Mezzamorphis

Another Christmas has come and gone, my 33rd here on this mortal coil. Like most people, this holiday season always brings about memories of when I was a child. Certain things stick out in my mind, things like…

… being at what was then Grandma and Grandpa Ginn’s house (now where my parents live), opening up the first Star Wars toy I can remember. It was an X-Wing, complete with stickers to simulate the moss of Dagobah. Regretted putting those stupid stickers on from the very beginning.

… what was probably my first Christmas at that house after we moved in, and we put the Christmas tree in the basement. Christmas morning I came downstairs to a Knight Rider big wheel that I rode all over the place. Something gnaws at the back of my head saying that I rode it down the stairs once, but surely I wouldn’t have been that stupid, would I?

… always having Christmas dinner (in Kansas, that means at noon) with my Dad’s family. As the years went on that family got progressively bigger and bigger, to the point where we had about 60 in one house one year.

… always having Christmas with Mom’s family the weekend before or after Christmas. This was fun because you were either getting presents early, or you had more presents to look forward to. Yes, I was a greedy little kid. Sue me.

… the clothes that I would often get from grandparents. They were very well meaning, but quite often they would pick out some phenomenally ugly stuff. Remember, this was the 80s and early 90s, so ugly takes on a whole new meaning. Occasionally they would hit a home run with one, but more often than not they would strike out and break the bat over your head.

… candlelight services at our church. It always seems like on of the most peaceful, serene times of year when the lights are out and the church is lit up only by candlelight. The most memorable was when I was 18 and Dad had some, er, difficulty blowing out the candle. I love my father, and I know he probably hates that story, but we laughed so hard that night. I’ll never forget that.

… the year we had pizza for Christmas dinner because I had sold everyone these stupid cards from Pizza Hut for a school fundraising thing. I think they were some kind of buy one, get one free thing that was unlimited. I don’t even remember what it was for, but my family dutifully ponied up for them, then proceeded to run Pizza Hut into the ground getting their free pizza. Never had that fundraiser again.

… playing pitch (a card game) or Trivial Pursuit with my mom’s family. The card games often involved accusations of cheating, mainly against my father and myself. There was also name calling, under-the-breath swearing, and out in the open swearing when someone lost. Oh, and laughter to the point of tears.

As I’ve gotten older, my memories shift from those of my extended family to those of my wife and our family. Memories like…

… our wedding. Our anniversary is December 14, and our wedding had some Christmas-ness to it, so that is always on my mind each year. And, weddings lead to honeymoons, which for us meant…

… Walt Disney World. You really can’t beat WDW at Christmastime. Collette’s dad spoiled us (ruined us, really) and paid for us to go to WDW for our honeymoon as a wedding gift. That turned into us wanting to go back constantly, and always at Christmas. The lights, the weather, and the magic were wonderful. Unfortunately, other people have discovered that as well and it’s a lot more crowded than it used to be. Still, a great place to celebrate the holidays.

… my own children. Ashlee’s first Christmas while we were living in Oklahoma. Alex’s first Christmas at the house we were renting in Kansas. Katie’s first Christmas last year, and David’s first Christmas just last week. Such great memories.

All in all, Christmas is probably the best time of year. I’m looking forward to next year already, but I’m also happy to be past the holiday season this year. I’m ready for the rest of winter, semester two of seminary, Easter, spring, storms, and summer to come back around.

(I wrote this about six months ago for a local magazine, but I’ve not seen it published yet. They had their time, so I’m posting it here. Hope you enjoy!)

For a seven year old, giving anything up is difficult. Children, like all of us, are by nature selfish people. When a child decides to give up something personal to help someone they don’t even know, it is a special thing to witness.

In April, our daughter Ashlee noticed an article on the front page of a small-town newspaper about a girl who had donated her hair to a charity called Locks of Love. This charity provides hairpieces to children under the age of 18 who have long-term hair loss due to a medical condition. The hairpieces are given at low cost or free of charge.

