Anne Marie Miller

Author: Anne Marie Miller

  • bull. crap.

    i am more affected by this blog than i care to let on. the more comments i get, the more inspired i am to write. the more daily visitors i have, the more i feel like i am making a difference. and all that is bull crap. i am relying far too much on this thing to make me feel successful in my ministry or in relationships. and that’s nothing but a lie.

    There are some lyrics by JET that kinda describe this for me.

    You tried so hard to be someone
    That you forgot who you are
    You tried to fill some emptiness
    Til all you had spilled over

    Now everything’s so far away
    That you don’t know
    Where you are
    You are

    When all that you wanted
    And all that you have
    Don’t seem so much
    For you to hold on to
    For you to hold on to
    For you to belong to

    When it’s hard to be ourselves
    It’s not to be someone else
    Still everything’s so far away
    That you forget who you are
    You are

    When all that you wanted
    And all that you have
    Don’t seem so much
    For you to hold on to
    For you to hold on to

    (By the way, I’m not sad or depressed or moody or funky. I feel fine. Just learning some things.)

  • 1500 watts

    it is 58 degrees in my office. you see, our communications team moved up to the third floor (affectionately named the penthouse suite) yet since this place has been mostly unihabited for several years, the air control circuit is on a shared unit with some kind of server room that must remain at 65 degrees or below. they are in the process of splitting the two so we can have one with heat.

    three of us girls plugged in our space heaters and last week had no problems. today, however a circuit blew by 9:30 this morning and all of our office plugs went dead. turns out all six of us share one circuit, and 1500 watt space heaters are the archnemesis of said circuit.

    computers, gone. half-written emails, gone. any sort of productive behaviours, gone. we were left helpless.

    during the eight minutes of downtime, i thought how similar this little situation is to my life. i feel cold…empty…frigid. i don’t have the Warmth inside of me that i should. so i plug in one 1500 watt space heater (perfectionism), after another (materialism), after another (unhealthy eating habits), after another (trading mindless activity for time with my Father)…until my circuit blows and I end up completely helpless and unproductive.

    although at the moment, the only thing keeping me physically warm is a fleece blanket i have wrapped around me, i am going to try and be more aware of the space heaters i plug into my life when i should be basking in the heat of a much more natural Source.

  • So…

    I haven’t been in a blogging mood lately. Sorry. Let’s see…not a lot has happened. Back to work. Got a new office (our entire Communications Team pretty much has the third floor to ourselves which also means a lot of exercise – 42 stairs up!), working a couple freelance gigs. Not too much exciting. No deep thoughts or revelations.

    How are you?

  • community…

    I have heard the blogging community compared to a real community of believers. And how although it’s just virtual, we can live out like the Early churched lived – sharing, caring, giving, praying for others. I have personally experienced this in many ways – from sending Christmas cards, receiving Christmas cards, a complete stranger letting me borrow his PowerBook for three months, prayer for my surgery, for others, and when we needed several hundred dollars last minute for our mission trip to Scotland. I don’t remember exactly how much PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET invested in my trip, but it was several hundred dollars and the way God worked in and through people was an extreme miracle and God’s glory was clearly shown.

    I know write on behalf of one of my closest friends. I met her when she was a wee high school senior, then she joined the staff where I worked at the church in Kansas. We took trips to Texas and chased cowboys, took photos with street vendors selling roses, and she shared with me one of my most embarrassing moments (which I will not – and she will not – mention). She eventually became part of the Communications Team and I had the honor of watching her grow professionally as an artist and spiritually as a person. She is one of the most generous people I know (and I know this because I do her taxes every year – It’s sick. I love doing taxes. So sue me.)

    Now my dear sister Crystal Renaud (AKA Pink Haired Girl) is taking a huge leap of faith and has signed up to go to South Africa on mission in a few short months. She is in the same position I was in several months ago – a last minute time crunch to come up with serious cash. Last I checked, she needed around $1000 and she needs it by January 15th.

    I URGE you – think about the way you value these blogging communities we have formed. Let your actions speak louder than your words. Be unreasonably generous. You probably don’t know Crystal. You probably don’t know me. But I know Crystal and I know God has called her to go on this trip.

    If you would like to act on this, visit her website dedicated to her Africa trip here. You will see what she’ll be doing and the organization she will be working with. I personally have met the founder of Oceans of Mercy and God has been doing amazing things with him. Another friend of ours worked at the AIDS orphanage for a few months this past year, and my very own maid of honor and her husband will be going out there as missionaries as well.

