You Are Different.

Not a poem, not quite an essay. This is more of a thought-sketch.

You are different.

In all of human history you are unique, and you have not been here before. You are not perfect, but you are interesting and full of potential..

But the treasure that is you is not yours to keep. Give your you-ness to God. I know, right? Craziness. But watch what happens. He gives you Himself, and you are a better you. And what He gives,  give THAT back. And He gives Himself and You give back a new, even better you. It's an adventure, wild and dangerous, this giving of yourself, of the you-ness that you know. You look down the road and you cannot see what you will be next.

Every now and then look back. You will see amazing stuff there, too. You will see that you have given up canned spam and received the finest steak.

Life Changes

It occurs to me that many life changes have happened here, and I have not taken the time to record it.

God remains my rock and my family remains stable (well, you know...with me around, stable might be a relative term). Anyhow, not much else is the same.

After two years as principal our Christian school closed for lack of students/funds. I figure I bought the school maybe a year it wouldn't otherwise have had, but still it was very, very sad for a very large number of families, including mine.

So I enrolled the kids in public school and went home with no aspirations other than to pray for my kids and for the country and teach guitar lessons maybe.

After two grueling years as principal I really enjoyed dropping the girls off and going home. The house was clean every single day! Mom was fighting cancer (a battle she since has won) and had to be taken to radiation every day. And I could take pictures of the most beautiful fall in memory. And I took up painting.

The second glorious week a fellow church goer stopped me to chat. She is on the board of the area Youth for Christ chapter. They have not had an Executive Director in about 5 years and it has put a strain on the organization. She asked if I wanted to be an Executive Director. I politely told her I'd pray about it, because that's what Christians say, and started working on how to tell the board no thank you.

Then I started to pray about it, and also started feeling pretty selfish about my response. So--

Now I'm praying for my kids and praying for the country, and I drop them off at Jr. High every day and then I go to work at Youth for Christ. I'm behind the scenes mostly, but I help out the ministry directors sometimes. One site needs new facilities. They have this thing called "Fifth Quarter" where you go there after the football game and eat pizza and drink non-alcohol beverages and learn more about God. Sometimes it's so crowded I joke you could pass out and stay standing up all evening.

It's really, really good times, and I can't believe God gave me an opportunity to do something like this and I almost said "no." God is good like that.