Chris​Hubbs​.com

I wrestled in an earlier post with issues of time and busyness. I’m still wrestling with it. I think I’m making progress this time… maybe. Becky and I have talked about things quite a lot. She’s supportive (no suprise there) of my desires to get the schedule cleaned off and getting my time priorities changed, and she’ll help keep reminding me so that I don’t just forget about it after a while and drift back to the same old way of doing things.

My “ideal situation” right now is still what I mentioned before: I’d like to just dump everything church-related for a while and see how my schedule settles out. Then I could slowly put it back together the right way, and see how much time I have to do church-related things.

Let me reiterate here that I’m not trying to get out of church responsibilities; I just need to act on what I’ve recognized: that the church can make do without me for a while, but my family can’t.

I don’t think my “ideal situation” is going to happen - it’s just not fair to everybody at church. I think there’d be too many hard feelings and misunderstandings to make it comfortable to continue attending if I just totally dropped my responsibilities there. So I need to find a tolerable compromise. One has suggested itself here recently that just might work.

1. Turn all my responsibilities for video and sound over to someone else. I don’t know why I even had them in the first place, other than that they loosely relate to the music aspect of the Sunday service. We need to find somebody else to be responsible for making sure the overheads with song lyrics are ready, and that someone is available to run them. It’s a stress that I don’t need on Sunday morning. My fear is that we won’t be able to find someone with a level of responsibility high enough to actually ensure that it gets done correctly.
2. Drop my elder apprenticing role for now. While my gifting and desire is still to be an elder and to participate in church leadership, I’m appreciating more and more the counsel my dad gave me this summer: that while there is no real age restriction on eldership, there is a “season of life” where your time is needed elsewhere. Family responsibilities have to come first.
3. Spread out the worship team leadership load. Right now I’m responsible for planning the service every week, then leading the practice and then both Sunday morning services. Every week. We have two teams of musicians/singers, but only one leader. I’ve taken maybe 3 weeks off in the past year. That’s just not enough. What I’d like to do is find someone willing to take leadership of one of the two worship teams. That way I’d only be responsible for planning and leading every-other week. I think that would be do-able.

I’ve put these plans of abdication on hold for a week or two since I promised my pastor (who is also a good friend and has really been my mentor for the past several years) that I wouldn’t make a decision without discussing it with him again, and he’s on a well-deserved vacation to Florida until the end of this week. We discussed it on the phone back before he left; he expressed his desire to talk it over so he could give me some “objective” advice. I laughed out loud. I hope I didn’t offend him. Good advice he will have in abundance. Objective? Not for a minute. He has a stake in this as well; if I dropped everything musically at the church it would have a big impact on Sunday worship services. I know it sounds conceited, but, sadly, it’s true.

What I need to hear him say is this: “I don’t want you to leave things totally. I think there are ways you can reduce your responsibilities without dropping everything. But, if you think it’s what God is calling you to do, then I will support you on that.” I think I will hear it, but I haven’t heard it yet.

I will be continuing to pray for God’s leading in this area. I need wisdom. And Lord, if You want to just send a couple good worship leaders to Noelridge, that would be fine with me, too. :-)

…and stuff is a bit crazy here at work. Fortunately for me, I’m taking vacation this afternoon to help a friend move, and then Wednesday afternoon through Friday as we take a short vacation to Door County, Wisconsin. It should be beautiful this time of year - most of the leaves should still be around. I’ll have to post some pictures once we get back.

[end of random thoughts]

I was remembering those Taco Bell ads the other day - the ones where a guy eats a burrito or something, and then comes out and reports in the glorious celebration “I’m full!” And everybody cheers. And it got me to thinking. Why is it that they think they need to celebrate being full?

I struggle off and on with being frustrated with my weight. I have a desk job, and I don’t exercise much, and so I’ve battled “the bulge” for several years now. And as I got to thinking about it the other day, I was trying to remember the last time I really felt hungry. Typically what happens is that I eat my meals with largeish portions at regular times, (the family’s gotta run on a schedule, after all), and I eat so much that I’m never really hungry - I’m just eating because I’m not too full and hey, it’s time to eat.

