My family and I traveled to our parents homes for the holidays this year. It's fun for the boys to see their grandparents; also great for my wife and I to catch up with our family. In November we had just returned home from seeing the grandparents. As usual, we end up packing half our house for only a three day trip; when we return home, we end up bringing back even more things. Generally I will go ahead and unpack the van, while my wife gets the boys settled in after a long car ride. After the van was unpacked and the boys were fed, my wife and I finally were able to sit on the couch and put our feet up after our long day. Unfortunately, our night was just getting started.
My youngest son was 10 months old at that time, and my oldest son was 4 years old. My youngest is just crawling and the boys love chasing each other around the house. After a long car ride, it's like all their energy has been bottled up for hours. So they let it all out once they get in the house and are able to stretch out. My wife and I were sitting on the couch chatting, while the boys were playing in the kitchen. When we're sitting in our house, for the most part we have a very good view of the kitchen and can see the boys very well. You must go through the kitchen to get to the basement in our house. The boys love going down to the basement because the play room is down their and they have way too many toys to play with down there. There is no door leading to the basement steps, so we put a baby get up that you have to swing to open. There is no way for the boys to open the gate unless it weren't shut by us. You can probably guess what I'm about to say next!
I had gone down the basement steps multiple times to put some of our luggage away and some of our clothes. I'm not sure how it was missed, I played through the scenario many times in my head. Unfortunately, that gate was not fully closed when I was finished putting our things away. As my wife and I were talking we had not noticed that our boys had made it over to the basement steps. I remember my oldest son yell out "hey mommy", and after that we heard our 10 month old rolling down a flight of 12 steps.
I've never seen my very pregnant wife run that fast in my life. She sprinted towards the stairs and I was running right behind her. That was probably the longest 5 seconds of my life. When our oldest son called out, my wife and I knew something was wrong. We looked at each other and we both knew that we had not checked the steps before we sat down to take a break. I think we were already running as he was rolling down the steps, we did not see him but we heard him hit the bottom. Our steps are not carpeted, they are wooden steps. After my son hit the ground, we immediately heard him start crying. I've honestly never been so happy to hear my son cry before. As we came down the steps, it was like a war zone. There was a decent amount of blood coming from his mouth and a lot on the floor. The baby was screaming, my wife was crying, my oldest son was freaking out as well. Just a very scary scene that will never leave my memory. My son had four teeth at the time, two on the top and bottom. As I checked him over, I could tell that one tooth on the bottom row was pushed very far forward. My wife and I cleaned him up and then packed the family back in the van and took him to Urgent Care.
The Urgent Care was about 30 minutes away, it was operated by the Children's Hospital near our town. I had so many thoughts running through my mind as I drove to the hospital. Does my son have a concussion? Will I be questioned by the police when we get to the hospital? Will my wife be mad at me for leaving that gate open? Just many thoughts in my head as I was rushing over to the hospital. Once we got to the hospital, the staff was very professional and brought our son back right away. Thankfully, the only damage my son had was his tooth and a swollen lip. My wife and I were so thankful!! We've taken my son to a pediatric dentist a few times since the fall. If you were to see my son smile at you today, he will have one crooked tooth on the bottom. But he would give you a big smile, for he survived a fall that could have been devastating.
My wife and I now check the gait at least three times an hour it seems like. We know that he could have had a lot more problems than just a messed up tooth. I also know that Christ is looking after my family. The Lord was with my wife and I as we were taking care of our son that night. Even though it was a tense situation, I just felt a lot of peace. I felt like God had control of the situation, and I was able to stay very calm for the most part. Some people may call it luck. If that was just luck, then I guess I'm just a really lucky guy. My wife and I know that the Father was protecting our son that. We don't call that luck, we call that faith.
Exodus 14:14 says "the Lord fights for you; you need only to be still". I've decided that throughout the rest of my life, I'm going to let God fight these battles. All these situations that come up and test us. Don't get me wrong, Kara and I could have easily avoided this situation. We took every precaution, we crossed all the T's and dotted every i after he fell down. The one thing that we didn't forget, was to include the Father. We silently prayed during our drive over to the hospital and continue to pray for our little boy. The Lord encouraged us the following days as we both felt very discouraged about parenting honestly. We feel like we are very blessed to come out with a healthy baby. I'm sure there are many stories similar to ours and probably a lot worse. So remember, the Lord fights for you. Even in those small situations, just let Him be a part of that situation. He wants to fight for you, so let Him. I've found that He ALWAYS wins, even if we don't like the outcome.
Have a blessed day!