She began reading the article and asking questions about it. “Why did the little girl pictured cut her hair?” “Where does the hair go?” “What do they do with it?” After a few questions, we pulled up Locks of Love’s website and began telling her about all that the charity does. We were about to end the conversation, thinking it was just part of satisfying the curiosity of a seven year old. She sat thoughtfully for a moment, then said “I want to do that.”

When we understood that she was serious about it, we sat her down and told her what she needed to do. She had to cut off at least 10 inches of hair, and we would send it in for her. We also told her how proud we were that she wanted to contribute to such a great cause.

The morning of April 30, my wife took Ashlee to Salon 203 in Van Alstyne. When they arrived, the salon was about to close for the day. However, when Ashlee and Collette explained why they were there, Whitney Mandes exclaimed that she would love to be the one to cut Ashlee’s hair. Thirty minutes later, Ashlee had a new, shorter hair cut and an 11 inch ponytail of  hair to send to Locks of Love.

We mailed off the package containing her hair the next week. It’s funny how such a nondescript brown package can mean so much. To us, this was a happy moment, a signal of the growing maturity of our oldest daughter. It was inspired by a little girl from a small town in Kansas. We may never know who receives Ashlee’s gift. It is our prayer that this story inspires others to give as well.

This year, I’m thankful for…

…my lovely wife. As we close in on 13 years of marriage, I find that I love you more than the day we met. You’re the most beautiful woman in the world, the greatest mother, and my best friend. I can’t imagine life without you. God truly blessed me with the perfect helpmate. You allow me to do so many things, and support me in every one of them. I love you twice as much as yesterday and half as much as tomorrow.

…my beautiful daughter Ashlee. As you grow much too quickly into a young woman, it is my honor to watch you blossom. I love it when you’re silly, and love it when you’re serious. You are such a sweet and loving princess. I love that God made you so much like me. You’re my snuggle buddy.

…my awesome son Alex. You’re so funny to watch hop around when you play video games. You get more exercise in 20 minutes of Lego Star Wars than you would in an hour on a bicycle. Your sweet heart is a gift from God that I treasure and try to handle with care. Keep being awesome.

… my angel girl Katie. What do I say about you? When God made you he broke the mold, then banished the mold maker. Your fierce determination is matched only by your immovable will. I can’t wait to see what you are going to grow up to be. Every morning you greet us with a smile brighter than sunshine, then wish us goodnight with a snuggle and laugh. Even though you were unexpected, I can’t imagine life without you.

… my little David. I still feel like I barely know you. Just six months into your life, you push on through all the annoyances of being the youngest sibling. Your mom and I know the feeling and we empathize with you. You’re going to be the fair haired, blue eyed child, totally different from the others. God put a cute bow on our natural family.

… my parents. You’ve always been patient with me, letting me go my way with suggestions, but never making demands. I know you don’t get to see your grandchildren as often as you would like, and I wish that I could change that. We may disagree sometimes, but you’ve never held my opinions against me. You’re generous, loving, understanding, and the best parents a child could ever wish for. You make it easy to follow the fifth commandment. I’ll always be indebted to you for making me who I am. I’ll always love you.

… my church family. What do I say to such a wonderful group of people? Even with my mistakes, foibles, lack of confidence, and overbearing opinions, you all accept me. I’m humbled that you allow me to be a worship leader week in and week out. I’m emboldened by the work that you all do on a weekly basis. I’m so blessed to be part of a church family that truly cares for each other and the community around us, whether that community be Anna, Honduras, Ethiopia, or beyond. My family and I are supported in ways that we’ve never really experienced, and blessed because of it. This last year has been such a ride and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

… my job. At a time when so many people are out of work, I’m blessed to have the job that I have. What makes it even better is that I’m able to thrive and grow in my position. Sure, there are the times of drudgery and fixing things that someone else broke, but overall I can’t be more pleased. Ray, you are as generous as you are kind and my family can’t thank you enough each month for my paycheck.

… my Lord and Savior. As I move forward in life, I realize that I can’t do it without the strength I get from You. I learn more about my faith through school, but I truly grow when I spend time with You. I pray that everyday I learn from my mistakes and I am able to turn those mistakes into successes for Your glory. Keep me humble, no matter my position. Keep me always looking to You. Really, just keep me. Each day is one more day closer to eternity, and I hope that I’m doing everything possible with the time I have to advance Your kingdom. I know that it can only be done through You, but You’ve given me my gifts and my ministry. I lean on you for the results.

