Spectacular Weekend

Overall, this has turned out to be one of the best weekends I've had in a long time.

After doing some much needed yard work and front yard maintenence (including washing, sanding, restaining a bench), I was looking forward to this weekend...

Our band's playout experience Saturday at Point Mallard turned out to be a lot of fun. Fun in spite of 93 degree sweltering heat, sound issues, and low crowd attendance (high heat doesn't attract large crowds to outdoor events). Fun in spite of this nagging feeling that I was about to pass out from heat exhaustion near the end of the show...

Afterwards we met up at Market Street Deli (formerly Jemison's, on the river)... GREAT food and a good time to sit down and relax after the show and all the moving around of our equipment. Drove back to Point Mallard afterwards in an attempt to let Kailyn see some of the balloons, but a freak summer thunderstorm squashed that idea. Fortunately, it wasn't raining on our side of town, so we were able to hook up with Kenny and some of the 'youths' for a pool party at the Andersons.

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This morning, we kept the music acoustic...just Jack, Kyle, and myself on acoustic guitars...Stacey on vocals, and Will making his Sunday morning debut on djembe. Whee!

The real fun picked up this evening as we went to Will's family's farm in Hartselle, where we fired off some rounds of various guns in the middle of a cow pasture. Believe me, that's more fun than it sounds. 9mms.... .45s... a .44 Magnum... an SKS, a mini-14... Ballistic goodness. Stacey fired a gun for the first time in her life. I'm pretty proud of her turning her fear of guns into a very healthy respect for them today.

Afterwards, we went back to Will/Helen's house for some Pizza (woohoo! Pizza Hut in Hartselle carries BBQ pizza!). Played some guitar (Will has this old Guild D5 which is very close the the Guild D4 I used to have which was inadvertantly destroyed by a girl in my youth group 8 years ago).

Will discovered a cave (yes, a cave) in his backyard recently. Tonight, we spontaneously decided to check it out. Matt, Will, and I (with only one flashlight) trudged through a field of poison oak, scaled down the embankment, and followed Matt's lead into the cave. The main entrance area made for a good size room (complete with a bat flying around)...but the real attraction is this hole in the ground in this room that may or may not go down a good ways. Will may get a friend of his who's all into spelunking out there to check it out.

My only wish is that I'd had shoes better than Birkenstocks tonight for hiking and exploring a cave. Heh.

Man, so much to report... This barely seems to tap the surface of describing how much fun this weekend's been so far.

Aging rapidly

This is one of those weeks that should've been easy and laid back, but hasn't been... Too much going on in our world, in spite of our efforts to keep it simple...

- Spent a good part of my Wednesday at the Nissan dealership while they replaced (for free) a scratched up plastic grill bezel on our new Xterra. Normally, that's an easy thing...but having 2 kids (one of which you have to carry) makes that an adventure. Throw in Kailyn's falling down and scratching up her knee in the parking lot, and a simple outing turns into a lot of drama. Whee. She cried and screamed so much you'd think her whole leg had come off...all for a small scrape that hardly bled at all. Sometimes, this parenthood thing gets to me at moments like this.

- Kailyn's day was just beginning, though. Without going into the fun details, Kailyn developed a UTI (urinary tract infection) later in the day. Stacey took her to the ER (at about 10:00 p.m.) while I watched Zachary. Unfortunately, the wait was longer than our last visit and Stacey didn't get to come home until after 1:00 a.m. It was worth the trip, though, as the antibiotic they gave Kailyn made her feel much better overnight.

- On a funny side note, while Stacey was waiting there, I told her (via cell phone) that she should call Allison and find out how long the average wait is there, since Allison seems to always be in there with one of her kids. Stacey calls me back a little while later to tell me, "Guess what...Allison and her son just came out...they'd been here about an hour already." Heh. I can laugh, since her son was okay (just a bruised noggin).

- My family's coming in town this weekend. Having free babysitting, I was hoping to go camping tonight, but there's a potential for some thunderstorms and the cool weather we've been enjoying might be on the way out. So...crap! We'll see, but it's not looking all that good...

- Kyle's got a girlfriend, he's building a house... Is the apocalypse next?

Equal misrepresentation

Why does Pat Robertson even attempt to speak with his mouth open? He opens his mouth, something stupid comes out. It's like he has some complicated version of Turret's Syndrome that only allows him to say utterly foolish, divisive, politically perverted things.

