I’ve had a few projects sitting around for a few months that I am working on this week trying to finish up. Here is one that is nearing completion. There are a few main things that still need to be accomplished, but I am confident that it will be done this week.
Also, this week.
Right now I am sitting in my favorite local coffeeshop for what may be one of the last times. I used to work at this coffeeshop and open up on Monday mornings at 5am. Granted, at the time I needed the extra money to provide for my family, but I still enjoyed the people, all the free coffee I could drink (when you open the store by baking pastries at 5am you need that coffee) and the employee discount. I even ended up building the website for them (for which I apparently got a lifetime employee discount which I only employ occasionally).
Today, I am just enjoying the quiet while I write and think a little bit. The next few weeks are going to be a radical shift for my family and I. I’ve never done a long-distance move before. I’ve contemplated it when I interviewed at churches in Lake Havasu, AZ and Kalispell, MT & sent a resume out to Juneau, AK. As you can tell probably, Becca & I are really excited about the move.
There is a bittersweet part of moving in all of it too. We had gotten pretty close to our church family at Narrow Road Community Church. I mean, they knew we were looking for where God would take us since we first started attending there. I had mentioned it in prayer enough while I was frustrated with the job search (which was often). They knew also that it was wearing on us considering Becca being pregnant and also the primary provider for our family financially. But we love these people. We had gotten involved in numerous ways (not as much as we wanted even) and really felt loved. They have in many ways become family to us.
I know there are problems in every church, but being at Narrow Road Community Church has been one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with a church… warts and all. We have been blessed beyond measure, prayed for, lifted up emotionally & spiritually and invested into while being a part of the family there. There’s been way more opportunity to get connected with the church family that I’ve never been able to take advantage of. More ways to serve than you could shake a stick at. I can honestly say that no one in that church feels like they are left out feeling that they don’t know how they can get involved. If they do, it’s their own fault. Now I know not every church is destined to be a mega-church. I had never understood that till I came to Narrow Road. Some churches are meant to be small. Small is what they do best. A congregation can be cared for adequately. People can grow together in ways they just can’t in a big church. The pastors (both of them) excite in me a passion for preaching the Word, really caring about people, and just being around them you know you are loved and cared for yourself. I don’t know if Narrow Road is destined to be a large church, but I can say they do small really well and I think they would do large well too.
I am not belittling the lessons I’ve learned elsewhere before coming to Narrow Road as a burned out (probably mostly my own fault) recent Associate Pastor from another local church, but here is where I’ve been re-ignited, reforged, and set aflame with passion again. Narrow Road has been a refuge for me and a place of renewing for both Becca & I. I hope in the future I can maintain the relationships I’ve found at Narrow Road and bridges can be built in the Kingdom of God for God’s Word to be spread all the more because of it.
Here’s the link to the article via the local newspaper – link.
My grandfather died this last week. The funeral is on Wednesday. But I want to take a moment and share his obituary with you.
NEWARK: A graveside service for Jesse Dale Morton will be held 11:00 a.m. Wednesday at Newark Memorial Gardens with Pastor Les Crossfield presiding. Licking County Veterans Alliance will render military honors. A gathering of relatives and friends will be one hour prior to service time, beginning at 10:00 a.m. at Brucker-Kishler Funeral Home, 985 North 21st Street, Newark. A procession to the cemetery will form at the funeral home.
Mr. Morton, a retired computer programmer for the Newark Air Force Base, passed away June 26, 2010 at Flint Ridge Nursing Center at the age of 87. He was born August 26, 1922 in Uhrichsville, Ohio, the son of the late Willard R. and Ruth (Utterback) Morton. Jesse married Janis Avril Holcomb on January 13, 1943. He served in the U.S. Army during WWII. Jesse attended Wesleyan Community Church.
Mr. Morton is survived by his loving wife of 67 years, Janis Morton; three sons, Gary (Nancy) Morton of Heath, Willard (Beverly) Morton of Heath and Marvin (Rose) Morton of Clarksville, TN; two daughters, Sheryl (Robert) Williams of Newark and Linda (Bill) Lehman of Buckeye Lake; a sister, Louise Thompson of Uhrichsville; 11 grandchildren; and six great grandchildren.
In addition to his parents; Jesse was preceded in death by his brother, Faye.
To sign an online guest book, please visit www.brucker-kishler funeralhome.com and click obituaries/view full details/add memorial guest book entry.
Did you catch it? If you didn’t, the title of this post certainly should have clued you in. My grandfather and grandmother were married for 67 years! Another tidbit to the story is that when they got married, they married the day before my grandfather was shipped off to war. In today’s age, I am proud of this. It’s a testament to commitment, love… and those vows that are so often uselessly repeated each day by people supposedly in love with each other. I wish this kind of love and commitment every time I go to a wedding.
Here is a man who kept his word, A man I am proud to say was my grandfather. Not because he was rich or powerful or famous, but because he demonstrated with his life something I wish more people would “get” today, the value of commitment & keeping your word.