-Aaron
Monday, January 21, 2019
Sunday, January 13, 2019
BELLS, by Ryan
I've never been one to really make New Year's Resolutions - mostly due to the fact that I would set some unattainable or lofty goal (with good intentions to better myself) that I wouldn't end up being able to accomplish. I recently finished reading a book called Surprise the World! by Michael Frost. Frost talks about five habits of highly missional people that are practical and simple to incorporate in to our every day lives. The English word mission comes from the Latin word missio which means to send, be ejected, or pushed out. The book is a fairly quick read and I recommend reading, but I wanted to summarize the habits the writer presents:
1. Bless three people each week (at least one who is not a member of the church you attend). This looks like encouraging or giving words of affirmation to someone else, an act of kindness, and/or giving a gift.
2. Eat with three people each week (at least one who is not a member of the church you attend). Most of us eat 27 meals in a given week and Frost discusses how it's natural to build friendships and relationships at the table.
3. Listen to the Holy Spirit for a period of time each week. The author suggests to set a designated time each week and eliminate distractions. Quiet yourself and meditate on the Spirit.
4. Learn by spending a period of time during each week by studying the life of Jesus. The book says, "We need to know Him (Jesus) if we're going to share him as the reason for the hope we have."
5. Sent to alert others of God's reign. The author recommends journaling either daily or weekly how you have been missional. "It will be about helping you to sort through the myriad everyday ways you operate as God's ambassador in your world," Frost says.
Frost also writes in the book that fear and laziness are mission killers. Fear of persecution, standing out, offending, or getting questions we may not have the answer to; laziness referring to the inner voice that prompts us not to bother or reach out to another person.
Research suggests that it takes approximately 3 months for a new habit to be formed. My goal for 2019 and beyond is to implement these 5 habits to spread the love of Jesus.
Bless
Eat
Listen
Learn
Sent
1. Bless three people each week (at least one who is not a member of the church you attend). This looks like encouraging or giving words of affirmation to someone else, an act of kindness, and/or giving a gift.
2. Eat with three people each week (at least one who is not a member of the church you attend). Most of us eat 27 meals in a given week and Frost discusses how it's natural to build friendships and relationships at the table.
3. Listen to the Holy Spirit for a period of time each week. The author suggests to set a designated time each week and eliminate distractions. Quiet yourself and meditate on the Spirit.
4. Learn by spending a period of time during each week by studying the life of Jesus. The book says, "We need to know Him (Jesus) if we're going to share him as the reason for the hope we have."
5. Sent to alert others of God's reign. The author recommends journaling either daily or weekly how you have been missional. "It will be about helping you to sort through the myriad everyday ways you operate as God's ambassador in your world," Frost says.
Frost also writes in the book that fear and laziness are mission killers. Fear of persecution, standing out, offending, or getting questions we may not have the answer to; laziness referring to the inner voice that prompts us not to bother or reach out to another person.
Research suggests that it takes approximately 3 months for a new habit to be formed. My goal for 2019 and beyond is to implement these 5 habits to spread the love of Jesus.
Bless
Eat
Listen
Learn
Sent
Tuesday, January 8, 2019
Word for this Season, by Will
Originally this post was titled "Word for the Year", but as I've been thinking about it for the past week that title really doesn't fit what's going on in my life. There have been times in the past where God has given me a specific word to focus on during a calendar year, and the various things I read, studied, experienced, and taught during that year all came back to that one word. It was something that happened continually for a while, but then something happened and I really didn't connect with God in that way.
A few years ago I began a journey as I began uncovering my God given identity. For three years that was the primary thing I was focused on, and pretty much everything I wrote and studied personally focused on that topic, something that started in March 2015 and continued until this past June at a ceremony. For two years I spent time alone in the woods, intentionally seeking vision from God, all of which served to confirm my identity and help me understand what claiming it entailed. I had the intention of doing another night in the woods in 2018, but things kept coming up, and I was never able to make it happen.
At first I was upset with myself for not making it more of a priority, but as I reflected, I really didn't have a sense to do one when I had the time, and once I felt the urgency to do one, the time wasn't there. I didn't get my over night vision quest with God this year, but I still felt like God had spoken to me and given me direction for the next stage of my journey.
For three years, I was fully focused on identity, on discovering it and owning it, and it is something I feel like I have a very firm grasp of. In early July 2018 I felt the need to get away from everything that was going on. I loaded my pack and heading for the woods. I felt that God was calling me to just escape and process some things, and so I headed to a nearby trail, having no real plan on where to go or what my mind was going to process. I got there, parked, and started walking, asking God where I should go. A little way down the trail He gave me a vision of a spot I knew well, and when I turned around to head to that spot I felt that the sense that I needed to take the scenic route there. I turned around and hiked almost three miles to a spot that was less than half a mile from the parking lot.
