We went to the awesome Aquarium in Gatlinburg this week!






Training

Last Friday at 8 PM, President Obama gave the Navy permission to use lethal force in the rescue operation of a merchant ship that was taken over by pirates off the coast of Somalia. After a scuffle with the crew of the merchant ship, the four pirates took the captain as a hostage to a lifeboat. The USS Bainbridge came onto the scene to negotiate the release of the American captain. One of the pirates, who had been injured by the merchant crew left the lifeboat on an inflatable vessel to seek medical attention from the U.S. Navy. Then the lifeboat ran out of fuel and agreed to let the USS Bainbridge tow them to calmer waters. A Navy Seal team parachuted onto the back of the USS Bainbridge to takeover negotiations…

So this is the situation: Navy Seals were on the back of a US battleship that was towing a lifeboat with three pirates and one hostage on it. Two of the pirates were visible through the glass of the engine room with the captain and the other pirate came above deck at the same time that one of the pirate’s AK47’s was pointed in the back of the captain. The commander of the Seal team gave his orders and three shots were fired… it was over in an instant. These Seals fired only three shots and each one was fatal. Here’s the really impressive thing: this was at night on the open sea! The lifeboat was listing up and down with the waves, two of the pirates were indoors and the three simultaneous shots were all right on their mark!

When I read the report of this story, I thought about those Navy Seals and all the training they went through… all of the target practice, the stationary and moving targets… the millions of times they have taken different types of shots in different situations. Did they ever feel like, “I don’t need to practice shooting today, I’ve got it down.”? Did they ever just get tired of practicing different scenarios where they had to simply take orders when they were given even if they didn’t have all the information? Did they ever get tired of doing the same fundamental things every single day, hour after hour? And yet… when it came down and they had to step up and do the very thing they had been trained to do, they were ready! More than ready, they were perfect.

Sometimes when people get into the trial of their life, they feel like they are suddenly drowning… they look around and panic because they realize they are in over their head and they simply don’t know what to do. Tom always says, “When you don’t know what to do, do what you know to do.” That usually means that when there’s nothing around you can do, you can always pray. Here’s the thing… what if you never really pray? What if you’re not really in the habit of talking to God? What if you don’t really spend any one on one time with Him? That’s like a marksman who never takes a shot… you get rusty. The Apostle tells us in 1 Thessalonians to “Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Maybe part of the reason it’s God’s will for us to always be joyful, praying and thanking Him is that these are our fundamentals! These are the things we need in a pinch! If you are always training, then you’ll know what to do when you get in the trial of your life and you just don’t know what to do.

Stop and Remember

Last night I asked Christy what Holy Week was making her think about this year… how the memory of Jesus’ death was impacting her heart this time around, and she reminded me of this story: Six and a half years ago we lived in Cookeville, TN. We had been married just over a year and these were our last few months in that town before we moved to Oak Ridge. I was working and Christy was finishing up her last semester of college; which for an education major means student teaching. By the way, student teaching is where you work someone else’s full time job while they sit and watch and get paid for what you’re doing. Anyway, there was this one day that sticks out in her mind because of how bad it was… it had been a hard day with kids and a hard day with her supervising teacher. The final bell of the school day was a sweet relief that probably felt like being released from prison. You know those days where you doubt every life choice you’ve ever made and hate your job like poison? Yeah.

Christy tells me that when I arrived at Cane Creek Elementary to pick her up, she was in a bad way. She was frustrated, she was hurt and she was just plain ‘over it.’ She piled her stuff in the car and got in. We didn’t say much, but just started to drive off. The Sara Groves song that had been playing in the background suddenly became the soundtrack to our drive home. It was a song written by Pierce Pettis about the death of Jesus and how it’s supposed to change our lives that’s called, “You Did That For Me.” Christy told me that in the middle of all the emotional strain of the problems of that day, she heard these words from the bridge of that song:

"Man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief, drug down to the city dump, spread eagle on a cross beam, propped up like a scarecrow and nailed like a thief, there for all the world to see, You did that for me, You did that for me, You wore the chains so I could be free, You did that for me…"

Upon hearing those words and thinking about Jesus and all He endured, Christy says she just started to cry… Suddenly the problems of that horrible school day vanished under the weight of love for the Savior and sorrow over the sin that held Him to the cross. That’s what Good Friday is all about. It is a chance to stop and remember. It is a chance to look at all He did because of who I’ve been and remember that somehow… Hallelujah… somehow, it was all because of love.

1 John 3:16 says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us.” Everything He endured, from the arrest, through the trials and torture, the ridicule, the piercing, the bleeding and the abandonment of the Father until He gave up His life unto death… it was all about love for you and me. When I think about who I’ve been and realize that somehow He loves me in spite of all that, and loves me so much as to die for me, it makes me different. It puts my problems and pains in perspective and fills me with something else instead: love for Him.