Above is the graphic I put together for this coming Sunday at Narrow Road Community Church. It’s mainly what I’ve been working on this afternoon. This morning I had the site down for a little bit as I did some database work finalizing the changes from the old domain name to the new domain name. Old images with the old url were not showing up because the urls were embedded in the content. I finally figured it out and got the site running again, but it was a bit of a frustrating process to figure out.
But if you aren’t doing anything on Sunday and you live in the area, we’d love to have you join us. Check out the post on the church website for more info.
We’ve been able to get out of town for a few days this week. It’s been a welcome change. Besides it’s nice to see family we haven’t seen for awhile.
Keep our family in prayer over the next few weeks. I am waiting to hear about a potential job with a church. I won’t say where or anything yet, but in my opinion, it looks like a promising opportunity.
More than anything though, is that we are where God wants us to be. Right now we are really enjoying the church we are at right now. They have been a great family of people we’ve come to love. With a growing family and all, it is time to find something full-time for me again. Hopefully, it is doing what I love to do in ministry and what God wants me to do. In this, the prayer is for God’s guidance to lead us where He wants us.
There is change in the air around our home as of late. New baby on the way. It’s pretty outside. There has also been trouble with customers regarding web payments for hosting. Extended family problems that have gone unchecked for years have sprung up with raging viciousness. I even got threatened in my own home this last week by one of these family members. In short things are changing.
As a result of the changing, we are become less bound up in living where we are geographically too. We need this impending change. Spiritually. Physically. Emotionally. But let me be clear, it’s not because problems have been stirred to the surface. It’s because it needs to happen.
You have to take the good with the bad and trust that somehow God is moving despite it all to accomplish His will.
Aidan had his 15 month checkup today. He got a few shots. My wife was berated by the doctor as Aidan didn’t fit their growth chart. He’s a bit small for his age and doesn’t weigh what they want him to weigh. Both Becca and I were small kids when we were little. It’s just our family. But apparently they think he isn’t fitting the growth chart for weight & that he’s too little and we must be starving him. Aidan eats pretty much from Sun-up to sun-down. Breakfast, milk, snacks, lunch, milk, snacks, dinner, more milk (maybe a juice or two) then more snacks. He could eat half a loaf of bread if I gave it to him one at a time. He has before. (I wasn’t trying to feed him half the loaf, but I absentmindedly just kept giving him pieces of bread and before I knew it half the loaf was gone. I cut him off after that.) But, he has a pretty fast metabolism for a little guy. Now, I will also say that he works a lot of it off through playing in his room too. He was early walking and early sitting up and rolling over when he was really young, so we decided early on that his room needed to be “romp ready” so he could play in there on his own.
After Becca got home from the doctor’s visit today with Aidan. I hunted down all the pictures of Aidan that I have on my computer. 886 images that show Aidan’s face. Shown Below.
Picasa has a nice little feature that allows you to categorize photos with faces so it found all the images of Aidan’s face and I went through and verified the ones the program had trouble with. I noticed that Picasa made all the images portrait shots of just his face for the categorization so I decided that I would try something else.
Picasa has a collage feature that allows you to effectively make digital double exposures. I decided that it might be fun to get an “average” of all the pictures of Aidan that I had on my computer. He’s grown a lot over the last year (he is after all 15 months old) and see what the “average Aidan” looked like. The final image originally was a little muted, so I used the “I’m feeling lucky” button to give the image more dynamic range. I thought it looked a little like a Rembrandt painting myself.
So take that, doctors who think Aidan has to measure up to some growth chart! He may not be average according to the chart, but he is average for himself. This makes him uniquely himself too.
I saw this video the other day and I thought it was wonderful. You may also recognize the guy who plays in the tv show “Bones”. But what I liked about the video was the message. We have an opportunity to “validate” and encourage others. So often we miss out on the chance to do so.
found via shallowfrozenwater (awesome find by the way)
My wife made an interesting observation today. I write like I am working on some kind of cumulative research project meticulously gathering data and facts ultimately working toward the encyclopedia entry for who I am as a person. She didn’t quite say it in so many words but that’s the way I heard it. I think I initially wanted to argue otherwise and defend it. I have come to the conclusion that she was correct in her assessment. The whole conversation revolved around my frustration that so many other people that I have helped blog and coached somewhere along the way were succeeding where I was failing. I can write day in and out, but actually saying something that is particular to me has become a chore. I felt over the last year or two that I’ve been having some kind of extended out of body experience objectively qualifying everything I write with the filter of bland factual analysis.
I am trying a different tack. Yes, the sharp pointy things that you used to put on your teacher’s chair but now you would probably get expelled from school for doing because in our culture you were trying to kill the teacher with tetanus instead of a mere tack. Tact. Yeah that word too.
A simple journal. This is a deliberate effort to be more real. Be more myself. Something like that. I think the other voice was me too, but it was a critical, self-absorbed version of myself trying to shoot myself with the same gun I was trying to aim. Maybe it’s all a bad analogy… maybe I should just shut up my critical self and write more?