In the past? Let's assassinate someone (Chavez of Venezeula). Good "Christian" call there, bonehead... Politicizing your Christianity is bad enough...but then calling for the assassination of someone...where do you find that way of thinking in your call to ministry?

Today, he's announced that a tsunami or great, disastrous storm will hit the U.S. sometime this year. Okay, maybe it's possible. Tsunamis happen. And Katrina happened (he does know the U.S. already has been hit by a major disastrous storm, right?). First off, the guy's already lost so much respect with his boob comments, it's like Chicken Little screaming the sky is falling. Second, disasters are always possible. Third, doomsday predictions like this seem like wild tangents (to me, anyway) that have little to do with the message Christians should be focused on proclaiming. Fourth...WHY is this frontpage news on msn.com?

Here's my biggest problem with the Pat Robertsons of the world. He's a very public 'Christian,' who has confused his faith with politics. I won't say politics aren't important, but I will say that too often Christians create a picture of our faith where Christ is nothing but a caricature of people's own conservative, even Republican beliefs and ideals. The Christ of pop-conservative Christian culture often looks more like Ronald Reagan than the Jesus of the Bible.

It's not just Pat Robertson. It's the very community I live in. It's pastors who get up and tell their consituents to vote Republican at every election, as if Democrats are somehow Satan's political preference. It's every Christian who scoffs at the seemingly directionless teenagers who hang around Books-A-Million rather than dare to connect with them. It's the Christians who would hang around the same store and protest every Harry Potter book that's released. It's Christians who've taken hatred of sin so far as to hate the very sinners we're supposed to be loving and reaching with a message of hope. It's the pastor who puts up a sign in front of his church that says "Turn or burn." It's the Christians who justified hatred and racism in the 60s with obscure, out-of-context bible references. It's the Christians who have stronger convictions about limiting alcohol sales on Sunday than they do about things like forgiveness, evangelism, and overcoming their own judgmentalism.

Yet these guys are the loudest voices out there. They are the reason Christianity is treated with such disrespect. We've made many enemies through our perverted version of Christianity, yet only deal with that by hiding behind a faulty martyr complex and simply write that rejection off as some sort of persecution that just comes "with" the price of being a Christian. Foolishly, we never look at ourselves and think that maybe the problem is with us. That our intepretation might be off. That we truly don't know who this person "Jesus" in Scripture really is.

Not ever knowing what we believe for ourselves, we blindly let others guide us. The power of the 'cult of personality' behind some of the leaders we turn to (like Pat Robertson) is scary. There's a fame and power they flaunt that Jesus sought to avoid. Jesus didn't want his message and his mission confused. When his disciples wanted to carry the banner that he was the "Messiah," Jesus silenced them...I believe because he didn't want the weight of people's expectations of that title to confuse what he was there to do. Israel's interpretation of the messianic hope was "waiting for a king" (a poltical figure). Jesus is much more than that...and he didn't want his role to be misrepresented...

Misrepresentation...makes the work of evangelism all that much harder. It's why so many people are not looking to Christ for answers anymore...and finding more acceptance and depth in Buddhism and philosophical pursuit. Why would anyone want to cling to a faith where we all bow down before a polticized Jesus who is portrayed as a prudish 'shunner' of the world rather than its Savior?

There are many "Christians" out there loudly professing this psuedo-Republican, middle class, Bible Belt Jesus...the noise has become deafening. How much more important today than ever before is it that genuine Christ-followers stand up and make sure that the real voice of Jesus' love for people is even louder.

You might think it's boogers, but it's snot...

I hate allergies. Stacey and I both woke up this morning with dried, itchy eyes and a lot of sinus congestion. Congestion for her usually leads to a headache later in the day. Her eyes were so bloodshot, you'd think she hadn't slept at all.

Though J-mo has this theory that our cats are the culprit (and I have no doubt they contribute greatly), it's the pollen that finally causes us to break down into a long list of allergy symptoms. Always has been that way for me (cats or no cats). With all the rain we're having lately, I'd like to think the pollen would get rinsed away, but alas... It's been a long enough 2006 already for sinus-related issues. Enough, already...

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We were bums and skipped small group last night. With my family coming into town this weekend, we decided to use last night and tonight to get the house ready for their arrival. A lot to do...mostly just laundry and vacuuming, though there's always the mystery 'piles' of odds and ends that seems to wind up on our counters/tables. The pile I'm looking at on my dresser right now is made up of about 10 CDs, a roll of fresh (unused...heh) toilet paper, a flashlight, a "Joey" menu from Outback Steakhouse, a pair of sunglasses and an empty can of Sunkist. And that's just the dresser. Don't ask me what's all in the mystery 'stack' of hobby stamps/scrapbooking stuff is that's leaning like the tower of Pisa on the chest of drawers.

