Tag: My Life

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Family Adventures at 4 a.m.

tristan-sunglasses

Usually you wake up from a nightmare. Last night, I woke up and walked right into one.

I heard some scuffling in the hallway at 4 a.m. and that usually means that Tristan is awake and trying to covertly sneak into our bedroom to get into our bed. Last night, I think God woke me up, because He’s cool like that. Most of the time, Tristan wakes up because his covers have fallen off and he is cold. I can simply take him back to his room (usually from our bed), cover him up and he is fine until his covers fall off again. Last night was a different story.

I walked into the hallway and saw Tristan standing there with a puppy dog look on his face as if something was wrong. The hallway light was off, but the bathroom light was on, giving me just enough glimpse of his face. I said, “Hey buddy, what’s wrong?” Immediately, as I walked towards him I was hit with the worst poop smell I had ever smelled, so I knew he was awake because he pooped in his diaper. So, I asked the question I already knew the answer to, “Did you poopy your diaper?” As he replied with a ‘yes‘ nod, I stepped in something wet. I quickly turned on the light to see a trail of liquid poop all over the hallway floor, and I had stepped all in it!

Nicki is probably tougher than I am. She would have probably let me sleep and taken on the poop monster and his mess alone, but I could see that God was using this moment in our lives to help us build team work. It didn’t take me long to jump into the tub to wash off my feet and get Tristan situated on a towel before I called my teammate in life to give me a hand. I would have hated for us to miss out on this team building exercise straight from God himself! We quickly discovered Tristan’s adventure for us started in his bed with what appeared to be a nuclear explosion, leaked all across his carpet, and then downloaded into the hallway floor and trailed behind him as he made his way towards our room. I quickly became thankful that God #1 woke me up before Tristan made it to our room and climbed into our bed and #2 that we have hardwood floors in our hallway. Nicki and I were able to crawl back into bed around 4:45 a.m. this morning after a bath for Tristan, laundry for the sheets, covers, and towels; and a lovely adventure of cleaning up poop laden carpet and flooring. Why do these things happen when its about an hour to an hour and a half before its time to wake up? Why not midnight? When we have several more hours to sleep? I guess I’ll never understand the timing of the early morning family adventures!

Join the Conversation: What’s one of your favorite early morning family adventures?

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Conditioned

football-training

I have a battle that wars within me constantly. Its a battle between desiring to be the Christian that Christ wants me to be and to do Christianity the way I was taught to do it.

I believe football has more conditioning and training drills than any other sport. I’ve played all of the major sports in school; football, basketball, baseball, and soccer. I missed out on underwater basket weaving. Football has so many positions and each position has a different function depending on the play, so the training is extensive. If you are an offensive lineman, one play may call for you to run block while the next requires a pass block, then an entire new play may require that you perform a pull block to open a bigger hole for your running back. This process of training is often referred to as “Conditioning.”

When I got out of High School, I held several jobs. One of my greatest closing lines when interviewing was to assure the company that I had the skills to perform the job, but because I had never worked in the specific position or for a competitor, I would do the job exactly the way they trained me to do it, unlike career employees, I was not conditioned in any other method of doing the job, basically I was a blank slate. I was communicating that I had not been programmed to do it any other way, rather I would perform the job only in the manner that they conditioned me or trained me to do it in.

I struggle with this in Christianity. I grew up being programmed that a lot of Christianity was a duty instead of a relationship. Even though I know better, I find myself reverting back to this approach in my faith walk. Don’t get me wrong, some of my Christian conditioning was good for me, and I use the skills all the time, but then there are some areas that are toxic to my relationship with Christ. I don’t want to do Christianity, I don’t want to have a checklist to make sure I am not making God mad. I fight against some of the opinions that were taught to me as ‘fact’ and as ‘the Gospel’. I’m left questioning a lot, is this (particular issue) a non-negotiable or is it a mere opinion of a righteous individual? In the end, I guess God uses this struggle to keep me reliant on him during the times I have this war raging within me. Join the Conversation: Have you been conditioned?

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Happy Birthday Gavin!!!

gavin-incredible

My little “oldest” son Gavin turns 6 years old today! I must say that I am extremely thankful to God for giving Gavin 6 healthy years of life, for protecting him in ways we’ve known (through a horrible car accident 3 years ago) and in ways that we will never know. I am thankful that the Lord has given Gavin abilities that some children do not have as well as gifts and passions such as art, soccer, and doing anything creative that comes to his mind.

I love my boy. I love how he thinks he is strong enough to beat me up, how he helps his younger brother Tristan, how he hugs me in the morning, before he goes to school, before he goes to bed, and just because. I love that his way of showing me love sometimes is a drawing or doing something out of his passions and gifts. I love to watch him get excited about something and watch his words get scrambled trying to explain what he’s excited about. I love his faith and purity in believing that Iron Man would answer his invite to his birthday party. I love to hear him pray at meals and before bed, especially when he prays for the “sick, the hungry, and the poor” – I think you could understand that I could go on and on all day about all the ways I love Gavin, so I’ll stop here, however…

I have to admit that as I think about Gavin turning 6, it is a little saddening to me as well. I use to hate hearing adults say, “It seems like it was yesterday…” But, the fact is, that is reality, especially once you become a parent. Time flies by, years literally seem like days, and as I reflect back on 6 years with Gavin, I realize that the next 6 years will be here in what seems like a few days. If I had my way, I would not let him grow up anymore. Even though children are challenging to raise, I don’t want to lose what I have with my son where he is now. I will no longer have a 5 year old Gavin, and reality stinks sometimes!