But There Shouldn’t Be

I was reading something kind of sad this week. It was in the book of Deuteronomy, which is sort of like Moses’ farewell speech to the Israelites. The Lord had already said that Moses would not be going into the Promised Land with the rest of the people, so when they were almost there and were camped out on the very threshold of Canaan, Moses unloaded everything else he had to say. This speech, which lasted 34 chapters, was full of instructions about what life in the Promise should look like; and in chapter 15, he said, “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.” To me this just seems sad… it seems sad that after all those hundreds of years of slavery, God’s people were finally going to enter the land of milk and honey and enjoy God’s blessing, but still there were going to be people who didn’t have enough to make it, and that’s not all…

See, Deuteronomy 15 is a chapter about how every so often (7 years to be exact) all debts were to be canceled so that people had a chance to start over. Mistakes were to be forgiven and I.O.U’s ripped up. It was like a do over for the unfortunate; and by the way, who doesn’t need a second chance? Well, right in the middle of this section (and right before he says there will always be poor people in the land) he says, “There should be no poor among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, He will richly bless you.” Do you see what’s going on here? First he says, “There should be no poor people in the Promised Land,” and then he turns around right after that and says, “There will always be poor people though.” I just think that’s sad! It’s like he’s saying, “There will always be poor people, but there shouldn’t be… because I’m going to bless everyone.”

If God was going to richly bless everyone but there would still be poor people, then the only explanation is that some people wanted more than they needed. Humanitarian organizations tell us that our planet has the resources to provide every person on earth with enough to eat and drink, but thousands and thousands die every day because they don’t have enough to drink or eat… isn’t that a mess?

I was looking around on Compassion International’s website this morning and they have a place where you can click on pictures of poverty stricken kids who need someone to sponsor them and you can read about them. Jagruti is a six-year-old girl who lives in India. She carries the water her family uses in her tiny little hands and her favorite thing to do is play hide and seek and jump rope. She needs help! There is a boy in Ethiopia named Akalu and he’s seven. He loves soccer and playing marbles. He runs errands and helps in the kitchen. He lives in a region devastated by AIDS and he’s been waiting for a sponsor for six months! There is a ten-year-old boy in Ecuador named Luis whose favorite activities include soccer, swimming and singing…

It only takes 32 dollars a month to sponsor a child through Compassion. They get food, water, medicine, education and the Gospel of Jesus. It’s the best dollar a day you will ever spend. There will always be poor people among us. There shouldn’t be, but there will be, so let’s open our hands toward our brothers and sisters.

This week Norah was sick... here's a picture:



Bringing Down the House

I am extremely clumsy today. I’ve tripped over a couple of chairs and almost run into a few doorframes and it’s not even lunchtime. My head is pounding, my eyes are burning and my whole body is saying, “Come on man, go to bed!” So, what is to blame for this sudden loss of equilibrium, coordination and energy? Well, Norah got sick at about half-past midnight and I was up all night with her while she lost her cookies into an empty trashcan again and again. Watching a little kid get stomach sick is one of the sadder things I’ve experienced in my life… It’s really hard before they can talk because they don’t know what’s happening and their confusion at your powerlessness causes them such horrific panic. When they are a bit older like Norah is now, it’s sad and sweet at the same time: sad because that pale face tells the whole story of how awful they feel, and sweet because they try so hard to be brave.

Last night as Norah started her sickness, Christy and I were running around like maniacs pulling sheets, grabbing towels and starting the bath. Christy was trying to console Norah by asking how she was doing and telling her how sorry she was. She looked at Norah and said, “Poor baby.” Norah said, “No, not poor… I’m okay Mom.” After we cleaned her up we pulled our two couches together and covered the smaller one in towels. We laid Norah on that couch and I sprawled out on the other one telling her, “Hey, this night will be great! We’ll just have a slumber party, okay?” Those sweet little eyes looked so vacant as she nodded her head and tried hard to smile. I got Norah some books to read and told her that if she felt like she was going to get sick to just say my name and I would help her up and grab the bucket. We lay there for a while, Norah reading her book while I read old emails and web pages when all of a sudden I heard it…

“Daddy?” It was the smallest, scratchiest and faintest sound my baby girl has ever made. It was a plea for help! She could feel herself getting sick and so she cried out as loud as she could, which was three steps below a whisper, and I was like a man possessed! I know I was only three feet away from her on the next couch, but if I had been across the desert I would have gotten there just as fast! At the sound of that needy cry, my heart exploded with an intense ferocity and I just had to get to my girl! I would have gotten to her if I had to swim the whole ocean, fight armies or tear the whole house down with my bare hands! The needy cry of my hurting child awoke something strong in me and it reminded me of our heavenly Father…

Psalm 18 says, “In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help. 
 From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears. The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook; they trembled because he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him— the dark rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced, with hailstones and bolts of lightning. The LORD thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded…” When we cry out to Him, even if it’s three steps below a whisper, He tears heaven apart, bringing down the house, riding clouds and hurling lightning to get to us! Now I know how it feels to be Him when your precious child calls out in need, and it makes me want to cry out to Him more and more!