I set my hammock up and began to write as the sun began to slowly set over the lake I was by. I have four central themes that I am focused on, Identity, Passion, Destiny, and Community, and I began to do some processing of each one. I filled a couple index cards with what I had learned about Identity, the Scriptural foundation, the support verses, the key concepts I had learned over the past three years, and a bit of my own experience with them. Then I got to Passion, I managed to write down the foundation verse, but then I got stuck, not really sure what to do. I moved on to Destiny, being able to give a little more for this one, but still not the detail of Identity. Community wasn't fully on my radar at that point so it didn't get any attention.
When I looked over what I had written for Passion I really began to get frustrated. I didn't get it, didn't know how to explain it or really what it looked like, and I wasn't sure what to do because this was the next area I was supposed to focus on. At that moment, during my mini vision quest, that God revealed what my focus would be for this next season, Passion.
Since that evening by the lack a lot has happened, most of which I can't share publicly yet, but I realized that my focus of Passion was off. I had made it too small and in some ways too complicated. Over the final months of 2018, God began to help me see that Passion is about Him, and specifically my relationship with Him. I spent three years focused on Identity, on who God says I am, and now that that part of the journey is complete it's time to move onto the next phase, focusing on Passion, my personal relationship and connection with God.
The word for this season of my life is Passion. If the past three years are any indication this season may not end until the next decade, honestly I think it's going to be something that continues to develop and unfold for the rest of my life, but during this season it is going to be the primary focus of my study and prayer. God has been calling me to a deeper intimacy with Him, and that is what this stage is about. I know who I am, and now I need to come to a deeper understanding of and intimacy with the one who named me.
Fight the lion, 1 Peter 5.1-11
TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!
A few years ago I began a journey as I began uncovering my God given identity. For three years that was the primary thing I was focused on, and pretty much everything I wrote and studied personally focused on that topic, something that started in March 2015 and continued until this past June at a ceremony. For two years I spent time alone in the woods, intentionally seeking vision from God, all of which served to confirm my identity and help me understand what claiming it entailed. I had the intention of doing another night in the woods in 2018, but things kept coming up, and I was never able to make it happen.
At first I was upset with myself for not making it more of a priority, but as I reflected, I really didn't have a sense to do one when I had the time, and once I felt the urgency to do one, the time wasn't there. I didn't get my over night vision quest with God this year, but I still felt like God had spoken to me and given me direction for the next stage of my journey.
For three years, I was fully focused on identity, on discovering it and owning it, and it is something I feel like I have a very firm grasp of. In early July 2018 I felt the need to get away from everything that was going on. I loaded my pack and heading for the woods. I felt that God was calling me to just escape and process some things, and so I headed to a nearby trail, having no real plan on where to go or what my mind was going to process. I got there, parked, and started walking, asking God where I should go. A little way down the trail He gave me a vision of a spot I knew well, and when I turned around to head to that spot I felt that the sense that I needed to take the scenic route there. I turned around and hiked almost three miles to a spot that was less than half a mile from the parking lot.
I set my hammock up and began to write as the sun began to slowly set over the lake I was by. I have four central themes that I am focused on, Identity, Passion, Destiny, and Community, and I began to do some processing of each one. I filled a couple index cards with what I had learned about Identity, the Scriptural foundation, the support verses, the key concepts I had learned over the past three years, and a bit of my own experience with them. Then I got to Passion, I managed to write down the foundation verse, but then I got stuck, not really sure what to do. I moved on to Destiny, being able to give a little more for this one, but still not the detail of Identity. Community wasn't fully on my radar at that point so it didn't get any attention.
When I looked over what I had written for Passion I really began to get frustrated. I didn't get it, didn't know how to explain it or really what it looked like, and I wasn't sure what to do because this was the next area I was supposed to focus on. At that moment, during my mini vision quest, that God revealed what my focus would be for this next season, Passion.
Since that evening by the lack a lot has happened, most of which I can't share publicly yet, but I realized that my focus of Passion was off. I had made it too small and in some ways too complicated. Over the final months of 2018, God began to help me see that Passion is about Him, and specifically my relationship with Him. I spent three years focused on Identity, on who God says I am, and now that that part of the journey is complete it's time to move onto the next phase, focusing on Passion, my personal relationship and connection with God.
The word for this season of my life is Passion. If the past three years are any indication this season may not end until the next decade, honestly I think it's going to be something that continues to develop and unfold for the rest of my life, but during this season it is going to be the primary focus of my study and prayer. God has been calling me to a deeper intimacy with Him, and that is what this stage is about. I know who I am, and now I need to come to a deeper understanding of and intimacy with the one who named me.
Fight the lion, 1 Peter 5.1-11
TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!
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