Also, this week.

• LookupCenter.org
• thesavageathlete.com
• landorhomes.com

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

found via shallowfrozenwater (awesome find by the way)

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?

image credit to one of the most unflattering images I’ve ever taken of myself

For me, I’d probably become some kind of wilderness recluse.  Buy a cabin in the middle of the woods and have most things delivered. Books and stuff I’d order from Amazon.com.  I’d learn about trees and roots and what to eat and what won’t kill you in the woods. Maybe even live completely off-grid and invest in some kind of alternative energy while I grew my own food.  In short, I probably wouldn’t be much help to anyone outside my own family.

Maybe it’s not just a burden that I carry of debt and having to try to supplement income every month.  Maybe it’s the blessing that through my situation (however much I dislike it) that I can be used to be a blessing to others. If I weren’t in need, it might be rather difficult for me to understand those who are in need.

• Rogin turns out to really be great with Aidan.  He loves him (as you can see in the pic above).  Apparently, it’s pretty much mutual.
• I did a bit of artwork for the church (Narrow Road Community Church) and I’m putting together their new website together now.
• I am in talks with a few people about forming a group of “wordpress engineers and designers” to start building premium wordpress themes together.
• I have started using the iphone app “Water your Body” to make sure I drink adequate water throughout the day as I have realized that I was suffering from chronic dehydration levels.
• Aidan is One as of a few weeks ago, but I think I posted about that already.
• I am still looking for a position with a church, but I am also enjoying just being a contributing member as of late.
• I’ve been playing around with the epub book format after the ipad debut earlier this week.  Hoping to find a way to integrate it on the site.  But right now, I think I am going to start writing something larger than just small posts….
• Been playing and writing some book ideas down (both nonfiction and fiction) and looking at doing some historical research on a few different ancient time periods.
• I’ve doing more artwork as of late (both digitally and with real paper)… maybe integrate artwork into the book process above.
• I am now reading around 6 books every day.  Usually one or two chapters each.  I added Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” to my list earlier this week in epub format viewable on my ipod touch.
• Praying for my friend Mark and his family.  They found out that they need to move this coming week.  He still doesn’t have a new job and they have two kids.  He’s a great guy and I’d really like to see something good happen for them soon.  They are in a bit of more desperate situation than we are right now in terms of the scramble to move quickly.
• I’ve been wanting to go running this month, but dang!  Just as it gets semi-warm to think about doing some running, it gets frigid again.  I may go ahead and get a Y membership this coming week.  At least then I can leave Aidan at their little childcare facility and go for a run without having to do it so early in the day and not in the extreme cold.  I may be more enticed to get out of the house then too.
• My wife and I will be celebrating our five year anniversary this coming month and we are excited.

I think that’s about it.  Each one of those could probably be a post by itself, but

I thought I’d share the picture above of Aidan getting ready to completely obliterate his birthday cake.

A little tune up and maybe a light dusting brings it to happy life once more.

As of late, new friends have been encouraging me to get out the ol’ git fiddle again regularly.  My friend Mark, especially.  Tonight I got another surprise.   Another new friend who I’ve played with at church a few times… well, I never really realized how good he actually was.  His name is Nathan Hiltner.  Check out his video below.  The sound and framerate are a little off, but you will get the idea.

Yesterday, I had my cousin and her family over.  I hadn’t seen her in probably 14 years or so.  She has three kids now and her husband and has lost over one hundred pounds.  It’s quite an accomplishment from the pictures she showed me.  Anyway, I wanted to take out my dog Dugal before she got here, but I didn’t get the chance.  Well, do you know how you know that you’ve been greeted by a cocker spaniel?

Yep. Pee.  All over her pants down her leg. Dugal couldn’t just pee on a shoe, no… he had to jump and squirt at the same time.  It takes talent to be a cocker spaniel.

” Hi, I know I haven’t seen you in fourteen years, so here let me let my dog pee on you.”  All was good though.  We laughed about it.  Her kids played some Halo and we got a chance to talk a little while she held Aidan (who happened to have one of those mysterious poops that you can’t see from looking at his diaper and the whole while, I kept thinking “wow, he’s really gassy today!”)

For me, it’s a day of reading and maybe writing a post or two, doing some artwork and getting back to the job search with a resolution to find something soon.  But first the reading:

Here’s the books I scored this Christmas:

• Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller (soon to be made into a movie directed by one of my favorite people, Steve Taylor)
• Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis.  One of his lesser known works that I read awhile back but never owned.
• Monster by Frank Peretti.

But, I am curious, what are you reading?  What’d you get for Christmas?  What kind of loot did you score?  You don’t have to share the whole enchilada, unless of course you got a gift card to your favorite Mexican restaurant…

]]> http://www.williamlehman.net/aidans-first-thanksgiving/feed 0 http://www.williamlehman.net/world-aids-day-my-dad http://www.williamlehman.net/world-aids-day-my-dad#comments Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:58:56 +0000 William Lehman http://www.williamlehman.net/?p=4370 Today is world AIDS day.  Not a big thing to many people.  AIDS never touches their lives.  Because to many, it’s a disease that is spread among homosexuals, people in Africa and people who live wild lifestyles.

My dad has AIDS.  He’s not a homosexual.  He’s not a wild and crazy sex addict.  He doesn’t live in Africa somewhere.  He’s a regular guy just like you and me.

