The Gentleman & Garden Panty

Oh, hello! If you are a parent, youth minister, or teen here because you think this is another post on social media, you will be sorely disappointed. I'm hoping to continue the conversations with you, if you will so kindly allow me to, but I'm not sure what that will look like just yet so bear with me. In the meantime, feel free to stick around. Or don't. Or drop me a line with other questions if you feel so inclined. I sincerely thank you for your feedback and encouragement.

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Whew. Now that they're gone, we can really get this party started.

Just kidding.

Before we can get back to regularly scheduled programming, I need to tell a short story about the past 3 weeks.

I wrote a post a few weeks ago about why I still believe in the church. I received a bigger response than normal and had a lot of great conversations because of it. Buuuut ole Selfishness kicked in and I started thinking I was a little bit awesome. That post really was touching, wasn't it?

So, since I was obviously on a roll, I decided to write another post on Instagram that I'd been thinking about for a while. I sent it to my eagle-eye spell-checker Mom, whose response of "It's...good..." was less than satisfactory. She was right, but it still deflated my pride balloon so I deleted the whole post. (Because I'm really mature like that.)

I could hear God said, "Oh, really? You think you're pretty clever, huh? Let me know when you're over yourself and we can try again." We had a heart to heart and I repented of being an idiot.

He also wouldn't let me forget about the Instagram post. I regrouped, thought about why it was important, and rewrote the whole thing. Even as I hit publish I thought, "It doesn't even matter if one person reads this, I just need to say it." (...always a good place to start from. I believe this is what that "humility" stuff is about.)

Well. Funny story.

A lot of persons ended up reading it.

Had God and I not just had that divinely timed remedial class on whose glory needed displaying, I probably would've given myself a trophy...or a medal at the very least. Instead, I got a front row seat to see him work BIG. All him, not me. (You've probably never considered letting the CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE do his thing without your ugly mug trying photobomb him, but it is pretty awesome. I'd recommend it.)

I'm not entirely sure what's next in the ole Brooks' journey o' life, but he's made it pretty clear through a lot of stuff the past few weeks that we're on a different path than expected and I'm excited to see where we go from here.

The end.

To catch up on the past few weeks of regular life...

The Gentleman

I know everyone thinks their kid is a perfect gentleman/lady, but mine really...isn't. He wanted cake at small group, so this is how he approached every person holding a plate:

Just kidding. He can be a little gentleman, especially with his "pleeeeath" and "tank you"s.

He can even be pretty mature. A little too mature. Like thinking-over-that-merger-deal-wishing-for-a-dirty-martini mature.

Other times he is just a precious little peach covering his eyes for a prayer.

But enough about that. I don't want to break the internet with too much cuteness in one post. I'd rather break the internet with discomfort.

Garden Panty

Our neighborhood is endearingly insane. Just ask me about it sometime. You probably won't believe the stories I tell you, but it's all true.

One of our neighbors has this little dog that is always doing something annoying. Like, for instance, the other day when he was digging in a hole in the very middle of the street. (Because clearly pavement is a better option for digging than, say, dirt.) He didn't even look up as I slowly creeped around him in my car.

I decided to be a good neighbor and tell the owner his dog was about to be roadkill, so I rolled down the window to get his attention (he and his wife were busy gardening), but, ya know, as soon I spotted the hot pink lacy panties hanging out the top of his pants, I just rolled that window right on back up and drove home. Ain't nobody got time for that.

In related news, it's always alarming when your child picks something up at the store without your noticing, but imagine my surprise when I saw him holding these purple zebra panties today. 

What a sweet boy...probably picked them out just for our neighbor man.