Weekend Links, 7.7.12 — Giving Up on Perfect

How was your Fourth of July? Did you do something fun? Eat something delicious? Tell me all about it!

My Fourth was pretty good. We stopped by my cousin’s annual party, where I ate (among a whole lot of good things) an amazing homemade-with-a-cake-mix Whoopie pie. It was delicious, and you know I’ll be making some soon. Then Mark and I left Annalyn with my parents and headed to the movies, where we saw the new Spider-Man movie. All in all, a great day!

Today I’m getting ready to host a barbecue for our friends, which includes a lot of cleaning, cooking and decorating. Oh, didn’t I mention? Ever since Annalyn saw me decorate for (in)RL, she’s been begging me to have a “beach party” at our house. So I’m re-using those fun decorations this weekend. And I could tell you that it’s only to make my kiddo happy, but honestly, I think it’s fun, too!

The most moving post I’ve read in the past couple of weeks was a guest post by Addie Zierman at Rachel Held Evans’ blog. She wove a story from the Gospels into her feelings about writing memoir, and though I never would have thought to put those two things next to each other, the result is beautiful.

“But the truth – the thing I love about the genre – is that in its purest form, it’s exactly the opposite. I tell my story not because it is particularly thrilling, but because if I tell it right, it will tap into your story, into the collective story that we all live in.

You pick up the shards, and they cut your skin, but you keep working. You arrange them and rearrange them until they make something beautiful. Something with the power to touch someone else’s unspoken pain. And this…this is memoir.”

~ The Whole, Bloody Truth by Addie Zierman :: Rachel Held Evans

Here are a few more great posts I’ve found recently. (Obviously they’re not all heavy reads, since I’m starting with Spider-Man!)