I found out just how much Hailey likes Toby Mac tonight. I feel I need to go ahead and lock her away until she is 30. Tonight, I am thankful for two older sons who will take care of any guys before I have to meet them when she becomes a teenager:
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Don’t ever tell an 8 year old that he will receive his free Lego magazine in the mail between 6 & 8 weeks and still not have it to him in 9! Now, stop reading this post and get those magazines in the mail! 
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Gavin asked why a nurse came to our house the other morning, so Nicki was explaining to both Gavin and Tristan that the nurse came to do different tests so we could increase our life insurance.
Here’s how the conversation went (paraphrased):
Nicki: “If daddy died, life insurance would help pay to bury him.”
Tristan: “We can bury daddy in the backyard and pack the dirt down real tight so no one would see him”
He says he learned it in school!
I am glad my family has big plans for me when I die. I think I may go ahead and make Tristan the executor of my will, it sounds as if he will be frugal with what little money I am able to leave behind.
Join the Conversation. Have you had any interesting conversations with your children lately?
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On Monday, I posted about one of the pivot points that Nicki and I made in our marriage. As a result of our choice we’ve seen the fingerprints of God on our home time after time.
Today, my post is not about a pivot point as a couple, rather, a pivot point that I made as an individual before I got married. Couples make decisions and commitments together all the time. After all, when standing at the altar, the minister officiating a wedding asks for a commitment from the couple in order to fulfill the requirements of the ceremony. How many times has a couple made a vow and commitment to each other and it is broken? It happens all the time.
Commitments to each other will only be upheld if each individual makes a decision in their own heart that they will fulfill that vow.
PIVOT POINT #2: Established Boundaries
The song made famous by Top Gun says the following in some of it’s lyrics…
Revvin’ up your engine listen to her howlin’ roar
Metal under tension beggin’ you to touch and goHighway to the Danger Zone ride into the Danger Zone
Out along the edges always where I burn to be
The further on the edge the hotter the intensityHighway to the Danger Zone gonna take you
Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins
Right into the Danger Zone
A life and marriage without boundaries is a life lived on the edge, not begging to be in the danger zone, but already there!
This was a commitment I made BEFORE I got married. It is a commitment I would encourage any man or woman whether single, dating or engaged to make now. It is definitely a commitment that I would encourage any married man or woman to make if they have not already done so.
Who is this commitment made to?
Shortly after I was married, someone (who will remain nameless), decided they would try to trap me and (I guess) test my commitment to my wife. This was back in the day when instant messaging was like today’s Twitter and Facebook.
I got a request from this “someone” and I didn’t recognize their user name. They posed as a UGA cheerleader and immediately started saying they noticed I was a Bulldog fan and liked certain things for which they had in common. The funny thing was, I did not post any of that information in my personal profile, so I immediately knew something was wrong.
I did two things. First, I contacted two or three people who I trusted and told them what was going on and that I had suspicions that it was someone I knew. Secondly, I continued to lead this person on through the instant messenger to try and discover who it was that was trying to obviously hurt me and my reputation. This person was asking me to come see them at a Georgia game, for which I had never been able to go to, so I started talking a lot around people who I knew about trying to go to a Georgia football game.
Long story short…I don’t remember all of the details of how it happened, but I finally found out who was doing it and the situation was dealt with (like Jesus would have…maybe).
Sure, that was a softball, but even if they were not that bad at deception, and I did not have boundaries, I could have given into the temptation to meet-up with a Georgia cheerleader and my reputation, my character and my integrity would have been shattered. By the Way, when you are married to the sexiest woman on the planet, this is an easy temptation to overcome because no other woman can compare!
By passing this test and maintaining my character, when a “concerned” lady in my church several years ago ran into my mom-in-law in the store and tried to accuse me of “being in the car” with another woman. My mom-in-law (who is wonderful by the way) knew immediately that this woman was only trying to cause problems and get me in trouble. My mom-in-law also knew that I was currently working at a car dealership and it was my job to be in the car with all sorts of people who wanted to test drive a car. By the way, this car only had a dealer tag and a sales sticker in the window. The fact is, some people are just fools.
In the marriage course, a Biblical Portrait of Marriage, Bruce Wilkinson talks about the traffic light and how we all put off a signal.
The question you have to ask yourself as a married spouse is what signal are you giving others outside your marriage? How do you talk with those individuals? How do you exchange touches? What kind of compliments do you pay them?
If you have the proper boundaries, when others interact with you, they should not receive any sincere or false signals that you are remotely “available” to them.
I’ll post later about my personal boundaries that I have set…
Men and Women…Join the Conversation…Have you set boundaries as an individual for your relationship to your significant other? What are they?
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piv·ot point: The point at which something pivots, changes, or turns (my definition)
This Sunday we kickoff our new marriage campaign I DO…Not Anymore at New Passion. As I’ve been preparing for the messages I was thinking about some of the pivot points in my own marriage. Nicki and I got married young and we face our share of struggles, but by God’s grace we celebrated 10 years of marriage last November. Throughout this series I will post about some of these pivot points we’ve made that were positive moves in our marriage.
This first pivot point was a subtle change that we felt led to make early in our marriage but the results and benefits of this change have lasted us and have been experienced over and over throughout our marriage.
PIVOT POINT #1: Shifted from tithing on our net income to our gross income.
Money has never really been an issue of contention with Nicki and me (We’ve had short spats, but no big brawls). When we first got married we had plenty of money. We never questioned how we were going to pay our bills and the term “pay check to pay check” was foreign to us. We always had money in the bank, we had new(er) cars and a nice house.
But, everything has to change at some point right? The life of financial ease would not last very long.
