New Favorite

I have kids. I have kids who like to watch and do crazy things. They have a new favorite cartoon that I am not ashamed has become one of my new favorite shows. It's called Chowder and it's on Cartoon Network. This show has grown on me like an infection. It's hold over me has spread like moss on a tree, slowly and completely. I swear, we have been watching at least an hour of this show every night. I'm enthralled...

Break-in Blues

You know that sick feeling you get when you can't find your wallet? You know, the one where it feels like a can of cheese whiz just broke open inside your stomach? I experienced that sensation this week when I realized one morning that my wallet was completely missing. I figured that it fell out of my jacket pocket when I was getting out of the car somewhere. Frustrated, I began the process of cancelling all my cards (well actually Terri began that process - I sat and wept into my open hands). It got more frustrating.

After trying to figure out where I had seen my wallet last, Terri and I began to put together some puzzle pieces. She got up early in the morning to put some clothes in the dryer and discovered that both of our garage doors were wide open to the world. She thought I had done it, chalked it up to me being dumb sometimes, closed the doors and didn't say anything about it. Similarly, when I went down to the garage to go to work I noticed that one of the overhead lights in Terri's van was on. I thought she had left it on, chalked it up to her being forgetful sometimes, turned off the light and didn't say anything about it. When I got around to my car I saw that the driver's side door was slightly ajar. I laughed at how absentminded both of us must be to leave our cars like that overnight and drove to work.

A few hours later Terri called me to ask if I had gone to the car wash this morning...twice. When I told her that I hadn't we began to get a sinking feeling that someone had found and was using my wallet. Terri called the police who told her that they'd had numerous reports of garage doors being open from our neighborhood.

If you haven't figured this out yet, let me break it down for you. Someone managed to open our electric garage doors in the middle of the night, broke into both our cars and stole my wallet and ipod. I think the part that makes me the sickest is that they could have walked right into our house while we slept and done whatever they wanted. Yeah...think about that for a second. Doesn't feel good running across your imagination, does it? Me either.

One positive about the whole thing; my wallet was getting a little bloated and uncomfortable in my back pocket. Having been relieved of much of it's weight, it is now slim and trim. Much easier to sit on.

You, The Fly

It happened to me one spring when the weather turned warm. I was driving around just enjoying the weather when I noticed I had an uninvited passenger on the window outside my car. Maybe he was just buzzing around looking for a good meal and found something that looked interesting on my windshield. Maybe he just needed to take a break and rest his six legs and my car was the closest spot. Maybe the common housefly just thinks I have a really sweet ride and wanted to check it out when I was near. Whatever his motivation, Mr. Fly had come to rest on my vehicle.

I dont' know how you feel about having a fly sitting on your windshield looking in at you, but I don't love bugs, and when there are bugs sitting on my car I want them off. So I did what anyone else in my situation would have done; I put the pedal to the metal to shake him off. As I'm speeding up I imagine the fly feeling like one of those guys in action movies who jumps onto the hood of the car that the bad guy is using to escape the scene of the crime while the bad guy speeds up, swerves left and right and side-swipes other cars in an attempt to shake him. I watch the fly as I enter onto the interstate and begin going faster. 45...50...60...65...70? He's still there?! I'm pushing 75 miles per hour and this fly, shaking and quivering in the roaring wind, is still hanging on to my windshield for dear life! I finally gave up and pulled off at the next exit.

When I got the stop sign at the top of the exit ramp I got out and shooed him off. I imagine he was a little disoriented from the terror of the experience when he found himself miles from where he came (what is the equivalent of a mile to a fly...50 miles?). I, on the other hand, got back into my car and went to get a milkshake.

We all buzz around trying to make sense of our lives, trying to qualify and categorize our experiences into something that has purpose and meaning. We usually try to fit things into our vision of how the world should be. We label people and assign value to them based on what meaning they bring into our lives. We fold up our experiences and put them into the appropriate folders: Life Lesson, Bad Luck, Coincidence, Fate. We alphabetize our knowledge by category: True, False, Important, Trivia, Myth, Read it on the Internet.

But sometimes we land on something that is just too big for us to move. It is too vast for us to understand, too complex for us to puzzle out. When this happens, when we are confronted with something that is just too much for us to fully make sense of, we have a choice. We can either fly away, searching for our next meal, or we can hold on for dear life and wait to see where this behemoth is going to take us. The question is this: Are you content to fly back and forth between the things that you can easily control and explain, always avoiding the thing that can neither be reigned in or simplified, or are you going to hold on for the ride? See where it takes you? See if this greater thing has bigger meaning for your life?

For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for
good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremiah 29:11

What does this mean? You are the fly. God is the car. When you hold on for dear life to the one you cannot quantify, change or control, He will take you for a ride. And the destination is always planned out specifically for you. It is always good. Are you willing to hold on?

Setbacks

Undoubtedly many of you have not heard this yet, but let this be the official announcement: This year we are planning to release an Eagle Creek Worship album with all original songs. Over the last few months we have been writing and introducing new, original songs on Sunday mornings with the goal of recording and releasing the cd in September.

Up until a week ago, everything was going swimmingly (or smurfingly for those of you who were shaped by the 80's). We had nearly all the songs written and began moving forward on the first stages of recording several weeks ago. We were busting it out too. Committing everything we possibly could to tape, we had a pretty sizable library of music tracks for the album. Until the inevitable happened - computer crash.

With the fast and simple failure of a single hard drive we lost everything we had recorded. Every single track. Every vocal, guitar part, drum track...everything.

Square one is not such a bad place to be though. We now have the opportunity to approach everything from the beginning again with fresh eyes and ears. It may have given us the opportunity to write better songs. Only time will tell, but the setbacks won't stop the music.