Known

This morning I met my friend Jack at a coffee shop in Knoxville to sit and talk with a bagel and some tea. We’ve been meeting like this together with Tom every Wednesday for well over two years now, so we have ‘our table’ and ‘the usual’ thing we all order. There’s even a guy that sits across from our table who’s always there, drinking coffee and working on his computer. Well, this morning that guy was not there… In fact, his normal table across from us was occupied by another man who had no companion, no computer, no newspaper or book of any kind. He was alone with his coffee and he was right beside us, just sitting there. The weird thing was that he was leaned up against the wall in such a way that his shoulders were open toward us and he was totally facing us. Undoubtedly he could hear everything we were saying and he seemed to be boldly listening in on our conversation. It was totally awkward! It felt as though Jack and I were like some sort of zoo exhibit, our booth was the cage and he was the zoo patron, just watching us share our breakfast.

I felt so spied on! All of a sudden I found myself speaking more quietly and measuring my words so carefully that I’m not sure I really said much of anything. Eventually the man left, but it shocked me just how comfortable he was to be right there in the middle of our business, although, I don’t guess I should have been so shocked… it seems to me that the boundary lines of privacy and propriety are getting weaker and more blurred all the time. The accessibility of wireless internet connections have given rise to social networking services where just about anyone can find out what just about anyone else is up to at any moment. Myspace, Facebook and Twitter (to name just a few of these services) allow people to proclaim their current status in 100 characters or less and publish this information for the world to see.

The funny thing is that there is absolutely no quality control or accountability when it comes to the truth of these published items, so people understandably post the most flattering pictures of themselves and the most witty and clever things they can come up with. In other words, people stalk their friends, but they only get the controlled information that those friends want them to know. When you want know what someone interesting is up to, you can connect yourself to their Twitter account so that you are notified when they update their status… and this is called “following.” Famous people such as Martha Stewart and Shaquille O’Neal have thousands and thousands of “followers.”

This morning, as our privacy was being awkwardly invaded by the new guy in the coffee shop, Jack and I were talking about all this stalking, tweeting and so-called ‘following’ when he said, “I wonder what Jesus thinks about all this.” – Good point. What does Jesus think about a world full of people so desperate to be known and accepted that they invent a version of themselves to publish at random for all the world to see, a people so curious and insecure that everyone obsesses over watching everyone else when no one is looking and a world full of ‘followers’ who think the term refers to simply wanting know what so and so is up to… Do we know what He meant when He said, “Follow Me,” and expected us to give all? Have we forgotten that He always sees all of us and that when you cry out to Him, He accepts you completely? People are trying so hard to fill up a hole that He put right there inside them on purpose. To know and be known, to be valued, no cherished and totally accepted… it’s something we all want but only He can do, and He wants to do it! He’s just waiting to be asked!

It Won’t Always Look Like This

One of the coolest things I’ve experienced in the past few years has been watching little kids play together on their own. I love just sitting on the outskirts of their little world and listening to the games, stories and scenarios they invent. I love how differently the drama plays out depending on the gender that has the most kids or the oldest kids… in other words, when there are more girls, it comes across like the dramatization of a Jane Austen novel, while boys in charge tend to convince everyone involved to help them explore the expanded universe of Star Wars. Kids pretend to be animals, parents, favorite cartoon characters and spouses. Lately Anna has been pretending to be a unicorn, but not just any unicorn… this mythical creature is actually a domesticated house pet complete with an owner named Norah (who is supposedly telling the unicorn what to do, although it usually sounds like the other way around).

Some of our kids’ best friends are Tatum and Arlo Craven. Tatum is three and awesome, and although she cuts up with the kids like crazy, she’s never actually spoken to me… Arlo is one and he’s just the bomb. The problem is that the rest of the kids are so much bigger, faster and stronger than Arlo that he winds up being sort of the punching bag of the group. Not only does he constantly have to play the kinds of girly games that his 11-year-old self would punch his lights out for playing, but he sort of gets pushed around. Sometimes the girls are just treating him like a doll or whatever, but sometimes Norah has pushed him. Every time this has happened we have disciplined Norah, but the last time, after she apologized to Arlo, I was putting her coat on to leave their house when I told Norah, “You know, you’re not always going to be able to push Arlo around.” Arlo’s dad Lucas started to laugh because he had given Tatum this same speech not long before, about how little baby boys grow up to be really strong guys who don’t like to be pushed or put in headlocks…

Yesterday I was reading Mark 14 where Jesus was on trial before the Sanhedrin in the middle of the night. They had been trying to get rid of Him in earnest for two and a half years and they finally thought they had the evidence they needed. They apprehended Him and brought Him before the high priest Annas. The trial was a mess. Matthew says many false witnesses came forward and their testimony was so all over the place that a verdict couldn’t be reached. After Annas questioned Him, the guards smacked Him and then took Him to Ciaphas the high priest who finally got frustrated and just asked Jesus point-blank: “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” “I Am,” said Jesus, “And you will see the son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

This is an amazing moment. Ciaphas was staring at a man he thought was simply a poor, blue-collar, redneck… homeless, in ratty clothes with a face that would soon be unrecognizably broken by the fists of his men. And Jesus knew that by calling Himself God, He had sealed His fate… they would execute Him for blasphemy, and they wouldn’t even need any more witnesses, but before anything else happened, He basically told the high priest, “Do what you’re going to do, but know this: I am the Christ, and I won’t always look like this… You’re going to see this face again, but different.” Jesus told Him that next time He would be seated beside God, coming on the wings of the sky. Paul tells us in 2 Thessalonians 1 that Jesus will appear “…in blazing fire with His powerful angels.” He’s coming back! And when He does, He won’t be poor and broken. It will rock this whole world. I’ll be surprised if our retinas survive the experience! No one will have to ask, “Are you the Christ?” because every heart will be shattered by the blinding glory of the Creator of life and love. That day really is coming… and it's not going to be like anything we thought! The King is coming... get pumped!

