Life sans Wife

Every semester in college you have the one week affectionately known as "hell week," "miracle week," or "suicide week" depending on the institution, in which every paper you have ever had assigned to you is due. Somehow you do end up getting through it, hand in your work and then forget that the week ever happened, and vow to get further ahead the next semester so that semester's hell week will not be so crazy. Believe it or not, being away from hell week for a few years now, I sort of miss it. I miss the rush, the testing your limits, the complete closure of the whole thing. Perhaps its the misplaced nostalgia, or the lack of memory, or the plain ignorance on my part, but this week for me is the married with children equivalent of hell week. My wife has fled the state for a week to go to two very important weddings and we collectively decided that I should watch all the children while she is gone. We are about six hours into that decision and there is a small nagging voice in the back of my head saying, "Oops."
I have approached this week like an end to semester, to be as prepared as possible I sat down and figured out a schedule of activities, a menu, even when the Brewers are on the radio, so I have a plan. Just like in hell week though, I know this plan is doomed to failure. I won't do everything on the list, I'll forget something really important (like laundry or sunscreen) and in the end I will have a sense of completion. After all, hell week is never perfect, you never write the paper you really wanted to, you never ace the test the way you thought you might, but when the week is over you can't help but feel like you've accomplished something. Next Thursday at around this time, I will be precious few hours from finishing out the week and will no doubt be tired, drained, longing for my wife and overall just plain spent, but for now, "Bring it on."
A couple of other unrelated thoughts, congrats to the Mighty Ducks (I hate that name by the way). A classic example of a talented team who just put the pieces together at the right time. Really good effort in net, leaving the Sens hurting. The series was very fast and very watchable. Apparently watchable does not equal watched however.
Great line in Pirates of the Carribean Three that sort of reminded me of the famous Jim Elliot quote, (spoiler alert) "Ten years for one day seems like a heavy price to pay." "It depends on the one day." Really good line that also gets to the heart of Samuel Wells point, "Faithfulness is but effectiveness measured against a much longer timescale." Also why eschatology is so crucial to proper theology and Christian living.

Potpuri

Several things:
1. While I am pleased that the NBA is still dead to me (perhaps mostly dead) I am also pleased to announce that the two teams I picked at the beginning of the playoffs are the two left. I thought it would take the Cavs seven games to beat an aging, fractured shell of a team, and I thought that team would be Miami, but whatever. My pre-playoff prediction was the Spurs in 6 which does not look too bad, though the series could go much quicker than that.
2. Page 2's Mike Philbrick has put together one of the funniest things you may ever see with his ultimate sports movie commencement address. The address itself is funny, but the idea is brilliant.
3. While at Burger King the other night, Josh and I began talking about happy meals, and why we weren't getting any. Once in a while the kids get happy meals and get really excited about it, and sometimes the toys seem worth the money, but on the whole Happy meals just seem wrong somehow. My whole family, sans happy meals, was able to eat for $9.42, or less than $2 a person. This lead us to ask, why is it our other fast food trips are usually in the $12-17 range (for example, earlier that same day we ate at Chick File for a whopping $23.08), and the answer is usually that we are not careful in how we order or what we waste. While I am willing to concede right off the top that the best alternative would be to give up fast food entirely (this is a no brainer, but also a no happener), we have begun to discuss how we might eat more faithfully on the rarer occassions we do eat out. This birthed the idea of restraining from happy meals to raise money for missions. By ordering meals a bit differently, being willing to share fries and drinks, and not buying happy meals, we realized we can save almost $2-5 every time we eat out. The more careful approach to ordering and eating allows us to help stunt some of the consumerism involved in fast food, train them to say no to certain desires, and teaches them to share. Also, by putting the money we save back towards mission we can make a small dent in hunger around the world. Kick this idea around with friends and we'll see how it goes. Also, we could use a really cool name for the idea.