I’ve spent a lot of time on Facebook in the past few weeks. One of the fun things is reconnecting with high school classmates and friends. It’s interesting to see the direction that our lives have taken since graduation. Most of us are married, with children ranging from none to seven. Many appear to be happy with where they are, with the snowy exception here and there.

One of the most interesting things about it to me is that we are all still connected to our hometown in some way. Many of our parents or grandparents still live there, and some never left the area. The recent death of one of my friends grandparents made me think that we are all still connected by that single strand. Something will invariably draw each of us back home, whether it be a wedding, funeral, reunion, or holiday. We don’t all descend upon that little town on the Kansas prairie at the same time, but we all cross into the city at some point.

There are exceptions of course. A few don’t have any reason to go back. I’m sure that as the years go by, more will move from the connected group to the unconnected. Slowly, living connections to our hometown will disappear and the only thing remaining will be that we grew up there and that many of us graduated from high school together.

That web of connections grows and blends together with time. Each of us has new friends and maybe new places we live. Those new friends are added into our own web, connecting us to their past, and they to ours. Our children will develop their own connections to other people, as will our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and so on. Each person that my life touches will, knowingly or otherwise, have a connection to a small town in south central Kansas, a family farm, and a community of people willing to do anything for each other.

That’s pretty cool.

… of which I do realize is eleven days old.

I got two books for Christmas from my parents. One is Red Hot Lies by Christopher Horner and the other is Peace to War by Paul Alexander. Red Hot Lies about some of the fallacies about Global Warming©/Climate Change© put out by politicians and the media. He actually infers that they might be pushing an agenda with this. Honestly, I’m shocked. (That was sarcasm.)

Peace to War looks at how the Assemblies of God moved from being pacifistic in their views on war to going along with a more pro-war stance. I actually know the author of the book from my days at Southwestern A/G University, and I was pretty excited to have opened this one up. I’m through the first two chapters of it so far, and it is quite interesting.

What is the new year going to bring? Well, we’re adding one more to the family in June, and then we’ll see after that. Yes, I did say we’ll see. We’re not ruling out adding another one to the family. We love our kids and having a baby around the house has just made us love them more. Big sister and big brother dote on their baby sister (sometimes a bit too much) and they’re going to have even more to do when LEM arrives.

OK, LEM is a name that I coined for the baby. We don’t know what we’re having yet and we had two names picked out, Lucas and Emily, though we’ve moved away from Emily now. I’m a little concerned that LEM might stick.

Anyway, another thing that I’m going to do (not hoping, not planning, going) is to write more. I’m working up some ideas for posts and I’m going to make it work. I would like to finish up some previous series that I started at my old site, and maybe start some new ones.

If there are topics you would be interested in, please let me know. I’m not an encyclopedia of all knowledge, but I do love researching and learning new things. Just not research that is associated with getting a PhD. That sucked and I quit it.

Well worth watching. He’s quite funny and dead on.

If anyone who has read the “About Me” page on this site already knows, I’ve spent more than enough time in my life in school. I’ve received a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Information Technology and a Master’s of Science in Management Information Systems. The way I see it, I’ve done a pretty good job of training my mind, which has honestly always been my strongest asset.

However, in doing so, I’ve neglected other parts of my being. Obviously, if you’ve seen any pictures of me laterly, I’m not the most svelte person. While I’m knowledgeable about the Bible and what it contains, I feel like I don’t know enough to defend it myself, much less to disciple my family in what it means. Financially, we’re doing OK, but could stand to do a lot better.

All this being said, I’ve made some personal changes, and we as a family have made some as well. What I’m trying to do is to build up muscle in other areas of my being, to bring them up to par with my intellectual training. What exactly am I doing differently?

