Chris​Hubbs​.com

It’s been far too long since I’ve written much here on the blog; it’s been a busy week or two. While not a full remedy, a brief update will at least catch you up to speed on Chris’s life in December of 2006.

Christmas Shopping: I have finished buying for four people; I have three left to buy for. I know pretty much what I want to buy, just haven’t gotten to the store yet. I’ll try to finish up early this week; that’ll be the earliest I’ve ever finished Christmas shopping, I’m sure.

Book Reviews: For those of you who listed books for my reading list, I haven’t forgotten you. I’m still working through The Russian Debutante’s Handbook as recommended by Geof Morris. I nearly finished it last night, but sleep got the better of me. It’s due back at the library tomorrow, so I better finish it up tonight. It’s been an enjoyable read, definitely a change from my usual reading fare.

Church Stuff: I haven’t led music in a month now, and I finally realized yesterday how nice the break has been. This was the first Sunday that I actually just showed up for church without giving any thought or concern to whether the music team was lined up and prepared. And it went just fine. Next week will break the streak; I will be leading next Sunday.

Travel Plans: We leave a week from Wednesday (the 20th) for North Carolina. We will swing through Nashville to see Becky’s brother and then head to Charlotte to see Becky’s folks and sister/brother-in-law/niece. Should be a fun time, if the 20-hour drive doesn’t kill us. :-) We should be back home by the 30th or 31st.

Christmas break should provide some more time for posting - I’ll try, I promise! :-)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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. :-)

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.