drifters, vagabonds, gypsies, jesters

Doing an image search of some of the above words is dangerous. Especially if you are a minister sitting in staff meeting. (Begin frantic mashing of the X button on the top left corner of the safari window. #holycrapoops!!)
Had I been born 20 years later I'm sure I would have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. That wasn't really popular while I was growing up. We had Ritalin then but it was pronounced spanking and I had regular doses...
wandering...
OK, so after being embarrassed by some of the images that popped up on my screen I opted for the Kawasaki Vulcan Drifter. Motorcycles are safe to look at. Until I start thinking about how much I want one.

All of that to say that my wife, kids, and I are drifters now.
Vagabonds
Gypsies
Jesters (Asa Gretchen and I were all born into that name but the other ones chose it. suckers)

We're out of our house. We didn't have much lead time regarding the house we were living in. We immediately began the loan pre-qualification process and started looking. We've offered on several houses. For whatever reason we haven't found one yet.

After 5 PODS, 12 van loads and 5 friends who are willing to harbor our stuff for an indefinite period of time we've moved. We ACTUALLY have friends who said "sure, the 10 of you can come live with us". Seriously, who does that? Better friends than I deserve. This morning after scrambling 16 eggs and toasting enough bread to re-stock Panera I loaded my kids in the Pilot (that had arrows, a burr grinder and a basket with a toilet snake in it) and drove them to school. Some of our stuff is constantly moving because it's in our vehicles. In our van 2 of the 7 seats are usable. That drives me just a bit crazy... well, crazier...

There's a feeling of malaise. I'm learning that as a man not only is my identity tied up in what I do but it is also linked to how I provide for my family. That's kind of a new revelation for me. Maybe because I've never been in this spot before. I don't like it. But I am waiting. Because really at this stage of the game there's nothing more that I can do.

slow

Done. Impulsive commit to fast until we found out if the bank favored our offer. They didn't. While I am disappointed about it I'm also at peace. 76 hours without food and asking God to move. The cynic would say He didn't. I say He did. No is just as much an answer as yes. Who knows what He saved us from or to. 5 hours after the post below this one "Fast" we received an offer on our old house which we have for sale in a less than ideal location in a not so energetic market. That was day 2 of the fast.

I've already had a friend tell me that God will bring along something better. I don't know where the rating system for stuff like that works, do you? Good, better, best, horrible... how do those sorts of things apply? It was just a house. It wasn't a life / death or salvation issue.

I changed a bit during the fast too, new perspective on it. The peace and the connection really came sometime around day 3. Bummer. Guess I have a new pattern to follow in the future for fasting. I don't hate it as much as I did. Which is VERY different than saying I like it.

I do not.

Chances to pray for lots of stuff besides myself. First time I've really felt hunger for more than 2 days. It's been a long time since I've felt physical hunger in general though.

Biggest realization - God is enough. Charlie Starr in his book Honest to God talks about Job a lot and wrestling with God. Job's questions never get answered. When God shows up there isn't a "thus sayeth the LORD Job, here is why....". The key is that God shows up. Job doesn't get answers, he gets God. Way better.
The circle around the S means extra meat. Hey, the fast is over. Nothing says comfort food like Chipotle. Bring it on.

Fast

Some spiritual disciplines I am better at than others. Fasting is not one of them.

I don't like it.

Generally speaking, I do myself and my family more harm than good when fasting. I get grumpy when I'm hungry. My beautiful wife knows this. Whenever we would shop together she made sure that I had something to eat. I also don't enjoy shopping. Put shopping and hunger together? Bad JuJu.

I don't fast very often. I wish that weren't true but it is. It takes something fairly monumental to move me to skip meals (you know, because God isn't enough...). I'm always thankful when the fast is over, both for the ending and the experience.

Jody and I have been looking for houses lately. We have to be out of our house May 1. Today it's April 3 and we've been looking for more than a month. We have a family of 10. That makes house hunting a challenge. We've found several houses that we got excited about. Usually the day prior to finding them they go under contract. Great fun.

We found a house that was a foreclosure that will totally work for our family. Great location. Good price. Moderate amount of work to have it livable. And there are multiple offers. Good time to fast.

We had our offer in by Thursday night. No word on Friday. I decided that we'd have to find out something on Monday. Why not fast until we find out? Great idea. Well, it's Tuesday and still no word.

2 days may be the new starting point for fasting. Day 1 had me focused on myself. Day 2 allowed that to change. I'm hungry. I think I'm hungry for more than just food. I'm hungry for God to move. Not just in our search for a house but in my heart and the church and this city. Crazy ride with what God has been doing in the Jesters lately. Will be interesting to see what's next.

Today & 7

Fridays are days off... in theory. I think the nature of ministry is you take time when you can knowing some days off will only happen in theory. It's spring break week which creates a challenge for my wife and I. Our 8 kids don't have school but we still have work.