Jack is eating some solid food and LOVES it... he was going crazy for some eating!!!!!





And poor Norah has been a little under the weather this week, but sweeter than sugar...


Shhh… He’s Sleeping

On almost every day of the week I wake up early, bust out of the house early and start my day before the sun even thinks about coming up; but once a week I stick around and handle diapers, waffles and cartoons. This day is also known as Monday, and it’s Christy’s day to sleep in. On Christy’s sleep day I try to get everyone up, fed and out of the house on some errand or other as quietly as possible so that she can get the opportunity to just sleep until her body wakes her up. Some days we are successful in being quiet enough and some days we explode into such an outlandish cacophony of fits, tears and discipline that I’m surprised the Cops aren’t involved.

If my kids knew how to bribe, they could play me like a fiddle on Monday mornings. They could earn any imaginable amount of underhanded candy and movie time just by threatening a good loud argument over some toy… They could easily work the angles and get triple-decker ice cream cones for breakfast all for the measly price of keeping a lid on it during her Monday morning lie-in, if only they knew how much I am willing to pay for that peace and quiet. You see, nothing pleases my heart more than pulling off a successful sleep day for my hard-working girl; and nothing (and I mean nothing) stresses me out more than unnecessary noises that threaten to prematurely end that same sleep day…

Now, I know this might sound weird, but what if I cared as much about Jesus getting his nap as I do about Christy getting hers? What if I was just as concerned with keeping it quiet so He could sleep the way I am for her on Monday mornings?

You see, a week or so ago I was reading that familiar story where Jesus calms the storm… you know, Jesus was teaching His disciples a bunch of stuff and when evening came He told them to get into the boat and head to the other side. While they were crossing the Sea of Galilee, such a furious storm came over them that the disciples thought they were going to die. In the midst of all this, they realized that Jesus was asleep on a cushion in the stern! They woke Him up, yelled at Him and He proceeded to tell the storm to “Hush,” which it did, and then He rebuked their lack of faith, saying, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” If you’re anything like me, you’ve heard that story a million and five times and every single time, you’ve gotten the same thing out of it… Jesus has the power to calm the storms of my life… right… got it.

But what if that story had gone differently? What if, instead of freaking out, panicking and waking Jesus up, the disciples had quietly grabbed a blanket and shushed each other while trying to cover Him up without waking Him? After all, they didn’t wake Him up so that He would calm the storm, they woke Him up so they could yell at Him right before they all died… but He said they were going to the other side and nothing was going to stop them from making it. What if they had just trusted His words and let Him sleep? What would it look like for me to stop waking Him up in the midst of the storm? What if, in the middle of storms, I stopped trying desperately to solve the problem while losing heart and faith, and instead just quietly trusted my Lord and let Him handle it and rest.

Jack Jack on Valentine's Day!!



Anna had PJ day at school... they ate french toast and pancakes for lunch!


Goal Line Defense

When you become a homeowner, you are immediately thrown into a world of things you have never dealt with. There is a huge learning curve in the areas of terminology, technology and even biology! When I rented an apartment, I was blissfully ignorant of things like lawn maintenance, paint swatches, crown molding and plumbing repair. When something broke or got old, overgrown or worn out, a magical person came in and made everything all better. When I bought a house, I learned about all sorts of things I had never even heard of before like plumbers strap, luan and flux. Before I owned a house, I had never used a reciprocating saw or a calk gun. Before I owned a house I never worried about really heavy rainfall that lasts for days and days on end, and I never even thought about or worried about mold...

When we first walked through new our house with the realtor, we loved it! It was everything we needed in a house and everything we really wanted as well. We prayed and prayed about all of the details and after two weeks, our old house sold for list price and our offer on the new house was accepted! Everything was moving forward like clockwork… and then we had the home inspection. After being down in the crawl space for about thirty minutes, our home inspector said there was some mold on the floor joists… I’ve seen the commercials enough to know that this was a big deal. Our realtor said that dealing with bad, spreading mold is a long, painful and expensive process involving chemists, environmentalists and tons of reports. After reading online, I discovered that being super careful about mold is a relatively new thing for homeownership… as in, the last thirty years or so. Before that, people apparently weren’t too concerned about it… that is, unless you count the Israelites.

Thousands and thousands of years ago (way before anyone knew anything about germs, bacteria and toxic spores) God told His people to be take mold and mildew very seriously. In Leviticus 14 He told them that it is corrosive, insidious and destructive. He told them that mold must not be ignored, but must be quarantined, washed, scraped off or cut out. He told them that if it won’t stop spreading, the only thing left to do is to tear down the whole house and burn the materials, brick by brick and rafter by rafter. Now, I’ve read these verses a bunch of times before, but this week I noticed something strange while reading them again. Leviticus 14:34-35 says, “When you enter the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as your possession, and I put a spreading mildew in a house in that land, the owner of the house must go and tell the priest, “I have seen something that looks like mildew in my house.”

