Beaches

When I lived in the midwest, a trip to the beach was something that I didn't really think about all that much. I loved to go to Florida or Alabama and see the ocean but I wasn't thinking about it much when I wasn't there. Now that I live 20 minutes from the beach, if I don't go for awhile, I really start to miss it. In the winter sometimes now, I tell the kids that we need to run by the beach and make sure that the ocean is still there. Jett is the official taster to check the saltiness of the water.

We went to the beach today for the first time this season and it was great. The ocean has such a calming effect and it puts my own little life in perspective. There is so much going on in the water and across the water that my issues seem to shrink a bit. Life is so much more than my small world.

It's good to be reminded of that occasionally.

Peace.

Craziness

Let's see, the last seven days...

Wednesday left for Greensboro, NC for a conference on after school programming. Good stuff there; inspiring, infomational, fun.

Home Friday to see the fam. It's amazing how much I miss them in such a short time. It's nice to have one night of quiet to get to chill a little, but then I need the noise that those other four incredible people bring into my life.

Saturday brought three soccer games stacked one after the other and an end of season party to follow the last one. Between the last game and the party, we took a quick trip to Urgent Care so we could get Kendall's scalp stapled back together. She basically fell out of a tree and smacked her head. No concussion, just two staples in her head for about ten days. Went on to the party, picked up the obligatory "we finished the season" trophy and finally went home.

Sunday brought finishing up the talk for church Sunday night. And lots of laundry. Farmed out two kids to various locations and went to hang out with our friends that we haven't seen in two weeks. I really miss the people from church when I don't get to see them much.

Monday and today both saw ten hour work days and home for the night.

Crazy, but a great life.

Peace.

Champs

We went to Charleston, SC last weekend for Brady to play in a soccer tournament. He was a guest player on a U11 team and he was the youngest on the team. They all played some great soccer and won the tournament for their age bracket. Nice work Port City Storm!!

Click the post title to see the team picture of the champs. Brady is the brutally handsome little dude with glasses. Please note that he is sporting a Missouri Tiger wristband that only comes off when he takes a shower. I think he has worn that thing every day for about a year and a half. That's a solid ten year old boy move.

Peace.

Still Here

Oh, I don't have any excuse except, to quote Lane Meyer from "Better Off Dead", "My little brother got his arm stuck in the microwave. So my mom had to take him to the hospital. My grandma dropped acid this morning, and she freaked out. She hijacked a busload of penguins. So it's sort of a family crisis."

So it's not really that bad, it's mostly just busyness that has prevented new posts. That and procrastination. And laziness. But I think I have fixed all of those issues forever so postings should pick up soon. By soon, I mean in the next month at least.

Peace.

Inspiration

I love inspiration. I love the thought of people being gripped by a thought, a dream, a possibility. I love to be the inspiration for others. I love to provoke people to think about where they are in life and how they approach it. I want to help people achieve the fullest of their God-given potential. I have run into a bit of a problem though.

How do you inspire those who don't want to be inspired?

Some people either never had or have lost the ability to dream beyond where they presently are. It doesn't matter if they are 14 years old or 70. Male or female. The foresight and hope are not there. And they seem to be fine with it.

I was thinking about church in relation to inspiration. How many times do we walk out of church and say "What a great sermon" or "Worship was really good today"? It may be a conversation or a message or a song, but we leave with something more than we went in with.

I think many times we get something because we expect something. We go in with the thought that there will be a moment that will push us a little further down the path in the right direction. The same is true when we take a class, go to a conference, read a book or give ourselves to any other learning experience.

What if you don't expect anything though? What if your life is what it is and won't ever be anything else, so you think? That is a hard place to be and I am struggling to know how to bring hope to some of the people I meet that live in this hopeless state.

I thought about writing some ideas about how to bring some inspiration but two things stopped me from actually putting them into words on a screen. First, I am at a loss when it comes to articulating what I am thinking. Secondly, I am not exactly sure what I am thinking.

Any thoughts?

Peace.

Time

I keep putting off writing because I tell myself that I am tired, busy, blocked, hungry, etc. I thought about a quote this week that I had come across a while ago. Kind of put me in my place.

"Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein."
--H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

I may not have the talent or the gifts that this group of people had, but I do have the same amount of time in a day. What it comes down to is discipline. Get up earlier, turn off the TV, force myself to do what needs to be done. It is so easy to just make excuses about not being able to do the things that I would like to do.

What are you not doing that you feel you should be doing? Why are you not doing it? It is not about working yourself into a state of burnout, but it's about using the gifts you (and I) have been given.

Peace.

The Greatest

I know I said I was not going to write about family as influences in my life because that seems to be a given. With this post, I have officially lied.

I got to go away this past weekend to Myrtle Beach with my wife. When you have kids, it is very easy to lose sight of the husband and wife part of the family. It isn't that you forget about being married, it is just so often swamped under everything else that goes on in life. Jobs, friends, soccer practice, bible study, church, dance classes, soccer games, trips to the beach, bills, broken stuff, facebook, writing... You get the idea.

Anyway, I was reminded again why I married this woman. Words cannot do justice to her spirit, her creativity, her love, her laugh, her dreams, her talents, her strength or her life. I often joke about how she threw herself at me because of the Lademann curse (women can't help themselves), but the truth is that I consider myself the most blessed man on the planet to have this woman as such an intimate part of my life.

Rachel, I love you and you are, after God, the greatest influence in my life; the reason I do anything that I do for good. Thank you for loving me.

Peace.