'Roof'

Well, last night was 'Bible Character' night at Cubbies. When we first asked Emily what Bible character she wanted to be her first reply was 'God.' Apparently in Emily and Josh's role playing lately they have been pretending to be 'God' and 'Jesus.' Furthermore they get into rather heated arguments that apparently go something like this, "I'm God no I'm God, I want to be Jesus no I want to be Jesus." So this has left me in quite a theological/parenting dilemna. I mean on the surface it doesn't sound too theologically sound that my children want to be God and Jesus....in fact if these confessions were isolated on their own they would be be the confessions that would birth some kind of new cult following. But, I am pretty sure that these are pretty innocent confessions of little children. So anyway, she finally decided that she would be Ruth or 'Roof' as she put it. I guess 'Roof' looks like any other Biblical woman who's wardrobe consists of a twin flat Khaki sheet, medium adult t-shirt, and gold ribbon (yeah my wife's got major skills on last minute Biblical woman costumes from Walmart).

Cabbage Confessions

once again I'm reminded of one of my favorite verses in the Bible in I Corinthians 1:27 "But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty." Yeah so Curtis Hooper and I were going to purchase hamburger fixin's for the Fusion (our college and career group) bbq last Sunday. So everything is going great we're crusing around HEB together and it's time to buy the lettuce. So I start perusing through the massive produce section and spot a green orb like vegetable that appears to be lettuce and I stick it in the buggy. Later on in the store as we're about to leave the produce area I notice another section of lettuce and thought 'hey, more lettuce, wow." We continued on our quest and thought that we had successfully and flawlessly knocked out our grocery shopping for the event. Well, the day of the bbq arrives and what I thought was lettuce was actually cabbage. So the group immediately begins to rail me on this one and enjoys quite a few laughs at my expense. Upon first realizing what I had done I tried to play it off by throwing it back on everybody with "there's no difference, I mean its a ball of leaves...I'm sure cabbage is just as good on a burger as lettuce." So to prove my point I ate a bite of raw cabbage and it was quite frankly pretty disgusting. I tried to campaign for the cause of cabbage as a worthy substitute for lettuce but to no avail. I stood by my cabbage and by myself was the lone person to put cabbage on my burger. I discovered that if you put enough ketchup and mustard you really can't tell the difference. But I guess based on the group's complete rejection of my head of cabbage I will conclude that cabbage will continue to remain a cole slaw only food staple.

Wimberley Couples Retreat

Well we had a great weekend as we retreated with 8 other couples to the Dunn compound in Wimberley. My mom came in on Thursday night and she stayed at our house with Emily and Josh and we headed out for her house. It was great just to spend a couple of days to focus on our marriages and our individual lives. One of the great things that happened was that we got to act like kids and play. We played ping pong, bocce ball, bean bag toss, pinball, horseshoes, wore matching t-shirts as we competed with our wives in competion, we danced to cheesy 80's music, we played cards, we skipped rocks, we perfected our Christ-like smack talk with the other guys around late night ping pong, we sang Garth Brooks songs at the top of our lungs at midnight, and many other immature and playful activities. I read a great quote today about playfulness from the book Dangerous Wonder. It simply says, "Play is an expression of God's presence in the world; one clear sign of God's absence in society is the absence of playfulness and laugther." So maybe that's a takeaway from this weekend. To go play together more, be more spontaneous, not take yourself too seriously, laugh at yourself, and really enjoy the amazing gift your wife is from God. I think that would be an incredibly contagious thing that would make a skeptical world curious and drawn to us as Christians. So it was a great and refreshing weekend for all of us.

The Dancing Flower Girl

Last week David and Lindsey tied the knot out at Ashlyn Manor. It was quite a memorable wedding for several reaons. First of all, Whitney and I have known both of them for many years all the way back to when they were high school students in our student ministry. So it was really neat to be able to meet with them over the past couple of months to do pre-marital counseling. It was a fun ceremony to officiate as the grand majority of people in attendance were from StoneBridge. Another interesting dynamic in the wedding was the fact that Emily was one of the two flower girls along with Kathryn McKnight. This was her second flower girl gig. Her first one was pretty simple as she simply walked down the aisle (throwing a few petals) and then sat down with mommy and daddy who had the entertainment center (crayons, activity books, snacks) ready to go to occupy her through the rest of the ceremony. Last Friday was a little different. First of all she's walking down with her good friend (her and Kathryn have the exact same birthday)....Secondly, when she gets through with her walk she sees Daddy standing there (now having to wear his 'pastor' hat) and she starts to walk right up to stand with me and I have to kind of nudge her to go back down and stand with the maid of honor. Then the ceremony starts and everything is going pretty good. Emily eventually walks over to mommy to take a little break while Daddy is talking and doing all the vows. Then she walks back up there near the end right before the sand ceremony. This is where it gets interesting. So I say something like this, "The sand represents two different families becoming one..." David and Lindsey walk up and pour the sand in and Sean Eppers starts singing his song at this point. So far so good AND THEN legend has it that Emily says "I just can't stand here anymore....I've gotta dance!" So I had been trying to smile and look over at Sean and glance at David and Lindsey staring dreamily into one another's eyes and then out of the corner of my eye I see and hear the next quote come out of Emily's mouth as she turns to Kathryn the other flower girl and says, "Kathryn, dance with me!"...My heat sank a bit as I braced to see if Kathryn would stay strong and steer my daughter out of harms way. Kathryn paused and I could feel her little body doing everything it could to resist this oh so captivating invitation from Emily to join her. But then the waters broke through the dam of resistance and suddenly the two little princesses broke out into synchronized twirling patterns. And for the rest of the song (which seemed like it lasted 3 and half hours) the little flower girls twirled and twirled and twirled in pure delight. There I was caught in a web of my two roles. First of all I was the officiating pastor...I had to act calm cool and collected and carry on the ceremony, but I am the little girls dad....and she's dancing in the middle of Lindsey's wedding...what do I do? So I realized I was pretty helpless so I just stood there and nervously smiled until the song finally came to an end. So, yeah, it was quite the memorable wedding all around.

Lessons to learn from kids

Lesson 1: Never stop learning. We were having dinner with our neighbors Monday night and we were talking about the miracle of a little kids brain. They are like little sponges that are absorbing at rapid rates everything around them. They are way more observant than we adults are. May we return back to our curiousity and hunger to learn as these little ones do.

Lesson 2: Never give up on hope. I came across this scene the other day where we put Josh in a little toddler flotation device aka 'the muscle suit' and Emily has discovered my old super 'Brian' cape that she loves to wear and becomes 'strong emily'. I was reading an article the other day about hope and how controversial it can be. How dare we even suggest there is such a thing as hope when we live in a world full of global problems and pandemics. Yet this is our mission as the church. To bring hope to one person, one marriage, one family, one child at a time. So let's not forget our super hero mission that Christ has called us to.

Lesson 3: Get out there and climb something. Sorry about the sideways film job on this. But it's hard to imagine how high this bunk bed would have appeared to this little 2 year old man. Yet with wreckless abandon he enthusiastically tackles this feat celebrating the thrill of the climb when he gets to the top. We were discussing in our small group last week the concept of something being 'gloriously treacherous.' Whitney piped in with an image of climbing a mountain. When you set out to climb a mountain there is a glorious and treacherous aspect to it. It seems that danger and real life hang out at the same places. So dare to get out there and experience some scary thrills of living by faith and climbing some mountains with God.