My buddy Tony who currently lives in Round Rock, Texas has been a friend since college.  I began working with his wife at the Christian bookstore.  We quickly became friends (Jessica and I and Tony and his bride Erin) and it became apparent that I was a jerk.  I was trying to be funny but it often came about by me speaking rudely about Jessica.  Tony & Erin told me I was not welcome at their apartment any more if I continued to be rude like that.  I learned a valuable lesson that night.  We came over many times after that and once getting married we moved in next door to them.  They were both part of our wedding party.

Tony & I are goofy together, which has been a lot less often since I’ve moved to Colorado, but I count he and his bride as dear friends.  Tony inspired me to be a coder, inspires me to be a better theologian, and he also inspires me to use the word Hermeneutics in any conversation we have together at least once.  I’m thankful for my friendship with him, and Erin as well.  We’re looking forward to them coming to visit us next month.

One of the elders at my church is Mike Doyle.  Every time I get together with Mike (and his wife and son) I’m blown away by their down-to-earth, practical lives.  Mike’s theology isn’t high-fa-luting, its not full of robust vocabulary, instead its sometimes terse, sometimes ‘vulgar’ [in the old sense of the word and not the raunchy sense], and often peppered with concepts that are familiar now that I’ve been around him for three years.  Mike loves to talk about beholding Jesus Christ.  Mike loves to talk about the Christian’s identification with Christ on the cross and afterward.  Mike loves to talk about how proud he is of his son, his wife or someone that he’s been teaching/discipling.

Mike loves the sheep he’s been assigned as a shepherd at Holly Hills Bible Church and I love being one of them.

Sure, its a few days late but being Father’s Day last week I needed to surprise the internets after the fact. My dad and mom are probably tired of me thanking them for the things they did growing up. They’re probably tired of me telling them that they have influenced me indelibly, but they’ll just have to deal with it.

My dad has been a tremendous role model for me.  He’s been a godly man, a humble man, a loving man, and as many of you can imagine he’s been a humorous man.  My dad taught me about puns, spoonerisms, play on words and various other silly things from an early age on.  I’m thankful for the laughter that he has brought to my own life for coming on three decades.  Outside of the list above my dad has dealt with pain and suffering well, too.  In his own life he’s dealt with a chronic disease and not made a big deal of it other than to share silly stories where that disease caused something funny or amusing to happen.  There are many events I could retell as events that I’m very thankful for, but I will share two.

The first landmark event was when my dad gathered the family around the kitchen table and humbly apologized for having worked such long hours as we were younger.  His admission to not spending enough time with the family was an act that redirected the family moving forward.  He made adjustments in his life and began spending much more time with us.  I knew my dad in High School unlike almost every single one of my friends and acquaintances.  He was my dad, and he was my friend.

Another critical series of events for me was right around when I turned 20.  My dad began to disciple me and teach me some important principles in the Bible that for some reason never showed up in Sunday School or Church for the first twenty years of my life.  Those times were rich with value, great in fellowship and important because of the content and things I would learn.  Some of those very things I’ve been trying to pass onto Sunday School students of my own for the last decade.

I’m very, very thankful for my dad, he’s been an incredible influence on my family and I look forward to the future as his adult son.

I’m glad my bike was given to me as a graduation present many years ago when I graduated from High School.  My grandmother gave me a large sum of cash (well, for me it was a large sum of cash at the time) and my dad and mom picked up the rest of the tab.  Together they bought me a green GT mountain bike.  No shocks, no frills, just many gears and a bike frame that was meant for men and not boys (like my old bike which was a BMX bike with 21 inch tires).  That bike has been through many accidents with me and survived the Texas heat.  I’ve broken or bent the forks, the rims, the sprockets and blown out tens of tires on it, but its still hanging in there.  I’ve gotten more bruses and scrapes from that than any other activity and its been a hoot!

Most recently I’ve hooked our kiddy trailer up to the green monster and been pulling the girls around the neighborhood.  Hearing them laugh behind me and having them yelling at me to go faster is also a blast.  Of course eventually the fun wears out about the time my legs do, but its still a blast.  Thanks Grandma (though she’s in heaven and not earth-dwelling any longer)  and mom and dad for the bike.  Its been great.

For the record the fastest I’ve gone on it was 45 miles per hour going down the road at King’s Canyon in Carson City, Nevada.

I have to be super-thankful for my church body.  I’ve missed three weeks in a row due to traveling and I miss many of the people there.  The people I don’t miss yet I probably should make an effort to get to know better 🙂  We moved to Denver to go to Holly Hills Bible Church (HHBC) and the body there has had its ups and downs as various events have taken place, but the teaching has remained consistent and the edification is amazing.

One guy particularly has encouraged me over and over: Norm.  Norm is in a wheelchair because he’s got some severe problem that has slowly caused him to lose muscle mass in his legs.  He’s in constant pain (though he is on pain medication) and yet he’s always got a smile and when we talk about our lives in Christ he’s just an encouraging brother.  Norm was in communications before the web and its been interesting at times to discuss his take on things having come from the print and media world before HTML.

