of bad things to--stole his organ, stole his tools, knocked him over in a port-a-potty, slept with his wife, and shot out the tail light in his truck. over the course of the show as he remembers these things he's done he tries to apologize and make it up to the guy. when the preacher finds out he slept with his wife he goes ballistic. but then when he realizes that earl was the one who shot out his tail light his attitude changed. it turned out that because of the tail light he was pulled over, then arrested for having all kinds of weapons and such in his truck (he used to be a gangster) and sent to jail. while he was in jail his entire crew was killed, and his life was saved. it was then he changed his life and became a man of god. so he forgave earl, realized it was earl's stupidity that had saved him, and came back.

at the very end, earl talks about how even though the preacher had lost his path, he came back. he said, "that's the beauty of having a path. even if you get lost and stray from it, it's always there waiting for you to come back." (not an exact quote but close enough.)

i really liked that. right now i'm not quite sure what my path is. ultimately i hope it's the path that will get me "home" back to Heavenly Father. i'd like to think it's the path i'm on. but how comforting to know that even if we stray, the path doesn't disappear. we can always find our way back and continue on our journey, no matter how bad things get.

isn't it funny how one line from a comedy tv show can get you thinking?

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