Is blogging still cool? Is saying cool still cool? I was looking over my blogs and my last one was 4 years ago...yikes. I thought maybe I'd see if people were interested in seeing what we were up to. Maybe you care, maybe you don't...but here it goes.
The last time I wrote, we were a family of 4. Now, we are a family of 5. We added Annabella Joy to the mix in 2011. She's 3 now and the light of my life. She is smart and adventurous but scared of her own shadow. Literally, her own shadow. She reminds me quite a bit of my mom. Clear about what she wants and doesn't know a stranger. Elijah is 9 now and Kyle is 6. Both of my boys are super smart. Elijah, my little need-boy, loves video games, the trampoline and reading. Kyle loves life, laughing and...girls...and girls love him. Yes, I know, a little young.
Kallie and I have been through our up's and down's but are rock-solid. She's my best friend and I can't imagine life without her. I always say, if Kallie wasn't around I'd be walking around the walmart parking lot in my pajamas all day, clueless and virtually lost. She's the apple of my eye and the hope I see for humanity that people still care, love and have a soul.
My life, as of lately, has been rocked by God's grace. I have been set free of many of my cynical views, jaded stances on theology and have just been set free to live under, as Pastor Tullian says, "the banner that says 'it is finished'". I have been prepping for a camp I will be preaching at soon and I will leave you with this story of how God's grace had changed my life:
When I was in college, I worked at a church, I'd say at the time the most popular church in that town amongst all us christian men and women. It was where all the cool christians went to church and hung out and dated each other. I somehow managed to score a job in the youth department as the youth intern the summer I was dating one of the deacons daughters. She went to work for the camp we would soon attend that summer and I stayed behind to assist the youth minister. As our time came near to leave for camp I was short on funds. I lived about an hour and 15 minutes from my hometown so taking a trip to get money from my padres was not easy either, or cheap for that matter.
I called my mom, as I usually did, and asked her if I could meet them halfway and get some money. She said the words I still dread to hear sometimes even now, "let me ask your dad". After a few short seconds of silence my dad came on the phone. "Why do you need the money?" he asked me. I explained to him that I had to pay rent and buy stuff for the trip and had ran short after all of that. He pushed a little further and asked if I had stuck to my budget and not spent money on Wendy's. Ummmm...Wendy's. I lied and said yes. He asked a few more questions that revealed the truth and I was enraged. I actually think I remember yelling at him and saying a cuss word under my breath and not just a christian cuss word like "dang" or "shut the front door". He listened and continued to offer some wisdom but said it was hard to help when I had dug my own finical hole. I hung up on him. I was mad. How dare him. A few hours later I heard a knock on my apartment door. I opened it and saw my parents standing there. They asked if I had eaten yet and when I said no, they persuaded me to eat with them. They paid for the meal and before they left they handed me two crisp hundred dollar bills. We said our goodbyes that night and nothing was said about the prior conversation on the phone.
You may say to yourself, "how dare him do that after you had yelled at him". The truth is it did not create in me a sense of shame or guilt but of freedom. Not freedom to take advantage of my parents but freedom to love because I was loved. They did not say anything about, you don't deserve this money or when you get back come do dishes for two weeks. Nothing was said, ever again. I had sinned against my parents and they loved e and showed me grace. This creates a long obedience in the same direction rather than a begrudging obedience. I love my parents for this and I love Jesus even more in the face that, "while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me."
