Watching your kids...

It's so hard to watch your kids struggle. It's so hard to fight the urge to insert yourself into a situation to rescue them from pain. But there are lessons in pain. When other kids exclude your kid or treat her like she's an alien it hurts.

Just another taste of what our Father goes through. It's wonderfully hard to be Dad.

Wilderness Visits

I feel like our church is in a valley/wilderness time. Subsequently, our attendance and contribution are significantly down.

Do we want to maintain our "church of christness" or do we want to divorce our identity from our practice?

How can we be "salt and light" to the world we live in? Can we look anything like the "old CoC"?

Hard questions. There are many more. I am praying for our elders as they are working out some differences this week.

Early exit - again!

Well, the Braves let me down again, and at home again. Tough loss. Painful way to end the season, but middle relief has been a sore spot all year. I think the Braves still miss Mike Remlinger. He was super solid in the 7th and 8th.

I give Chipper and Jaret Wright a bit of a pass for their below-average performance due to injury. J.D. let me down. Too many stranded baserunners.

GO SOX!

(Now THERE'S a lost cause! But here's hoping it's their year.)

October baseball

As a Braves fan I have a love/hate relationship with October baseball. As a good friend of mine at work pointed out, baseball is supposed to break your heart. (He's a Red Sox fan.) While winning the division 13 straight times has been wonderful, the Braves postseason experiences have not been as much fun. Still, hope shines on... including today!

GO BRAVES!

Familiy Visits

We are in the midst of Family Visit Season. We have all of my wife's family with us now. This weekend they will leave and my sister will arrive. After she leaves my mom will arrive.

Anyone have cool (or funny, or ridiculous) family visit stories?

Praise!

Last night's Praise Team rehearsal was very good. The group received "We Are An Offering" very positively. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to integrate that song into our worship soon. One of our members shared a significant praise regarding a family situation where it seems God has worked a mighty work of reconciliation and healing.

We then had our worship planning meeting, after "church". That went pretty well, though we struggled to stay focused due to the desire to discuss the ZOE conference. We're also having a hard time staying ahead (we like to be 4 weeks ahead of the presentation) due to last-minute changes from our minister. While that is often (not always) understandable, it is (always) frustrating.

We also got into a philosophical discussion of worship planning style. Here is the crux - Do you plan your entire worship based on the theme of the lesson (sermon)? Or do you try to focus on the Praise and Worship aspect, with perhaps a song or two just before the lesson to set up the theme, with an appropriate song afterwards? Or some other approach? I'd love to hear from you on this!

On the home front, we have my wife's family in our house right now, and it's fun (though crowded). My father-in-law and brother-in-law are working on "phase 1" of finishing out our basement. I'd prefer to be involved in that too, but I have to work, so... they're moving ahead. Today the family is going to a dairy farm as a school field trip for the girls. That should be fun, and the weather should cooperate nicely.

My wife is tired - I really need to find a way to give her a break. She works SO hard for our family!

Bringing back memories...

I found an old CCM song in our song book. It is a song by Chris Christian (written by Dwight Liles) called "We Are An Offering." I'm planning to introduce it to our Praise Team tonight. I just found my old (20 years old!) cassette of the album (remember pops and clicks on your records?) and listened to the song again. What a wonderful song!

We lift our voices, We lift our hands
We lift our lives, they are yours.
We are an offering, we are an offering.

Lord use our voices, Lord use our hands
Lord use our lives, they are yours.
We are an offering, we are an offering.

All that we have, all that we are,
All that we hope to be we give to you,
We give to you.

Just a great lyric! Perhaps I'll try to arrange this a little more elaborately and pitch it to ZOE.

The Grind - and a whine about being a grownup

This is one of those days where I can't be sure that my desire for a career change is for the right reason. When pressed, I'll say that what I really would like to do for a living is Worship Ministry. (2nd choice, studio musician.) But today, I just don't want to do what I've been doing in Software Development anymore. The grind is unreal. They would take my soul if I would give it to them.

I still get a charge out of programming. I do not get any charge at all from the business world. It pays the bills. It allows our family to have and to do things. My heart wrestles with that, because I feel that I am addicted to my lifestyle. Going into Worship Ministry would likely require (at least) a 50% cut in pay, with the question of whether or not health insurance would be paid. Since my wife stays home with the kids, and especially since we are a homeschool family, that would be hard to absorb. We felt (feel) called by God to homeschool.

Ugh - sometimes it is REALLY HARD to be a grownup!

Hello out there!

Wow, this is a stretch for me. I'm not sure what I'm hoping for at this point from this excursion into the world wide web - and into myself. I have been touched (at times deeply) by several folks' blogs - Mike Cope, Brandon Scott Thomas, and Clarissa Cox (to name just a few). So I think I'll try this for a while and see what happens.

As for me - Here's a bit.

Born and raised in Charleston, SC. Graduated high school in 1979. Attended David Lipscomb College in Nashville, TN from the fall of '79 till June '84. I am the oldest of 3 children, and I have 2 younger sisters. One lives in Cary, NC, the other in the D.C. area.

Also born and raised in the Church of Christ. That has been quite a journey, which I'm sure I'll get into over time.

I am married to a wonderful woman, Natalie. It is one of my greatest joys to make her laugh. We have been blessed with 2 beautiful daughters, Lauren and Rachel. We now live in the Atlanta area (Kennesaw, actually, but with an Acworth mailing address).

I am gifted in music - primarily in voice and guitar. Being raised in the CoC makes this a pivotal part of the story, which, again, I'm sure I'll get into over time.

I work in the software industry. I wrestle with a call to music (worship) ministry.

I have been involved with Palmetto Bible Camp since I was 8 years old. Nary a place on God's green earth means more to me (or has meant more to my walk with God).

My family and I attend the Burnt Hickory church in Marietta, GA.

My wife and I just returned from a great weekend in Nashville at the ZOE Worship Conference.

I could ramble on for quite a while, but something tells me I should stop for now. I hope that I will make many new acquaintances (and maybe even re-connect with some old ones!) through this medium.

WWW, here I come!