So while I am joyful for the life my child has been blessed with and who he is as a person…I am a little disappointed that I no longer have him at 5. Happy Birthday Gavin!!!

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2009

2009

Happy New Year! I am thankful that I have been blessed to live life for another day and hopefully for another year. I am thankful for a healthy and happy family.

I resoluted not to  do New Year Resolutions a couple of years ago and that is the only resolution I’ve ever fulfilled, so in keeping with my new found tradition, I will not be making any New Year Resolutions, however I can say that 2009 is going to bring some big things, definitely some changes in the life of my family, and though I cannot share it all now, I am excited about some stuff that is going to be happening later this year…I’ll be talking about it soon, until then, here are a few 2009 goals that I’ve set…I really haven’t thought much about this, but these were on my mind yesterday:

  1. I want to know my Jesus more
  2. I want to know my family more
  3. I want to be more of a blessing to people in need
  4. I want to create more memories with and for my kids
  5. I want to keep my 49 pounds off that I lost between late 2007 and 2008
  6. I want to grow as a leader

Join the Conversation: What are some of your resolutions or goals for 2009?

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Can God Trust You & Your Church?

moneyI must confess, I have an issue with the so-called prosperity preachers and Christians. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to set myself up as a “judge and jury” against anyone, but my view of Christianity is a life of giving away and serving others rather than a life of obtaining and prospering. Jesus himself said, He did not come to be served, rather He came to earth to serve.

I really feel like Christmas came early this year. Nicki and I are not getting each other anything for Christmas. Honestly, we don’t need anything, and if we did there is a good chance we will get it as we need it throughout the year. However, our church did something different last month, I know some other churches that have done a similar project, but there are none in our area that I have heard of. During our “Bling” series we started the “Bless Back Campaign” where our church handed out free money to everyone in the congregation. The church took the equivilant amount to what we receive in a week in tithes and they divvied it up in envelopes, some people got $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, and even $500. Now I have heard of churches that did a similar project, but the goal was for people to multiply the money and bring it back to the church for a building campaign or similar, but our goal at TCAG is to redefine church, so we simply gave it to people and asked them to bless someone else. Someone could simply take a single mom for coffee or help buy someone groceries, the ideas were totally left up to the individuals. (You can read the stories HERE under the “Celebrate” section). (Keep Reading its worth it…)

Our Community Group put our money together. It ended up being around $700 total. My mother-in-law knows a lady that fosters kids, and the one’s that she currently has have never had a Christmas. The lady picked up a second job just to try and earn enough to buy them some presents. So yesterday, the ladies in our group took the lady the $700 in cash and in a gift card plus a Wii and controllers that another family wanted to pitch in to help. That made my Christmas. These kids have had horrible lives up until their current Foster Home. A 6 year old girl has cigarette burns down her neck and  back (Shane wants to adopt her and is trying to convince Diana to pursue it), a 7 year old boy is considered “un-adoptable” because he has to take 5 insulin shots a day (His name is Tristan and I want to adopt him…I never thought I would say I want to adopt a child so soon after Hailey, but how can you say someone is un-adoptable? Plus he would be a great playmate for Gavin), that’s just 2 of the 12 children in this home. Sure $700 won’t go real far with 12 kids, but at least they will have more of a Christmas than they would have. Just to hear the stories from our wives when they got home got me more excited than opening a gift for myself this Christmas. All day, I felt like I had experienced Christmas…and…Christianity for what it really is…giving away, not obtaining and not prospering because I named something and claimed it. (Keep going just a little more…)

I wish you could see what has happened in our church within the last 2 months. Our students did a 2 weeks of sacrifice and raised enough money (along with matching gifts) to buy right at 6 clean water wells with Blood Water Mission. Our church committed to purchasing 25 of 61 meals for Christmas through a local ministry center, our people bought over 40 of the 61 meals needed, and to cap it off, we adopted 4 families in our county who would not have a Christmas with gifts unless someone were to help them, and our church stepped up to the plate big time providing gifts for each family member plus enough food for a Christmas dinner. Here’s what gets me though, two of the families we helped lived in a city that is growing by the thousands, Grovetown, GA. God is going to be doing some awesome stuff in Grovetown in the coming months, but…One of those families was living right next door to a church. These people live in what was described to me as “filth.” They are just dirt poor, yet a church who claims to follow Christ, has done nothing to assist this family, and probably any of the other families around them. It just leaves me to wonder, what kind of Christianity is this? Am I saying that every church has to do a Bless Back Campaign like our church did? No, but can God even trust us or trust our churches to do what Hes already told us to do? Some churches may look at what we as a church did and say its extreme, but I would say, its really just us doing what we’ve been called to do, but American Christianity has become so shallow it makes genuine obedience look “extreme.”

So, Join the Conversation, Can God really trust us or trust our churches to live life trying to serve and to give rather than to obtain and prosper? What are your thoughts?