Blessings of Baptism

Today Josh, my oldest son, was baptized. He has been wanting to be batized for about six months or so, and we had sort of been putting it off to make sure he was ready, and also to make sure we were ready. It turns out that we would probably never be completely ready for what God is doing in our son, but that this is a blessing. One of the amazing things about this baptism is the way Josh has prepared for it by constantly asking questions and interpreting his world through it. He is fond of saying, "Being baptized means I will follow Jesus with my whole life," which is not the exact language of the baptismal covenant, but is pretty good for a six year old. This "new reality" that has been inbreaking in Josh has opened our whole family up to some of the ways God is using Josh as an ambassador, and challenging Abby and I to be more faithful. Whether its deciding to stay in our apartment so Josh can continue to minister to his neighborhood "friends," or giving up some dreams we have had about elementary school so Josh can continue to be saturated in the story of God's Word, God has been faithful and we have been blessed. Josh's baptism corresponded with Pentecost, the event marked by the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, and foreshadowed in the Old Testament lesson for the day by Ezekiel and the dry bones, when the words of the prophet brought life to a valley full of dead bones. Our prayer is that God will bring life from death through Josh as he continues to speak God's Word to the world. Here are some pics:


Josh gets his first Bible.

Josh about to be baptized.

Josh's baptism cake, he ordered it himself.

a new week

The start of this week feels different somehow, maybe its that I am finally pain free, that I am on a rediculous diet, that its the last week of school, or maybe its that Josh is getting batpized this Sunday. Whatever it is, I have a newfound bounce in my step and am really looking forward to what God has in store. Summer is a wierd time for youth ministers, some dive in full and have activities going constantly, while others shut down completely. At Reconciliation we have a sort of hybrid of this approach, I do a ton of relational things, Bible studies and informal stuff, and then we have the occasional programitic piece. Last summer went pretty well, but we did not take a lot of momentum into the school year, something I am hoping to rectify a bit this year as we try not to be the Dallas Mavericks of the youth ministry world. On two other big fronts this summer ought to be an exciting time of preparation. Beginnig this Fall, I am helping to lead a College worship service on the campus of St. Mary's University which has me really excited, and will force me to use my summer well. The interns I am working with rock, and the vision for unity and discipleship couldn't be closer to my heart. On another front, I am taking two classes at Regent in Vancouver over the last week of July, first week of August. This week marks the beginnig of the readings (for me at least). I always get a little giddy when I have a stack of books I am beginning to work my way through. More on these courses of study to follow as I plan to include some summaries and highlights on this blog, we'll see how well that goes. This morning I am thanking God for health, family and hope.

A couple of crap filled days

Hey all. Today, I believe is Thursday. I am not confident of this because I have been sick out of my mind the last three days. I have been in and out of the ER twice and its finally been concluded that I have some sort of intestinal infection, with all the glorious symptoms which come with intestinal infections. I noticed two things while in the ER, I am not sure they are transferrable to any of your experiences, but here goes:
1. I think doctors and nurses are trained to call patients by generic nicknames. In the last three days I was consistently referred to as, "Brother, Sweetheart, Dude, Babe, etc..." I sort of lost track.

2. On my second visit to the ER, I realized that to work in the ER you have to have to things:
a. a warped sense of humor. This makes total sense to me, because of all the trauma they see all the time, but it still makes life akward when anyone else interacts with that. Sort of like Michael Richards' character in So I Married an Axe Murderer
b. I think it is a requirement that you must look like an 80's sitcom/made for TV movie character. Never a main character, but never someone completely unfamiliar. For example one my nurses looked sort of like the mom from Family Ties, but not exactly, she would have been cast as Alex's Aunt and Merdith Baxter's sister. Also my ct scan guy looked like every "bad adult" who did things with little kids in the after school specials. I suspect he was not this way in real life. The problem with this one is that you spend your whole time in the ER trying to "place" your nurses, and when you finally do, its just not terribly satisfying.

One other note, my wife is amazing.