love

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14 and counting…

I was 18 then. The entire world around me was changing. Graduation loomed only a few months away and the prospect of college loomed in the not too distant future. I didn’t know who I was or who I wanted to be. I just knew I didn’t want to do it alone.  Enter the most unique and incredible person I have ever known. From the moment I laid eyes on her I knew she was different. Some people call it…

Laying down for love

The room had pink carpet. Not just any kind of pink either, but in-your-face, highlighter, abrasive, pink carpet. Not that you really ever saw it - the room was filled with rubbermaid bins, mostly filled with fabric and stamps, stacked 3 or 4 high - but it had been my wife’s childhood bedroom for a time, and her father had made the egregious mistake of telling her that she could pick out WHICHEVER carpet she wanted. He was a man…

Humans, we have a problem

There are not many things in the first world that compare to bailing “dirtied” water out of your sons toilet because he has put an entire roll of toilet paper into it and flushed. I would know. After about an hour of plunging I decided that wasn’t going to work, and so I moved on to the ‘Plumber MAXX.’ When that started bubbling almost to the point of unintentional evacuation, I decided that an ice cream bucket ‘bailing’ system was…

False Start

There’s a penalty in football called a false start. The basic premise is that it is illegal for someone on the team with the ball to start the play before all the others. So after they all line up and get ready, someone moves before the ball is snapped and the whole play has to be stopped and the offensive team is penalized 5 yards. It’s one of the only times in life I can think of that someone gets…

The line

A few months ago our church went through a study on the book of Hebrews entitled "Jesus is greater." It was a pretty convicting look at what it means to really put Jesus above every and anything else in your life. As a Christian, I am often torn between the words I sing on Sundays and speak from my 'platform' and the actions I choose throughout the week. Do I really value my relationship with Jesus above the rest of…

Something new

New things are hard for me. I wish the reason they are was better. I wish it was because I had some sort of intense phobia that had a sweet name and was so debilitating that they could make a movie about. Arachnophobia after all was a colossal box-office success. Maybe it would be better if instead of a phobia, the reason I was averse to new things was because I didn’t have time for them. If I was literally…

even so, come

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you…

if it doesn’t break your heart, it isn’t love

Sometimes the things that you don’t see coming change you the most. I guess it only makes sense, if you saw them coming you’d probably be more ready for them or something. I’d made kind of a habit of making sure I saw things coming. My whole life I’d played things safe, not gotten too far outside of my comfort zone, made sure that if life was happening it was happening on my terms. Looking back at it I’m actually…

what trinkle taught me

My brother once referred to pop as “trinkle” for almost an entire year of his life just because he thought it would be funny. That alone should tell you all you need to know about him, but I’ll continue. He once drank an entire container of boysenberry syrup at a Perkins at midnight for five dollars, which he then spent on one of those claw games in the entryway to gain possession of a stuffed duck, which he then almost…

from 6.23.11

Some things in life are too obvious to be coincidence. They seem to happen at the most apropos time, and tie the knot in the bow of life to finish things off. I personally believe that things like this are not the result of chance, but rather divine providence. They just work out too well, you know? In any event, such an occasion occurred in my life last week, and it was seemingly magical. Without getting into too many specifics…