Anyway, time to get going...now if I could only find some allergy medicine in the pile on my nightstand...

Falling down the stairs

Zachary fell down the stairs two nights ago. It was a pretty scary experience to hear the "ga-dunk ga-dunk" noise of a 1-year-old tumbling like that and not being able to get to him in time to stop the fall. Baby gates do little when they're not put up. It just surprised us how quickly he got to the edge of the stairs.

Fortunately, he was all right. Had a little busted upper lip, but he quickly resumed his normal habit of crawling at light speed...and we made sure the baby gate was in place to avoid future mishaps.

If falling down the stairs is the worst thing that happens to him, then great. But I know that won't be the case. It's a rough world out there, and he's barely begun to grow into it. I hate that the innocence of childhood is something we lose as we grow up.

When we're children, our drama is usually limited to fixing 'boo-boos', wondering why summers go by so fast before school starts again, and trying not to get too bored as we sit through adult things like "shopping for clothes" or something like that. I'd gladly exchange the drama of my life for that kind of drama.

As adults, there's way too much drama in our lives. We're living, breathing, walking, talking soap operas. Our lives are confounded by work issues, health issues, friendship issues, financial issues, spiritual issues, control issues, and emotional issues. And in facing the reality of these issues, we're either too thin-skinned or too thick-skinned. Left to our own devices, we suck at dealing with drama.

We suck at communication. We talk too much or talk too little. We think too much or think too little. We love ourselves too much and others too little. We can be overly protective or overly vulnerable. We can act too quickly or be too indecisive. We can be too controlling or too out of control. We can love others, but even our love for others can often be self-serving. Too much depression, not enough joy. Too much chaos, not enough peace. Too much criticism, not enough grace. Too much debate, not enough dialogue. Too much pain, not enough healing. Too much anger, not enough longsuffering. Too much "me," not enough God.

Life throws drama our way we didn't ask for. And we add to that drama with our own shortcomings and flaws. And it all collides into a big mess that only seems to get bigger and bigger over time. Ga-dunk. Ga-dunk. And it hurts. Bad, sometimes.

Life should not be so freakin' complicated.

If things go wrong, we ought to be able to work things out. This may sound simplistic and unrealistic, but - as Christians - it may only sound that way because we seldom really try to live this way. Emotional crises could be handled by not getting to worked up over things...and getting help when that doesn't work. Financial crises could be handled by managing things like our debt and learning to give up the things that lead to the crisis. Health crises could be dealt with by having faith in the life to come after death. Spiritual crises...same thing...know when to wrestle with our doubt and when to understand that real faith is believing amidst doubt. Friendship crises...talk things out...no mind games, no bitterness...forgiveness and grace. Work issues...sure, it'd be great if jobs were more satisfying for most people, but even the worst jobs help bring home a paycheck.

Is it a matter of perspective? Partly. It's having a Christ-induced optimism that ought to come with knowing there's real hope in all things. Not a blind allegiance to some utopianistic and imaginary vision of a world where everyone smiles a big, cheesy smile and begins sentences with "Joy and peace to you brother..." But a genuine acknowledgement that there's still hope in spite of the very real issues in our lives. Maybe if we did that, our lives would be filled with less drama...less tension...less doubt...less anger...less fear... We'd learn to at least 'let go' of the things that we can that knock us down the stairs...

But it's also a matter of choice. When something goes wrong, I choose how I respond. And I can either add to the drama by responding incorrectly, or I can respond to life's issues in such a way that lessens the impact.

I think God understands this about our lives when he says things like, "A kind word turns away wrath." If someone comes at me with 'wrath' - deep anger, every bone in my body wants to respond in kind. And an escalaton occurs. Our wrath combines exponentially, then things are out of control. Chaos ensues...and the moment becomes a huge issue in our lives. Maybe even one that haunts us and even reinforces a pattern of behavior that will make the next similar moment is even more intense.

But a "kind" word could've lessened the impact. A Christ-like response - a choice - could calm the chaos...even if just a bit.

It just amazes me that when issues get thrown at us, we know how we ought to respond, but get so caught up in our own intense feelings and attitudes, that we throw that Christ-like response out the window. And the drama of our lives intensifies. Ga-dunk. Ga-dunk.