The 2 teenage girls had been pulling some baby sitting duty and had a chance to get away to Busch Gardens today...

Jody had a dental appointment...

That left me with the 6 littles...

Beach.

I already mentioned that it's spring break didn't I? Oops.

We drove from one end of Siesta Key to the other looking for parking. No dice. So, we headed to Lido Beach. Sarasota streets are already bursting at the seams from the snow birds/q-tips/blue hairs (odd names for the retired people who winter in Florida and then return home for the summer). That turned our trip into a more than hour long excursion - just to get to the beach. I had no real agenda today except to hang with my little people so it was no big deal. 40 minutes in Gretchen said "DAD HOW MUCH LONGER IS IT GOING TO BE??" (She doesn't have an inside voice unless she's being corrected and I'm waiting to hear a yes sir.) Matthew: (also lacking ANY volume control whatsoever) "YOU HAVE TO BE PATIENT!" Gretchen: "I'VE ALREADY BEEN PATIENT, I DON'T WANT TO BE PATIENT ANYMORE".

I totally get that.

I'm there with God right now. We found out not long ago that we have to move. We've been renting a house for the past 15 months that is much larger than the home we purchased back as a family of 4. The owner wants to move back in. In a month. I've been praying and asking God to provide in a way that honors Himself. So far? Nada. So, yeah, Gretchen... I totally get where you're coming from.

We made it to the beach. I love the beach. My wife would probably argue this point. I like to go, enjoy, and come home. She wants to pack overnight bags for everyone and stay for a week spearing fish for food and washing our clothes in the water. No thanks. That's the beauty of living 10 miles from the beach. You don't have to get your money's worth out of it in just one day. (end rant)

People look when they see our entourage. It's like a car accident or an 80 year old man in a speedo, you just can't not look. It's far more entertaining when I'm flying solo. Let's face it dads, a great many of us are totally disengaged from our families. We love them, but we are relational pygmies (no offense pygmies). It's easy to invest 70 hour work weeks to provide for them and difficult to spend quality time with them.

When we lived in Kentucky and my son was a newborn I just couldn't get enough of him. My wife is quite crafty (all meanings apply) and she made this baby sling. I would have called it a papoose but whatever. I loved popping him in there and going grocery shopping. (Moms need breaks sometimes dads, especially the ones who don't ask for any breaks. So, if you're worth your salt you will provide them.) It was laughable to see how people responded. The one thing I didn't expect was all the ladies who wanted to see exactly what I had in there. I have a larger than normal bubble of personal space. It would have been worth catching on film for a good belly laugh. Me being proud of my son (yeah, I made that) vs. the 10 foot pole rule.

I'm reading 7 by Jen Hatmaker and brought it with me. Somewhere in the middle of chapter one the alarms went off and I realized the perimeter had been breached - "'em 4 kids, you adopt 'em?" said the nice gentleman who clearly owned a "the south will rise again" t-shirt. I was so tempted to say, "which ones?". "Yes" I replied. "'at's awesome man, shoot(the oo part was much longer than I can adequately convey here), you just don't see that kinda thing. Really? Damn. Man. Wow."

It was interesting punctuation to the book that I'm reading. God calls us all different places and the same place at the same time. Universally I think He calls us to his side. Individually He calls us to preach, to start a prison ministry, to be an accountant, a lawyer, a stay at home mom, maybe even to adopt. I'm not always obedient. When I am things like that happen. Weird. It's like God was telling the truth when He said the world will know we're Christians by our love.

tough mudder vs the spartan

Last December I did my first ever obstacle race. 12 miles of running, climbing, crawling, balancing, diving, and being shocked. The Tough Muddder. It was awesome. I can't remember the last time I had that much fun. Almost as soon as I got home I started looking for other similar events. Last weekend I did the Spartan. For my own brain it would be worth comparing the two events. I have in mind to eventually try all of the events like these that are within reasonable driving distance which is probably less than 4 hours drive.

The Tough Mudder was north east of Tampa. The race took place over a Saturday and a Sunday. They release 600 runners every 20 minutes. There wasn't a lot of communication prior to the race but as soon as we arrived they were ready for us. Ample parking and polished logistics. The race itself took place on a large farm/ranch. Beautiful area. Mud was dark and rich and probably 20% mud, 80% poop. The 26 obstacles were well spaced out. We ran between 10 - 12 miles and probably never more than 1 mile at a time due to the spacing of the obstacles. The finish line greeted us with Cliff bars, bottled water, builders milk, gel blocks, a shiny tough mudder t-shirt and the highly coveted orange headband. After race events included live music, lots of fried food, tattoos, showers (i.e. hoses laying on the ground), a free XX beer, and the entertainment of watching people run thru the electroshock therapy obstacle. After the race you could search look up photos of yourself by entering your race tag number. If that didn't show up you could look thru the 3,568,742 pictures that were not labeled in hopes of seeing yourself or one of your teammates.