So the last few days I’ve been making a bigger effort to eat less, and to enjoy the feeling of being hungry between meals. It’s a little different, but it feels good. Now if I could just couple it with some exercise, maybe I’d be getting somewhere…

So forget about all those Taco Bell commercials. You don’t really buy their food, anyway…. you just rent it for a while. :-) My new cause for celebration: I’m hungry!

I’ll come up with a more thoughtful post one of these days, I promise. But for now, more boring information! :-)

I’ve been trying to get ahold of a wireless USB adapter that will work with my Tivo so I can transfer programs onto my PC.

Step 1: I went out and bought some wireless adapter at random from Walmart. Oops. Bad idea. Tivo doesn’t support very many adapters. Took that one back and got a refund. Arrrrrgh.

Step 2: Researched carefully, bought a WUSB12 that the online forums assured me would work fine. Got it online, it arrived via Fedex yesterday. It didn’t work. It ends up that certain versions of a WUSB12 will work with Tivo… but there wasn’t any version info avalilable on the online store. Arrrrgh.

Step 2.1: Figured I’d need to return this one as well, requested an RMA number.

Step 2.2: Realized that maybe I could sell it here instead to get out of the “store credit” hassle.

Step 2.3: Listed it on the buy/sell newsgroup here at work this morning. Sold it within 1 hour. After I send in for the rebate on this puppy, I’ll actually be a few bucks ahead. Woohoo!

Step 3: Go to a local store and purchase one that I can check the model/serial/version number on before I buy it, or, at least, that I have the ability to return locally if it doesn’t work. No time to do this tonight, but tomorrow, maybe.

That’s all for today’s episode. Tune in tomorrow when Chris goes to BestBuy and asks, “hey buddy, ya got a D-Link DWL-G122?”

I keep a little running list of things I’d like to do if I had another life to live. Not that I’m complaining about my life now - it’s great and right where God wants me. But this is still a fun little list to keep. Feel free to add your own!

In another life, I would like to be…

• …a Major League Baseball umpire
• …an FBI agent
• …a US senator
• …a musician in a touring rock band
• …a proprietor of a music store
• …a crew member on a freighter or cruise ship

I’ll add more later when I think of them.

Becky was bored the other day and reading over some blogs (something she doesn’t do very often), and after about an hour she informed my that my blog is boring. While other folks (my siblings and friends) tend to write about their feelings, what’s going on in their lives, what they’re learning, deep stuff, my posts tend to be more “informational”.

I thought about it a bit and agreed with her; because I tend to post quickly, my posts end up being short bits of information, updates on my life, and occasionally reviews of things I’ve heard or read. You find precious little in the way of soul-searching or philosophizing. I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t do those things enough in the rest of my life, or if I just don’t get them transferred to my blog with much regularity.

In my defense, I did point out to her that blogging styles differ greatly depending on the person; I gave her for reference Geof’s more terse, informational style, Kari’s writings on life (and her book reviews), and Michaela’s picturesque essays. I don’t think she read them; she had to go do something else. She did remark, though, on how my being able to reference, from the top of my head, several other blogs for examples just made me even geekier. I suppose she’s right.

Also in my defense, I noted that when I extra time to just sit and write, my writing style changes. Reference a post from the pastor’s conference this summer. She acknowledged that this was true, and that I don’t have much time to write. Of course, then last night after I’d spent 45 minutes catching up on my blog reading while we were watching football, she remarked that if I hadn’t spent all that time catching up on other people (most of whom I’ve never met), I’d have had time to write some stuff myself. Probably true, but I just wasn’t ready to write last night. Reading was good.

So I guess from time to time I should try to make my blog more “interesting”. In the mean time, bear with my “informational” style. :-) Hey, if anything, a blog should represent the personality of the person behind it… and mine does. Good enough for me.

Last week was killer. I had soooo much to do. I’ve talked about this already so I won’t go on and on again.

It all went really well. The wedding was beautiful. The music worked out just fine, and the song that I was singing (and had never sung before) was right in my comfortable singing range. All good.

Saturday night after the wedding, my brothers and I went over to the church and worked up our worship set for the Sunday service. After we got that together, it degenerated into a Caedmon’s Call/Derek Webb jam session… good times.