Life should not be so freakin' complicated.

I choose to uncomplicate my life. I can't pretend there aren't issues that will impact me. Certainly not. I've struggled with depression, debt, marital issues, friendship breakdowns, work issues, etc., etc. They can and do and will happen. But I can uncomplicate them by trying to figure out how to choose to live a life governed by loving God and others...and letting that love and faith dictate my responses to everything.

The alternative is sheer chaos.

Filed under things that are 'messed up'

- Recently, Comedy Central censored an episode of South Park that depicted Mohammed, but would've allowed an image of Jesus urinating on the American flag. I guess terrorism does earn you respect, since Comedy Central obviously isn't balanced on whom they're afraid to offend. I certainly don't want to see an image of Jesus urinating on a flag, but if you're going to censor one, censor both, or neither. Be consistent at least...

- A elementary school student who - while on his way to school - realizes he accidentally carried a pocket knife in his jacket pocket bypasses his locker and his first class to head straight to the principal's office and turn the knife over to the principal. In spite of his good intentions, he's suspended under the school's zero-tolerance policy. He should've just kept the knife hidden in his pocket all day.

- Vending companies signed a deal today that virtually remove all non-diet drinks from schools (only high schools would be sold non-diet sodas). This is all made possible by a 'deal' between the major beverage makers (Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc...) and anti-obesity political advocates (Bill Clinton, for one). Okay, no one wants to be fat, and children should be taught to eat right, but shouldn't they be given the freedom to choose for themselves? We're not talking beer or drugs or weapons...just soda.
Don't get me started on the same health nuts making turned Sesame Street's Cookie Monster into "Veggie Monster."

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This is just a small list of crap I've read in the news lately...

Anyone else feel like politicians are slowly pecking away at our freedom? Anyone else see politicians feeling it's their responsibility to tell parents how to raise their kids? Anyone else see parents preferring government standards than to take responsibility for their own child? Hilary Clinton wants to ban all violent video games. Wouldn't it make more sense if parents just didn't buy the games for the kids, so that the adults the games are intended for would be the only ones purchasing them?

I gotta admit, the government isn't taking our freedom away...we're handing it to them on a silver platter....

A zero-tolerance policy gets an innocent kid expelled over a pocket knife. But illegal aliens - who are here ILLEGALLY - are allowed to demonstrate in the streets protesting the current administration's effort to deal with their illegal presence. (Wait...don't you have to be a citizen to be guaranteed first amendment constitutional rights to gather in peaceful assembly anyway?). Don't get me wrong, there's not a thing in the world wrong with people immigrating to the U.S. Many of these people are hard workers, good people, and an asset to our nation. And I've been to Mexico (not tourist Mexico, but areas where people live in shacks along railroad tracks...where government is corrupt), so I know why people are desperate to leave. But such a large influx of people coming here illegally is both a threat to our economy and our security. But let's reserve zero tolerance to the kid with the pocket knife...

It's amazing (and a bit horrifying) what we will tolerate nowadays...and what we won't.

-rant complete-

Whoa, Nelly!

It's already May. No wonder I'm starting to feel so old sometimes - because time just seems to go by faster. As a kid, I remember thinking how long a year was....how summers seemed to go on forever...how a day at school could seem like an eternity. As an adult, it seems that years go by like months. Weeks like days. You get the idea.

My son will be a year old on the 11th. That, above anything else, is the most amazing description of how time flies. Seems like just yesterday I was posting about his birth.

But anyway...

Cramming my schedule full of activity isn't helping things slow down. Spent last week in 3 separate band rehearsals, editing video, and car shopping. Whee! Though Saturday was slow (thank God, in hindsight), Sunday was a long day. Got to church at 8:00, did the whole play in the band thing (probably the only church in Decatur playing John Mayer's version of "I Got a Woman" during church), then stayed after while the drama team shot a video for church a couple of weeks from now. Thanks to Kyle for shooting the video (amazing how much better a video turns out using a $3500 camera and an experienced videographer vs. me and my $300 Samsung...heh). After that was done, I took a 1-hour break at home, then went back to church to help Kenny out with the youth program. After that, a trip to "Barrel of Crackers" was in order (mmm...French toast, bacon, eggs...)...

Now it's Monday, and the circus is starting all over again. What I won't complain about, however, is being busy. It's nice to be doing things than to be doing zilch.