personal
A Time for Giving Thanks
With Thanksgiving being tomorrow, I thought I’d list a few things I’m thankful for. I encourage you to think about it and make your own list!
Family. I have had more opportunity this year to spend time with my brothers, sister, and parents than I have in several years. What a blessing to have a family that loves each other, loves God, enjoys making music together and living life together, and has so much fun doing all of it. Closer to home, nay, at home, we are one more in number than we were last Thanksgiving; it’s hard to believe little Addie Grace is over 8 months old now. What a blessing to have a loving wife and precious daughters.
Skilled Doctors. This one hit home a couple of weeks ago when I had to take Becky to the ER. It was one in the morning, she was very sick, I was very concerned and tired. What a blessing to have a wonderful nurse and doctor who were skilled and kind. That someone would pay for years of education just to get a job where they have to work overnights all so they can care for hurting people? Blessings on them.
God’s Provision. The leadership at Noelridge planned and encouraged a special Thanksgiving offering this year. We were all encouraged to seek God’s guidance in what He would have us give and then to trust Him to supply it. Our goal was $12,000, which is more than 3x what we receive on a normal Sunday, over and above regular giving. We took the offering last Sunday and the Lord provided over $15,000 in the special offering, on top of the regular offering. Praise Him!
Old Friends. Lydia and I were friends back in Jr High. When our family moved to Texas it pretty much put the damper on that and we drifted apart. I last saw her in 1994, and hadn’t heard from her in several years. But she tracked me down a couple of years ago and we have corresponded from time to time. Finally, last Sunday, she and her sister Candace made the three-hour trek from Illinois to Iowa to visit for a day. It was fun to meet Candace, to introduce Lydia to Becky and the girls, and to spend an afternoon catching up.
Good Music. Did you really think I could write a blog post without mentioning music of some sort? I will ridicule all the radio stations playing wall-to-wall Christmas music already, but I must confess I have had Christmas music of a sort playing repeatedly over the past few weeks. The sort in question isn’t your traditional Christmas stuff, but rather is Andrew Peterson’s wonderful Behold the Lamb of God. (You can stream the whole album from his website. Go listen to it.) The truth of the Christmas story told in an original way. Becky and I are headed to Omaha on December 1st to see Andrew and his huge cast of friends perform it. I can’t wait.
This is only the beginning of what could be a really long list. Lord, remind me to be thankful every day, not just once a year.
Seasons
Yard work isn’t my favorite task; it’s one of those things that gets done because it needs to be done, not because I really want to do it. But there is something increasingly pleasant about the pattern of life as I see it develop year after year. This will be our third autumn in this house, and so the third season of cold afternoons raking until dark, brisk Saturdays cleaning out gutters, and warm cups of tea waiting for me back in the house. When the raking gets long I will take comfort in the knowledge that in just a few weeks all the leaves will have fallen, the bags will have been collected, and all that will remain in this year’s outdoor maintenance is to prepare the snowblower for its season of work.
They say time speeds up as you get older, and I can understand why they say so. Children have a particular way of making time fly. Wasn’t it just yesterday that little girl was born? Today she sits up on her own, sports two teeth, and grabs everything in sight. Wasn’t it just recently I graduated from college? And yet the new grads at work this year look like mere children. When did I get old? What I am starting to see, though, is the joy in the patterns of life across the years.
Laura is old enough to attend Sunday School this fall, and she came up a few weeks ago chattering “day, night. day, night”. She’s learned about all the other things God created, too, but she has been stuck on “day, night”. At night when we pray I’ve been reinforcing to her that we’re praying to God who made day and night, sun, moon and stars (also favorites of hers!), and who made her. At her young age, I’m sure “day, night” seems like a long time; but even now she can start to learn the patterns that God has so beautifully designed for us. And before too long she’ll be out helping rake the leaves, mow the grass, and shovel the snow.
Writing this suddenly I feel old. I can take some short-lived comfort in the knowledge that my 30th birthday is still nearly 5 months off, but I know that it will come all too soon. (Some of my readers will say that 30 isn’t old - humor me for a minute.) I can be content, though, in knowing that the God who designs and upholds the days, seasons, and years has designed them for me, and me for them. And I can enjoy living them and passing the lessons of life on to my little girls. God is good.
Thank goodness for the weekend!
It’s managed to be a busy week, but now the weekend is upon us. Finally!
This afternoon Becky and I are headed to the MAC to play some racquetball, then we’ll go (with the girls) out for supper and down to the coffeehouse to hear Billy Heller - first time in a long time to hear him!
Nothing really scheduled for Saturday. Sunday is church and then possibly a babysitter and a date with Becky! Gotta love the weekend.
