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Updates
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@BrookeGooch shhh, I can hear you all the way over here!
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@petalandbean sweet. I'll do that. been wondering where your new shop was.
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@petalandbean thanks bro.
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PS. I made a new Freind today. Her name is Picaboo Street, ya know, the Olympic gold medal winning skier... she's super nice.
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just got home from whirlwind work trip to Denver...freaking exhausted. so glad to be crawling into my bed.
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@jayridenour me that's who!
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fascinating evening.
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@BreckWeddings @petalandbean sweet. I'll send you something when I get back to Breck!
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I may have found the Denver equivalent to the Franklin Mortgage & investment Co.
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I'm all geeked out from driving around the city...
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Went from a city with one of the highest murder rates in the country to this... http://t.co/8OB84JwW
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i could really go for a coca-cola...
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@JesusNeedsNewPR I've had plenty in my home-groups over the years…
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@anniemal sorry, I couldn't help myself. 12 years writing that stuff does bad things to the brain. glad to be free. :)
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@PastorMark so is the @JesusNeedsNewPR article/posts a cause for introspection?
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@jesusneedsnewpr "whole" i was ok with the WHOLE andrew things… stupid fat fingers.
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@JesusNeedsNewPR PS. I was ok with the shoe andrew thing until you go to the "letter" bad form in my opinion. hopefully they can see this.
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@JesusNeedsNewPR so, when does that next book drop?
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@JesusNeedsNewPR PS. I like the disnelyland AD at the bottom of the sexual immorality post… :)
Posts
I’m 37. In a few months I will be 38.
Looking back at life over my 30’s life has changed in vast ways. For some reason I’ve been thinking about my 29th birthday. We still had no child, we still lived in Detroit, and we were on the verge of some really big stuff that we had no idea was coming.
I remember the card my wife gave me for my 29th birthday. It was a card she made. She cut the numbers 2 and 9 out of orange paper that had the texture of a basketball, then glued them to a piece of folded card stock. I also remember that she bought me a game boy advance for that 29th birthday, and I had to wrestle it free from it’s evil molded plastic packaging. I was also about 40 pounds fatter than I am right now, but that’s off topic. Now that I am sort of looking back down the road since the big 3-0. Life came crashing into us. I wonder if the thirties are like this for everybody. Joy, hope, turmoil, community, despair, fear, redemption, restoration these are all adjectives that are descriptors of the last (almost) 8 years of our lives.I mean really amazing crazy life just seemed to materialize.
We moved to Philadelphia about 3 weeks before I turned 30. I have watched my baby become a little girl. My marriage (of 7 years at the time) nearly collapsed. We discovered deep meaningful and engaging friendships. My faith became real to me. I got hit by a car (which resulted in 4 new teeth, a broken nose, elbow, and shoulder). My Marriage was restored. We lost a baby to miscarriage. I found out that walking with Jesus is not a campy, happy existence, and that figuring out this journey of being a real person and trying to be someone who wants to follow Jesus is complicated. I’ve had to deal with real life regarding finances, health issues, family problems etc. I’m not saying that I have been dealt a bum deal...don’t take that away from this. I’m just saying that I’ve had to engage in life experiences that I wasn’t expecting. Some have been amazing and life giving. Some have been scary shit that nothing can prepare you for, and they have all transpired since I turned 30. Things that simply in my 20’s never even occurred to me that I would ever have to deal with.
And now
I sit, poised to make another giant move forward in life, not knowing what to expect. Just as I have settled into loving where am, and who I am, and who I am riding this journey with, here we go kicking it up another notch. Forty is just around the corner. I’m not overly concerned about being forty or turning forty, but I wonder what that decade is going to bring with it. It’s going to bring adolescence into our home, and climax with a high school graduation. Wow. To think...just a decade ago we had no kid, but a decade from now she will be graduating from high school. But what else?
I do know this without question.
God brought us here with purpose. We were supposed to be in Philadelphia to weather the storms and breath new life. I have no doubt in my mind. Jesus drew us to the place where we belonged. So where He’s taking me, is where I want to be.
The wind is kicking up outside my window. It is supposed to pour tonight and all day tomorrow. I am wrapped up in my bed with a blanket nice and warm...thinking about the storm coming our way...and for the goodness it will will bring in it’s wake.
The word for 2010 was proactive.
Proactive was a good word for 2010. Birthed out of a need to stop sitting, waiting, watching, and procrastinating but to begin doing. As far as I am concerned, it was a pretty successful venture.
I was not the most amazing productive individual in the world, but…
- I did stop leaving my underwear on the bathroom floor and walking past pieces of junk mail and old receipts left on the kitchen table.
- I deliberately spent more time with friends and enjoying time in conversation.
- I started to lead the third incarnation of a house-church/life group/home- group in our home each week.
- I had 2 friends from college fly into Philly for a complete weekend of 36 year old boy ridiculousness (the beginnings of a yearly boys trip).
- I started to work on creating a photography project, but lost momentum and let it die (you can’t succeed without learning how to fail right?).
- I even took the bolt bus to Manhattan and met up with John Charles Ridenour the Third. We surprised a friend of ours who lives in Brooklyn, before taking in a taping of Letterman.
All in all, not a bad run. (there’s one more little “proactive” thing from 2010 that’s a pretty good one. I Just can’t bring it up here….yet)
Now 2010 was the first year of my “Word of the Year”. So this is still an experimental process, and we are not going to abandon Proactive for 2011, but keep it in play, and build on it.
The selection for this year is:
Present.
Not as in “will you please buy me a present?” but…Present. Engaged. Fully involved in life.
I tend to spend a lot of time fantasizing about idyllic scenarios and day dreaming about a life designed around my ultimate comfort (not that there is anything wrong with wanting to be content). It’s time to stop living in the little fantasy in my head and engage. Life requires work, commitment, perseverance, and presence. I have to stop letting the fantasy get in the way of my reality.
Present. Here. Now. That’s the goal this year. Along with keeping proactive.
So if I can succeed at being proactive and present in my marriage, with my daughter, in my job…I think I will generally have a better mind-set about life. Again, just like last year, we’ll see how this goes. It may be life altering, it may be a complete waste of time.
Ultimately, what I hope to get out of this is: To be a better father, better husband, better provider, better worker, better son, and better friend.
I guess ultimately to be a better human.
Just in case you were wondering, other words that were in contention are below.
expectation
imagination
drive/n
motivated
follow-through
engage
Hello posterous. I like your style. maybe we can hang out for a little while.
