She Who Laughs, Lasts! Laugh-Out-Loud Stories from Today's Best-Known Women of Faith

She Who Laughs, Lasts! Copyright © 2000 by Ann Spangler Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data She who laughs, lasts! : laugh-out-loud stories from today's best-known women of faith / compiled by Ann Spangler. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-10: 0-310-22898-0 ISBN-13: 978-0-310-22898-1 1. Religion - Humor. 2. Conduct of life - Humor. 3. Women - Religious life - Humor. I. Spangler, Ann. PN6231.R4 S54 1999 818'.540208 - dc21 99 - 052293 All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means - electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other - except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Interior design by Michelle Espinoza Printed in the United States of America In the Pink Liz Curtis Higgs It's not that I don't adore home decorating. That love affair began at the dawn of puberty when I turned twelve and my two older sisters had vacated our big bedroom. Mother decided I was old enough to choose a new decorating scheme myself. Did I do a safe pale blue, a feminine pink, a slightly daring lavender? No, I went for a Mother Nature look: navy blue walls (think sky) with bright yellow floral wallpaper on the ceiling (sun), brown painted floors (dirt) with green throw rugs (grass, of course). And to think Earth Day hadn't even happened yet. I was ahead of my time. Way ahead of my time. Mother, being a gardener, thought it was dandy. She even helped me antique the desk and bookshelf - remember that look? We used yellow paint for the base color then brushed on dark blue stain and wiped half of it off. It looked as bad as it sounds: green and yellow striped furniture. My friends made gagging sounds when they walked in the room. I've traveled the interior design highway many times since then. My first apartment furniture consisted of one metal pole shelf earned with S&H Green Stamps and a dreadful plaid sofa bed bought with a credit card. Next came the early seventies hippie look with oversized floor pillows in earthtone colors: tans, browns, and rust. (Did we really decorate with olive and orange?) When it came to decorating, I found my best bet was paint. It was inexpensive, came in a zillion colors, and required no sewing, stuffing, or hauling. There wasn't any shade I wasn't willing to try: dark green, paper bag brown, turquoise, even feldspar. Feldspar? The dictionary will tell you it's something found in igneous rocks, but I'm telling you this is not a color found in nature. Picture the deepest, brightest coral imaginable, then multiply it by ten. That's feldspar: a color one should use in very small doses, which is why it seemed the perfect choice for my tiny six-by-seven-foot laundry room. Never one to rush such projects, I waited until the night before the delivery men would arrive with my new washer and dryer to start painting. How long could one little room take? Anyway, the hardware store insisted it would cover in one coat. I popped open the can and gasped. Feldspar my foot, this was flamingo pink! With trepidation, I poured it into the paint tray and was soon rolling it onto the walls. Flat and vertical, the color was more coral than pink, and I sighed with relief as I rolled and trimmed, rolled and trimmed. By 1:30 a.m., I had finished three walls and was pleased with the progress, except for one minor point: it was going to take two full coats to cover the old paint. Filling up the paint tray for the last wallSpangler, Ann is the author of 'She Who Laughs, Lasts! Laugh-Out-Loud Stories from Today's Best-Known Women of Faith' with ISBN 9780310228981 and ISBN 0310228980.