I don’t usually broadcast it out or make a big deal about it, but this disease has affected my life too.  It isn’t just some random disease to me.  He’s lived with full-blown AIDS since 1994.

I’ve been by the bedside while I watched someone I love battle the various illnesses that come as a result of a poor immune system.  I’ve seen the reactions that people still have to people with AIDS,  the judgement & the scorn still associated with it.

AIDS is still a disease that has touched millions in our day and age.  In the next decade you will know at least a few people who have AIDS.  In fact you already may and maybe you don’t even know it.  In fact, they might not even know it yet either.

The image included is my dad with his grandson (my son) Aidan.

I built this little farm firehouse for Aidan (so he could tear it down).  I wanted to use all his blocks and make something large enough to continue to draw his interest.  I couldn’t duplicate it if I tried.  He was goofing off in his swing while I worked on it.  Then I gave him free reign to do with it as he wanted.  It took me about 15 minutes to build it and it took him 5 to tear it down.  Like Godzilla on a rampage of downtown Tokyo, Aidan left his pile of rubble and moved on to try to grab the camera out of my hands as I took pictures of the carnage.

Life is like playing blocks…. or is life playing blocks?

I am going to go for the second one.

It’s not who I want to be.  It is by nature who I have become and I dislike it.  Oh sure, I justify it through saying it’s a great way to connect to people I’d never meet in real life.  All the while, real life is going by.  When I was about five my dad and I moved to Jesus People USA.  Good place, good vision… but terrible leadership.  They lived in a commune that was self-sufficient.  They had work crews that would go out and build porches (those great big five or eight story ones) or be a part of a roofing crew.  The money from these projects would come back into the ministry and it would be used for things like food & shelter.  I was young but I have an astounding memory about my early childhood.  The homeless would come in off the streets of Chicago and we’d feed them.  Resurrection Band (or REZ) was in their heyday and Cornerstone Music festival was all the rage.  I remember kids my age coming into the ministry with no clothes and old boots that hurt their feet.  I remember my dad giving a kid a pair of my shoes because he had holes in his feet from wearing some old pair of workboots without socks.  There was a guy down the hall who had a huge mohawk and a turtle that had his address scrawled onto it’s shell with a sharpie.  It was in reality a remnant of the Jesus People movement in the 60′s and 70′s, with a distinct 80′s twist.

We were probably there for about eight months.  I started kindergarten early.  We left because there were some in the school who used more corporal means of punishment for the children.  Wooden spoons to be exact.  I wasn’t a bad kid, but if I didn’t memorize a verse for homework or spoke out of turn or something, I got the spoon.  The bruises would last a few days.  My dad saw this and decided he needed to talk to the leadership.  They didn’t see his point of view and we left.  My dad is a fan of spanking and to this day is very adamant about it, but he knows the difference between abuse and discipline.

But back to the point.  I am growing as a Christian day by day.  I have my struggles.  This idea of community keeps coming back to me.  Not the exorbitant online facades we throw up to mimic  genuine interaction and life together, but the real thing.  Not a group or a place but a reality of purpose and vision that supersedes the petty everyday Christianity we get caught up in so easily.  Today’s churches can become so centralized and self indulgent that they forget why they are there in the first place.  See Matthew 28:16-20

As I write this, I write it with clarity that I can’t just pick up and move my family out to some woodland hut and begin a new experience of community off the cuff.  I am not even sure if it’s what God wants from me right now in my life.  I do know that even if the most radical of ideas is what God wants of me then doing anything else is sin.

Maybe I should learn to make my own clothes first?

For the Sake of Christian Community – Audio Version

There is even the same mole under their chins so I actually think they might be brothers from different litters two years apart.  I rescued both of them from petland, so if they are using the same breeder, then it’s a possibility.  I wish I knew for sure though.

Dugal is the “I eat everything” one who is always worried about Becca and I.  I could probably feed him burgers for a month and he wouldn’t gain any weight.  In fact, we only got puppy food this last month and he still isn’t gaining any.  He sleeps at the foot of the bed and more than takes up his section of the bed by sneaking up right between us when we sleep.

Rogin so far is a bit more laid back.  He sits when he eats and occasionally lays down and never is in a hurry to eat his food.  He also has been known to steal shoes and teddy bears.  He will run into Aidan’s room behind us and grab a teddy bear and run.  It’s really cute watching a puppy try to carry a teddy bear twice as big as him away while trying to avoid detection.  He’s more mischievous than Dugal and often tries to bite the stub of Dugal’s tail.

In other news, I am seriously beginning to get a little bummed out about the job search.

Same look.  Same thought.

“Promise, I’ll be good.  Don’t send me to bed.”

There is a difference though.  The older dog, Dugal.  He has earned our trust.  We can leave him out and he will be good.  But the one that is hard to resist, ah he’s a disaster waiting to happen.  We’d wake up in the middle of the night with the smell of burning fur in our nostrils from him chewing electrical cords (or another smell).

But it’s so hard to resist.  Rogin is like a little teddy bear with a round puppy belly that likes to be scratched.  Dugal on the other hand, grumbles if you hold him too tight too long.  It’s a light kinda growl thing he does.  Not really a growl though because there is no malice in it.  We call Dugal our grumble pup because of it.  Rogin has such sad eyes too….

The good news is now that Aidan has what Becca has, she can now hold him which she hasn’t been able to do since Sunday for fear of getting Aidan sick.  So momma and baby are comforting each other.

The pictures above are Aidan from last week that we thought were cute.