Things are changing
I made this announcement after both services at Noelridge today. I didn’t read from a script, so this isn’t verbatim, but is the gist of the message I had for the folks.
After much prayer, thought, and discussion, I have come to the decision that the best thing for me and my family right now is that I step back from my role as the worship leader here at Noelridge. Now, that’s not a fun announcement to make, but let me explain a little bit.
The key factor playing into this decision is time. This hit home the most to me when I recently realized that my current life schedule of work and ministry is the same or busier than it was seven years ago when we moved to Cedar Rapids. However, in those seven years God has blessed us with two little girls. And while Becky’s schedule has changed drastically since the girls were born, my schedule hasn’t changed at all. And it needs to.
I also want the time to be able to get involved in community things. My entire social life and structure has been within the church, and that’s not good. I need to have the time and freedom to be able to be involved in the “real world”, to reach out to my community. You have also entrusted me with a role as an elder here at Noelridge, and I want to make sure I have the time to do that well.
Let me emphasize that we are not going anywhere. Noelridge has been a great blessing as our home church for seven years now, and our desire is very much to stay here, I will just be in a different role. Sunday mornings will look at bit different; we have many other talented musicians in the church here who are capable of helping with music, and we will be calling on them. Worship team may also look different for a while, we’re still having discussions on that.
So thank you for letting me lead these past years, and for understanding as I move to fulfill responsibilities in a new season of my life.
It is a big relief to get this off my chest and officially announced. I’m looking forward to see how God will use the folks in the church to fill in and minister in different ways.
Your update for the week
It’s gonna be a slow week here on my blog. I’m in town today, but tomorrow we’re leaving town for a few days of much-needed vacation. We’ll be leaving the kiddos with my folks and then heading to Wisconsin Dells for two nights. It will be glorious.
Sunday night’s concert went well; we played about 80 minutes of music and, from what I am told, it sounded quite good. The recording we made wasn’t so good; we don’t have a compressor in the system and the signal was so strong that many of the songs we just overloaded the recorder. Still, I guess it’s better than nothing.
If I get some time tonight or tomorrow I’ll post some of the pictures my sister took, and maybe a recording of one of the songs.
Sunset
There’s something about sunsets that make me nostalgic. I’m not sure what it is about them, but give me the chance to look to the horizon as the last light of the day streaks across the landscape, and I’m entranced.
One specific sunset comes to mind… Open one of the photo albums at my parents' house and you will find some pictures that date from the summer of 1990. It was a tumultuous year for us. Dad had to head to Colorado to work for two weeks, which was an eternity for him to be gone. Later on that summer his job situation would cause us to move from Nebraska to Texas. I was 13, had just finished seventh grade.
Several times during that two weeks that Dad was in Colorado Mom would take us out to the state park outside of town. As I see it now, she was probably just trying to keep her sanity after dealing with five kids in the house all day. But we’d go to the lake in the evening, fish, swim, and just hang out until the sun went down and it was time to go home and to bed.
One of those nights Mom brought the camera along. I don’t remember the night exactly, but the pictures she took capture the sunset-streaked moments of me and my siblings on the beach, playing in the sand and the water. There is one particularly memorable photo of my brother Aaron, the little awnry scamp, with a bucket of water cocked and ready to fling right at the camera. (The actual existence of the photo probably indicates he didn’t actually fling it in that direction at that moment.) Every time I look at those photos, the emotions kick in. Something about the sunset signifying an end, the end of my childhood years, of that season of my life.
I’m not the first person to notice that seasons change. Read Ecclesiastes sometime. There is a time for everything. Sunsets may have tinges of sadness to them - but without a sunset, there’s no chance for the sun to rise again. I don’t know when my life’s next “sunset” will come, but those pictures remind me that even as seasons change, we have hope for a new day coming.
Running
I’m going to make a real effort to do a bunch of running this week. I’ve been too much of a slacker; I need to crank it up. I ran 5K this morning, it was nice and dark and cool. I made it *almost* 2 miles before I had to walk… I was rather disgusted with myself then that I did walk for 30 seconds or so.
Mile 1: 8:18
Mile 2: 9:47 (total: 18:05)
Mile 3: 10:43 (total 28:48)
End: 31:10
The Solon 5K is less than three weeks away…
Sonic is coming!
Back in Texas, Sonic was a favorite fast food place of ours. Who can top the Route 44 Cherry Limeade? When we moved to Iowa, we had to kick the habit; there’s only one Sonic in Iowa, and it’s two hours away in Des Moines.
But then we found out a couple of months ago that there are plans to build several Sonics in our area.
