It was one of those days when I didn’t exactly need, but really really wanted, Taco Bell for lunch.

There’s just something about Mountain Dew and three soft tacos with two packets of hot sauce each that makes my stomach grumble.

And so I drove the short bit down the road to my favorite Taco Bell location, ordered the usual, and settled down with The Christian Wedding Planner by Ruth Muzzy and R. Kent Hughes, printed in 1984. A friend of my mom’s let me borrow it.

I thought, since so many of my friends are engaged, that I would share the most helpful tip I’ve found so far, to be done immediately after the engagement:

If you like, your mother can invite people over to meet your “friend,” and then your father can reveal the “inside facts.”

I’m not sure what the “inside facts” are considered to be, but my dad isn’t really the kind of person to reveal them.

In another book that was lent to me, I’m excited to read the “Top Ten Ways to Plan Your Wedding Using the World Wide Web.” Sounds cutting edge!

Keeping in line with yesterday’s post about free music at NoiseTrade, I wanted to let you guys know about another free offer.

ChristianAudio is once again offering a free book this month. Last month it was Pilgrim’s Progress. This month it’s The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Laurence. I’ve always wanted to read that book, so I’m really excited about being able to listen to it while I’m working out.

All you have to do is go here and proceed as if you were going to pay for it. You don’t have to ever enter your credit card information, although you do have to create an account. When it asks for a coupon code, use JULY2008. Voila! Free audio book in any format.

Christian informed me later yesterday that Matthew Perryman Jones also has music available at NoiseTrade. If you don’t recognize the name, Indelible Grace fans will recognize the voice: He has written many of the IG tunes and also sings on a lot of the albums.

I had planned a Fourth of July post, or something at least a little patriotic. Alas, all I can come up with is free stuff, which is kind of related to freedom, I think. Sure. I’ll take it.

As for my Independence Day celebrations, I spent the day packing up stuff at my apartment, making homemade pizza and watching Pan’s Labryinth with Christian. There’s not too much to say about the first one, but the latter two will definitely turn into blog posts next week. Three words: barbecue chicken pizza. You better come back.

I mentioned the other day that you could downoad an audio version of Pilgrim’s Progress for free. The offer’s still good; it goes through the end of June.

I’m only in the third stage of Part 1, but I’m enjoying it so much. There’s so much to take in. As Christian (my boyfriend) said to me today, it’s like a book full of sermon illustrations. Not that I so much need sermon illustrations for anything, but still.

My favorite passage so far is from when Christian (the book character) leaves the Palace Beautiful and is headed to catch up with faithful. The four virgins walk with him a little bit of the way, and they discuss his former life…

PRUDENCE: Do you not think sometimes of the country from whence you came?

CHRISTIAN: Yea, but with much shame and detestation. Truly, if I had been mindful of that country from whence I came out, I might have had opportunity to have returned; but now I desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.

PRUDENCE: Do you not yet bear away with you some of the things that then you were conversant withal? (Chelsey: Basically, she’s asking if he still struggles with sin.)

CHRISTIAN: Yes, but greatly against my will; especially my inward and carnal cogitations (Chelsey: thoughts and temptations), with which all my countrymen, as well as myself, were delighted. But now all those things are my grief; and might I but choose mine own things, I would choose never to think of those things more: but when I would be a doing that which is best, that which is worst is with me.

PRUDENCE: Do you not find sometimes as if those things were vanquished, which at other times are your perplexity?

CHRISTIAN: Yes, but that is but seldom; but they are to me golden hours in which such things happen to me.

PRUDENCE: Can you remember by what means you find your annoyances at times as if they were vanquished?

CHRISTIAN: Yes: when I think what I saw at the cross, that will do it; and when I look upon my broidered coat, that will do it; and when I look into the roll that I carry in my bosom, that will do it; and when my thoughts wax warm about whither I am going, that will do it.

PRUDENCE: And what is it that makes you so desirous to go to Mount Zion?

CHRISTIAN: Why, there I hope to see Him alive that did hang dead on the cross; and there I hope to be rid of all those things that to this day are in me an annoyance to me: there they say there is no death, and there I shall dwell with such company as I like best. For, to tell you the truth, I love Him because I was by Him eased of my burden; and I am weary of my inward sickness. I would fain be where I shall die no more, and with the company that shall continually cry, Holy, holy, holy.