#1 So I love this hat. I bought it the night we told some of our friends we were pregnant while we were out and about in the Legends area of KC. It's got the Superman sign on it and if I could be any superhero I would be Superman. Always loved him and have a T-shirt with the S on it, etc...
#2 OK now I've always wanted a French Cuff shirt [ever since I was in High School, Thanks Sean] I never bought one because I already have a ton of dress shirts and couldn't justify the cost, AND I didn't have any Cufflinks to wear in the shirt....................
Behold the awesomeness of my new cufflinks:
Can't you hear the Theme music swelling in the background? Oh yeah I also got this T-Shirt. Basically, my wife is the most amazing gift giver in the world because I am notoriously difficult to buy gifts for. She just hit a 490' homer on this Father's Day. Can't wait to see how she tops this next year!
Wow this week has been super crazy. Monday night we went and did some baby registering at Terrrget, that was fun. Tuesday was the 95th Annual Red Cross Awards and Recognition nights. My wife's department swept the awards winning 4 of the 6 possible. BOOYEAH! Tonight my parents will be at our house as my mother flies away to Europe at 4 A.M. tomorrow morning. Thursday is rehearsal for sunday morning [last time /single tear]. Friday is hangin with family night......phew! Anyway, I wanted to touch somewhat briefly on the journey that has brought me to where we currently are. Lets go back in to time, circa 1980.
The wife was born [obviously that wasn’t her birth name ] and as a baby developed meningitis [I think spinal but that’s not confirmed]. She was supposed to die, she didn’t.
Fast Forward to 1996
My oldest Brother is in college and decides to become a basketball referee.
As soon as my middle brother hits college the two become refereeing partners because its good cash and fun.
I follow suit in 2001 and get my certification.
My middle brother is sick for a game and was schedule to referee with a certain individual named Jason.
I subbed for my brother and became friends with Jason.
Fast forward to 2007.
I’m in a smallish town grocery store when I see abovementioned Jason picking up some water. I have only lived in the area for 3 or 4 days.
I ask him about what church he goes to.
He invites us [the wife and I] to CRCC, and we are hooked.
Fast forward to March 2009
I’m scheduled to play guitar on a Sunday, and my calluses are weak, and I’m frustrated.
Saturday night, an ice storm hits, and I’m hoping Sunday morning is cancelled.
My in-laws were to join us, but they decided to stay home.
I drag myself to the building and try to have a good attitude, the guest speaker for the day was a guy who wrote a book that I had read and didn’t like it that much. I thought the speaker was going to be not that great.
I sit there and listen to what this guy is saying, and God starts tuggin at my heart. It was like, “this guy is nuts, and so are you, LETS DO THIS THANG”
I squelched my excitement when the wife arrived for the 2nd session, and asked her kindly to pay attention to what this guy was saying. After his schpiel, the wife says “How do we say no to that?”
We put our house on the market. 3 people looked at it over a 2 month span, and we were somewhat discouraged, so much so that we talked about giving up moving and realizing our place was where we were.
Then someone offered 1.5 weeks ago, and we are signed and sealed.
Before we got the offer, I had a framework of the date we wanted to settle and the lowest price, they offered at that price AND wanted to settle on that date.
We are losing money on the house, but the real estate market in Las Vegas will allow us to use our current equity and buy a place that is potentially better for less money.
My job has a quarterly cycle. The month I resign is the month with the lightest work load to allow for the transition at my place of work to be easy.
My boss has offered to keep me on as a consultant for a couple months to help ease the transition financially.
The wife is preggers as I mentioned, and if we would have moved any later, there could have been plenty of potential issues.
If my wife wouldn’t have survived, if my brothers wouldn’t have refereed, if my middle brother hadn’t been sick, if Jason wasn’t getting water, if I didn’t play guitar, if the roads were to icy, if CRCC had been cancelled due to weather, if my in-laws would have came, if our house hadn’t sold, if real estate was in vegas what it was just 1 year ago, if my boss didn’t believe in what we were doing, if the wife was 2 months further along…etc. I mean you can see how this isn’t something I just dreamt up one night. I mean look at all that crap. I have come to find the vast difference between the ideological understanding of Sovereignty and the experiential part. Personally I like the experiential part. I know that some of you that will read this don’t believe what I believe, regardless, look at that string of ‘coincidences’ [I’m sure there’s a ton more]. Can’t you see the argument for Something greater is real? I digress.
There’s the list off the top of my head. Hope all is well with all of you. Hit me back as I’m stoked to know what’s going on with you all.
We sold our house and are moving to Las Vegas, NV effective July 7th.
Crazy, I know right?As to the why, that’s more drawn out, but begins with this:there is a church plant happening on the Strip and we have been accepted to be a part of the team.The wife and I had a pull on our heart, and we’ve followed it to this spot.Our house is under contract, we both gave notice at our respective places of work, we’ve organized a moving solution, and we are rolling out of the Midwest first week in July.It’s all so surreal.