Then even better, we found out this morning that they’re building the first one, to open around December 1, only four blocks from our house.
I sense some cherry limeades in my future. :-)
This is why I wear a belt
The main button on my (nearly-new) khakis just came off. Fortunately, there’s still that little inside button. If I had no belt, I’d be going home to change. As it is, I think I’ll survive until the day is over.
Bits and Pieces
I wait far too long between blog posts, and then I find myself searching for interesting things to write about. I guess my life, if not boring, is at a minimum mundane.
I’m adjusting to actually being in the office all week this week; it’s been about a month since I did an actual five-day in-office stretch. It’s not too bad.
Took Andrew and Rebecca out for dinner last night, then they watched the girls while Becky and I went to see the new Pirates of the Carribean movie. My take on the movie: parts of it were quite fun, comic even, and it certainly hearkened back to swashbuckling movies of old. My main grip with it was that it didn’t really resolve much; it was too directly setting you up for Pirates 3, which will come out next year. It felt much more like the end-of-season cliffhanger on a TV series than the satisfactory conclusion of a movie. But still… Johnny Depp is hilariously over the top.
I picked up a Virgin Wireless cell phone yesterday to be my travel phone. Roaming is horribly expensive on our current US Cellular plan, and we don’t really need it often. However, now that I’m traveling more for business, it’d be nice to be in touch for less than $0.69/minute. So I now have a pay-as-you-go phone that I’ll use for my travels. It has a Cedar Rapids number, which I’ll be happy to give you if you’re wanting to keep in touch with me while I’m on travel.
What else?. The folks and Aaron are coming down this weekend to celebrate Laura’s birthday. Andrew interviewed for a job here in Cedar Rapids yesterday; it sounds like he’ll be living here and taking some classes as Kirkwood this fall. I heard rumor that Aaron may be looking at moving to Florida… but haven’t heard anything specific yet.
So that’s the (mundane) news from Iowa today. When I think of something more interesting, I’ll be sure to post it.
I had that dream again...
Yeah, that dream. The one where Andy Osenga and some other unidentified people are holed up with me in a house (not my house, dunno what house it is) when bad guys show up with guns. We call 911, but the cops are in on it, so no help there. We are tricky, though, and manage to escape out the back way. We run behind a little hill and hide and we’re laying in the water in this lake, peering over the hill, watching the bad guys search through the house.
Maybe the bad guys were looking for the automatic weapons that we had found hidden in the attic of the house; they were up there in the rafters next to the 100 baud modem. I don’t know the answer to that one.
What does it all mean? I report, you decide.
Today's Lesson: Motor Mounts
Yesterday I had an unhappy occurrance. I had stopped at Quik Trip to get some gas on my way to work. When I got back in the car and turned the key: nothing. No lights, no radio, definitely no engine turning. I checked the basic things I know to check (battery cable connections, fuses, etc) and found nothing apparently wrong. So I coasted it down from the gas pumps into a parking spot and walked the 6 blocks home and took the minivan to work. Soon I got a tow truck called and since my preferred mechanic was booked full until Tuesday (a day on which I plan to be on the road), I had the tow take it to the local Saturn dealership’s service department.
Two hours later I get the phone call. They checked everything out, my alternator is fine, my battery is fine. However, I had a bad connection with a battery cable/terminal. So they replaced it, and now the car starts fine, even better than before. However, they did notice that a motor mount had collapsed and needed replaced. I did a quick bit of investigation, ascertained that motor mounts are probably important, and had them replace it. So by 3 pm they had sent a nice lady in a courtesy car to pick me up, and upon my payment of around $200, I got a car back that had a new negative battery cable, a new motor mount, and an oil change.
What I had not realized was how much of a difference the motor mount made. The engine just feels tighter now. It accelerates better. It’s just all-around improved. I took it for a spin up a few exits on the interstate last night with the windows down and the cool night air in the cabin, and it was glorious. Oh, and the car ran really nicely, too. I think it’s ready to make the trip to Nashville next week.
If you’re ever buying a used car, I could recomment the ‘99 Saturn SL - at least, my ‘99 Saturn SL. We bought it 5 years ago, have put 70k miles on it, and so far the only two repairs have been an oxygen sensor back in ‘03, and now the motor mount. That’s a level of repair I can handle.
road tripping
In a bout of insanity, I have decided to take two days off work and drive to Nashville for Andy Osenga’s CD release concert. I don’t know what possessed me. But I’m looking forward to getting to meet Geof and maybe some others, and seeing Andy do a full show with a full band… awesome.
