Working against the way I was designed...

This is what I should look like after Saturday. A couple of my friends & I went snowboarding, and I quickly was reminded that I was not designed for this amount of pain. I went downt he hill three times, and that was enough. I tend to carry much momentum and the impact is more than I can tolerate. I'll stick to hockey and Xbox snowboarding from now on. Until then, I'll be in some sort of traction till these old bones heal.

renewed sense of hope...

thanks to all for your all but priceless advice on the whole "ship" theory..my fav was to not get on the Titanic...since it's at the bottom of the atlantic...good advice

Met with the interim DS here in West Michigan and have a very encouraging conversation about my future.

I feel like I have purpose and direction again. My tank is full again...

There's nothing like a renewed sense of hope to get the ol' blood flowing.

jump ship?

Why is it a natural thought to want to jump ship when the storm comes. Wouldn't it be wiser to stay in the ship and ride the storm out?

thinking...

Finding God in the strangest places

I once heard someone say that "everythign is God's". I found such beauty in thinking that in everything, we could find God. This made God so much bigger and so much more readily accessible in any given moment.

God is there, if we only open our eyes.

Beautiful isn't he?

love vs. reality: which hurts or bleeds more

For those hard core 80's fans, and for those who don't fear a public beating for admitting a fondness for Def Leppard, they famously sang a song with the words "love bites, love bleeds, it's bringing me to my knees"...in short...they said the love pretty much sucked but there was no way around it...

I have no quams with love...still hapilly married to a great woman..

I have problems with reality..no I'm not dilusional, but the sting of reality has hit me hard these past few weeks.

Who I thought I was, and who I thought I was going to become, doesn't look anything like I have ever dreamed. I've given up on a lot of dreams and hopes, those same hopes that drove me to make big jumps. And on the road to developing a "kingdom minded-ness" I've realized that the more and more I desire life to be about others, the more and more it will be about others, and less about me, which by all accounts SUCKS THE BIG ONE!!!

Unfortunately, the kingdom brings no garantees and does not negotiate with spiritual terrorist. God is still bigger than me and isn't impressed with my weapons of mass conversion (that one made me laugh inside...humor me).

So the new year is going to be different. One filled with more reality checks and less dilusions of ministry and ideas of grandeur that the church is what we dreamed it to be.

Why must a reality check feel so much like a prostate exam?