No, we don’t have jobs, or a house.We have housing arranged through some people that are already there and we’ll most likely rent for a couple months and as soon as we get jobs, we’ll get a house as real estate in Vegas is super cheap.
I’ve talked with some of you, but for those I haven’t, here’s the key phrase for me at this point.It’s one thing to sit around a table and talk about the sovereignty of God, and it’s a completely different thing to be living in it.We went from giving up on moving on a Friday to having someone offer on our house less than 48 hours later.The house was for sale for 2 months, and we had 2 people look the first day it was listed, another couple about 5 weeks later, and the buyers saw it on a Sunday morning, and offered Sunday night.There are a multitude of ‘coincidences’ that have occurred that I will share later that in total add up to make this absolutely ridiculous.
Oh and we are about 17.5 weeks along on the wife’s first pregnancy.So, changing jobs, selling a house, moving cross country, starting a family, and planting a church in Sin City…as a friend of mine said, if you look at your future and it doesn’t make you scared/queasy, maybe you aren’t living.
Hopefully I’ll be better at updating this blog as it will become a better way for family and friends to keep in touch.
Our house is for sale...come buy it! we are trying to walk in the path that we feel God wants us to walk in. [I really wanted to end that sentence with a preposition, but Joe woulda been mad, so instead he gets to correct my improper use of brackets.] The first part of May is super busy, and its already making me ticked. This weekend is Mother's day, my Mother's Retirement Party, and a trip to Memphis TN for 3 days, then next weekend is my All-Star Sister-in-Law's Graduation Party [SWEET!]. End of May hopefully slows down, but with Zack Greinke being as awesome as he is [0.40 ERA, 6-0] I'm sure we'll make time for the Boys in Blue, and my good best friend goes away to Army for 7 months, so I need to hang with him before June also! Oh and the Wifey hasn't been to the B-town Rodeo EVER, so we'll have to take that in. Hopefully, in there somewhere we will sell the home and start moving also. Phew! Anyway hope Spring finds you all well.
and now for info on my new bromance....Zack Greinke
p.s. the link for my sister-in-law is an article she wrote FOR ESPN! I know, my claim to fame.
we wanted to tell our families first, but i'll still keep it pretty vague because the specifics still aren't ironed out.
The Wife and I have an opportunity to do some crazy shiznit with our church. There was a guy that came through KC a couple weeks ago and we felt God completely rock our world. We feel that God is pulling us one way, and we are doing whatever we can to follow. Being as the message of the Cross is quite foolish to those who don't know the Truth, some of the 'action items' are quite tremendous from a Non-God perspective. Anyway i know there aren't any specifics here, but e-mail me and i'd be more than willing to let you in on all the details.
I plan to chart our crazy journey through the next few weeks here on this blog, so stay tuned to see the rediculousness that we will be embarking on!
so it seems i suck at consistently updating, but that will all change, there is something very huge on the horizon. so too all 2 of you, stay tuned and i'll inform you as soon as i can! still feeling it out, but i'm about 95% confident that this will happen...........
Well a couple things have happened since I last posted.
I had an unfortunate basketball injury that involved very gross pictures of a multicolored foot.
I had an amazing weekend on the Country Club Plaza to celebrate my valentine.
I have weekly meetings with an immensely intelligent and deeply philosophical blast from my past.
I have been asked to participate in a group that is helping design a 3 week series at the church we go to.
the last two are what i want to touch on most. the series is about different 'life operating systems' and how they have become apart of our lives. on a high end level, you have the Pantheistic [god is whatever i want him to be and i'm molding god], Pragmatism [whatever works is whats right], and Secular Humanism [my decision making process is equal to god's]. There is a lot of overlap between the three, but in general, people live their lives in these three 'Operating systems' [according to our group]. I'm sure there is a large discussion that would entail many different systems, but for sake of time and argument, this is where we are.
So after a couple meetings with the 'group' and some time processing what was said, i approached my philosophical friend [who is not necessarily a 'christian'] and asked what would be the alternative to the three operating systems? His response kind of caught me off guard. he spoke to a Unconditional Love-ism but quickly quipped that unconditional love doesn't exist and went on a very Schopenhauer ridden diatribe about pain and lack of pain, but no joy/love. [thats a discussion for a different day]. So after dwelling on the bits of information, i can't shake the thought that unconditional love is the 'correct operating system'. so then that begs the definition of unconditional love, which philosophically can be argued to not even exist due to the fact that we are conditioned to love because we know we receive 'good' in turn. ANYWAY, despite all that, i am tickled that even if one can argue it doesn't exist, the thought of it is the answer to how we should live life. hah. i love it.
