Congrats to the winner of the $25 Starbucks gift card from the last post. It is Brandae; Timestamp: August 12 at 10:20 a.m. Send your home address to me at karen@proverbs31.org so it can be shipped to you! Enjoy!

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We women love to talk.

A lot.

In fact, my ability to talk is the only complaint my elementary teachers wrote on my “progress reports”.

Remember those? Little boxes stood at attention across the crisp, white page?

Poor.

Fair.

Satisfactory.

Good.

Very Good.

I worked my little  performance-driven tail off to nab all “Very Goods”.  I do remember my mom showing me that I’d reached my goal, except for one category in which I only received a “Good”.

Classroom cooperation.

The teacher made it clear that it wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t cooperate. It was just hard for her to gain the cooperation of the entire class when I was flappin’ my jaws so much.

My ability to talk also got me into trouble in junior high.

Not with teachers.

With peers.

Think the “talkin-behind-the-back-to-this-one-so-that-one-will-like-me-only-now-that-one-sat-at-lunch-by-this-one-and-repeated-what-I-said-about-her-so-now-no-one-likes-me-and-I-am-forced-to-stop-sitting-at-the-popular-table” kind of stuff.

In high school I discovered that I liked to talk in front of a crowd. Mrs. Lewis’s 9th grade speech class and I hit it off real well, followed by forensics (not the CSI kind, the speech contest kind!)

Then, in college, my ability to yack it up is what my husband says first attracted him to me.

He asserts “You could talk to anyone. From the college president to the grocery store clerk to the shy girl on your floor, for Pete’s sake! Come to think of it, you were even pretty good at talking to Pete!. You knew how to work a room, making everyone feel included and noticed. I loved how you could talk.”

“Then,” he continues, “About three days into our honeymoon, I had this thought. ‘When is she EVER gonna shut up?!?!?”

In fact, he told me not too long ago that he has decided, if I go first, just what he is going to put on my tombstone.

A period.

“She’s finally done talking!”

(It was a cold night in our house that night with no….shall we say “horizontal fellowship”!)

Today, I get paid to talk.  So I guess I have the last laugh!!

Anyhow…. I hope for us to have ourselves some good ole’ girl-talking discussions here in the next few months.

Some changes are coming here on this blog that I am oh-so excited about.

Some in the look.

Some in the features and content.

And I really hope it will provide us ALL a place to talk.

About living our lives. Our families. Our men. (Be nice, now!) Our priorities.Our passions and pet peeves. Our attempt to live like Jesus wants us to when sometimes we really stink at that.

But I don’t want to leave out the practical. The tips, secrets, recipes and such that enable us to take care of the ‘have tos’ of life efficiently so we can get around to the ‘want tos’.

How about you? What do YOU want to chat it up about?

Sweet-talkin’ Blessings,