The mold came from Him! God was sending the spreading mildew! He was planting those messed up little replicating destroyers in people’s houses… but why? I thought about it for a long time and came to the conclusion that everything God did with the Israelites was designed to teach them stuff… stuff about Him and stuff about themselves. Like the way thousands of years of animal sacrifices were getting them ready for what Jesus would accomplish on the cross… I think that warning the people about what mildew and mold are like and can do and then telling them how fiercely they had to respond in order to save their houses was a picture of what sin can do to our hearts. I think it was His way of saying that sin is violent and ruthless and when you find it in your life, you have to be decisive and aggressive to get rid of it or it will destroy you. Then He sent them mold as a way to practice responding… like a fire drill in school or like when a football team practices their goal line defense… In the best circumstances, you hope you don’t have to do it, but at some point, you’re going to have to, so you’d better be ready.

HAIRCUTS! Chris cut the girls' hair which makes for a lot of cute...








The Holiest Thing

A couple of weeks ago I was up at church trying to get some stuff done and it wasn’t working out. For one thing, I had a deadline, which was stressing me out. For another thing, everything I started, I threw out… it was all garbage. Not only that, but I was physically drained and draining all the more! My stress was mounting by the second and people kept walking in with questions or calling with problems! I felt myself getting darker and more volatile on the inside with every passing heartbeat. I looked forward in time to the rest of my jam-packed week and despaired because this was going to be my only chance to accomplish this thing, but how was I supposed to do that with depleted energy, repeated failures and constant interruptions?!

Whoa… I was about to tear my own head off with my bare hands when I remembered Norah. You see, being a dad has taught me a few things and one of them is this: There are very few problems that can’t be cured by a big, fat nap. Having a three-year-old is like playing basketball 24/7, but you’re always on defense, and it’s always a full court press. They fall off of couches, tables and major appliances and scream as if being tortured. They trip over thresholds, rugs and toys and scream as if being tortured. They throw stuff, hit themselves with stuff and break stuff and again with the screaming… They get happy and excited really quickly, but they also get scared and really upset with record-breaking speed. Sometimes Norah is just having one of those really weepy days where everything is drama and at some point Christy and I just look at each other and say, “That girl just needs to go to sleep.” And you know what? It works… she slams a big ole nap and usually wakes up cheerful and back to her bouncy little self.

I know, it sounds like something that works great on toddlers but has little to do with you in the middle of your real life, but I don’t think that’s actually true… in fact, this idea that a nap can cure you is Biblical! In 1 Kings 19 Elijah was on the run. He had just defeated and killed the 450 prophets of Baal after the Lord sent fire down to his soggy altar on Mount Carmel. It was the high-point of Elijah's career. He outran a horse-drawn chariot to Jezreel to tell Jezebel that God was in charge and that her days were done, but she was as mean and determined as ever. She told Elijah she would kill him before the sun came up again and filled with fear, he fled. He was traveling 80 miles south through the hot desert and after a while, he just lost heart. He was broken, tired, famished and wound up suicidal, praying for death: AKA, naptime.

He slept a while and woke up to see an angel making him some breakfast. The angel told him to eat, which he did and then he slept again. He woke up again to the same angel cooking it up once more. Again he ate and this time he was strengthened to journey on for 40 days to Sinai, where God Himself whispered to him. I have never personally had an angel cook me breakfast, but I know that when I get to the very end and I’m about to lose my wits, my patience and possibly my friends, the holiest thing I can do is stop everything and take a nap. We are spirit and flesh. Psalm 103 says, “He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust.” In other words, He knows us and knows that sometimes, we just need a little sleep.

Anna playing at the park with Sam and Garrett... thanks Kristin!


Theme Songs

Okay, so I was with the kids at Wal-Mart again when something happened that made Norah start freaking out like crazy, which in turn caused every one shopping for every-day low prices to stare me down… What had I done to this child to make her lose control? Well, Anna and Norah were chewing gum, but Norah dropped hers on the floor. She bent down to pick it up and when she was about to shove it back into her mouth, I deftly swiped it out of her hand… thus, the screaming. As a hundred pairs of eyeballs burned holes in me, I tried to explain to Norah (above her screams) that we don’t eat anything off of the ground, especially at Wal-Mart! She just didn’t seem to understand that there are things we can’t see that are very, very important and have a huge impact on our lives. All she saw was moist, delicious gum, but I was thinking about microscopic landfills of virus-ridden germs collected from the shoes of three surrounding counties… a bacterial nightmare just waiting for that salivary highway.

Our lives are full of stuff we can’t see that we ought to think about a whole lot more than we do. There are spiritual realities all around us that we can’t measure or hold on to, but are real and that matter. Now, usually when people talk about this sort of thing they focus on angels and demons… you know, the spiritual forces that are battling it out in unseen realms. I know, those guys seem really cool and scary super interesting, but that’s not really what I want to talk about… because, while there are beings out there and in here and frankly all over the place waging an invisible war, there is other stuff too. There is heaven, there are those who have gone before us and have rested from their labors, there is God Himself and… there is music!