Physically, I’m trying to eat better and have started going to taekwondo with Alex twice a week. If it wasn’t so far away (30 minutes) I would happily go more often, but twice a week is enough for right now. We are both white belts, but we have a test coming up next weekend to see if we advance to yellow belt.

Financially, Collette and I have drawn up plans to have all of our debt (minus student loans) paid off by the middle to end of next year. This includes our car, personal loans, credit cards, and a couple other debts that we’ve incurred. After that, we’ll take a year to build up our savings, then turn it loose on the house. If my calculations are correct, we’ll have it paid off completely by the end of 2013. My plans are all based on the Dave Ramsey “Total Money Makeover” book, which was so generously given to me by my brother.

Spiritually, I’m reading more about theology in an attempt to better be able to defend my faith. I know the basic talking points, but I want to know more in depth. Going back to school isn’t an option right now, because I really don’t want to. The two weeks I spent in the PhD program at UNT was enough to make me realize I don’t want any more formal education. I’ve been reading Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem and it’s really excellent. It’s not so intellectual as to be difficult to read, but not so basic as to be boring.

So there you go. That’s my current life goals. Others are included as part of the whole, like better time management and spending more time with my family. I’ve cut down on the TV that I watch, especially as the one show I was really looking forward to this season turned out to be a dud (Heroes).

What kinds of things are you doing to maintain or make your life better?

  Yesterday we looked at a young princess meeting her contemporaries for the first time. Today, we watch a young boy transform from a Padawan into a Jedi. (If you don’t get the end of that sentence, I’m sorry. The rest won’t make sense either. Read about it here, catch up, and come back. )

He found it hard to contain his excitement as we traversed mighty distances to accomplish our goal.

He thought long and hard about how he was going to get there.

Oh, and he had ice cream too.

Finally, with his intrepid assistant in tow, he came to the foot of the…er…well, it’s an AT-AT. Jeez, watch a movie people!

There were droids there to assist him on his journey as well.

And some fish-headed things. (Yes, I know they are called Mon Calamari. I’m fully geeked out here.)

(Fake) guns blazing, he couldn’t wait to get in to see his objective.

First in line, he used the Force to open the doors for everyone.

–INSERT PAUSE–
OK, here is where I stop and tell you that I couldn’t take pictures of the inside of the ride. Why? Because they say no flash photography on the ride. They even had a video of someone flashing a camera in a Wookiee’s face, and he seemed none too pleased by it. Seeing as how I’m partial to retaining my arms, I figured I would toe the company line.
–END PAUSE–

We finished our trip to Endor and went out into the gift shop giant sucking sound of my wallet exit area, where both he and his assistant were transformed into fearsome bounty hunters.

It was a good day.

 
This will be what we look like August 15th when the new Star Wars movie hits the theater. It’s fun having a boy who loves Star Wars, at least for me.

We went to Walt Disney World back in December last year. Ashlee had been looking forward to meeting the various princesses while we were there and she got her chance. Don’t worry, I’ll cover Alex later.

These photos were taken at the Akershus Royal Banquet Hall at breakfast one morning. Click to enlarge.

 
Ashlee with Snow White (She actually had the voice too. It must have killed her throat talking like that all morning.)

 
Ashlee and Jasmine (None of us really responded when she walked up to the table, so she was in and out pretty quick.)

Ashlee and Aurora (Her favorite princess, Ashlee bought a little $3 ring the day before that she had to show Aurora.)

Ashlee and Mulan (This interaction almost made her change her mind the next day. More on that later.)

Ashlee and Belle (The first one was just too cute. She got other pictures taken with Belle, but I have to scan those.)

She also saw Belle and Aurora while we walking through Epcot. Not to break the magic, but Belle is the same on both days. Aurora was two different people.

Oh, and Alex didn’t really want to be there. He kept moving away from everyone.

Next, I’ll post some pictures of Ashlee acting like a princess one night at Downtown Disney.

I finished school last week for the summer, now I’ve got all of August to look forward to getting caught up on writing and chores around the house, not to mention reading some of the new books I’ve got. We went to Mardel this weekend and they had several bargain racks I perused through. I don’t have all of these on my list over to the right, but here’s a quick sample.

Christ and Culture