Hello to my blogging faithful!........all two of you :)
Did your mom ever tell you, in response to you doing something dumb because your friends did it, "If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too?" Yeah, I heard that saying more than once growing up. So before I go any further, I must issue my disclaimer: What you are about to read is a stunt done on a non-closed course by someone who is a professional......just not a professional stuntman. Please, under no circumstances, do not try this at home.....or any where else, for that matter!
In less than 3 months I am getting married. My fiancee, Christina, is having her first bridal shower tomorrow and one of her bridesmaids wanted to do a version of the "NewlyWed Game" for the shower. She wanted to have a list of questions that would be asked to the bride-to-be. Christina would answer how she thought I would answer, and then they would show a video taped answer from me. One of the points to this game was for it to be a surprise for Christina. So this bridesmaid (let's call her "Mel") contacts me and asks if I would be up for this. I said I would and we planned on meeting one evening with her brother to film while my fiancee was away in New York.
So we ended up in downtown Indianapolis by the canals, which is where I proposed. We got some footage standing right where I popped the question. And then we started to head out to the next location. Mel asks me if I want to get any other footage down here and I tell her no. So as we are heading back to the car, we cross over a bridge and she says, " I want some of the questions to be questions that there may not have set answer to, like: woiuld Jared jump off a bridge?" The light bulb went off in my head. I peered over the side of the bridge and thought, "I've made jumps close to this height before, I can do this!" So I turn to Mel and say "That's a great idea! Let's do it!" Mel said, "Do what?", and I said, "I'll jump off the bridge"
As you can imagine, Mel's response was something along the lines of "Are you serious? You'll get yourself killed". I surveyed the area and saw at the far end of the bridge a set of steps that went down to the canal. I told Mel that I could climb up on the stone railing and jump down to the first landing on the steps. It was about a 9-10 foot drop, one that I have jumped from before (when I was at least 10 years younger and 50 pounds lighter). So I climbed up as Mel asked me more than one time "I you sure? I don't think this is a good idea...." I reassured her that everything would be fine. Mel started filming and I said, "Would Jared jump off a bridge? Yes, he would!" and then leaped off the rail to the landing.
Everything went as planned....until I landed. As soon as I touched down and went to roll, I felt fire flow across the bottom of my right foot, around my ankle, and up the back of my leg. Oh crap! Did I just tear my achillies's tendon?!? I lay there for a moment and then tried to get up and put weight on it. Pain instantly went through my ankle like it had been stepped on by a brontosaurus and down I went. Mel and her brother came to the edge, looked over, and asked if I was alright. I, of course, said what any tough, macho man would say: "No! I think I hurt myself really bad!"
So to make this story shorter than "War and Peace", I didn't tear my achillies' tendon. Instead, I broke my heel bone into a few different parts. My foot swelled to the size of an Olympic swimming pool. The bruising was pretty brutal, too, making my foot look like I had been stomping on grapes for about a month straight. So now I can't bear weight on it for 6 weeks, and will have to be in an aircast boot for 2-3 months. Yay me.......
Oh well, if that is the worst thing that happens to me this year, I think that I can call it a good year :) Thanks for reading to the bottom. As my sister in law would say "Daily bread, daily strength".....and a good icing of the ankle.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
A gleem in a young girl's eye
In the words of Stan Lee: "Hello True Believers!"
Happy St. David's Day!
It has been a few days since I have posted, and I'm sure my two or three readers have been pondering what I have been up to lately. Well, the suspense is over :)
This past weekend was week two of our marriage enrichment class at church. It was very interesting to hear from Tim, who is a marriage counselor on the subject, even for a cagey veteran like me :)
What I really want to touch on today, though, is not from this past weekend, but from the week before. Christina and I had been doing a lot of wedding legwork (literally....I think we visited over 10 stores that day). Since we were doing many wedding things that weekend, Ellie stayed with her grandparents. By the time I got over there early Tuesday morning, I was really anxious to see her. The nice thing is she was as excited to see me as I was her. She gave me a big "huggy" and "kissy". It was awesome! As I was taking her to day care, we talked about what her and her Grandparents had done over the weekend and what her and I were going to do the rest of the week together. We got to day care, I hugged and kissed her goodbye, and then headed into work.
As I drove away I got to thinking about two important questions: 1.) Just as I was excited to see my child when she was away from me for a while, is God equally excited to see His child(ren) when they come racing back to Him? 2.) For as excited as Ellie was to see me that morning, why are we not always as excited to run to our Heavenly Father?