Psalm 32:7 says, “You are my hiding place; You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.” Have you ever been watching a great movie and been brought to tears by the music? Have you ever known something bad was about to happen in the movie just because of the way the music changed? You know how certain characters have theme music and when it comes on it just makes you feel certain things… like Darth Vader, Rocky Balboa and Samwise Gamgee? When you see their faces and hear their music, you’re filled with whatever they want you to feel! Well, what if there was a theme song for you?

You see, I believe that when we are in something we shouldn’t be in, or when we go somewhere we shouldn’t go… when we say stuff we should never say or think things we regret like crazy, it’s usually because we forgot that the invisible God is with us and always watching. What if every single time you overcame a temptation or loved your neighbor or opened your heart to Jesus there was a triumphant and beautiful melody that played in heaven? And what if… what if it was your song… only yours? He surrounds you with songs of deliverance. If you could hear that royal tune, you’d never fall again. Strain your ears for it! He’s alive, He’s here and He’s singing! Let the knowledge of the song fill you and strengthen you to stand. One day I’m going to hear my song, and I want it to be familiar!

Trusty and her little dude after dinner last night...


You Haven’t Tried It Yet

Anna has this fixation with being scared lately… as in, she thinks she loves scary stories. She thinks she loves being scared, or being brave while others are scared. Anytime she hangs out with someone she asks them to tell her a scary story. When they say, “A scary story? Why do you want to hear a scary story?” she tells them, “Because I love scary stories!” The truth is, she’s never really experienced anything very scary yet. She’s never heard a really scary story at all. Basically she’s watched a couple of intense scenes in Disney movies that we used to fast forward and so now she believes herself to be un-scare-able. Let’s be honest: Ursula and Scar are not that big of a deal. If she were to come face to face with something that is really bone-chillingly scary, she would freak out… she just hasn’t actually tried it yet.

I think there are tons of things like that in our lives that we write off because we just don’t know and we don’t know because we haven’t actually tried them out. Like the idea that being humble, contrite and sorry when you’re wrong is actually more fun than being right…

On Monday morning I took our three kids to Wal-Mart by myself for a little grocery trip. We take this adventure surprisingly often, so I knew I could do it, but there were several things on that particular morning that made it difficult. For one thing, the girls woke up on the wrong side of the bed. By the way, I used to hear people talk about ‘waking up on the wrong side of the bed’ and scoff, but it’s totally a thing! Some days they are just grumps, and this was one of them. They complained about their breakfast and then didn’t eat it. They complained about their shoes and the fact that they had to wear coats and hoods (it was cold and rainy). They complained about the music in the car and Anna kept dropping something she was playing with and whining about how she couldn’t reach down to retrieve it while buckled up. I was cold and soaking wet from fastening seatbelts in the rain. It was a nine-minute drive so completely packed with huffs, puffs and grumbles that by the time we got to the store, I was at the boiling point!

Somebody said something ridiculous and I lost it. I just lost it. I went off on them and told them what a terrible day it was shaping up to be. My heart was pounding in my chest and I felt like I was going to ‘hulk out’ at any moment… The car was totally silent except for the twenty-seven-pound raindrops hitting the glass and that’s when it hit me: a choice. I had a choice. It was as clear as it was preposterous, but in those moments of silence I knew that I could either stay mad, and ruin that whole morning, or I could apologize to my kids and redeem it. It was right there in front of me, but something held me back…

In Ephesians 4 Paul said, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” I was going to have to humble myself before my five-year-old, before my three-year-old, and before my three-month-old! People don’t really do this kind of thing easily. We would rather be right. We’re embarrassed to be wrong… to need forgiveness… to humble ourselves, especially before little kids, but the problem is that we just haven’t tried it yet. You see, I went for it. I turned around and looked at those little sad faces and said, “Guys, I’m really sorry. I was wrong to get so mad. I really love you. Will you forgive me?” Their joy was instantaneous! They forgave me and returned my love and we had a great shopping trip. By the time we came out of the store even the rain had turned to snow! It felt like my heart had done the same thing: the dreary wet became light and beautiful and I was happy… it really works. You should try it sometime!

Patient Love

Yesterday at pre-school Anna had to take a test… already… it’s pre-school, people! Anyway, it was this Kindergarten readiness test where they ask kids to identify letters and numbers, colors and shapes and body parts. They have to write their name, know their parents’ names and recite their address and phone number. Anna did great on the test and is really pretty pumped to talk about all about it, including what she got right and what she missed. Fortunately her teachers didn’t tell her it was a test until the end of the school day, because otherwise she may have freaked out and refused to do any of it. When we got in the car I asked her if it was fun taking a test and she said, “I didn’t know it was a test. I just thought it was my regular school work… so, yeah.” I realized that this was brilliant because some kids like Anna do not like being evaluated… even at age five.