    Please pray about this and think on this. I can think of no one better way of showing the validity of online community than by supporting our friends in ways that will make the world a better place, and give glory to God.

    Visit Crystal’s Mission Website

  • FlowerDust.net in 2006

    Copying Mr. Tony Morgan, here is what happened on FlowerDust.net in 2006!

    236 posts
    3078 comments
    Most Popular Post: %*@%^! (120 Comments)
    138325 Unique Visitors
    287921 Page Views
    Went from 180 Daily Visitors to 639 Daily Visitors

    Here’s to a great 2007! By the way, I don’t really have internet right now at home, so blogs will be few and far between for a while. I can still email from Chris’ BlackBerry though…so don’t let the love stop.

  • Compassion International India Bloggers Trip

    On April 26-May 2, four other bloggers and I walked the streets of Kolkata (Calcutta), India with Compassion International.

    Click here to read about our journey and meet the children we have come to love.

    There are hundreds of stories told through this trip.? Stories of the children, the parents, the poverty, the hope, the life, the wealth, the contrast, and the unknown.

  • cherry cokes & car bombs

    whenever i would hear reports of car bombings or iraqi violence, it always blended into to background – somewhere in between the weather report and traffic. i have friends with family over there, and my dad is a vet, but somehow it has just become something that never really stood out to me when i watched the news.

    until i found out my friend nathan was in baghdad.

    i’ve known nathan about half my life. he was always our waiter at IHOP on family-night fridays when my parents would take my brother and me out to eat. i really didn’t mind, and found him pretty cute. plus he would make me the best cherry cokes ever. i started my freshman year in high school and realized nathan also went to my school. we started hanging out, and after i moved to dallas my junior year, i’d go back to abilene and we’d always spend time together. about the same time i graduated, he moved to seattle, but we still kept in touch, writing letters (this was before email was as convenient as it is now)…i still have some of his letters…filled with awesome prayers and songs he’d write.

    as life would have it, nathan moved to dallas and we ended up working at the same company four years later. we reconnected and hung out, but as our dot-com imploded, we lost touch again, and i moved to kansas.

    occasionally i’d google his name to see whatever happened to my friend. i tried to find him to let him know i was getting married. no luck.

    until just a few months ago when he found my blog online and left a comment.

    i emailed him – so happy that a life-long friend was back in the picture. he had gotten married too, and although he’s not in the military, he works for the government in baghdad.

    now each and every time “those” kind of reports come on the news, my pulse quickens a little bit and i get anxious wondering if my friend for the last 14 years is alright. i pray for his wife, who has got to be missing him something awful.

    i just found out he gets to come back to the states for a few days in january, after two years of being gone. if you think about it, please pray for his safety there with the recent events and execution. that he’d have a safe trip home, and quality time with his wife.

  • bonnie scotland

    i had a dream we were back in scotland a few days ago and ever since then my heart is breaking on how much i miss it. hanging out with the petticrews, the baines, rosemary, all the wonderful people we met in glasgow, and even taking roxy for a walk with mairi up the hills behind their house…climbing all the stairs in the city centre which left me out of breath the first two weeks, sleeping with the windows open, riding the buses, letting my clothes air dry, watching everyone else eat haggis, walking princes street and rose street at 1 in the morning taking it all in, praying with each step, looking in the windows of the flats lit up with life…knowing how much more life there is yet for that city…the city of dreams as geoffrey has dubbed it as we all sat up on salisbury crags, listening to james talk with such passion as he shares god’s vision for edinburgh. we must go back. soon.

  • say a little prayer

    so there is this girl i randomly found on myspace a week or so ago. a friend of a friend of a friend who goes to this school…click, click, click. anyway, she is just 17 and is in the hospital, has been there for over a month, with a growth on her pancreas. tomorrow, yep, the day after christmas, she is having a tricky surgery where the surgeons will go through her throat to drain the cyst and remove it.

    since i dont even know her really (although she is from the dallas area) i’m not going to post her myspace, but if you could leave a comment here letting her know she is in your thoughts and prayers, i thought it’d be really cool to have her visit to see all the people who are praying for her and her recovery. i can’t imagine how crappy it is spending thanksgiving and christmas in a hospital. :( but she is really keeping a great attitude and you can tell her friends really care and miss her.

    we will call her “E” – so if you’d leave a prayer below for her, that would be awesome. you guys talk about underwear and rick warren, so surely you can say you’re praying for a lovely young lady!!