“Much rock will be had.” – Andrew Osenga
:-)
I'm sore... but I think it feels good.
Having been disgusted with my lack of exercise for a while, and having been challenged by my wife’s initiative to start swimming on a regular basis, I bit the bullet yesterday and set my alarm back an extra half-hour so I could get up and run to start the morning. Yesterday morning wasn’t too bad - I was ready to get up at 5:15, I did about 2 miles in 20 minutes, and felt pretty good. Woohoo!
Fast-forward to this morning. 5:15 seemed much earlier. I was sore. But I argued enough with myself to go ahead and get out of bed and do it again. But my heel was hurting this time; it felt like it was rubbing funny against my shoe, enough to hurt a bit, but I didn’t think there was much to it. Finally I sat down on a park bench about half-way through my run, and found that I had a bloody sock to rival Curt Schilling’s. Bummer. I guess it was worse than I thought. So I’m wearing my sandals to work today, and I’ll have to figure out what to do with the shoes this weekend. I’ve had ‘em for 3 years or so, but haven’t worn them that much - they should still be in decent shape… oh well, I’ll figure it out this weekend.
So anyway, now I’m at work feeling a little bit sore. But that feels good - much better to have sore muscles than to be feeling fat and lazy. :-)
It's Monday already...
That’s actually not a bad thing, just a statement of fact. Had a nice weekend; installed a screen door on the side entrance to our house. It went pretty easily, but I ran down the batteries in my drill and had to wait until Sunday for them to charge up so I could finish the job. Note to self: pick up a cheap electric (plug-in) drill sometime so that doesn’t happen again.
Sunday was nice, church in the morning went well, then finished the aforementioned screen door, then later on we took Laura to the splashpad at the park. She’s still a little bit scared of the water, and quite a bit intimidated by the throngs of (larger) kids, but she’s figuring it out and getting braver. I have to keep reminding myself that she’s not even 2 yet. Amazing. Then we came home and I washed all of the nasty tree pollen and junk off the car, Laura helped with that, too. Give her a wash rag and she has all sorts of fun. Becky took some pictures, if they turned out I’ll have to post one.
It was awesome sleeping weather last night; it only got down to about 70 in the house, but the humidity was really low. Nice to have the windows open again and the a/c off at least for a day. Now it’s Monday and back-to-work time. This afternoon is softball… it will be fun to play again after a week off for the holiday. I’ve got Andy O’s The Morning playing on the iPod for about the zillionth time since I got it, and it’s still good. Probably even better than the first several times. More good stuff to appreciate each time. You’ll probably get tired of my raving about The Morning before I get tired of raving, so just get used to it… or go buy the album and joing the raving maniacs. :-)
It's Monday again...
No, wait, it’s Tuesday. It just feels like Monday. It was very very hard to get out of bed this morning. It was cool and there was rain pattering on the roof. But no, I had to get up and come to work. When I got to work, I found out that I’m losing a good engineer off of my project. Double-grrrrrr. And now I have meetings for pretty much the rest of the day: 10:00, 11:00, 1:00, 2:00, 2:30… the last three all overlap. Just another day.
On the bright side, you should go over to Andy Osenga’s website and listen to the cut he’s got up there from his upcoming album. It’s amazing. He’s finally taken the chance to really rock out on this one, and it sounds great. I have this album pre-ordered, which means I should be getting it in a couple of weeks… I can’t wait. But hey, I have to. :-(
a time of refreshing
I hadn’t realized how burned-out I was getting. When I step back and look at it now, it should’ve been obvious. I’ve been leading worship at Noelridge for the last 5 years or so, and have never taken off more than about 4 weeks a year. And those weeks were even more work than the weeks that I just led it myself. It wasn’t the leading so much; it was the preparation. Planning the service, writing instrumental parts for our various musicians (some need chords! some need notes! some can transpose… some can’t!), practicing beforehand, then leading. First it was one service per week, since last September it’s two services. I was getting to the point where I didn’t even want to do worship team.
It came to a head last fall. My initial position was that I wanted a bunch of time off. O.F.F. I didn’t figure it was feasible, but it sure sounded nice. (It still does, sort of.) After some discussion with the pastor, we decided on a scheme that we started in January. Under this new scheme, I lead solo and usually take requests one Sunday a month, and another Sunday every month I enlist somebody else to plan and lead. God has blessed us with David, who is willing and able to plan, prepare music, and lead. He’s been improving every month.
So this month, this upcoming Sunday is the week I’m off. Which means I don’t have to worry about dealing with worship team practice tonight. I don’t have to be there for the early service on Sunday if I don’t want to. Heck, I don’t have to be there at all on Sunday if I don’t want to. And it feels good. It’s refreshing. And next week I’ll be cranked up and ready to go again.