Sometimes when I try to work with Anna on learning to read, she feels tested or pushed and simply shuts down. I’ll be reading along and come to a word she knows and say, “Anna, what word is this?” She’ll usually identify a couple words before she figures out what’s happening and raises her voice, saying, “Dad, I don’t want to do sight words! I just want you to read it, okay?!” Whenever this happens, I find myself getting frustrated because I know she’s right on the threshold of reading and I just keep waiting for her to cross over, but it’s as if she doesn’t want it. All of a sudden there’s this tension because I feel like she’s totally ready to read, but just doesn’t want to, so she just chooses to hold back and stay in the land of non-readers. I don’t push her to try and read after this happens, but in my heart I totally want to and this week I’ve been feeling really bad about that.

I was looking at 1 Corinthians 13:4, that most familiar of verses, that says, “Love is patient” and was trying to understand what that means. It turns out that the word for patient is a word that means ‘long-tempered.’ I know we don’t really use the word long tempered, but we do use the word ‘short-tempered’ and this just means the opposite. A person who loves well doesn’t have a short fuse… they don’t get all frustrated and heated up quickly. This same word ‘long-tempered’ is used in a bunch of places in the New Testament and translated ‘patient.’ I decided to look at some of these to figure out more about what it means to have patient love.

James uses this word in chapter 5 when he says, “Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains?” When I read that I thought about farmers and how they can’t speed up the growth of what it is they want to see… they can only wait for it. They can’t go over to a sprouting corn stalk and start tugging and pulling on it just because they want it to be six-feet tall. They just have to wait. That’s patience, and that’s what my love is supposed to look like. I shouldn’t be pushing and pulling my little girl just because there are things I want to see in her! And when I realized this, I wondered if this is what my love looks like across the board… Do I have a program in mind for everyone in my life? And, am I bringing tension when people don’t line up with my program? We need to have patient love… the love of a farmer. He knows he wants a crop, but he doesn’t push, pull or uproot, he just waits. That’s the way I want to be.

Our Girls kickin' it on the Snow Day... and check it out, we made a 17" snow man. If you wanna see a video of it, check it out on Christy's blog.



The Last Laugh

Last week we reached a parental milestone. We’ve been here three times now and I remember each one very clearly. In fact, every parent I know remembers this particular moment very clearly… Last week Jack slept through the night for the first time. He nodded off at around 8:30 PM and slept until 6:00 AM!! That night was both awesome and stressful: awesome because there wasn’t a tiny human screaming at us multiple times in the dead of night and stressful because well, there wasn’t a tiny human screaming at us multiple times in the dead of night!!! You see, not only does every parent clearly remember the first time their kid slept through the night, but we all remember it for the same reason… when your kid first sleeps through the night, you wake up wondering if they’re still alive!

When my alarm clock woke me up before my son did, I reached over to shut it off in disbelief… “No way it’s time to wake up… Jack hasn’t woken up yet.” When I noticed the time, I silently freaked out and said a quick but extremely intense prayer. Then I snuck into Jack’s room, leaned down into his crib and waited to hear those precious little breaths. When I heard them, I told my pounding, adrenalized heart to chill out and said a prayer of thanks. Parents, you know what I’m talking about… It’s just that life is so fragile for all of us, but especially for babies. You spend literally all of your time just keeping them alive and you always hear stories about SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) which could be caused by anything and happen at any time! Sometimes when Jack’s little head flops around because of his undeveloped neck muscles I just think, “Oh, please make it out of this fragile state, little guy!” Not only that, but kids are dying… everywhere, from hunger, disease, war and all kinds of other stuff. It’s just so scary and so sad that it can be completely oppressive… until you remember Jesus.

The other day I was reading in Matthew 9 where Jairus’ daughter died and Jesus went to the house. It says, “When Jesus entered the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd, He said, “Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at Him. After the crowd had been put outside, He went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up.” It struck me that the folks who came to the house to comfort Jairus and his wife in their loss were laughing at Jesus. Right there, in the midst of the saddest thing ever, they were laughing. For us, death is so scary, so powerful, but Jesus said it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be… it was more like sleeping. So they laughed. Out of discomfort and fear, they laughed and Jesus asked them to leave.

But they didn’t have the last laugh… what were they thinking when Jairus shouted for joy and his wife gasped from behind that closed door? How do you think they felt when all of a sudden they heard the laughter of a little girl? Death may frighten us now, but it won’t always be so scary. One day we’ll have the last laugh! One day all the dead in Christ will rise to praise Him filled with the careless joy of indestructible, everlasting life and all those babies will be there! In the words of Samwise Gamgee, one day ‘every sad thing will become untrue.’ In the words of Sally Lloyd Jones, one day ‘even death is going to die.’ Everything scary will become a joke and the last laugh of little boys and girls will fill the universe forever and ever and ever and ever.

No Quitting!

It’s really cold today. I mean, really cold. I did not want to go running in this weather, but I did anyway because I need to. I was talking to Tom about it and he said that running in the freezing cold is the best. He said the only way it could be any better is when you run in the pouring rain and bitter cold. I wondered how on earth this could possibly be a good thing and he said that when you run in those conditions you know for a fact that you are alive… and fully alive. Not like those folks all warm and comfy in their offices with central heating… no, those folks are protecting themselves from life, but not you; you’re in it, feeling it and knowing that you’re fully alive… well I say, “Whatever.” I got out there in that ridiculousness and let me tell you, it’s mainly just really cold.