The answer to the first question was pretty easy for me to answer. I can remember many times, as I grew up in the church and even after I was saved (and older), reading the story of the Prodigal Son and hearing messages preached on it. In case you are not familiar, this story was a parable that Jesus told to His disciples. He tells of a son who asked his father for his inheritance and then left his father to go blow the fortune on fine wine, women, Moon Pies, and penny whistles. A long parable short, he ended up trying to get food from some pigs, knee deep in mud, wishing he was back with his daddy. He figured that if he was even a hired hand for this father, he would be living with more that he had at that point. So he headed down the road to his father's hacienda, rehearsing the message he was going to tell his dad. When his dad saw him coming, he ran to him and embraced him. He had his hired help (there were a lot of "h"'s right there) get a cloak and a ring and to make a feast for his son, because he came back home.
In this parable, Jesus was describing our relationship with God the Father. We were (or "are" if you haven't been saved) spiritually wanting to eat what the pigs had because our hearts were desolate. If you have ever watched a zombie movie, you know that a zombie is a dead body that walks around. Spiritually, that is what we were: zombies wanting to eat pig slop. God is the role of the father in this story and when He sees us coming back with a contrite heart wanting to be even the least of the people in His kingdom, He runs to us. Please don't miss the emphasis on Him running. He doesn't wait for us to get to a certain place ("Hey look...here comes Sally back to be saved. Hmmm....I think I will wait until after lunch until I go see her"). Our God runs to meet us right were we are! It makes me ponder this question: if the Prodigal son had been feeding the pigs and the Father just happened to be visiting that city and saw his son out there trying to grab a bite from the bovine buffet (yes, I know a bovine is a cow and not a pig.....if I said a pork buffet I would have just gotten hungrier), would the father had said, "yeah.......I'm betting he'll be crawling back soon." and walked away, or would he have done the high jump over the fence and into the swine swill to hug his son? I'm sure it would have been the latter scene.
But what about the second question? Why are we not as quick to run to our Heavenly Father? Why do we have to wait until we are trying to lick morsels from a mud-infested slop trough before we come to the conclusion that we are in need of what only God can provide for us? I can't tell you how many time since I have gotten saved that I try to do something (even something small and seemingly insignificant) on my own and don't first run to my Creator. I'll give you an example: last night I was tired. Which is to say that I could have probably slept for three straight days if my daughter hadn't woken me wanting a drink of water. When I woke up, I looked for my cell phone and couldn't find it. I had it with me in bed that night because I was waiting for my fiancee to call me (turns out she did, but I didn't hear my cell phone ring). To make matters worse, the battery had completely died, so calling it was not going to bear any fruit. So I scourge my bed and room looking for my cell phone. I still can't find it. Then I think that maybe Ellie had picked it up. I asked her, but she didn't have it. I looked and looked and looked again, hoping that it would magically appear in the spots that I had just checked over about 15 times, but alas, it was not to be found.
So, I call Christina. I apologize for not hearing her call (I correctly assumed she called and correctly assumed that I missed it) and told her I couldn't find my phone. We talked for a moment and then she prayed for me. She said in her prayer the she knew God saw where my phone was and asked Him to reveal it to me. We finished praying and hung up. I finished getting Ellie ready and went into my kitchen to get an item. Lo and behold, what do you think was sitting on my counter? Yep, my phone. I don't know how it made it to the kitchen, but there it lay. I thanked God for helping me, and then thought "Why don't I do that all of the time?"
Now, don't get me wrong: praying like that isn't a magic spell. Asking God to reveal it won't make Him do it. That is not the point. The point is, even if God chose not to reveal my phone to me at that moment, we had asked Him to. We came to Him in a relational manner and with open hearts and told Him about it. That is what I need more of. That is what I want more of.
Off to do some work. Thanks for reading to the bottom. Daily bread, phone GPS, and daily strength.
Happy St. David's Day!
It has been a few days since I have posted, and I'm sure my two or three readers have been pondering what I have been up to lately. Well, the suspense is over :)
This past weekend was week two of our marriage enrichment class at church. It was very interesting to hear from Tim, who is a marriage counselor on the subject, even for a cagey veteran like me :)
What I really want to touch on today, though, is not from this past weekend, but from the week before. Christina and I had been doing a lot of wedding legwork (literally....I think we visited over 10 stores that day). Since we were doing many wedding things that weekend, Ellie stayed with her grandparents. By the time I got over there early Tuesday morning, I was really anxious to see her. The nice thing is she was as excited to see me as I was her. She gave me a big "huggy" and "kissy". It was awesome! As I was taking her to day care, we talked about what her and her Grandparents had done over the weekend and what her and I were going to do the rest of the week together. We got to day care, I hugged and kissed her goodbye, and then headed into work.