Sunday morning the music went well; it was nice to have a strong lead guitar…. way to go Andrew!

Then came the sermon. I hadn’t prepared quite as much as I would’ve liked, but the message got out anyway. It’s a funny thing; you preach a sermon, and then the first 5 people that come up to you all say things like “hey, you made me think of [this point] or [that point]”, and I’m standing there thinking, “wow, those are good points, how did I miss those?” But then I recognize and appreciate that God used my words to speak in specific ways to specific people, even if it wasn’t what I thought I was going to teach them. Praise the Lord!

My family all took off for their respective homes after lunch on Sunday. After a short trip to the local sweet corn festival, it was time to come home and crash. The Cubs and the Cardinals were the Sunday night game on ESPN, and the Cubbies found a way to win the game! I can’t make sense of how they can drop 8 in a row, including getting swept by the Reds, but then can take 3 out of 4 against the league-leaders… but it was a fun game to watch, a nice way to end the weekend.

Next weekend we’re going to Wisconsin to visit the family again (gotta take the chances to see Aaron while he’s in-country), and I’ve just about got everything taken care of. I still haven’t managed to get ahold of the replacement pianist yet for Sunday… two e-mails and a phone message, and still no response. I hope she’s in town…

I haven’t posted much this week… it’s been just a bit on the busy side. There’s been plenty to do at work, which means little boredom or free time, and the evenings have been just crazy.

This afternoon my family is coming to visit, which I’m very excited about - I haven’t seen my brother Aaron since Christmas since he’s been in Panama doing missions work. They’ll be staying all weekend.

Tonight I have a wedding rehearsal for a friend; I’m playing the piano and singing. Last night I had to write a transcription of a song that she wants played that there’s no sheet music for. It’s an instrumental from the soundtrack to the movie Love Actually. It’s a nice little instrumental, not too tough. Still, extra hassle having to transcribe. I just don’t trust my memory enough to do it without some music.

Saturday is the wedding, and I also need to get music together with my brothers for leading worship on Sunday. Still not sure what we’re going to do, but I’ll try to get a couple of them involved.

Sunday I’m not only leading worship, but also filling the pulpit since the pastor’s on vacation. This’ll be my third time preaching a full sermon, so I’m not really worried about it, but it’s just another thing I have to try to stuff into my brain so that I’m not just totally reading it off of the page. The sermon is going to be from 2 Thess 1:11-12, if you’re really interested.

I think by Sunday night I’ll be ready to collapse. About my only remaining task after that is to ensure I have a musician lined up for next week’s worship, since I’ll be taking the week off. I can’t wait…

I haven’t written many (any?) posts on my first year’s worth of experience as a parent… not sure why. But there was one little episode tonight that was too funny.

I was sitting at the dining room table, eating a late supper - a Whopper and fries from Burger King (yum yum). Laura was sitting under the table near my chair, begging french fries. I noticed as she was sitting there that there was a diaper sitting next to her on the floor; I assumed that it was one that she had pulled out of the diaper bag during one of her usual unload-the-whole-bag-on-the-floor sessions. So, I think nothing of it.

A few minutes later, we’re about ready to go for a walk. Becky asked me how her diaper was, if she needed changed before the walk or not. So I reach down to feel her diaper…. and, lo and behold, she doesn’t have a diaper on. Somehow, while wearing a shirt and overall shorts, she managed to get her diaper off and out of her clothes. I wish *I* were that coordinated. :-) She was having a great time, very comfortable. Thankfully we caught it in time, so there were no puddles (or worse) to clean up.

Just another adventure in parenting.

This upcoming week is gonna be a hum-dinger. Tonight is softball, first umping, then playing. Tuesday night is a church leadership meeting. Wednesday night is worship team. (Note to self: gotta get WT reorganization plans going.) Thursday night Mark Smiley is coming over for dinner. Friday night my folks, brothers, sister, and friend come to visit for the weekend and celebrate Laura’s birthday. They stay until Sunday night, and then Monday I take off to Norfolk, VA, for the DER conference. Maybe I can get some rest there… :-)