So there I was, freezing my tail off with sore legs and tired eyes from lack of sleep jogging up and down the relentless hills of Outer Drive when a delicious temptation to stop running came over me like a wave. Look, my entire run was only going to be three miles, and I know that’s not a ton, but I was exhausted and sore with chapped lips and icicles in my lungs. Not only that, but my run was about to go from somewhat hard to really stinking hard. You see, the last few tenths of this particular run are a climb… and not just a climb, but this intense uphill that punishes me without a second thought. I was getting close to the intersection of Outer and Georgia with the big climb looming ahead while this germ of an idea to just walk the rest of the way back was growing stronger every second. I would quit… no big deal, it was just a run. I’ll finish it another day. I can quit…

Then something happened… something changed my plans and pumped me so full of adrenaline that I destroyed that hill with joyful determination! Something went from the depths of my iPod straight into the depths of my Spirit and super-charged me to make it to the end. No, it wasn’t The Eye of The Tiger or Jock Jams. It was an audio Bible… it was someone simply reading the Scriptures that got me, but it wasn’t the end of Isaiah 40 about eagles wings and all that; it was the end of the book of Colossians where Paul sends the greetings of his companions to the church at Colossae. In chapter 4, amid the shout-outs of guys like Mark and Epaphras, Paul says, “Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings.”

So, what was it about that verse that got me so fired up to finish? Well, when I first heard it I just felt really sad. You see, Colossians 4 is not the only time Paul mentions Demas… Later on, at the end of 2 Timothy (and the end of Paul’s life) he says, “Do your best to come to me quickly, for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica.” Demas was a quitter. He fell away because he fell in love with this world! He didn’t make it to the finish line! When I heard Paul so sweetly give the greeting of Demas to the Colossians, I thought about how he didn’t know at that time that Demas would eventually quit and fall away, but I did! I’ve read 2 Timothy and I don’t want to be like Demas! When I heard that greeting, I decided I would never quit walking this walk! Never fall away by loving this stupid old world! And never stop running until I got to the top of this hill! Let’s not quit! Let’s make it, right to the very last.

Counting Stars

One of the things I absolutely love about Anna is how excitable she is. As far as Anna is concerned, everything is a big deal. To her, whatever is going on is a reason to jump up and down, raise your voice or let your face break open in the biggest smile of all time. The other day I discovered that Anna’s preschool was starting back up even though we didn’t know it… I called Christy and told her Anna was going to go to school that day and Christy told Anna… what followed was a complete distortion of the phone speaker due to Anna going absolutely insane with glee at the thought of going back to school in less than an hour! On Norah’s birthday we took the girls to the movies, and most of the time I was just watching Anna’s face explode with incredulous mirth as her mind was being blown at 24 frames per second by the biggest screen she’d ever seen. On Christmas morning our house couldn’t have been any louder if a fire truck had rolled through the living room, blaring its siren; such was the merry making of my little girl.

She just gets so pumped about everything! I’ve grown to love this part of her personality so much that I try to build things up and spring them on her in such a way as to cause one of these outbursts… like when we’re going to the zoo, Christy and I will go in the girls’ room when they wake up and really slowly say, “Guess what guys?” And the girls start to giggle while Anna starts bouncing in place and says, “What… what?” (with increasing volume) So we spread the next sentence out with a pause in between each word for dramatic effect: “Today… we… are… going… to… the………” “To the what, Dad?! Today we’re going to the what?!” “To the ZOO!” And everyone bursts into raucous screams and laughter! It’s awesome, and as a dad, few things get me more pumped than seeing my girl giddy with delight.

I thought about Anna today when I was reading in Genesis 15 about Abraham. I thought about his long life full of dashed hopes and crushed dreams… I mean, a guy with a name that means ‘exalted father’ who has no kids? Come on! I thought about how it had probably been years and years… maybe even decades and decades since he had his mind blown by unexpected joy. God told him, “I am your very great reward.” But Ole’ Abe was grumpy that day and he wasn’t having any of it… he said, “What reward? What can you give me since I have no kids and will never have any kids because You didn’t give me any kids?!” It says then that God took him outside and said this: “Look up at the heavens and count the stars – if indeed you can count them… so shall your offspring be.”

The old man walked outside his tent, craned his neck and peered up into the black sky… what must a cloudless night of stars have looked like 4,000 years before the industrial revolution? What was it like to stare up into thousands upon thousands; no, hundreds of thousands of shining beacons of bright in the middle of the dark knowing that they were there for you? I don’t know, but I bet you anything he didn’t stand there for too long. I bet he laid down on his back in the grass and just watched, counted and laughed. Somewhere in that night of stargazing, faith was born, and I bet it was that super excited faith of a child. It says that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. That night God blew his mind… the plans God had for him were so outrageously bigger than anything Abe would have ever dared hope for that it made him giddy and full of faith. Here at the beginning of a new year, I hope you’re ready for God to blow your mind. The stuff He has planned for you is so much bigger, so much cooler and more amazing than you could ever invent or ask for. Get ready.