Norm told me about going through trials and suffering in real life and about how one of the Sunday School classes he was in at HHBC encouraged him. Norm sees the trials and suffering as an opportunity to grow in his walk with Christ.  Yesterday he had some surgery on one of his eyes to attach his retina (again) to his eye so that it will work correctly.  He now has to sit facing down with his head for days as the retina and eye heal.  What an amazing brother in Christ to endure these things with such joy.

Thanks Holly Hills, and thanks Norm!

I’m thankful this week that I was a Sunday School teacher to a high school class for a while in the earlier part of this decade.  This week I’ve had breakfast with students and acquaintances of those students all week long 🙂  Friends of former students who even wanted to get together.  Neat folks, neat to have had some sort of impact.  Neat to have the opportunity to continue to have an impact.  Life is good.

Today I’m thankful for having parasites (it turns out I have two different parasites going on inside of me, a pair of parasites).  I don’t like the parasites, but its caused me to do some life evaluation.  Firstly its caused me to spend more time thinking about things above & my relationship with Christ.  Secondly its caused me to spend more time with my family.  Thirdly its caused me to start exercising and working out.  I have lost, as of this morning, 8 pounds in the last month.  Some people lose weight from parasites, I’m losing it from being healthier in my diet, healthier by exercising, and healthier by having self-control.

I know its weird to be thankful for a parasite problem, but I guess I’m used to being weird.

Sure, this one probably seems like an easy one given its proximity to Mothers Day. However, I’ve been thinking about motherhood (as much as I probably can’t fathom it) and I think its pretty terrific that my mom was there as we were kids kissing our boo-boos, kicking our butts and making us tons of food. Sure, the food may seem like a superficial thing, but I recall as a teenager being able to eat more food than was probably sane. Here are a few funny stories involving my mom being a comforter, a corrector, and a cook:

Comforter

When I was about 14 or so my dad took us up the Virginia City truck route which was a 6 mile long windy road with cliffs at parts and gravel on oil pavement. The perfectly safe place to bring us given that when we weren’t under his supervision on our bicycles we were probably out in fields that had barbed wire strewn about them. Rusty barbed wire. But I digress. As I mentioned we had our bicycles with us because the purposes of these trips up the truck route were to bomb down them at insane speeds with as little use of the breaks as possible. I crashed multiple times on these rides, but one of them was a doozy. I was going about 35-40 miles per hour on my BMX bike (smaller 20″ tire kids bike) when the collar nut that keeps the handle bars and front forks synchronized became loose. My front tire started to wobble back and forth and my bike began to swerve. As happens when I’m involved with things the bike crashed. I scraped and rolled across the pavement stopping a few feet away from the edge of the cliff I was riding next to. Like all but the toughest of people I cried. My dad loaded up the bikes and drove us home with me bleeding all over the suburban and my clothes.

When we arrived home my mom carefully picked gravel from my arms and side (thank God I was wearing a helmet) and helped wash out my wounds. That was pretty awesome considering that I should probably have been taught a lesson about being a stupid stunt bicyclist.

[note: my dad was a good dad, too, but that’s another post.  We begged for him to take us up the truck route.]

Correcting (That’ll Learn Ya!)

One winter my cousin Norman was up with us in Carson City and we had a good freeze. The three of us (Norm, Ed and I) went for a walk and discovered that the ice on top of the Carson river was fun to crack and break through. Sure, our feet got wet but the destructive nature of what we were doing was much more fun than the water was cold. After walking up literally one half a mile of the river’s edge stomping through ice our feet were incredibly cold. Colder than the heart of even the most evil politician. Yes, it felt about -40 degrees (which is the same in Celcius & Fahrenheit) in our legs and feet. OK, I admit it: evil politicians are probobaly colder than that.

We called my mom from a pay phone in the middle of the park that we were in and asked her to come collect us. No such luck. If we were crazy enough to walk in a frozen river for that long we could walk home, too. The whole quarter of a mile or so to our house we all grumbled and fussed about how mean my mom was for making us face the consequences of our actions. When we got home we asked her to kind run us a hot, hot bath. We needed the hot bath to warm us up. As some of you may know and be chuckling about already cold body parts don’t like really hot water because the temperature difference is so severe that it literally feels like burning. My mom gladly ran a hot bath for us to take turns using.

Much shrieking was heard as all three of us in order discovered that this hot bath was not the solution to our problem. Lesson learned. Mission accomplished.

Cooking

My mom was a better cook than we let on with all of our grumbling. If mom made anything but Spaghetti or hamburgers we’d gripe because our pickiness knew very few bounds. Mom would make large quantities of food to feed us and our friends, hoping that there might be left-overs so that the next day my dad would have a more complex lunch than rice cakes and such (he’s gluten intolerant as well as allergic to corn & various other grains). Mom, even when she wasn’t cooking for us, would buy foods that we could cook for ourselves. She bought huge quantities of frozen burritos. While that may sound like a bad thing, consider that I would eat one for lunch (we lived a few blocks from the High School my brother and I attended), one before going to work in the afternoons, and my brother would also participate.

Mom fed us food, shopped for food for us, and even taught us a thing or two about cooking so that when we moved out of the house we lived out of microwaves and fast food containers.

Thanks Mom!