We were giving a tithe to God. A tithe is 10% of the income God provides to us. However, we were giving a tithe on our net income, meaning that when we got paid we were giving Blue Cross Blue Shield their share first, the U.S. Government their share second, and then God 10% of what was left over.
We heard a pastor preach a message about the tithe being the first fruit and how it should be our response to God’s goodness to us. In worshiping God through our tithe our best would be giving back to him that first fruit from the total of what he has blessed us with. I had never really been taught what was what. I had friends who were giving their tithe after paying all of their bills. This message not only struck home with Nicki and me, but also with some of our friends.
Nicki and I decided that we were going to start worshiping God with our tithe from the gross of what he had blessed us with. Because symbolically, we wanted God to be first in our money and first in our home. This was the best way we could demonstrate this to God.
A Back Story – - – (I am not presenting a prosperity gospel) – - I believe when we did this God communicated something to us. Here’s how. I had a four wheeler that I bought but never got to ride. So, I placed it in the IWANTA to sell it. Several weeks had passed and I heard nothing. The day Nicki and I decided to start tithing on our gross (with the right motivations) I had a phone call from a guy wanting to see the four wheeler. The next day he was at my house looking at it. I tried to start it three times and it wouldn’t start. On the fourth attempt it started. The guy bought the four wheeler that day and didn’t even try to negotiate a lower price.
Does this mean that if we tithe on our gross or tithe at all that God will always act on our behalf and become our personal genie? No! In fact, the impression that I felt God was communicating to me at that moment was this, “If you put me first in everything, I will take care of you (not give me what I want).” Since that day, we followed through with our goal of having Nicki stay at home with the children (up until last year she started working part time at a gift shop). Honestly, we have faced some very dark financial issues since this pivotal day in our marriage. We have had challenges as a family. But God, has sustained us. Are we rich? By America’s standards, no. According to the world’s standards, yes! Do we have the nicest material possessions because of this pivot point? No. Do we have everything together as a family? Far from it. The reality is, this pivot point was not a magic pill to give us everything we wanted.
This pivot point was our communicating and committing to God that he was first in our marriage, our finances and in our home. Even when we didn’t have the money to pay the bills, we put God first. It has not always been easy. But there are undeniable, obvious finger prints of God on my household because he has taken care of us in good times and in bad.
In addition, because we learned these principles in our marriage, they play a huge role at New Passion as well. It was set in our DNA from the very beginning that we would put God first in the church’s finances by giving at least a tithe as a church to missions. God has honored this commitment.
Join the Conversation…Have you had to come to a pivot point in your marriage with God and finances?
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Hailey loves doing this…I caught her on the tail end of her little dance, she’s typically a little wilder!
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Here’s some of the new family pictures we had taken for Winter/Christmas. There are a lot of great pictures, I just can’t post them all. Once again we had the talented Jeri Ann Dean take them for us and we did them in three locations. If you are in the Augusta area and want Jeri Ann to take your pictures as well, you can email her HERE or you can visit her blog to see more of her portfolio.
(Click on a thumbnail to enlarge it)
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Interesting conversations Nicki and I have with our children…
This is a conversation Nicki had with Gavin this morning about earning money.
Nicki: “If you want to make good money when you grow up you’ll have to go to college and get a degree.”
Gavin: “How can I get my degree now so I can make a better allowance?”
Smart kid.
Other Conversations with our kids…
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It was on Saturday, November 4, 2000 that my life changed forever. On that day, it appeared not to be a big deal, just a simple Wedding Ceremony. A small gathering of family and friends, a small wedding chapel, repeat a few words, say ‘I do!,’ and then the Honeymoon. Nothing much would change (so I thought), I practically saw Nicki everyday anyway, but now we got to live together. Hey! I’m a guy!
That’s why I tell everyone who says, “Wow, you two got married young!” that we actually got married “Young and Dumb,” however I had enough wisdom to land Nicki while she was dumb enough to say ‘Yes!‘
10 Years later…I have no way of telling all of the great and not so great memories that we have shared so far in a blog post, but I can say I am eternally grateful to God for giving me the greatest wife in the whole world. She has stood by me when I’ve followed some of the dumbest dreams and ideas that have ever popped into someone’s head, she’s let me make horrible decisions (and only brings them up every once in a blue moon), she’s been hard headed and difficult (which I am thankful she’s not always been who I wanted her to be), she’s helped me grow and become a better person, she’s been flexible to not always demand her own way. She is loving and merciful when I am a little less so. She is a great mother to our three wonderful children, Gavin, Tristan, and Hailey. Simply put I love her for who she is.
As a bonus…she is an awesome cook and is sexier than your wife (and if you are a woman, she’s sexier than you)!
Happy 10 Year Anniversary Nicki, I love you and look forward to the next 10+ years together!
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It’s been a long time since I’ve posted a conversation between my children and Nicki or myself. Today, Nicki had a conversation with Gavin that I could not resist posting.
Gavin finished his bowl of cereal and wanted a second bowl. Nicki was getting ready for work, so she told him to fix the cereal himself. Several minutes later Nicki walks into the room to find Gavin sitting on the couch watching cartoons and not dressed or ready to go to school, when she inquired why, Gavin exclaimed there was no more milk for his cereal. I guess his refusal to get dressed was in protest to our running out of milk. Several things happened from this point until it was time to leave for school (spilled kool-aid, Nicki couldn’t form milk for my teenager drama queen 7 year old out of thin air, earth shattering stuff like that) which led up to this tearful conversation…
Nicki (in the car): Gavin will you shut Tristan’s door?
Gavin: Why do I always have to shut his door?
Nicki: Gavin, let’s have a good day today, its already started out bad, so let’s make it a good day.
Gavin: How can it be a good day when your starving me?
Yes, I think my 7 year old boy is a diva.
Join the Conversation…Have you had any interesting conversations lately?
Other Conversations…
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