As I drove away I got to thinking about two important questions: 1.) Just as I was excited to see my child when she was away from me for a while, is God equally excited to see His child(ren) when they come racing back to Him? 2.) For as excited as Ellie was to see me that morning, why are we not always as excited to run to our Heavenly Father?
The answer to the first question was pretty easy for me to answer. I can remember many times, as I grew up in the church and even after I was saved (and older), reading the story of the Prodigal Son and hearing messages preached on it. In case you are not familiar, this story was a parable that Jesus told to His disciples. He tells of a son who asked his father for his inheritance and then left his father to go blow the fortune on fine wine, women, Moon Pies, and penny whistles. A long parable short, he ended up trying to get food from some pigs, knee deep in mud, wishing he was back with his daddy. He figured that if he was even a hired hand for this father, he would be living with more that he had at that point. So he headed down the road to his father's hacienda, rehearsing the message he was going to tell his dad. When his dad saw him coming, he ran to him and embraced him. He had his hired help (there were a lot of "h"'s right there) get a cloak and a ring and to make a feast for his son, because he came back home.
In this parable, Jesus was describing our relationship with God the Father. We were (or "are" if you haven't been saved) spiritually wanting to eat what the pigs had because our hearts were desolate. If you have ever watched a zombie movie, you know that a zombie is a dead body that walks around. Spiritually, that is what we were: zombies wanting to eat pig slop. God is the role of the father in this story and when He sees us coming back with a contrite heart wanting to be even the least of the people in His kingdom, He runs to us. Please don't miss the emphasis on Him running. He doesn't wait for us to get to a certain place ("Hey look...here comes Sally back to be saved. Hmmm....I think I will wait until after lunch until I go see her"). Our God runs to meet us right were we are! It makes me ponder this question: if the Prodigal son had been feeding the pigs and the Father just happened to be visiting that city and saw his son out there trying to grab a bite from the bovine buffet (yes, I know a bovine is a cow and not a pig.....if I said a pork buffet I would have just gotten hungrier), would the father had said, "yeah.......I'm betting he'll be crawling back soon." and walked away, or would he have done the high jump over the fence and into the swine swill to hug his son? I'm sure it would have been the latter scene.
But what about the second question? Why are we not as quick to run to our Heavenly Father? Why do we have to wait until we are trying to lick morsels from a mud-infested slop trough before we come to the conclusion that we are in need of what only God can provide for us? I can't tell you how many time since I have gotten saved that I try to do something (even something small and seemingly insignificant) on my own and don't first run to my Creator. I'll give you an example: last night I was tired. Which is to say that I could have probably slept for three straight days if my daughter hadn't woken me wanting a drink of water. When I woke up, I looked for my cell phone and couldn't find it. I had it with me in bed that night because I was waiting for my fiancee to call me (turns out she did, but I didn't hear my cell phone ring). To make matters worse, the battery had completely died, so calling it was not going to bear any fruit. So I scourge my bed and room looking for my cell phone. I still can't find it. Then I think that maybe Ellie had picked it up. I asked her, but she didn't have it. I looked and looked and looked again, hoping that it would magically appear in the spots that I had just checked over about 15 times, but alas, it was not to be found.
So, I call Christina. I apologize for not hearing her call (I correctly assumed she called and correctly assumed that I missed it) and told her I couldn't find my phone. We talked for a moment and then she prayed for me. She said in her prayer the she knew God saw where my phone was and asked Him to reveal it to me. We finished praying and hung up. I finished getting Ellie ready and went into my kitchen to get an item. Lo and behold, what do you think was sitting on my counter? Yep, my phone. I don't know how it made it to the kitchen, but there it lay. I thanked God for helping me, and then thought "Why don't I do that all of the time?"
Now, don't get me wrong: praying like that isn't a magic spell. Asking God to reveal it won't make Him do it. That is not the point. The point is, even if God chose not to reveal my phone to me at that moment, we had asked Him to. We came to Him in a relational manner and with open hearts and told Him about it. That is what I need more of. That is what I want more of.
Off to do some work. Thanks for reading to the bottom. Daily bread, phone GPS, and daily strength.
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