So that’s my little thought for the day: rest is good. Time off is refreshing. Don’t be afraid to ask for it. No sense in burning out.
another week
Give me a three-day weekend, and do I post any? Nooooo. But it was a very nice weekend.
I had all of Friday off from work. Friday morning I woke up with a very, very sore back - the kind of sore where you can’t bend over to reach to flush the toilet because it hurts too much. The back is still sore today, but it’s better than it was on Friday. It gets looser during the day, to the point where it’s not bad at all, but then it starts all over again in the morning. I’m headed to the chiropractor again today to see if he can help. But enough griping. I sound like an old person.
Friday morning we decided to go garage saleing. Normally this isn’t a very exciting thing, but it was a nice morning, and I figured I could do the driving and Becky could shop and we’d have fun. At the second sale we stopped at, I noticed an electric bass and bass amp sitting out there for sale. I couldn’t resist going to check them out. After some drooling, I made an offer of $100 for the pair, and the gal took it. So now I am the happy owner of an electric bass and amp. I wish I could provide more detail on the bass, but there’s no name printed on it anywhere. I opened up the back of it, and still, no name. The woman said it belonged to her father, and I’d say he’s had it for a while; the insulation on the wires isn’t plastic, but rather that woven stuff that I have seen on old wiring in houses. The amp is an old Roland bass amp, about 30" square. All in all, it sounds good. There’s a bit of a buzz, but I think the cable connecting the bass to the amp has a bad connector. I’m gonna try a new cable tonight. I don’t know when all I’ll have opportunities to play it (other than for my own fun at home), but I’ll find times. And for $100, I couldn’t pass it up.
Friday afternoon we went out for lunch and then did some clean-up at home in preparation for Ryan’s visit. He showed up around 4 pm. We had a great time seeing him this weekend; Ryan, I hope we didn’t work you too hard!
Saturday morning we borrowed the neighbor’s pickup and procured a load of topsoil and a load of compost from the local garden center. All that dirt went into the planters behind the garage in preparation for the strawberries that Becky was ready to plant. After that was done, I tilled the garden so she can get some tomatoes started. Then we crashed Saturday night.
Sunday morning was the usual two services at Noelridge. I was unexpectedly without either my flautist (sick) or my bass player (car in the ditch the night before). Regardless, the music went OK. Always a joy to celebrate the resurrection with our brothers and sisters.
Ryan headed home Sunday afternoon and we didn’t do much the rest of the day. Now it’s Monday and I have to deal with a full five-day work week this week. :-( But ignore me, I’m whining again. Fortunately, this week my evenings should be much calmer.
play time
Yesterday, as the culmination of a lot of research by Becky, we went out and purchased a backyard play set for Laura. It was on sale at Toys’r’us. Woohoo for sales! We just barely got the box to fit in the van - we had to remove the back seat and then still bungee the back hatch down. But we got it home in one piece and then got it put up last night. It has a ladder on one side and a slide on the other. It took Laura about 2 tries to get the hand of the ladder, but then she did nothing but climb up and slide down in a circuit about 30 times in a row. I think she enjoys it. :-)
Springtime!
This week has finally brought spring-like weather to our little piece of Iowa. Temps will be in the 70’s all week. I love it.
Springtime also means it’s time to catch up on all those outdoor tasks that have been building up over the winter. Last night we did some cleanup in the garden. I’ll probably get the tiller out this weekend so Becky can plant some tomatoes next week. I also pulled the grill out of the shed and put the snowblower in its place. And the picnic table is now out of the garage and back on the patio in back. There’s still plenty more to do, but it’s good to at least get things started off. My natural laziness dislikes outside work, and my family can tell you that I’ve never been one for being outdoors a lot, but I sure love the way it all looks when it’s been well-kept. And I need the exercise. :-)
Tonight we’re gonna go shop for some type of play-thing for Laura that we can put in the backyard for her to climb and play on. Becky’s been doing all the research, so hopefully we’ll find something that meets with her approval. :-)
My other piece of rather mundane news is that I found some new footwear for the summer. I’ve typically worn out a pair of cheap Walmark brand Birkenstock knock-off sandals each summer, but this season the footwear phenomonon that is Crocs has reached my door. I finally found a pair my size and the style I wanted yesterday at the mall. They are very comfortable and amazingly light. I don’t think I’ll be regretting their purchase.
I just looked at the forecast page and now they’re predicting 81°F for the high on Thursday. Note to Mother Nature: we want some spring right now. Please save the 80’s for a couple of months. Thanks.