The spartan was held in north Miami at a state park. Same deal, the race took place over a Saturday/Sunday. Only a couple hundred racers were released at a time. As soon as you signed up for the race they started sending your daily workouts, VERY challenging daily workouts. We parked at a local college and rode a bus over to the race location. Lots of people were late for their heat because they didn't account for the 40 minute wait and the 10 minute bus ride. Bummer for them. I like to be really early. Beautiful setting again at a state park. The one bummer to the setting was that most of the course was on mountain bike single track. Lots of rocks and roots which wouldn't be a problem if I were a runner who wore normal shoes. I wear 5 finger shoes with vibram soles. After a mile the rocks starting calling to mind all of the colorful ways I learned to use profanity in the Army. There was a big swim at the beginning of the race. I'm a bad swimmer - not fun. The obstacles were not evenly spread out. At one point of the 8 mile race we ran 4.5 miles straight. The worst grouping of obstacles was at the end when we low crawled thru tar-like black mud and then had to traverse some vertical walls. I couldn't do it, not many people could. Any obstacle that you failed required 30 burpees. Bah. The finish line greeted you with bananas, powerade, some kind of funky green bar, a spartan medal and a cool t-shirt. Food and better showers followed the event. They gave every runner a chip which signaled cameras when you approached and tagged pictures with personal ID's. That should be really cool once they get the pictures up on their website.

Both events were great and totally worth doing again.

Wife's Blog

crazyjesterfam.blogspot.com

check her out. My wife's in on this thing now.

God is Scary

My wife is the best person I know. She recently made a comment that reminded me of when I was younger rocking out to Hall and Oats or 65 love affair on my record player. Sometimes the needle would get stuck and the same couple words and notes would repeat over and over and over and over... well, you get the idea. She was headed in a completely different direction with her thought than where it took me but in the words of Buckaroo Banzai "no matter where you go, there you are".

A week ago I received a gift. I have received this same gift every year for the past 3 years. I knew it was coming, like fruitcake but not bound for the trashcan. One of my guitar students gives me a sum of money every year at Christmas time. Honestly, I look forward to it. The materialistic side of me starts thinking in November about what I'm going to spend it on (not proud of that). This year was no exception. On the same day that I received my Christmas "bonus" I ran into an old co-worker. He and his wife left our church some time ago to plant a church. That's hard work. They don't make a lot of money and they have a lot of kids. As soon as I saw him the record started skipping in my brain:

Brain: "give him your bonus"

Me: "nope"

Brain: "give it"

Me: "uh... no"

Brain: "yes"

Me: "but I have plans for that money"

Brain: "so do I"

Me: "But we're the same. Aren't you my brain?"

Brain (or something else): "..."

Me: "Hello up there?"

Brain (maybe Holy Spirit...): "choose"

At that point in the conversation I had spent about an hour with this guy and I was in my truck driving away. I turned around. I wish that I had obeyed when I first was told to but I didn't. My friend thought I was crazy. I think I'm crazy. Not because of that particular incident but I can think of a few hundred other instances that testify to my lack of sanity. He tried to not take it but was persuaded when I said I had to do it to be obedient. Weird. I'm not one of those "God audibly spoke to me" people but I tell you, He made it difficult for me to ignore what He was saying that day; and I tried. I REALLY tried. Sometimes God comes in the gentle whisper and sometimes He's got a 5 pound sledge hammer headed toward your face.

So, back to my wife...

She said (and this is taken somewhat out of context) that there was no hope for the american church. This was rooted in the ideology of America that exalts the individual and individual happiness over everything. Don't agree? Look at your checkbook. Break everything down into percentages and if the scale tips in your favor... Don't want to use your checkbook? Use mine. The same thing would be true. The vast majority of what I receive goes right back to me. I make time for things that matter to me. I like to say some things matter to me that actually don't based on the allocation my time - not what I say mind you, but what I actually do. Checkbook's the same way. My sister loves big cats - bengal tigers, snow leopards - the kinds that are cute in stuffed animals but in real life would eat you. Her checkbook proves it. She has given to organizations that help protect the habitats of those animals. I would like to support those animals by feeding people that bother me to them. That’s not real support and not actually true (most days).

Proof.

Money = proof of value.

Digress. Sorry.

Back to the hopelessness of the American Church…

She’s was reflecting on a story about a third world country where an American had gone, behaved in a very “un-American” way and made a huge difference; so huge a difference in fact that a book was written about her. The context for that is found in our efforts to raise 8 children in the midst of a society so deeply entrenched in entitlement and self-preservation that the idea of losing your life to find it almost cannot be translated.

So…

What if the third world could be brought here?

That’s the endless repeat question and I need to think about it more before I finish that thought.